Conference Agenda

The inclusive education perspective of UNESCO’s Framework (Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all) has brought significant changes to educational policy and school management and organisation (Diem, Browning and Sampson, 2020). Research on teaching and learning practices in diverse classrooms is as important as ever. This symposium focusses on an implicitly diverse education context- schools with multigrade classrooms.

In an educational context where schools have been organised according to the principles of enterprise organisations, the tendency in educational systems has been to distribute the population from homogeneous criteria in order to work under criteria of homogeneity. Heterogenous classrooms only have been present when the conditions of depopulation of rural areas cannot organize a complete graduate school. In this context a general model of urban school has been shown as the ideal of school and classrooms with children of different ages have had a negative reputation. Research from different countries have shown this negative perspective attending to the teachers' voices (eg. Mulryan-Kyne, 2004).

European classrooms have become more diverse due to migration both within Europe and from non-European countries with this creating potentially new challenges and opportunities for teachers and teacher education. Multigrade classrooms are present in rural and urban areas. Inclusive teaching practices research become central arenas in this scenario for creating deepened understandings of education and inclusion in different countries and for considering local and global discussions. The main aim of this symposium is therefore to help to broaden knowledge and create a space for exchange, reflection and discussion about the status of teaching practices research in these respects in European countries. Connecting this is a challenge for educational research.

Previous studies have already highlighted the relevance of inclusive teaching practices in multigrade classrooms to deal with social justice and inclusion in conditions of European diversity (e.g. Bjøru, 2023, Mangione et al, 2022, Vigo and Soriano, 2014). This research has dealt with the challenges of globalization, migratory movements and inclusion and the implications and needs that these factors demand from future (and past) teacher professionals, teacher education and teacher education research and policy. They ask questions about how schools, universities and other institutions entrusted with teaching practices to respond to the European Union call to inclusive education, so that they can participate in and develop schools that respect different needs, cultures and lives, and contribute to social justice and inclusion aims (EC, 2017) and in line with this the Symposium has a twofold interest:

• To exchange research knowledge about teaching practices from multigrade schools, attending to inclusive education.
• To promote interest for future research about inclusive and creative teaching practices in rural and urban spaces in schools and hyper-diversity in European countries.

The symposium will include researchers from four European countries whose research has addressed initial teacher education in Higher Education. With a critical perspective as a common theme, the papers will cover issues dealing with different processes of inclusion and exclusion related to initial teacher education perspectives. These issues are of great relevance for European educational research, where markets and Inclusion are co-located. The symposium challenges contemporary initial teacher education and the preparation of teachers for working in diverse classrooms.

This contribution is based on a recently published book chapter entitled ‘Multi-grade Teaching in a Small Rural School in Northern Norway’ (Bjøru, AM., 2023, in Hirshberg, et al, J. (eds)). The research on which the chapter is based, investigates multi-grade teaching in a small rural school in Northern Norway. The aims of the research are to show what characterizes the teaching practices in a multi-grade school in a small rural community, and how these practices enable inclusion and adapted education. It presents a brief insight into parts of the Norwegian framework for education; the Education Act (1998) and the Core Curricula (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, n.d.), and the Subject Curricula (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2022), as well as theory about didactical tools that are useful in multi-grade school settings (Hyry-Beihammer, & Hascher, 2015a; 2015b). The data was collected during a visit to a small rural school. The field work lasted two full days and included observations of classroom sessions, participation at recess and informal talks with the teachers. Findings show that the three didactical tools student group formation/subject organizing, peer-learning and pupils’ personal working plans (Hyry-Beihammer & Hascher, 2015a; 2015b) are useful when conducting multi-grade teaching in a small school with few pupils. Alongside the subject orientation, the paper includes a discussion about the Norwegian Core curriculum’s (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, n.d.) focus on social learning and how this is an important fourth element when working towards a practice that is inclusive and adapted to the individual pupil.

Norway. In: Hirshberg, D.B., Beaton, M.C., Maxwell, G., Turunen, T., Peltokorpi, J. (eds) Education, Equity and Inclusion. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97460-2_14 Hyry-Beihammer, E.K. & Hascher, T. (2015a). Multigrade Teaching in Primary Education as a Promising Pedagogy for Teacher Education in Austria and Finland. Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 22C, 89-113. http://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720150000022005 Hyry-Beihammer, E.K. & Hascher, T. (2015b). Multi-grade teaching practices in Austrian and Finnish primary schools. International journal of Educational Research, 2015:74, p. 104-113. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2015.07.002 The Education Act. (1998). Act relating to Primary and Secondary Education and Training. (LOV-1998-07-17-61). Lovdata. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/1998-07-17-61 The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. (n.d.). Core curriculum – values and principles for primary and secondary education. https://www.udir.no/lk20/overordnet-del/?lang=eng The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. (2022). Curricula in English. https://www.udir.no/in-english/curricula-in-english/

Initial teacher education programmes (ITE) in Scotland must all be accredited by the General Teaching Council for Scotland, with the expectation that the content of each programme will, ‘to prepare student teachers to become competent, thoughtful and reflective and innovative practitioners’ (GTCS, 2019, 1.2) confident to teach in any part of Scotland. This generic approach is premised on preparing teachers for schools in urban areas, where the majority of the Scottish population lives. In urban areas the majority of classes in primary schools are in single year groups, with few multigrade classrooms. This means that ITE programmes provide little preparation or practicum experience of multi-grade teaching. The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) provides ITE programmes across the rural north and west of Scotland, where there are large numbers of smaller schools and multi-grade classrooms. To prepare new teachers for practice these programmes have a greater emphasis on pedagogies and practicum experience to develop knowledge and skills for teaching in diverse multi-grade classrooms. This paper explores the space between the pedagogies taught in initial teacher programmes in Scotland and focus of early career teachers on the resources available to them in multi-grade classrooms. It builds on the results of research carried out in the University of the Highlands and Islands between 2018 and 2020, as part of the SCDE Attainment Challenge Project (SCDE, 2021), where one of the key findings was that early career teachers are more comfortable planning their teaching through the resources available to them than pedagogical approaches and preferred to work with particular schemes that structured teaching for them. Research to explore this point with graduates teaching in multi-grade classrooms has confirmed these approaches and identified a series of questions for initial teacher education programmes that suggest a focus on resources (Misimanga, 2019) would better prepare teachers for multi-grade classrooms.

General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), 2019 Guidelines of the Accreditation of Initial Teacher Education Programmes in Scotland. Available online: https://www.gtcs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ITE-Programme-Accreditation-Guidelines.pdf Msimanga, M.R, (2019) Managing the use of resources in multi-grade classrooms, South African Journal of Education, 39(3). 1-9 Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE), (2021) SCDE Attainment challenge Project: Developing pedagogies that work for Pre-service and Early Career Teachers to reduce the Attainment Gap in Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing. Available online: http://www.scde.ac.uk/projects/scde-attainment-challenge-project/ Scottish Government, 2021, Rural Schools in Scotland: definition. Available online: https://www.gov.scot/publications/rural-schools-in-scotland-definition/

Today, it is imperative that schools make profound changes that go beyond educational innovation, enabling social transformation (Feu-Gelis and Torrent-Font, 2019) and inclusion (Ainscow et al., 2006). Following this idea, the research addresses the concept of pedagogical renewal (PR), following with a more open and critical school where in multigrade contexts (Cornish, 2006) active methodologies and democratic structures (Zyngier, 2011; Pericacho Gómez, 2015) and changes in the didactics of the resources used (Carrete-Marín and Domingo-Peñafiel, 2022) are carried out. This study is part of the R&D research project "Resituating pedagogical renewal in Spain from a critical perspective. 5 case studies in secondary schools in Aragon, Catalonia, Castile-Leon, Valencia, and the Basque Country". The project aims, on the one hand, to identify singular elements and practices carried out in the center related to PR for the secondary school stage. On the other hand, it aims to link and analyze educational practices with the innovative pedagogical discourse. This paper presented aims to analyze the traces of Pedagogical Renewal (PR) for the secondary school stage in a primary and secondary school (IE) in rural Catalonia considered to be a renewal school, identifying the singular elements of educational practices, in a multigrade context, that can be related to PR. The methodology is based on an interpretive paradigm, and we carried out a case study in the IE Barnola school in Catalonia, in which interviews with the management team, focus groups, pedagogical stories and participant observations are carried out. The study showed the link between the educational practices of the rural school and PR, as well as the coherence between the discourse and the reality observed in the multigrade classrooms. Unique aspects of the school related to the foundations of PR today were identified. The school's trajectory has also been linked to PR for its different stages, pointing to changes, continuities, and discontinuities. The results show a great diversity of PR elements in the school's practices and discourse, such as the reflective attitude of the teachers, their initial training, inclusion, the importance of the territorial dimension, commitment to the environment, multigrading, democratic practices, networking with the community and transformation through ICT. Of these, this paper focuses on exploring the relationship between multi-stage, inclusion and PR.

Ainscow, M., Booth, T., & Dyson, A. (2006). Improving schools, developing inclusion. Routledge. Carrete-Marín, N., & Domingo-Peñafiel, L. (2022). Textbooks and Teaching Materials in Rural Schools: A Systematic Review. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 12(2), 67-94 https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.1288 Cornish,L. (2006) (2006). Multi-age practices and multi-grade classes. In Reaching EFA through multi-grade teaching: Issues, contexts and practices. Kardoorair Press. Feu-Gelis, J., & Torrent.Font, A. (2019). Innovation in the Context of Educational Change and Mirages. In: Peters, M., Heraud, R. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. Springer, Singapore. Pericacho Gómez, F. (2015). Actualidad de la renovación pedagógica en la comunidad de Madrid: un estudio a través de las escuelas emblemáticas. Evolución y experiencias actuales ante los retos socioeducativos de la sociedad del siglo XXI. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Tesis Doctoral. Zyngier, D. (2011). Rethinking the thinking on democracy in education: What are educators thinking (and doing) about democracy? Education Sciences, 2(4), 1-21.