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 sets the scene for critical discussion of the Bangor Poverty and Learning in Urban Schools (PLUS) team’s place-based action study to date in a school-community on the Trem y Mynydd housing estate, to use its pseudonym, to push back against child poverty, especially its ongoing influence on schooling success. Concerned to realise an ‘ethnography that makes a difference’ (see Mills and Morton, 2013), it opens with some points for debate about the relationship between scholarship and politics, notably Hammersley’s (2000) concerns about research and its neutrality. It is informed by our compilation of case stories (see Beckett, 2023) but also shared ideas about inequality, social exclusion, unmet needs, values, powerlessness and degraded life chances (see Child Poverty Action Group, 2017, p.2). As CPAG noted, how you define it has a lot to do with what you think ought to be done about it. This paper is concerned with poverty and values, notably Piachaud’s view that poverty carries a moral imperative that something should be done, and Alcock’s view that poverty is a political concept that implies action to remedy it (see Piachaud, 1981, and Alcock, 1993, both cited by Child Poverty Action Group, 2017, p.22). Our sober approach in seeking to influence government decisions about schools/social policies can be aligned to the ‘worldly ambitions’ named by Mills and Morton (2013, p.142). This is both necessary and problematic going by Ball’s mapping of the new transnational policy networks and their connections (see Ball, 2008; Nambissan and Ball, 2010; both cited by Mills and Morton, 2013, p.142). It is evident in the tensions between successive UK government neoliberal policy choices like de-industrialisation, austerity and Brexit and devolved Welsh governments’ social democratic policies such as the 2015 Well-being and Future Generations (Wales) Act, the 2018 Children First needs assessment, and the 2022 Curriculum for Wales. This complex policy field, underpinned by party political ideology, requires concerted efforts to strengthen participatory and collaborative approaches to democratise policies, their roll-out and resourcing, all built on a constructive analysis of the present, including the history in the present, and of possible and probable futures. These efforts are strengthened by synchronising with other city-based teams working in school-communities voicing the practical-political realities of child poverty charted in their own localities, sharing values, findings and research intelligence about their respective cultural, political, and social contexts. Of interest are local solutions prefiguring national systemic and structural changes.

Child Poverty Action Group (2017). Poverty: The Facts. Ivinson, G., Thompson, I., Beckett, L., Wrigley, T. Egan, D., Leitch R., & McKinney, S. (2018) The research commission on poverty and policy advocacy A report from one of the BERA Research Commissions BERA available online at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/132212039.pdf Ivinson & Thompson (2020) Poverty and Education Across the UK. Bristol: Policy Press. LappaLainen, S., Hakala, K., Lahelma, E., Mietola, R., Niemi, A.M., Sallo, U.M., and Tolonen, T. (2022) Feminist ethnography as ‘Troublemaker’ in educational research: analysing barriers of social justice. Ethnography and Education, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457823.2022.2122855 Mills, D. & Morton, M. (2013). Ethnography in Education Sage Thompson, Ivinson, Beckett, Egan, Leitch, McKinney (2017) Learning the Price of Poverty across the UK. Policy Futures in Education, 16, 2, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1478210317736224

This paper describes a research initiative conducted in 2021- 2022 with the Queensland Department of Education, Australia that resulted in an evidence-based practice framework to complement ACER’s National School Improvement Tool (2016). The initiative focussed on the importance of the relationship between student wellbeing and engagement and learning success ensuring all students make good progress. It was driven by a persistent policy and practice challenge regarding inequality and poor educational outcomes for a growing number of students, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Masters, Fraillon, Taylor-Guy & Chase, 2020; Dabrowski, Nietsche, Taylor-Guy & Chase, 2020) and real concerns that the most vulnerable learners in the education system would be forever lost as a result of school closures (Watterson & O’Connell, 2019). Whilst poverty was not a major focus of the project, there are indications from our work in school improvement over a decade that poverty can be contributory and/or risk factor in disengagement from schooling and poor wellbeing outcomes. What is certainly clear is that wellbeing and engagement interventions can make a difference. Everything schools do to support student wellbeing counts, but some strategies are more effective than others. Student wellbeing has been defined as: “a sustainable state of positive mood and attitude, resilience, and satisfaction with self, relationships and experiences at school”. (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Broadly speaking, this is a concept that covers a holistic range of psychological, physical, social, spiritual and cognitive dimensions. Research identifies that student engagement is multi-faceted, consisting of three domains: cognitive engagement, including motivation to learn and resilience and persistence to achieve; emotional engagement, including the nature of a student’s relationship with learning, and connectedness to others; and behavioural engagement, including a student’s level of participation in all areas of schooling, including academic, social and extracurricular activities (Dix, Carslake, Sniedze-Gregory et al., 2020).. Importantly, a student’s level of engagement is not a ‘fixed state’ and will respond to external factors such as their relationships and classroom environments. Sustained interventions are needed to impact academic outcomes and disadvantaged students benefit most from tailored support. This paper concludes with the suggestion that this initiative could provide a template for a city-wide study of child poverty, as it relates to wellbeing and student engagement although this remains relatively under theorised. By drawing together propositions around the research/practice nexus in relation to child poverty in the Brisbane context, it sketches a possible contribution to a multi-cities ethnography.

ACER’s National School Improvement Tool (2016) https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=tll_misc Masters, G., Taylor-Guy, P., Fraillon, J., Chase, A. (2020) Ministerial Briefing Paper on Evidence of the Likely Impact on Educational Outcomes of Vulnerable Children Learning at Home during COVID-19. Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. https://research.acer.edu.au/learning_processes/24/ Dabrowski, A., Nietschke, Y., Taylor-Guy, P., & Chase, A. (2020). Mitigating the impacts of COVID-19: Lessons from Australia in remote education. Australian Council for Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.37517/978-1-74286-618-5 Dix, K., Ahmed, S. K., Carslake, T., Sniedze-Gregory, S., O’Grady, E., & Trevitt, J. (2020). Student health and wellbeing: A systematic review of intervention research examining effective student wellbeing in schools and their academic outcomes. Main report and executive summary. Evidence for Learning. https://www.evidenceforlearning.org.au/assets/Uploads/Main-Report-Student-Health-and-Wellbeing-Systematic-Review-FINAL-25-Sep-2020.pdf Fredricks, J.A., Blumenfeld, P.C., & Paris, A.H. (2004) School Engagement: Potential of the Concept, State of the Evidence. Review of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074001059 Watterson & O’Connell (2019) Those who disappear: The Australian education problem nobody wants to talk about. https://education.unimelb.edu.au/mgse-industry-reports/report-1-those-who-disappear

This paper highlights the assets-based community development perspective we brought to working with the Bangor PLUS team following up on the Welsh Government’s Children First needs assessment on the Trem y Mynydd housing estate, to use its pseudonym (see Thirsk, 2023; Silvester and Joslin, 2023). We are adamant this means working with and supporting local resident families and children as a matter of principle (a better way of working) as well as a way to ameliorate some of the child poverty effects by improving health and well-being in the local community (through an empowering and sustainable way of working). We also share the view that as the cost of living crisis bites harder, notably over this last winter, those in poverty are disproportionately carrying the greater burden and suffering the most. This paper expounds an argument for community development workers being part of the Bangor PLUS team, which connects with a more ethnographic approach to co-producing local knowledge (see Banks et al, 2019) about this school-community. The aim is to hammer home the point that the local community be given mentoring and support on their terms to, firstly, define and critically understand their needs, assets and strengths, then the challenges facing them, and finally to co-develop local solutions to the challenges. These processes, especially ownership of the local solutions, is where school staff and academic partners prove useful, linking to external expertise, resources and support. Here the focus is on our working with them to help identify children’s learning needs, the circumstances that impact on children’s futures, and what is required to ensure the goals for their health and well-being but also their prosperity (see Welsh Government, 2015, 2019). This means connecting with the local community, including those who can help deliver our identified local solutions to child poverty, as they too can positively impact upon children’s experience of schooling and education and ultimately employment and training. For example, the Hive community garden and café, growing food and serving it up (via volunteers) to families, has seen children embracing new ideas about food production and supply. This way of working would of course also potentially strengthen the school’s relationship with resident families, their elected representatives, multi-agency workers, and beyond into government as this in itself can bring several benefits to supporting the school’s aims. We conclude with what it really takes to forge a city-based team for a multi-cities ethnography.

Albon, D. & Huf, C. (2021) What matters in early childhood education and care? The contribution of ethnographic research, Ethnography and Education, 16:3, 243-247, DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2021.1916978 Banks, S., Hart, A., Pahl, K., and Ward, P. (2019) Co-producing research. A community development approach. Bristol: Policy Press. Silvester, J. M. & Joslin, P. (2023) Hungry kids: families’ food insecurity further exposed by the pandemic in Beckett, L. (ed) Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations University of Wales press: Cardiff Thirsk, G. (2023) ‘It takes a Village’ to realise school-community development in Beckett, L. (ed) Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations University of Wales press: Cardiff