Conference Agenda

Drawing on the work by Leithwood et al., (2006) and Day, Gu & Sammons (2016), this paper reports on findings from a 3-year research project aimed at investigating the impact of school leadership on teachers’ work and pupils’ outcomes. This study is based on existing literature that points to the direct and indirect influence of school leaders on pupil learning and outcomes. Such an influence is often moderated by other factors such as the sociocultural context of schools, teachers' work, classroom dynamics, the school-family relationship, school culture, as well as, leaders' personal characteristics (Day, Gu & Sammons, 2016).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressure on school leaders has increased. They had to deal with a wide array of unpredictable and changing scenarios with limited options and resources leading to a 'perfect storm with imperfect leadership answers' (Harris & Jones, 2020, p. 244). Also, the COVID-19 pandemic had consequences for pupil learning and achievement (Engzell et al.,2020; Flores et al.,2021; NFER,2020). Among the abrupt changes triggered by the pandemic, the sudden and compulsory shift from face-to-face to online teaching and learning, and the constraints and changes in the experience and perception of the physical and relational space of the school, particularly on the part of the pupils are highlighted. It is, therefore, important to look at leadership practices and school functioning, particularly in such challenging circumstances (Harris & Jones, 2020), taking into account pupil voice.

Educational research recognises pupils as key informants in understanding school dynamics (Day, 2004, Horgan, 2016, Ansell et al., 2012) and teaching and learning improvement (Mitra, 2004, Flutter & Rudduck, 2004, Roberts & Nash, 2009). Moreover, pupils are very proficient at understanding the attitudes, intentions and behaviour of teachers and other educational actors (Day, 2004). Listening to pupils is key to improving teaching and learning (Flutter & Ruduck, 2004). This paper explores pupils’ views and their experience of schooling during and beyond the pandemic as well as their perception in relation to the work of the school leaders during such period.

The presentation will detail an ongoing project, the ‘Visualising Opportunities: Inclusion for Children, Education and Society’ (VOICES) project. VOICES has been designed to involve children, young people and the adults that work with them to explore issues and concerns relating to children and young people’s experiences of inclusion in education. The intention of the research is to provide spaces for exploring how children’s rights can be invigorating by revisiting how inclusive educational practice is, or can be, implemented.

The objective of the VOICES project is to explore how children and young people might be included within the design and delivery of education in a more inclusive way. This intention aligns to the requirement to “recognise the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity” as stated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 28.1, 1989) and the need for children to be consulted on practices that affect them (Section 2B of UK Children and Families Act, 2004). However, despite drastic changes in the experience of education between 2020 and 2022 due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the UK Government has offered minimal guidance on how teachers can listen and respond to the personal experiences of children which might be affecting their engagement with education. In order to start to address this gap in guidance, we seek to share and discuss examples of pedagogies that can be used to help practitioners, parents and researchers to understand how the experiences and priorities of children and young people can impact on their health and wellbeing and therefore ability to engage in education. We feel the sharing of our work is timely because of the rise of concerns over mental health. In the UK over 25% of 11 to 16 year olds with a mental health problem reporting self-harm or attempts to take their own life (NHS Digital, 2021). This same group are almost twice as likely to have been bullied or bullied others and are more likely to have been excluded from school (ibid, 2021). The ongoing challenges presented by our post-pandemic society have created an urgent need to explore innovative and creative ways to engage children who are at risk of exclusion and mental health difficulties and to foster new and enterprising inclusive practice which makes best use of the financial resources available, especially in light of the radical reforms planned for education in the latest SEN Green Paper (DfE/DoH, 2022).

In addressing this need, a key tenet of the VOICES project has been to reject the idea that there is a clear, fixed or incontestable understanding about what constitutes educational inclusion (Dunne et al. 2018) or good practice. Rather, we use a qualitative, creative arts-based approach to find out about the realities, feelings and beliefs of children and young people in relation to their experiences of education. We adopt this approach because we feel that education can be an important site for altering discriminatory practices and changing attitudes about the slippery concept of inclusion (Hodkinson, 2020). This is necessary, as it has been argued that for changes to be implemented that challenge the status quo we need to be willing to interrogate norms and expectations (hooks, 2003). To do so, in the VOICES project children and young people’s voices and opinions are foregrounded and brought into dialogue with education professionals, relevant UK legislation and UN guidance relating to inclusion and expectations, to determine how their diverse voices and experiences can inform curricula, teaching and learning (Allan, 2015; Nyachae, 2016; Rix, 2020).

‘Crisis’ is a broadly used term referring to an exceedingly dangerous or difficult situation where something of value is under threat and requires urgent addressing (Boin et al., 2020; MacNeil Vroomen et al., 2013). Early conceptualisations of crisis theory explained intense psychological distress as emerging when individuals face a problem which is both meaningfully threatening to their life goals and cannot be resolved through the application of normal problem-solving mechanisms (Caplan, 1964; Parad & Caplan, 1960; Rapoport, 1962).

What remains unclear is how crisis theory applies to children, a social group who are frequently labelled as being ‘in crisis’ within literature. This includes issues such as increasingly poor mental health amongst youths (Mind, 2020), child homelessness (Rhoades et al., 2018) or cyberbullying (Zaborskis et al., 2019). Additionally, children are among the most vulnerable social group affected by disasters, due to their need for a safe and stable environment to promote healthy development (Agrawal & Kelley, 2020). They are often disproportionately impacted during times of economic depravity (Lawrence et al., 2019), political conflict (Jones, 2008) and natural disasters (Curtis et al., 2000) due to infringements placed on their rights to access education and to participate in decisions which affect their lives (Harper et al., 2010). Despite this, therapeutic interventions specifically designed to support children in the aftermath of a crisis situation have been shown to fail at improving their mental health symptoms (Thabet et al., 2005) or suffer from a high drop-off rate (Hendricks-Ferguson, 2000; Rhoades et al., 2018), suggesting they may be limited in their accessibility for children and young people. A possible explanation for the ineffectiveness of these services is that they are often targeted at the family system and may overlook the specific needs of the child (O'Connor et al., 2014). As a result, judgements about children’s needs may primarily represent what adults perceive them to be and fail to capture the child’s unique experience (Oakley, 2002). Therefore, improving the effectiveness of these intervention programmes may require a reconceptualization of crisis from the perspective of children.

Children are often limited or even discouraged from taking action in managing crisis, presumably due to their socialization within power-imbalanced institutions such as school (Hohti & Karlsson, 2014). Despite this, research has found that children often have a unique interpretation of policy which affects them and can feel that their voices are disregarded within decision-making (Perry-Hazan & Lambrozo, 2018).

The relevant research is adult oriented and very little research intends to make links between conceptualisations of crisis and children’s rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (United Nations, 1989), and its near universal ratifcation by state parties of the United Nations (UN), has promoted developmental, survival, protection and participation rights as fundamental for children. Subsequently, the UNCRC, and children’s right to participation has gained recognition in education systems and curricula. Educational contexts work within a wide range of legislative requirements, adhering to regulatory standards and curriculum documents. These may be designed with reference to the requirements of the UNCRC to promote the best interests of children and uphold their rights to provision and protection. However, when it comes to crisis, the obligation of adults to protect children “overwrites” children’s participatory rights.

Thus this study aimed to investigate how children attribute meaning to the term, ‘crisis’ through their narrative discourse. Two secondary aims were, firstly, to encourage children to evaluate the support systems which may provide aid to them during a crisis and, secondly, to delineate what children perceive to be their role within crisis management.