The understanding teachers have of their students? home backgrounds is a crucial dimension in the way teachers make sense of students? transitions between home and school. Research in this area has addressed issues about the cultural nature of school knowledge and how ?everyday cognition? differs from ?school cognition?. As societies become increasingly diverse due to globalisation and migration, it is apparent that the mismatch between teachers? and students? cultural backgrounds is not only an issue of cognition but also an issue of identities. Research with teachers has mostly focused on the teachers? constructions of culturally diverse students, yet the ways in which teachers construct students are not independent of the way they construct themselves. In this paper, we question what new insights using concepts from Dialogical Self Theory can reveal about teachers? constructions of self and other in the school. Focusing on cultural contact zones where individuals must struggle to negotiate their lives and identities between cultures, Dialogical Self Theory holds that identities are constructed in dialogue, interdependent with the cultural context. This enables the study of the mutual relationships between self and other. We argue that modifying the traditional identity question ?Who am I? to ?Who am I in relation to the other? must also consider ?Who is the other in relation to who I am?? We illustrate this in our analysis of the impact teachers? constructions of themselves have upon their constructions of the students and their families
This presentation examines young people’s accounts of their own experience of moving between a culturally different home and a culturally dominant school. The analysis draws on interview data from studies with young people in English schools, examining accounts where differences between home and school practices were stressed. Two types of differences will be examined. One is differences related to “what is taught at school and at home” (e.g. mathematical practices) and the other is differences related to “what roles are accepted at school and at home”. These accounts will be analyzed in relation to socio-cultural representations, their construction of identities, and how they recount the impact on the young person’s participation in school practices. The aim of bringing the analysis of these two dimensions together is to illustrate that whether the focus is on a traditional cognitive activity (mathematical learning) or on social development of the young person (normative age role), the experience of the young person is constructed in relation to socio-cultural representations, and has impact on how they made sense of themselves (construct their identities)
Abstract Background A number of children experience difficulties with social communication and this has long-term deleterious effects on their mental health, social development and education. The E-PLAYS-2 study will test an intervention (‘E-PLAYS’) aimed at supporting such children. E-PLAYS uses a dyadic computer game to develop collaborative and communication skills. Preliminary studies by the authors show that E-PLAYS can produce improvements in children with social communication difficulties on communication test scores and observed collaborative behaviours. The study described here is a definitive trial to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of E-PLAYS delivered by teaching assistants in schools. Methods The aim of the E-PLAYS-2 trial is to establish the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of care as usual plus the E-PLAYS programme, delivered in primary schools, compared to care as usual. Cluster-randomisation will take place at school level to avoid contamination. The E-PLAYS intervention will be delivered by schools’ teaching assistants. Teachers will select suitable children (ages 5–7 years old) from their schools using guidelines provided by the research team. Assessments will include blinded language measures and observations (conducted by the research team), non-blinded teacher-reported measures of peer relations and classroom behaviour and parent-reported use of resources and quality of life. A process evaluation will also include interviews with parents, children and teaching assistants, observations of intervention delivery and a survey of care as usual. The primary analysis will compare pragmatic language scores for children who received the E-PLAYS intervention versus those who did not at 40 weeks post-randomisation. Secondary analyses will assess cost-effectiveness and a mixed methods process evaluation will provide richer data on the delivery of E-PLAYS. Discussion The aim of this study is to undertake a final, definitive test of the effectiveness of E-PLAYS when delivered by teaching assistants within schools. The use of technology in game form is a novel approach in an area where there are currently few available interventions. Should E-PLAYS prove to be effective at the end of this trial, we believe it is likely to be welcomed by schools, parents and children. Trial registration ISRCTN 17561417, registration date 19th December 2022. Protocol version: v1.1 19th June 2023.
This paper considers the field of enquiry called ethnomathematics and its role within mathematics education. We elaborate on the shifted meaning of ‘ethnomathematics’. This “enriched meaning” impacts on the philosophy of math education. Currently, the concept is no longer reserved for ‘nonliterate’ people, but also includes diverse mathematical practices within western classrooms. Consequently, maths teachers are challenged to handle people’s cultural diversity occurring within every classroom setting. Ethnomathematics has clearly gained a prominent role, within Western curricula, becoming meaningful in the exploration of various aspects of mathematical literacy. We discuss this enriched meaning of ethnomathematics as an alternative, implicit philosophy of school mathematical practices. Key-words: Ethnomathematics, Diversity, Politics, Philosophy, Values.
This paper explores the ambivalent positioning of separated child migrants in the UK with a focus on the care that they provide for each other. Drawing on interview data with state and non-state adult stakeholders involved in the immigration-welfare nexus, we consider how children's care practices are viewed and represented. We argue that separated children's caring practices assume an absent presence in the discourses mobilised by these actors: either difficult to articulate or represented in negative and morally-laden terms, reflective of the UK's 'hostile environment' towards migrants and advanced capitalist constructions of childhood. Such an examination sheds light on the complex state attempts to manage the care and migration regimes, and the way that care can serve as a way of making and marking inclusions and exclusions. Here we emphasise the political consequences for separated child migrants in an age of neoliberal state retrenchment from public provision of care and rising xenophobic nationalism.
Parental involvement in children’s homework is strongly endorsed and encouraged by political and educational policy in the UK. However, involvement in mathematics homework is said to be particularly problematic for parents because of changes to the curriculum since their own schooling, the introduction of multitudinous mathematical strategies at school, and in the case of multicultural communities, an ever-increasing heterogeneity of learning experiences amongst parents. Using the theoretical framework of cultural models and cultural settings this chapter examines the kinds of resources parents use to make sense of their child’s mathematics homework. Two parental resources for making sense of mathematics homework are scrutinized: (a) the child, and (b) cultural models of child development. The interviews with twenty-two parents revealed that these resources were highly intangible and often symbolic models which were open to misunderstandings, resistances and transformations. Also, the child could be an active or resistant co-constructor of these resources which subsequently informed the homework setting.
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