School leaders as projective agents:Online spaces for heritage languages during Covid-19

This article reports on a national survey of complementary school providers in Scotland to gain insights into their perspectives of the abrupt transition to online learning spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data gathered from a questionnaire (n=34) and in-depth interviews (n=13) covering 19 different heritage languages are analysed through the lens of practical evaluation, projective agency, and the concept of uncertainty in education. While teacher agency has been a subject of recent study and debate, there is limited research on enacting agency in complementary school settings, and in times of flux or disruption. The study sheds light on the ways in which school leaders developed and enacted agency on multiple levels and in complex and nuanced ways as schools adapted their diverse provision in the face of challenges triggered by Covid-19. Findings reveal that (i) emergency measures and subsequent closure of school sites led to further pressures and growing uncertainty for these schools and for the learners, families, and communities that they support, and (ii) the creation of online spaces provided opportunities for complementary schools to explore new tools and resources, facilitate innovative forms of learning and teaching, and extend the reach of their school. The article concludes with a consideration of new avenues for complementary school planning and provision, and implications for developing online learning spaces for heritage languages

Quality of life indicators: The objective-subjective interrelationship that exists within one’s ‘Place of Residence’ in old age

Using a largely qualitative research design, this study originally explored how a small cohort of aged clients and human service workers assessed and measured Quality of Life (QOL) amongst older people. A literature review was undertaken and interviews were conducted with participants from Community Vision Incorporated (CVI) and other key informants from separate human service agencies. The findings suggested that there was a dichotomous relationship between the perceived affects that in-home care and aged care facilities had on the QOL of older people. A number of participants suggested that in-home care and aged care facilities were disempowering and overall, impacted negatively on the Objective QOL (O-QOL) and Subjective QOL (S-QOL) of older people. This paper will outline these complexities and further discuss related themes, issues and new insights into the relationship between an older person’s ‘place of residence’ and other O & S-QOL indicators

Scotland’s language communities and the 1+2 Language Strategy

• The Scottish Government's ambitious 1+2 Language Strategy, launched in 2012, has refocused attention on language policy in education and the provision for language learning in Scotland. • The Language Strategy contains a commitment for schools to further develop links involving “language communities” and to teach “the community languages of pupils in schools”. • However, a review of the implementation of the policy reveals the languages on offer in mainstream schools remain dominated by a narrow range of European languages such as French and German. • The learning of community languages of an increasingly diverse population remains the preserve of complementary schools organised by language community members and operating in the evenings and the weekend. • Numerous studies in the UK and internationally have acknowledged the pivotal educational, social and cultural role of complementary schools. However, learners’ linguistic achievements gained at complementary schools often remain hidden from mainstream schools. • A national survey of complementary school providers highlights a desire to improve their language learning provision and to be involved more in 1+2 developments at a local authority level. • Developing meaningful partnerships between the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), local authorities, complementary schools and mainstream schools needs to be an integral part of the 1+2 Language Strategy. • Extending and enhancing language learning provision in and outside of mainstream schools will add much weight to the Scottish Government’s policy aspiration to develop a new generation of plurilingual citizens

A view from the garden:Interrupting politics of attainment and Re-orienting Education towards sustainable futures

Peer reviewe

A view from the garden : Interrupting the politics of attainment and Re-orienting Education towards sustainable futures.

Peer reviewe

Teachers as designers of learning in diverse, bilingual classrooms in England:An ADiBE case study

This ADiBE case study explores an innovative, integrated approach to addressing diversity in secondary classrooms in England, where more than one language is used and learned. We position diversity in multilingual and multicultural communities where schooling seeks to provide meaningful learning experiences for all students and guide learners towards being and becoming global citizens. Within a UK context, underpinning values emphasise social justice and inclusion embodied in classroom practices that actively involve teachers as researchers with their learners – in terms of ‘curriculum-making’ and reinterpreting the impact of diversity on ‘successful’ learning communities. This research analyses contextual and exploratory factors that enable diverse learners with diverse needs to engage in learning partnerships with each other and their teachers. Using a framework to capture collaborative professional learning, synergies are explored between two different approaches to bilingual learning – English as an Additional language (EAL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The case study identifies potentially rich sites for building pedagogic capital and explores how diversity can enable more young people to feel valued, respected and successful bilingual learners in formal schooling

A World Convulsed: Earthquakes, Authority, and the Making of Nations in the War of 1812 Era

This dissertation examines responses to a series of earthquakes emanating from the Mississippi River shortly before the War of 1812. As the strongest earthquakes in the North American interior in the last 1,000 years, the tremors alarmed communities from the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast. I consider how people across this expanse sought to explain and interpret the earthquakes in light of their own political, territorial, and cultural struggles. By incorporating all North Americans' ideas about a common event, this dissertation seeks to broaden intellectual, religious, and environmental history to include interpretive communities well beyond the Atlantic coast. In current historiography, following the American Revolution, the continent's entangled, contingent origins quickly narrow into a conflict between U.S. expansion and collective indigenous resistance. Slower to recognize contingency and a similar multiplicity of people and interests in the early national era, historians tell the story of the post-revolutionary borderlands as an almost inevitable ideological clash between self-interested land grabbing and spiritualized resistance. I argue that the dichotomy between U.S. greed and Native American spirit misses the deep connections that all early modern people drew among the human, natural, and spiritual orders. The struggle to explain the earthquakes prompted people to engage in debates about who could claim rightful authority and what sources of knowledge they could marshal to assert their visions for human order. The earthquakes and related geopolitical upheaval thereby summoned a range of responses that an over-simplified showdown between American expansionists and militant Indians cannot capture. This dissertation is an intellectual history of the borderlands. Because all people took matters of spirit, territory, society, and politics into account to interpret the earthquakes, this cross-cultural approach yields insights into structures of religious and political authority, intellectual trends, and geopolitical strategies across the eastern half of North America. And amid the rush to describe expansion and change in histories of the early republic, this dissertation ultimately invites us to slow down and re-imagine early nineteenth-century North America as a site where all of its inhabitants wrestled with fundamental human questions.Doctor of Philosoph