Conference Agenda

This symposium, in two parts, reports on city-based teams forging a multi-cities ethnography focussed on child poverty and the challenges for schooling future generations. This takes a cue from a local place-based action study on Trem y Mynydd, the pseudonym given to a housing estate adjacent to the city of Bangor in Wales. The first set of four papers discusses the ethnographic approach forged on Trem y Mynydd in the face of damage done by de-industrialisation, unemployment, exploitation of the working poor, Universal Credit, benefit cuts and Brexit, to focus on children’s lived experiences of poverty. The second set of four papers interrogates this ethnographic work and the ways it might inform other city-based teams with a view to inter-connecting across international borders with the express purpose of raising a common voice on what is required of research-informed schools/social policies, ostensibly a hallmark of democratic governments.

The action study on Trem y Mynydd was initiated by a Welsh Government sponsored Children First needs assessment, which was conducted in 2017-2018 (see Lewis, 2023). Lewis, who won the contract after submitting a competitive tender, interrogated publically available data and then embarked on fieldwork to identify needs but also the strengths and assets of the local geographically defined school-community. In her endeavour to engage in critical analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data, Lewis organised a multi-agency group of workers employed on the estate and invited academic partners, who recognised her work as a first ethnographic sketch of the lived experiences of child poverty.

As Lewis’s fixed-term work drew to a close, the group made it clear that given the findings, they did not want to disband and called for further research. This provoked a core group to reconvene as the Bangor Poverty and Learning in Urban Schools (PLUS) team of school staff, multi-agency workers and academic partners along with resident families and critical friends. Lewis also joined this team, who continued to meet in two series of six monthly seminars (2019-2020) geared to mentor and support participants to become research-active, all sponsored by Professor Carl Hughes (Bangor University). At the outset they agreed on a twin purpose: to follow through on the needs assessment and work towards an ‘ethnography that makes a difference’ (see Mills and Morton, 2013), which included critical discussion of definitions of child poverty and human rights, inspired by former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s (2018) probe into Extreme Poverty in the UK, which involved Wales.

They also resolved to contribute to a multi-cities ethnography, which was then being planned to include four cities in the UK, apropos a recommendation from the BERA Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy (2017-2019), and four in Australia given liaison with the AARE Equity network. While those eight city-based teams made good progress towards coordination, the first Covid lockdown in early 2020 put paid to that project. The Bangor PLUS team re-grouped in early 2021 and proceeded to develop a school-community-university partnership that gave rise to a participatory ethnography as a model way of working in Wales, recognised as a small European nation-state that espouses a social democratic social imaginary, which in some portfolios contrasts markedly to consecutive UK Westminster governments' neoliberal project. This is all showcased in Beckett’s (2023) edited book to be launched at conference, while the task for this two-part symposium is to explore the possibility of a research partnership in a multi-cities ethnography, inviting other city-based teams active in school-communities to join: building clout on child poverty, sharing insights, synchronising findings, joining forces and ultimately lobbying through our networks including the ECER, ACER, the OECD, UN and UNESCO.

This paper is by a Training and Business Development Manager and a Board member of an incorporated company now known as NCU CLG (NCU) Training, which traces its origins back to an Unemployment Action Group founded in 1983. This not-for-profit educational organisation provides Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) certified training programs on the National Framework of Qualifications of Ireland (NFQ) for those who self-identify as marginalised or low-paid workers in both the local and the extended community. The aim is to support them in finding gainful employment and becoming self-sufficient to counter poverty and unemployment, irrespective of schooling and education. The ethos that guides NCU Training is that all members of the society, regardless of circumstance, are entitled to quality education, training and access to quality, well-paid jobs. Its series of training programs is recognised as a local solution to a widespread and long-standing problem of unemployment in Ireland going back to the 1980s when the emigration of college graduates who left to find work and further training opportunities soared to 30 percent. The contemporary situation is favourably different, but the need for a series of short-term courses remains. The paper begins with two collaborative case stories of different and diverse participants’ encounters with formal schooling, which had a deep and lasting impression that shaped their life paths. These are ethnographic accounts constructed as creative portraits, which bring photos, drawings, poems and song lyrics among other resources to make it real (see Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983, cited by Mills and Morton, 2013, p.88). It then does some backward mapping to tease out their lived experiences of child poverty and the ways this impacted not only on schooling but subsequently. Taking another cue from Mills and Morton (2013, p.3), telling this story is a deeply humanistic endeavour with the twofold intention of creating knowledge about the experience of being unemployed and charting educative actions in response to the challenges. It proceeds with an analysis of some causes for concern in Irish politics, culture and society (Higgins, 2007), which lends itself to policy debates about schooling, notably the complexities of the educational and social worlds of those who are in positions of weakness. While this work in Dublin has the potential to plug into a city-based team and provide a contribution to a multi-cities ethnography, this paper concludes by charting the work to be done to make it happen (see Hughes, 2023).

Higgins, M.D. (2007) Causes for Concern. Irish Politics, Culture and Society. Dublin: Liberty Press. Hughes, E. (2023) School Heads: Enacting school-community development in response to child poverty in Beckett, L. (ed) Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations University of Wales press: Cardiff Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (1983) The Good High School. Portraits of Character and Culture. New York: Basic Books. McInch, A. (2020) The only way is ethics: methodological considerations for a working-class academic, Ethnography and Education, 15:2, 254-266, DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2019.1631868 Mills, D. & Morton, M. (2013). Ethnography in Education Sage OECD (2022) The New OECD Jobs Strategy. How does Ireland compare? https://www.oecd.org/ireland/jobs-strategy-IRELAND-EN.pdf

The purpose of the paper is to interrogate the 2015 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act as a trigger for policy debates on how schools could address the consequences of child poverty on learning engagement and wellbeing. We relate this to a case study in Queensland, Australia, investigating how school leaders and teachers conceptualise and support student wellbeing. We firstly articulate a professional concern Australian educators have with child poverty: what they understand of it and how they respond. In turn this builds a critical understanding of the effects of de-industrialisation and austerity on schooling and of the Global Educational Reform Movement or GERM (Sahlberg, 2015), which means developing a sharp acknowledgment in their professional work of how the GERM shapes the everyday experiences and demands of schooling with devastating consequences for children and their families living with poverty. The case study presented here was initially concerned with Australian wellbeing policy triggers and school leadership decisions behind student well-being and learning engagement in two schools in one coastal community. These schools were grappling with changing demographics and re-gentrification of the school-community, a challenge for providers of public education for children of families who are predominantly key workers. The data from interviews between the authors and school leaders lent itself to analyses informed by Basil Bernstein’s (1990; 1996) concepts of rules and fields, particularly recontextualization, recognition and realisation, but the task here is to return to what and how educators in Australia can learn from the 2015 Well-being legislation in Wales. This all plugs into a wider Brisbane city-based case study, which makes for a rich contribution from the Australian contingent to the multi-cities ethnography project (Beckett, 2023; Whatman et al, 2019). There is much to be learned from international partners featured in this symposium given their professional commitment to educative responses to child poverty, which in turn helps further develop responsive/educative work in Australian school wellbeing.

Australian Council of Social Services. (2022). Poverty in Australia 2022: A snapshot. University of New South Wales. https://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/a-snapshot-of-poverty-in-australia-2022/ Beckett, L. (2023). Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations. University of Wales Press. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Revised Edition. Rowman and Littlefield. Davidson, J. (2020). #futuregen: Lessons from a small country. London: Chelsea Green Publishing. Dix, K., Ahmed, S.K., Sniedze-Gregory, S., Carslake, T., & Trevitt, J. (2020). Effectiveness of school-based wellbeing interventions for improving academic outcomes in children and young people: A systematic review protocol. Australian Council for Educational Research. Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In defence of the school: A public issue. Translated by Jack McMartin. E-ducation, Culture and Society Publishers. Sahlberg, P. (2012) How GERM is infecting schools around the world? https://pasisahlberg.com/ Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2015). Action Now, Classroom Ready Teachers Report. Department of Education, Australian Government. World Health Organisation (WHO)(2021). Making every school a health promoting school: Global indicators and standards. Author. Wrigley, T., Lingard, B., & Thomson, P. (2012). Pedagogies of transformation: keeping hope alive in troubled times. Critical studies in Education, 53(1), 98-10.

This paper describes how recent education reform in Wales has supported a culture of collaborative working in schools, which is one of the characteristic features of the Bangor Poverty and Learning in Urban Schools (PLUS) project. It begins with work done with schools across North Wales to improve the uptake and impact of research and evidence use in schools given the current ‘social partnership’ policymaking agenda. Through Welsh Government’s 2021 National Strategy for Education Research and Enquiry, education professionals have been tasked with the challenge of moving education in Wales to a more research and evidence-informed system. We are guided by Thomson, Lingard and Wrigley’s (2012) unifying theme of, ideas for practice at systemic, policy, school and pedagogic levels, and Fullan’s (2023) idea of internal system drivers to enable better quality decision making and outcomes for disadvantaged learners such as those in the Trem y Mynydd and other school communities across Wales. However, we are only just beginning to know how we might encourage teachers to become research-active and get evidence into action in schools while the debate itself is often represented through polarised camps (Hammersley, 2009, 2015; Thomas, 2016, 2021; Pegram et al., 2022). It is within this contentious policy and practice space that we will describe our work with Welsh Government to evaluate how a network of schools serving disadvantaged communities worked with researchers and the regional school improvement service through the Embedding Research and Enquiry in Schools (EREiS) project. We explore how moves toward a more research-active, evidence-informed and ultimately evidence-based system (Owen et al, 2022) can be set within a progressive policy context that fosters greater teacher agency where intellectual responsibilities are successfully transferred to schools (Priestley, 2015). We present survey and interview findings gathered from schools, and explain how our work offers useful insights to help school leaders develop the professional knowledge to identify ‘best bets’ to improve learner outcomes rather than ideas and approaches being imposed through policy compliance measures. We conclude with some reflections on the worth of this research partnership in a multi-cities ethnography, especially as it provides us with the opportunity to further strengthen our knowledge of how schools can realise the ‘evidence revolution’ through social partnership. For example, the work in Dublin and Brisbane alert us to emerging findings that also identified similar features that need to be in place, which lends weight to our further calls on Welsh Government.

Fullan’s (2023) idea of internal system drivers Hammersley, 2009, 2015 Lunneblad, J. (2020) The value of poverty: an ethnographic study of a school–community partnership, Ethnography and Education, 15:4, 429-444, DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2019.1689518 Owen et al (2022) Pegram et al (2022) Priestley (2015) Thomas, 2016, 2021; Thomson, Lingard and Wrigley (2012) Changing Schools. Alternative ways to make a world of difference. London: Routledge. Rizvi and Lingard (2009) Globalising Education Policy.