Conference Agenda

The intensification of migratory flows around the world, largely associated with the humanitarian crisis that has been victimizing migrants and refugees more visibly since 2015, has motivated fracturing positions in civil society and in the political sphere, expressed in welcoming movements, on the one hand, and in xenophobic and segregationist movements, on the other hand, a stance that has been conquering territory in contemporary societies (Huber & Reynolds, 2014; Silva et al., 2018).

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, guided by the commitment to “leave no one behind”, has had the migratory phenomenon as one of the major challenges to be considered, namely regarding SDG 4, devoted to Education. UNESCO underlines the need to protect the right to education of displaced persons, considering the principle of non-discrimination, which comprises the inclusion of migrants and refugees in national education systems. The increase in the migratory flow to Europe leaves many migrant and refugee students helpless in the education systems, and European countries are faced with the growing need to adapt the institutional, social, and educational response to the reception of a considerable number of children and young people with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (de Wal Pastoor, 2016).

The migration crisis added urgency to the demand of an inclusive school (de Wal Pastoor, 2016). Despite the efforts to ensure access to education for all, there are shortcomings in the quality of educational integration that compromise the academic, emotional, and social well-being of young migrants, intensifying the marginalization and stigmatization of these groups in society (Cerna, 2019; de Wal Pastoor, 2016; European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2019; PPMI, 2017; Silva et al., 2018).

According to the holistic model for the educational integration of refugees (Cerna, 2019), teachers’ training to deal with diversity is one of the main factors to improve the response of education systems to meet the learning, social and emotional needs of this population (de Wal Pastoor, 2016; Szelei et al., 2020; European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2019; PPMI, 2017).

From this panorama, the following research questions emerged: What are the teachers' perceptions and beliefs about migrants and refugees, about welcoming other cultures and about cultural diversity in schools? What training needs, opportunities, challenges, and good experiences can be identified in this area?

Professional development of teachers in interculturality is also an insufficiently studied field (Szelei et al., 2020). Research shows that teachers feel unprepared to work with students from different cultural backgrounds (de Wal Pastoor, 2016; PPMI, 2017; Szelei et al., 2020). Indeed, the increase in cultural and social diversity raises challenges and opportunities for education. For teachers to be(come) agents of positive change in this process, it is essential to promote a culture of support for teachers.

Ecologically informed research on education of migrants and refugees, that considers the educational and historical realities of specific countries (in terms of receiving and integrating migrant populations and national cultural minorities) is still scarce and this is especially true for Portugal (de Wal Pastoor, 2016). Professional development of teachers in interculturality is also an insufficiently studied field (Szelei et al, 2020).

This study intends to contribute to improve the quality of the educational integration of migrant, refugee and ethnic minority children and young people, as well as the professional development and well-being of teachers when working with a multicultural public. For this purpose, the research aims to study the perceptions of primary, secondary and vocational school teachers about the welcoming of other cultures in Portugal and in the Portuguese education system, particularly migrants, refugees and ethnic minorities. Furthermore, it also proposes to know teachers’ preparation and training to deal with cultural diversity.

The pilot project reported on in this paper is part of a larger aim: to transform English literary education insettler collonial contexts to foreground climate and racial justice as part of its core curriculum. Climate change has been identified as the major crisis facing the world, and a foremost issue for young people. Addressing the climate crisis in education requires new approaches that reflect the urgency and scope and scale of the situation and prepares young people to lead decisions regarding justice-focused, sustainable futures. The Reading Climate Pilot Project explored the way that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literary narratives provide new perspectives on interactions with Country, climate change, allowing readers engagement with Indigenous knowledges and perspectives for the justice-oriented citizenry of the future. There is an urgent need for this research: while Indigenous writers’ contribution to understandings of climate are well documented and awarded, and the power of story to impact on understandings of significant environmental, social and cultural issues is well established, Aboriginal writing remains significantly underrepresented in Australia’s curricula, particularly in

subject English.

This project prioritizes Indigenous stories and interdisciplinary collaboration in

English, cross-curricular knowledge sharing, developing teaching resources in English secondary

settings, and interdisciplinary and international collaboration. The project was undertaken as a collaboration between the Literary Education Lab (members: Sandra Phillips; Sarah E. Truman, Clare Archer Lean, Melitta Hogarth and Larissa McLean Davies) with the Stella Prize for the literature or women and non-binary writers, and Indigenous authors and scholars.

Research questions were:

1. How do English teachers engage with Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding Country to imagine sustainable climate futures?

2. What new knowledge about climate justice in English education can be developed

through interdisciplinary collaboration between Indigenous writers and texts, and the

environmental humanities and climate science?

3. What real-world applications of new knowledge about the intersections of climate fiction, Indigenous knowledges, racial justice and climate science have for the field of sustainability education?

Theoretical framework: The project’s conceptual approach draws on three key ideas: Indigenous relationality, literary sociability, and literary linking. First, Indigenous relationality enables thought that connects all living things (Graham 2014; Harrison et al 2017). We are not only shaped by biology but also through our story-telling activities: the stories we tell ourselves have material effects on who we become (Heiss 2015; Clarke 2016). A climate justice citizenry requires the capacity to comprehend the complex relations between human and nonhuman species and Country. Indigenous fiction establishes a corpus of narrative ready for critical classroom engagement to develop this capacity. This argument resonates with English curricula accounts of the promise of literature for building good moral character and citizenship (Atherton 2005), but also prioritises feminist concerns over whose stories are prioritised, whose stories are listened to (Hogarth 2019; Truman 2019). By changing the repertoire of stories and reading practices we can change cultural understandings and futures: this is a pressing concern in an era of ongoing resource inequalities, environmental racism, and climate disasters (Yusoff 2018). Second, the study also draws on an understanding that pedagogical literary study is sociable and relational (Phillips & Archer-Lean 2019). Third, this project activates a new transdisciplinary method called literary linking (McLean Davies et al 2021). Literary linking is informed by principles of relationality and co-design, where research participants and researchers work together to develop shared understandings. It is underpinned by a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration as a necessary component for making sense of pressing social, environmental, and cultural concerns, including climate change.

The objective of this presentation is to show the results of research in which I explored the ECE teachers' awareness of social classes. As a teacher-student, I often observed a lot of reluctance towards some of the pupils from their teachers. Very often those children were from underprivileged families. I also observed and read a lot about inequalities in education, which led me to think about whether teachers, especially those from early childhood education have knowledge and awareness about social division and how this affects the pupils they work with.

According to Bourdieu's theory of socio-cultural reproduction, children start their schooling with different inherited capitals, but the school treats pupils as if they all have the same starting position while assuming that all children are expected to acquire the same skills, knowledge and level of 'cultural familiarity'. This situation allows middle- and upper-class children to benefit from the resources brought from home and early schooling (Grochalska, 2009: 63). Pupils for whom the values of the dominant culture are distant may consequently drop out of further education at a certain stage of their education or consciously choose ‘an educational profile that reproduces the life path of their parents’ (Szkudlarek, 2007: 35). However, the idea is not that students with low-class backgrounds should be deprived of the chance to change their social position, but that those working with the pupils should understand that school is part of a system that reproduces the social structure.

There are divergences in the literature in defining social class. Some authors speak of the 'death of classes' in most developed societies (Pakulski, Waters, 1996, in Lareau, 2008: 4) or the 'obsolescence of the term', including in relation to education, without denying the existence of social inequalities (Harris, 2018: i-ii). Anette Lareau notes that social classes are often written about in a non-explicit way, using terms such as 'inequality’, ‘stratification’, ‘origin’ or analysing specific indicators such as education, wealth, income, and occupation (Lareau, 2008: 3). Also in common parlance, the term appears to be ambiguous (Wright, 2005: 1) or attempts are made to strip it of its political character, as is the case, for example, in Palska's research (Gdula, Sadura, 2012: 18). In Poland, the issue of social classes seems to be perceived rather as a historical relic. The vocabulary used to describe the social structure, i.e. terms like: 'working class’, ‘social classes’, ‘exploitation’, ‘capital’, ‘class conflict’, ‘class struggle’ (Zuk, 2010: 9), is associated with the past social system and tends to be no longer used. On the other hand, some researchers stress that we are intuitively aware of the existence of social classes (Sadura, 2012). Despite the colloquial social perception of social classes, Polish researchers undertake class analyses, including those devoted to Bourdieu's concept, which I also adopted as the basis for my exploration on social classes and educational inequality (Gdula, Sadura, 2012).

Adopting Sadura’s approach to Polish social structure, we can distinguish three main social classes in Poland: higher, middle and lower (Gdula, Sadura, 2012). All three of them have different ways of life as well as different ways of learning which is a part of the way of living and living necessities (Sadura, 2017). Understanding this is crucial to creating inclusive school environments and developing the idea of equal chances.

We examine how Palestinian teachers in Jewish schools, who are Israeli citizens, coped during the intense conflict that unfolded after the events of October 7, 2023. This period was marked by a series of coordinated attacks initiated by Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas. The attacks included a relentless barrage of some 3,000 rockets targeting Israel and the breach of the Gaza–Israel barrier by around 3,000 militants who launched assaults on Israeli military bases and civilian communities, resulting in approximately 1,200 casualties and the abduction of about 240 civilians (Dostri, 2023).

The onslaught triggered recollections of European pogroms and the Holocaust among many of the Jewish citizens in Israel and elicited a national trauma (Tal, 2023). This shifted their perception from enjoying a comfortable, modern life in a quasi-European nation to an overarching sense of survival. This sentiment manifested as heightened suspicion toward Arab citizens of Israel (Asad, 2023), accompanied by widespread conspiracy theories alleging collusion with Hamas. There was also a notable persecution of Palestinian citizens of Israel expressing support for Palestinians on social media during this period.

Amidst the escalated tension and violence, Palestinian citizens of Israel working as teachers in Jewish schools were placed on the educational frontlines (Gindi et al., 2023). They encountered unprecedented challenges in managing interactions with students, students’ parents, co-teachers, and even their daily commutes to the schools where they taught. Our exploration delves into the experiences, resilience, and strategies employed by Israeli-Palestinian educators as they navigated the complexities of teaching in an environment overshadowed by the Gaza–Israel conflict.

Throughout November 2023, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 teachers and five supporting personnel 16 of which are Palestinian citizens of Israel and one Jewish Israeli citizen. The interviewees expressed their astonishment at the events of October 7^th, elaborating on their personal concerns regarding safety, security, and the prospect of resuming teaching duties in Jewish schools. They also discussed the transformations they observed both in Israeli society at large and within their immediate school environments. By exploring the role of Palestinian citizens of Israel as teachers in Jewish schools during this tumultuous period, the lecture aims to offer insights into the transformative power of education and the mediating role of teachers’ workplace relationships in fostering resilience, tolerance, and the potential for unity even in the most challenging circumstances of external war which intensify an internal national identity conflict.