Scaffolding Reflection: Prompting Social Constructive Metacognitive Activity in Non-Formal Learning

The study explores the effects of three different types of non-adaptive, metacognitive scaffolding on social, constructive metacognitive activity and reflection in groups of non-formal learners. Six triads of non-formal learners were assigned randomly to one of the three scaffolding conditions: structuring, problematising or epistemological. The triads were then asked to collaboratively resolve an ill-structured problem and record their deliberations. Evidence from think-aloud protocols was analysed using conversational and discourse analysis. Findings indicate that epistemological scaffolds produced more social, constructive metacognitive activity than either of the two other scaffolding conditions in all metacognitive activities except for task orientation, as well as higher quality interactions during evaluation and reflection phases. However, participants appeared to be less aware of their activities as forming a strategic, self-regulatory response to the problem. This may indicate that for learning transfer, it may be necessary to employ an adaptive, facilitated reflection on learners' activities

Problematising international placements as a site of intercultural learning

This paper theorises some of the learning outcomes of a three-year project concerning student learning in international social work placements in Malaysia. The problematic issue of promoting cultural and intercultural competence through such placements is examined, where overlapping hegemonies are discussed in terms of isomorphism of social work models, that of the nation state, together with those relating to professional values and knowledge, and the tyrannies of received ideas. A critical discussion of cultural competence as the rationale for international placements is discussed in terms of the development of the graduating social worker as a self-reflexive practitioner. The development of sustainable international partnerships able to support student placement and the issue of non-symmetrical reciprocation, typical of wide socio-economic differentials across global regions, is additionally discussed

Problematising parent–professional partnerships in education

The value of, and need for, parent–professional partnerships is an unchallenged mantra within policy relating to ‘special educational needs’. In spite of this, partnerships continue to be experienced as problematic by both parents and professionals. This paper brings together the different perspectives of two disability researchers: one a parent of a disabled child while the other was a teacher for 20 years of children with the label autism. The paper deconstructs the concept of partnership and then, drawing on the expertise of parents, suggests how enabling and empowering parent–professional relationships might be achieved

Problematising Civil Society- on What Terrain Does Xenophobia Flourish

Is there a need to reconceptualise civil society organisations (CSOs) given the fragmented, uneven, varied and sometimes contradictory responses of CSOs to the May 2008 violence

Through a glass darkly: Assessment of a real client, compulsory clinic in an undergraduate law programme

In this article, Cath Sylvester considers Northumbria's Student Law Office in the broader context of an academic legal education, and discusses both its value and the means of assessing the same

Problematising parent–professional partnerships in education

The value of, and need for, parent–professional partnerships is an unchallenged mantra within policy relating to ‘special educational needs’. In spite of this, partnerships continue to be experienced as problematic by both parents and professionals. This paper brings together the different perspectives of two disability researchers: one a parent of a disabled child while the other was a teacher for 20 years of children with the label autism. The paper deconstructs the concept of partnership and then, drawing on the expertise of parents, suggests how enabling and empowering parent–professional relationships might be achieved

Moving beyond 'refugeeness': problematising the 'refugee community organisation'

This paper explores processes of change and development within asylum seeker and refugee-led associations in Glasgow. I argue that adopting a life-cycle approach to association emergence and continuity (Werbner 1991a: 15) provides a more rounded and sophisticated understanding of not only the factors giving rise to such groups, but also of processes of change within groups. By problematising the ‘refugee community organisation’ label, I suggest that the focus on ‘refugeeness’ fails to attend to internal diversity, specifically relating to changing and differentiated immigration status within such associations. Exploring an externally constructed fictive unity using Werbner’s framework provides one way to challenge these effects. Rather than see this framework as made up of linear stages, I argue that groups move through and between stages of associative empowerment, ideological convergence and mobilisation simultaneously and that features differentiating stages may be co-present. This paper is relevant for policy-makers, practitioners and third sector organisations and can aid thinking about how to move beyond labels in approaching broader questions, practices and experiences of ‘settlement’, integration, belonging and social cohesion

Problematising researcher-respondent relations through exploration of communicative stance

To what extent and in what ways should researchers share their views with research participants during ethnographic fieldwork? This article discusses the author’s experience adopting different communicative stances with respondents in the context of an ethnographic study of the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy in a “failing” primary school. A commonly accepted communicative stance in ethnography, according to which the researcher avoids disclosure of his or her own views, is problematised; and the potential advantages and disadvantages of feedback as a research tool are explored

Problematising home education: challenging ‘parental rights’ and 'socialisation'

In the UK, Home Education, or home-schooling, is an issue that has attracted very little public, governmental or academic attention. Yet the number of children home educated is steadily increasing and has been referred to as a 'quiet revolution'. This article neither celebrates nor denigrates home educators, its aim, rather, is to identify and critically examine the two dominant discourses that define the way in which the issue is currently understood. First, the legal discourse of parental rights, which forms the basis of the legal framework, and secondly a psychoanalytical/common-sense 'socialisation' discourse within which school attendance is perceived as necessary for healthy child development. Drawing on historical, doctrinal human rights and psychoanalytical sources and post-structural and feminist perspectives, this article suggests that both discourses function as alternative methods of governance and that the conflicting ‘rights claims’ of parents and children obscure public interests and fundamental questions about the purpose of education

'Was it Good for you Darling?' – Intimacy, Sex and Critical Technical Practice

On the basis of forty-two weeks of ethnographic data collected across six pairs of co-habiting partners, we have theorized about the nature of intimacy, developed artifacts for its mediation and explored methods for its study. In this workshop we wish to take this work as our departure point, and reflect on: The importance of problematising intimacy carefully, that is, approaching intimacy critically. The complex and multiple meanings of intimacy in the context of ongoing intimate relationships. The losses and risks attendant on supporting intimacy between distributed couples