Conference Agenda

From the perspective of social (in)equalities and social justice in education, forced migration unprecedentedly challenges education systems to pedagogically and politically manage the growing diversity stemming from cultural and social groups' experiences. By bringing together research on inclusive education, this proposal stems from the previous symposium held in Glasgow focusing on the activities of the Erasmus+ KAIII (621365-EPP-1-2020-1-NO-EPPKA3-IPI-SOC-IN) project “Co-created Education through Social Inclusion” (COSI.ed).

Considering the different ways of managing marginalised and disadvantaged groups suffering the disproportional impact of negative outcomes, the COSI.ed project sought to develop a co-created education model in which educational staff and students from underprivileged backgrounds collaborate to share their perspectives on learning experiences, develop knowledge and skills, remove learning barriers, and improve educational experiences and pathways. The indirect approach, the equality literacy (Moshuus & Eide; 2016; Stuart et.al 2019) and the co-creation methodologies were incorporated into the model, which was tested and improved in educational settings in Denmark, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.

This proposal of symposium aims thus at discussing the development of policies and practices oriented towards social inclusion based on the upscaling of a co-created model for achieving social inclusion in European countries with diverse contextual characteristics while emphasising the outcomes of the various education professionals' promising practices.

To this end, the contributions to this symposium will show how the experiences and results of COSI.ed can be sustained in the future while supporting educational and youth policies at several levels, including local, regional, national, and European. The symposium starts by analysing the process of enacting social inclusion policies and follows by identifying promising practices, and the conditions within which they were developed to explore policy recommendations at regional and European levels. The ambition is to portray a meta-analysis of policy outcomes associated with social justice and intercultural education. The second contribution discusses the impact of current educational policies on the cognitive, emotional, and social development of young people at risk. The presentation aims to highlight the need for collaborative efforts in implementing inclusive education and social inclusion policies while introducing a conceptual, scientific model developed within the Co-created Education through Social Inclusion project, implemented in five European countries. The COSI.ed model maintains continuity in theoretical and methodological approaches, evolving through implementation in diverse contexts. Despite common assumptions from the MAcE project, the model undergoes changes and adaptations in different regions, leading to five regional/national working models and one European COSI.ed model. The co-creation process is refined through desk research, data analysis, national models examination, and interviews with practitioners and young people, with a focus on humanising methodology. The third contribution underscores the pressing need for adaptations in European educational policies to address the challenges faced by institutions in qualifying, developing, and supporting diverse cultural and social groups, often marginalized or from disadvantaged backgrounds. The presentation identifies how in the development of the project promising practices are translated into policy recommendations, involving diverse stakeholders. The paper summarises the collaborative processes, identifies key policy recommendations from the voices of youth and professionals, and discusses their potential transferability to different contexts and regional practices.

The Co-created Education through Social Inclusion (COSI.ed) project, funded by Erasmus+ (621365-EPP-1-2020-1-NO-EPPKA3-IPI-SOC-IN), aimed to change educational practices by developing a co-created education model. This model engaged educational staff and students from underprivileged backgrounds in collaborative efforts to share perspectives, develop knowledge and skills, eliminate learning barriers, and enhance educational pathways. The COSI.ed model, incorporating an indirect approach and co-creation methodologies, underwent testing and refinement in educational settings across Denmark, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. This paper emerges from an analysis of how regional education and youth policies align with and diverge from the goals outlined in the Council Recommendation on promoting common values, social inclusion, inclusive education, and the European dimension of the teaching of the Paris Declaration. Adopting the Policy Cycle Approach (Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992; Ball, 1994), the policy process is seen as a series of interconnected actions occurring within specific interest group-dominated arenas at transnational, national, and local levels. The theoretical-methodological approach, includes the context of influence, the context of text production, and the context of influence, while emphasising micropolitical processes and the role of actors at the local level, including professors, support staff, and school communities. Guided by the research question, "What are the ideas and organizations supporting educational policies for social inclusion?" this paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic landscape of educational policies for social inclusion, shedding light on the ideas and organisations that shape and influence these policies across different levels of governance.

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Current educational policies regarding inclusive approaches have a huge impact on cognitive, emotional and social development, as well as on the social integration of young people at risk (Gordon-Gould & Hornby, 2023). Our study aims to illuminate the emerging need for collaborative working to implement models for a more inclusive perspective on education and social inclusion policy. We demonstrate a conceptual, scientific model, as well as the process of its development, illustrating useful practice in working with young people at risk of social exclusion, created and implemented in five European countries within the Co-created Education through Social Inclusion project. Among the various ways of acquiring knowledge, models and scientific modelling activities are particularly important (Potochnik, 2017). A scientific model aims to represent empirical objects, physical phenomena, and processes in a logical and objective manner. They “attempt to reduce the world to a fundamental set of elements and laws and on this basis, they hope to better understand and predict key aspects of the world” (Borner et al. 2012, 3). Model is not only a reflection of reality, but also grounds for action, or a stimulus for discussion. Model design usually involves the formulation of a scientific hypothesis or the identification of a particular structure or dynamic. Often the hypothesis is grounded in an analysis of empirical data (Borner et al., 2012). Harré (2004) notes that models can complement theories by providing mechanisms for processes that are left unspecified even though they are responsible for bringing about the described phenomena. The COSI.ed model is qualitative, inductive and uses verbal and graphical description to represent the findings from the bottom-up approach. This starts from observations followed by the identification of patterns and factors, which leads to the generation of conclusions (Borner et al., 2012). The COSI.ed model is characterised by a continuity of theoretical and methodological approaches. Despite it was built on the common assumptions and concepts from the MAcE project, in the process of its implementation in different and highly heterogeneous contexts, common assumptions have been subjected to different processes - changes in perception, understanding, re-signification, repositioning of elements and redefining interrelationship. This led to five regional/national working models, based on which one European COSI.ed model was developed. Drawing on desk research, data, national models analysis and interviews with practitioners and young people, we refine the co-creation process by embedding it in the tenets of humanising methodology (Reyes et al. 2021).

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Within the rapidly evolving European landscape, the urgency for adaptations in educational policies is accentuated by the daily challenges faced by educational institutions in facilitating the qualification, development and support of increasingly diverse cultural and social groups, often marginalised or from disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite continuous innovation and modifications in pedagogical practices motivated by the inclusive education movement for social justice, the translation of such principles to educational policies that facilitate the dissemination of successful or promising practices across diverse contexts is frequently disturbed by neoliberal logics and systemic inequalities (e.g. school competition, standardized curricula, managerial control) that underlie educational systems (Mikelatou, & Arvanitis, 2023). Ainscow (2020) highlights how promoting inclusion and equity through educational policies and practices is highly connected with processes of social learning in particular contexts. To achieve this, the author suggests an inquiry framework for inclusive education, which emphasises teacher-student dialogues about teaching and learning, as well as wider discussions about what inclusion and equity mean for different actors. Dialogue and social learning have been chief aspects of the experience practices in the COSI.ed international project when engaging young people, researchers, teachers and other education professionals, as well as actors from management and policy-making sectors in collaborative practices. The co-creation approaches used in the implemented and monitored practices of the indirect approach (Moshuus, & Eide, 2016), the collaborative competence groups (Krane, & Klevan, 2019) and the equality literacy framework (Stuart et al., 2019), which embody the COSI.ed model (as described in the previous paper) align with the emerging trend towards more collaborative and participatory processes in the design of policy recommendations and policy-making (e.g. Goulart, & Falanga, 2022). Therefore, the project team initiated a collaborative process to translate the identified promising practices into policy recommendations for a wide audience of policymakers and practitioners at different levels. This ensured that the recommendations reflected the diverse voices of the project. The paper summarises the collaborative processes used to design and upscale promising practices for policy recommendations of co-created education for social inclusion. This paper also identifies the main policy recommendations that emerged during the design process, highlighting the voices of youth and professionals. The recommendations are discussed in terms of their potential transferability to other contexts, as well as their specific regional practices.

Ainscow, Mel (2020) Promoting inclusion and equity in education: lessons from international experiences, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1), 7-16, DOI: 10.1080/20020317.2020.1729587 Goulart, P., Falanga, R. Co-production and Voice in Policymaking: Participatory Processes in the European Periphery (2022). The European Journal of Development Research, 34, 1735–1744 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-022-00551-z Krane, V., & Klevan, T. (2019) There are three of us: parents’ experiences of the importance of teacher-student relationships and parental involvement in upper secondary school, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 24:1, 74-84, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.2018.1464482 Mikelatou, A., & Arvanitis, E. (2023) Pluralistic and equitable education in the neoliberal era: paradoxes and contradictions, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 27(14), 1611-1626, DOI: 10.1080/13603116.2021.1904018 Moshuus, G. H., & Eide, K. (2016). The Indirect Approach: How to Discover Context When Studying Marginal Youth. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406916656193 Stuart, K., Bunting, M., Boyd, P., Cammack, P., Hornbæk Frostholm, P., Thore Graveson, D., Moshuus, G. Walker, S. (2019). Developing an Equalities Literacy for Practitioners Working with Children, Young People and Families through Action Research. Educational Action Research, 28(3), 362-382