Conference Agenda

Social inclusion and inclusive education are key priorities in the Europe 2020 strategy and among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the formulation of such goals, there is extensive evidence that various types of barriers are preventing young Europeans from being successfully integrating into society. Those successful at school come primarily from high socioeconomic backgrounds (Broer,Bai & Fonseca, 2019; Chung, 2015). This factor influences their success at school in terms of engagement, grades and their performance in upper secondary school (Alexander, Entwisle & Horsey 1997; Benner, Boyle & Sadler, 2016). From this perspective we argue that the educational system reproduces inequalities, and that many of those struggling have experienced a lack of social inclusion. Social inclusion through education is therefore vital to individual and society as a whole.

This symposium focuses on the project Erasmus+ KAIII “Co-created Education through Social Inclusion” (COSI. Ed). COSI.ed is an upscale of the proven good practice from the Erasmus+ project; Marginalisation and Co-created Education (MaCE). The COSI.ed project intends to develop a comprehensive model for social inclusion of pupils in the risk zone for social exclusion and dropout, as well as a political strategy that can be used throughout Europe. Central in the project are the four cornerstones: 1) context (background, schooling and cultural/national, 2) Co-creating (egalitarian perspective to learning, acknowledging competence in the expert as well as the learner), 3) indirect approach (how to communicate with children vulnerable positions to give them voice) (Moshuus & Eide; 2016) and 4) Equality Literacy (what support or hinder learning, for the expert to understand and to empower the learner to)(Stuart.et.al 2019)

The COSI.ed project is conducted in five different countries and educational contexts representing Southern (Portugal and Spain), Eastern (Poland) and Northern Europe (Norway and Denmark). The objective of the project is to prevent and reduce Early School Leaving from Education and training (ELET)and contribute to change of policy. The ambition is to portray an inclusive educational practice for theorists, researchers, educational authorities, and stakeholders to provide theoretical perspectives to practitioners to strengthen their educational work , provide more equal educational opportunities and preventing school dropouts. Following this project we have the Collaborate Competence Groups (CCG) where the pupils, students, politician, professor and teacher meet to analyses, advice and support the project nationally and internationally.

Co- creation in public sector refers to joint working between people or groups who have traditionally been separated into categories of user and producer (Durose, 2017). When young people and other stakeholders’ experiences and tacit knowledge is included in development and implementation of new practices they are experienced as more useful than practices developed and imposed in a ‘top down’ approach(Shamrowa&Cumings,2017).

COSI.ed builds on the understanding that educational staff, role models and the pupils co-create as part of a community of practice. Role models collaborate and share knowledge and experience with students to further develop our approach. By using the embedded methodology pupils learn about themselves, how to excel and the educational staff develop skills and understanding to socially include the pupils.

The collection of studies forms a novel opportunity to discuss strengths and weaknesses of upscaling a co-created model for achieving social inclusion in European countries with diverse contextual characteristics. The symposium contributes to further knowledge about models for social inclusion by focusing on social disadvantage pupils as well as the various teachers’ good practices. In two subsequent symposia we will present the COSI.ed project and the overall design in the first paper. Through the next five papers we will present challenges related to implementation of COSI.ed in the participating countries.

The relationship between adults, such as teachers, educators, pedagogues and their pupils or wards in Polish educational institutions is strongly rooted in traditional perceptions of education and is heavily marked by distance, power imbalance and hierarchy. Research shows that Polish students do not trust teachers (Jankowska, 2013) and the perceived possible support from them in challenging situations is relatively low (Wrona, Małkowska-Szkutnik & Tomaszewska-Pękała, 2015). This may lead to resistance to schooling and student-teacher relationships, which Paul Downes described as “a diametric space of assumed separation, closure and mirror image inversions” (2016). Such processes are particularly evident in institutions aimed at working with young people at risk of social maladjustment, which are based on coercion through the use of various disciplinary and punitive methods (Granosik, Gulczyńska & Szczepanik, 2019). The research shows that in many of these institutions prevails a controlling and restrictive social climate ( Staniaszek, 2018). At the same time, a positive relationship with a significant other is one of the most important protective and compensatory factors (Masten, 2014; Powell, 2015), especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds whose immediate environment often lacks a model of a supportive relationship with an adult (Clarke&Thévenon, 2022; OECD, 2019). The COSI.ed project aims to create a working model in which, through an indirect approach, equality literacy and co-creation, diametrical relationships are to be broken and the chance to change a culture of resistance towards a concentric relationship i.e. connection and openness as a precondition for trust, care and voice is created (Downes 2016). The main target group of the project are young people at risk of leaving school early. In the presentation we discuss the challenges of implementing this innovative model of working with young people at risk of educational and social exclusion in two Warsaw institutions - a special educational centre and a youth sociotherapy centre. We will include the perspective of young people as well as that of the staff of these institutions, highlighting the risks and opportunities that a bridging and empowering working model opens up for them.

Clarke, C. and O. Thévenon (2022), Starting unequal: How’s life for disadvantaged children?, OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, No. 06, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a0ec330c-en. Downes, P. (2016). Developing a Framework of System Change between Diametric and Concentric Spaces for Early School Leaving Prevention, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48:9, 899-914, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2015.1079517 Granosik, M., Gulczyńska, A., & Szczepanik, R. (2019). Przekształcanie klimatu społecznego ośrodków wychowawczych dla młodzieży nieprzystosowanej społecznie (MOS i MOW), czyli o potrzebie rozwoju dyskursu profesjonalnego oraz działań upełnomocniających. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Jankowska, A. (2013). Nauczyciel (nie)godny zaufania. Edukacja Humanistyczna, 2 (29), 235-244. Masten, A. S. (2014). Ordinary magic: Resilience in development. New York, NY: Guilford. OECD (2019), Changing the Odds for Vulnerable Children: Building Opportunities and Resilience, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a2e8796c-en. Powell, K. M. (2015). A Strengths-Based Approach for Intervention with At-Risk Youth, Champaign IL: Research Press. Staniaszek, M. (2018). Diagnoza klimatu społecznego młodzieżowych ośrodków wychowawczych w Polsce. Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana, 21(1), 175-197. Wrona, A., Małkowska-Szkutnik, A., & Tomaszewska-Pękała, H. (2015). Perceived support from parents, teachers and peers as a factor of early leaving from upper secondary schools in Poland. Przegląd Socjologiczny, 1(LXIV (64)), 61-80.

Converging with European policies and goals that value the role of education and training in social inclusion, Portugal has been developing efforts to reduce early-school leaving, including the enlargement of compulsory schooling to 12 years and the reinforcement of vocational educational tracks (Araújo et al., 2014). However, student grade repetition and related equity concerns remain challenging, thus being key policy areas (OECD, 2020). Second-chance schools have been a recent policy measure to support young adults' transition back to education and training, with practices that invest in high recognition of students' life situations (Macedo et al., 2018). Bearing in mind reducing early-school leaving, we conducted a study in which a model was applied that privileges the Indirect Approach as a methodology that uses communication, thus giving voice to young people in vulnerable situations. Disadvantaged situations that can hinder learning can be identified in the young people's life stories. The Indirect Approach is an explorative method through which the recognition of impactful and unknown realities is intended. Ideally, the intervention session should take the shape of storytelling, letting the young informant guide the conversation (Frostholm & Walker, 2021; Moshuus & Eide, 2016). This paper presents and discusses the ways the Indirect Approach being upscaled in the COSI.ed project was adapted and applied to a sample of five young people in a second-chance school of the metropolitan region of Porto, in a partnership between educational researchers, Education Sciences Master students and educational professionals from the schools. We will describe the intervention inspired by the Indirect Approach and discuss the preliminary results of the monitoring study through semi-structured interviews with two master's students and one teacher who used the methodology, as well as questionnaires distributed to 21 young people chosen by convenience. The discussion will center on some of the model's strengths and weaknesses as seen through the actors' perspectives and experiences, as well as its relationships with students' engagement with schooling in general, and the second-chance school in particular. Concerning the conversations topics, the results showed that young people have expectations about their educational and professional future, and most of them know what job they want and how to achieve it. The relationship between policies (Veiga, 2014) and practices that provide opportunities for students at risk of exclusion to tell their life stories and emphasize disadvantaged situations that can hinder their learning will also be highlighted in order to support policy recommendations.

Araújo, H., Magalhães, A., Rocha, C., & Macedo, E. (2014). Education/social and measures regarding ESL in nine partner countries. In: REDUCING EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING IN EUROPE (RESL) (org.). Policies on Early School Leaving in Nine European Countries: A Comparative Analysis (University of Antwerp). Frostholm, P., & Walker, S. (2021). The Indirect Approach – The Basics, the Craft and the Ethics (pp. 61–75). https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-448-620211006 Macedo, E., Santos, S., A., & Aarújo, H., C. (2018). How can a second chance school support young adults’ transition back to education? European Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 452–455. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12312 Moshuus, G. H., & Eide, K. (2016). The Indirect Approach. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406916656 OCDE. (2020). Education Policy Outlook: Portugal. www.oecd.org/education/policy-outlook/country-profile-Portugal-2020.pdf Veiga, A. (2014). Researching the Bologna Process through the Lens of the Policy Cycle. In: Teodoro, A., Guilherme, M. (eds) European and Latin American Higher Education Between Mirrors. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-545-8_7.

Policy efforts are increasingly aimed at addressing the challenges of early school leaving. Following national goals to increase upper secondary school completion (Meld. St. 21 2020–2021), "Co-created Social Inclusion in Education" (COSI.ed) have collaborated with young people in an upper secondary vocational school in Norway characterized by a challenging socio-economic context. 'Equality Literacy Framework'(EQL) (Stuart et al., 2021) concerns theoretical, practical and research perspectives addressing factors that promote and inhibit equal educational opportunities (context, personal life experiences, positioning from other people, oppressive or liberating structures, self-understanding, and individual choices). EQL is used for research and assessment purposes to understand factors and dimensions important for young people’s learning, as well as to improve the learning environment for students who are at risk of early school leaving. The model is rooted in a bioecological, systemic view. The model thus captures relationships between the individual student and the different contexts at micro, meso and macro level: Teacher- student- relationships (Krane et al 2016), relationships with peers, family relations, quality of school life (Tangen, 2009) and sociocultural contexts are pinpointed as vital to preventing early school leaving. A life-history perspective shows how the relationships between the individual and the different contexts change over time. We used a visual ethnography method aiming to understand and facilitate a more equal and inclusive school environment based on the EQL framework. (Berg, 2008). 23 students in a vocational upper secondary school in Norway have participated. By visualizing their own school narratives they have developed a new understanding of their learning paths. These school narratives have been interpreted and discussed between students and teachers in a classroom setting. Moreover, the school narrative approach has been discussed in a Collaborative Competence (CCG) group (consistent of stakeholders: two upper secondary students, one teacher, one policy maker, one higher education student and one researcher) to analyze how these narratives could be understood at a macro level and how the approach can be further developed. According to preliminary findings, students who construct their own school narratives and learning paths show greater awareness and engagement in their own school path. Teachers reported a positive development in the relationships with their students and in the overall teacher- student-relationship. Both teachers and students have reported an improvement in quality of school life. Challenges of the method are related to boundaries and ethical considerations between private spheres and school life.

Berg, B. L. (2008). Visual ethnography. In: L. M. Given (Ed.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. S. 934-937 http://www.yanchukvladimir.com/docs/Library/Sage%20Encyclopedia%20of%20Qualitative%20Research%20Methods-%202008.pdf Krane, V., Ness, O., Holter-Sorensen, N., Karlsson, B., & Binder, P. E. (2017). ‘You notice that there is something positive about going to school’: how teachers’ kindness can promote positive teacher–student relationships in upper secondary school. International Journal of adolescence and Youth, 22(4), 377-389. Meld. St. 21 (2020-2021). The completion reform - with open doors to the world and the future. [Fullføringsreformen – med åpne dører til verden og fremtiden] https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/meld.-st.-21-20202021/id2840771/?ch=1 Stuart, K. & Gravesen, D. T. (2021). Equality Literacy Framework. In: Gravesen, D. T., Stuart, K. Bunting, M., Mikkelsen, S. H. & Frostholm, P.H. (2021). Combating marginalization by co-creating education. Methods, theories, and practices from the perspectives of young people. Emerald publishing. Chapter 4. Equality Literacy Framework. (pp. 47-60). Combating marginalization by co-creating education | Emerald insights Tangen, R. (2009). Conceptualising quality of school life from pupils’ perspectives: A four‐dimensional model. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 13(8), 829-844.