Conference Agenda

Bullying and victimization are persistent problems in countries around the world and affects the lives of many students (Thornberg, 2010; Gu, Lai, & Ye, 2011; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996; Ttofi & Farrington, 2009). Bullying is commonly defined as recurrent harassment or offence against an individual who is in a powerless position (cf. Hellström et al., 2021). It has been emphasized that in order to be called bullying, the recurrent aggression should be considered unwanted by someone and that an individual's experiences are also important to consider and not just the stated intention of the perpetrator(s) (Gladden et. al., 2014). National measurements in Sweden in recent years have shown an increase over time in bullying measured in percentage points (Bjereld et al. 2020; cf. Edling et al. 2022; Friends, 2022; SCB, 2020). The most significant increase can be observed among girls aged 13-15 years (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2018, p. 40). This study is based on a request from a municipality in Sweden to help investigate how it comes that a surprisingly high proportion of girls in middle school (grades 4-6) felt exposed to victimization and bullying. In reoccurring measurements of victimization and bullying among students in a Swedish municipality it is shown that bullying and a sense of vulnerability amongst girls have increased by around 74 %, since 2016 (Simonsson, 2022).

In a large global study involving 46 countries, Cosma et. al (2022) found that the practice of traditional bullying and cyberbullying was more common among 11-15 year old boys than girls in most countries, while gender differences in victimization were mixed. One conclusion they draw is that one reason why major anti-bullying programmes are slow to show marked improvements in bullying patterns is because they do not address gender norms that are sometimes unconsciously embedded in societies.

In research on professional identity, a teacher’s vision or seeing, is regarded as an important factor that affects the quality of their teaching (Ibarra, 1999; Shulman, 1991) and is thus used as a framework in this study. According to Goodwin (1994), who introduced the concept of professional vision, a profession can be understood as the way in which a specific group creates a social organisation for seeing depending on what the specific profession requires its members to see or notice. In this context, professional seeing is linked to specialist knowledge that supports the group's understanding and ability to observe the relevant dimensions in practice (a.a.). Closely related to professional vision is professional identity, which is shaped by a person's task perception, i.e. their lenses of meaning-making through which they see a specific situation, e.g. education, and act on it (Kelchterman 2009, p. 260). Professional identity thus constitutes a framework for individuals that guides their perceptions and how they interpret and act in particular situations (see also Richter et. al. 2021).

In interviews with 62 school actors in three schools the importance of teachers’ seeing, referred to here as professional vision, became one key theme. With this as a background, the overall purpose of this study is to map the selective use of professional vision as a means to handle and grapple with as to why a relatively large number of girls in middle school in the selected municipality feel bullied or vulnerable to bullying.

1) How do students, teachers, health staff, and school leaders in three middle schools explain the importance and notion of professional vision in relation to gender victimization?

2) What possible gender differences exist in relation to what these actors argue is important to see [pay notice to] in relation to bullying/abusive behavior?

This study explores how women teachers in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan practise their leadership within their own established communities of practice and learn to understand gender inequalities and professional development practices in education. Beyond realising existing inequalities, women teachers share their critical hope of addressing those challenges and transforming professional development opportunities to be equitable for all. Through this understanding and critical hope, this paper hopes to influence policies in transforming leadership practices for women teachers in the educational milieu and fulfil the sustainable development goals.

The study backdrop, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a multi-ethnic developing country in South Asia that spotlights a decentralised education system with top-down leadership approaches. Gender disparities exist in teaching, where females predominate, but leadership positions are primarily held by males (Drudy, 2008). This entrenched 'top-down' leadership approach reflects the social hierarchies (Clarke et al., 2020). Moreover, teacher professional development faces insufficient funding, lack of practical resources, and low self-esteem among educators (Khan & Haseeb, 2017). These tensions highlight the underrepresentation of women and invisible educational inequalities within a decentralised, gendered, and socially stratified education system.

The study draws upon the concepts of ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) as a social theory of learning (Wenger, 1998) and ‘critical hope’ (Freire, 1994). CoP refers to “a social process of negotiating competence” (Farnsworth et al., 2016, p. 5), where individuals share concerns and obstacles, have an affinity for similar topics, and regularly interact to enhance their understanding and abilities. Wenger (1998) identifies three key dimensions that distinguish CoPs from other groups: mutual involvement in a community, joint domain of interests and a shared repertoire of lived resources developed or adopted by the community. These dimensions highlight teachers’ learning experiences in the discoveries about ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ of their self and society through CoP engagement. Teachers, through CoP participation, develop their professional identity and engage in critical self-reflection on teaching and learning (Wenger & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). Despite the growing recognition for CoPs’ potential for teacher professional development (e.g., Borg, 2012, Yıldırım, 2008), little has been discovered about how they work or function (Patton & Parker, 2017). While predicated on social learning, CoPs rarely take into account power dynamics within the contextual structures (Barton & Tusting, 2005). As a result, there is a need to modify the model of CoPs for teacher professional development that considers the power dynamics within and beyond educational practices.

Through the lens of social justice, the idea of critical hope (Freire, 1994) underscores the contextual structures and power relations inside them, and “systematically links the individual with a collective sense of transformation” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 16). Critical hope is more like “what is needed to transform social reality and to imagine possible futures” (Bourn & Tarozzi, 2024, p. 1). Addressing equalities should take into account the connection between individuals, education systems and the broader social structures that shape, maintain and reflect it. The critical hope under the social justice umbrella theme calls on teachers to “identify cracks in dominant social structures and ideologies” (Webb, 2017, p. 555) and create “a different lifeworld” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 13) whether through imaginative or practical means, where their potential to drive change and dismantle inequitable systems through CoP participation remains steadfast. Consequently, this concept will be mapped into the model to understand power relations and inequalities within and beyond CoP context. This proposed conceptual framework helps address the research questions:

• How are CoPs in schools in Pakistan established?

• How can women teachers perceive and address invisible challenges in Pakistani education through CoPs?

Bush fires are extraordinarily dangerous and possess precarious capacity for growth and destruction. Driven by changeable winds, bushfires devour, transform, and territorialise. In the immediate period after fires school communities swing into actions of care and recovery. Crisis leadership plays a critical role in navigating the aftermath of these devastating events that causes catastrophic harm and leave long-lasting impacts on communities (Striepe & Cunningham, 2021).Leadership from a posthuman perspective reworks notions of solely human agency as more-than-human relations between human and non-human bodies produces distributed subjectivity (Fairchild, 2019). Moreover, ‘selves’ are not individual subjects, but are collective enunciations that are produced through the processes and movements with assemblages (Strom & Lupinacci, 2019).

The more-than-human entanglement of fire, schools, communities, wildlife, and the anthropogenic landscape provoke a challenging debate around ethics of care. This study embraces critical posthumanism, which challenges the traditional centrism of the human in ethical discourse (Taylor, 2018). Specifically the aftermath of bushfires are examined through the lenses of affect and ethico-onto-epistemology. Ethical considerations during crisis leadership are reframed as an interplay of relationships, engagements, and entanglements, emphasising material interactions that encompass more than just human actors. The engagement of posthuman concepts enable ethical and political affordances that fracture binary dualisms and discourses. (Fairchild, 2019). Drawing on new materialism we conceptualise the post- bushfire aftermath as spaces for ethico-onto-epistemological mattering. The physical devastation and recovery are inextricably linked to ethical, ontological, and epistemological dimensions.

Ethico- onto-espitemology foregrounds the moral dimensions of our interactions with the world (Barad, 2007). Ethics are immanent so that ethical considerations are not external to us but arise from relations. Therefore ethics, ontology, and epistemology are not separate domains but are deeply intertwined, with our ethical decisions (ethico-) are influenced by our understanding of being (onto-) and our knowledge (epistemology) (Geerts & Carstens, 2019). In short, our way of knowing the world is shaped by our ethical positions and our ontological understandings

In the aftermath of fires, the challenges are shaped by uncertainty and moving frontiers (Drysdale & Gurr, 2017; Mutch, 2015; Smith & Riley, 2012). As Bozalek suggests “research is a matter of opening possibilities and immersion in the indeterminancy of the world, which is never settled. It is about being aware of how one part of the world makes itself intelligible to another part of the world and what matters in the flourishing of the world, where politics, ethics, ontology and epistemology are intertwined” (2021, 147). At every step the affective encounter is new and different; and unknown. “Affect is a material encounter where we change in relation to an experience” (Hickey-Moody, 2009).

This research into school leadership during such crises addresses the nexus between destruction and regeneration. Bushfires are more than freely occurring natural disasters; they are active agents that reshape landscapes, lives, and communities. They challenge a traditional human-centered perspective of leadership and crisis management by highlighting the significant role of non-human elements in these scenarios. The immediate actions of care and recovery in school communities post-bushfires, as observed by Striepe & Cunningham (2021), demonstrate a collective, emergent response, transcending individual human efforts. This collective response is a manifestation of Fairchild's (2019) concept of distributed subjectivity, where the agency is not just a human attribute but a product of the interplay between humans, nature, and the environment. The catastrophic impact of bushfires necessitates a leadership approach that acknowledges this interconnectedness.