Lived Histories of Science Education in Modern Luxembourg: Interactions between Global Policies, National Curriculum and Local Practices.

The current paper is part of a larger research project, that seeks to gain insights into the policy and curricular reform of science education in Luxembourg’s primary schools through a state of the art approach that integrates research in educational sciences (interviews and classroom observations) with research in the history of education (interviews and document analyses). Beginning with the premise that “science education” as a school discipline is the product of culturally shaped expectations, we examine the interface of international and national educational policy with local educational practice through the lens of primary school science education in Luxembourg (from 1920 through the present). This papers focuses on the historical analysis of science education and policy changes in modern Luxembourg using (1) a document-based historical analysis of curricula, textbooks and public discourses and (2) interviews with curriculum developers from the 1980s and 1990s and with key participants in science education in Luxembourg to examine the lived practices in a local context. In the synergy of the different approaches, local analysis of historically shaped notions of science education can be integrated with a transnational global perspective. Our analysis shows, among other findings, that the science education curriculum was conceived as a response to a variety of specific national educational needs (e.g. environmental protection, love of nature, scientific rational thinking, economy development, technological progress, social progress, demographic changes and challenges). But at the same time, it was covertly in line with international “scientization” policies (e.g. Drori & Meyer, 2009) building on transnational ideas such as the “spiral curriculum”. The analysed educational reform is thus a relevant example to understand culturally and historically embedded perspectives of what “science” is, and how this shapes ideals of “science education” as a discipline in school

Problematizing science as a primary school discipline: Learning from contingencies and diversities

This paper puts the idea of a contingent nature of science at its fore, asking what we as researchers can learn from seemingly irreconcilable differences in our approaches and interpretations to past, present and future developments in science education. To do so, we aim to explore the potentials of multi-perspectivity in an academic self-experiment. The idea is to problematize science as a school discipline from different theoretical, disciplinary and methodological standpoints. By taking one concrete example of a Luxembourgian primary school curriculum document, four researchers will independently apply their individual lenses on science as a school discipline. Concretely, the coverage of the hedgehog as a “characteristic animal” in our primary school curriculum will be commented on in historical, sociocultural and pedagogical perspectives. This concrete curricular example is seemingly defined and non disputable as a content theme in primary school science education in Luxembourg, and is also to be found in international curriculum policy documents. Yet a seemingly proven fact can be interpreted in multiple ways, not only to bridge controversies, as it is done so often, but as exploring the differences in a self-reflective manner. Through such multiple interpretations, we are specifically looking for inconsistencies between the four different narratives, instead of focusing on consensual conclusions or firm and consistent patterns. Instead we will follow a multi-layered approach to research in order to undertake a métissage approach to analyzing a component of the science pedagogical practice, allowing the different understandings on the Luxembourgian science curriculum to remain and complement each other in a complex manner

Understanding and breaking the intergenerational cycle of abuse in families enrolled in routine mental health services: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial and two non-interventional trials investigating mechanisms of change within the UBICA II consortium

Background!#!Parents' mental illness (MI) and parental history of early life maltreatment (ELM) are known to be significant risk factors for poor parenting while poor parenting is a crucial mediator of the intergenerational continuity of child maltreatment. Hence, maltreatment prevention programs for families with an MI parent, which pay particular attention to experiences of ELM in the parent, are urgently needed. Parental mentalizing was previously found to mediate successful parenting. Interventions aimed at improving the parental mentalizing capacity reduced maltreatment risk in parents. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of a mentalization-based parenting-counseling in acutely mentally ill parents currently treated at a psychiatric hospital.!##!Methods!#!Mentalization-based parenting-counseling (MB-PC) vs. enhanced standard clinical care (SCC+) will be administered in a cluster-randomized-controlled trial (RCT). Patients treated at psychiatric hospitals with children between 1.5 and 15 years will be included in the trial. MB-PC will be administered as a 12-h combined individual and group program enriched by social counseling (over a course of 5 weeks) as add-on to standard clinical care, while the control condition will be standard clinical care plus a 90-min psychoeducation workshop on positive parenting. Primary efficacy endpoint is self-reported parenting practices at follow-up. Embedded within the RCT will be two sub-studies investigating social cognition and dyadic synchrony as biobehavioral mechanisms of change.!##!Discussion!#!The main goal of the present study is to investigate ways to break the intergenerational continuity of maltreatment by assessing the benefits of a prevention program which aims at improving parenting in vulnerable mothers and fathers. MB-PC is a short, low-cost intervention which can be delivered by nurses and social workers and is applicable to MI patients with children with a broad range of diagnoses. If it is shown to be effective, it can be directly implemented into standard psychiatric hospital care thereby providing help to prevent child maltreatment.!##!Trial registration!#!German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00017398 . Registered on 5 July 2019