Going Spatial, Going Relational: Why ‘listening to children’ and children’s participation needs reframing

This article explores the consequences of the view that the identifications of children and adults and the spaces they inhabit are intimately related. Firstly, the article reviews the rationales that suggest we should consult with children and young people and encourage their participation. Arguments are made, using examples, to support the view that policy and practice and research on children’s participation are better framed as being fundamentally about child_/adult relations. Secondly, the emerging field would benefit from becoming more sensitive to how place and space are implicated in identity formation

Towards Glocal Pedagogies: Some Risks Associated with Education for Global Citizenship and How Glocal Pedagogies Might Avoid Them

In this chapter, I outline what a pedagogical orientation to the ‘glocal’ might comprise and afford. I argue that ‘going glocal’ in our pedagogies will mean never losing touch with the local when responding to transnational forces; going glocal means taking local settings, concerns and practices as connected to extra-local ones. Going glocal helps us comprehend and respond to the lived realities of transnational forces. This can help with ameliorating and potentially overcoming some of the risks and critiques associated with weaker formulations of ‘education for global citizenship’. Glocal pedagogies can enable us to address ecological and social justice, and produce viable knowledge and practices within a reframed education for global citizenship

Children's Participation in Changing School Grounds and Public Play Areas in Scotland

Abstract The study draws on theories of society, learning, planning and design, democracy, identity formation, and cultural change to inquire into children’s participation in the social sphere. The thesis emerges from the growing literature in the sociological and educational study of childhood, identity, space and culture. A case study approach, using a variety of participatory methods and photographic visual evidence, is employed to investigate the substantive issue of children’s participation in changing their locales in a contemporary Scottish context. Two main cases are narrated: the first concerns primary school children’s experience in participating in changing school grounds throughout Scotland; the second details the experience of one local authority’s efforts to enhance public play provision for children with disabilities. Local socio-cultural / spatial practices used in the construction of children’s participation and their places of learning, work, and play are described. Children are found to be ‘positioned’ between adult desires to increase children’s participation in matters that affect them, while at the same time, adults may wish to protect children from perceived dangers. The context for children’s participation takes cognisance of the influences of schooling, the exclusion of children from the workplace, as well as the influences of technology, the media, and the changes in family make-up. One central finding of the thesis is that children’s experience of participation appeared to be constructed out of ‘essential beliefs’ about the relations between children and adults, the nature of the child and the child’s ‘place’ in society

Borderland Voices and Practices: The Ambiguity of Children’s Participation in School Grounds Greening

Commentators on children's experience (largely the urban experience of the developed countries) indicate that publicly accessible open space for children is being limited due to commercialization, litigation, fear for children's safety and changes in lifestyle. One of these open spaces facing change is the school grounds. Evidence is drawn from a Scottish based multiple case study of 22 school grounds projects. One finding is that when participation is a project goal, children can be involved at high levels of decision making and activity but that adults are seen to maintain a strong gatekeeper role. A typology of utopic practice is offered with respect to children's participation in grounds development. The analysis suggests that different project hopes and expectations can have multiple, ambiguous, and sometimes conflicting effects for children – a moot point for proponents of education for sustainable development who consider the need to address real world issues to be a central tenet

Open the gates an’ that’s it ‘See ya later!’: School Culture and Young People’s Transitions into Post-compulsory Education and Training

This paper draws on young people’s accounts of their transitions from compulsory to post-compulsory education and training (PCET) within a Scottish region. Evidence was collected using focus groups with 41 4th. and 5th. year pupils, 42 full-time National Certificate college students, 71 Skillseekers in training and individual interviews with some college tutors and management staff. Data on school cultures and aspects of learning were collated from a larger qualitative data set relating to the sources of information, influences and the factors that had affected their transitions. School culture was identified as one factor of many which had impacted on transitions. The paper begins by locating the research within the literature and then describes the methodology used to collect data on young people’s transitions. An analysis of the data is them provided using the ‘voices’ of young people. Finally, the implications for the role of school cultures in transitions are discussed

Children and Young People's Participation in Scotland: Frameworks, standards and principles for practice

A report by Dr Greg Mannion. Providing greater support for children and young people's participation in Scotland is seen by Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People as a way of addressing children's rights, improving practice across all kinds of services, and advancing a more democratic civil society.Output Type: Full Repor

Mud pies and green spaces – why children do better when they can get outdoors

First paragraph: The first warm weather here in the UK generally means a few things – the impending start of tennis at Wimbledon, school examination time, and the smell of cut grass. Inevitably, pupils and teachers start to wish they were outdoors and not stuck in a classroom. There is now a growing body of evidence why teachers should respond to these urges and incorporate outdoor places into their teaching and the school day more widely

Place-responsive Intergenerational Education

This chapter is available to read at Academia.ed

Mapping literacy practices: theory, methodology, methods

The Literacies for Learning in Further Education (LfLFE) research project has been funded for three years from January 2004 as part of Phase 3 of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme in the UK. The project involves collaboration between two universities and four further education (FE) colleges. The intention is to investigate students’ everyday literacy practices and explore ways of mobilizing these to enhance their learning on college courses. The LfLFE project does not view literacy as a set of individual skills and competences alone, but as emergent and situated in particular social contexts (Barton et al., 2000). As such, literacy practices are not static or bounded spatially or temporally. A central concern for the project is to understand how the literacy demands of college life and being a student relate to students’ other literacy practices. As part of the work of the project, the group is undertaking a ‘mapping’ of the literacy demands associated with student learning across a wide range of FE courses. This paper explores the methodological debates in planning and operationalizing this mapping.Additional co-author: the Literacies for Learning in Further Education (LfLFE) Research Group, Lancaster Universit

Beyond the Disneyesque: children’s participation, spatiality and adult-child relations

The article describes a case study of children and young people's participation and the attendant effects on professional practice and child-adult relations. We consider the findings under four headings: professional learning, child-adult relations, childhood memories and the spatial dimensions of change. Evidence indicates that adults and children were finding new ways of working and relating and that these processes were inherent in efforts to reconfigure space. The analysis shows how adult and child identification, relations and associated constructions of childhood and adulthood were connected. We argue that changes occurred in and through the shaping of real and imagined places