Conference Agenda

This paper will draw upon the first two years of my doctoral studies in order to address an overarching question: how can caring communities be co-created in our schools?

In the context of global conflicts, polarisation of political beliefs, rising inequalities and the climate crisis, learning to live together well and collaborate are arguably the ethical imperatives of our times (Booth, 2018; Samanani, 2022; IEA, 2022). School environments hold the potential to be sites of relational learning, in which both staff and students can learn experientially about coexistence, and how we might collaborate to address common issues. Dewey conceptualises the school environment as a ‘miniature community’: a participatory space, in which we can learn through processes of co-construction and reflecting upon our interactions (1941). As well as a co-learning space, the school community also holds the potential to be an invaluable source of social, emotional and wellbeing support (The Children’s Society, 2023).

Yet the extent to which our education systems are preparing young people to grapple, collaboratively, with the challenges we are facing, and enabling schools to support the social and emotional needs of those within their care, can be called into question by urgent calls to transform education globally in light of the climate crisis, and situated reports of alienation and unhappiness in English state secondary schools (e.g. Higham, 2021; Tannock, 2021; UNESCO, 2021; The Children's Society, 2023; McPherson et al., 2023; Haraway, 1988). In the face of these international and national challenges, this paper draws upon the concepts of care, agency and community to theoretically and empirically consider the role of school communities today.

This paper explores the potential for participation, support and connection at school through the lens of care: a broad and expansive concept that connects how we relate to each other and the world around us (Dobson and Higham, paper in progress). The theoretical framework for this paper also draws upon the literature review from the first year of my doctoral study, in which I brought together literature on care and agency to theorise an agential ethic of care, elevating our capacity to act together in care in education (references include: Tronto, 1993; Owis, 2022; Noddings, 1984; Higham and De Vynck, 2019).

In order to address the central question of how we might co-create caring communities in our schools, this paper will present initial findings from my Economic and Social Research Council-funded doctoral research, which explores: how care and community are lived and experienced in state secondary schools in England at present; barriers to and opportunities for co-creating caring communities in our schools; and emergent possibilities from care and community-centred collaborative research in schools. This field work will provide a situated example of knowing with staff and students in the English context – yet the findings hold international implications, in light of the global challenges we face (Haraway, 1988).

Current societies are characterized by their complexity and globalization, as they must face different global challenges that manifest themselves on a local and regional scale, such as the climate crisis and economic and social inequalities. In order to understand these situations, it is essential to learn how to adapt to these constant changes that seem to become more accentuated over time. Knowledge of these phenomena can help us to understand our attitudes and behaviors in the environment, to contribute so as to benefit it with favorable actions and change those that can harm it. Sustainability competencies are understood as the combination of cognitive skills, practical abilities, and ethical values and attitudes that empower individuals and communities to contribute to sustainability (Bianchi et al., 2022; Brundiers et al). The European Framework of Sustainability competences GreenComp was recently published in order to promote and enrich educational programs so that students develop habits, processes and attitudes in favor of sustainability and public health (Bianchi et al, 2022).

This research aims, on the one hand, to inform about the diversity of competences that have been assessed and plenty of instruments that have been designed, validated and applied to measure these competencies in school context and, in the other hand, to communicate about the role of climate school assemblies in the sustainability competencies students’ achievement (EDUCLIMAD project). The EDUCLIMAD project aims to implement school assemblies for the climate as an innovative, democratic and collaborative methodology to learn, deliberate, make informed decisions and search for solutions in a critical and committed way, to deal with climate change and promote sustainability at a local and regional level. Therefore, the school climate assemblies are considered as an innovative, democratic and collaborative methodology to learn, deliberate, make informed decisions and seek solutions in a critical and committed manner to address climate change and promote local and regional sustainability, as well as to achieve the competences in sustainability, established in the European GreenComp framework (Bianchi et al, 2022).

The main research questions guiding this doctoral research are: 1) What are the different sustainability competencies’ assessment approaches and tools used in Secondary Education? 2)How can effective assessment tools be designed to measure students' sustainability competencies?; 3) What is the influence of school climate assemblies in the development of sustainability competencies amongst students?. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review was conducted related to sustainability competencies’ assessment in secondary education. The evaluation resources used in the different investigations are interviews, discussion groups, workshops, drawings and pre and post questionnaires, being the latter the most used to evaluate sustainability competencies among students. These results also reflect the current state of evaluation and offer interesting implications for educators, teachers and researchers working on the development and acquisition of sustainability competencies in secondary education. Moreover, provides detailed information on the influence of climate assemblies on sustainability competencies’ assessment among students through a pre- and post-test instrument related on sustainability behaviors and contextualized situations related to the sustainability competences proposed by the European GreenComp framework (2022). To sum up, this research addresses the challenge of designing competence-based Education for Sustainability, where clear pedagogical and assessment strategies must be defined, tested and documented on how learners develop these competencies to contribute to a collective sustainable social transformation of our societies, specifically focusing on educational context.

In France and within the European Union, representative democracies are in crisis due to the rise of abstention and the erosion of public confidence in the institutions. The COVID health crisis and the social distancing measures have contributed to the deterioration of physical interactions in social life. Researches on civic engagement and political participation in educational sciences and psychology tell us what engagement is, what representations individuals or institutions have of civic rights and duties (Civic Knowledge Framework, 2023). Beyond these researches, how can research contribute to positive social transformation? What challenges awaits the researcher wanting to use research as a transformative channel? Grounded in a multidisciplinary approach, the research evoked in this paper seeks to accompany changes in posture, both among elected officials and citizens, at a municipal level to recreate a participatory culture and repair frayed local social bonds. It is a qualitative longitudinal research and we have been invited into this municipality via the mayor and some of the elected representatives to follow a local experimentation on a new participation project. This is a local policy set by the elected council to involve citizens in collective projects for the municipality. Using institutional analysis (Lourau, 1970), psychosociological studies on group, crisis and the collective imaginary (Guist-Desprairies, 2009), and certain studies in political science (Amnå&Ekman, 2014), we have designed a framework to accompany a participatory council made of volunteer citizens and elected officials, and we try to help them understand and overcome conflicts and contradictions to recreate a participatory culture. The theoretical framework is based on the institutional socio-clinical approach that “aims to think together about the singular futures of subjects (their practices, their subjectivities) and institutional and political transformations.” (Monceau, 2013).

It is necessary to say that I have been following the participative council since December 2022 and a lot of steps have been taken. At the beginning of the participation project, the municipality paid a service provider to apply a new method of scientific mediation inspired by the work of Bruno Latour. The citizens gathered for the workshops. A part of those citizens became members of the participative council that emerged from the first period of the participation project.

The pandemic experience has solidified the knowledge of how crucial it is to periodically pursue additional education and possess soft skills, as well as being able to adjust to changing circumstances (WEF, 2020; Deloitte, 2020).

The basic concept of human capital is typically used to frame discussions about involvement in continuing education, which is meant to accumulate this form of capital and so to give profits to its owner (Korshunov, Shirkova, Gorbunova, 2023). Therefore, researchers in continuing education concentrate on adult education providers and the demographics of those who take advantage of these opportunities (Korshunov, Gaponova, Gaponova, 2019). They also study the effects of additional professional training on salary (Travkin., 2014), job satisfaction (Karmaeva, Zakharov, 2021), and the smoothness of the education and employment transition (Du Bois-Reymond, Blasco, 2003; Machin, McNally, 2007).

However, taking into account the process of creating one's own educational trajectory is overlooked. For example, education can be used to "upgrade" a current position (either on one's own initiative or at the request of an employer), but it can also be used as a means of sidestepping to occupy a different position within the labor market's structure (Kosyakova, Y., & Bills, D. B., 2021). It turns out that the cross-sectional approach does not allow us to see structural changes: from whatever sector of work people are obliged to retrain and where they are heading, which path and level of education is more self-sufficient, or, conversely, demands (or stimulates) continued education.