Culture In Education And Education In Culture: Tensioned Dialogues And Creative Constructions 3030284115, 9783030284114, 9783030284121

Table of contents :
Education in Between the Established and the Possible......Page 6
References......Page 8
Introduction......Page 9
Culture in Education......Page 10
Education in Culture......Page 11
Format of the Book......Page 12
Content of the Book......Page 13
Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization......Page 14
Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education......Page 15
Part III: Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives......Page 17
References......Page 19
Contents......Page 20
About the Editors......Page 22
Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization......Page 23
1 Education, Competition, and Cultural Development......Page 24
1 The Promise of Enlightenment......Page 25
2 De-Moralizing Education......Page 26
3 Competition......Page 27
4 Globalization and Rationality......Page 29
5 The Meaning of Bildung......Page 30
6 Inspiration from Non-western Education......Page 32
References......Page 33
1 Introduction......Page 35
2 Outcome-Oriented Education......Page 37
3 Disruptive Behavior in the Outcome-Oriented School......Page 38
4 Control, Self-management, and the Taming of the School......Page 40
5 Changed Attitudes Toward Disruptive Behavior......Page 42
6 Concluding Discussion......Page 44
References......Page 46
1 Introduction......Page 49
2 From Whence We Came......Page 51
3 Democratic Citizenship as an Educational End......Page 52
4 Deliberative Democracy as the Model of Democracy......Page 53
6 A Matter of Motivation......Page 55
7.1 Ramadan and Koran School......Page 57
7.2 Discussions Around Faith and Different Religions Practices in “Christianity Studies”......Page 58
7.3 Challenges and Potentials—In a History Lesson......Page 61
8 On the Possibility of Deliberative Participation in School......Page 62
References......Page 64
1 Introduction......Page 66
2 Neoliberalism, Competition, and Learning......Page 67
3 Learning and the Social Situation of Development......Page 70
References......Page 72
Constructing Culturally Responsive Education......Page 74
5 Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglements with Mainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Transition to School......Page 75
1 The Australian Context......Page 76
1.1 Education and Colonisation......Page 77
1.2 Contemporary Schooling......Page 78
2 Transition to School......Page 80
3 Coffin’s Model of Cultural Security......Page 82
3.1 A Case Study for Cultural Security......Page 84
4 Yarning: Identifying Cultural Entanglements and Counter-Narratives......Page 85
5 From Cultural Safety to Cultural Security......Page 91
6 Conclusion......Page 92
References......Page 93
6 A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices in Solomon Islands and Australia......Page 96
1 Introduction......Page 97
2.1 Indigenous Methodologies......Page 98
2.2 Case Study......Page 99
2.3 Researcher Reflexivity......Page 100
2.4 Data Analysis......Page 101
2.5 Applying Hedegaard’s Model to Indigenous Contexts......Page 102
3.1 Yamatji Country, Australia......Page 104
3.2 On Country Learning......Page 108
3.3 Temotu, Solomon Islands......Page 112
4 Conclusion and Implications......Page 116
References......Page 118
7 Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectories of the Mbya Guarani Struggle for a Differentiated Education......Page 123
1 Rights Conquered by Indigenous Peoples in Brazilian Legislation on Education......Page 124
2 Three Paradigmatic Moments in the Education Applied to the Indigenous Peoples in Brazil......Page 126
3 The Struggle of the Mbya Guarani of São Paulo for a Quality Differentiated Education......Page 128
4 The Activity of the Amerindian Support Network at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo......Page 130
4.1 The Amerindian Support Network (IPUSP-PSE) in Considering Together with the Mbya Guarani of São Paulo the Challenges for a Differentiated Education......Page 133
4.2 The House of Indigenous Cultures Xondaro Kuery Xondaria Kuery Onhembo’ea Ty Apy at the Institute of Psychology at USP......Page 135
5 Final Considerations......Page 138
References......Page 139
1 A Visitor’s Impression of Acervo da Laje......Page 141
2 Introduction to the Laje Collection......Page 142
3 Developmental Poetics......Page 144
4.1 Visiting Acervo da Laje......Page 145
5 Results and Reflections......Page 153
5.2 From Violence to Beauty: An Urge for Forgotten Humanity......Page 154
5.3 Educating to Beauty and to Sensitivity......Page 155
5.4 The Possibility of Being Happens in the Meeting with What Transcends Us......Page 156
5.5 How Can Art Bring Rags to Riches?......Page 157
5.6 The Development of Skills—The Development of Youth......Page 158
6 Concluding Thoughts......Page 162
References......Page 163
9 Commentary to Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education......Page 165
References......Page 171
Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives......Page 173
10 Identity in Education and Education in Identities: Connecting Curriculum and School Practice to Students’ Lives and Identities......Page 174
1 How We Arrived at the Term Funds of Identity......Page 175
2 The First Theoretical Principle: The Notion of Funds of Identity......Page 176
3 The Second Theoretical Principle: Learning Means Transforming Identities......Page 179
4 The Third Theoretical Principle: Deep Learning Involves Meaning but also Sense......Page 180
5 Example 1: Identity Drawings in the Context of the Funds of Identity Approach......Page 182
6 Example 2: Making Text-to-Self Connections Through Visual Art......Page 184
7 A Critical Stance: Some Risks and Challenges......Page 185
8 By Way of Conclusion: Identities at the Heart of Educational Activity......Page 186
References......Page 187
1 Introduction......Page 191
2.1 The Sociology of School Inequalities......Page 192
2.2 Social and Cultural Psychology on Cultural Differences at School......Page 193
2.3 A Life Course Sociocultural Approach to School Trajectories......Page 194
3 A Case Study in Switzerland: Young Women from Kosovo and Their Use of Symbolic Resources......Page 195
3.2 Young Women from Kosovo in Switzerland and Their Success at School......Page 196
4.1 Finding Sense in a Successful School Trajectory beyond A Priori Barriers......Page 198
4.2 Turning Barriers into Challenges to Overcome......Page 202
4.3 Using Symbolic Resources for Resistance and Long-term Engagements......Page 203
5 Discussion and Conclusion......Page 206
References......Page 208
12 Teacher Identity in Structural Reflective Workshops: A View from China......Page 213
1.1 A Pressing Need to Develop Teacher Identity in China......Page 214
1.2 Teacher Identity in Dialogical Self Theory......Page 216
1.3 Previous DST-Based Research on Teacher Identity Through Self-reflection......Page 217
2.1 Participants and Context......Page 218
2.3 Date Sources and Analysis......Page 219
3.1 Teacher Identity with Different Dominant I-Positions......Page 220
3.2 Negotiations Between Partner and Controller I-Positions......Page 222
4 Discussion......Page 223
4.2 Three Forms of Negotiations Between These Two I-Positions......Page 224
4.3 The Reasons for Teacher Identity Negotiations in the Workshops......Page 226
5 Limitations and Conclusions......Page 227
References......Page 228
1 Introduction......Page 231
2 From Local Engagements to Global Standards—Exemplified by Danish ECEC Services......Page 232
3 The Theoretical Perspective and the Empirical Context......Page 235
3.1 Personal Engagement and Educational Goals......Page 236
3.2 Engagements as Fragments of Personal Life Concerns in Educational Practices......Page 240
3.3 The Existential Foundation of Personal Culture......Page 241
3.4 From Shared Concerns to the Emergence of Resistance......Page 244
4 General Discussion......Page 247
References......Page 250
14 Commentary to Part III: Cultural Perspectives on Self/Identity Issues, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources......Page 253
1 Cultural Barriers, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources......Page 255
2.1 Identity or Self?......Page 257
2.2 Teacher Identity and Interactive Patterns......Page 258
2.3 The Student as School’s Major Concern......Page 259
3 Monologism Versus Dialogism in Educational Contexts......Page 260
References......Page 262
1 Exploring the Relationship Between Culture and Education......Page 264
2 A Choir of Voices......Page 266
3 Dialectics of the Educational Situation......Page 270
References......Page 272

Citation preview

Cultural Psychology of Education 10

Pernille Hviid Mariann Märtsin   Editors

Culture in Education and Education in Culture Tensioned Dialogues and Creative Constructions

Cultural Psychology of Education Volume 10

Series Editor Giuseppina Marsico, DISUFF, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy Editorial Board Jaan Valsiner, Department of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark Nandita Chaudhary, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Maria Virginia Dazzani, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Xiao-Wen Li, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai Shi, China Harry Daniels, Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Nicolay Veresov, Monash University, Australia Wolff-Michael Roth, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada Yasuhiro Omi, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

This book series focuses on the development of new qualitative methodologies for educational psychology and interdisciplinary enrichment in ideas and practices. It publishes key ideas of methodology, different approaches to schooling, family, relationships and social negotiations of issues of educational processes. It presents new perspectives, such as dynamic systems theory, dialogical perspectives on the development of the self within educational contexts, and the role of various symbolic resources in educational processes. The series publishes research rooted in the cultural psychology framework, thus combining the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, education and history. Cultural psychology examines how human experience is organized culturally, through semiotic mediation, symbolic action, accumulation and exchange of inter-subjectively shared representations of the life-space. By taking this approach, the series breaks through the “ontological” conceptualization of education in which processes of education are localized in liminality. In this series, education is understood as goal-oriented personal movement that is at the core of societal change in all its different forms— from kindergarten to vocational school and lifelong learning. It restructures personal lives both inside school and outside the school. The cultural psychology approach to education fits the global processes of most countries becoming multi-cultural in their social orders, reflects the interdisciplinary nature of educational psychology, and informs the applications of educational psychology in a vast variety of cultural contexts. This book series: • Is the first to approach education from a cultural psychology perspective. • Offers an up-to-date exploration of recent work in cultural psychology of education. • Brings together new, novel, and innovative ideas. • Broadens the practical usability of different trends of cultural psychology of education.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13768

Pernille Hviid Mariann Märtsin •

Editors

Culture in Education and Education in Culture Tensioned Dialogues and Creative Constructions

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Editors Pernille Hviid Department of Psychology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Mariann Märtsin School of Psychology and Counselling Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove, QLD, Australia

ISSN 2364-6780 ISSN 2364-6799 (electronic) Cultural Psychology of Education ISBN 978-3-030-28411-4 ISBN 978-3-030-28412-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface of the Series Editor

Education in Between the Established and the Possible Reading the book Culture in Education and Education in Culture. Tensioned Dialogues and Creative Constructions, edited by Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin, I had the feeling of being before one of the crucial, and still unsolved, critical issues in education: that is the universalities and particularities of the educational enterprise worldwide. I myself have tried to address the point in the Manifesto for the Future of Education (Marsico 2017), where I discussed the need, for the contemporary Cultural Psychology of Education, to be increasingly international and global, while promoting the cultural sensitiveness of the educational intervention. I claimed that, in any society, the application of the know-how in the area of education is local. This may appear quite controversial in the current panorama of rampant neoliberalism, with an increasing standardization and outcome-based focus. This book, instead, intends to contribute to the discussion about education of a global scale, but rather than moving toward of education as a universal and homogeneous practice, as the trend at present is, our attention is directed toward the potential for learning from creative constructions (or unresolved tensions) between concrete local cultures and their educational aims and standards (Märtsin & Hviid this volume, p. x). The need to share and promote the relevant psychosocial processes, value systems, practices, and ideologies, in contexts that present a polyphony of perspectives, is the very core of this book. Here, I must thank Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin, since I feel in good company in my recent struggle to question what does it mean “diversity” or “inclusion” in the context of the global flux of migration that is changing the geography of the world, as well as to discuss how the current educational ideology may

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be disrespectful of the alternative value systems, and contribute to the impoverishment of cultural diversity around the world. It is sufficient to think about the perpetration of acts of dominance, oppression, and silencing over native cultures (Guimarães 2016). Yet, the most interesting theoretical contribution of this book resides in the notion of “tensioned dialogue.” As the editors point out: …new ideas and knowledge for the individuals and communities can emerge from the tensions between various perspectives and voices, when these are held (and dealt with) in their dynamic developmental relationship, rather than being deformed in a way that the striving for the “best outcome” leads to marginalization, stigmatization – in short, othering (Hviid & Märtsin, this volume, p. 260).

It is worth noting that the notion of tension has had a hard time to be acknowledged as one of the essential aspects in all psychological processes (Marsico & Tateo, 2017; 2018). Tension has often been considered as a negative feeling or state to be overcome as soon as possible. In this volume, instead, the ever-neglected positive value of tension has been reconsidered as a premise of any sort of creative construction between education and culture. Also, Culture in Education and Education in Culture. Tensioned Dialogues and Creative Constructions delves around the dilemma, already addressed by Jerome Bruner (1996; 2007), whether education (and schooling) should serve what is the established set of culturally acceptable knowledge or create the conditions for the young generations to deal with the always changeable future life. According to Bruner: I’ve become increasingly convinced that the powers of mind reach their fullness not simply in accumulation – in what we come to know – but rather in what we can do with what we know, how we are enabled to frame possibilities beyond the conventions of the present, to forge possible worlds (2007, p. 2).

Hviid & Märtsin’s volume offers interesting methodological and conceptual tools, not only to discuss the classic theme of “becoming an individual and a member of society through education,” but also to question how to do it “in a way that respects and supports the unique local ways, while also paying attention to global trends” (this volume, p. xi). The book provides a refreshing intellectual journey between universal perspectives and cultural diversity (Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania), and between education for individual creativity and societal progress that will be, for sure, of great interests for readers from all continents. Salerno, Italy July 2019

Giuseppina Marsico

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References Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S. (2007). Cultivating the possible, address at Oxford dedication, Jerome Bruner Building. http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/TranscriptCultivating-the-Possible.pdf. Guimarães, D. S. (2016). Amerindian paths: Guiding dialogues with psychology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Marsico, G. (2017). Jerome S. Bruner: Manifesto for the future of education, infancia y aprendizaje. Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 40(4), 754–781. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02103702.2017.1367597. Marsico, G. (2018). The challenges of the Schooling from Cultural Psychology of Education. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, 52(3),474–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12124-018-9454-6. Marsico, G., Tateo, L. (2017). Borders, tensegrity and development in dialogue. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, 51(4), 536–556. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-0179398-2. Marsico, G., Tateo, L. (Eds). (2018). The emergence of self in the educational contexts. Cultural Psychology of Education, 8, Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues and Creative Constructions Between Culture and Education in Cultural Developmental Key

Abstract This introductory chapter opens the field of education in a cultural developmental perspective and explains how and why learning and development can be considered as cultural processes. It discusses the way the tensioned dialogues and creative constructions between education and culture are conceptualized in this book and outlines the guiding question for this volume: when and how does an educational intrusion produce a constructive surplus of individual and collective creativity, and when do educational contributions create unconstructive or even destructive tensions for the single individual and/or for the community? The introduction also provides an overview of the main themes discussed in each chapter.

Introduction The idea for this volume grew out of intense discussions, frustrations, new ideas, and hopes among educational and developmental researchers from diverse geographical settings. The impetus for the book came from a series of workshops funded by East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paolo, Brazil; Center of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark, Department of Psychology; University of Copenhagen, Denmark and The Danish, Agency for Science and Higher Education. These were held in several parts of the world—China, Brazil, and Denmark—with the aim of learning from each other and creating together new ways of understanding the relation between culture, education, and the life course of children and young people. As part of the workshops, several field trips to childcare centers, kindergartens, schools, and out-of-school activity centers were organized that provided ample opportunities for discussions and reflections among practitioners and academics about differences and similarities, successes, and tensions, which exist between diverse cultural contexts and ways of doing education. The results of some of those discussions and reflections have found their way into this book in the form of different chapters,

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while others have led to innovative research projects or continued to grow and develop in their particular locales. In addition to contributions from the initial trio of contexts, the book also includes chapters that reflect on challenges that are characteristic to the Australian context. By inviting Australian researchers to be part of this book, we sought to widen and diversify the reach and relevance of the discussions gathered between the covers of this volume; yet perhaps ironically, this wide geographic reach has also allowed us to underscore some of the central arguments of this book. The general aim of this book is to grapple with central global movements in educational methodologies investigated in a cultural developmental perspective. The book intends to contribute to the discussion about education of a global scale, but rather than moving toward education as a universal and homogeneous practice, as the trend at present is, our attention is directed toward the potential for learning from creative constructions or tensions between concrete local cultures and their educational aims and standards. We aim to achieve this by bringing together a group of educational and developmental researchers and scholars grappling to find ways to educate people and communities in a manner that responds to and sustains local cultures. The authors have different disciplinary backgrounds such as educational and developmental psychology, early childhood education, teacher training, educational sociology, and public health, and come from diverse geographical contexts: Australia, Brazil, China, and Europe. Despite these differences, they share a conceptual grounding in cultural developmental theorizing and a vision for a culturally responsible globalized perspective on education.

Culture in Education In conceptualizing culture, we draw upon the contemporary cultural developmental theory that sees culture as a unique organizer of the person–environment relationship. That is, we do not see culture as a container of a homogeneous class that stands outside of the person and somehow makes him or her similar to others in that class and different from others in another class (Valsiner 2014). Rather, we conceptualize culture as a mediator between person and environment that allows positioning oneself in relation to the world and the world in relation to the self. We assume that in this mediating role all cultural contexts are universally the same, although the tools and resources that different cultural contexts provide for organizing the person–environment relationship may vary considerably. We also assume that this mediating role that culture has can take different forms. We follow Hasan (2004) and Wertsch (2007) who have suggested that we can distinguish between visible or explicit and invisible or implicit cultural mediation, both of which are important in the context of education. In the case of visible cultural mediation, the interaction is explicitly focused on a specific concept or problem and at least one of the interaction partners acts consciously in the role

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of the teacher. In contrast, in the case of invisible mediation, it is not clear to either party what is being mediated or what the goal of the interaction is, for individuals simply engage in everyday interaction. Yet, as Hasan (2002) argues, important elements of mental dispositions, identities, and practices are still being mediated in those situations, where culture has become invisible and gone “underground”. For it is through these interactions that are not directly aimed at teaching and learning in school and outside the school, which we learn to position ourselves in relation to others and the world around us. This focus on becoming a person and a member of society through education, the shaping of our ways of knowing and participating that happens in educational contexts, and how to do that in a culturally sustainable way, while also paying attention to global trends, is thus an important conceptual thread that runs through this book.

Education in Culture In thinking about education in this book, we start from the position that education is crucial in enhancing people’s lives, making them capable of developing as societal members and advancing their society in a rich and humane way. Education can be considered as “benevolent violence” (Valsiner 2008) to human and collective cultural systems, in the sense that it intrudes and enforces change. This is meant to be for the better, for the single person, and for the community. But following this idea, the ethical and developmental question appears to be: when and how does such educational intrusion create a surplus of individual and collective creativity, and when do these educational contributions create unconstructive or even destructive tensions for the single individual and/or for the community? In our globalizing world, education is becoming a standardized imported commodity that is based on global ideals and prototypical practices that often conflict with the local and concrete cultural belief systems, traditions, and practices of collective cultures of people’s everyday lives. Educational offers or demands are thus a double-edged sword: on the one hand, they give human beings access to new possibilities, while on the other hand also challenge collective and personal ways of living by enforcing its own inbuilt logic of “best-educational-and-cultural-practice” upon people and communities. The results are varied. In the worst-case scenario, education risks violating local and concrete collective ways of living, in ways that estrange people from their own environment and creates conflicts and disruptions. The increased focus on global competition in the past decades has added another level of complexity and speed to these developments. Today, evidence-based teaching systems are exported and imported and cultural educational specificities, which previously served local aims, are replaced with systems that postulate to work for everyone, everywhere. We believe that this trend is common on a global level, and precisely this unites in a new and peculiar way educational communities that were once very different in their degree of influence on what teachers were to teach, parents were to accept, and pupils were to learn. In some absurd sense, we are all becoming marginalized groups in a global educational abstractum. Without any

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attempt to diminish the extremely difficult educational situation marginalized communities or indigenous people experience, our suggestion in this book is that we have much more educational challenges in common than ever before. In this context of global standardized educational systems and practices, the development of innovation of educational practices and methodologies is at risk. In the process of spreading evidence-based teaching and learning, the whole agenda of education is in danger of becoming frozen. Standardization serves the aim of comparing and competing. This aim is most successfully met, when standardization is complete and variability is zero. From a cultural developmental perspective, such success is a catastrophe (as already noticed in educating indigenous cultures) for variability and difference is the foundation of generativity and development. While enabling competition, standardization blocks the whole idea of education as a generative practice. Are there any alternatives to this process? Could a perspective that is global but also responds to and sustains local cultures offer an opportunity for the educational research to enter in a productive dialogue and learn from each other, drawing attention to the diversity of practices and sometimes perfection with respect to arranging education in accordance to cultural meaning systems and intentions? Could we, more precisely, change focus from decontextualized methods and their average effects to educational practices that show their productivity in the dialogue between the local and concrete collective cultures and their practices? The aim of this book is to move toward such a perspective. To us, such an approach also reintroduces education as a pedagogic enterprise. We follow thus the line of thought that education is not beneficial nor damaging in and of itself, but can only be evaluated (and eventually planned) in relation to the meaning and meaningfulness it can come to have for the people who are engaged with it (i.e., groups of students, teachers, parents, school administrators, researchers working in schools) while relating to and living in their sociocultural environment. And precisely this is our focus in analyzing tensioned—creative or disruptive— dialogues between education and cultural arrangements. By this approach, we propose a cultural psychological perspective on the developmental potentials—to persons, communities, and societies of education.

Format of the Book Before describing the structure of this book, we want to comment on the general style of this book. Working on the chapters of this book has been a deeply rewarding activity through which we have learned a lot as cultural developmental researchers. As editors working with a group of authors from diverse cultural backgrounds we have been acutely aware of the fact that this book is published according to Western publishing standards and in English language—requirements that are not necessarily fitting with our aims to respect the unique cultural ways of knowing and writing that various authors presented to us. We have learned that for the Amerindian people who have contributed to this volume, written language is

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“white peoples” language, not their language. We have come to know that for Australian Aboriginal people, the linear and highly structured ways of explaining, analyzing, and discussing are unusual, while free-flowing and often spiral or cyclic ways of telling stories—yarning—are more common. Such dilemmas are not to be solved here, but rather to be acknowledged and lived with. To lessen these tensions, we have decided to take the role of attentive listener and instead of imposing certain stylistic and content rules, work together with the authors to create chapters that take into account these tensions while maintaining the uniqueness of each contribution. We believe that this diversity of styles enriches this volume and hope that the readers share our vision.

Content of the Book All the chapters in this book analyze interrelationships between societal, local cultural, institutional, and personal levels of meaning-making. However, they do so with varied prioritized agendas. Based on their unique focus, the chapters are grouped into three parts. In Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization, the general questions, and tendencies in the relation between educational and societal development are presented and analyzed in relation to different educational issues, such as the challenges of disruptive behavior in classrooms or learning about democracy by engaging in discussions about own and others’ religious beliefs and practices. In Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education, the focus moves from discussions about global trends as these impact Western educational contexts to relations between culture and education in concrete community case studies in other cultural contexts. This part also includes discussions about the role of culturally responsive methodologies and research strategies for working in such contexts. In Part III: Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives, we move closer to the perspective of unique persons who participate in educational practices, be it children, young people in school, or teachers. The case studies in this part of the book provide opportunities to examine the tensions and dialogues that characterize the educational trajectories of individuals as these are negotiated within the implicit cultural guidance and offer unique conceptual perspectives for analyzing these. While the three parts thus have their internal logic in moving from societal toward personal tensions and dilemmas, the chapters still develop and provide their unique contributions which will be briefly summarized in the following.

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Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization Only a few can present the (Western) history of education, its fundamental ideas, and current challenges while at the same time clearing up conceptual misunderstandings and opening up new potential horizons in a single chapter. Yet, Wardekker can. His chapter offers a historical overview of Western education since Enlightenment and demonstrates that while much has been gained in that process (such as offering education, if not for all, then for many, many people) something has also been lost. As a social movement, Wardekker writes, Enlightenment entailed a double responsibility. It urged human beings to take part in education and make use of it, for the common good. It also urged societies to offer education for everybody. Whereas education de facto is widespread today, it has, as a neoliberal practice, renounced on making it accessible as a purposeful activity that can enable societal development and the common good, with conceptual knowledge. As part of the global competition, education has paradoxically ended up in a situation, where it promotes knowledge that is useful in competition (local or global) but is of little use in personal conduct of everyday living, together with other human beings. Although Wardekker shows no naivety with regard to turning around the neoliberal tank, he envisages several strategies to refine education as a double responsibility for the common good. One strategy is a revival and reconceptualization of Bildung, which already articulates a relation between person and his environment. Another strategy concerns learning from non-Western (or to be more precise, non-neoliberal) education. The chapter is generous, as it explicitly deals with classical pitfalls in educational science and in cultural–historical theory. The focus on the pitfalls of neoliberal agenda in Western education is picked up also in Thomas Szulevicz’s chapter “What Is Disruptive About Disruptive Behavior?” (Chap. 2). In his chapter, Szulevicz investigates a newly emerging relation between pupil’s disruptive behavior in classroom and education. Szulevicz does not argue that pupils are more disruptive today than in previous times. Rather, he argues that the disruption is seen in a new light when considered from the perspective of the neoliberal Learning Outcome Education. The author critically analyzes the present-day “hyper-attention” on students’ and teachers’ work that is meant to achieve the expected learning outcome. In this context, the noise or the disruption, Szulevicz argues, is not seen as a critique of pupils’ conduct, neither as a distraction in their life or as an occupation with other matters of more relevance to them. Rather, disruption is seen as a barrier for meeting the expected learning goals. Pupils and the conduct of their lives get lost in this focus on expected learning outcomes, as do the teachers and the work that they do to support students’ development. In this sense, the disruption also interrupts the task that is set before teachers, a task, they themselves are measured by. The invitation by Wardekker to reapproach Bildung is taken up by Klitmøller & Jensen in their chapter “Bildung, Motivation, and Deliberative Democracy in Primary Education” (Chap. 3). Drawing on data from a Danish school context, they aim at investigating the relation between the conceptualization of motive, as it has

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been developed in cultural–historical psychology and the conceptualization of Bildung. Bildung is (still) central in Danish educational thinking, as it underlines the development of and education toward democratic citizenship. Following Vygotsky and Leontjev, the authors propose to understand motives as interdependent phenomena that develop in dialogue and interaction with other human beings around issues of personal and collective concern. Empirically, Klitmøller and Jensen demonstrate such evolving processes of motivation in dialogues between pupils, teachers, and researchers in 4th and 5th grade of a public school in Denmark. What is of special interest in this process is the dynamic evolvement of motives through two interrelated processes: one which relates children’s everyday experience with scientific concepts and one which relates personal and local collective concerns. In this way, the authors argue for the need to reconnect education to children’s and young people’s everyday lives and experiences in- and outside of school.

Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education In their chapter “Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglements with Mainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Transition to School” (Chap. 5), Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers, and Thorpe also underscore the idea of constructing strong connections between students’ experiences in school and in their everyday life. They focus on the case study of Australian Aboriginal children’s transition to school and discuss it by building on the views and experiences of an indigenous educator. They thus discuss a case study at the border between local and mainstream through the eyes of an educator working across that border. Building on the concept of cultural security as proposed by Coffin, the authors argue for the need to open up a meaningful dialogue between local traditions, protocols and curricula approaches, and mainstream schooling. Yet, they also discuss the difficulties of doing that due to long history of and continuing impact of colonization, racism, and whiteness in Australian society and education. The empirical material discussed in this chapter comes from a yarning session, and the chapter thus provides an illuminating example of using a culturally responsive methodology, another culturally secure space through which transitions between local and mainstream can occur. Colliver and Lee-Hammond’s chapter “A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices in Solomon Islands and Australia” (Chap. 6) continues our journey in Australia and takes us also to Pacific islands. The authors draw upon Hedegaard’s wholeness approach, where societal history, institutional traditions, educational practices, and pupil’s learning and development are seen as forming a whole, and explore two case studies about the education of indigenous people in the Solomon Islands and in Australia. The authors reexamine the model and elaborate on it, building on experiences, where mismatches (or “gaps”, as the authors call them) exist between mainstream educational traditions and the local culture. Both with regard to

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research methodologies and with regard to education, the authors recommend blended, or at the best synthesized, approaches that recognize and pay equal respect to both traditions. They too introduce yarning, a traditional indigenous nonlinear story-telling practice as a dialogical research mode. In relation to teaching practices, they demonstrate cultural misfits in the classroom, where Westernized (and rather old-fashioned) strategies offer indigenous children very little opportunities to learn anything from schooling; other than that they are unable to profit from it. However, the authors also demonstrate promising initiatives to blend, mix, and synthesize richness and usefulness from both cultures. In Lima, Martim & Guimarães chapter: “Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectories of the Mbya Guarani Struggle for a Differentiated Education” (Chap. 7), we are taken to Brazil. Here, the authors present the Guarani peoples’ work for the establishment of not only a culturally fitting education but of the reestablishment of the whole Guarani community. Indigenous people of Brazil have for centuries experienced intense and inhuman suppression and rejection of all that they value and stand for. And although there have been moments when it has felt that it makes sense to have hope in the reestablishment of the indigenous communities in Brazil, the current political situation has once again crushed these hopes. This historical process is not only a process of the education as such, but a process of the development of the community as a whole, in which education plays a central role. The chapter sketches the history from the sixteenth century of European invasion, killing, and missionary, to the establishment of the Brazilian republic in 1889 with deportation of indigenous people to agriculture and Western mode of living, the dictatorship in the 1960s where the tiniest progress was lost again, and the beginning of protective public policies in the 1980s. The work of these communities is not only a work of healing wounds and trusting the new order (which is still violated), it is also an exorbitant work in restoring and adapting indigenous values, traditions, beliefs, and practices to the life in the twenty-first century, such as dealing with the present pollution, practices of land marking, and deforestation in Brazil. In this process, we are offered glimpses of a fitting education that is nevertheless formulated in relation to the Western tradition as historical and societal background, and thus requires critical reflections. José Eduardo Ferreira Santos’ chapter takes us to a different kind of Brazil, for in his chapter “Education for Beauty in Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection) and the Emergence of Creative Work at the Outskirts of Salvador, Brazil” (Chap. 8), Santos opens up a universe of living as a citizen of the outskirts of Salvador. One way of presenting this context is the one we already know: the Suburbia Ferroviário is a favela where a million of people live. It is extremely poor, and its inhabitants live in inhumane conditions; it is unhealthy and it is dangerous. However, is there more to the outskirts? Santos argues that precisely this one-dimensional story of the periphery hurts the people living there in tremendous ways, stigmatizing them, and paralyzing the community. He suggests that there is more to say about the periphery. In Acervo da Laje, Santos and colleagues have created an alternative space. A space for beauty. We are invited into the houses which are literally filled

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with beauty; beauty made by well-known or “invisible” artist in the area or with beauty-in-the-making by children, young people, and adults who work to generate poetics in their own and others life, and thus to become strong, poetic, and creative inhabitants of Suburbia Ferroviário. Developmental poetics is central to the research of Santos and his colleagues. “We propose,” Santos writes, “that when art works in peripheral contexts, a protective and symbolic field is created in the face of situations of violence, opening new perspectives of integration, in the sense of taking part in building a human culture and a human community” (Santos, this volume, p. 140).

Part III: Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives The third and final part of this book is opened by a chapter by Moisès Esteban-Guitart, who investigates the relation between pupil’s identity and education as a developmental phenomenon. Inspired mainly by Vygotsky and his successors’ work within the cultural–historical tradition, Esteban-Guitart suggests that deep learning is facilitated when it stems from and transforms learners’ identity. He investigates this idea within his conceptualization of “funds of identity” and in relation to three interrelated principles. The first principle concerns the distributed and situated development of identity, the second principle relates to the interrelation between identity and learning, and the third principle concerns the development of personal sense, or meaningfulness in relation to education. Based on this analysis, Esteban-Guitart examines deep learning in educational contexts and introduces the notion of deep teaching, in those cases, where education builds upon and dialogues with children’s emerging identity. Teuta Mehmeti and Tania Zittoun’s chapter “Using Symbolic Resources to Overcome Institutional Barriers: A Case Study of an Albanian-Speaking Young Woman in Switzerland” (Chap. 11) demonstrates and discusses the potentials of sociocultural analysis of “school-failures” (or school success for that matter). The chapter is built around a rich case study of a young female student and her family, who have migrated from Albania to Switzerland. While Swiss education is typically conceived of as well developed, supportive, and democratic, this case shows a different pattern. The analysis of the case focuses on the dynamics in the relation between institutional constraints and personal engagements, symbolic resources, and resistance of an Albanian-Swiss student, who manages to follow her educational dreams despite institutional hardship. The chapter is a strong argument for a theoretical perspective that includes the local collective culture as well as the participant’s personal interests and engagements in understanding school failure as well as school success. These concerns are taken up also in the chapter by Zhou, Li, Wu, and Gao that takes us from Europe to China and from discussing the lives of pupils to thinking

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about the challenges of teachers. In their chapter, Zhou, Li, Wu, Gao, and colleagues focus on the tensions between traditional Chinese educational culture and increasingly global and Westernized pedagogical practices of today’s classroom, as well as tensions between related societal needs for students’ independence and autonomy and the limitations of teacher training to support this. They analyze processes of negotiating teacher identity by a group of teachers, who participated in structured reflective workshops to improve their teaching practices. For as the analysis in Zhou, Li, Wu, and Gao’s chapter indicates, it is through this personal engagement and through dialogues with other teachers that new I-positions emerge for the teachers that allow them to engage with their students and support their development, but also relate to the institutional and societal demands on teachers’ work in a more productive manner. In the final chapter of the book “Children’s Development: Between Personal Engagements and Curriculum-Based Preschool Practices” (Chap. 13), Jakob Waag Villadsen aims at investigating these interdependent dynamics between institutional practices and persons making sense of their everyday life from a cultural life course perspective, which incorporates an existential level to the cultural developmental psychological analysis. Drawing on Simmel, Villadsen articulates an important distinction between the collective and the personal culture. In so doing, he attempts to treat these wholenesses as distinct yet interdependent. On the level of the person, Villadsen finds inspiration in Heidegger’s conceptualization of being-in-the-world and introduces the conceptualizations of “engagement” and “life concern” as overarching, interlinking, and situated expressions of what is meaningful and—in a personal perspective—also necessary, in a person’s life for they give directionality to the course of a person’s living. The empirical study concerns children’s life course in Danish Early Childhood Education and Care. Through a number of examples, Villadsen demonstrates both convergence and divergence between personal and collective culture, i.e., between children’s life concerns and engagements and institutional goals and practices. The author argues that children’s resistance to institutional goals and practices are overheard as personal engagements and concerns, and with the institutional logic as frame of analysis, often understood as a child’s lack of developmental success. In the Conclusion, we will return to these chapters in an attempt to synthesize their insights. In so doing, we will include the wise thoughts, careful considerations, and thought-provoking proposals from the three commentaries that are included in this book: Ian Thompson on Part I, Rebeca Mejía-Arauz on Part II, and Angela Uchoa Branco on Part III.

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References Hasan, R. (2004). The concept of semiotic mediation. Perspectives from Bernstein’s sociology. In J. Muller, B. Davies, & A. Morais (Eds.), Reading Bernstein, researching Bernstein (pp. 30– 43). London: Routledge. Hasan, R. (2002). Semiotic mediation and mental development in pluralistic societies: some implications for tomorrow’s schooling. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.), Learning for life in the 21st century: Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 112–126). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Valsiner, J. (2008). Open intransitivity circles in development and education: Pathway to synthesis. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 23, 131. https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF03172741. Valsiner, J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage. Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole, & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky (pp. 178–192). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Contents

Part I

Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization

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Education, Competition, and Cultural Development . . . . . . . . . . . . Willem Wardekker

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What Is Disruptive About Disruptive Behavior? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Szulevicz

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Bildung, Motivation, and Deliberative Democracy in Primary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jacob Klitmøller and Sarah K. Jensen

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Commentary to Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Thompson

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Part II 5

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Constructing Culturally Responsive Education

Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglements with Mainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Transition to School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melinda G. Miller, Karen Dawson-Sinclair, Areana Eivers and Karen Thorpe A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices in Solomon Islands and Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yeshe Colliver and Libby Lee-Hammond

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Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectories of the Mbya Guarani Struggle for a Differentiated Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Roberto Veríssimo Lima, Jurandir Augusto Martim and Danilo Silva Guimarães

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Contents

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Education for Beauty in Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection) and the Emergence of Creative Work at the Outskirts of Salvador, Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 José Eduardo Ferreira Santos

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Commentary to Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Rebeca Mejía-Arauz

Part III

Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives

10 Identity in Education and Education in Identities: Connecting Curriculum and School Practice to Students’ Lives and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Moisès Esteban-Guitart 11 Using Symbolic Resources to Overcome Institutional Barriers: A Case Study of an Albanian-Speaking Young Woman in Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Teuta Mehmeti and Tania Zittoun 12 Teacher Identity in Structural Reflective Workshops: A View from China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Zhou Li-Hua, Li Xiao-Wen, Wu Aruna and Gao Ya-Bing 13 Children’s Development: Between Personal Engagements and Curriculum-Based Preschool Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Jakob Waag Villadsen 14 Commentary to Part III: Cultural Perspectives on Self/Identity Issues, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Angela Uchoa Branco 15 Editors’ Conclusion: Imagining an Education for “Good Life” . . . 251 Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin

About the Editors

Pernille Hviid is trained as Preschool Teacher and has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen (Denmark). She studies developmental processes within the cultural life course, emphasizing the interdependency between personal and collective levels of meaning-making. Empirically, she has conducted studies of children’s experiences of being, focusing on engagement and resistance, as it emerges and persists within the cultural life course. In addition, she has worked with the organization and the managerial practices of public preschools in Denmark, aiming to develop local alternatives to New Public Management. She has edited the online journal Outlines—Critical Practice Studies (2012–2018), coedited (with Wagoner and Chaudhary) the series Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology (2014 & 2015) and the volume Resistance in Everyday Life: Constructing Cultural Experiences (2018) (with Chaudhary, Marsico, and Villadsen). Recently, she contributed to The Sage Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education (in press) with “Educational play-supervision—playing and promoting children’s development of meaning.” At present, she and a group of scholars collaborate on investigating the role preschools plays in Danish, Japanese, and Chinese communities and their contribution to children’s cultivation. e-mail: [email protected] Mariann Märtsin is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and Research Fellow in the Institute of Natural and Health Sciences at Tallinn University (Estonia). Her primary area of interest is identity processes as these relate to experiences of education, migration, and major life course transitions in adulthood. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, who draws her inspiration from semiotic cultural psychology. e-mail: [email protected]

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Part I

Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization

Chapter 1

Education, Competition, and Cultural Development Willem Wardekker

Abstract The insights into the natural and social worlds that may be learned in schools enable students to understand the world and their own position in it in a more complex and deeper way. However, such results cannot be accomplished by “learning” in the sense of being able to come to the predetermined right answer. Rather, learning in this sense involves a long-term process in which the student relates the new ideas to his or her own existence in past, present, and (projected) future. Learning is always at the same time personality development, and it implies emotional and moral as well as intellectual aspects. This kind of learning is threatened by the development of the school under conditions of neoliberal thought. The “hidden curriculum” of neoliberalism teaches students that competition, success, and consumerism are (morally) good. Do we have ways to counteract the consequences of such schooling, while retaining its positive value? We could look at non-western systems of education that give less emphasis to formal schooling and pay more attention to the formation of “good” persons. However, in many cases, this is a person that is well adapted to the mores of a more or less stable society. Or we could connect schools more to the local cultures. But not all knowledge and insights in that culture are of the quality that is needed. Can we devise a school that is culturally sensitive and provides possibilities for significant educational experiences without falling back behind the best insights that a global civilization has to offer?

Both in structure and in content, school systems in Western countries have developed mainly on the basis of the Enlightenment, as a set of ideas and as a social movement. I will argue here that a very one-sided interpretation of Enlightenment ideas has been detrimental to the way the tasks of formal schooling in the formation of participants in culture are now understood. The emphasis on abstract and general knowledge, representing the world rather than making students experience it directly, is intrinsically related to the tendency to compete in egocentric ways. A new interpretation

W. Wardekker (B) Department of Education, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_1

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of the old concept of Bildung, coupled with insights from non-western traditions, is needed to re-orient education to this task.

1 The Promise of Enlightenment The Enlightenment was the expression of a societal development in which, due (among other factors) to expanding trade contacts, the power position of the clergy and the nobility was contested. Not nobility by birth, but nobility of the mind was to be the deciding factor for legitimate power, a nobility that could be reached in principle by every human being through an adequate education. This promise carries a double responsibility. On the one hand, it requires an effort from every human being to strive toward that nobility of the mind by letting themselves be educated. Such an education, as Neiman (2011) has shown, does not only concern facts and logical procedures; it aims at urging human beings to strive toward a common good life, by enabling them to use conceptual knowledge to distance themselves from, and reflect on, their involvement in a daily routine. This is, according to Neiman, what Kant meant by his famous adage of overcoming “self-incurred immaturity.” It is also what the German educational philosophy of Bildung intended; and it is what Vygotsky (1934/1987) meant by his emphasis on the importance of learning “scientific concepts” in school. I’ll come back to these claims shortly. On the other hand, the idea that human beings can only become fully human by education implies a responsibility for every society to make education available for everybody. The Enlightenment idea of emancipation was not an individualistic program, in which a lack of freedom from unjust dominion is ascribed to one’s own lack of effort; it was a social movement directed at creating the possibilities for human progress, especially in the moral sense: creating a better life in a better society (Neiman, 2014). Such ideas developed, of course, in a dialectical relation with the economic changes that began to take place already after the Middle Ages. Expanding trade made some knowledge of writing, arithmetics, and foreign language necessary for traders, who gained societal status because of this, and schools came into existence to cater for the education in these skills. But the spreading of such skills meant that it became possible to expect possession of them by ever more people, so that society became more literacy- and numeracy-based, which in turn required that more people be educated. In present Western societies, it has become very difficult to live without basic knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetics, and schools consider teaching these skills to all young children as their core business. But the process of “schooling society” has taken a long time. Access to schooling for every child was not realized until the beginning of the twentieth century; and in most European countries, this access was and partly is still only to that knowledge deemed necessary for children of a certain heritage (and a certain gender). This is a consequence of the fact that different classes or layers in society felt the need for schooling at different times in

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history, and then sent their children to schools that limited their curriculum to the needs of that group (or the needs that governments thought they had). Several studies in the sociology of education (e.g., Ball, 2003; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970/1990) have shown that even today, schools in European countries keep class distinctions in place rather than abolishing them. In that sense, education has failed to make good on the promise of the Enlightenment. As Bauman (in Bauman & Mazzeo, 2016, p. 28 v.) notes, “the odds in the currently prevailing kind of society are set against the acquisition, mastery and deployment of the capabilities whose possession, coupled with the capacity to use them, are […] indispensable for a dignifying and gratifying human life. I would suggest that the stark inequality in the distribution of these particular goods currently lies at the foundation of social inequality in all its other dimensions.”

2 De-Moralizing Education There is, however, a more important sense in which those promises have not been fulfilled. We may also conjecture a dialectic between the official rather skills-oriented curriculum of the schools and the development of theories about schooling and education. An important element here is the strict division that developed in the theory of science between facts and norms, and the conviction that science should only be concerned with facts, because norms cannot be decided empirically. A development that led to the complaint by Frankfurt School philosophers like Adorno and Horkheimer that “ratio” was being curtailed into a mere technical thinking about efficiency and effectivity. This division was also introduced in social science generally and in the theory of education specifically, with the implication that such theory cannot concern itself with the aims of education (the “why” and “what”) and should be restricted to didactics (the “how”). Discussion about aims was henceforth seen as a task for politics and/or for parents. Educational science is now almost exclusively about “what works” in terms of educational arrangements and didactic procedures. From there, this position led to the idea that schools are to restrict themselves to the teaching of facts and skills and should abstain from any teaching of norms and values. Thus, it became difficult and “unscientific” to think of and talk about the connection between education and the good life that was so central in the thinking of the Enlightenment philosophers. The ideas around this connection continued to be discussed in educational philosophy (e.g., White, 1982), but in actual school practice, teaching facts, and technical procedures came to be seen as the core task of the school. The recent emphasis on teaching “twenty-first-century skills” can be seen as a case in point: there is hardly any discussion about what such skills are to be used for in terms of a better society or of “the good life.” That is not to say that teachers do not feel responsible for the development of students into moral beings, but many have learned to see this as a separate and secondary task of the school, and to give priority to the “core business” of teaching “objective” knowledge, which means that

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much of the actual influence of schools on the personal and moral development of pupils goes unreflected. While Neiman would consider this state of affairs a grave misunderstanding of the intentions of the Enlightenment, or at least of Kant and Rousseau, there is yet another sense in which Enlightenment ideas have been misunderstood and even perverted. Kant’s idea of maturity or adulthood as “reason’s emancipation from its self-incurred immaturity” (as Neiman translates) seems to have been understood by later writers in a strictly individualistic way that was not intended by Kant himself. According to this interpretation, it is one’s own responsibility to acquire the ability to think and act reasonably. Coupled with the curtailed interpretation of “reason” as “instrumental rationality,” this is then understood as being able to act in such a way that one’s aims are reached—no matter what these aims are. Thus, “success” becomes the criterion of a good education. Conversely, a good education is one that leads to success—in whatever field. It is only a small step from here to the idea that students who have the best school results will also have the best results in their acting outside school: competition is the basis for success both inside and outside schools. High marks become all-important—you need to have higher marks than your classmates in order to obtain the best positions in society. Deresiewicz (2014) has written a scathing analysis of this tendency in America’s top universities, where (according to him) working for high marks (and high-paid jobs) has replaced learning to think under your own responsibility.

3 Competition That, under these conditions, high marks and critical thinking are not easily compatible, follows from the fact that the measurement of results in a competitive environment requires common standards. Results need to be predictable in order to make comparison possible. And such comparisons are now being made not only between the students in a specific classroom, but also between schools and even between countries. International comparisons like PISA and TIMSS not only evoke concerned reactions of politicians who see the scores of their country getting lower relative to other countries. These studies also have a definite, limiting, and unifying effect on curricula worldwide, because the subjects they measure come to be seen as the most important elements of the curriculum. This strengthens the idea that the primary task of schools is to transmit objective knowledge (the transmission of which can be tested unequivocally) and redefines “critical thinking” to “being able to discern objective truths.” Objective testability in an international context becomes the norm for the curriculum. The consequence is that curricula in schools in Western countries become narrower (for not every aim of education is easily testable in this way) and internationally standardized. Thus, cultural diversity diminishes and cultural uniformity becomes a de facto norm. This in itself is not a good development, because cultures develop and grow exactly because of the tensions and dialogues between different points of view. A uniform culture is ultimately a dying culture.

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And it is even more deplorable because the uniformity created is the uniformity of neoliberalist thinking. Testing and standardization also lead to classification and labeling: of students, teachers, or even whole education systems. Test results of individual students are translated into curriculum choices that have lasting consequences for their future schooling and career opportunities, as they are classified in fixed categories like “learning difficulties” or “gifted”, notwithstanding the fact that test results have only limited predictive value. This has lead French educationalist Meirieu (2007) to write that “nobody should be condemned to repeat their past.” International comparisons of test results often inspire politicians to ask for changes in curricula that supposedly would lead to higher test scores and thus to a higher national standing. Competition can be friendly and even fun, if it takes place in a playful and trusting atmosphere. In that case, it can be a necessary element in growing up. But where it becomes the leading principle, competition generates anxiety (for you might be falling back in the race to the top) and distrust (for others might try to trip you up or claim your results as their own). This is not only the case in education, but in Western society generally. More and more, we seem to make the adage of Hobbes’ philosophy, “homo homini lupus,” real. According to Schirrmacher (2013), in modern times, a number of factors contributed to intensifying this process: economists further developed Hobbes’ idea that all humans are basically egoistic and will always act toward their own profit into the basic tenet of economic theory; game theory created a model that could predict the actions of such egoistic persons; and computers made it possible to actually use such complex models. Since then, Schirrmacher says, people have begun to act according to such models and to suppose that others will also act egotistically. This mind-set forms the background of neoliberalism, which essentially holds that the free market is the best (and in fact, the only) regulation mechanism for coordinating all these egocentric wishes. Anxiety and distrust have made their way into education, too: Anxiety of students for tests and examinations in which they may not just fail, but get lower marks than their classmates. Anxiety of teachers not to meet the test result norms set by their principals. Anxiety of principals for school inspection and for lawsuits against the school by students or parents, resulting in strict protocols for teachers so that one can say that “nobody did anything wrong.” Indeed, by not doing anything wrong, the school climate is being poisoned as there is less and less room for spontaneity and responding on a humane level to the real needs of students. In a climate where even touching children is forbidden for fear of accusations of sexual misconduct, opportunities for students to learn from adults how to connect to other people dwindle. And this again plays into the hidden message that schools are places where you learn to be at the top of the competition, if necessary at the cost of fellow students.

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4 Globalization and Rationality Not quite incidentally, these developments toward the neoliberalization of education come at roughly the same time as the global spread of Western culture. Globalization is made possible by better travel possibilities, by expanding trade, and especially by the growth of mass media. And free markets can only work properly (if at all) when they are universal. With this globalization, many aspects of Western education also acquire dominance in the rest of the world. This in itself has its good and its bad sides. One clear advantage is that many more people (not only children) now have access to schooling. In a world that is increasingly dependent on literacy and numeracy, this is a necessary condition for them to be able to improve their existence. Another positive point is that wrong ideas about the world, superstition, and magical thinking may gradually be replaced. A significant downside, however, is that the Enlightenment tradition values exact knowledge more than stories, and abstract, generalized knowledge more than insights that are situated in the place and time where students live. This is a consequence of the way Enlightenment understands human beings as distinguished from (other) animals by virtue of their ratio (Manschot, 2016). And rationality, given the sharp divide between body and mind that is assumed, is not thought of as situated in a specific body or in a specific place and time but as generally valid. As a result, both in science and in formal education preference is given to knowledge that is generally valid—but therefore necessarily abstract, that is to say, unrelated to concrete social practices. As Crawford (2015) says, schools represent reality in such a curtailed form that it is difficult for students to relate emotionally to these representations, as opposed to their experiences made directly in the world outside school or as it is told in stories. It is only relatively recent that we have begun to understand how intimately connected body and mind are (e.g., Claxton, 2015) and how important the relation to concrete social practices is for our understanding of the world and of ourselves—a central tenet in Vygotskian thinking. Related to that understanding is the insight that it is very difficult for students to learn such abstract knowledge. For learning is not a matter of just memorizing pieces of information, in the hope that they will be retrieved from memory when necessary. As Vygotskian theory has shown, learning involves a long-term process in which the student “makes sense” of the new ideas, relating them to his or her own existence in past, present, and (projected) future. Students cannot be developed (formed); they have to develop themselves with the help of others. Therefore, engagement with what they are taught is a primary condition for successful education, and this engagement can (in the longer term) only be evoked if they feel that learning has a relation to their own (past, present, and future) existence and participation in social practices (Hedegaard, Edwards, & Fleer, 2012). Learning, then, is always at the same time personality development, and it implies emotional and moral as well as intellectual aspects. It does not lead to standardized answers, but to informed creativity. And such creativity, implying differences in outcomes between learners, is what is needed to keep any society developing.

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It is exactly this kind of learning that is threatened by the development of the school under conditions of neoliberal thought. That is, learning insofar as it is recognized and supported as such in most schools is characterized by exactly the opposite: objective information that should be learned “as is” without much relation to the students’ own existence, and can be tested objectively within a short period of time—while the “hidden curriculum” of neoliberalism teaches students (unreflectedly) that competition, success, and consumerism are (morally) good. Instead of being a counterforce, schools have become instruments in the global spread of the neoliberalist doctrine of every person for themselves.

5 The Meaning of Bildung But that is not quite true. Especially in primary schools, many teachers feel unhappy about these changes that threaten to rob them of personal contacts with their students, and with that of their job satisfaction. And schools based on explicit pedagogic creeds do not easily succumb to this trend. These include Waldorf and Montessori schools, and especially in the Netherlands, Developmental Education schools, based on Vygotskian ideas and offering a play-based curriculum where the teacher is involved in the play, thus combining play and learning (Van Oers, 2012). In secondary and higher education, the impact of neoliberal ideas may be greater. More generally, however, we see a renewed interest in the Enlightenment idea of Bildung. The way of thinking that became known by its German name of “Bildung” has often been misunderstood. While it is clear that it is something to do with the promotion of personal development, there have been various interpretations of how exactly education was supposed to contribute. In the present educational climate, with its emphasis on objective knowledge, it is mostly interpreted as an effect of the interaction of students and teachers, or as those activities of teachers that are separate from the official curriculum and aim at personal development and moral education. Thus, a distinction is supposed between two tasks of the school. In earlier interpretations, this distinction was seen as that between the objective knowledge that could be learned in the “hard” subjects like science and maths, and the more personal knowledge to be gleaned from “soft” subjects like literature and history, with the label “Bildung” being reserved for the latter. Neither of these interpretations adequately captures the intentions of the original idea. Which, I think, is that the ultimate purpose of learning any form of knowledge is a personal confrontation. Learning is not, in this view, about obtaining information about the world. It is to better understand the tensions in our relation with the world in which we live (Heydorn, 1980; Klafki, 2000). Or rather, the worlds, plural: for Humboldt, whose name is mostly connected with the Bildung idea, learning natural science was learning about the tensions in the relation between humans (or rather, this particular, learning human being) and the natural world; in the humanities (including the arts), it was to be about the tensions between one’s actual life and the world of ideals for a good life. Nowadays, we may want to add learning in social science about the tensions in your relationships with other

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people and with yourself. And we should recognize that not all relevant knowledge about the world children live in is treated in academic theory. Clearly, however, the important point is not what knowledge is part of the curriculum, but how it is treated so that it becomes personally relevant for students. Bildung theorists saw the ultimate aim of education as the person who is able to act responsibly and responsively, in relation to the “good life” not only of themselves but of all humankind. That is also what Vygotsky meant by stating that the school is the place to learn what he called (or at least, what has been translated as) “scientific concepts.” This has often been understood as a plea to replace “common sense” concepts in the minds of students by more “advanced” concepts, which derive their meaning from (ideally, tested) theories and thus from a network of other concepts instead of from haphazard observations and tradition. Such concepts would then afford students a deeper insight into reality. This interpretation, however, is only half a truth, which interprets Vygotsky’s idea from within the Kant-inspired framework that takes general, abstract concepts as the highest form of knowledge. It ignores the fact that Vygotsky was not talking as a philosopher of language or of knowledge, but as a researcher into the development of children’s thinking about the world. For him, a concept is not an abstract definition, but the way a specific child understands itself in relation to the world around it (and even to itself). He studied the way this understanding changes when the child is in contact with the understanding (concepts) of other people. And, although I think he did not state this explicitly, he understood scientific concepts (the contribution of the school to this development of understanding) not as ways of thinking that represent ultimate truths that are to be accepted “as is”, but rather as providing insights into fundamental tensions and forces, to be used as props for thinking responsibly for yourself. Learning, then, is not learning how you should see the world, but it is learning to think with the help of culturally (partly, academically) developed insights of others, and to act in a more thoughtful and responsible way. But such “making sense” of the world in relation to yourself is difficult in an environment where students are presented with abstract, generalized information that they are supposed to use “as is”. Such an environment invites memorizing and blind following of procedures rather than “real” learning. Making sense can only happen in relation to one’s own history, one’s personal and cultural environment, because people are always also participants in local cultural traditions (Gadamer, 1960). It has consequences for one’s future actions in that environment, and therefore always has a moral component that is also related to that direct environment, although this does not mean that one necessarily shares the moral orientations of that cultural environment. It is also important to note that the result of sense-making is not in the form of statements or laws, but can rather be understood as a set of stories about yourself in the world (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Stories, rather than laws and dogmas, are also adequate means to get students to think and make sense of the world in which they live, including its moral sides. The challenge for education at this time is, I think, to re-vitalize elements of the Bildung tradition and Vygotskian thinking, and adapting them to the needs of presenttime education, as a counterforce to neoliberalist tendencies. I do not think we can just return to that tradition without adjustments; its history, especially in Germany,

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has shown that, to mention just one problem, it was insufficiently aware of current societal tensions and developments. The cause for this must be found in its adoption of a moral “grand narrative” that identified Western culture (and, since Hegel, especially German culture) as the most morally and intellectually progressive. The rethinking of the tradition after the Second World War in the German so-called critical pedagogy (Klafki, 2000) remained caught in a contradiction between the (potentially) “good” individual and “bad” society. It never worked out exactly how the Enlightenment idea of emancipation could be understood in this context (Wardekker & Miedema, 1997). It should be possible, however, to found a Bildung-inspired education in a less Eurocentric set of ideas.

6 Inspiration from Non-western Education One way to do this is to look at non-western educational traditions. The study of such traditions, as Reagan (2000) has shown in his overview of seven traditions (including, for instance, Rom and Native Americans, but also Hinduism and Confucianism), can teach us much that is valuable: Ultimately, of course, as we better understand the educational traditions of other societies and cultures, we will also be forced to reexamine and to reflect on our own tradition in somewhat different ways – and this will be immensely beneficial to our understanding of our own traditions. (Reagan, 2000, p. 3)

Among these beneficial understandings Reagan, in his summary discussion, mentions a less rigid distinction between formal schooling and (family) education and a greater role for the family; a more important role for the community; and greater concern with civic and moral education, with the formation of “good” persons. We cannot, of course, just transplant such educational principles to contemporary Western education. One reason for that is that many of these traditions were developed in rather static societies. The “good” person in such cases is primarily a person that is well adapted to the mores of a more or less stable society, so that compliance and respect for elders are often valued more than critical thinking and acting. Such a moral outlook is not adequate to the problems of our present society. But the confrontation with such ideas can and should make us look critically at our own tradition in thinking about the aims of our educational efforts. There are, of course, also critical voices to be found in Western philosophy. For instance, as Manschot (2016), interpreting Nietzsche and Foucault, points out, humans can only act morally when they understand themselves not as abstract minds, but as living beings connected with their own bodies, with others, and with the rest of nature. Care for yourself, for others, and for our ecology, based on this connectedness, may well be the beginning of an alternative for the dominant way of thinking in our present society.

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7 Local Cultures Manschot’s emphasis on connectedness and situatedness ties in with another element of non-western educational cultures as analyzed by Reagan: the importance of the community and of local culture. Learning about practices in direct contact with the people practising them is much more educational than learning about them by representations (Crawford, 2015). Introducing local culture and locally available knowledge into the curriculum, as, e.g., in the “funds of knowledge” initiative (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; see also Chap. 10 in this volume), in the “radicallocal teaching and learning” approach of Hedegaard and Chaiklin (2005; see also Chap. 6 in this volume), or in Developmental Education as described in Van Oers (ed.) (2012), is thus not just a pedagogical trick to get students interested and engaged because they can connect school to their home environment, but still with the ultimate intention to teach them to accept generalized, abstract “truths”. There is a difficult balance to be maintained between teaching general “theoretical knowledge” in the sense of Davydov (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005) and the intention to keep diversity alive and to “ground” students in their environment, both in the physical sense and in the narratives of local culture, rather than in abstractions. One side of this is that human beings can only flourish, and even can only be understood, as participants in cultural traditions, so young persons can only be expected to understand themselves if they know these traditions and experience themselves as belonging (or, as the case may be, explicitly not belonging). The other side is that local cultures may contain prejudices, unwarranted convictions, or even harmful practices. It is then the task of educators to help students to become aware of the good and bad elements in such a practice. Such an approach could fundamentally change Western formal schooling and the work of teachers.

References Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market: The middle classes and social advantage. London: Routledge Falmer. Bauman, Z., & Matteo, R. (2016). In praise of literature. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.C. (1970/1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage. Claxton, G. (2015). Intelligence in the flesh. New Haven: Yale University Press. Crawford, M. (2015). The world beyond your head: How to flourish in an age of distraction. London: Viking. Deresiewicz, W. (2014). Excellent sheep: The miseducation of the American elite. New York: Free Press. Gadamer, H. G. (1960). Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: Mohr. González, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hedegaard, M., & Chaiklin, S. (2005). Radical-local teaching and learning: A cultural-historical approach. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

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Hedegaard, M., Edwards, A., & Fleer, M. (Eds.). (2012). Motives in children’s development: Cultural-historical approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hermans, H., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heydorn, H. J. (1980). Zu einer Neufassung des Bildungsbegriffs. In H. J. Heydorn (Ed.), Bildungstheoretische Schriften (Vol. 3). Frankfurt: Syndikat. Klafki, W. (2000). The significance of classical theories of Bildung for a contemporary concept of Allgemeinbildung. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann, & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Teaching as a reflective practice: The German Didaktik tradition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Manschot, H. (2016). Blijf de aarde trouw [Stay true to earth]. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Meirieu, Ph. (2007). Pédagogie: le devoir de résister. Issy-les-Moulineaux: ESF. Neiman, S. (2011). Moral clarity: A guide for grownup idealists. London: Vintage. Neiman, S. (2014). Why grow up? Subversive thoughts for an infantile age. London: Penguin Random House. Reagan, T. (2000). Non-western educational traditions: Alternative approaches to educational thought and practice (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schirrmacher, F. (2013). Ego: Das Spiel des Lebens. München: Karl Blessing Verlag. Van Oers, B. (Ed.). (2012). Developmental education for young children. Dordrecht: Springer. Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1987). Thinking and speech (N. Minick, Trans.). In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39–285). New York: Plenum Press. Wardekker, W., & Miedema, S. (1997). Critical pedagogy: An evaluation and a direction for reformulation. Curriculum Inquiry, 27, 45–61. White, J. (1982). The aims of education restated. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Willem Wardekker is retired Lecturer in Educational Theory at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Professor of Education at Windesheim University of Professional Studies, Zwolle, The Netherlands. His main inspiration comes from cultural–historical activity theory inspired by the work of Vygotsky.

Chapter 2

What Is Disruptive About Disruptive Behavior? Thomas Szulevicz

Abstract Most educational systems have over the last 20 years increased their focus on definable and measurable student learning outcome. Concurrently, disruptive behavior and disciplinary problems have globally been identified as growing concerns. After describing the shift in educational philosophy and practice toward more outcome-based education, this chapter will follow two tracks. The first track describes how and why disruptive behavior is a major concern in most educational systems as both teachers and students report being plagued by noise and disruptive behavior in schools. In the second track of the chapter, it is discussed how the described changes toward measuring student learning outcome have changed our understanding and attitudes toward student’s disruptive behavior. The chapter by no means makes light of the problems related to disruptive behavior in schools, and it acknowledges that disruptive behavior is one of the biggest problems in most Western educational systems. The aim of the chapter is rather to stress how the notion of disruptive behavior—from a cultural–historical perspective—is changed with an increasingly outcome-based educational practice and how this practice potentially creates new problems related to disruptive behavior by changing the general approach to disruptions and disruptive students.

1 Introduction As an educational researcher doing research on disruptive behavior in schools, I am often invited to schools to do talks on my research on disruptive behavior. I usually always structure my talks around questions like What is disruptive behavior? Why is disruptive behavior in schools a problem? Are problems related to disruptive behavior bigger than 30 years ago, etc.? I always also ask the question: “What are the characteristics of the typical disruptive student?” The question is asked rhetorically and provocatively, and it often tends to foster quite strong emotional reactions among the T. Szulevicz (B) Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_2

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teachers, as they argue that a typical disruptive student cannot be identified because classroom disruptions most often originate from many different contextual factors and thus not as something that can be reduced to a question about individual student characteristics. At one of my recent talks, a teacher answered the question in a way that I hadn’t been confronted with previously. She said that over the last couple of years, and much to her annoyance, she felt an increasing intolerance toward students who were noisy and disruptive. She also described how she tended to use more arbitrary and—according to herself—unreasonable methods to sanction individual (often boys’) student’s disruptive behavior. She explained her lower threshold for disruptive behavior by the fact that the public schools in Denmark over the last couple of years have been including a greater amount of students that previously were part of special needs education. According to the teacher, this movement has changed the dynamics in many classrooms. And second, she explained how teachers today are being monitored and held accountable for individual student performance in new and highly increased ways. The teacher further described how this shift in educational policy affected her relationship with her students because she, as a teacher, was obliged to focus more on individual student performance and as a consequence she was also becoming more vigilant vis-à-vis students displaying disruptive behavior. Subsequently, the teacher’s account got backing from many other teachers in the room, as they expressed a growing concern about less time for preparation of teaching, more top-down management and goal-steering, and consequently less mental resources to tackle disruptive behavior in class. Most educational systems have over the last 20 years increased their focus on definable and measurable student learning outcome. Concurrently, disruptive behavior and disciplinary problems have globally been identified as growing concerns. Within this paper, when “disruptive behavior” is discussed, it serves as a catch-all for students who exhibit behaviors that are classified as disruptive, oppositional, and rule-breaking. After describing the shift in educational philosophy and practice toward more outcome-based education, this chapter will follow two tracks. The first track describes how and why disruptive behavior is a major concern in most educational systems as both teachers and students report being plagued by noise and disruptive behavior in schools. In the second track of the chapter, I will discuss how the described changes toward measuring student learning outcome have changed our understanding and attitudes toward student’s disruptive behavior. I am by no means making light of the problems related to disruptive behavior in schools, and the chapter acknowledges that disruptive behavior is one of the biggest problems in most Western educational systems. My aim with the chapter is rather to stress how the notion of disruptive behavior—from a cultural–historical perspective—is changed with an increasingly outcome-based educational practice and how this practice potentially creates new problems related to disruptive behavior by changing the general approach to disruptions and disruptive students. The chapter thus mainly focuses on how general changes in education affect the attitudes toward disruptive student behavior, whereas the chapter does not address how students themselves make sense of the phenomenon of disruptive behavior.

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2 Outcome-Oriented Education In 2001, the OECD published the first results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). And while there had been movements and actions from the late 1950s and onward that preceded the PISA-project, the publication of the first PISA-results became extremely influential and led to changes in public debate and educational policies in most participating countries (Biesta, 2015). It is, for example, often pointed out how the British, the German, and a couple of Scandinavian countries were confronted with so-called PISA-shocks when the PISAresults were published in the beginning of the 2000s. Pongratz (2013, p. 471), for example, describes how the (negative) PISA-results stirred up the German education policy landscape as never seen before, and that no other empirical study had been able to create as much public resonance as the publication of the German PISA-results did. The massive impact of PISA reflects the fact that most educational systems in recent years have witnessed a global educational reform agenda in which we have seen a rise in quantification, standardization, competition, and focus on student learning outcome (Sahlberg, 2011). Biesta (2010) describes how the reform agenda also has spirited a new language of learning in education in which everything there is to say about education has been translated into a language of learning. Schools are learning communities, students are learners, teachers have become learning facilitators, school psychologists are learning consultants, and so on. This so-called “learnification” tends to transform educational matters into a question about how the individual student learns most effectively. And education thus easily becomes a question about quantifiable learning outcome on individual, institutional, and global levels (how much does a student score on a national test, what is the grade point average of the school, how do students do in math compared to students from other countries?). In the same spirit, Stoller (2015, p. 317) argues that education today is permeated by a logic of learning outcomes (LOM). LOM reflects how definable and measurable student learning outcome has become a requirement for justifying educational and curricular practices. Stoller draws parallels between LOM and a new form of “Taylorism” in which school teachers to a much greater extent are made accountable for their teaching practice and where their teaching is “controlled vis-à-vis high-stakes testing and pre-packaged, corporate curricula aimed specifically at teaching to the tests” (Stoller, 2015, p. 317). Robbins and Kovalchuk (2012: 198) describe how school development today is characterized by “a mindless logic of quantification and measurement,” where schools are (forced to be) concerned with measuring and producing enormous amounts of data about their students, their drop-out rates, grades, sickness absenteeism, socioeconomic status, etc. LOM can also be considered a neoliberalization of education. Neoliberalism is a term almost used exclusively by those who are critical of it, and finding someone admitting to being neoliberal might prove difficult (Ball, 2012; Biebricher, 2014; Sugarman, 2015). Add to this that neoliberalism also has become a detached

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signifier that is used to describe an abundance of different movements and tendencies. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that most educational systems have shifted toward an increasingly outcome-based and thus also neoliberal school ideology (Davies & Bansel, 2007; Sugarman, 2015; see also Wardekker’s chapter in this volume).

3 Disruptive Behavior in the Outcome-Oriented School One of the trademarks of the neoliberal school is, as abovementioned, a very strong (and narrow) focus on student learning outcome. This means that education is measured almost solely in academic terms, whereas the normative questions about other purposes of education seem to be left ignored. As a consequence, educational research and policy have paid increasing attention to factors that both increase and hinder student learning. And in this context, disruptive behavior is often identified as one of the main contributors to a poor learning environment. Disruptive behavior and lack of school discipline are by no means new phenomena. But as a consequence of educational evolution, modern education generates more disturbance, noise, and student disruption because our visions and ideals of students and learning have changed. Among other things the view of the more active and engaged students was catalyzed in the 1970s by Vygotsky’s emphasis on the importance of spoken dialogue for children’s cognitive development and at the same time educational research also began showing how students’ involvement in active dialogue had a positive effect on their academic achievement (Mercer & Dawes, 2014). Today, most educational systems are characterized by a dialogical teaching ideal in which – teachers require thoughtful answers to their answered questions, – questions provoke further questions and are buildings blocks of further dialogue and talk, – individual teacher–pupil and pupil–pupil exchanges are chained into coherent lines of enquiry and are an integral part of teaching (Mercer & Dawes, 2014). The dialogical teaching ideal encourages students to talk and engage actively in teaching, which creates what could be termed constructive disruptive behavior, where disruptions of teaching reflect the fact the students feel safe, comfortable, and engaged in teaching (Szulevicz, 2016). In some ways, it seems, however, that students almost have become too active in teaching. Or at least that many students become active in the wrong ways. Over the last 30 years, problems related to disruptive behavior, noise in classroom, and disciplinary issues have increasingly been put on the educational agenda—and for good reasons. Let’s just have a short look at some of the evidence that clearly testifies to the problems related to disruptive behavior in schools: – In a recent national Danish survey, 59% of the teachers reported to be exposed to disturbing noise in at least ¼ of the working time (Kristiansen et al., 2014). – Over the past 40 years, exclusionary discipline sanctions have increased by 40% in the US (Slee, 2014).

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– The high rates of attrition from the teaching profession are an increasing concern in many countries and they are being linked to disruptive behavior (Jenkins & Ueno, 2016). – On an annual British survey with 10,000 teachers responding, 68% responded that they felt there was a widespread behavior problem in schools (Jenkins & Ueno, 2016). – A national Danish survey from 2015 indicated that 1/3 of Danish students are plagued by noise and disruptive behavior in schools (Szulevicz, 2016). The evidence clearly suggests that disruptive behavior is a global and major concern for students, teachers, parents, and policy-makers alike. An interesting point related to disruptive behavior is that teachers seem to be most concerned about the cumulative effects of disruptive behavior being caused by continued, but relatively trivial forms of student discipline problems (Hart, 2010). There have been many different explanations to the seemingly permanent problems related to disruptive behavior ranging from a general disciplinary crisis, a general loss or decentralization of authority, student motivational problems, social segregation, and to a reformist and progressive pedagogy having had a massive influence on school politics since the 1970s and 1980s, and having led to a general slip in discipline in schools. These different explanations might hold some of the answers, but I will not pursue them any further. Instead, I will argue that the current school context marked by LOM sets up a different context for the understanding of and attitudes toward student’s disruptive behavior compared to previously. This is seen in many recent school reforms like, for instance, the latest Danish school reform that was implemented in 2014. It is broadly acknowledged that this reform represents a more outcome-oriented school with intensified emphasis on clear and testable objectives. One of the focus areas in the school reform is furthermore an emphasis on the need for more quietness in class and less disruption of teaching: A national effort will be launched to strengthen classroom management and reduce disruption of teaching in the Folkeskole. The aim of the effort is to strengthen schools’ work to establish routines, norms and rules in support of a good learning environment and ensure that there is a focus on classroom management in order to develop teaching and teachers’ competencies (Szulevicz, 2016).

In Sweden, the Swedish Education Act from 2011 similarly puts emphasis on the urgent need of more quietness and more discipline in Swedish classrooms. My claim is that one of the reasons why we see this new contextualization of disruptive behavior is the fact that there has been established a link between disruptive behavior and poor PISA-results in many countries, which probably also is one of the main reasons why the issue of school discipline has been increasingly politicized (Fredholm, 2017). The association between disruptive behavior and PISA-scores is, for example, evident in the following quote by Norwegian scholar Bru (2009) who analyzes why Norwegian students consistently perform badly on PISA-tests: Classroom disruption is a major concern for schools. It can threaten the well-being of pupils and reduce learning outcomes because pupils have difficulties concentrating on the learning

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Generally, an orderly classroom climate is considered a precondition for good teaching and in the quote above, Bru uses the PISA-results from Norway to argue that disruptive behavior has negative effects on learning outcome and that disruptive behaviors lead to a loss of learning time. It is a common held view that a generally indulgent and progressive pedagogy is considered to have caused turmoil in school, and as a reaction and as part of or maybe rather synchronously with the neoliberalization of education, a neoconservative trend is increasingly gaining an edge in education. The educational neoconservatism privileges academic rigor, core knowledge, traditional subject disciplines, and teacher authority but it also tends to promote a much narrower and fixed curriculum to which students are expected to comply, memorize, and rote learn (Keddie, 2015). And while this neoconservative orientation definitely has gained some momentum, the plea for more traditional teaching and more discipline in school is also regarded as an oldschool orientation that does not entirely fit with the visions of good education in the twenty-first century. But with the growth of LOM, new and subtler ways of disciplining and controlling students (and teachers) have emerged and in the following section, I will describe some of these new educational control strategies.

4 Control, Self-management, and the Taming of the School Up until now, I have described how most Western educational systems increasingly are influenced by a logic of learning outcome (LOM), and how disruptive behavior and lack of school discipline are major concerns because they hinder effective teaching and thus student learning outcome. In that connection, progressive/reformist pedagogy has been identified as one of the reasons for the lack of belief in teacher authority among students and turmoil in schools. Pongratz (2011) identifies reform pedagogy as a “soft” discipline where students are considered autonomous subjects with the teaching organized around the interests of the students. On one side, the soft disciplining of the reform pedagogy has been replaced by the neoconservative disciplinary turn that I described above. Among other things, this turn has led to an explosion in classroom management techniques that are meant to help teachers establish a quiet and calm environment in the classroom so that the students can take part in meaningful learning in a subject. On the other side, the soft discipline known from the reform pedagogy has been supplied or altered by a neoliberal control or self-management technology that is an integral part of LOM. This soft disciplining of students has its roots in the neoliberal mode of subjection in which individuals are expected to make constant efforts to achieve their targets by being responsible, by showing ownership, by being able

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to self-regulate, by showing self-monitoring behavior, by positive thinking, and by self-management. This vision of the individual is also clearly visible in Martin and McLelland’s (2013) influential book The education of selves: How psychology transformed students. Martin and McLelland analyze how the image of the ideal student has changed as they identify how school psychology has promoted an image of the successful student as unique, active, self-directed, and self-disciplined. Furthermore, this ideal student is capable of monitoring own learning, evaluating own performances, and she is equipped with strategic tools for setting learning goals. This specific view of the learner aligns perfectly with the governmentality required of neoliberalism (Szulevicz, in press). Drawing on Deleuze, Pongratz (2011, p. 163) describes how the neoliberal vision of the learner is engaged in new forms of control in which freedom and domination are linked in a paradoxical figure of voluntary self-control. This is, for example, the case with the notion of self-regulated learning (SRL) that has been promoted as a pedagogy associated with empowerment, agency, democratic participation, and personal responsibility (Vassallo, 2012). I am not arguing that self-regulation necessarily is a completely new educational ideal. In a cultural–historical tradition, Vygotsky’s (1929) ideas about mastering feelings and thoughts through cultural tools can also be considered self-regulatory processes. Nor am I arguing that children and students shouldn’t learn to regulate themselves. With Vassallo, my stance is rather that the current school context and the ways students learn to regulate their own learning basically represents a curriculum of obedience, subordination, and oppression as Vassallo further argues that SRL can be associated with a hidden curriculum that (1) strives at rendering students adaptable to existing social orders, (2) is guided at promoting a certain kind of self, and (3) makes students dependent on their teachers for learning necessary scripts to regulate their own learning. Vassallo’s critique of SRL is in line with Stoller’s (2015) critique of LOM as he argues that the systematic use of learning outcome is based on a deficit logic of the students, as they are expected to obey to some externally determined objectives. Over the last 20 years, we have thus seen a gradual shift from a predominant progressive/reformist pedagogy toward a pedagogy in which the self-monitored and self-regulated student has become the ideal and where students are disciplined and controlled through self-regulatory practices and by goal-steering of their learning outcomes accompanied by a constant monitoring of learning targets. Gert Biesta also criticizes LOM as he argues that the outcome-oriented school approach basically promotes “a rather un-educational way of thinking about education” (Biesta, 2014, p. 124) because the very fundamental and normative question about what “makes good education good” is not answered. So the dominant educational policies have disabled us from asking important questions about education, and as a consequence we have lost sight of how the central purpose of education is to help people learn how to be human (Gibbs, 2019). Instead, the normative questions about “good education” have been replaced by educational technologies that aim to optimize student learning outcome. Similarly, Masschelein and Simons (2013) describe how modern schools—in order to become more efficient and productive—today are being converted into student-centered

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learning environments in which tradition has been substituted by a belief in the uniqueness of the learner. As a consequence, the individual student becomes the only focus of attention and she both becomes the starting point and the ending point of the learning process. And the result is a tamed student and a tamed school. Masschelein and Simmons (2013, p. 92) put it this way: The taming of the school here means ensuring that students are kept small - by making them believe that they are the centre of attention, that their personal experiences are the fertile ground for a new world, and that the only things that have value are the things they value. The result is the taming of the student: he becomes a slave to his own needs, a tourist in his own life-world. The importance placed on learning to learn is perhaps the most telling expression of this attempt to tame. The pupil is thrown back upon his own learning, and the link to ‘something’ – to the world – is broken.

From this perspective, both the school and the individual student are being tamed by so-called educational strategies that seek to optimize individual student learning. With inspiration from Biesta and Masschelein and Simmons, my claim is that LOM and the neoliberal approach to education is entangled in politics of control, measurement, conformity, and obedience that basically are noneducational.

5 Changed Attitudes Toward Disruptive Behavior In this paragraph, I will discuss how disruptive behavior is perceived in the tamed school. I am not necessarily arguing that the tamed school aggravates the problems related to disruptive behavior in the school. My stance is rather that LOM and the tamed school create a different context for the understanding of and the attitudes toward disruptive behavior. I will clarify my stance by illuminating how attitudes toward disruptive behavior generally are changing. It seems that in almost every part of the world, teachers face increasing pressure in their working lives. They are made accountable for student performances, expectations are generally rising, and PISA and the OECD have introduced new global modes of governance in education that regulate teacher’s teaching practices. There seems to be a constant urge for raising standards as the different generated test scores are used to measure and compare teacher against teacher, school against school, and nation against nation (Stevenson, in press). Generally, schools are confronted with demands for reforms and improvement and everything seems to be urgent, if you don’t want to lose against other and better performing school systems in different countries. Add to this the general downward pressure on public investment in general education and we have a situation where teachers are asked to produce a better outcome, while costs at the same time are kept down. From a neoliberal perspective, competition makes the better out of us. But a potential backside of the coin is that a systemic or structural restlessness is created in which students and teachers alike feel the pressure of ongoing measurement, performativity, accountability, and (self-) monitoring. As already mentioned, the teaching profession is globally witnessing high and increasing rates of attrition, and while

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the reasons for the increasing attrition rates inarguably are multiple, there are also dawning signs that teachers oppose to the standardization and quantification of their profession (Hardy, 2017). And while we often tend to focus on student well-being, we might be undermining the creative and professional autonomy of teachers and their sense of agency (Gibbs, 2019). We are thus gambling with teacher professionalism, autonomy, and well-being by imposing new and standardized regulatory tools on teachers’ work as suggested by Priestly, Biesta, and Robinson (2015, p. 125): The combined influence of at least two decades of intrusive input and output regulation may well have to a large extent eroded teachers’ capacity for agency and have taken away important resources and opportunities for the achievement of agency from their practice.

As part of an empirical study on disruptive behavior in schools, I made interviews with different teachers. In one of the interviews, a teacher described: With the new school reform, we were supposed to improve our classroom management techniques. But that’s paradoxical because the order in the classroom was actually disturbed by the new school reform since we spent way too much time on individual student assessment. As teachers we always have to evaluate where the students are in their individual learning processes and the students are supposed to do the same. And that’s a way to create turmoil and unrest, and it actually takes attention away from the proper teaching and the content of the teaching. We are spending way too much time on irrelevant activities. As a consequence I myself, and the students get bored and they start disrupting instead.

This is very much in line with Angus (2015) who describes how the standardized, assessment-based curriculum make schools more boring places for students—and particularly for less advantaged students “whose cultural dissonance with traditional, mainstream, conservative schooling practices and high-stakes testing is most pronounced” (Angus, 2015, p. 409). Every person with knowledge of the school knows how boredom and disruptive behavior tend to walk hand-in-hand, and bored students is one of the safest ways to create turmoil and a poor teaching and learning climate. But the high pressure on teachers also tends to change teacher’s tolerance and attitudes toward less advantaged students and particularly disruptive students. A recent Danish study, for example, reported how Danish teachers emphasize how it is children with disruptive behavior that cause them the most trouble (Kristensen & Mørck, 2016). Kristensen and Mørck also point out that teachers generally have become less tolerant toward disruptive behavior. Their hypothesis is that this intolerance grows out of the increased focus on learning outcomes that fosters negative attitudes toward all kinds of student behavior that minimize learning outcome. Over the last 10–20 years, most educational systems have worked toward more inclusive schools with a marked reduction in the number of students referred to special education services. Simultaneously, with regard to ADHD, there has been more than a tenfold (1.125%) increase over 10 years in the number of people being treated with medicine for ADHD (Langager, 2014). There have been a lot of different explanations for the dramatic rise in ADHD cases, and they range from increased awareness of the condition and improvements in how it is diagnosed, to pharmaceutical lobbying, or to the fact that the increase in school-accountability measures has changed teachers’

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attitudes toward students who display ADHD-symptoms—either to get more funding or to explain low performance. Irrespective of the different explanations, there is no doubt that a diagnosis is a powerful tool and social technology that obviously influences the way the surroundings perceive the diagnosed person. Timimi (2009, pp. 134–135) describes it this way: In other words, it could be that changes in our cultural-environmental contexts are causing increases in ADHD-type behaviors and these, in turn, are changing our perception of childhood behavior, and our perception of and the meaning we give to it is, in turn, changing the way we deal with it and our common cultural practices around children (such as rearing and education), which in turn are further increasing these behaviors, and so on.

The rise in students diagnosed with ADHD also covers the fact that many of the students, who are described as being disruptive, increasingly get talked about in psychiatric terms (Szulevicz, 2016). In that sense, ADHD can be considered an extreme case of some of the new social representations of disruptive behavior, and it also both entails a further individualization and pathologization of disruptive behavior. If disruptive behavior increasingly gets perceived of as ADHD, it also goes from a state that previously required no diagnostics or treatment to now being formulated as a condition that calls for medical treatment.

6 Concluding Discussion In this chapter, I have argued that teacher’s, policy-makers’, peers’, and parents’ attitudes toward student’s disruptive behavior change within an outcome-based school approach. One of the interesting trends these years is that persistent problems with disruptive behavior are used to legitimize new school reforms focusing on teacher authority and a narrower and fixed curriculum (Szulevicz, 2016), and disruptive behavior thus becomes increasingly politicized because policy-makers use the disruptions to legitimize new (neoliberal) school reforms. I am in no way making light of the problems related to disruptive behavior in schools. This is one of the biggest problems that schools are facing. My aim is rather to stress how LOM subtly and maybe also counterintuitively might create new problems related to disruptive behavior by changing the general approach to disruptions and disruptive students. I have argued that a very likely backside of the LOM approach is that a systemic or structural restlessness is created in which students and teachers alike feel the pressure of ongoing measurement, performativity, accountability, and (self-) monitoring. And this potentially leads to new disruptive behaviors, and it definitely risks changing teachers’, parents’, peers’, and policy-makers’ attitudes toward disruptive behavior. So far, I have argued that our educational system has been tamed by a logic of learning outcome that fundamentally changes and corrodes the premises for education with huge consequences for the ways we think about and practice school, but

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also with important consequences for the understanding of disruptive behavior in schools. From my personal view, alternatives to LOM are highly needed as it is my contention that these alternatives also may have a positive effect on our approach to the problems related to disruptive behavior in schools. As already pointed out, one of the problems with LOM is that it promotes an un-educational way of thinking about education that basically is characterized by a risk aversion, where schools are turned into learning communities that are controlled as effectively as possible. This can, for example, be illustrated by referring to Biesta’s (2010) three concepts or dimensions that he uses to define the functions of education: socialization, qualification, and subjectification. Schools have a role in socializing students into a societal order by passing on values and knowledge. Schools also have an important task in assuring that students have sufficient qualifications as citizens. These qualifications consist of basic academic skills or what more generally could be termed civic and critical literacy. Third, education deals with subjectification. Put shortly, subjectification is about how education should produce independent and autonomous individuals. The three different functions and dimensions of education are thought of as an analytical tool, but school’s overall assignment is contained in these three concepts and good education is about finding a balance between these different and separate dimensions. If we go back to the progressive reform pedagogy, one could argue that this approach puts too much emphasis on the subjectification dimension of education giving a lower priority to the qualification dimension, and where the teacher is reduced to a facilitator of student learning. On the other hand, critics argue that LOM stresses the qualification dimension too narrowly, and on behalf of the other dimensions. This relates to a long discussion about the normativity of educational content. What I want to pursue in this context is how Biesta stresses how friction arises in the intersection between the different educational dimensions. The current stress put on qualification and on techniques that promote acquisition of qualification potentially also represents a reduction in the plurality, diversity, and complexity that education is all about, and with Biesta’s own words it requires “an erasure of what makes education difficult” (Biesta, 2001, p. 399). If we return to the initial example from my talk on disruptive behavior and the teachers’ experiences of changing attitudes toward disruptive student behavior, I think it is an extremely important reminder of how we slowly are changing the fundamental premises of our school system and how it subtly might influence teacher’s perceptions of their students but also their professional self-perception. In his recent book, “Immoral Education: The assault on teachers’ identity, autonomy and efficacy”, British educational psychologist, Gibbs (2019), puts forward how teachers’ autonomy and professional identity are disregarded with new neoliberal educational policies and that we in general have been seduced into asking the wrong questions about education and what we want for society. The general teacher disrespect in society affects teacher well-being with immense impact on student well-being as well, and Gibbs argues how the best way to promote student well-being is by ensuring teacher well-being.

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With LOM, we are thus creating a school that on the surface produces highly qualified and independent students. But we are also controlling and monitoring students and their behavior to a hitherto unseen extent. I have discussed some of these consequences in relation to understanding of disruptive behavior and in relation to education in general. LOM was introduced as an answer to some evident and global problems in the educational sector with low-performing students and general problems with lack of discipline. Some of the educational changes that have been induced with LOM might have been necessary. However, the main problem is that a basically un-educational way of thinking about education has been promoted, and a response rooted in educational thought and philosophy is now needed. What LOM-based education got fundamentally wrong was to conceptualize education as a matter of individual and measurable student learning outcome. This error should be corrected by finding another way and by “bringing education back to education.” There are some encouraging signs in a great deal of the educational literature. As an example, I would like to point to Masschelein and Simon’s inspirational book (2013) “In defense of the school”: Firstly, the teacher must free the child from all expertise that ascribes an immediate function, explanation or destination to what that child does. In a sense, ‘letting a kid be a kid’ is no empty slogan. This means allowing a child to forget the plans and expectations of his parents as well as those of employers, politicians and religious leaders in order to allow that child to become absorbed in study and practice. (Masschelein & Simons, 2013, p. 86)

A student is not just a “learner” who strategically sets goal for her learning processes, and a disruptive student is not only a student who disrupts the learning for herself and her peers. There is a need to tell and enact a different story about the student—both the student as a learner and the disruptive student. A way to enact these stories would be to investigate the phenomenon of disruptive behavior in (neoliberal) schools both theoretically and empirically. What is actually understood by disruptive behavior? Do our current educational system produce more disruptive behaviors? What are the long-term psychological consequences for children growing up in increasingly neoliberal educational regimes? How are increasingly individualized notions of disruptive behavior challenged? How do we maintain educational systems that are still open for heterogeneity, disturbances, and disruptions, while still acknowledging that disruptive school behaviors are legitimate concerns in our schools?

References Angus, L. (2015). Scholl choice: Neoliberal education policy and imagined futures. Br. J. Sociol. Educ., 36(3), 395–413. Ball, S. J. (2012). Performativity, commodification and commitment: I-spy guide to the neoliberal university. British Journal of Educational Studies, 60(1), 17–28. Biebricher, T. (2014). Power in neoliberal thought. Journal of Political Power, 7(2), 193–210.

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Biesta, G. (2001). How difficult should education be? Educational Theory, 51(4), 385–400. Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Biesta, G. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Biesta, G. (2015). Resisting the seduction of the global education measurement industry: Notes on the social psychology of PISA. Ethics and Education, 10(3), 348–360. Bru, E. (2009). Academic outcomes in school classes with markedly disruptive pupils. Soc. Psychol. Educ., 12, 461–479. Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2007). Neoliberalism and education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education., 20(3), 247–259. Fredholm, A. (2017). Reconsindering school politics: Educational controversies in Sweden. The Curriculum Journal, 28(1), 5–21. Gibbs, S. (2019). Immoral education: The assault on teachers’ identity, autonomy and efficacy. London: Routledge. Hardy, I. (2017). Governing teacher learning: Understanding teacher’s compliance with and critique of standardization. Journal of Education Policy, 33(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939. 2017.1325517. Hart, R. (2010). Classroom behavior management: educational psychologists’ views on effective practice. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties., 15(4), 353–371. Jenkins, A., & Ueno, A. (2016). Classroom disciplinary climate in secondary schools in England: What is the real Picture? Br. Edu. Res. J., 43(1), 124–150. Keddie, A. (2015). Prioritizing social and moral learning amid conservative curriculum trends: Spaces of possibility. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(3), 355–373. Kristiansen, J., Lund, S. P., Persson, R., Shibuya, H., Nielsen, P. M., & Scholz, M. (2014). A study of classroom acoustics and school teachers’ noise exposure, voice load and speaking time during teaching, and the effects on vocal and mental fatigue development. Int. Arch. Occup. Environ. Health, 87, 851–860. Kristensen, K.-L., & Mørck, L. L. (2016). ADHD medication and social self-understanding (Social practice research with a first grade in a Danish Primary School). European Journal of Psychology in Education, 31, 43–59. Langager, S. (2014). Children and youth in behavioural and emotional difficulties, skyrocketing diagnosis and inclusion/exclusion processes in school tendencies in Denmark. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 19(3), 284–295. Martin, J., & McLellan, A. (2013). The education of selves: How psychology transformed students. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In defence of the school. A public issue. Leuven: Education, Culture & Society Publishers. Mercer, N., & Dawes, L. (2014). The study of talk between teachers and students, from the 1970s until the 2010s. Oxford Review of Education, 40(4), 430–445. Pongratz, L. A. (2011). Controlled freedom—The formation of the control society. Pedagogicky Casopis, 2(2), 161–172. Pongratz, L. A. (2013). Voluntary self-control: Education reform as a governmental strategy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(4), 471–482. Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury. Robbins, C. G., & Kovalchuk, S. (2012). Dangerous disciplines: Understanding pedagogies of punishment in the neoliberal states of America. Journal of Pedagogy, 3(2), 198–218. Sahlberg, P. (2011). The fourth way of Finland. Journal of Educational Change, 12(2), 173–185. Slee, R. (2014). Evolving theories of student disengagement: A new job for Durkheim’s children? Oxford Review of Education, 40(4), 446–465. Stevenson, H. (n.d.). The “Datafication” of teaching. Can teachers speak back to the numbers? (in press).

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Stoller, A. (2015). Taylorism and the logic of learning outcomes. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(3), 317–333. Sugarman, J. (2015). Neoliberalism and psychological ethics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(2), 103–116. Szulevicz, T. (2016). FAQ om uro (FAQ about disruptive behavior). København: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Szulevicz, T. (n.d.). Psychologists in schools—What kind of marriage? (in press). Timimi, S. (2009). Why diagnosis of ADHD has increased so rapidly in the west: A cultural perspective. In S. Timimi & J. Leo (Eds.), Rethinking ADHD. From brain to culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vassallo, S. (2012). Critical Pedagogy and Neoliberalism: Concerns with Teaching Self-Regulated Learning. Studies in Philosophy and Education., 32(6), 563–580. Vygotsky, L. S. (1929). The problem of the cultural development of the child. J. Genet. Psychol., 36, 415–434.

Thomas Szulevicz , Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Head of Studies in the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. His main fields of research are educational psychology, educational psychology practice and critical educational psychology.

Chapter 3

Bildung, Motivation, and Deliberative Democracy in Primary Education Jacob Klitmøller and Sarah K. Jensen

Abstract Our intention with this chapter is to argue for connections between the broad framework of “Bildung”, which is central to Danish educational thinking because it applies to education for deliberative democratic citizenship and the concept of motives as it has been developed in Cultural-Historical Psychology. The central tenet in the present chapter is to argue that education for deliberative democratic citizenship must be connected to, but cannot be reduced to, children’s everyday experience in and beyond school. Though seemingly self-apparent, this idea is challenged both from more formalistic approaches that foreground factual knowledge and, specifically in Denmark, a reduced emphasis of democracy as a potential fundamental aspect of school practice. The concept of motive is utilized to capture the content-rich and directed interests of students concerning the discovery of mutual differences in everyday school practice. Empirical material from classrooms is used to show connections and disconnections between the students and teachers in everyday school life vis-à-vis students’ explorations of their own and others’ religious beliefs and practices.

1 Introduction In a recent comparative international survey concerning political knowledge and democratic practices in schools, Danish students scored highest (alongside Finland) regarding civic knowledge among 38 participating countries (Bruun & Lieberkind, 2011; Lieberkind, 2014). Students in Denmark also scored highest with regard to “openness in classroom discussions” (Lieberkind, 2014, p. 720). On the basis of these results, Danish students were touted as “world champions in democracy” (Bruun, 2010) and the results were widely received as long-desired good news in comparison J. Klitmøller (B) · S. K. Jensen Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] S. K. Jensen e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_3

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with mediocre results in PISA (e.g., Ebdrup, 2010; Mikkelsen, 2010). These findings echoed well with democracy being a central concern in debates over the purpose of schooling since the Second World War. However, in the same survey, when asked whether they thought their voice was heard in relation to making changes in classroom practices, Danish students scored much lower—below average and very close to the bottom. Lieberkind sums up by saying that “students’ context of experience is accompanied by asymmetry between a dialogue-based classroom and an open environment, and their poor influence and participation in decision-making at school” (2014, p. 727). Thus, although knowledge of political institutions and practices is high amidst a culture in which students are encouraged to have and express opinions, those opinions do not, in the students’ estimation, equal influence on practice. Given that the education for citizenship is one of the key aims of mass schooling—and that, for many countries, democracy is a key part of societal governance—education for democratic citizenship is an important issue for educational policy and practice and as part of the experience of being agents of change. Voicing critique, Biesta (2011) argued that a great many of the programs implemented in order to further education in democratic citizenship internationally do not necessarily include democratic practices but, rather, focus on knowledge about democracy. He continues that such teaching of citizenship represents at most a partial response to an alleged ‘crisis’ in democracy [particularly among young people]. This is why I argue that there is a need to shift the focus of research, policy and practice from the teaching of citizenship toward the different ways in which young people ‘learn democracy’ through their participation in the contexts and practices that make up their everyday lives, in school, college and university, and in society at large. (Biesta, 2011, p. 6)

In this chapter, we aim to take up this challenge of exploring some of the ways in which students—in our case, pupils in 4th and 5th grade—are already engaging in communicative practices that are fundamental for the formation of democratic attitudes and habits. Though our ultimate aim is to contribute to the discussion of how school may contribute to the democratic formation of students—alongside outof-school practices in which students participate—in this chapter we will focus on a more limited set of issues. Briefly, these concerns pertain to the relation between the act of formation (or Bildung, to use the German term) on the one hand and student motives and motivation on the other hand. Democratic Bildung has been on the agenda in Denmark, as elsewhere, since the end of the Second World War. However, it has recently come under pressure—both from a growing focus on education as being primarily for the labor market and from nationalist reactions to growing immigration in which the ideals of what constitutes the notion of what it means to be Danish has favored the Danish language and Christian cultural values over democracy. This means that, in Denmark at least, within current debates over compulsory education— and, hence, also Bildung—democratic citizenship education has come under scrutiny as a direct consequence of the meeting of people of different origins, languages, and religious beliefs. Since what constitutes democracy is not a simple matter, we have made a point of entry by choosing Habermas’ theory of communicative action and discourse ethics

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to formulate the deliberative aspect of democratic Bildung (e.g., Habermas, 1984). The choice of Habermas further rests on the fact that, in recent years, Habermas (e.g., 2006) has highlighted the tensions between religious belief and participation in the (secular) public sphere—with religion being better able to communicate alternative insights than secular deliberation. By introducing analysis of ongoing practice in 4th and 5th grade multiethnic classrooms, we show that the kernel necessary for deliberation is already present in students’ conversations about faith and religion—a theme that is at times carried into lessons by the teachers. By discussing this within the motivational theory of Cultural-Historical Psychology, we hope to connect this developmental theory of motivation with one of the issues raised by Habermas as well as of his critics: the question of motivation for citizens exhibition of fidelity to the results of deliberative processes. In this way, we aim to illustrate the way that reflections on educational activities and content can be related to wider social concerns. After a brief section situating the question of democracy within a Danish context, we frame the following analysis within a Habermasian perspective by arguing that partaking in deliberations about what is desirable is fundamental for democratic citizens. We then follow Habermas who, alongside some of his critics, argues that deliberation itself only acts as a weak motivator for complying with the agreed-upon norms in deliberation as they may conflict with individuals’ subjective desires. We suggest that the practices of deliberation itself may become motivational (and, by proxy, also the decisions reached) if they—following Cultural-Historical Psychology—become part of persons’ motivational structure—which demands that deliberative practices are developed. We proceed to demonstrate how students, particularly those in 4th and 5th grade classrooms, thematize each other’s faith and religion, as well as how teachers tap into students’ engagement in this regard. We relate school practices among students, with or without teachers, to the concept of the lifeworld as well as to the communicative aim of consensus.

2 From Whence We Came In this section, we will briefly ground our endeavor in the educational framework that is still dominating the practice of school and teacher education in Denmark. Earlier chapters have already spelled out the important parts of the historically developed ideas and practices concerning education (see Wardekker, this volume; and Szulevicz, this volume). Denmark has been part of this development, and the tradition of Bildung has been and remains strong within particular schools and in teacher education. The notion of Bildung is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to translate into English— particularly the connotations it contains since “the word [Bildung] combines elements of education, erudition, formation, experience, and whatever else is used in English to denote the process of unfolding individuality by learning” (Hopmann, 2007, p. 115). In line with some of the previous chapters (Wardekker, this volume), we conceive of the presently dominating force in educational reforms as neoliberal. A specific

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Danish variant has been the gentrification of the concept of the competition state from the work of Ove Kaj Pedersen (2011, 2014a, 2014b). Pedersen conceptualizes the neoliberal educational agenda as follows: The individual must be motivated to a life-long engagement with his or her own development of competencies and must be made cognizant that if he is to be self-sufficient and that her standard of living as well as social status becomes dependent of the motivation for and competences to achieve employment as early, as intensively and as long as possible. Focus on the individual and his or her [self-servingness] is seen within the boundaries of the need of employers and the need of society for competent and mobile citizens (Pedersen, 2014a, p. 40 - our translation).

The tension between education as qualifying students for the labor market on the one hand and more generally for life in society, as well as a broader engagement with the world in which they live on the other, is far from new. However, the last decade and a half in specific has seen a more general move toward alternative ways to understand and develop education with the focus on international comparisons (e.g., PISA) and on research aimed at so-called evidence-based practice (Biesta, 2007, 2010). However, there may be more to education than qualification. Biesta (e.g., 2009) viewed education, as being understood as qualifying students for specific tasks or jobs as only a part of what “doing school” is about. Apart from talking about “qualification,” Biesta added socialization and subjectification to the functions of the purpose of good education. That is, apart from becoming able to do things, students should be introduced to various traditions and be challenged to take an existential stance in relation to happenings in the world. In short, Biesta insisted that school is not simply and not primarily a place for “learning”—it is a place for challenging and exploring “existence.” Our contention, one that we will develop below, is that democracy and citizenship cannot solely be understood as a matter of qualification. First, because democracy can be viewed as a more general way to live one’s life within one’s community and, second, because the content of democracy is for the person to make up his or her own mind (autonomously)—that is, without being forced to an opinion by either established fact or custom.

3 Democratic Citizenship as an Educational End In Denmark, democracy has played an explicit part in the official formulation of the objectives of compulsory education. Folkeskolen [the Danish Public School] prepares students for living and participating in a democratic society and shared responsibility for solving shared tasks. Teaching and all of school’s everyday activities must therefore build upon freedom of thinking/spirit and democracy. (1975 – our translation)

These initial formulations were inspired by debates surrounding a reorientation following the Second World War and specifically a reaction to the political extremism of the first half of the twentieth century. Central were debates over whether democracy

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was to be understood primarily as a form of governance only or whether democracy might be considered more a form of life, a substitute for—an overcoming, as it were of—religion on the one hand and ideology (specifically fascism and communism) on the other. The early introduction in Denmark of student councils in which pupils were represented formally in schools has received some international attention (Hermann, 2006) but is also a very formal arrangement with varying degrees of success (Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, & Vyff, 2015). By 2006, however, the centrality of democracy was significantly downplayed and the activity of schooling was no longer required to be built upon democracy, which is only an aspect of it. Folkeskolen [the Danish Public School] is charged with preparing students for participation, co-responsibility, rights and duties in a society with freedom and public rule. The activity of school must therefore be characterized by equal worth and democracys. (2006 – our translation)

This downplaying of democracy—and the allocation of it from the foundation concerning life in general to a means for teaching students about participation in society—was fueled not only by the need for specialized labor demanded by accelerated globalization, but equally by nationalist discussions about whether democracy is central to what it means to be Danish or whether other aspects (e.g., language, Christian culture) are more important. In this perspective, democracy was seen as a fairly new addition to a much older Danish national character (Gilliam & Gulløv, 2012; Kofoed, 1994). The relative diminishing of democracy notwithstanding, it remains a key aim of schooling. In the present paper, we turn to the rapidly growing field of deliberative democracy in order to challenge the potentially formal understanding of democracy that Biesta warns about and which, for instance, the idea of student councils may reflect.

4 Deliberative Democracy as the Model of Democracy Theories of deliberative democracy have gained increasing attention, also as they pertain to compulsory education (Osler & Starkey, 2003; Weinstock & Kahane, 2017). It is, however, a field with great internal diversity that makes a definition difficult. Weinstock and Kahane (2017) offer two defining characteristics—that “democracy should be understood as the exchange of reasons” (p. 1—our emphasis)—as opposed to, for instance, the “pluralist” idea of democracy as a struggle between different beliefs; and “that the justification of policies […] should be more democratic” (Weinstock & Kahane, 2017, p. 1). That is, there is in deliberative democracy an ideal of the “better argument” that will allow the discussants to agree on the better course of action in the given instance, rather than simply a barter on the issues at hand based on pre-existing positions. In short, consensus versus compromise.

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Most prominent, at least in a European setting, is Habermas’ (e.g., 1996) theory of communicative action and discourse ethics. The goal for Habermas is to devise a theory of democracy that will help to strengthen the liberal democracies of the west that are under tremendous pressure, partly due to rapidly growing societal differentiation and the colonization of the lifeworld by strategic logics that are divorced from the communicative logic of the lifeworld. The idea is that both the lifeworld view and the systems view of social institutions are valid, but inform different aspects: If we comprehend a social system as a lifeworld, then the steering aspect is screened out. If we understand a society as a system, then the fact that social reality consists in the facticity of recognized, often counterfactual, validity claims is not taken into consideration. (Habermas, 1988, p. 5)

The integration of systems is a matter of participants being active in a way that reproduces those systems, regardless of what motivates the participants to do so— or sustains them in doing so. Social integration, on the other hand, demands that participants view each other as belonging to the same society and connected with previous generations (Borman, 2011) and is the way in which this common background forms a mutual horizon of understanding. In secular societies of today, there is, Habermas believes, a tendency for the logic of system integration, specifically in the form of the growing reach of advanced capitalism—to dominate the lifeworld logic of communication and consensus. Central to Discourse Ethics is the view that the development of moral maturity primarily requires not the transmission or internalization of specific substantive moral values but rather the fostering of a procedural understanding of what is epistemically entailed by the responsible holding of a moral belief or judgment. To believe and to judge responsibly is to believe and judge on the basis of reasons. Our moral concept of responsibility, like that of autonomy, is rooted in the epistemic requirements of coherent and justifiable belief. (Okshevsky, 2004, p. 180 - emphasis added)

Deliberation is built upon participants being able to break egocentrism and take the other’s perspective—on the backdrop of the lifeworld in order for a common world to emerge from the process: For both parties the interpretive task consists in incorporating the other’s interpretation of the situation into one’s own world in such a way that in the revised version ‘his’ external world and ‘my’ external world can – against the background of ‘our’ lifeworld – be relativized in relation to ‘the’ world, and the divergent situation definitions can be brought to coincide sufficiently. Naturally, this does not mean that interpretation must lead in every case to a stable and unambiguously differentiated assignment. Stability and absence of ambiguity are rather the exception in the communicative practice of everyday life. (Habermas, 1984, p. 100)

What it does lead to is a mutual way forward with a widened horizon of meaning, from personal desire or belief to what is mutually desirable. An important aspect is Habermas’ insistence on the idea of our lifeworld as the backdrop of any given communicative exchange. There is an insistence on what is shared by participants, rather than on what divides them. Discourse ethics is radically communal in this sense.

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5 Habermas and Motivation One problematic issue in Habermas’ theory is that of motivation concerning “the ‘gap’ between what a candidate norm requires and what citizens are motivationally capable of doing” (Munro, 2007, p. 447); that is, even if persons are convinced of the correctness of a deliberatively arrived at conclusion, they may have little incentive to act accordingly. Even if sorting the garbage may be accepted as the better argument, people may fail to do so when they a rushing to get the chores done. Habermas sees no problem in instituting incentives through legislation to aid in making citizens follow what has been agreed upon through deliberation. Below we will introduce a theory of motives that would highlight how participation in shared practices may themselves become sources of motives. We suggest that the “weakness” of motivation, at least in part, may stem from the transformation of the communication as it exists as an unspoken background in the lifeworld as opposed to how it functions in reflective deliberation. In this view, motivation is not something that becomes relevant after the fact when a deliberatively arrived-at decision needs to be carried out but is already at work in engaging in deliberative activities in the first place. Hence, we turn to the concept of motives and suggest that it is in students’ everyday inclinations to question and probe each other that we find the kernel of lifeworld relations that may be transformed into deliberative activities and, in the end, a motive for engaging further in such activities.

6 A Matter of Motivation We suggest that in order to engage with the problem of motivation, it is necessary to discuss the relation between children’s everyday motives and how this may function as a lever for developing not only the procedural understanding of what is epistemically entailed by the responsible holding of a moral belief or judgment (Okshevsky, 2004, p. 180), but crucially develop motives for engaging in deliberative activity and to further the motivation for following actions required as a consequence of a reached consensus. Finding one’s own place in the scheme of things is at the outset an interpersonal endeavor. It acts, as it were, as a forceful motive for students, and may thus serve as a starting point for developing deliberative habits. Hence, we turn our attention first to a concept of motives and then to empirical material concerning students exploring specific questions about religious practices as an aspect of themselves as part of a community of students. In a famous passage from the book Thinking and Speech, Vygotsky, the founder of Cultural-Historical Psychology, commented that: [thought] is not born of other thought. Thought has its origin in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotions. The affective and volitional tendency stands behind thought. (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 282)

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Motives and affect were, however, not central aspects in Vygotsky’s research, although he indeed turned toward researching emotions in what turned out to be the latter part of his career (John-Steiner & Mahn, 2002; Vygotsky, 1999). However, Vygotsky did develop the concept of the “social situation of development” (e.g., 1998) to address how the child experiences its social circumstances, which must be thought of as a specific relation between the child and the environment (Klitmøller & Hviid, 2017; Veresov, 2016). It was Vygotsky’s colleague, Leontiev, who developed activity theory and who more thoroughly developed a concept of motives (1978). Here, motives are more than the energy for action—motives include specific content; they are always about something. This is the case not only for societally developed activity. For instance, though true that we are biologically equipped to feel hungry, only in the direst of circumstances is any potential food source considered. Rather, not only do we develop ways in which we anticipate feeling hungry into our daily doings, even when hungry we usually are hungry for a subset of edibles. Some edibles are appealing, while others are not. The concept of motive thus concerns the objects—or, better perhaps, the “objectives” that are developed as the person develops. The total system of motives constitutes that person’s personality. The core of the concept is the notion that individual development cannot meaningfully be separated from the actual relations that the person develops within the world. In this sense, motives are not biologically given, but they are delivered in the sense that they constitute the ways in which the surrounding community and wider society works. Hedegaard’s (2002) concept of motive is developed from Leontiev’s activity theory (2009). The concept forms a close connection to that of activity which denotes several levels: On one level, the way that we collectively in society reproduce the means of our existence and on another individual level the way that individuals realize their motives. Important is the view of how they may develop new motives while engaging in already existing practices. Participation is the driving force of developing motives for something. If the relational aspect of development is not stressed, then motive runs the danger of becoming a student-centered concept concerning supporting the child in developing what is already within its perspective. Institutional frames are developed in order to create new types of development—and school, as Vygotsky famously formulated it—that teaches steps ahead of development and guides it (Vygotsky, 1987). We contend that democratic deliberation and civic formation should be understood within this framework—not only as an outer demand of compliance with a democratic ideal, but as the rationalization of motives in a move from what is (individually) desired in a given situation, to deliberation on what should be desired (collectively— or in a collective framework). In order to develop motives for deliberation—and for carrying out the decisions reached—deliberation must become a central part of school activities. In order to facilitate development of such motives, it is important to take existing motives into account. One central way to realize this in classroom practice is to pay attention to the concerns displayed by the students in their everyday lives at school. Those relations that students themselves pay attention to and focus on create what is developmentally at stake (Hedegaard, 2012). In this section, we turn to

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the social situation of development within a multiethnic 4th grade in a Danish public school while trying to grasp what the students are concerned about—the objectives or motives that are expressed in the students’ everyday school life.

7 Faith and Religious Practices as a Central Motive in 4th and 5th Grade The empirical material for the chapter comes from a research project by the second author concerning differences as they are noticed by students. The classrooms consisted of students with multiple religious and ethnic backgrounds. As they develop over the course of the years, the students spend together in the same class. The material consists of field notes from observations in two classrooms over a period of one year. As such, the research project is concerned with how ethnicity and religion play a role (or not) in what students find noteworthy, different, and peculiar about each other. Faith and religion is a recurring theme in the studied classrooms. First of all, it is an important part of many of the students’ everyday lives at home. Furthermore, and partly for that reason, it is carried into school because of the diverse cultural and religious backgrounds of the students. And finally, it then becomes one of the focal points of the “we” that has been developing since kindergarten among students. The interest in faith and religion includes students who do not describe themselves as religious (e.g., Lili, who is not part of any religious community, or Sara being a Muslim “but without believing all that much,” as she says). Below, we present some examples leading to a discussion of the relation between lifeworld, motives, and democratic Bildung as deliberatively sought consensus.

7.1 Ramadan and Koran School While finishing their hand puppets in Design and Technology, a group of students are talking with each other and Sarah (the second author) about faith. We talk about religion. It started because Rania told me that she almost had a stomachache and therefore thought that school was a bit rough today. I ask her if it is because she is fasting. It is. She says that she thinks ‘to fast’ is the wrong word because it is actually called ‘Ramadan’. I ask her if I should say ‘Do you Ramadan?’. That makes her laugh. Isra asks me ‘what do you believe in?’ I say that I am probably what you would call a culture-Christian. They ask me what that is and I tell them that I am baptized and confirmed but that I do not come to church often and that I believe in something without knowing exactly what. Soraya attends Koran-school and have attended four different ones. Presently she is following it over Skype but her parents want her on a specific school by next year, she says, because that school is supposed to be good. If so, she has to go every morning before school. Both Halima and Isra have attended Koran-school but when it became summer Isra stopped but will start again when it gets colder. Isra says she is almost finished ‘the first book’. Soraya says that

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J. Klitmøller and S. K. Jensen they believe that Jesus was a prophet. Lili asks when you are supposed to wear a scarf? Halima says that it is ‘when you get the red flag’. They laugh. Sara does not understand at first, but figures it out. Sara is a Muslim because her father is, she says, but she does not attend Sunday-school and her father does not teach her. Her mother is just ‘Danish’, she says, meaning that she does not really have a faith. Isra fasts in the weekends. So does Halima apparently. Isra tried to fast on a school day last year but it was too hard, so now she only has to fast in the weekends. Isra says that in Turkey, if you are a Muslim, you say ‘Allah’ into both ears and whisper the child’s name when they have just been born. ‘A little like your baptism’ she says to me. I don’t think you do that in Somalia, says Soraya pensively. (Field notes, June 21, 2016, our translation)

While completing teacher-sanctioned assignments (sewing hand puppets), religious practices pop up as something worth discussing when Rania tells Sarah that “it’s hard to fast.” Their talk is on the students’ own initiative and revolves around various aspects of religion (e.g., what “should” or “could” or “must” you do as a Muslim, concerning rules and different perceptions of Islam), which is an important theme since many of the students in this class have experiences with religious practices. Or because, like Lili, who comes from a nonreligious family, experiences with faith and religion become important for her to understand because she is part of this community/social situation. Another aspect discussed by the students concerns which “books” or “texts” they read, listen to, or are being taught, and the students are trying to find out together how to conceptualize this. Further, their talk is about commonalities or differences across religions and cultures (e.g., Christianity and Islam), when Isra says, “in Turkey we whisper Allah in the baby’s’ ear, like when Christians baptize their children” and Soraya wonders if you—as a Muslim—do that too in Somalia. We suggest that faith and religion act as central motive for the students in this classroom, not just for Rania (who fasts) or for Soraya (going to Koran school) individually, but for all the students because they point to a joint horizon. Faith and religion is not simply about who “I” am, but becomes an important aspect of who “we” are. It is about the students’ experiences of their common surroundings— objects (e.g., scarfs, Koran, water you cannot drink because of fasting), activities (attending Koran school, being taught about religion in public school), and people (classmates, teachers, family—and meeting someone for whom faith and religion is something very different from what it is to you). The lifeworld of the students—and the motives that are central to them—moves to the forefront.

7.2 Discussions Around Faith and Different Religions Practices in “Christianity Studies” Faith is not only of importance for the students in conversations like the one above. The subject “Christianity studies” is mandatory from 1st to 9th grade. In the formal description of aims for the subject, it is stated that students must “acquire knowledge and skills that make them able to understand and reflect upon the significance of the

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religious dimension for the life-view of individual people and its relation to others” (Fagformål for faget kristendomskundskab1 —our translation). So the students must learn about faith, as it is understood as an important dimension in life. Despite the central focus on Christianity and the history of Christianity in Denmark,2 the students also have to learn about other religions—for instance, Islam (the primary religion discussed by the students in the field note above). They learn about Islam in ‘Christianity studies3 ’. The teacher reads aloud from today’s text and suddenly she meets a word (‘saura’) she does not know how to pronounce. Yunus immediately raises his hand and helps her. The teacher continues to read. She says that one of the five pillars of Islam is that you as a Muslim at least once in a lifetime must make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Yunus raises his hand again but the teacher tells him to wait with comments until she has finished reading. Halima raises her hand too. After a while the teacher asks Halima who explains that ‘this about making a pilgrimage to Mecca is not something you have to do, e.g. if you are poor, you don’t have to go’ she says. The teacher nods and continues to read: ‘Muslims believe that from the age of 15 two angels are writing down in each of their books what you do. One of them is writing the good things you do the other one the bad things you do, and then when the judgment day arrives it is assessed if you go to heaven or hell’. Jonas asks if this also concerns ‘Danes’? The teacher says that it does not but that we (the Danes) follow our own rules too; if we, for instance, are Christians (she argues that Islam and Christianity are very much alike). Afterwards the teacher asks the students what ‘haram’ means because Mike wants to know and the teacher is not quite sure. Yunus answers that it just means that something is wrong. ‘You pronounce it with a trilled r’ he says. Afterwards the students must work with some questions related to the text. The questions concern the five pillars of Islam. Mai and Malina ask Rania if she will work together with them and Rania nods with a smile on her face and tells me that this is because she can help them because of her being a Muslim (and therefor being an expert on this subject). ‘Finally’ she says, (as in ‘finally you want my help – usually it is the other way round’). One of the questions is about how to behave if you are a Muslim. Yunus writes a lot, e.g. that you must not kill and that you cannot drink alcohol. When I ask if you are allowed to drink alcohol but that you cannot get drunk (because that was what the students in 9th grade told me), he says ‘no, you cannot drink alcohol at all’. I ask if his parents then never drink alcohol? He looks amazed at me and answers ‘no’. Yunus also writes that you cannot eat pork and that you cannot hit your wife. About what you can do he writes that you have to love your wife and children, that you have to pray and a couple of other things. Esra and Sana are working together. Esra asks me what she can answer to the question about what you cannot do as a Muslim. I tell her that I do not know. She then writes that you cannot eat pork. I think about what Helle (teacher) told me earlier, that Esra is allowed to eat pork at home. After writing that she says ‘I do not know if I am allowed to participate in Lucia, but I do so…’. She turns around and asks Sara who is a Muslim too and who also participated in Lucia. ‘Yes’ says Sara, ‘I was allowed to do that’. Esra understands this answer as a ‘then you are as a Muslim allowed to participate in Lucia’. I say that some of the other groups have been talking about alcohol and ask her if her parents can drink alcohol? ‘Yes’ Esra answers, ‘my mother drinks beer sometimes, e.g. when on holiday home in Turkey’. We talk – mostly me! – about how you can understand these religious rules in different ways, and 1 http://www.emu.dk/sites/default/files/Kristendomskundskab%20-%20januar%202016.pdf. 2 For

a discussion about this, see Kristiansdottír (2006). Danish name for the subject is “Kristendomskundskab”—and highlights the same national identity question commented on earlier. Rather than changing the name of the subject to, for instance, “Studies of Religions” or the like, it was decided to keep the emphasis on (protestant) Christianity which historically has been dominant in Denmark.

3 The

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J. Klitmøller and S. K. Jensen that her answers should therefore not necessarily be the same as some of her classmates (I say that because Esra is so concerned about finding the right answer). She nods but does not seem to find my comment that relevant. Neither Esra or Sana normally pray at home. Sana does so occasionally, she says. I ask if her prayers then are about getting her Instagram Profile back? And smiles at her. Sanas parents have closed her profile because of a concern coming from Sanas teachers. And the girls in 4.B find this very unfair. She smiles at me (as in ‘you are crazy’) and says ‘NO, it is not at all something like that your prayers are about’. Many of the students continue to work with the answers after the lesson ends. Yunus tells me, that I probably will not go to heaven. He seems to feel sorry for me. ‘Unless I – or somebody else – could get you with us?’ he adds. ‘Yes, it would be nice if You could smuggle me in’ I say smiling. He laughs and asks if I don’t know that Allah sees everything – even if You try to hide. (Field notes, April 28, 2016, our translation)

Many different students (those who often participate in discussions or have the “correct” answers like Yunus, as well as some who are not always paying attention in class and therefore stand out in this excerpt as doing something different here, like Mike or Rania) are engaged in the subject of the above conversation. The students use their different knowledge and experiences with religious practices to participate, such as when students with a Muslim background know something the teacher does not know (how to pronounce “saura,” what “haram” means, or the nuances about “having to make a pilgrimage to Mecca”), or when knowing about Islam gets them invited to participate in groups other than those in which they normally participate (Rania helping Mai and Melina). Another example is when Mike wants to know what haram means because “haram” is something some of the Muslim students are discussing with each other outside the lessons. The students seem engaged because they share a common motive—faith—not a common experience of faith, but a social situation in which faith is often (in different ways) an important theme between the students. In the example above, the concrete teaching material is about Islamic rules. The students are working with this assignment in different ways. For Yunus and Rania, their answers are mostly based on their own experiences with Islam (e.g., “my parents do not drink,” “I fast,” “we treat each other nice”) combined with what we could call the more theoretical knowledge about Islam (“you have to pray,” “from 15 and onwards it counts”) given in the textbook in today’s lesson. No problematic ambivalence between the experience with and the theoretical “school book” knowledge about Islam seems present. However, for Esra, her experiences with Islam in her family contradict the experiences and perceptions of her classmates (especially Yunus and Rania)—“my mother drinks alcohol when on holiday” and “the Luciaexperience in school last year” makes her doubt if she was allowed to participate in a Christian tradition when being Muslim. Therefore, she has trouble finding “the right answers” in the assignment. As the lessons ends, these issues remain unresolved. Describing Islam (and Christianity) as something general—what Islam is, what makes up its practices, introduces a quite different logic—that of compliance to rules about right and wrong conduct. It is not that this is alien to students’ selfinitiated talk about religion, but suddenly deviations from the correct conduct become an issue. At the same time, the participation of a number of students, some of whom are not often participating in this manner, highlights again how religious practices

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function as a central motive for many of the students. However, the content remains on a basis of correct knowledge about Islam. There is an invitation for participation and the students are invited into the lesson as experts on issues on which the teacher is uncertain. There is, however, no central issue on which deliberation is possible as no problematic situation is being raised. In implicitly framing the issue as “finding the right way,” students are suddenly positioned in relation to an abstract version of what constitutes Islam, and are implicitly challenged to justify themselves and/or their family (as more or less, better or worse) Muslims.

7.3 Challenges and Potentials—In a History Lesson In a history lesson, the teacher, Helle, is trying exactly this—to include and discuss this central motive (Hedegaard, 2002) about faith in a discussion about vendetta, not because it is part of the curriculum, but because it connects/links what is important to the students and what is important to come to understand about developments in Danish history. In a history lesson the class is working with the history of Denmark including themes about kings and the society in the Viking Age and in the early Middle Ages. They talk about a text concerning the practice of ‘vendetta’. Esra does not know what vendetta means. Helle (their teacher) asks the other students. Rania suggests that it is when somebody has got a knife in his stomach and as a result of that a lot of blood. A couple of other students have similar suggestions. Helle describes what vendetta means and asks the students whether they prefer vendetta or compensation (which is what the king suggests in this historical period that they have just been reading about). Nobody answers. Helle now addresses her question to those students who are Muslim: How this is understood within Islam? (she does that to address an associated theme in a text they have read about the propagation of Christianity in Denmark and a Bishop saying that a person’s death is God’s will). Rania nods – she is of the same conviction. The other Muslim students nod, too (Yunus, Sinan, Rania, Halima and Soraya). But Soraya does not think that vendetta is right, she adds, as she nods. Helle sticks to this agreement about ‘it being God’s will’. She elaborates saying that this is also how Christians understand a person’s death – as God’s will. She adds to that ‘this is if you are a faithful Christian and a member of the church’. “I, for example, do not believe in this” she says and a couple of students declare that they agree with her. Almost all the boys and a couple of the girls – Lili, Halima and Rania – are ‘for vendetta’. Most of the girls are ‘for compensation’. Helle asks these students being ‘for vendetta’: ‘but do you think the grandchild (the person whose death is the reason for the vendetta) is coming back as a result of vandetta?’ She would like them to say ‘no’. Everyone agree that the grandchild is not coming back - but still many of the boys are ‘for vendetta’. Daniel suggests – with a smile on his face – that you could just kill the entire family ‘because then nobody could retaliate’. Then it would not become a vicious vendetta circle, which Helle problematizes, he explains. Helle asks him, ‘also the small children?’ ‘Yes’, he adds with a teasing smile. Many of the other boys smile and laugh, clearly indicating that they know it is the opposite Helle wants them to answer and think. Helle teases them and says that she must remember not to get into a fight with the students in 4.B because they are too tough. (Field notes, April 5, 2016, our translation)

In this excerpt, the teacher is asking students to take a stand on an issue—one that has historical significance, but which is brought to the students’ experience by way

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of Islam. Here, arguments are actually voiced—even if the teacher may be trying to “get” the students to agree to what she herself already thinks. To some extent, this invites the introductory research into student participation in school in which Lieberkind (Bruun & Lieberkind, 2011; Lieberkind, 2014) argues that in Danish primary education the voicing of opinions are ubiquitous. In relation to the earlier example, the teacher in this one actually invites not knowledge of facts but asks the students to argue for (or against) certain practices. Deliberatively speaking, however, it remains unclear what constitutes a valid argument. Having an opinion is good— but what constitutes a good argument concerning vendetta or compensation remains unclear. Here, the teacher seems at odds with posing the question in an open fashion and, at the same time, not quite accepting that students may feel that vendetta is actually the right action. Lieberkind (2014; Bruun & Lieberkind, 2011) suggested on the basis of the research presented in the beginning of the chapter, that students in Denmark are used to being asked about opinions though they are less accustomed to having those opinions matter in decisions about their school life. Part of this discrepancy may stem from the way that teachers, such as Helle in this instance, use student opinions as a way to engage them epistemically in the subject matter, but without framing the issue as a problem that the students need to solve. She aims—so it would seem—in this instance for what she already considers the right answer—no real deliberation needed.

8 On the Possibility of Deliberative Participation in School As an aspect of Bildung, in this chapter, we have focused on how deliberative democratic ideals may benefit from engaging more explicitly with a concept of motivation. Turning to the Cultural-Historical Psychology and Activity Theory, we have argued that motives must be analyzed (and engaged with) as the transformation of already existing motives through participation in differentiated and sometimes new motives. Thus, part of the answer to the “weak” motivation that Habermas and others recognize in relation to consensus is about highlighting if and where children may be involved in deliberative activities. In the above examples, the motives surrounding students’ engagement with their own and others’ religious convictions and practices show some of their motives. The examples taken together also show how teachers take this into account when teaching. By using these motives more students engage in discussions—and historically distant issues may be thematized in relation to the religious beliefs the students have. Tapping into motives and changing and developing motives are not the same thing. When using the students as experts or when asking (what appears to be a “trick”) questions about vendetta, the aim is not for students to participate in deliberation in search of the better argument—and ultimately consensus. Teachers have many aims to pursue and in the material we have presented there is a tendency for the teachers to pursue aims of knowledge and qualification rather than aims of deliberation. This is not a problem in

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itself—but becomes one if deliberation is never introduced. What is needed, however, is not first and foremost knowledge to be comprehended, but problems to be solved and perhaps teachers are here caught between the aim of deliberation and the tension that permeates society when it comes to religious beliefs and differences. Parts of the aim may well be that students need to formulate their own opinions in order to be able to voice these and argue for them—an important aim, to be sure. However, deliberatively speaking, it falls short of first what is “procedural [understood as] epistemically entailed by the responsible holding of a moral belief or judgment“ (Okshevsky, 2004, p. 180). Second, in the examples given, the opinions held by students—one way or the other—have no impact on their daily lives. Before suggesting, briefly, what may constitute a way to come closer to actual deliberation and perhaps consensus, we will briefly return to Habermas. He has lately engaged with the role of religion in the public sphere (e.g., Habermas, 2006). Since Habermas introduced the notion of communicative action and discourse ethics, he has made a number of changes to his position, not the least of which is his stance on the relation between public life and religion. Being from the outset opposed to the interference in public affairs of religiously grounded discourse, Habermas has recently allowed for a more lenient strategy for such discourse, arguing that the translation of insights from religion to publicly acceptable reasons is a task to be mutually accomplished by religious and nonreligious citizens. In short, Habermas is of the opinion that the burden on religious citizens of having to provide nonreligious arguments in the process of public deliberation makes for an unequal cognitive load in comparison to nonreligious citizens. He asserts that religious traditions hold important assets because they have “a special power to articulate moral intuitions, especially with regard to vulnerable forms of communal life” (Habermas, 2006, p. 10). The danger, however, is that religious beliefs take on a totalizing role and prohibit religious citizens from working to give their opinions a generalized form that is accessible to citizens of other religions and nonreligious citizens alike. To reintroduce arguments based on religious thinking makes for what Habermas called a “post-secular society” and the accepted form of arguments within this type of society as “post-metaphysical.” Critiques of Habermas’ position have been voices (e.g., Boettcher, Holst & Molander, Sikka) as to Habermas’ understanding of what constitutes religious beliefs, what counts as a translation of such beliefs and the standing of such beliefs vis-à-vis nonreligious ethical understandings. In the context of the present chapter, the issue is not primarily whether such cognitive load exists or is problematic; rather, it is to highlight how motives are changed by participation in concrete practices. That is, such practices need to be developed. A first step, apart from differentiating when the aim is for students to develop and voice opinions and when the aim is to develop deliberative practices, is to identify relevant issues upon which deliberation connects the attitudes and beliefs of the students with the need for a solution. A good colleague of ours suggested, for instance, that issues surrounding school cafeterias and the range of foods that should be offered, as an example of a situation in which it is no longer enough to hold different beliefs or to point to general ideas of religion but, instead, in which it is necessary to come to an agreement—compromise or consensus.

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References Biesta, G. (2007). Why “what works” won’t work: evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.17415446.2006.00241.x. Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9. Biesta, G. (2010). Why ‘What Works’ Still Won’t Work: From Evidence-Based Education to ValueBased Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29(5), 491–503. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11217-010-9191-x. Biesta, G. (2011). Learning democracy in school and society - Education, Lifelon Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship. In Learning democracy in school and society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-512-3. Borman, D. A. (2011). The adulatory of the actual - habermas, socialization, and the possibility of autonomy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bruun, J. (2010). Danske elever er verdensmestre i demokrati. Asterisk, 55, 6–9. Retrieved from http://edu.au.dk/aktuelt/asterisk/magasinetasteriskarkiv/arkiv-tidligere-numre/asterisk-55/. Bruun, J., & Lieberkind, J. (2011). Unges politiske dannelse. Aarhus: Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsskole, Aarhus Universitet. Ebdrup, N. (2010, July 29). Demokrati, Skolen gør danske elever til verdensmestre i demokrati. Videnskab.Dk, pp. 1–5. Retrieved from http://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/skolen-gor-danskeelever-til-verdensmestre-i-demokrati. Gilliam, L., & Gulløv, E. (Eds.). (2012). Civiliserende institutioner. Om idealer og distinktioner i opdragelse. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1). Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1988). Ligitimation Crisis. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. Habermas, J. (1996). Diskursetik. Frederiksberg: Det Lille Forlag. Habermas, J. (2006). Religion in the Public Sphere. European Journal of Philosophy, 14(1), 1–25. Hedegaard, M. (2002). Learning and child development. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Hedegaard, M. (2012). Analyzing Children’s Learning and Development in Everyday Settings from a Cultural-Historical Wholeness Approach. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(2), 127–138. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2012.665560. Hermann, S. (2006). Magt og Oplysning—Folkeskolen 1950–2006. Unge Pædagoger. Hopmann, S. (2007). Restrained teaching: The common core of Didaktik. European Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 109. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2007.6.2.109. John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (2002). The gift of confidence: A Vygotskian view of emotions. (pp. 46–58). Malden, MA, US: Blackwell Publishing. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost. com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2002-02515-003&site=ehost-live. Klitmøller, J., & Hviid, P. (2017). Lev Semjenovitj Vygotskij og den kulturhistoriske psykologi. In L. M. Gulbrandsen (Ed.) (pp. 235–258). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Kofoed, J. (1994). Midt i normalen. Om minoriteter og den nationale idé. Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed (Vol. 24). København: Danmarks Lærerhøjskole. Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, personality. Englewood Cliffs {N.J.}: PrenticeHall, Inc. Leontyev, A. N. (2009). Activity and consciousness. Pacifica: Marxist Internet Archive. Lieberkind, J. (2014). Democratic experience and the democratic challenge: A historical and comparative citizenship education study of scandinavian schools. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(6), 710–730. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2014.971862. Mikkelsen, M. (2010, June 30). Danske elever er verdensmestre i demokratisk dannelse. Kristeligt Dagblad, pp. 1–4. Retrieved from https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/danmark/danske-elever-erverdensmestre-i-demokratisk-dannelse.

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Munro, D. (2007). Norms, motives and radical democracy: Habermas and the problem of motivation. Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(4), 447–472. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007. 00286.x. Okshevsky, W. (2004). On the epistemic grounds of moral discourse and moral education: An examination of Jürgen Habermas’ “Discourse Ethics.” Philosophy of Education, 174–182. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2003). Learning for Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Theoretical Debates and Young People’s Experiences. Educational Review, 55(3), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 0013191032000118901. Pedersen, O. K. (2011). Skolen og den opportunistiske person. Konkurrencestaten (pp. 169–203). Hans Reitzels Forlag: København. Pedersen, O. K. (2014a). Konkurrencestaten og dens uddannelsespolitik—baggrund, intentioner og funktionsmåder. In K. Illeris (Ed.), Læring i konkurrencestaten—kapløb eller bæredygtighed (pp. 35–52). Roskilde: Samfundslitteratur. Pedersen, O. K. (2014b). Urenhedens arkæologi. In L. Tanggaard, T. A. Rømer, & S. Brinkmann (Eds.), Uren pædagogik 2 (pp. 199–215). Aarhus: Klim. Coninck-Smith, N. de, Rasmussen, L. R., & Vyff, I. (2015). Dansk skolehistorie—Da skolen blev alles—Tiden efter 1970. In C. Appel & N. de Coninck-Smith, (Eds.), Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Veresov, N. N. (2016). Perezhivanie as a phenomenon and a concept: Questions on clarification and methodological meditations. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 12(3), 129–148. https://doi.org/10. 17759/chp.2016120308. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and Speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky—Volume 1—Problems of general psychology (pp. 37–285). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1998). The problem of age. In R. W. Rieber (Ed.), The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky—Volume 5—Child Psychology (pp. 187–205). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1999). The Teaching about Emotions. Historical-Psychological Studies. In R. W. Rieber (Ed.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky—Volume 6—scientific legacy (pp. 71–235). New York: Plenum Press. Weinstock, D., & Kahane, D. (2017). Introduction. In D. Kahane (Ed.), Deliberative democracy in practice. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Jacob Klitmøller is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research concerns students’ experiences of going to school—particularly the importance (or sometimes lack thereof) that students attach to the subjects and the importance of school as a social arena. Another stream of his research concerns the relation between educational research and the goals of education, and focuses specifically on notions that school is exclusively about student achievement. A last stream of his research concerns the methodological and theoretical investigations of concrete educational programs developed to enhance students’ achievement—specifically Visible Learning by John Hattie. Sarah Kirkegaard Jensen is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the field of educational psychology. Her research is about students’ possibilities for participation in ethnically mixed educational settings including issues such as materiality, social class, ethnicity, and children’s perspectives.

Chapter 4

Commentary to Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization Ian Thompson

Abstract There is a growing worldwide unease about the effects of globalization on the education of school education particularly of those most marginalized in society. The impetus to compete in systems of education, whether at the international level through comparative data derived from PISA tests or through systems of school accountability at the national and institutional level, has come to dominate both discourse and practice in schools. This is a commentary on three chapters that reflect the sense that there is something drastically wrong with the way that young people are educated in modern education systems that are dominated by neoliberal ideology and the pressures of performativity. Although the articles emanate from particular social and cultural settings, there is a unifying thread in the chapters that education systems are failing many young people. All three chapters show a concern with Vygotsky’s contribution to an understanding of learning through his concept of the social situation of development. The chapter concludes with the consideration that learning must involve risk and uncertainty if young people are to learn through their engagement with social situations of development. In this sense, the cultures of institutions that resist neoliberal pressures of performativity are key to potential development of marginalized learners.

1 Introduction There is a growing worldwide unease about the effects of globalization on the education of school education particularly of those most marginalized in society. The impetus to compete in systems of education, whether at the international level through comparative data derived from PISA tests or through systems of school accountability at the national and institutional level, has come to dominate both discourse and practice in schools. For example, in the United Kingdom (UK) consecutive governments have expressed concerns over both “social mobility” and the failure to educate I. Thompson (B) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_4

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the poor and most disadvantaged in society effectively. Yet, the concept of “social mobility” is imbued with the same neoliberal logic as deficit ideology that blames the perceived shortcomings of child or their parents rather than structural inequalities. Of course schooling in the UK, like much of the Western world, has long been unequal, and Ball (2016) has demonstrated that the education systems in the UK have historically replicated the systems of social class. The policy response in England, the only UK jurisdiction where education remains the concern of the central government, has been to combine a neoliberal policy of diversification in types of school alongside compensatory reforms aimed at disadvantaged students with a neoconservative drive toward a more traditional curriculum and more rigorous testing (Burn and Childs, 2016). Yet as both the Russian educational psychologist Vygotsky (1987) and the American psychologist Bruner (1960) argued long ago, education is never neutral. School education is necessarily social, in that it involves interaction with others, but it is not necessarily just. Research has consistently shown that children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, with social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties, or with disabilities, are more likely to do significantly worse at school than their relatively more affluent or fortunate peers (Thompson, 2017). They are also less likely to be in well-resourced and successful schools. Factors of social class, ethnicity, language, gender, and socioeconomic status remain the most prominent variables for all aspects of well-being such as health, education, and access to public resources.

2 Neoliberalism, Competition, and Learning The three important chapters in Part I reflect the sense that there is something drastically wrong with the way that young people are educated in modern education systems that are dominated by neoliberal ideology and what Ball (2006) has described as the pressures of performativity. Although the articles emanate from particular social and cultural settings, there is a unifying thread in the chapters that education systems are failing many young people. Thomas Szulevicz asks the suitably provocative question “what’s disruptive about disruptive behavior?” He highlights a deeply problematic cultural and historical shift in conceptions of disruptive behavior in education from the influence of performance and outcome-based obsessions in schools. The other two contributions by Willem Wardekker from the Netherlands and Jacob Klitmøller and Sarah K. Jensen from Denmark locate their chapters around the German Enlightment concept of Bildung, a word and concept that is notoriously difficult to translate into English. Blunden (2010) has described the historical concept of Bildung as the process of acquiring and maintaining the culture of the worlds we live in. Or, as Wardekker points out, the culture of interrelating worlds in Humboldt’s sense of the tensions that exist between people and the natural world or the individual and the culture in which they exist. Klitmøller and Jensen in their chapter define Bildung as the act of formation. For Humboldt, the very purpose of Bildung is to unite individual and culture in a harmonious mutual interplay. Bildung comprises equally of systems

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of knowledge that are acquired and critiqued; questions of value orientation; and responsibility for the community. If education from an Enlightenment perspective was supposed to achieve this harmony, then the class and social divisions that are perpetuated through many educational systems represent proof of the failure of this ideal. People might make history, but as Karl Marx pointed out not in circumstances of their own choosing. However, the argument that Wardekker advances here is that although the structure and content of school systems in Western countries have developed mainly on the basis of the Enlightenment, the interpretation of Enlightenment ideals has been a distorted one. In particular, the Western obsession with abstract and general knowledge as typified by school and examination board curricular has led to a narrow and standardized representation of forms of knowledge and a uniformity of the sort of neoliberal thinking that feels that repeated testing of children is the way to measure development. In essence, Wardekker argues, competition has replaced learning to think or the long-term process highlighted by Vygotsky by which people make sense of the world mediated by the people around them and the experiences that they encounter. To use another German concept very familiar to Vygotsky, education, in this sense, should attend to the complexity of the whole or the Gestalt of learning or what Wardekker describes as the importance of connectedness and situatedness. Wardekker argues that in order to do this then education might draw inspiration from non-Western education and through introducing the importance of community and local culture. Bildung, for Wardekker, should be seen less as the acquisition of a system of knowledge but rather as a personal confrontation necessary for a person to understand the tensions inherent in our relationship with the social and cultural world in which we live. This strongly echoes Vygotsky’s (1993) concept of a social situation of development to which I will return later in this commentary. Klitmøller and Jensen echo Wardekker’s sense of the importance of redefining both Bildung and what is meant by learning. They argue for the need to connect the broad framework of Bildung within the Danish educational foundation for preparation for deliberative democratic citizenship. In order to do this, they draw on both Habermas’ argument for the need for motivational structures and the concept of motives in Cultural-Historical Psychology. The concept of motives here draws on the work of Vygotsky’s former colleague Leontiev (1978). Leontiev’s research moved away from attention on the mind in society to a focus on the object of social activity. Leontiev formulated a distinction between goal-orientated actions that are conscious, tool-mediated operations which he called “the methods for accomplishing actions” (Leontiev, 1978, p. 65), and collective activity as a unit that involves both actions and operations. The concept of object motive is a key element in cultural–historical analyses not least because of the possibility of conflicting or contradictory object motives within an activity. The object motive for teachers and the reason they design classroom activities are their students’ learning trajectories. The object motive for the students involved in these activities may well be very different. Thus Klitmøller and Jensen describe the move in the Danish educational system from the learning process toward student learning outcomes as defined by standardized testing. Neoliberal ideology’s version as the self-regulated and self-motivated learner is characterized

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through a curriculum of obedience, subordination, and rule led control to students that negate the potential for active participation in concepts of democratic citizenship. More explicitly than Wardekker, although in the same vein, they draw on Vygotsky’s concept of the social situation of development in their analysis of empirical research from primary classrooms. Szulevicz’s chapter takes on critically the process of “learnification” identified by Biesta that has come to dominate concept of schooling. The increased emphasis in schools on competition has resulted in less tolerance of what is regarded as acceptable. As Szulevicz points out, the emphasis on the “normal learner” in neoliberal conceptions of schooling positions what is outside the norm as unacceptable without considering the reasons for behavior that appears to be disruptive. Indeed, it could be argued that education should necessarily be disruptive if it is to effect a change or influence development. Persistent causes of apparently disruptive behaviors are socio-historical, diverse, and complex which intersect with each other in various ways to produce disparities in the social and cultural contexts of different institutions and countries (Slee, 2012). Marginalized young people with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties often struggle within the performative expectations and cultures of traditional schooling, leaving them at risk of social exclusion. As Szulevicz points out, this can lead to the pathologization of behaviors. Connell (2009) and Ball (2006, 2016) have shown how the performative professionalism that arises in competitive practices can undermine teachers’ capacity and desire to meet the needs of disadvantaged social groups. Students who cannot play by the rules of what is judged to be acceptable can become the casualties of performance targets (Lloyd, 2008). This can have long-term negative future consequences for their social engagement in the wider world. It has been argued that success in both academic and emotional terms in secondary school requires both self-regulation, emotional resilience, and the ability to collaborate with both peers and adults (e.g., Claxton, 2007). However, the relentless demands of a school curriculum that is geared toward academic success (or failure) allow little time and resources for the development of these psychological and emotional skills or tools. As Szulevicz suggests here, this can lead to perverse incentives which justifies more authoritarian teacher behavior at the expense of students with attention difficulties. School interventions are often focussed either on the integration of the child into the formal structures of schooling (e.g., literacy, numeracy, or other specific academic skills) or on modifying their behavior (Thompson, 2017). For example, across the UK, policy reforms have been underpinned by stated commitments to both accountability and inclusion. This leads schools and teachers to face the dilemma of deciding between incentives of excellence through competition on the basis of maximizing mean examination performance and promoting practices of inclusion. However, in contrast to Scotland, and to some degree Northern Ireland and Wales, commitment to accountability appears to override practices of inclusion in England.

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Policy discourse in England has also tended to individualize reasons for exclusion rather than develop an understanding of exclusion in the wider context of education and social policy (Mills, Riddell, and Hjörne, 2014). Yet again, Vygotsky’s understanding of the social situation of development is key to an understanding of the contexts of social exclusion and apparent disruptive behavior in the negotiation of task activity in the classroom between learners who may wish to minimize risk and the pedagogic concerns of the teacher (Doyle & Carter, 1984).

3 Learning and the Social Situation of Development I have argued that all three chapters in this part show a concern with Vygotsky’s great contribution to an understanding of learning through his concept of the social situation of development. Vygotsky (1993) argued that development involves periods of crisis, or critical periods, as the learner encounters contradictions between their own psychological development and the demands of the learning situation. When there is a clash between the personal and social (the crisis point), the young person, through interaction with others, can begin to envisage things in a new way. However, these social situations of development can lead to considerable frustration for the young person as well as a “drop in the rate of success, a slacking of interest in school work, and a general decline in capacity for work” (Vygotsky, 1993, 191). At adolescence, this frustration can also lead to clashes with the authority or the perceptions of parents or schools, as the young person develops a more critical understanding of previously accepted cultural and social norms. Vygotsky (1993) argued that in moments of crisis within a particular social situation of development “the child can become relatively difficult due to the fact that… the pedagogical system applied to the child does not keep up with the rapid changes in their personality (193–194).” These moments of crisis are both personal to the particular need and history of each young person but also socially experienced and mediated by interaction with others. Moreover, the key to development lies in the ability of an individual to perceive the limitations of the situation they are in and to reimagine a different identity for that allow them to function and thrive in social situations (Holland et al., 1998). Vygotsky (1987) conceived learning as both a social and situated cultural activity. Vygotsky’s emphasis in the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was on the development of the individual child in their social situation of development. Cultural–historical theorists, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of the collective and the role of learning in leading development through the creation of zones of proximal development. A cultural–historical theory of learning involves a focus on the historical and cultural contexts related to learning within activity systems mediated by culture and its products or artefacts (Cole, 1996). Wartofsky (1979) defines artefacts as things that humans create in three distinct areas: primary artefacts (words, writing instruments, etc.), secondary artefacts (beliefs, norms, etc.), and tertiary artefacts (imagined worlds, play, creative representations, etc.). Secondary

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artefacts, in Vygotskian terms, include sign and semiotic resources. Tertiary artefacts are ones in which “the forms of representation themselves come to constitute a world” (Wartofsky’, 1979, 207). This theoretical framework views individual psychological development as being rooted in culture and society (the social situation of development). It is both through interaction with others and our response to the contexts within which we develop, which we attempt to make sense of the world around us. Learning involves mediated activity through psychological tool usage and in particular the culturally acquired conceptual tool of language. Vygotsky (1993) identified emotional experience, or the young person’s affective relationship to their environment, as the key unit of analysis for an understanding of this development. It matters both who we learn from and with as well as how and where we learn and in what social, cultural, and historical context. The ZPD (Vygotsky, 1987) is both the best known and perhaps least understood concept in Vygotsky’s thought. Unlike the predominant model of children’s learning that sees the function of learning as acquisition of knowledge, Vygotsky’s theory of the ZPD stresses the importance of the educative process in the psychological development of higher order thinking. For Vygotsky, the ZPD is the difference between existing and potential levels of development revealed through an analysis of how far a student is able to master a task by themselves or with help from a teacher or peers. As Chaiklin (2003) has argued, Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD defines the potential development of a child rather than an abstract metaphor for learning. For Vygotsky, real learning is that which is in advance of development and is mediated through interactions with other people and through the social and cultural acquisition of sign systems. The ZPD indicates both the presence of maturing psychological functions and the possibility of meaningful interventions that can stimulate conceptual development. This process of conceptual development involves cooperation and collaboration between the teacher and the learner, or between learners at different levels of development. Vygotsky (1987) argued that school learning introduces something fundamentally new into students’ development. By giving students specific tasks of understanding scientific concepts within a designed environment, school learning introduces new concepts that stimulate psychological development. It is within the dialectical interplay between the students’ grasp of everyday spontaneous concepts and the development of their scientific conceptual understanding that learning leads development. However, Wardekker is quite right in my view to argue that Vygotsky saw children’s learning of scientific concepts not as ends in themselves or the highest forms of knowledge but as the acquisition of tools for argumentation and understanding of the world around them. Cultural–historical researchers argue that collaboration and cooperation can be crucial features of development. Vygotsky (1987) argued that learning can take place when the learning task is set at a level in advance of the student’s current mental level of development. This has implications concerning the relationship between instruction, students’ development, and the classroom environment. As Derry (2008) points out, the learning environment has to be designed according to a clearly designed conceptual framework of learning. But learning must also involve risk and uncer-

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tainty if young people are to learn through their engagement with social situations of development. In this sense, the cultures of institutions that resist neoliberal pressures of performativity are key to potential development of marginalized learners.

References Ball, S. J. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen J. Ball. London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2016). Education, justice and democracy: The struggle over ignorance and opportunity. In A. Montgomery & I. Kehoe (Eds.), Reimagining the purpose of schools and educational organisations (pp. 189–205). Heidelberg: Springer. Blunden, A. (2010). An Interdisciplinary theory of activity. Leiden: Brill. Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burn, K., & Childs, A. (2016). Responding to poverty through education and teacher education initiatives: A critical evaluation of key trends in government policy in England 1997–2015. Journal of Education for Teaching, 42(4), 387–403. Chaiklin, S. (2003). The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analyses of learning and instruction. In A. Kozulin, B. Gindis, V. Ageyev, & S. M. Miller (Eds.), Vygotsky’s educational theory in a cultural context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Claxton, G. (2007). Expanding young people’s capacity to learn. British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(2), 115–134. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Connell, R. (2009). Good teachers on dangerous ground: Towards a new view of teacher quality and professionalism. Critical Studies in Education, 50, 213–229. Derry, J. (2008). Abstract rationality in education: From Vygotsky to Brandom. Studies in the Philosophy of Education, 27, 49–62. Doyle, W., & Carter, K. (1984). Academic tasks in classrooms. Curriculum Inquiry, 14, 129–149. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leontiev, A. N. (1978). The problem of activity in psychology, in activity, consciousness and personality. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lloyd, C. (2008). Removing barriers to achievement: a strategy for inclusion or exclusion? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12(2), 221–236. Mills, M., Riddell, S., & Hjörne, E. (2014). After exclusion what? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 19(6), 561–567. Slee, R. (2012). How do we make inclusive education happen when exclusion is a political predisposition? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 17(8), 895–907. Thompson, I. (2017). Tackling social disadvantage through teacher education. St Albans: Critical Publishing. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In L. S. Vygotsky, Collected works (Vol. 1, pp. 39–285). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Vol. 2: The fundamentals of defectology. New York: Plenum. Wartofsky, M. (1979). Perception, representation, and the forms of action: Towards an historical epistemology. In M. Wartofsky (Ed.), Models: Representation and the scientific understanding (pp. 188–210). Dordrecht: Reidel.

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Ian Thompson is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford, where he is also the PGCE Course Director and joint convener of the Oxford Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research. He is currently a co-editor of the journal Teaching Learning and Vice-President of the International Society for Cultural–Historical and Activity Research. His research focuses on issues of social justice in education and his recent research projects include “Collaboration for Teaching and Learning”, “The Effectiveness of Arts Based Approaches in Engaging with Disaffected Young People”, and “Excluded Lives: Disparities in rates of permanent school exclusion across the UK”. He is author or co-author of the books Tackling Social Disadvantage through Teacher Education, Designing Tasks in Secondary Education: Enhancing Subject Understanding and Student Engagement (Critical Publishing, 2017), and Learning to Teach in England and the United States: The Evolution of Policy and Practice. (Routledge, 2019)

Part II

Constructing Culturally Responsive Education

Chapter 5

Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglements with Mainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Transition to School Melinda G. Miller, Karen Dawson-Sinclair, Areana Eivers and Karen Thorpe Abstract In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children attend formal early education at rates lower than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Research on factors influencing attendance and engagement in early childhood education has focused primarily on Indigenous children, families or community. In comparison, there is a dearth of research on the preparedness of mainstream educational contexts to receive Indigenous children and families, and to ensure cultural security via appropriate curricula and connections with community. To address this gap, Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security is used to position mainstream educational contexts as responsible for ensuring that cultural needs are met for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. In this chapter, the authors juxtapose Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches to school transition and share extracts from a yarning session with an Aboriginal educator and researcher who facilitated an Indigenous-led school transition program. The program attended to the needs of children, families and community via culturally meaningful engagement, curriculum content and pedagogies. The yarning about the school transition program and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s experiences of mainstream education M. G. Miller (B) School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Dawson-Sinclair Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Eivers School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Thorpe Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_5

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highlights cultural entanglements between local traditions, protocols and curricula approaches, and mainstream schooling expectations.

In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children attend formal early education at rates lower than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Research on factors influencing attendance and engagement in early childhood education has focused primarily on Indigenous children, families or community. In comparison, there is a dearth of research on the preparedness of mainstream educational contexts to receive Indigenous children and families, and to ensure cultural security via appropriate curricula and connections with community. To address this gap, this chapter draws on Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security to position mainstream educational contexts as responsible for ensuring that cultural needs are met for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. In this chapter, we juxtapose Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches to school transition and share extracts from a yarning session (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010) with an Aboriginal educator and researcher (Karen, Author 2) who facilitated an Indigenous-led school transition program. The program attended to the needs of children, families and community via culturally meaningful engagement, curriculum content and pedagogies. Karen’s yarning about the school transition program and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s experiences of mainstream education highlights cultural entanglements between local traditions, protocols and curricula approaches, and mainstream schooling expectations. To understand barriers to cultural security in mainstream schools, we first provide an historical context to the engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian education, including discussion about Australian history and continuing impacts of colonisation, racism and whiteness.

1 The Australian Context Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 2.8% of the total Australian population, estimated at 24 million overall (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2016). As the First Peoples of Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups have histories and connections to this land since the beginning of the Dreaming/s (over 60,000 years). Prior to European arrival, there were over 250 language groups and many different cultural practices representative of diverse geographies and relationships with land (Broome, 2010). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a unique and enduring relationship with the lands and territories now known as Australia. In present-day Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent the oldest, richest, living cultures on Earth. Indigenous cultures, lore (law), ceremonies and connection to land remain strong. Globally, Australia ranks highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom and political rights (OECD, 2017). However, circumstances for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people present a more complex picture related to ongoing

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impacts of colonisation, racism and whiteness. As a direct result of colonisation processes including dispossession from lands, denial of languages and cultural practices, and exclusion from education and health, overall outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in relation to health and welfare, educational outcomes, and life expectancy are significantly lower than the non-Indigenous population (ABS, 2010). Through the maintenance of language and culture in present-day Australia, some aspects of overall health and welfare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people show improvement but remain below those for non-Indigenous Australians. It is important to recognise that Australia remains a colonising context to the present day. Sovereignty rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have never been formally ceded and have been denied on the legal fiction of terra nullius—a colonial doctrine meaning ‘land belonging to no one’. Employed by British forces upon invasion in 1788, this doctrine relied on the biological classification of Indigenous people as primitive or sub-human, despite the existence of highly sophisticated societies, technologies, and social and cultural practices for over 60,000 years (Elder, 2009). As a form of scientific racism, biological definitions of race supported the classification of Indigenous people as sub-human, thus providing a ‘convenient rationale for the inhumane processes of colonisation and the civilising project’ (Haebich, 2008, p. 5). The strength and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia is clearly visible in light of ongoing colonial effects including systems of education and government dominated by Western forms of governance and the use of the English language. Historical pre-conditions for the significance of race, founded on the falsehood of terra nullius, have been further articulated throughout Australian history via colonising processes including the introduction of the White Australia Policy (1901–1973) and government interventions premised on ‘civilising’ and ‘protecting’ Aboriginal children. In place from 1901–1973, the White Australia Policy promoted the ideal of a white Australia that excluded non-white Europeans and assumed the eventual eradication of the Indigenous population (Elder, 2009). The social construction of whiteness is related to the social and political significance of race throughout Australia’s history and manifests through ownership and occupation of lands, institutional practices and processes including education, and as a national cultural identity (Moreton-Robinson, 2004).

1.1 Education and Colonisation Education is a key cultural institution that has enacted the safeguarding and advancement of whiteness throughout Australian history (Coté, 2009). Through institutional forms of racism, whiteness has chronically excluded, marginalised and forced the assimilation of non-white groups in Australian education, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. In a comparative analysis of the historical role of education in colonial contexts, Coté (2009) identified that maintaining whiteness in ‘settler’ societies rested largely on forthcoming generations. Historically in Australia,

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education presented a resolution for safeguarding whiteness and furthered political and economic registers associated with colonisation and civilisation processes. The civilisation of whiteness through education was tied with a possessive investment in Australia as a ‘new nation’ that could reflect the nature of European society as civil and advanced (Coté, 2009). Whiteness and racism have manifested in more covert ways in Australian education in recent times and remain prevalent across different education sectors (early childhood, primary, secondary, higher education) in governance, policies, attitudes, curricula, employment and professional development (Rose, 2012). As a manifestation of colonisation, the portrayal of diversity and difference in Western education has centred on notions of deficit. This portrayal has enabled and upheld colonial measures designed to exclude, marginalise or assimilate individuals, languages, worldviews and values within mainstream education systems (Coté, 2009; Price, 2012a). Schooling for Aboriginal children has moved through distinct phases beginning with the removal of Aboriginal children from their families to become ‘civilised’ and converted to Christianity (1770–1860s). In the period 1860s–1940s, Aboriginal children were assimilated into Western society by way of training as labourers and domestics. Compensatory education focussed on interventionist programs then became prevalent in early childhood services from 1940s to 1980s (Martin, 2016; McConnochie & Russell, 1982). Imported from America, compensatory programs were premised on the notion that due to family circumstances, children from impoverished families lacked essential values, knowledge and skills (Martin, 2016). Such programs did not address socio-political histories and circumstances for the families involved. In the Australian context, socio-political histories and circumstances constituted ‘centuries of exclusion, marginalisation, racism and ethnocentrism directed at Aboriginal Australians’ (Martin, 2016, p. 16). For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children today, deficit constructions of ability and performance in Western education systems continue to impact positive outcomes, despite increased recognition in mainstream education for the need to be responsive to Indigenous Australia.

1.2 Contemporary Schooling Contemporary mainstream schooling in Australia recognises a need to be responsive to the histories, cultures and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In the Australian Curriculum for Preparatory to Year 12, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures is a cross-curriculum priority aimed at providing ‘dimensions which will enrich the curriculum through development of considered and focused content that fits naturally within [all] learning areas’ (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2016). Similarly, for early education programs catering for children aged birth–5 years, the national learning framework, Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009), includes recommendations for educators to:

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… [promote] greater understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and being; … become co-learners with children, families and community, and value the continuity and richness of local knowledge shared by community members, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders; and, … respond to children’s expertise, cultural traditions and ways of knowing, the multiple languages spoken by some children, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children … (pp. 13–14)

Across sectors in Australian education, such priorities usually take the form of embedding Indigenous perspectives. Ideally, embedding practices occur at all levels of an education system including curriculum, organisational procedures and community outreach. Embedding practices are diverse and include a commitment to: understand Indigenous protocols; plan appropriate curriculum materials; develop reciprocal community partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Elders and organisations to support teaching and learning; evaluate equity in school operational procedures; and demonstrate personal accountability for critical awareness of one’s attitudes and perceptions about Indigenous Australia (Dreise, 2007). Despite progress in recent years and the emergence of exemplars of practice from all sectors of education, grave issues remain around experiences of racism in education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families (Paradies, 2017; Price, 2012a), a lack of cultural awareness among a majority white, monolingual teaching service (Grace & Trudgett, 2012; Rose, 2012), and inconsistent approaches to centralising Indigenous perspectives and knowledge in curriculum (Price, 2012b; Rose, 2012). Most often, mainstream schooling remains characterised by the following: – The language of instruction is standard Australian English; – Western worldviews and approaches to education are dominant; – Aboriginal worldviews, knowledges and values may be recognised through embedding practices but are not given equal footing as a basis for curriculum development, design and implementation; – Relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in mainstream schools are not always equal; – Not all non-Indigenous teachers and school leadership have some degree of cultural awareness or competency.

To this point, the centering of Indigenous worldviews, knowledge and values in curriculum and organisational structures has rarely occurred in mainstream educational settings. Martin (2007) outlines how centering ‘necessitates the decolonisation of knowledge, of relationships, of institutions and of the colonial or colonised self’ (p. 17). Further, decolonising occurs … through processes of critiquing and reframing to provide the necessary spaces for the harmonisation of Aboriginal ways of knowing, ways of being and ways of doing, to not only be centred, but to permeate and continue to construct these spaces (Martin, 2007, p. 17)

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The policy recommendations outlined above go some way to addressing a history of marginalisation and cultural displacement for Aboriginal children in Australian schooling and Aboriginal groups in Australian society. However, in the Australian context, it is critical for education systems and individuals to acknowledge that ‘Indigenous students have now had nearly 200 years of inadequate access, participation and success in education’ (Andersen & Walter, 2014, p. 69). For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, strength in identity, culture and language are protective factors that provide resilience, dignity, purpose and security as they transition to school and enter mainstream classrooms.

2 Transition to School Transition to school presents both opportunities and challenges for children, their families and teachers. As children begin formal schooling, their roles, identities and expectations change. Similarly, new or different expectations from teachers, family, community and peers impact children’s social interaction patterns and their role in new and existing relationships (Dockett & Perry, 2015). For some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, transition to school presents a primary point of contact that shows differences between cultural values and practices from home and community, and those practised within the classroom. Tensions arise when the cultural values and practices of families are viewed by teachers as inferior or a burden, with children only socialised in the cultural context of the classroom setting (Buchori & Dobinson, 2015; Martin, 1999). Notions of school readiness remain topical due to increasing evidence that a positive start to school matters for productive educational experiences and later life opportunities. However, the term ‘readiness’ continues to be scrutinised in changing policy landscapes, including inclusive education policies that have become more prevalent in recent years (Petriwskyj, 2014). The notion of ‘readiness’ has multiple meanings depending on the perspective of the individual or group. Readiness can be defined by age, a set of skills or dispositions, or the context (Dockett, Petriwskyj, & Perry, 2014). For example, from an Aboriginal worldview, childhood is regarded as a part of lifehood and not a separated stage. Lifehood occurs as a series of transformations that are circular rather than linear (Martin, 2007), meaning a pre-determined age-defined approach to school readiness that is restricted to a single time event at school entry is not necessarily appropriate. Inclusive education policies place emphasis on system readiness rather than the individual child; that is, the school adapting to ‘the diverse learning requirements of children rather than assum[ing] a set of pre-specified academic and social skills’ required at school entry (Petriwskyj, 2010, p. 3). For early education programs, this translates to assisting children to become confident learners through play, activities and practices that attend to children’s social, linguistic and cultural knowledge. This approach broadens and challenges conceptions of readiness that privilege a narrow

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focus on pre-specified skill sets, individual performance tasks and testing (Armstrong et al., 2012; Falchi & Friedman, 2015). The ease or difficulty of school transition can be dependent, in part, on the degree of discontinuity children and families negotiate as they move from an early education program or home environment to the schooling context (Noel, 2011). For example, discontinuity can result from differences between cultural values and child-rearing practices from home and those practiced within the school setting. Martin (1999) provides the example of differing values placed upon a young child at school and his/her role within the family, given Aboriginal children are often afforded the same status as young adults and are treated as such in the home and community context. In this sense, Aboriginal families are continually under ‘threat of being misjudged in the way they raise their young’, particularly when ‘inappropriate, non-Aboriginal norms for child rearing are applied’ (Martin, 1999, p. 6). From an ecological standpoint, school readiness is more than the skills and attributes of an individual child. Rather, school readiness encompasses the influence of family, community and relevant early childhood and community organisations with whom the family has engaged (McTurk et al., 2011). Quality early education programs can support positive transition to school and ongoing educational attainment by promoting social–emotional development, adaptation to group contexts and familiarity with school routines. Literature on the effectiveness of high-quality early education programs in preparing children for school and establishing ongoing positive trajectories for academic and social–emotional learning is strong. However, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have lower attendance than non-Indigenous children in formal early education programs and may therefore be at higher risk of poorer school transition. For Indigenous families who do not attend an early education program, transition to school can be fraught with difficulty for the child, family and receiving schools. Since 2009, Australian governments have evidenced a significant policy push to increase attendance in Kindergarten programs (catering for children aged 3–5 years in Queensland in the year prior to formal schooling). Queensland has raised attendance from 29% to almost universal across this period. Non-attendance or low attendance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children remains a concern. Studies conducted for the Queensland Government (see Thorpe, Vromans, & Bell-Booth, 2011) and additional research from other Australian states (Grace & Trudgett, 2012) indicate that while families have educational ambition for their children, the potential threats of mainstream educational institutions (e.g. racism, lack of cultural awareness amongst teaching staff) can prevent educational engagement. Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security provides a useful framework for examining cultural entanglements between mainstream schooling expectations and culturally relevant school transition processes that uphold local traditions, protocols and curricula approaches. Following an outline of Coffin’s model below, we present extracts from a yarning session focused on an Indigenous-led school transition program and the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in mainstream schools. Key themes from the yarning session are read against components of Coffin’s model to consider how mainstream schooling enables and constrains

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culturally relevant approaches to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s transition to school.

3 Coffin’s Model of Cultural Security Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security supports understanding about ways to ensure approaches to schooling and school transition meet the specific cultural and linguistic needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. Developed by Juli Coffin, an Aboriginal Australian health researcher and advocate, the cultural security model was designed initially to support and evaluate culturally relevant service delivery in the health sector and is now applied to broader professions including education. Of key importance in the model is clear differentiation between the frequently interchanged terms cultural awareness, cultural safety and cultural security (Coffin, 2007, p. 22). Coffin and Green (2017) describe how the misuse of these terms occurs in practice when there is a lack of shared language around what they mean, and individuals are not able to articulate key differences. In education, clear definitions of each concept support understanding about the roles and responsibilities of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and organisations who engage with children as they transition to school. In Coffin’s model, concepts of cultural awareness, cultural safety and cultural security sit both hierarchically and along a continuum on a scale that also includes brokerage, protocol and sustainability. Hierarchically, cultural awareness and cultural safety provide the foundations for the attainment of cultural security. Cultural awareness forms the basis for cultural safety, with the two then required to achieve cultural security (Coffin, 2007; Coffin & Green, 2017). The cultural security scale (see Figure 1) shows a continuum, which also has cultural awareness as the foundation, but includes brokerage, protocol and sustainability. Cultural awareness encompasses an understanding of self, along with similarities and differences between cultural groups. This includes awareness of one’s positioning in society and related biases and assumptions. Cultural awareness is a foundational concept included in self-assessment and cultural competence models, although a focus on awareness and attitudes alone has received widespread critique. For example, the work of Abrams and Moio (2009) draws attention to the focus on individual attitudes in cultural competence frameworks which leaves professionals ‘unequipped to deal with institutional racism and oppression on all of the levels where it permeates—individually, structurally, and globally’ (p. 247). Referring to the Australian context, Dudgeon, Wright, and Coffin (2010) draw attention to difficulties

Fig. 1 Coffin’s (2007) Cultural Security Scale

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for white Australians to develop a level of cultural awareness that acknowledges colonial effects and the complexities of racism and privilege in colonising societies, beyond ‘becoming aware’ or ‘unmasking’ their whiteness. Coffin and Green (2017) emphasise issues with maintaining a focus on awareness rather than action. The authors illustrate this point with the example of a practitioner using the term awareness when describing a process that did not actually demonstrate awareness—for example, ‘we try and include Aboriginal people in all our events’, without being able to demonstrate engagement with the local Aboriginal community (Coffin & Green, 2017, p. 79). Cultural safety relates to small actions and gestures that are positive in nature but are not usually standardised as policy and procedure (Coffin, 2007). In this article, we (the authors) extend the concept of cultural safety to leverage responsibility to both the service provider and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities. In early childhood education, ‘families as children’s first teachers’ and ‘family partnerships with early childhood services’ are concepts foregrounded in philosophical principles and practice. Based on sociocultural theories, children’s development and learning are situated in the social and cultural contexts of their families and communities (Arthur, Beecher, Death, Dockett, & Farmer, 2015). Given this philosophical stance, we place equal emphasis on the role of families and community in supporting cultural safety, along with the role of early childhood services in building on cultural safety to enact cultural security in service delivery. We use the term cultural safety to refer to the ‘rights of the child to experience cultural safety and a sense of belonging by having their culture affirmed and strengthened within family and community’ (Miller, 2017, p. 9). Within family and community, cultural safety could take the form of families and community: Developing children’s cultural identity to support a sense of security, dignity, purpose and resilience; Ensuring children experience cultural safety when engaging with extended family and community; Creating opportunities for inclusion in the early childhood program by sharing cultural practices and values and building social networks with other families; and Actively supporting educators to identify biases in documents, policies, practices and interactions. (Miller, 2017, pp. 9–11)

Here, cultural safety is a two-way cultural entanglement and the responsibility of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities, and mainstream early childhood services who uphold children’s strength in culture, identity and language. In this sense, families, communities and early childhood services ‘become partners in an equitable, culturally secure provision of service—this is the pathway to cultural security’ (Coffin, 2007, p. 23). The concept of brokerage relates to reciprocal relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people that enable the sharing of information to support positive outcomes for both parties. Protocols refer to correct guidelines or procedures for community engagement. This can include protocols for establishing relationships, accessing information from the correct people, and working with Elders. Coffin

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(2007) refers to brokerage and protocols as the ‘vehicle to reach cultural security in the appropriate way that will then be sustainable’ (Coffin, 2007, p. 23). Cultural security is the responsibility of the service provider. As Coffin (2007) explains, ‘cultural security directly links understandings and action’ (p. 23). For example, culturally appropriate policies, procedures and processes are automatically in place and applied from the point of engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Combined, the concepts of awareness, safety and security provide a structure from which service providers can map, evaluate and acknowledge the impact of service delivery on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In relation to early childhood education specifically, cultural security refers to ‘the responsibility of early childhood settings to enact cultural competence and respond to the specific cultural and linguistic needs of children and families’ (Miller, 2017, p. 12).

3.1 A Case Study for Cultural Security In the sections following, we present extracts and analysis from a yarning session about an Indigenous-led school transition program facilitated by Karen DawsonSinclair (Author 2) and implemented in an urban context in Logan, Queensland (eastern Australia). In the city of Logan, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 3.2% of the total population (313,000), a higher percentage than in the greater Brisbane (the capital city of Queensland) area (2.4%) (Logan City, 2017). The program operated in the 2015–2016 summer period, prior to the commencement of a new school year in late January. On the lands of the Yugambeh and Jaggera language groups, the program involved eight children, some of whom had not attended a formal early education program previously. The primary aim of the Indigenous-led school transition program was to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s identity and socio-emotional well-being. As the program facilitator, Karen embedded skill sets for school including adapting to routines, self-regulating behaviour and socialising with peers using a culturally relevant play-based approach which recognised children as capable, autonomous and active contributors. As an Indigenous research methodology, the two-hour yarning session began with social yarning (i.e. talk about our families, work and shared professional connections) to support re-connection between the authors who had met previously but not worked together closely. The topic at hand was then introduced in a relaxed yet purposeful manner, described by Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) as a shift from social yarning to research topic yarning (i.e. moving from a social discussion to talk about the research topic of cultural security). This was followed by collaborative yarning (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010), whereby the three authors elaborated on the discussion around the Indigenous-led school transition program, expectations of mainstream schooling, children’s well-being, culture, pedagogy and cultural security to support shared understanding and new learning. As explained by Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010), ‘yarning facilitates in-depth discussions in a relaxed way, and

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provides rich data … it matches an Indigenous way of doing things’ (p. 47). Social yarning is the ‘significant precursor’ (p. 42) to the research to establish connections and relations between the participants. Research topic yarning then takes place in a semi- or unstructured interview style, with collaborative yarning taking the form of participants sharing concepts and ideas (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010). Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) emphasise difficulties in employing yarning as a research method because of a lack of literature available to researchers, and because of comparisons with narrative research established in Western research paradigms. Yarning is in itself a legitimate research method which reflects Indigenous ways of doing things (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010). Due to the diversity of yarning within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and communities (Dean, 2010), it was important to follow Karen’s lead in how the yarning session unfolded to attend to local protocol. Our social yarning occurred over a 45-min period to support the establishment of a connection and relationship. While we agreed collaboratively that a voice recorder would be used to document the yarn, it was not appropriate to capture the initial yarning focused on our relational connections. As we moved into the research topic yarn the voice recorder was activated, although this became a secondary form of data collection to the process of listening to each other and recording handwritten notes in a diary, which was then used throughout the collaborative yarning phase to check for shared understanding and to identify key ideas, terms and phrases. For example, in the collaborative yarning phase, Karen would ask for a notation to be circled or underlined for emphasis, and we drew lines and arrows between notations across pages to show how ideas were interconnected. The notations circled or underlined in the diary were then used as a basis for selecting extracts from the yarning session to include in this chapter. The chosen extracts are presented chronologically to show how the yarning unfolded and to highlight how particular ideas were returned to in a circular fashion. Karen’s yarn is privileged in the extracts chosen, with the voice recording used to ensure her yarn is presented verbatim. The yarning session with Karen enabled common understanding between the authors about key aspects of the Indigenous-led school transition program and issues associated with cultural security in mainstream educational contexts. Below, we draw on Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security to identify cultural entanglements and counter-narratives between local traditions, protocols and curricula approaches, and mainstream schooling expectations.

4 Yarning: Identifying Cultural Entanglements and Counter-Narratives The impetus for the Indigenous-led transition to school program stemmed from Karen’s previous work in Indigenous community-controlled Kindergartens. Karen identified that the specific needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

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differed from what was offered in mainstream services and this informed the approach to the Indigenous-led school transition program. Primarily, the program aimed to create an environment for children that is calming, and not chaotic. As Karen explained: Social-emotional wellbeing and resilience was the main factor of our curriculum. To make our children safe and secure, so then they weren’t in ‘flight or fight’ mode. This way, their brains could ‘settle down’ and their receptors could open to start connecting for their learning. ‘No shame’ is another concept in the program so that we are responsive to the particular family circumstances for the child and can support where needed so the parents aren’t reluctant to send the child. Also, that the program is culturally secure. When I say that, even in an urban environment, I mean the use of lingo such as gammin (joking, muck around, tease) and deadly (awesome, great) and other common words used across many mobs. Using those sorts of words creates a place of safety, leading to security for children.

A strong identity, the foundation for social–emotional well-being, featured strongly in further yarning related to laying foundations for security platforms: When we are talking about children aged 3–5 years, it is very important for those elements to be present because if we don’t create those where they are able to learn and be engaged, prior to them transitioning to big school, which is not necessarily going to be culturally secure as the environment we’ve created for them, it lays the foundations of a platform for them that takes them on that learning journey. If their identity is supported and safe, to be who they are culturally, then they are not trying to figure out where they fit in this world. If we don’t teach our children our way first, when we transition them into the mainstream setting, we haven’t given them the tools that they need. And their families, because of transgenerational impacts from education, society, child protection, Stolen Generations – all of these impact families and they may not necessarily have the skills to support children either. When families are not able to support fully, our inroads are made with the children around laying the security platforms, which is then what lays their learning foundations as they go to school. I am a firm believer that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children need two years of quality, culturally safe Kindergarten that fosters their identity and learning. Our children are strong in identity because they live culture at home every day. Culture is the way you talk, where you belong, extended family, cultural practices … unfortunately in mainstream education our children don’t have access to culture. Often, mainstream education won’t accept children’s birthplace responsibility, such as checking on a sibling, sharing food … birthplace responsibility is part of their identity. It’s more than a Western concept of a big brother or sister. It comes with true responsibility and that responsibility is linked with social-emotional wellbeing. It’s not taken into account in schools. They don’t understand the yearning and need our children have to check-in with siblings, cousins, family.

Above, Karen linked concepts of safety and security to children’s social–emotional well-being, including the use of language. Language is a key cultural marker that affirms identity, belonging and resilience for young children (McLeod & McCormack, 2015). Karen’s statement that culture is the way you talk highlights that language and identity cannot be separated. Language is an expression of cultural reality and provides children access to spaces in which they can use their language freely to express their interests and needs, and to connect socially with others. The use of specific forms of language (i.e. humour, lingo) as intentional teaching points to the ways principles of education practice employed in the school transition program reflected Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogy so that cultural safety for Indigenous children was further supported (Martin, 1999). In the program, intentional teaching occurred within a cultural framework that disrupted notions of official

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curriculum (Western curriculum). While the use of Aboriginal lingo in a mainstream space was reportedly challenging for white educators and became a cultural entanglement in relation to understanding the unique uses of language across cultures, as a form of intentional teaching, the practice was responsive to the knowledge and skills of children and reflective of their home environment. In this sense, intentional teaching occurred within a cultural context, with emphasis on the teaching–learning engagement between the children and Karen, rather than the prescribed curriculum framework (Martin, 2007). Language became an intentional pedagogical tool that supported innate cultural attributes … my use of lingo was intentional to provide language security. In colonising contexts including Australia, English is embedded within power relations tied to colonialism and the denial of Indigenous rights. While teachers may develop sensitivities to children’s bilingual or multilingual capabilities, this usually occurs within a prevailing Western developmental framework. While the maintenance of first languages is not discouraged, first languages are often assumed to be ‘an impediment to success’ rather than a resource (Bernhard & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2010, p. 27). In this sense, there is resistance to view children as emerging bilinguals who develop great capacity to decode, use and analyse multiple languages. As Bernhard and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2010) report, many educators indicate attitudinal support for first language maintenance, but may not take-up practical opportunities to encourage home language use in daily classroom activities. Acknowledgement of norms of child-rearing including birthplace responsibility showed respect for how Indigenous families ‘go about their business of raising their young’ (Martin, 1999, p. 6). Beyond respect for a familial practice, opportunities for children to demonstrate familiar cultural practices in educational contexts matter (Arthur et al., 2015). As Karen described … the yearning and need our children have to check-in with siblings, cousins, family. Children have a right to see themselves reflected in the daily curriculum. This supports cultural safety by promoting a sense of belonging in educational contexts and affirms identity, culture and related familial practices that fit into the schema of families (Martin, 1999). During the yarning session, Karen referred to a need to counter deficit narratives around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s capabilities and adaptation to school, with particular reference to the responsibilities of the receiving mainstream schools. If we are ever going to change the narrative of our children, we need to look at them having quality, culturally secure early education experiences. Not every child is going to be able to have access to an Indigenous community-controlled program, so mainstream services need to be skilled up on how to support and be responsive to a child’s cultural identity to move up toward cultural security. That is currently not on their agendas. It’s not there. Mainstream services need to understand it’s a tri-partisan relationship that includes community – when I say community it may not necessarily be the parents or Elders who give the service what they need because of their own trauma, commitments in their own community – it may be an Indigenous community-controlled service provider that has Aboriginal workers with skills and expertise that can be that conduit between culture and Westernised ways of learning. This is really important in the mainstream.

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A key issue in changing the narrative was attributed to the attitudes and approaches employed by white teachers, as emphasised in the following dialogue: Too often white teachers see themselves as the ‘expert’. We need white teachers to sit down and come into the circle, become humble and listen. Listen with your ears and do not make judgements because you’ve come in with a set of judgements and assumptions about what our black children need. White teachers need to be open to culture. Teachers need to find personal relevance for this – beyond what the curriculum document says. You can read all the ‘embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives’ documents, but what matters is if you have the practice principles to engage effectively. It’s not just putting a picture of a yarning circle on the door, or boomerangs or didgeridoos, having the Aboriginal flag – it’s having true understanding and respect and being willing to ask if you don’t know. There is no need for ignorance. Build a relationship – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are relationship-based people – come and ask. I’ve had to reflect on the educators’ understanding of embedding cultural practices. At times, it was as superficial as an acknowledgement to Traditional Owners and hanging the [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander] flags in the foyer. These are visible signs of culture and they do give a sense of connection for families. When families walk in, these are starting points, buy-in, but if you then get approached and dealt with in a Westernised way, those embedding practices won’t make a difference.

Here, reference to embedding cultural practices highlighted attempts at cultural safety in relation to visible signs of culture installed in mainstream classrooms. For example, Karen referred to … an acknowledgement to Traditional Owners, dot paintings and hanging the [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander] flags in the foyer. As such practices and imagery support a sense of connection for families, they are representative of ways mainstream classrooms can promote cultural safety, even though these practices are not compulsory. However, cultural security is not guaranteed as an extension of such practices, as explained by Karen in relation to embedding practices that make little difference when interactional patterns with families occur only within Western frameworks. An example of this outcome is seen in Miller’s (2015) study of interactional patterns in consultations between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous people. Data showed that colonial discourses including a subjugated positioning of Indigenous people were reproduced in interactional patterns when the educators sought access to cultural information and invited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be involved with the childcare centre. A Western-only approach in interactional patterns resulted in a lack of reciprocity and reduced potential for sustained partnerships between the non-Indigenous educators and Indigenous people and organisations (Miller, 2015). In Karen’s yarn, mainstream transition processes were also identified as a barrier to cultural security: When we get to transition to school, the school also has to take responsibility for accepting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their diversity. What is it that those children and families need? For transition, current legislation lets us down. With the transition statements, if the families don’t give consent, the transition statements from the early childhood service do not reach the school and the Preparatory classroom teacher. Essentially, there needs to be a face-to-face interview with the child and family so that their home environment and experiences can be understood because if you read the transition statement – well, they are all written in the deficit. They don’t highlight where our children have moved

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from one set of skills to the next. So, it sends them off to school in a deficit framed way from the start. We need Preparatory teachers to look at children as individuals, beyond the national curriculum. What is the child walking in to? You have a deficit transition statement and then you could have a white teacher with their own assumptions and biases, so how is that child welcomed? How can that be a culturally secure environment when they already have a label placed on them? If we are going to get positive transitions and outcomes, we need good work in quality early childhood programs that focuses on their resilience building, layered in a cultural framework. As children transition, they may have their ups and downs, but their cultural baseline remains strong. If the transitioning environment is prepared for them there will be different, more positive outcomes.

A cultural entanglement identified in the comments above relates to transition statements—a prescribed document prepared by Kindergarten teachers as children near transition to school. Transition statements present a summary of children’s development and learning during the Kindergarten year. It is intended that the statement be completed in collaboration with children, families and support personnel. Development and learning in mainstream educational contexts are viewed through prevailing Western constructions—the consequences of which Karen identified in the comment … because if you read the transition statement – well, they are all written in the deficit. In this sense, the transition statement reproduces the colonial portrayal of difference as ‘deficit’ or ‘in need of fixing’ (Coté, 2009), with the accompanying label having the potential to disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as they transition to school. Dockett et al. (2006) confirm that ‘any system seeking to assess children’s preparedness for school must recognise the strengths and capabilities of young Aboriginal [and Torres Strait Islander] children’ (p. 143). While the aim of transition statements is to report on children’s progress across the Kindergarten year, such forms of institutional documentation can conceal marginalisation and racism, thus hindering cultural security (Coffin, 2007). When discussing challenges to implement the Indigenous-led school transition program, a need to ‘educate the educators’ was also identified as a hindrance to program implementation, along with a need to justify culturally informed pedagogies. In this instance, the school transition program was implemented within a mainstream setting led by an Aboriginal director of the service. During the program facilitated by Karen, the director moved on to other employment: When offered in a mainstream program, the challenge of an Indigenous-led school transition program is to educate the staff. There is no issue for mainstream children – it is good for them to be part of and have a sense of belonging in the program as well. It was a constant educating of the educators as to why particular approaches and pedagogies were used. For example, they couldn’t understand intentional teaching that was responsive to cultural considerations. The sharing of food at meal times is a cultural consideration but for mainstream educators that was a “no” because of the regulations, but for our children that is normal – you share food with others. The older children will make sure the younger children eat first. Also, the mainstream educators were challenged by what they would call “slang” – what we call lingo. When we used Blackfella talk (gammin, deadly), the educators couldn’t grasp why we would be encouraging children to use lingo. This is true language for our children. Using ‘silly talk’ for example is a cultural link for our children. Using humour. This is normal everyday practice and engagement. You intentionally embed these things in your curriculum because it lays the foundations for security. When children hear this, they think “I know how to communicate in this space”, “I’m not going to be in trouble”, “I’m not on

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M. G. Miller et al. eggshells with what words I can use and what I can’t use”. The educators wanted to use language in superficial ways related to the official curriculum, like with counting. What they considered intentional came from the official curriculum, rather than the children’s identity and experiences. There was no cultural context to their intentional teaching. Whereas my use of lingo was intentional to provide language security. The educators were not able to connect what the child bought to the classroom and the curriculum.

Here, Karen returns to earlier points about a need for mainstream educators to recognise the cultural practices of children and families attending the service. Reference to cultural practices around food, sibling responsibilities and language point to cultural entanglements with mainstream program regulations, the implementation of official curriculum and recognition of the validity of different cultural practices. Discontinuity between familial traditions and normalised practices in educational settings is an example of what Ahmed (2012) refers to as ‘institutional trouble’ (p. 27). Disruptions to dominant practices and values in educational contexts are often constructed as forms of institutional ‘trouble’ because they challenge prevalent colonial views that disregard new ideas and pedagogies for professional practice that are often more inclusive and representative of local (e.g. Indigenous) knowledge. To cease being ‘trouble’, familial practices such as shar[ing] food with others, demonstrating birthplace responsibility and using Blackfella talk would need to be constructed as part of routine practices, and upheld by diverse yet equally valid interpretations of national or school/centre-based regulations. In concluding her yarn, Karen emphasised critical factors for cultural security, drawing attention to relationships, protocols and the sharing of responsibility to create culturally secure transitional platforms. A critical factor for cultural security is relationships with significant people to get the outcomes for what you are trying to achieve. If those outcomes are with your Elders, then that’s where you start, but if your Elders aren’t able to provide that then there might be a community-controlled provider that can be the conduit for what you need. To be respectful of protocol, engage with the Elders. Although, at times, when you need information to achieve cultural security for children, it may be necessary to also access people who have a level of education and awareness and can make linkages back to your particular field. It is a holistic approach to create culturally secure environments. We need Indigenous support services to go into and support mainstream education. From the other way too, mainstream services don’t always seek out these relationships, but this is the hard work of cultural security. What is the relationship and the collaboration that needs to happen for culturally secure outcomes for children? Sharing skill sets, sharing responsibility. These are culturally secure transitional platforms.

In sum, the yarning data showed that cultural entanglements occurred most often in relation to Coffin’s (2007) elements of cultural awareness, brokerage and cultural safety. A reported lack of cultural awareness in mainstream education centred around responding appropriately to children’s identity and language, implementing culturally relevant curricula, taking responsibility to seek relationships and support from Indigenous community-controlled services or community members, and individual teachers positioning themselves as ‘experts’, with limited awareness of their own assumptions and biases and how these impact teaching practice. These issues align with ongoing concerns outlined earlier in this chapter related to experiences of

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racism in education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families (Paradies, 2017; Price, 2012a), a lack of cultural awareness among a majority white, monolingual teaching service (Grace & Trudgett, 2012; Rose, 2012), and inconsistent approaches to centralising Indigenous perspectives and knowledge in curriculum (Price, 2012b; Rose, 2012). While cultural awareness alone does not lead to cultural security (Coffin, 2007), it is critical for teachers to be self-reflexive about their own race and positioning in society, and to examine related underlying values, beliefs and assumptions that inform their pedagogy (Martin, 2007). Also, for mainstream education settings to effect change by way of careful consideration around what diversity might look like as routine institutional practice, beyond more simplistic technical elements of practice only (i.e. the ‘how to’).

5 From Cultural Safety to Cultural Security The Indigenous-led school transition program is an example of how cultural safety (Coffin, 2007) is afforded to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children through culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy. In line with elements of successful school transition programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children outlined by Dockett, Mason, and Perry (2006), the program under focus provided access to mainstream curricula within a cultural framework that supported language; opportunities to express and maintain identity; and respect for Aboriginal families, historical factors that impact their individual circumstances, and the strengths they embody. Strength in identity, cultural practices and language affords a counter-narrative to negative stereotypes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children hear at school, in the community or in the media. For example, stereotypes linked with low expectations of learning capability, non-compliance and non-attendance can be projected at a whole school and/or individual classroom level and impact how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children experience education and construct their sense-of-self as learners (Price, 2012a). While this narrative is difficult to change, cultural safety provides a protective factor in terms of building children’s resilience. Resilience is a critical factor in how all children negotiate the transition to school. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who enter mainstream schooling contexts that do not guarantee cultural security, resilience is about ‘being culturally strong and able to participate in two worlds’ (Armstrong et al., 2012). As emphasised in Karen’s yarn … If we are going to get positive transitions and outcomes, we need good work in quality early childhood programs that focuses on their resilience building, layered in a cultural framework. As children transition, they may have their ups and downs but their cultural baseline remains strong. In a review of data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC)— a study that follows two age groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as they grow—Armstrong et al. (2012) express frustration that positive elements captured in the LSIC data are not being reflected in the ‘rhetoric, policies, programs and approaches that are aimed at supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander chil-

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dren’s transition to formal learning’ (p. 5). In particular, the authors point to the ways protective factors (e.g. strength in culture, identity and language) are not reflected in current testing and checklists used to measure children’s school readiness. Using regression models to explore children’s readiness for school and social–emotional well-being, the authors identified that in addition to factors that usually influence these outcomes (e.g. age, health), LSIC data showed that identity and activities that support children’s pro-social behaviours played an important role. Specifically, children whose caregivers placed more importance on their Indigenous identity had fewer social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Further, greater participation in culturally relevant activities (e.g. oral storytelling, reading, games) was associated with higher levels of pro-social behaviours (Armstrong et al., 2012). Combined, these elements of well-being supported Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s resilience, identified in the review of the LSIC data as critical to successful transition to school. In the Indigenous-led school transition program under focus, social–emotional well-being and resilience provided the foundation for program design and delivery. As cultural security could not be guaranteed in the receiving mainstream schools for the participating children, it was critical that counter-narratives around strength in culture, identity and language were foundational to the school transition program to foster the children’s resilience. Cultural safety fostered in Indigenous-led school transition programs becomes the foundation for building cultural security in mainstream schools.

6 Conclusion In this chapter, Coffin’s (2007) model of cultural security provided the framework for examining core elements of an Indigenous-led school transition program to identify how cultural awareness, cultural safety and cultural security were both enabled and constrained in program design and delivery. Cultural entanglements related to cultural awareness and brokerage provide insights into ongoing concerns and areas that require attention for cultural security to be achieved in mainstream education. Of most importance is recognition that cultural security is the responsibility of mainstream education to meet the individual cultural and linguistic needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families as they transition to and move through formal education. This work does not occur in isolation from the knowledge, values and worldviews of Indigenous families and communities. It is through shared understanding, shared skill sets and shared responsibility that cultural security in mainstream classrooms becomes possible.

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Melinda G. Miller is Senior Lecturer in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. She publishes in the areas of cultural diversity, racism, whiteness and sustainability. Her doctoral research examined the ways whiteness and racism were reproduced in teachers’ work around embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula. She is a registered teacher and active contributor to reconciliation initiatives in the Australian early childhood education field. Karen Dawson-Sinclair is a Gubbi Gubbi woman from south-eastern Queensland, Australia. She has over 25 years’ experience working on the front line of early childhood education and the social services sector. Since 2016, she has been a Community Empowerment Project Office with Logan together, working with community to improve cultural security for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the early childhood education sector especially. Drawing upon both practical skills and knowledge of child development and the Harwood Institute Community Listening Framework, she exercises her passion for early childhood education by listening to community members and helping their aspirations for their children come to life. Areana Eivers is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology and a practising Clinical Psychologist. She researches in the field of social developmental psychology, in particular, the social/relational determinants, correlates and consequences of developmental processes across the lifespan. This includes study of the way individuals and groups develop because of, throughout, or in spite of their relationships, with a focus on social behaviour, peer relationships and friendships during early childhood. She has experience in family therapy and individual therapy with children, adolescents and adults, and has worked in both government and community settings including domestic violence counselling, sexual assault counselling, child and youth mental health and child and family community health. Karen Thorpe is Professor and Deputy Director—Research—at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland where she also leads the Childhood Development, Education and Care Research Group. Her research examines the effects of children’s early life experiences on social, learning and health trajectories across the lifespan. Her research focus is early care and education environments. Her recent work includes evaluations of parenting programs for the Australia Department of Social Services and the National Child and Youth Mental Health Strategy for the Department of Health. In Queensland, she is undertaking a study of the effects of early years policy on child outcomes across the last decade and studies of sleep–rest policy in ECEC. She has been named among Australia’s 100 Women of Influence for the impacts of her research on educational and family policy.

Chapter 6

A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices in Solomon Islands and Australia Yeshe Colliver and Libby Lee-Hammond Abstract The goal of education is often considered to be emancipation and empowerment. Yet, the capacity for education to emancipate and empower can be hindered when approaches and assumptions are not shared by all the participants in an education context. This is particularly true in contexts where one set of cultural assumptions and traditions have been forced onto another, such as in the process of colonisation. This chapter provides case studies of two contexts where colonisation has had an impact on the approaches to education: in an Indigenous community in Yamatji Country in Western Australia and another in Temotu Province in Solomon Islands. In both contexts, European-heritage approaches to learning have been forced onto Indigenous cultures with little understanding of, or cultural responsiveness to, the Indigenous communities themselves. These case studies are presented through the lens of Hedegaard’s (2009) model of perspectives, with the aim of illustrating why the approach used in one context has been achieved in a more culturally responsive manner than the other. Through adaptations to the model itself, this chapter seeks to explain how two educational approaches may be successful or unsuccessful in incorporating Indigenous traditions and knowledge. The descriptive power of the model also allows us to reconceptualise these existing tensions and reimagine more responsive future adaptations. We explore the utility of the adapted model for articulating the assumptions and approaches at play, and for providing potential ways forward. These ways forward facilitate a re-imagination of education as something more than mere preparation of children for workforce participation. We argue that the model proffers ways to provide equal respect for, and emphasis on, different cultures and traditions. It also provides ways to document and understand different cultures, with scope to learn from them in our endeavour to improve educational provision. In a world where the functionalist push to improve education is globalising and frequently silences or overlooks local knowledge, the authors contend that Y. Colliver (B) Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Lee-Hammond School of Education, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_6

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local communities should be central rather than peripheral to the curriculum. When this occurs, it is possible to reimagine ways in which pedagogy can emancipate and empower all members of the society.

1 Introduction Globally, Indigenous cultures have been usurped by western cultural practices. This colonisation has taken place over the span of centuries. Yet, many of the values and practices of these cultures have considerable wisdom to offer for western societies (e.g. Colliver, 2017a; Lee-Hammond, 2017). This wisdom is increasingly threatened by globalisation. For example, languages are becoming extinct at a rate faster than plants or animals (Amano et al., 2014), taking with them associated knowledge and concepts (Smith, 2012). It is timely, therefore, to document some of these practices and reflect on their utility for modern educational contexts. This chapter describes the utility and tensions of applying a cultural–historical framework—and one particular model of perspectives—for educational research in two Indigenous communities. Both of these communities have endured the imposition of a European educational approach, and the resultant fracturing of educational purposes, as the imported curriculum does not adequately represent the aspirations and traditions of the Indigenous culture (e.g. passing on knowledge about the land, equipping children with skills necessary for subsistence, etc.). The chapter begins with a description of aspects of the cultural–historical framework that are relevant to the analysis and implications of two case studies: Yamatji Country (Australia) and Temotu (Solomon Islands). It is within this framework that Indigenous Methodologies are presented, followed by a section that describes case study as a methodology, the methods used, and the data analysis resulting from the application of Hedegaard’s model. In the Findings section, data from the two case studies are presented to illustrate the utility of the model. In the Discussion, with reference to the shortcomings of a model based on European settings, we seek to describe its utility not only for analysis but also for imagining reconfigurations of cultural practices used in early educational contexts. The merits and disadvantages of each configuration have implications for the appropriate and responsive adaptation of curricula into varied contexts, and truly respecting and valuing existing Indigenous cultural knowledge and practices. In a globalising world, where European educational approaches and theoretical models are increasingly being applied to varied cultural contexts, it is imperative we critically evaluate how this is done and add to the growing body of knowledge about what is effective and culturally responsive education (Berryman, SooHoo, & Nevin, 2013).

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2 Cultural–Historical Framework Undergirding the Study Cultural–historical theory-guided multiple aspects of the studies described in this chapter. Developed by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) and his colleagues, the theory has been expanded upon by many scholars (Daniels, 2001), often to describe the learning of cultural practices in Indigenous contexts (e.g. Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz, & Correa-Chávez, 2015). This is because the theory acknowledges that the very meanings that individuals attribute to their daily life are derived from their participation in those cultural contexts (Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1979). In placing culture at the centre of all human activity, it is particularly suited to describing situations in which multiple different cultures intersect, such as in post-colonial Indigenous communities. The centrality of culture in the theory makes it amenable to cross-cultural comparisons, or any research which seeks to reduce researchers’ own cultural biases and assumptions as they endeavour to conduct authentic investigation of cultural phenomena. It is imperative that research is “internally consistent” (Carter & Little, 2007, p. 1319), meaning the theoretical framework chosen fits the ontology, epistemology, axiology and methodology (Grix, 2002). In this study, the cultural–historical axiology that cultural activity is only understood within its native context was consistent with the Indigenous Methodology protocol that all activity is observed with respect for the cultural and ecological context in which it exists. To do so, cultural assumptions and values from outside that cultural context ideally should not be applied. We acknowledge the limitations of our work as non-Indigenous researchers working in two separate Indigenous communities; There are aspects of “insider” perspectives that are inaccessible to us as “outsiders” (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009), such as certain concepts only understood in the mother tongue. Central to the axiology of Indigenous Methodologies, therefore, is to always remain self-reflective and vigilant for assumptions that will inevitably have been applied by us as “outsider” researchers. We explore some of the protocols that assist in this orientation.

2.1 Indigenous Methodologies Indigenous methodologies refer to a variety of methods that are suitable to investigate an Indigenous context (Battiste, 2017; Botha, 2011; Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008; Smith, 2012) and are underpinned by certain protocols. The protocols include the centrality of Traditional Owners and Elders, the respect that must be foregrounded by “outsider” researcher visitors, the necessity of permission to enter the community, and an emphasis on the local and contextual in understanding a community’s aspirations and challenges. Indigenous methodologies challenge the Western scientific knowledge paradigm and are closely aligned with critical pedagogies (Kincheloe, 2007; Yellow Bird, 2005). The discourses of Indigenous methods are empowering of local knowledge

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custodians (i.e. Elders) and deconstruct the role of the researcher in research (Berryman et al., 2013). In this way, the goals of research utilising Indigenous Methodologies are emancipatory (Freire, 1972) and are aligned with the overarching values of education, as both seek to enlighten and empower. Participants in Indigenous research have historically been placed at the margins and have been subjugated to research rather than been afforded the role of decisionmakers and designers in that research (Colbung, Glover, Rau, & Ritchie, 2007; Smith, 2012). Yet, post- and de-colonised research seeks to oppose the subject–object relationships typical of the scientific positivist tradition (Denzin, Lincoln & Smith, 2008). That is, rather than knowledge existing in some objective way separated from its interpretation, as in positivist epistemology (Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006), Indigenous Methodologies take local understandings as knowledge itself (Berryman et al., 2013). This empowers the Indigenous community members to take part in the analysis and interpretation of the research, deconstructing the passive role expected within colonising research and the positivistic frameworks. Non-Indigenous researchers are learning how to work alongside communities using methods designed for and by those communities rather than coming to research as “experts” (Smith, 2012; Swadener & Mutua, 2008). For example, rather than using formal interviews, as is usually the case in educational research, a more informal approach known as yarning is used. In Australia, a yarn is a casual conversation, it may be held under a tree or—adapting to the Solomon Islands context—within the village marketplace. It is not conducted in the traditional, linear question–answer format. It is circuitous, drawing the researcher into a story that the participant wants to tell. Such an approach disrupts the interviewer–interviewee power imbalance of many formalised interview formats and enables a dialogue that flows wherever the participant wishes. Sometimes the researcher will not obtain answers to their questions. They must accept that the participant is choosing what to disclose; silence on a topic is a non-verbal signal that the question is not appropriate, often for cultural reasons to which the researcher is not privy. It is not the place of the researcher to “probe” in this instance, but to accept that there will be no answer to the question and respecting the participant’s choice to refrain. Not only the inherent cultural integrity of the research participant, but also the values underpinning the research are recognised. It is a central difference between culturally responsive and unresponsive research. Respect is crucial in this process and intertwines epistemologically with cultural–historical research because it takes culture as the basis of human activity (Hedegaard, 2008; Vygotksy, 1987). Other similarities between cultural–historical research and the protocols of Indigenous Methodologies have been elaborated elsewhere (Lee-Hammond & Colliver, 2017).

2.2 Case Study The cultural–historical imperative to use a “wholeness approach” to researching communities (Fleer, 2008, p. 103; Hedegaard, 2008, p. 11; Winther-Lindqvist, 2012,

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p. 119) implies that a case of something—while unique and a product of a complex web of different influences—holds “all the basic characteristics of the whole” (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 37). Likewise, case study methodology takes on case of something as representative of the whole (Yin, 2003). While there exist constant tensions between generalisations and theoretical consistency, culturally responsive methodologies do not provide meaning about one case to override or overpower others (Berryman et al., 2013), but rather seek to provide rich, “thick” description (Geertz, 1973, p. 5) from which greater understandings can arise. The interpretivist epistemology that Vygotsky’s own research operated within takes any sincere expression of a perspective as truth, consistent with Indigenous Methodologies. Kaplan (1964) defines methodology as “the study—the description, the explanation, and the justification—of methods, and not the methods themselves” (cited in Carter & Little, 2007, p. 1318). The case study methodology used the methods of participant observation and field note-taking, artefact analysis, videoing, photography and informant interviews (i.e. “yarning” as described earlier).

2.3 Researcher Reflexivity The participant observation employed within the case studies observed the protocols (described above) of respectful entry into, and permission from, the community itself. Cultural assumptions were “bracketed” as much as possible to strengthen the reliability and validity of the study as a whole (Cousin, 2010, p. 41). For example, the high esteem that our officialised entry through respected organisations afforded us into Solomon Islands would have made it easy for the authors to conclude that our assumptions were correct, even when they were informed by subconscious bias. The historical legacy of colonisation brought an assumption in Temotu society that our cultural norms were in some ways superior because we come from developed countries and have educated backgrounds. Yet, the cultural–historical theoretical framework suggested that the cultural contexts in which activities occur are the only values by which they can be judged (i.e. not by our own); one cultural context is not superior to another. Our grounding in Indigenous Methodologies and protocols also created an imperative to resist the hegemonic power that comes with developed world contexts (Swadener & Mutua, 2008). Our research was activity also, and this needed to be accounted for, just as Hedegaard’s (2009) model accounted for the activity we researched. In previous work (Lee-Hammond & Colliver, 2017), we thus visualised our relationship (to the human activity we were analysing) within Hedegaard’s (2009) model. In this chapter, we wish to elaborate the utility of her model for describing contexts where multiple cultures exist within one society and where the goals of education may serve one culture more than another.

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2.4 Data Analysis All cultural–historical research holds human activity as the basic unit of analysis (Matusov, 2007; Wertsch, 1995). However, rather than an individual approach, cultural–historical research focuses on social practices (Arievitch, 2003), or “socially assembled situations”, within which individual perspectives might be held (Stetsenko, 1999, p. 238). This approach intertwined with the researchers’ desire to understand human activity not as individual behaviour but as communities in their own cultural niche: in the context of the community. Similar to Rogoff’s (1995) more widely known three-planed framework in which activity occurs, Hedegaard’s (2008, 2009) model provides a way to analyse activity at the individual, institutional and societal levels (see Fig. 1) and has provided insight about other cultural activity in previous work (e.g. Colliver, 2016, 2017b). Because cultural–historical research seeks to provide a holistic analysis (Chaiklin, 2012), levels are not viewed as separate (Matusov, 2007). Rather, a particular level of analysis (e.g. individual, institutional, cultural) is the focus of the analysis, which is conducted with the remaining levels as the context. Focusing on one level with others in the background is a holistic analysis that seeks to provide an understanding of a phenomenon within that cultural group, fitting neatly with the protocols of Indigenous Methodologies described earlier, such as deference to Elders and senFig. 1 Hedegaard’s (2009) model of perspectives (Reproduced with the author’s permission)

6 A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally Responsive … Table 1 Realisation of activities and motives from different perspectives (Hedegaard, 2008, p. 17)

Level

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Activity

Motive

Societal

Traditions

Conditions

Institutional

Practices

Values

sitivity to the local and contextual (Botha, 2011). Cultural–historical researchers thus put aside their own value judgements and assumptions about a culture rather than analysing cultural phenomena from the prejudices of their own “outsider” culture. This can be challenging given the subconscious nature of assumptions but can also be highly productive in making conceptual breakthroughs in understanding data (e.g. Colliver, 2017b). Human activity is the unit of analysis in cultural–historical research, and the only means of discovering our true intentions (motives); We can only know why something has been done if we examine how (Matusov, 2007). That is, motive explains a phenomenon completely, but can only be known by examining activity itself. Hedegaard (2008) expanded on this focus on activity and motive by stating that they are realised differently at different levels (see Table 1). For example, activities at the societal level are realised as “traditions” (p. 17) and motives as “conditions” (p. 17). Other work has used a societal (e.g. Lee-Hammond & Colliver, 2017) and institutional level (e.g. Colliver, 2016) analysis, but because the current chapter considers different cultural influences on one society at a time (e.g. Temotu or Yamatji society), we will analyse each level while maintaining the others “in the background”, as has been recommended (Matusov, 2007, p. 324). Hedegaard’s model provides a format for deductive analysis which allows the researcher to move past their own assumptions by circumnavigating their own assumptions (Colliver, 2017b). Data from the current study were thus analysed deductively according to the traditions and conditions demonstrated, providing a robust platform from which to derive meaning specific to the context. Focusing on one level while maintaining others in the background fitted well with case study methodology.

2.5 Applying Hedegaard’s Model to Indigenous Contexts While it has been productive elsewhere, we found it necessary to adapt Hedegaard’s model to describe the contexts presented in this chapter. Hedegaard’s original model offered a tangible and rich starting point for analysis; however, it became apparent that the model required changes to accommodate the non-European cultures that coexisted within the societies described here. Rogoff and her colleagues have detailed how in many traditional communities, home and work life tend to be much more integrated than in (post-) industrialised ones (e.g. Alcaláa, Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz, Coppens, & Dexter, 2014; Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff, Mistry, Göncü, & Mosier, 1993; Rogoff et al., 2006). For example, rather than leaving the home to attend school, where they would learn the skills required to participate in the work-

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force, in many Indigenous communities, children “pitch in” with adult agrarian, hunter-gatherer or pastoral work (Rogoff, 2014). Many ethnographic studies (e.g. Coppens, Alcalá, Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, 2014; Diamond, 2012; Lancy, 1996; Mead, 1930/1962, 1956) have detailed how children in Indigenous communities around the world learn participate in adult work not through institutionalised learning (such as schools or early childhood centres), but through “legitimate peripheral participation” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) beginning with observation and increasingly taking on more responsibility and autonomy. Diamond (2012) affirms the contrast of approaches: In modern state societies, there is formal education… in which specially trained instructors teach children material set by school boards… But education in small-scale societies is not a separate activity. Instead, children learn in the course of accompanying their parents and other adults…. (p. 205).

That the human species has evolved in contexts where learning has been through observation and participation goes some way in explaining why school-based formal learning may have little meaning for Indigenous children (Colliver, 2017c). Thus, Hedegaard’s (2009) model may best be adapted to Indigenous contexts by accounting for the lack of school institutions, and the inseparability of home and work practices. It is within the nexus between home and work that children learn to become fully participating members of adult society, not outside of them (Rogoff et al., 2015), as visualised in Fig. 2. As the chapter will later elaborate, the differences visualised in Fig. 2 Adaptation of Hedegaard’s model to account for traditional learning

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this model may be productive for understanding the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of different approaches to education in Indigenous contexts (Temotu and Yamatji). As is illustrated by the adaptation of a European model to understand two unique Indigenous contexts, this chapter describes ways in which European-heritage systems require adaptation to fit in the diverse contexts that globalisation threatens to homogenise.

3 Findings and Discussion The data presented here were part of a study evaluating the progress of village-based kindergartens supported by World Vision International and preschool-to-school transition for Australian Aboriginal children supported by the Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia. In line with the protocols of Indigenous Methodologies, consultation with Traditional Owners and/or community Elders was conducted. Permission to enter and participate in the communities was obtained in both locations. This facilitated a more holistic approach to data collection. In order to provide a “thick” description of the two case studies, it is important to begin with background information on the socio-historical context (Geertz, 1973). This section begins by describing a typical education context (a year one classroom) and some vignettes of classes in Yamatji country, followed by a description of the context and learning experiences of children in Temotu.

3.1 Yamatji Country, Australia The first site is located in a rural town in Western Australia. The land is fertile with trees and flowering plants as well as bush medicine available in the region. There are beaches and numerous waterholes that provide places of rest and refreshment as well as holding deep spiritual significance for the various language groups comprising the Yamatji peoples. The relatively recent (just over 200 years) British colonisation of Australia has meant that rapid changes in lifestyle have occurred for Indigenous communities. Use of traditional languages and cultural practices were forbidden during colonisation, meaning much of this knowledge has been lost or diluted. A rich aspect of Australian Indigenous culture is the strong oral tradition of passing on of stories from one generation to the next. With the loss of traditional languages and the imposition of a foreign education system, some of these traditions have suffered irrevocably (Atkinson, 2002). Education systems have not systematically embraced Indigenous cultural knowledge in the curriculum. Cultural observances are reserved to special days and weeks of the year when Australian Indigenous culture is celebrated nationally. For the remainder of the year, it is the usual case that Australian Indigenous culture and history are not foregrounded in mainstream education.

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Some very important aspects of Australian Indigenous culture and Lore have been maintained and are still practiced today by Indigenous Australians. However, in the Yamatji context described in this case study, these cultural practices were not typically integrated into the school curriculum. Rather, it might appear when one enters a classroom that the site is like many other classrooms around the country. There are child-sized desks and chairs and posters of the alphabet and numbers on the wall. The teacher has a whiteboard with spelling words written in a list and the children are working on paper and pencil tasks. There is one poster providing a list of words in Aboriginal English alongside the Standard Australian English, but otherwise the classroom remains devoid of cultural knowledge and practices. The following example describes a 6-year-old Yamatji boy’s engagement with an activity typical of the context: The class was engaged in ‘literacy rotations’ and most of the children were working in small groups at desks. [Frank],1 however, was relegated to the floor and provided with a picture of a violet and a violin (which were on A4 cards that also included the letter V in capital and lower case). Along with these cards a he was provided a white pegboard and coloured buttons. He was instructed to ‘make the letter V with the buttons’ … He was then left alone to complete this task …He looked at the pictures and began to pick up some pegs and started to place them into the holes in the board. It was very clear he was not following any schema of the shape of the letter V for this task but he was putting pegs carefully into empty holes. His actions were deliberate and his focus was strong… I recalled that the teacher had shown him the pictures but had not pointed out the shape of the letter or where one might begin to recreate it, where to go next, the direction of the lines etc. I could see [Frank] was trying to do something but he had no clear idea about what was required. … Living in a rural Aboriginal community, he was almost certain not to have seen a violet and had most likely not seen a violin. (Field Notes, 2007, pp. 1–2)

In this example, it was apparent that Frank’s funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992a) were not being utilised to accommodate the new information about the shape of a letter. In Hedegaard’s terms, the European-heritage educational tradition of giving students tasks (e.g. create the letter V) which had no obvious connection to the physical context (i.e. there were no violins or violets in the room, nor would Frank be likely to have a practical understanding of what they were) belonged to a culture that was foreign to the home practices of Frank’s family and community. Even if Frank’s home cultural practices were no longer the traditional subsistence activities such as hunting and foraging, the very act of participating in exercises “out of context of target endeavours, with little chance to discern how steps fit overall process” (Rogoff et al., 2006, p. 500) is likely to have been foreign to him because activities have traditionally contributed directly to endeavours shared by the community. In contrast, European-heritage educational traditions of adults instructing children to engage in exercises with no contextualised purpose reveal the conditions wherein children are assessed on how well they can reproduce abstract knowledge (e.g. the shape of a V; see Table 2).

1 Pseudonyms

are used to protect the identity of participants.

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Table 2 Results from deductive analysis of Yamatji classroom using Hedegaard’s (2009) model Culture

Tradition

Condition

European-heritage Australian

Adults instruct children to engage in exercises whose purpose is out of context

Exercises are undertaken to assess how well children can reproduce abstract knowledge

Authority figures (e.g. teachers) requiring children to reproduce out-of-context knowledge

Adults control when children speak. Adults evaluate the response

Children are treated as “yet to be formed” adults

Power resides with the teacher

Visiting friends and family in the neighbourhood

Living in smaller communities, with relatives closer by

Kinship systems

Extended family is large and children have multiple people with whom they share parent/child relationships. Children freely move and live between households

Children are equal and valued members of the community

Power is shared. Children are given respect and responsibilities in line with their ability to participate in work practices

Yamatji

A second tradition that is evident in the vignette is adults asking known-answer questions. In many Indigenous cultures, “adults do not ask children known-answer questions” because the purpose of a question is to ascertain information one does not already have (Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1983, p. 688). Yet in European-heritage classrooms, the condition for this tradition is “switchboard participant structure” (Phillips, 1983, cited in Rogoff et al., 2006, p. 500) where adults control when and how children speak, for the purposes of assessing their abilities (see second row in Table 2). In European-heritage traditions, “discussions with authority figures, answering known-answer questions, analysing word problems on the basis of counterfactual premises, … responding quickly or pondering ideas before volunteering their contributions, and many other approaches … are sometimes treated as characteristics of individuals” (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003, p. 22). This can lead to the condition of individual Indigenous children being assessed as if their familiarity and comfort with these traditions is equal to their Europeanheritage counterparts. This disconnection is a result of the historical European condition of home and school practices being separated and the “terra nullius2 thinking” 2 Terra

Nullius (Latin) means “land belonging to no-one”, invoked by Britain to claim sovereignty over Australia, denying the sovereignty of Australian Indigenous peoples. This thinking has come to inhabit the mindset of non-Aboriginal Australia (especially government and its agencies like

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that has permeated Australian education (Butler, 2000). It has been noted that the most limiting condition to Indigenous children’s educational success is the Eurocentric nature of the approach itself (Andersen, 2011). As Hedegaard’s model ties traditions to a culture, one way to conceptualise the misalignment between learning traditions is to visualise Indigenous home practices as not connected to those of school (see Fig. 3). While it remains true that traditional Indigenous home and work practices have been excluded from mainstream educational approaches, this does not mean that greater alignment between home and school practices cannot be fostered. For example, one researcher, in the spirit of Indigenous research (having established a respectful relationship with Frank), made a suggestion to view the task in terms of cultural traditions. Viewing the lack of meaning for Frank in terms of Hedegaard’s model, the researcher attempted to link the task to his home practices. In a continuation of the previous field note, the researcher… … decided to tell [Frank] a story. I used the street where he lived in the community as the setting. Using words and a drawing, I drew a quick sketch of the street and some of the houses and other buildings on both sides of the road. I explained that if he imagined he was at home and wanted to play with his friend Sam he might start at his gate and cross the road to go to a community building where Sam might be playing. To get there he would walk ‘this way’ and I drew a diagonal line from his house (the top left of the V ) to the building (the vertex of the V ). Once he arrived at the building, Sam wasn’t there, so he decided to cross back over the road and go to Sam’s house (from the vertex to the top right of the V ). (Field Notes, 2007, p. 2)

Anthropomorphising knowledge in the form of a story (or myth) has been shown to be an Indigenous tradition, a way of committing to memory a huge pool of knowledge about different species from the local environment (Kelly, 2015). Framing the abstract knowledge of a letter shape in terms of his existing tradition of visiting neighbours (see Table 2) inspired Frank to tell the story to other children in his class who were also from the same community. In other words, he shared the bridge between the abstract knowledge of the European-heritage school curriculum with concrete knowledge derived from his home practices. This sharing in turn inspired a project resulting in the creation of an alphabet book using photos from the community. The book represented each letter of the alphabet with photos of objects and people well known in the community (e.g. the local figure, “Uncle Harry” was photographed for the H card, “Nana” for the letter N). The teacher subsequently reported being “amazed” at the increase in children’s engagement with the activities associated with learning letters (Field Notes, 2007, p. 3). To phrase this adaptation in Hedegaard’s terms, making the school practices reflect children’s home culture resulted in the conditions of their engagement in school also changing. But for the researcher to be culturally responsive, she needed to examine the differences in traditions in the classroom and Frank’s home culture. If classroom practices had been adapted to value Frank’s home traditions enough times that it schools) as a means for establishing control and minimising the value of Australian Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being.

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Fig. 3 Contexts with differing home and school cultural traditions

became a tradition of that educational approach, the impacts on the conditions for Indigenous students would have presumably become permanent also. Such impacts require the development of teacher–community relationships. Much has been written about this in Indigenous education; however, it is rarely applied and a divide occurs at the school gate. We propose that this has much to do with institutionalised racism, a deficit view of Aboriginal peoples and a “terra nullius mindset” whereby educators adopt the position of “expert” and do not value the important role of families, cultures or communities in Aboriginal children’s learning.

3.2 On Country Learning Before describing the next vignette, it is pertinent to give a brief account of On Country learning (Lee-Hammond & Jackson-Barrett, 2013) as a tradition that connects to children’s home cultures in multiple ways. It consists of group visits to designated places On Country on a weekly or fortnightly basis. The sites are chosen by the Traditional Owners of the community, so that they can teach and nurture children with the skills, knowledge and values from that Country. Children are active participants in the experiences and are encouraged to explore and experiment in collaboration with their peers, teachers and Traditional Owners.

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Through this participation, the children adopt an active role in constructing meaning from their experiences, and thus develop a deep understanding of the curriculum content. On Country Learning enables children to make connections with curriculum areas such as languages, history, literacy, numeracy, science, the arts, technologies, health and physical education. Teachers are supported to work alongside the children to connect the experiences on Country with the school curriculum and to plan further investigation of wondering questions, observations, new knowledge and skills that germinate from the visits on Country. On Country Learning provides children with educational experiences that are hands-on and relevant to their lives and their relationship to Country. In contrast to the focus on abstract concepts and theories that European education primarily has (Rogoff et al., 2006), this type of learning is not only grounded in the existing natural and cultural context. It also attributes great value to the traditions and funds of knowledge that children inherit as members of Indigenous communities (Moll et al., 1992a, 1992b). That is, children’s existing knowledge and experience from home life are utilised by teachers and synthesised with the curriculum. The foregrounding of Indigenous cultural traditions in these approaches to education represent one established way to bridge differences in European-heritage and Indigenous cultural traditions. The following vignette, recorded on Yamatji Country (see Fig. 4), illustrates how the presence of an Elder, the curriculum being determined by Country, activity being contextualised, and children being able to contribute to a concrete goal transformed these children’s engagement in learning. On an afternoon field trip, the group of six children aged between 4 and 8 years were transported to

Fig. 4 Yamatji boy voluntarily demonstrates cultural knowledge

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a location around 15 kilometres from the remote community school to a site where a particular tree grows. The children were accompanied by their classroom teacher, two university researchers and a community Elder. This tree, known as a “jam tree”, has the best wood for making sticks for tapping to create rhythms for cultural songs and dances. The Traditional Owner led the children to a site where he selected a tree …and explained that the children would use this timber to make clapping sticks. The sticks are usually used to accompany dancing. As he started segmenting the branches into sets of sticks the children began calling out “I’m first” “I’m second”. It appeared that they were very keen to be in possession of their clapping sticks. The two boys in the group received their sets of sticks first and began to make rhythms with them straight away. While the girls waited for their sticks to be cut, I watched one boy [Jarra] as he searched around on the ground and selected a small flat rock with a very narrow wedged end, for a cutting tool. He stood one of the sticks on its cut base and began to peel the outer layer of bark away from the stick using the found rock tool in a downward cutting stroke to help him. He worked at chipping away the bark persistently and stopped periodically to peel back a section of the bark with his fingers. He was completely focussed on this task and undistracted by my approach to watch him. I asked [Jarra] how he knew how to peel back the bark in this way, he replied “my Pop [Grandfather] showed me”. Behind him, [Daryl] had begun to do the same thing… [Daryl] had been diagnosed with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and the researchers were warned that his behaviour was likely to be problematic when we took him out On Country. What we observed was that there was no restlessness or inattention evident. He was focussed, calm and engaged as he set about preparing his sticks for decoration and playing as instruments, knowing that the outer layer of bark needed to be removed. He did so without interruption and for an extended period of time. (Field Notes, June 2017, p. 3)

While we do not know Daryl’s full story, it appears that he did not experience any of the limitations associated with ADHD when engaged in experiences related to his home traditions and funds of knowledge. More significant is how different his demeanour was as a result of being On Country with a Traditional Owner, perhaps a reflection of participating in practices that have meaning in his home culture, to the people he admired and loved the most (e.g. older family members). The practice of incorporating On Country learning into the curriculum appeared to facilitate Daryl “tapping into” latent cultural knowledge that is not likely to be present when his learning is framed only in terms of purely European-heritage cultural traditions. Perhaps, an analogy of the disconnection Indigenous students may experience between European-heritage curriculum and their home traditions is the experience of only being able to conceptualise of certain concepts in one language (Catford, 1978). By bringing curriculum onto Country, with Elders, teachers are “speaking in the same language”— a portal to Daryl’s latent knowledge. The presence of a researcher using Indigenous Methodologies should not be overlooked either. Being watched and revered by a European-heritage researcher—genuinely curious about (and valuing) his home practices—appears to have created a “bridge” between the two cultures also. It is arguable that having more than one culture represented in educational approaches need not be a disadvantage for which to compensate. Although Indigenous Methodologies were useful for research conducted in communities different to that of the researchers (see Lee-Hammond &

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Colliver, 2017), their protocols may be equally applied to curriculum. “Outsider” teachers who wish to create a bridge between their own (non-Indigenous) educational traditions and those of Indigenous students’ home culture may be able to adapt Hedegaard’s model to highlight differences and also build “bridges” between them. Specifically, the protocol of holding and demonstrating respect was a key to attenuating power differentials that have existed as a result of colonisation (Butler, 2000). Respect is also productive for celebrating the wealth of knowledge present in one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world and their ways of understanding resource use, subsistence, geology, ecology, spirituality, learning, et cetera, which have contributed to the survival of communities in remarkably resource-scarce environments for over 65 millennia (Clarkson et al., 2017). The protocol of seeking permission from Traditional Owners or Elders before entering communities also foregrounds Indigenous funds of knowledge because permission is based on an elaborate understanding of Country, Dreaming, kinship systems and so on. All of these continue the use and transmission of cultural traditions which children can both observe and participate in, which, as discussed earlier, form a significant part of the ways that learning occurs in traditional societies (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003). In short, broadening the traditions of the European-heritage-heritage curriculum to include those of Indigenous children’s home culture, and using Indigenous Methodology protocols to generate new practices, are two significant ways to create greater currency for Indigenous students in educational approaches (see Fig. 5). The second case study will describe how similar “bridging” has been achieved in a different context.

Fig. 5 Curricula can have more currency for Indigenous students

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3.3 Temotu, Solomon Islands Temotu is an island and province of Solomon Islands, which is a sovereign state in the Pacific Ocean between Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Temotu is the most remote group of islands of the country, characterised by volcanic and rich soil and a tropical climate. The country has a long history of European imposition from Britain, Germany and Australia, with British and Australian missions importing religious and educational traditions since the mid-nineteenth century. As the country was a British protectorate between 1893 and 1978, European governmental and educational systems were imposed and influence the norm today. Due to the remoteness of many of the more than 900 islands, the educational approaches utilised in Solomon Islands typically reflect the norms of European education of the time, with teacher-driven rote reading drills, mechanical question-and-answer drills and resources derived from European lifestyles and contexts (Scaglion, 2015; Watson-Gegeo, 1992). An example of this influence is seen in the following excerpt of a typical primary school lesson. Context: Teacher writes five sentences on blackboard, announces lesson, reads sentences aloud, then tells students to read them in chorus. [Teacher, pointing to blackboard with a stick:] “Now everybody ready on the blackboard [pause]. Ready. One, two, go.” [Children, reading each word the teacher points to]: “Those children are good. Anna is making a cup of tea [pause] for her mother. Tom is getting a tin of water [pause] for his father. Ken is playing with ice-cream. He’s only a little boy [pause] and he can’t help his father.” [Above sequence repeated. Then teacher tells them to open their books to page 46, and check between book and blackboard. Then he asks a series of questions requiring one-word answers.] (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1992, pp. 28–29; Emphasis in original)

The above excerpt illustrates the importation of British teaching traditions of the time (1893–1978): lessons in English rather than local languages, repeating after the teacher, answering known-answer questions, reading texts with little currency in children’s lives (for example, including tins, ice cream, etc.). Traditions such as sitting down while the teacher stands and following her/his instructions in unison (see Figs. 6, 7 and 8) reveal the conditions of students being placed along a continuum of competent to incompetent. While many children may use the skills acquired in adult work, many traditional lifestyles (e.g. fishing and agriculture) will not require them. The amount of educational resources provided to education facilities varies considerably between provinces and islands, depending on their remoteness, connection with non-government organisations and advocacy of local community leaders such as rectors and tribal chiefs (Asia Pacific Association of Adult and Basic Education, 2014; Scaglion, 2015). However, the vast majority of the families subsist with fishing, small-scale crop cultivation and animal husbandry (e.g. chickens, pigs) for food and sometimes to sell (International Trade Centre, 2014). Similar to Yamatji education, home and (subsistence) work practices drawing from Indigenous culture do not appear to align well with school practices originating in European-heritage cultural

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Fig. 6 A kindergarten in Temotu Province

traditions (see Fig. 3). Functional literacy rates sit around 10% of the population, with many adults not requiring literacy for everyday life and being “pensil brek” (Pijin word for illiterate). Since the country attained independence from British protection, the goal of universal primary education led to a rapid spread of European formal education, with replacement of expatriate with Indigenous teachers, few with any formal qualification (Lee-Hammond & McConney, 2016; Watson-Gegeo, 1992). Nonetheless, this proliferation of local teachers appears to have spurred an increase in the inclusion of local in teachers’ pedagogy. For example, the first author’s year working with teachers across the nine provinces revealed a wealth of Indigenous knowledge (e.g. plant use for medicine or construction, “black magic” practices, horticultural techniques, etc.) being incorporated into lesson plans (represented in a typical textbook in Fig. 9). Other examples of the adaptation of European-heritage educational traditions include the use of foreign crayons and paper to draw local reef fish caught by expert 5-year-old fishers, or the teaching of European calendar days (e.g. “Wednesday”) because they are useful to coordinate locally run boat taxis between the hundreds of small islands that make up the country (see Fig. 6). Common teaching practice thus appears to hybridise the early European teaching format with local content knowledge. A typical Temotu kindergarten illustrates the hybridisation in the material resources typically available from European-heritage conditions (paper, crayons,

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Fig. 7 Students are called by the teacher to reproduce known-answer information in front of others

Fig. 8 Students read the same textbook in unison

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Fig. 9 Example textbook incorporating traditional medicinal, agricultural and fishing practices

string and cardboard) and local ones (fish, vegetables, lush rainforest, local timber and materials for building construction) in Fig. 6. Here the “bridge” visualised in Fig. 5 appears to have been cultivated by teachers themselves, sharing the knowledge needed for home and work cultural practices. The gap between Indigenous home and work traditions and European-heritage school traditions of teaching literacy has been narrowed. Lesson formats [such as that seen in the Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo (1992) excerpt] have been adapted by Indigenous teachers to include knowledge that will assist children in participating in home and work traditions (fishing skills, knowledge about plants in local environment and their use, etc.). Other examples include small-scale production of local myths and stories into European style storybooks being read to children in kindergarten in other societies, which hybridised Indigenous story-telling traditions with European writing and reading traditions. The hybridisation provides a connection with home culture as well as providing skills for a globalising world. However, without this hybridisation, children are more likely to feel disempowered and disconnected from home traditions and knowledge. While many contrasts and irregularities exist, what Hedegaard’s (2009) model would suggest is that incorporating Indigenous traditions into the curriculum bridges

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disparate aspects of children’s lives and promotes adaptations from which children can derive meaning, belonging and a sense of competence. A key driver of this has been the employment of Indigenous teachers who have both Indigenous (e.g. expert knowledge of craft, fishing and agriculture) and European-heritage knowledge (e.g. literacy, numeracy). The European-heritage teaching formats (e.g. teacher standing above sitting students, controlling and judging their participation in abstract knowledge tasks) and their conditions (in which children can be seen as inferior to adults) have been destabilised through the inclusion of local traditions. A more horizontal power relationship is more likely to empower children to share knowledge they have of Indigenous (which they know from outside of the classroom) as well as European-heritage cultural practices.

4 Conclusion and Implications The examples given from the above case studies seek to illustrate the utility of Hedegaard’s (2009) model—in conjunction with Indigenous methodologies—for educational research. The protocols of Indigenous Methodologies dictated that we must enter into research as outsiders, demonstrating respect for the cultures we entered, with permission from and deference to Traditional Owners and Elders. These protocols aided our ability to see ourselves as outsiders who needed to take the lead from members of the society rather than from our own agenda and priorities. Seeing oneself from the outside also affords a degree of reflexivity, which is necessary for educational research with cultures different to one’s own. The protocol of analysing a cultural activity relative only to that culture also fitted well with Hedegaard’s (2009) model, which analyses a level of activity (e.g. societal) relative to all other levels (i.e. individual, institutional and cultural). This meant activity was not viewed and valued relative to an external culture, as has too often been the case for research with Indigenous communities (Colbung et al., 2007), but within the cultural norms and values of that culture, and in this way “decolonises” the historically colonised. In this way, the research fulfils the education enterprise’s broader goals to emancipate populations (Bingham & Biesta, 1991). Understanding the configurations of traditions and conditions in the societies (i.e. Temotu and Yamatji) provides insight into the relationships between cultures within them (i.e. Indigenous and European heritage). These insights illustrate conflicts between these cultures and ways forward in research methodologies. For example, the more balanced representation of local traditions with European-heritage ones in Temotu society shows how educational approaches can be responsive to other Indigenous cultures and traditions. The understandings provided by the model allows teachers to work “both-ways” (Ober & Bat, 2007); understanding the similarities and differences between traditional European-heritage curricula and local curricula while respecting traditions from both cultures (Guenther & Ober, 2017). The fact that this was in part accomplished through the simple replacement of expatriate with Indigenous teachers in Temotu suggests there may be extra (incidental) benefits to this

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replacement process within Yamatji country if it were to occur there as well. This idea is certainly supported in approaches to remote Indigenous education analysed elsewhere (Guenther & Ober, 2017). The case study of Temotu also shows the value of using European traditions common to many classrooms (e.g. reading or writing stories) to transmit and reproduce traditional knowledge (e.g. myths, agricultural practices, etc.). On the other hand, the unintended benefits of On Country learning—such as respecting, listening to, valuing and providing opportunity for the expression of local traditions such as the making of clapping sticks—provide ideas for the Temotu educational approach, which traditionally keeps lessons and officialised learning within the four walls of a classroom. The valuing of contextualised and participatory knowledge has huge potential not only in the contexts of the Indigenous culture present, but also the abundant and rich environment of unspoilt rainforest and tropical marine environments that are characteristic of Solomon Islands (Table 3). A curriculum that can successfully incorporate the European-heritage traditions of scientific enquiry, measurement and documentation could be used to understand and build knowledge around existing Indigenous cultural practices in these contexts. Just as examples in these case studies have shown, sharing traditions on equal footing allow for new ideas for both. For example, documenting traditional fishing practices may provide insight for European-heritage industries which are significant contributors to the concerning loss of global fish stocks (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2016). Similarly, within our own methodoloTable 3 Results of deductive analysis of Temotu classroom using Hedegaard’s model Culture

Traditions

Conditions

European-heritage

Reading texts

Reading and writing are valued skills, a mark of education

Lessons in English

Literacy is associated only with foreign culture (when other languages not used)

Repeating after the teacher, answering known-answer questions

Students must conform to expectations inherent in teacher-driven tasks

Using crayons and pencils to write and draw

Written communication is a display of education and Culture

Cultivating plants and vegetables for consumption and/or trade

Tropical conditions on traditionally owned land (via historic occupation) can be utilised to grow all endemic species

Using plants for medicine, cuisine, housing construction, etc.

Dependence on local environment for medicine, cuisine, construction, etc.

Fishing and knowledge of reef fish

Living near coast with abundance of edible sea life

Temotu

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gies, there was scope to adapt existing models (e.g. Hedegaard, 2009) with findings from research on Indigenous communities (e.g. Lancy, 1996; Rogoff et al., 2006) to arrive at more nuanced and less Eurocentric understandings of configurations of cultures (i.e. Fig. 3). This represents how different cultures and assumptions may come together to provide new understandings of how education systems are applied. The appreciation and respect for Indigenous traditions and conditions can also provide more meaningful ways for teachers to document children’s learning. Understanding what traditions children are exposed to in their home contexts provides teachers with alternative understandings of children’s learning that can enrich planning and pedagogies. The findings of these case studies provide examples of the impacts of colonisation on children’s learning. When considered in light of the historic devaluing of Indigenous traditions, the case studies show how children’s future achievement prospects are also limited or opened up by the degree to which curriculum and teachers are able to balance Indigenous traditions and conditions with European-heritage ones. To do so is to be culturally responsive. Researchers—indeed, teachers—need to respectfully immerse themselves in local traditions in order to provide conditions that enable children to learn more meaningfully than just serving the traditions of one (foreign) culture (Ober & Bat, 2007). Similarly, while Hedegaard’s (2009) model may be productive for researching European-heritage contexts (e.g. Colliver, 2016), a culturally responsive adaptation appeared necessary for the current case studies. Noting that learning in many traditional societies is not something that occurs isolated from home, but entwined with work and home practices (Lancy, 1996), the current case studies have illustrated imbalances in the application of European educational approaches that may not fully accommodate important cultural traditions of the Indigenous contexts (e.g. assuming a separation of work, home and school practices). Like the model used for research here, European educational approaches may require culturally responsive adaptations. Language extinction—which is driven primarily by globalisation (Amano et al., 2014)—is indicative of how much damage the homogenous application of external systems is likely to be causing. In a world where education is globalising, being culturally responsive is necessary if we are to avoid perpetuating the damage of colonisation. As the cultural traditions and conditions informing globalisation are typically European-heritage, the case studies presented here proffer some insights for ways this can be achieved in other contexts. Much work is to be done to offer more insights about how educational approaches can be culturally responsive in other contexts.

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Yeshe Colliver is Lecturer at the Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University (Australia). He has worked in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings for nearly a decade in multiple cities across the world including Osaka (Japan), Ulsan (South Korea), Wakayama (Japan), Concepcion (Chile), Granada (Spain) and Honiara (Solomon Islands). Through his work and life overseas, he has acquired an interest in natural learning that we have evolved with (e.g. the types we needed in Indigenous cultures). His career has reflected a belief in two premises: that all social problems can be addressed most effectively through education, and that early childhood is the most crucial period in life. Historical records helped him develop the Following in Our Footsteps intervention, which has demonstrated the effect parents and educators can have on children’s interest in literacy and numeracy in just 4 weeks. By partnering, educators and parents can significantly increase the amount children choose to play with literacy and numeracy in their free play. The intervention shows that adults can get young children more interested in useful learning without depriving them of choice or their human right to play—and this results in real learning. Libby Lee-Hammond is Associate Professor in School of Education at Murdoch University (Australia). She has been a member of the academic staff at Murdoch since 2000 and has developed the early childhood courses there since their inception. Prior to that she worked at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane in the School of Early Childhood and at the Centre for Mathematics and Science Education. Whilst employed as a tutor and research assistant at QUT, she also assisted in the implementation of an enrichment program for very young gifted children on campus. This program gave rise to her Ph.D. titled “Teachers’ conceptions of gifted young children: Perspectives through the lens of gender”. Her supervisors were Dr. Jim Watters and Dr. Jillian Brannock. Associate Professor Lee-Hammond has been involved in many research projects and consultancies related to early childhood education and children and family services. Her ongoing involvement in research with Aboriginal communities has been a highlight of this work and continues to drive her research and community service. She is passionate about research that is unreservedly directed towards social justice.

Chapter 7

Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectories of the Mbya Guarani Struggle for a Differentiated Education Roberto Veríssimo Lima, Jurandir Augusto Martim and Danilo Silva Guimarães Abstract The Mbya Guarani knowledge is traditionally transmitted through oral language, in a process designated by the expression Nhembo’ea reko regua. The Brazilian legislation defines the right of the indigenous communities to have a differentiated, bilingual indigenous education, one that may contribute to the empowerment of the traditional culture. However, many times the communities’ efforts in this direction are not recognized, not even by the State agents responsible for managing public services. In this article, we depart from the Brazilian legislation’s determinations for the indigenous education to then present the fight process of the indigenous communities of São Paulo to effectuate their rights in relation to this subject. With the imposition of school for the recognition of the youth’s instruction by the State, and with the need of written language to access the world of white people, arises also the need to document the Mbya Guarani narratives and knowledge in written form in order to use them as didactic resources in the education of teachers and students. We conclude the text presenting the paths of action taken by the Amerindian Support Network service (Institute of Psychology/University of São Paulo), in considering the processes of differentiated education, that culminated in the construction of a House of the Indigenous Cultures in the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

This chapter was constructed in a collaborative process among three indigenous workers on the Education system. Two of them dwell in Guarani communities— Tekoa Pyau and Tekoa Ytu—in the Indigenous Land of Jaraguá, São Paulo/SP, Brazil. The third author is professor at the Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, R. V. Lima Tekoa Tangara, Itanhaém, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] J. A. Martim Tekoa Yytu, Terra Indígena do Jaraguá, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] D. S. Guimarães (B) Institute of Psychology, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_7

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Brazil. The chapter is the result of reflections we have been developing during 5 years of collaborative work between the University and the communities. The collaboration concerns the role of psychology dealing with Amerindian needs that are mainly related to rights violations, such as (1) the right of living in their lands; (2) the right of receiving quality health services that respect the Guarani conceptions of health; and (3) the right of receiving quality education services. The psychological expertise from the University team was demanded to support the indigenous struggle in order to implement some of their fundamental rights, as we will discuss in the following pages. The chapter begins with an explanation on the former rights recently conquered by indigenous peoples in Brazil, on the topic of the a specific school education, then we present the challenges faced by the Mbya Guarani communities of São Paulo addressing the implementation of these rights. We present sociohistorical roots that are relevant to the understanding of these challenges: considering that the law is now favorable to indigenous peoples, the realization of human rights faces crystallized understandings in the culture of Juruá (white people) that remain spreading mistaken conceptions about indigenous peoples in the education system. We argue, at the end of the chapter, that the Mbya Guarani struggle to keep alive their Nhembo’ea reko regua, that is, a school education that is coherent with their traditional cultural values, can be strengthened in the dialogue with the academic knowledge when the dialogical setting allows the indigenous tradition be uttered and become visible. This dialogical principle guided the construction of the House of Amerindian Peoples in de Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo, discussed at the end of this chapter. The House is not a place to aesthetic or intellectual contemplation of the visitors, mainly linked to the academic courses. It is a place to shelter indigenous conceptions and to promote dialogues in which their worldviews are discussed. The indigenous worldviews are transmitted in the process of Bildung (cf. Gadamer, 2008/1960; Simão, 2005, 2010), educate yourself with tradition, and promoted in the daily life of the community. Indigenous people educated as such present sophisticated understandings in many branches of knowledge and about the challenges of conviviality in the contemporaneous world.

1 Rights Conquered by Indigenous Peoples in Brazilian Legislation on Education Only in 1988 did the Federal Constitution of Brazil determine that the indigenous peoples “[…] shall have their social organization, customs, languages, creeds and traditions recognized, as well as their original rights to the lands they traditionally occupy, it being incumbent upon the Union to demarcate them, protect and ensure respect for all of their property” (Brasil, 2012, p. 130). The Brazilian State has since then committed to “protect the expressions of popular, Indian and Afro-Brazilian cultures, as well as those of other groups participating in the national civilization

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process” (Brasil, 2012, p. 124). Additionally, “Regular elementary education shall be given in the Portuguese language and Indian communities shall also be ensured the use of their native tongues and their own learning methods” (Brasil, 2012, p. 122). The cited duties, inserted in the set of fundamental laws that rule the Brazilian State, were the result of long, arduous struggles of the indigenous movements that involve the more than 300 ethnic groups native to the diverse parts of the territory that currently comprises Brazil. However, the effectuation of these rights has been taking place in a gradual and heterogeneous manner when we look at the reality the diverse indigenous peoples and communities face. The history of attempts of elimination or assimilation of the original peoples to the structure and ideology of the dominant power of the State left crystallized educational conceptions and proceedings that are frequently in conflict with the indigenous conceptions, with their traditional ways of educating people, and with their expectations in relation to formal schooling, including higher education. In 2002, the ratification by the Brazilian government of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 (1989), about Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, has further developed the legal support for the demands of peoples who currently claim their rights to a differentiated indigenous education in diverse regions of Brazil. These claims, each time more numerous, bring new challenges to the Brazilian educational system. Advances in the implementation of legal determinations concerning the process of education of the indigenous peoples have also happened with the ratification of Law 11.645/2008, which stipulates that “in the facilities for both primary and secondary education, be them public or private, the study of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous history and culture shall be mandatory” (Brazil, 2008). It proposes the inclusion of “[…] diverse aspects of the history and culture that characterize the formation of the Brazilian population” (Brasil, 2008) in the programmatic content of all schools in the country, taking into account “[…] the study of the history of Africa and Africans, the black and indigenous peoples’ struggle in Brazil, black and indigenous Brazilian culture, and the black and the indigenous person in the formation of the national society, recovering their contributions in the social, economic, and political fields, pertinent to the history of Brazil” (Brasil, 2008). Additionally, Law 11.645/2008 specified that “[…] the contents referent to the Afro-Brazilian and indigenous history and culture will be ministered throughout the entire school curriculum, especially in the areas of artistic education and Brazilian literature and history” (Brasil, 2008). The result is making the school a place where all feel valued and recognized as legal subjects, in their singularity and identity (MEC & SECADI, 2013). In bringing forth the current legislation, we attempt to demonstrate the institutional insertion of the indigenous peoples’ demands for transformations in the educational process, in order to introduce in an adequate manner their millennial knowledge in the field of school education. The formalization of these education proposals depends on the recognition of the differences in the ways of conceiving not only the content, but also the form of transmitting the indigenous culture and knowledge, outside and inside the school regulated by the Brazilian State. At the same time, it points to the need and possibility of dialogue between distinct forms of transmission of knowledge

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and its contents. In order for the school to become a place where all feel valued and respected, it is necessary, fundamentally, to provide knowledge concerning who we are, how we live as indigenous peoples, and in what conditions. To informed oneself, consider in thought, and dialogue about these issues are important paths for the recognition of the persistent prejudice and invisibility in Brazil in relation to the indigenous peoples, necessary steps in the process of formation of an attitude of openness to alterity. The effectuation of the legislation, in turn, depends on the overcoming of obstacles created along the process of colonization and post-colonization, by public policies of extermination and assimilation of the indigenous peoples. Throughout five centuries, these actions aimed to built an excluding Brazilian culture that would mirror imported references from the metropoles that invaded the territory now called Brazil. Eurocentric values were promulgated in our societies by many means, among which the school, as we will further detail.

2 Three Paradigmatic Moments in the Education Applied to the Indigenous Peoples in Brazil Understanding the challenges faced by the indigenous peoples in order to implement a differentiated education in their communities, as well as introduce their culture in the curriculum of the Brazilian schools, depends on a support from history, so that we may understand the genesis of these challenges. For this, we selected three paradigmatic moments in the history of Brazil, which allow us to portray, in a brief manner, the form in which the Brazilian State consolidated an excluding and depreciative image of the indigenous knowledge and cultures in the educational process. These moments were taken from the classic Brazilian historiography, which segments the country’s history in Brazil-Colony, Brazil-Empire, and Brazil-Republic. It is worth noting that we are dealing with extensive and complex historical periods, with diverse nuances and points of view in debate, that are impossible to take into account in such a short space as this article and which are not the subject matter of this text. We depart from Ribeiro’s (1997) considerations on the formation of the Brazilian people, with the perspective of contextualizing the different conceptions of the educational process together with moments that belong to the history of Brazil, but that are still present contemporarily, producing tensions in respect to the educational process and indigenous resistance strategies. The first moment we selected concerns early colonization, when the European peoples’ invasion of the Americas begins, creating profound difficulties for the path of cultural development of the Amerindian peoples. The European colonizers introduced illnesses, ecological alterations and disputed the territory, promoting indigenous slavery and mercantilization of the native production (Ribeiro 1997). In this context of profound changes, the Portuguese State financed Jesuit missions that

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developed the first pedagogical methods directed to the indigenous populations of the Brazilian coast. The systematization of the pedagogical methods created by the Society of Jesus in the 16th century […] materialized […] from the missionary experience, from the realities lived by the Jesuits in their work of repressing and saying truth. Repression of the indigenous traditions, considered as examples of bad customs, signs of Evil, and saying truth about the malignity of the native customs, that should be replaced by the good customs, expression of knowledge of the true Faith. Evidently, all this process was supported by teaching, by education. (Costa, 2007)

In this period, teaching and education consisted, therefore, in a strategy to convert indigenous people to Christianity and make them available for profitable work for the colonizers. Brazil proclaimed independence in 1822. Before, it ceased being a colony of the kingdom of Portugal and headquartered the Portuguese Empire from 1808, and became member of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves, from 1815 to 1822. In the new period of structuring of the Brazilian State, it organized itself as a monarchy until the proclamation of the Republic in 1889. The Empire of Brazil maintained a conflictive and ambivalent relation with the indigenous populations, at the same time that diverse legislations had a protective character toward these populations. The current practices kept, in general, its integrationist character, by means of the education with conversion to Christianity, and extermination of those who did not accept such impositions: After independence, the new Brazilian Imperial State was faced with the challenge of creating a nation and the Brazilian people, until then inexistent. It was necessary to create a territorial unity, politics, and ideology in the country, generating a collective memory that could unify the populations around a single identity. The ethnic and cultural plurality, so valued in our days, had no place in this period, and the ideology of the new Brazilian State was based on European values of modernization, progress, and superiority of the white man. (Almeida, 2012)

It is worth noting that parallel to the process of construction of discourses and images about the indigenous people, which contributed to strip them of their role as historical agents,1 communities were slowly passing from an invisibility, built along the nineteenth century, to a protagonist role, reclaimed by political and intellectual movements with intense indigenous participation. The history of the republican Brazil, beginning in 1889, is marked by the aspiration of a laic, modern State, oriented by scientific achievements as tools for organizing society. In the process of modernization of the country, the remaining assimilation policies directed toward the indigenous populations present since the colonial period were intensified, in order to continue the process of unification of these populations around a single identity. The beginning of the republican period is marked by the advance of expansion fronts, with the intensification of the colonization of inland areas of the country, which 1A

special highlight to the role of the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute, IHGB, in 1838, still in Brazil-Empire, in the construction of the myth of the Bandeirante in São Paulo.

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lead to violent territorial disputes. The country is publicly accused of massacre of its indigenous populations. In this context, in 1910, the Brazilian State created the Indian Protection Service and Localization of National Workers agency (SPILTN), with the objective of protecting and integrating the indigenous people and establishing agricultural colonies, that would make use of manpower found in official expeditions. The conception that the fate of the indigenous peoples was to become rural workers, or urban proletariat, and progressively abandon their traditional way of life, still remained. (ISA, s.d.). The Indian Protection Service lasted until 1967, with the premises inherited from the colonial period and the paradox of guardianship, which established the indigenous people’s relative legal incapacity. With the shortage in resources and the growing number of denunciations of cases of hunger, sicknesses, depopulation, and indigenous slavery, an Inquiry Commission was established in the 1960s among the deputies of the Brazilian Congress, aiming to investigate the accusations of genocide, corruption, and inefficiency of the Service (ISA, s.d.). In 1967, in the midst of the institutional crisis and beginning of the dictatorship, the SPI was extinguished and substituted by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), which had the purpose of overcoming the impasses of the old Protection Service (ISA, s.d.). However, the activity of the Brazilian State during the dictatorship was strongly assimilationist in nature. It was only in the 1980s that the indigenous reaction to public policies against self-affirmation began to gain prominence in the national sphere. In this context, the issue of land demarcation and of the implementation of public policies for differentiated health and education were and continue to be as central struggles of the indigenous movements throughout Brazil. They aim for the construction of projects of a more participative nature, which include the indigenous people in all stages of implementation: diagnosis of the problems faced by the communities, development of strategies for overcoming the difficulties, and execution of the proposed actions through dialogue, in which the traditional knowledge may have a central role.

3 The Struggle of the Mbya Guarani of São Paulo for a Quality Differentiated Education The municipality of São Paulo has an indigenous population of 12.977 people from diverse ethnic groups, who inhabit the urban context, while the demarcated areas in the municipality are inhabited especially by people who self-identify as Mbya Guarani. The Guarani constitute a group of peoples with common origins, languages, and ways of life. They are distributed throughout a vast territory they designate as Yvyrupá that comprehends the central-south of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina (Azevedo, Brand, Heck, Pereira, & Melià, 2008). Currently, the Guarani population comprises around 145 thousand people, of which 50 thousand are in Brazil. It is worth noting that this population is characterized by a constant practice of visiting each

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other, which indicates life histories marked by transit between different localities (Pissolato, 2007). The Guarani communities of the municipality of São Paulo are situated in two peripheral regions, to the north and south of the city, distributed in diverse villages. From the year of 2002, when they obtained recognition from the City Hall of their need for more investments in the children’s education, three main population centers received a CECI (Center for Indigenous Education and Culture), in the communities of Jaraguá (Tekoa Pyau) and Parelheiros (Tekoa Tenonde Porã and Krukutu). The CECIs were the result of vindications from the Mbya Guarani leaders in the city of São Paulo, who strived to empower their ethnic–cultural roots by means of a differentiated education focused on children from 0 to 6 years of age. Jekupe (2015), an inhabitant of Tekoa Krukutu, tells how the idea of the construction of the CECIs came into being: We used to receive visitors in Krukutu Village with much difficulty, when it rained or the weather was cold it was complicated. In that time we had few people living in the village, everyone had simple houses, made from cob, there was no school. Around the year 2002, we thought of building a Cultural Center to receive them better. In this time, there was this fellow – Sidney Soares – who came to help us at the Association to disclose tourism and other projects. We dreamt of the construction of a small Cultural Center. He and I and Marcos Tupã then started to study the matter. The first idea was to use the resources that would come from the Fraternity Campaign, whose theme was “Fraternity and Indigenous Peoples – For a Land Without Evils”. In our studies we realized that the Cultural Center should also be a space for the systematization of the Guarani tradition, a place where it would be possible working with the elder’s knowledge (xamõi kuery) in a different way with the young, using the new technologies to talk about the tradition. (Jekupe, 2015, p. 11)

The Guarani community’s purpose is clearly to promote an education that does not rival with their traditional way of life, but, on the contrary, that may contribute to it, strengthening the transmission of the teachings that have always been orally transmitted from the elders to the young members of the communities. The sketch was made by Marcos Tupã, who, thinking of the old Guarani houses, reached the conclusion that the Cultural Center should be entirely round. The first project was written by Sidney Soares, hearing our ideas. Even then we had a strong connection and contact with the Municipal Department of Education of São Paulo. They had many meetings and we participated, we had connections with the Department’s adviser, Mrs. Maria Nilda Teixeira, and she had great respect for the indigenous peoples. One day I went to the Department and took the opportunity to visit her. We talked and she asked me if there was any state or municipal project with the children from 0 to 6 years of age. I answered that no, there wasn’t, but that we had a project in mind and some ideas, however for lack of money the project was shelved. I noticed she liked what she heard and told me the Department of Education could help in this project […]. (Jekupe, 2015, pp. 11–12)

The perception that the reduction of the traditional territory hindered the culture’s survival, including the maintenance of the language, traditional nourishment, health, wisdom, and millennial knowledge of the Guarani was fundamental for the leaders’ course of action. The construction of the CECIs is part of a strategy of resistance and

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maintenance of the traditional way of life, through the development of projects for the educators’ formation and exchange between indigenous communities (cf. Godoy, Mirim, & Silva, 2013). So began the many encounters between indigenous leaders and the Municipal Department of Education, with the architect Wanderley Meira and with Ivone Mosolino, for the construction of the Political Pedagogical Project of the CECI. By means of this connection with the Municipal Department of Education, today we have three buildings, one in each village, which became known as the CECIs - Centers for Indigenous Education and Culture, in the villages Krukutu, Tenondé Porã, and Tekoa Pyau. (Jekupe, 2015, p. 12)

The entire conception of the Center, from its architectonic structure to the development of the political pedagogical proposal, was elaborated from the dialogue between the technicians of the Municipal Department of Education and the indigenous leaders. Aiming to satisfy the demands for an integral development of the child, “in which their physical, psychological, intellectual, and social aspects are taken into account” (PMSP, 2004). However, challenges remain involving the maintenance of this formal space of education, the formation of the indigenous educators in such a way as to secure the consistency of the work of differentiated education for children. Challenges also persist concerning the continuity of this process of education beyond the age of 6, when the indigenous youth start studying in the schools of Basic Education, managed by the Government of the State of São Paulo. The State school, in turn, divides the students in classes, which results, to the Guarani conception, in a fragmentation of the social bonds and millennial values of the Amerindian traditions: “this is not part of the Guarani culture, […] we are a people, we are a community, we are Guarani and we cannot be divided” (Macena, 2014). The experience of division of the schoolmates mirrors the division of the Brazilian society in classes, and unfolds in the segmentation of knowledge and creation of hierarchies in personal relations in a distinct manner from the one proposed by the Mbya Guarani wisdom (cf. Macena, 2014). The social division fomented by the State bureaucracy and reproduced without criticism by the school promotes the development of vulnerable people, subjected to the centralized power from which knowledge is supposed to emanate, the thinning of the power of the communitarian bonds that sustained affectively the social cohesion between the young people of the communities.

4 The Activity of the Amerindian Support Network at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo The Care for the Indigenous Person Network service was formally included in the organization chart of the services provided by the Institute of Psychology/USP in the first semester of 2015, as a result of a gradual process of insertion of the indigenous

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thematic in the formation of the undergraduate and graduate students of psychology and related areas. The actions linked to the service began in 2011, when we solicited fellowships for undergraduate students interested in the thematics from the Learning with Culture and Extension Program. Since the beginning our actions were based on the recommendations to the psychologists in working with indigenous populations (CRPSP, 2010) and in guidelines of the Ministry of Health,2 according to which care must be based on support and respect for the indigenous communities’ capacity—with their values, modes of organizations, of expression, and of knowledge production—to identify problems, mobilize resources, and create alternatives for the construction of solutions to the identified demands. As we developed our extension activities, we found evidence that facing the indigenous peoples’ psychosocial vulnerabilities in Brazil depends on the possibility of respect to the peoples’ process of ethnic self-affirmation, the promotion of forums for equitable interethnic dialogue between the indigenous points of view and those of the surrounding society, besides the promotion of visibility of the indigenous cultures, who remain active and influent in the contemporary world. We were able to establish, progressively, a relation of trust and openness to dialogue with the indigenous people in the urban context and in the demarcated areas of the city of São Paulo. The mutual trust and availability for dialogue are necessary conditions for the expression of feelings and thoughts linked to the psychosocial vulnerabilities faced by the communities. We performed the listening of the speeches expressed in conversation circles promoted by the communities, we accompanied traditional practices of health intervention and pedagogical practices in the schools were indigenous students go. We provided the joint construction with the indigenous people of activities aimed to foment reflexive dialogue about the situation of health, rights guarantees, land demarcation, strengthening of the traditional culture, and differentiated education, having insight the improvement of the life conditions of the people of the communities. In its first year of existence, the work was centered in the Mbya Guarani communities Tekoa Krukutu and Tekoa Tenonde Porã, located in the Parelheiros region of São Paulo/SP, also in the Tekoa Pyau and Tekoa Ytu communities, located in the Jaraguá region, São Paulo/SP. Moura, Achatz, and Guimarães (submitted) report that in 2012, the Amerindian Support Network (IPUSP-PSE) organized an event in the Institute of Psychology, named “Psychology and Indigenous Peoples: forms of knowledge and practice in dialogue.” It was attended by people from the four abovementioned communities, besides participants from diverse parts of Brazil, connected to the work with indigenous populations: educators, health professionals, indigenous students, etc. From this first event, we received an invitation from leaders from Tekoa Pyau (Jaraguá/SP) to contribute to the organization of a new meeting, involving leaders from diverse communities of the State of São Paulo (South coast, Vale do Ribeira, and Capital), to discuss issues related to the indigenous right to a differentiated health care, education, and land demarcation. Collaboration in this task allowed us to deepen our understanding of the psychosocial vulnerabilities that threaten the indigenous com2 Ministry

of Health, Directive nº 2.759, of October the 25th, 2007.

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munities. The meeting, which took place in September 2013, had the sponsorship of PrCEU-USP3 and the support of the CRPSP. The projected then already counted with the participation of four undergraduate students. The recordings of the event resulted in the production of a Report, written in a collaborative form and with co-authorship with the indigenous participants (Huvixa Kuery Nhembo’a Ty, 2013). Also in September 2013, we had the opportunity to contribute with the sponsorship of PrCEU-USP to the realization of the 1st National Encounter of Indigenous Students, which took place in the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR), with the participation of undergraduates from 26 universities throughout Brazil, belonging to 50 different ethnic groups (ENEI, 2013). Still in the second semester of 2013, we produced the Cultural Diffusion Course “Psychology and Indigenous Peoples: Introductory Notions”, that counted with the participation of diverse specialists in the area, including some indigenous persons, who acted as instructors and lecturers in a class composed of 19 students, among psychologists, professional from the area of education, health, and social assistance, undergraduate students, and indigenous persons. Finally, in this period we promoted, together with São Paulo School of Theater, and with sponsorship from PrCEU-USP, the Cycle of conferences of the Theatrical Residency Bandeirante Phantom Sonata, with the participation of researchers, artists, and indigenous people in a context of intense interdisciplinary exchanges (cf. Moura et al., submitted). As an outcome of the conversation circles with indigenous women at Tekoa Pyau, in 2013, a proposal to work with the indigenous youth of the community was developed, involving the production of a video in which they would dialogue with the elders, asking questions about the Mbya Guarani tradition and culture (cf. Moura et al., submitted). The videos were recorded and edited, and assembly was completed in 2016. In 2014, the Amerindian Support Network (IPUSP-PSE) developed a set of reference materials for thematic conversation circles in the indigenous communities. A supplement about the life and communitarian work of Marta Guarani, indigenous person who represented the Brazilian women at ONU in the 1990s; supplement about the Maria da Penha Law4 ; and supplement about the life of Sepé Tiaraju, important historical reference for the Guarani people (cf. Moura et al., submitted). In the second semester of 2014, the Indigenous Network (IPUSP-PSE) prioritized the conduction of forums about the Indigenous Presence in São Paulo, advancing toward the demands of the community in regard to the promotion of visibility of the indigenous tradition, still present in our contemporary culture. The forums took place at the Institute of Psychology/USP. They were open to the participation of the academic community and the outside community. Additionally, meetings were held at the community for planning the second Huvixa Kuery Nhemboaty, which took place in January 2015 (cf. Moura et al., submitted). Moura et al. (submitted) report that in the beginning of 2015, given the demand from the indigenous community Tekoa Tangará, located in the municipality of 3 Pro-rectory 4 TN:

of Culture and Extension of the University of São Paulo. Brazilian Law concerning punishment of domestic crimes, implemented in 2006.

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Itanhaém/SP, the Indigenous Network (IPUSP-PSE) gave support to a project of Community-Based Tourism, initiated by the community. They proposed to receive schools for forming students and teachers in the theme of Indigenous History and Culture, according to Law 11.645/08.5 Our actions throughout that year consisted in promoting conversation circles to structure, together with the community, a visitation itinerary, to evaluate and implement this itinerary, to produce a disclosure material for the project, aimed at schools of the region, and to collaborate in the description of the project for the consent by FUNAI. Throughout 2015, the Indigenous Network (IPUSP-PSE) developed, together with the community (Tekoa Pyau), activities involving music and theater. With respect to the activities involving music, the students worked especially with young Mbya Guarani who were elaborating authorial compositions and forming the Rap group “Oz Guarani”. As result of these activities, the young Mbya Guarani made presentations at the Centro Cultural São Paulo, participated in the Indigenous August (organized by the Municipal Department of Education) and received an award from the City Council of São Paulo (Noteworthy Youth Prize). In the scope of the theater activities, the indigenous people involved discussed with the students the possibility of working with improvisation techniques based on psychodrama and the Theater of the Oppressed (Boal, 2013). With the enlargement of the team of the Indigenous Network (IPUSP-PSE), the service multiplied its activities: from research projects to extension projects related to community services to indigenous populations, with actions involving audio-visual production, music, theater, permaculture, and text production in co-authorship (cf. Moura et al., submitted).

4.1 The Amerindian Support Network (IPUSP-PSE) in Considering Together with the Mbya Guarani of São Paulo the Challenges for a Differentiated Education From the dialogues, we have been establishing with the indigenous leaders and persons in the Guarani communities in which we develop activities, above presented, we began to conceive that the Mbya Guarani perspective on education differs from the classical model established in the nineteenth century in the European context, design to form apt factory workers in the societies undergoing industrialization. In this environment, there was little space for freedom and uniqueness. On the contrary, a sedentary discipline was demanded from the young apprentices, in which circulation was controlled and obedience to the hierarchical instances was fundamental, supported on the image of the teacher and, later, of the industry managers (cf. Patto, 2008). We understand that the education of children in the European societies promoted the restriction of creativity and of the possibilities of handling social relations. School 5 As

we discussed before, this law included in the official curriculum of the education network the obligatoriness of “Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture”.

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became a space where experiences of prejudice and social violence, which would later be lived by the person in their adult life, were intensified. In this process, education contributes, to a great extent, to the formation of consumer markets, making its target public more dependent on heteronymous and directive discourses, be them the ones proffered by the foremen or those propagated by the teacher, in books and by the media. The regulation of the experience of temporality was also a part of this package for the standardization of human minds and bodies, insofar as education had the task of training children to become adults capable of accepting regular and uninterrupted work rhythms (cf. Patto, 2008). While Eurocentric education aims to form people for a profession and the market, the differentiated education the Mbya Guarani educators defend at the CECI values partnership in knowledge exchanges between pairs (Macena & Guimarães, 2016). That is, it proposes recognition and value of differences in a ground of intercultural and interethnic equity, which can handle asymmetries without creating hierarchies. In other words, avoiding one culturally situated knowledge—for example, the model of formal education developed in Eurocentric societies—imposing on another form of knowledge also culturally situated, the Mbya Guarani form of transmitting knowledge and its contents. We realize differentiated education, which happens in the frontier between the education provided by the laic State and the Mbya Guarani culture, presupposes a refusal to a standardization that eliminates difference, or assimilates it in a supposed “umbrella” pedagogical structure, in which the different cultures would be superficially contemplated, in relativist eclecticism. It also presupposes a refusal to dogmatism, to the isolation of cultures in relation to one another. On the contrary, belonging and giving value to a specific ethnic–cultural position, capable of welcoming, in its strength, other cultures in equitable dialogue, are considered relevant attributes. Thus, neither eclecticism, since it eliminates the differences between traditional and scientific knowledge, nor dogmatism, which supposes one type of education, could be generalized as superior to the other; what is proposed instead is a respectful coexistence between different forms of knowledge (Macena & Guimarães, 2016). The construction of respect toward difference depends, fundamentally, on the construction of persons who do not feel threatened in the relation with alterity and who, for this reason, do not feel the need to aggressively defend themselves against what in the other could be perceived as threatening. This thematic is a central axis of the education of the children at CECI (Macena & Guimarães, 2016). The possibility of circulating and being welcomed in the vast territory propitiates the encounter with different people and experiences that sediment the development of openness to alterity. That is, the school should be an institution that collaborates in the construction of an serene and confident ethos to the indigenous communities. In the case of Guarani people, they claim that the school should collaborate with the Nhandereko (the Guarani way of living). Figueiredo (1996/2013) argues that the notion of ethos refers to a ways of “[…] propitiating, configutin shaping and costituting human beings and their worlds—their dwelling-place, both subjects and their objects, social, private and “subjective” experiences of each individual” (p. 48). Therefore, the ethos,

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refers to human installations (p. 48), ways of dwelling the world. Once the ethos of each culture presupposes different habits, ways of constructing their serene and confident dwelling places, the coexistence with the culture of the other constrains the possibilities of each people to enjoy, work, think, play, and experience their worlds, being these dimensions also relevant to human psychological health (Figueiredo, 1996/2013). Macena and Guimarães (2016) propose that one of the roles of the educator, in relation to the smaller children, who are the main public of the CECI, is to propitiate a free and at the same time safe circulation, allowing each child to build, in a singular manner, the sense and significance of communitarian life. In the Mbya Guarani understanding, therefore, the difference provided by the liberation of the child from the teacher’s guard, from imprisonment in the classroom, from the pressures of time and the heteronymous judgment allows the development of a person of integrity, capable of knowing their own limits and aspirations, as well as the limits and aspirations of those who they live around them. The formation of people of integrity, nondependent of extrinsic regulations—even if connected to their collectives of reference—promotes the development of responsibility and respect toward difference (Macena & Guimarães, 2016). The violence of prejudicial attitudes—in which the alterity relation and the respectful interchange between different people is avoided in an explicit or dissimulated manner (cf. Crochík, 2008)—turns out to reproduce the existing order of the social field, that sees itself threatened by difference. From the psychological point of view, these are attitudes connected to the affective condition of the aggressor, as far as this person manifests, in a particular and circumstantial way, even if temporarily, dogmas or feelings of strangeness between positions that do not dialogue in the social field (Macena & Guimarães, 2016). We conclude from the Mbya Guarani knowledge that when a child becomes an adult well educated in their culture, connected to a collective that becomes stronger the deeper it goes into its ethnic–cultural perspective, they tend to become capable of hosting alterity without feeling threatened, getting rid, in this way, of the affective dispositions that could lead to disrespect between different people, which we mentioned above (Macena & Guimarães, 2016).

4.2 The House of Indigenous Cultures Xondaro Kuery Xondaria Kuery Onhembo’ea Ty Apy at the Institute of Psychology at USP Since 2012, the Amerindian Support Network has performed the listening of reports of situations of psychosocial vulnerabilities faced by the Mbya Guarani of São Paulo and has developed strategies together with community leaders to face these situations. In the development of the extension activities, we arrived at the proposal of the construction of the House of Indigenous Cultures at IPUSP. In approaching the

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frontier between psychology and the traditional knowledge, we see, from the start, in the Mbya Guarani thoughts about the specificity of their education, the centrality of the relation with the surrounding environment, in which life happens in communion with people and with the other beings of nature. The idea of construction of a traditional Guarani house, with indigenous people from communities attended by the Amerindian Support Network Service (IPUSP-PSE), emerged at the end of the year of 2015. The construction, however, was concluded by the beginning of 2017, and the inauguration happened in the month of May of this same year. The idea of building a House of Indigenous Cultures at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo came from the demands of leaders from the Guarani communities of São Paulo for an amplification of the visibility of their ways of living and of thinking about the challenges of the contemporary world. Recognition and effectuation of the already achieved rights, especially the rights to a differentiated health and education, demarcation of lands, strengthening of the indigenous communities’ culture and memory. The house received the Guarani name Xondaro kuery xondaria kuery onhembo’ea ty apy, which is approximately translated to place of teaching of the guardians, of those who detain the traditional knowledge and protect it, of those who care for their community, protecting it against possible menaces. The implantation of the house in the university aimed to foment, inside the academic universe, in the sphere of psychology and indigenous peoples, discussion on the thematic of differentiated health and education, recognition and rights, land demarcation, strengthening of the indigenous communities’ culture and memory. The proposal justifies itself in allowing further development of the already existent exchange between psychology and the Guarani communities, with the participation of indigenous leaders, educators, and students. The inclusion of communitarian cultural values, present in the life and thoughts of the indigenous educators, has contributed to the development of the possibilities of the young university students and young indigenous people to circulate and relate with integrity, in multiple spaces and sociocultural contexts. The continuous process of learning and personal development is bidirectional; it depends on the experience of the educator, who brings with him or herself their personal formation, acquired through the liberty of the apprentice, to whom the conditions of exploration of the world are facilitated. First in relation with others in the community, in order to next amplify the horizons to other communities, other peoples, to the rest of the world. Until recently, the indigenous thematic was present in very few courses and was concentrated in the first chapter of the History course textbooks. The indigenous peoples have generally received a generic, synthetic approach, crystallized in the historical time of the colonial period. This approach collaborated significantly to strengthen the popular imagination of the indigenous peoples as belonging to the past and to a place in history of subsumed peoples. It is worth mentioning, however, that the chronological and linear segmentation of time is due to an evolutionary perspective that does not have any identification with the indigenous perspective, since for these people the relation between past, present, and future do not imply, necessarily, the idea of development and progress, typical of the Western culture.

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The House of Indigenous Cultures at the Institute of Psychology at USP aims to contribute to the affirmation, in the academic space, of people who detain indigenous wisdom as persons of knowledge and rights, uniting in this place the possibility of discussing and considering the diverse challenges faced contemporarily by the communities. Among these challenges are those resulting from the process of invasion of the indigenous territories, the shock between different conceptions of culture and nature, the modes of relating with the forest, the implications of deforestation, pollution and its impacts in everyday life in the communities, and the possibility of constructing pertinent adaptations to the maintenance of the way of life oriented by the Guarani culture. Other contemporary challenges concern the mercantilization of the land and its impacts on the life of communities that possess divergent conceptions of use of the land and modes of relating to the productive process. Land concentration in Brazil and the exploitation of labor in the rural context, which carry remnants of the slavery period, left the memory of the Guarani struggles and resistance against the transformations in their territories and their mercantilization. The House of Indigenous Cultures also proposes to conduct educational processes that approach the challenges of the indigenous communities in their relation with the urban context in small and large Brazilian cities. At the same time, the cities allow an encounter with the diversity of cultures and articulation between different indigenous peoples, they also present forms of exclusion and violence, invisibility, and prejudice, especially in the peripheral regions where most of the indigenous people in the city end up living. We understand, therefore, that the education of youths and adults must include the debate on how the psychosocial vulnerabilities imposed on the indigenous communities and people are faced, building understandings that may help in their struggle for rights, especially in relation to land demarcation and differentiated health and education. We understand that it is through the effectuation of rights, already formally achieved, that the communities will be able to strengthen the culturally oriented forms of care for the elder, children and young people, deal with gender relations, keep the memory of their people, and maintain the way of life transmitted through the process named nhembo’ea reko regua. The role of an education compromised with communitarian life is to foment thought on the knowledge that is directly related to the challenges faced by the collectivity, using the sustainable customs and practices characteristic of the community as references for giving strength to the ample exercise of the peoples’ capability to manage their educational processes, health promotion, economy, nourishing, appropriation of knowledge, and choices concerning what they intend to build for future generations (cf. ABRASME, 2014). In this trajectory, original contributions from other peoples and communities for facing these challenges may also appear, when we are educated to the point of living with the differences in a collaborative manner and become capable of appreciating them.

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5 Final Considerations Now is time to summarize some of the ideas discussed here, on the issue of the Mbya Guarani struggle addressing a differentiated education. First, we identified a tension between the achieved rights, formerly included in the Brazilian constitution and other legal regulations, and their implementations. There is a distance between the written and the practiced that leads to a reflection on the difference between an education that privileges access to information documented in text and an education that privileges social and community experience as an object of reflection and community commitment. The second case, in which education is a personal construction assured by experience, brings us closer to Nhembo’ea reko regua. Indigenous communities understand the need to appropriate the knowledge produced in human societies as a whole, as a way of carrying out their activities and reflections in dialogue, integrated with the diversity of life forms. However, they recognize that the historical imposition of knowledge derived from the Juruá (white man) religious and scientific traditions has been a way of delegitimizing indigenous cultures, silencing it, subduing it and, ultimately, eliminating it. With respect to this process, communities resist and school education is one of those points of resistance. In other words, the school is an ambiguous space. The knowledge it offers is important, but its importance concerns the nhembo’ea reko regua, that is, the Mbya Guarani resistance, ensuring cultural diversity against violent imposition of values of one culture on the other. Finally, the interlocution with the university is one of the important spaces in the construction of the resistance Mbya Guarani, in favor of the conviviality in the diversity, through the education. The university is the institution of juruá (white people) that forms the team of teachers and managers of the schools; therefore, it is strategic in order to give visibility to the conceptions that in the indigenous communities are transmitted in the process designated by the term nhembo’ea reko regua. The entry of the indigenous people into the university does not refer only to the appropriation of the knowledge produced by scientists and scholars. The construction of the House of Indigenous Cultures of IPUSP points to a distinct possibility in which indigenous people teach university students and professors. The contents of these teaching have been the principles and values that guide indigenous community life, their reflections and concerns about the misdeeds that contemporary society has been taking, alternatives for reversing the serious violations of sociodiversity and biodiversity that we experience on a daily basis. The House of Indigenous Cultures is a space of exchange, of dialogue, in the dialogical sense of the term, in which the differences can affirm and contribute mutually with one another in the displacement of points of view often hardened in school and academic education. Education must be, above all, a space for cultivating a soil for human existence, serene and confident, in which the diversity of personal and collective experiences can make sense. A space to expand, multiply the understandings of the world, in which diverse positions can coexist without exclusion or forced silencing. A differentiated school is therefore the one capable of harboring diversity by resisting historical and

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contemporary tendencies marked by the intensification of polarities, oppressions, attempts to silence, and imprisonment of the alterities of the others.

References ABRASME. (2014). Carta de Manaus: Por uma saúde integral aos povos indígenas: Carta aberta com recomendações para a promoção da saúde indígena integral, com propostas elaboradas no IV Congresso Brasileiro de Saúde Mental, 6 de setembro de 2014. Disponível em. http://psicologiacultural.ip.usp.br/sites/default/files/Carta%20de%20Manaus.pdf. Acesso em 23 de Abril de 2015. Almeida, M. R. C. (2012). Os índios na história do Brasil no século XIX: da invisibilidade ao protagonismo. Revista História Hoje, 1(2), 21–40. Azevedo, M., Brand, A., Heck, E., Pereira, L. M., & Melià, B. (2008). Guarani Retã 2008: Povos Guarani na Fronteira. Argentina, Brasil e Paraguai. Grumberg, G. e Melià, B. Boal, A. (2013). Teatro do Oprimido e outras poéticas políticas [Theater of the Oppressed and other political poetics]. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify. 224p. Brasil. (2008). Lei nº 11.645 de 10 de março de 2008. Disponível em: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ ccivil_03/_Ato2007-2010/2008/Lei/L11645.htm. Brasil [Constituição (1988)]. (2012). Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil: Texto constitucional promulgado em 5 de outubro de 1988, com as alterações adotadas pelas Emendas Constitucionais nos 1/1992 a 68/2011, pelo Decreto Legislativo nº 186/2008 e pelas Emendas Constitucionais de Revisão nos 1 a 6/1994. Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados, Edições Câmara. Costa, P. E. S. (2007). Do sensível ao inteligível: O Auto de São Lourenço. Dissertação de mestrado apresentada ao programa de pós-graduação em História e Cultura Histórica da Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brasil. Crochík, J. L. (2008). O conceito de preconceito e a perspectiva da Teoria Crítica. In J. L. Crochík (Org.), Perspectivas teóricas acerca do preconceito (1st ed., pp. 69–101). Sâo Paulo: Editora Casa do Psicólogo. CRPSP. (2010). Psicologia e Povos Indígenas. São Paulo: CRPSP. ENEI. (2013). Documento final do I Encontro Nacional dos Estudantes Indígenas. São Carlos, SP: UFSCAR. Gadamer, H.-G. (Meurer trad. 2008). Verdade e Método I: Traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. São Paulo: Vozes (Trabalho original publicado em 1960). Godoy, M. G. G., Mirim, A. G. T., & Silva, D. (Orgs.). (2013). Nhande Kuery Nhembo’ea? Nossas Aprendizagens, Educação Tradicional Guarani (58p) São Paulo: Terceira Margem Editora. Huvixa Kuery Nhembo’a Ty. (2013). Relatório do Encontro de Lideranças Mbya Guarani na aldeia Tekoa Pyau, São Paulo, SP. ILO (Intenational Labour Organization). (1989). Convention C169. ISA (Instituto Socioambiental | Povos Indígenas no Brasil). https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/ c/politicas-indigenistas/orgao-indigenista-oficial/o-servico-de-protecao-aos-indios-(spi). Acessado em: 02/07/2017. Jekupe, O. (2015). Histórico da criação do projeto CECI. In São Paulo (SP). (2015). CECI: 10 anos de história. São Paulo: SME/DOT. Macena, P. L. (2014). Saúde e educação indígenas: Oralidade, cultura e políticas públicas. Palestra proferida no III Fórum: A Presença Indígena em São Paulo, no Instituto de Psicologia da USP, em 9 de outubro de 2014 Disponível em. http://psicologiacultural.ip.usp.br/sites/default/files/Carta% 20de%20Manaus.pdf. Acesso em 03 de novembro de 2015. Macena, P. L., & Guimarães, D. S. (2016). A Psicologia Cultural na fronteira com as concepções Mbya Guarani de educação [Cultural Psychology in the boundary of the Mbya Guarani conceptions of education]. In CRPSP. (Org.), Na Fronteira da Psicologia com os Saberes Tradicionais:

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Práticas e Técnicas [In the boundary of psychology and traditional knowledge: Practices and Techniques] (pp. 135–147). São Paulo: CRP-SP. MEC (Ministério da Educação), & SECADI (Secretaria de Educação Continuada, Alfabetização, Diversidade e Inclusão). (2013). Plano nacional de implementação das diretrizes curriculares nacionais para educação das relações étnico-raciais e para o ensino de história e cultura afrobrasileira e africana (104p). Brasília: MEC, SECADI. Moura da Silva, P., Achatz, R. W., & Guimarães, D. S. (submetido). O protagonismo indígena na promoção de diálogos com a sociedade e aluta pelo território tradicional. Revista Cultura e Extensão USP (em avaliação). Patto, M. H. S. (2008) A Produção Do Fracasso Escolar [The production of scholar failure]. São Paulo: Casa do Psicólogo (Originally published in 1990). Pissolato, E. (2007). A duração da pessoa: Mobilidade, parentesco e Xamanismo Mbya (Guarani) [Person’s Duration: Mobility, Relationship and Shamanism Mbya (Guarani)]. São Paulo: Editora UNESP. PMSP. (2004). CECI—Centro de Educação e Cultura Indígena. In Proposta Político Pedagógica. Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo. Ribeiro, D. (1997). O Povo Brasileiro: A formação e o sentido do Brasil (476p). São Paulo: Companhia das letras. Simão, L. M. (2005). Bildung, culture and self; A possible dialogue with Gadamer, Boesch and Valsiner? Theory & Psychology, 15(4), 549–574. Simão, L. M. (2010). Ensaios Dialógicos: Compartilhamento e diferença nas relações eu outro (286p). São Paulo: HUCITEC.

Roberto Veríssimo Lima (Tupã Popygua) is Mbya Guarani, indigenous health agent from the community of Tangara (Itanhaém, São Paulo, Brazil). He coordinates partnerships of Mbya Guarani projects with the Amerindian Support Network (Institute of Psychology da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil), through which he formulated the proposal to build the House of Indigenous Cultures at the Institute of Psychology in 2015. He was educator of the Indigenous Education and Culture Center (CECI) of Tenonde Porã community, São Paulo/SP Brazil (2004–2006), supervisor of the food sector of the CECIs of São Paulo (2006–2009), educator (2012), school assistant (2013), administrative assistant (2015), and administrative coordinator (2016) of CECI Jaraguá (São Paulo/SP, Brazil). He co-directed the documentary “Tenonderã—a look for the future” (2009). Jurandir Augusto Martim (Karai Jekupe) is Mbya Guarani. Since 2012 he has been a teacher of sciences at the state Guarani indigenous school Djekupe Amba Arandu, in the Indigenous Territory of Jaraguá (São Paulo/SP, Brazil). He was trained through the National Policy for Indigenous Environmental Management (PNGATI, 2014). Between 2009 and 2011, he worked as a teacher at the State Guarani indigenous schools Gwyra Pepo and Krukutu in the indigenous lands of Tenondé Porã and Krukutu (São Paulo/SP, Brazil). He co-directed the documentary Ribeirão das Lavras— Um Rio Guarani. He reflects that the real education should work to improve the world and not to make money. Danilo Silva Guimarães is Professor at the Institute of Psychology Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil). He has been working with theoretical and methodological issues concerning the cultural construction of senses, from a semiotic-cultural and constructivist perspective in psychology. His focus of investigation is the process of dialogical multiplication concerning tensional boundaries between cultures and indigenous psychology.

Chapter 8

Education for Beauty in Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection) and the Emergence of Creative Work at the Outskirts of Salvador, Brazil José Eduardo Ferreira Santos Abstract This chapter introduces the aesthetic and pedagogical experiences carried out at Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection) involving artists and the population living on the periphery of Salvador. The author considers the impact of such actions in strengthening social support networks and in creating new symbolic fields in face of urban violence. He analyzes the role of artistic methodologies to cope with psychosocial vulnerability, namely. art education and the appreciation of memory, beauty, local history and its creative potential and capabilities in a context that is stigmatized by stereotypes linked to poverty and violence. In this sense, the project in scene is original and contradicts the usual notion that it is not possible to find creativity, art, history, and aesthetical values in the outskirts. There are no records of other initiatives with the same dimension and potential for growth and networking. The discussion is guided by the concept of developmental poetics, focusing on the process of creation, authoring, exhibition and socialization of pieces of art with the potential to favor human development under hardship, activating family and community dynamics through the occupation of nonformal education spaces, artistic creation, and exhibitions. Concrete experiences in this direction are presented and analyzed.

1 A Visitor’s Impression of Acervo da Laje It has been a couple of years now since I have been following the activity of José Eduardo Ferreira Santos with much interest and emotion, an educator who embodies the most noble and difficult aspect of pedagogical practice: the education of girls, boys and adolescents of both genders who live in adverse conditions, such as economic hardship and the risk of ‘Laje’ is a roof top area in houses, which are common in poor communities around Brazil. It is sometimes part of an extension of the house and still under construction and it is commonly used as a gathering place for barbecues, sunbathing or small parties. J. E. F. Santos (B) Catholic University of Salvador, Salvador, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_8

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social marginalization, to the rhythm of daily brutalities. Thanks to his spirit of solidarity, José Eduardo conceives the educational act as a stimulus for the conquest of freedom by the student, within the framework of a vision that is realistic and utopian of the possibilities opened up by coexistence, even in the negative universe of deprivation. Hence it rejects the consecrated formulations and the elite conceptions, generally aimed at unifying and dissolving the individual in the more conformist class and group expectations. Identified to the deep needs of marginalized communities, it seeks to associate the acquisition of knowledge with the use of what could be called “lived cultures”, which correspond to the way of being of collectivities. Hence the use of playful and festive practices of the people, as well as African traditions and educational factors, in the light of an integrative conception. The pedagogy of José Eduardo and his companions is, therefore, essentially humanizing, in conceiving socialization, not as framing and conformism, but as conquering the autonomy of thought and choice. The contrast between the struggle for personal achievements and the oppressive weight of the environment, in his work, is admirable, which acts in the opposite direction, due to factors that dehumanize, such as poverty and violence. Educators of José Eduardo and his companions’ stature show that a pedagogy capable of realizing the true “human promotion” is possible, making individual freedom to blossom in harmony with the positive values of the collective”. (Candido, 2005, pp. 13–14)

2 Introduction to the Laje Collection The Laje Collection is a cultural and artistic space located in the periphery of Salvador, Brazil, known as Subúrbio Ferroviário.1 Some residents founded this place in 2011 in order to retrieve the ancestral and artistic legacy of Subúrbio, and its existence has been useful as an important instrument to resist the stigmatization and marginalization of its population. The idea of creating the Laje Collection emerged from a meeting between the author and the Italian photographer Marco Illuminati during their research on “The invisible art of the beauty workers on the periphery of Salvador”. The initiative aims to create a response to the negative narratives constantly displayed, especially by the local media, which highlights poverty and violence, and focuses on a bad and reductionist view of the periphery. José Eduardo Ferreira Santos and his wife Vilma Santos2 are the main people responsible for the project. José Eduardo is the curator of Acervo da Laje. Acervo da Laje was first located at José Eduardo and Vilma’s house, but as the collection 1 Subúrbio

Ferroviário is the name given to the set of peripheral districts northwest of Salvador, which are inhabited by 500 thousand people distributed within 22 neighborhoods. It is known for the railway line that connects its districts. This area is underserved by public services and lacks basic infrastructure. 2 José Eduardo and Vilma are both teachers, José Eduardo teaches at the Catholic University of Salvador (UCSal) and Vilma teaches students from preschool to elementary school. José Eduardo went to Pedagogy School, has a Master degree in Psychology and a Doctorate degree in Public Health. He participates in the National Program of Post-Doctorate (PNPD–CAPES) by the Institute of Psychology of the Federal University from Bahia. He has published a book on the homicide among the youth in the periphery (Santos, 2010) and another on Acervo da Laje (Santos, 2014).

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was growing fast, they moved to another place. Shortly after the move they started to build another space, known as House 2, on the top floor of the new house. At first, works of the “invisible” periphery artists were bought and after a while, the curator started to collect objects, related to the story of Subúrbio Ferroviário. The full collection is currently placed in House 1. The space in House 2 is going to be used for workshops, meetings, celebrations and to welcome the community itself and other groups which might be interested in getting to know Acervo da Laje. Visiting Acervo da Laje calls upon a reflection of the invisibility, where periphery artists are subjected to in the art scene. Artists and the artwork from the community are commonly misjudged and underestimated, not only by the society but also by those who set the rules on art valuation. The artistic production has a vast importance to these people as a way of communicating their cultural identities (Simão, 1999; Valsiner, 2012) and their lifestyle, and as such is a very useful tool for empowerment, for counteracting stigmatization and for dissemination of alternative narratives. Art is admittedly one of the most elaborate processes created by human beings. Brazilian scholars such as Simão (1999) and Japiaçu (1999) have stressed the relevance of culture to human development and especially underlined mutuality, bidirectional dynamics, and historicity. Through art, we exercise our capacities of creation, imagination, synthesis, analysis, and generalization. Art deals with the elaborations of experience and serves thus as important contributing aspect in context of human development. According to Vygotsky: The cognitive effect of art is also possible and achievable. A lived-out work of art can really change our view of a certain field of phenomena, compelling us to look at it with new eyes, to generalize, and to gather facts that are sometimes totally dispersed. Like all intense experiences, the aesthetic experience creates a very sensitive state for later actions and, of course, it never goes by without leaving marks on our subsequent behavior (Vygotsky, 2003, p. 334).

In this sense, it is important that art and aesthetics are present in daily life, both on formal and nonformal spaces of education. When pedagogical practices are intentionally related to aesthetic and artistic aspects, we can see new forms of elaboration and creations emerge fueling the exercise of authorship, since to create is to exist. This chapter presents the meetings of children, young people, and adults with the artists through the activities carried out in Acervo da Laje. It investigates how these moments were of discovery and possibility. In this sense, the meeting, the creation, and the aesthetic elaboration with the population of the outskirts mark the pedagogical practices of Acervo da Laje. A longitudinal study of such practices offers the possibility to examine how even in adversity human promotion can be supported by education that focuses on the cultural richness that exists in the people, often made invisible by hegemonic models of power. The pedagogical practices here are seen as space for the development of bonds of belonging, besides the personal development of each subject and strengthening of the collective.

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3 Developmental Poetics The notion of developmental poetics or poetic motion seeks to grasp the “blossoming of individual freedom” (Abbey, 2006). It refers to the unique and daily emergence of new actions and regulatory elaborations of our way of being in the world, even in adverse situations, promoting human development in context, overcoming the anachronistic gap that sees life without its complex dialogically and culturally situated dynamics. Poetic motion is seen as new form of elaboration of reality and subjectivity in its more resilient and adaptive way, indicating that adversities and violence are not determining oppressive experiences. Rather we suggest that education to beauty can promote small revolutions, by bringing to light the unpredictability of existence (and resistance) amidst context vulnerabilities, in other words, the access to art and beauty in contexts of social vulnerability encourages people—mainly children and adolescents—to develop protection mechanisms and new elaborations of the symbolic resources, and to make new experiences available to them. The perspective of developmental poetics has been discussed in the context of cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2012), with contributions by Rabinovich and Bastos (2012), Bastos and Abbey (2012). Implied in the notion of developmental poetics, and the practices it has developed, we consider it to function as a protection against risk factors, vulnerability, and violence. Thus, we emphasize that art has semiotic functions, which are essential to human development in the context of adverse situations. Rabinovich and Bastos (2012) write: The main point here is that the notion of poetic motion can help overcome the gap between theoretical approaches and everyday life, where narratives are nested, since this notion assumes the quality of emergence, of life transformation, resulting in reaching a form of transcendence in space and time and in the construction of new meanings. The idea of poetic motion also seems to be approaching the heart of the phenomenon, favoring the, highly desired, quality of coming close to real life. The poetic dimension also originates in the domain of dreams and projects and it converges towards the future, guided by personal desires of a different life, at several levels. (Rabinovich & Bastos, 2012, p. 33)

With the poetics of development, professionals must be attentive to glimpse that moment of emerging novelty in art, since it is here, that new meanings potentially emerge for the participating families that have access to the spaces of Acervo da Laje. Our theoretical approach also includes the works of Vygotsky (2003) on art and psychology, and of Becker (1977), on art and sociology. Their systematic works inspire intervention from two relevant disciplines that are capable of including the vulnerable context of our work and the risks of exclusion, violence, and the feeling of embarrassment and shame generated in this context. Both authors have elaborated on the cultural dimension, understanding that it belongs to the persons, as Valsiner (2012) beautifully said. In practice, Acervo da Laje assumes that art always has a social, interactive, and dialogical dimension, which cannot be excluded from any understanding of, or working with art. Behind the activities that interlink art and education our notion of development of poetics is considered as a movement of authorial creation and unique experiences

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by subjects in development. Subjects, whose expressions become works of art that mobilizes skills and resources of the subjects, involved in the creative processes.

4 Aims and Method This chapter seeks to analyze and discuss the impact of art on the aesthetic education and human development of children and adolescents in the Subúrbio Ferroviário de Salvador. The multiple resources made available—the workshops and exhibitions, the interactive encounters with pieces of art, and the meetings with the artists—should all be mentioned as creating new dialogical ways of working with art in the communities, connecting home, school, and museum. Throughout the whole process, the aim has been to democratize and decentralize the process of creating and displaying art and move it from the traditional museums that have been restricted to the richer areas of the city also to the outskirts, observing the impact of this process. We have carried out longitudinal, ethnographic, and participatory research projects based on participant observation (Laplantine, 2000, 2005; de Oliveira, 2000). The content and forms of artistic expression in the outskirts of the city of Salvador have been consistently and intensively recorded. This has involved educative, participatory strategies, always stressing the encounter with the children, adolescents, and families who visited and/or participated in the artistic and cultural activities carried out in Acervo da Laje. We have analyzed the data in order to understand the nature of the complex process triggered in the community by the experience of the Acervo da Laje. We are aware that this is a very preliminary approach. Yet, the experience has been very intense and is constantly expanding in new modalities of artistic work and encounters. It is fair to say that the analysis done so far attempts to identify the relevant dimensions and categories on a more thematic than theoretical level. These are, however, stepping stones needed to develop a comprehensive understanding, which requires time and continued analytical effort to be completed. The thematic analysis of the data indicated abilities related to the aesthetics acting in the context. These results are later presented in descriptive accounts and in a table. Before turning to the initial results and reflections on our work, we will first describe the space in the two houses that together form Acervo de Laje. Together with the photos, this description aims to provide the necessary context for understanding the empirical examples and conceptual reflections that follow.

4.1 Visiting Acervo da Laje Acervo da Laje consists of libraries, newspaper archive, collections of CD’s, vinyl, manuscripts, sketches, shells, bricks, wooden and aluminum sculptures, photographs, and objects that tell the story of the railroad outskirts of Salvador. We dialogue with the whole city and aim to show that there is beauty and aesthetic elaborations also

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in this area. Some permanent exhibitions are worth mentioning, as for example The Beauty of the Outskirts, which is coordinated by Marcella Hausen and shows photos of children and teenagers from the neighborhoods. There are also works coming from Subúrbio Ferroviário [Railroad Outskirts] and from Cidade Baixa [Lower City],3 along with works by artists from other areas of the city4 along with other works, which are not been signed, made by the so-called “Invisible artists”. In telling the story of the hitherto invisible from the Railroad Outskirts of Salvador, Acervo da Laje acquires its items through purchases and donations—and many of them are found in the garbage. We will come back to the “junk-art” shortly.

4.1.1

House No. 1

The staircase toward the first floor is decorated by works by Santana, Nalva and Carioca and a large painting by Oliveira, an artist who creates poetics about the clown and the social reality of the outskirts in his works. First floor exposes photos from the exhibition “A Beleza do Subúrbio” [The Beauty of the Outskirts]. The photos were taken by children and teenagers from the neighborhoods of Itacaranha and São João do Cabrito, in 2013. On the ceiling hangs works by Esdras, who used to sell his paintings door-to-door throughout the city, and also by Santana and Nalva, who are residents of the neighborhood. In addition, works by Carioca, who is homeless, and whose works are loaded with windings and oneiric lines, are exhibited. The poem “Respeito” (Respect), by Nelson Maca, is drawn in graffiti by Luiz Pablo Moura, on the wall and door (see Fig. 1). On the first floor, three libraries with donated collections of books (General, Collections, Rare Books, Local, Poetry, Art) are located, as well as paintings found in the garbage of the outskirts. Oliveira’s paintings decorate the ceiling. The stairway leading from the first to the second floor is decorated with items (such as plastic signs) found in the garbage and with sculptures, masks, and painted tiles, handcrafted by local artists. The paintings by Carioca and the baroque motifs carved in wood by Índio, also adorns the wall. On the second floor, we find the permanent exhibition by M. Illuminati: Cadê a Bonita? [Where’s Ms. Beauty?] It depicts sixty women, 18–96 years old, who lived in Plataforma neighborhood (see Fig. 2). The second floor also includes two important libraries: one of “Autographed books” and one on “Soccer and Poetry” by Edson Barbosa Bulos. In one room, 3 The

artists that have participated in the exhibitions and collections at Acervo da Laje come from the outskirts and from central areas of the city as well. Many of them have donated pieces of art and participated in the educative activities, what amplify the meaning and exchanges during the meetings, favoring the dynamics of encounters that is so important to us. Almiro Borges, Cesar, Otávio Bahia, Otávio Filho, Prentice Carvalho, Indiano Carioca, Perinho Santana, Nalva Conceição, Zaca Oliveira, César Lima, Ray Bahia, Marlúcia, Zilda Paim, Ivana Magalhães, Jorge de Jesus, Índio, Raimundo Lembrança, Isa Amaral, Mila Souza, Carlos Coelho, José Leôncio, Maurino Araújo, Ana Cris, Esdras. 4 Itamar Espinheira, Reinaldo Eckenberger, Lênio Braga, Renato da Silveira, Filho and Neto do Louco, Adriana Accioly, Simone Santos, Cláudio Pastro, Solon Barreto, Mario Bestetti, Chico Flores, Deraldo Lima, Valéria Simões, Nelson Maca & Luiz Pablo Moura.

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Fig. 1 The poem “Respeito” by Nelson Maca

Fig. 2 Part of the exhibition “Where is Ms. Beauty”

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Fig. 3 Objects on the altars

we find numerous paintings of local and invisible artists and a numismatic section. The room also contains a ceramic sculpture by R. Eckenberger, whose work was exhibited during the 3rd Biennial of Bahia. This space is a place of memory linked to families, so there are many photographs, altars, and objects that tell stories and keep memories (see Figs. 3 and 4). The libraries are a depository for research and tell, for the first time, the history of the Railroad Suburb, showing that the outskirts of the town are marked by a life and creativity, what counteracts the stigma of violence that is used to make even deeper the social exclusion that defines a big part of the everyday experience of the dwellers. The hallway of second floor is also a mix of found items and crafts. The aluminum fish, sculptures, and masks are composed with found objects, e.g., old tiles, mortar and pestle, and iron typing machines. Yet another room shows folkloric motifs and customs of the Recôncavo region together with wooden carts by Cicero and paintings by Borges, a renowned painter who lived in Itacaranha neighborhood (see Fig. 5). The fifth room presents many historical works and artifacts, from aluminum and wooden masks and sculptures to paintings made by well-known or invisible artists and mixed with found items (such as signs) found in the garbage. The room also contains a large collection of Carrancas, an outskirts’ seashell collection. Finally, it contains a bronze sculpture by Tati Moreno from the 3rd Biennial of Bahia.

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Fig. 4 Objects on the altars

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Fig. 5 The big hall, a mixture of items found and crafted

4.1.2

House No. 2

The second venue was designed by the architect F. Calabrese and is composed of three floors, with a prominent view to Cabrito cove and São João bridge (see Figs. 6 and 10). On the first floor, Vilma and José Eduardo’s have their home, which is decorated with tile panels made by great artists from Bahia and Brazil, such as Prentice, Eckenberger, and Claudio Pastro. The second floor is composed of a large room for workshops, discussions, and classes (see Figs. 7, 8 and 9). Here, we find paintings by Bida and Oliveira. As one of the objectives of Acervo da Laje is to foster the meeting between people, works of art, and artists, as well as to stimulate research and redefine the image of the outskirts, showing their values, memory, culture, we have made space for workshops in partnership with, e.g., Rosa Bunchaft and Isabela Lemos (on handmade photography projects), and Ivana Magalhães (on pottery therapy). There is a guestroom with works of the #OcupaLajes project carried out by Acervo da Laje in 2016. The bathroom on this floor is decorated with old hydraulic tiles from the factories of the outskirts region, as well as recycled tiles found on streets and beaches. On the third floor there is the library, a reading area, and future community kitchen. On the balcony, there are also old hydraulic tiles. Built to welcome people and foster encounters, house 2 is the continuity of the beauty found in house 1.

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Fig. 6 House no 2

Fig. 7 One of the workshops

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Fig. 8 One of the workshops and its participants

Fig. 9 One of the workshops and its participants

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Fig. 10 A view from the balcony

Research, academic works, and journalistic materials about Acervo na Laje and the artists can be found on the Internet,5 as well as in its Facebook profile.6 Visits are usually booked by phone, Facebook, or email (Fig. 10).

5 Results and Reflections In this part of the chapter, we begin to describe and reflect on the many experiences that we have had in Acervo de Laje. We cannot yet discuss concrete documented outcomes of our educational work with children, young people, and adults who live in the peripheries. Instead, we offer some initial empirical vignettes and conceptual reflections that have emerged from our work so far.

5 Aprovado, 6 More

Soterópolis, Como Será?, TV Pelourinho. information and photos: www.facebook.com/acervodalaje/.

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5.1 Facing Violence on the Outskirts with Art The interest in art in the outskirts arose from studies on violence (Santos, 2010), which we have previously conducted and which results pointed to the lack of artistic and aesthetic elements in the trajectories of young people in situations of marginalization. Acervo da Laje was structured after the research with the purchase of hundreds of artistic works of the artists from that territory. Many other have been found in the garbage, and the artists and community members donated others. The objects found in garbage are important in the sense that they tell stories of people and communities. In this sense, the Collection works as a place of collective memory, one of the few contexts in the outskirts that is able to keep these memories alive. Following the initial events, where objects were rescued from garbage, the community members started to bring objects and pieces of art from their homes to the Collection. As such, the Collection is the first to exist in Salvador and one of the few spaces for collective memory existing in the country—for this reason, it has attracted many visitors from other States in Brazil and from other countries too. This research, its extensions, and intervention space appears as an action that aims to minimize the effects of violence on the populations of the outskirts through art and to promote the meeting of children and teenagers in a situation of vulnerability and psychosocial risk through the symbolic and semiotic elements present in art. Differently from conventional museums that typically prevent the direct interaction between visitors and the pieces being exhibited, people are free and invited to touch and feel the pieces of art very close and concretely. We have noticed that having a sensorial and kinesthetic experience with art has an impact not only on how the body reacts to art, but also on understanding the meaning of art. This understanding cannot be restricted to verbal apprehension—it is better approached as a pleromatic experience (Valsiner, 2012).

5.2 From Violence to Beauty: An Urge for Forgotten Humanity Obviously, one can state that there is poverty in the outskirts, but there is richness as well. The revelation of so much beauty produced by the inhabitants of the outskirts of Salvador shows that they are in movement, moving forward with impetus to build a better and more humane life, all of this with an invisible work, which is revealing itself as a legacy to the new generations. Situations of violence tend to reduce the human to statistics. In this reduction, and especially when we cannot see the humanity in the other person, we tend to forget the values of life. This is often the case in studies on violence: we often forget the history, life, and memory of those people. When we began to study the beauty produced in the outskirts, a perspective that radically changed our understanding arose. People could be seen through their cre-

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ations and human elaborations, because in so doing, they created something new and communicable, they showed that they were part of the human history and at the same time that they were unique and dignified. In this sense, in affirming the population of the outskirts considering their potentialities, we aim to bring a sense of humanity that has often been lost or forgotten to the surface, since in a historical perspective, people in such situations have a history, a name, and dignity.

5.3 Educating to Beauty and to Sensitivity Beauty might not be visible in the outskirts. But we insist that beauty is to be found and made everywhere: in people, in their houses, their neighborhoods, in dressing, in faith, in sociability, for where the human being is, there is beauty (and its possible opposite). We consider it necessary to educate people, so that they recognize it and relate to it. We need to be educated, in our personal and professional journeys, to constantly look for this rise of beauty and not to look down on other human being. To be willing to be surprised by our cultural life. Even in the most unlikely places, like in the outskirts of big cities, people are creating art and beauty in their various expressions, teaching us that there is a beauty democracy that renews itself daily. Acervo da Laje seeks to show this beauty through visits, workshops, courses, and other activities that educate the eyes and sensibilities of residents, students, children, adolescents, and even the population of other neighborhoods and countries to break the stereotypes about the outskirts. We have all the pieces of art exposed in the two houses with monumental views and a beautiful structure built to receive people, because for the art to be useful in education to sensitivity, it needs to be welcoming. In recent years, we have received thousands of people who have gone through this experience of meeting the beauty. In considering, that the creative processes carried out at the Acervo da Laje happens in a nonformal educational space, which is already marked by poverty and lack of respect for basic human rights, we came to realize that the whole process implies cultural resistance and standing for the rights of the people living in the outskirts of the town. To stress the natural beauty of the area and that people living there are capable of producing beauty, art, and culture in such a vivid way, is a powerful educative strategy to fight the social stigma and its consequences on self-esteem and identity. This is how we, the team of educators, experience the encounter with the visitors of Acervo da Laje: They come here to try what is not available and allowed at conventional museums that are aseptic, rigid in their rules and say “no” all the time to their visitors. When people visit the Acervo, they start from a “yes”, from what exists there. To visit the Acervo is to be welcomed by people (Vilma, Eduardo and Leandro) and by the pieces of art, interacting with them, cherishing the desire to have some of this art in their home. In order to make it possible, the visitors meet the artists during the workshops and can buy their art. They

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can also produce something (photographs, painting, pottery etc.). This experience is made available to people who have never visited a museum before. Living in the outskirts, people don’t feel comfortable in places where they are discriminated against, due to racism, to territorial segregation or social exclusion. Besides that, usually the collections exhibited in conventional museums do not dialogue with their cultural reality. (Fieldnotes, Santos, 2017)

5.4 The Possibility of Being Happens in the Meeting with What Transcends Us In order to not look down on the human being (oneself or the other), the person must seek something that transcends him or her as a possibility of being, as a discovery of oneself and as one, capable of creating and developing. We have realized that art has a restorative and educational function, because it goes beyond contingency (without forgetting it). Every time a person from the outskirts discovers oneself as potentially creative, it mutually feeds back and feeds forward into his or her development. We propose that when art works in peripheral contexts, a protective and symbolic field is created in the face of situations of violence, opening new perspectives of integration, in the sense of taking part in building a human culture and a human community. Art, like education, protects, stimulates, and triggers a desire to live. To give an idea how this can be achieved and has been done in Acervo de Laje, we present the case of #OcupaLajes. We developed the #OcupaLajes project in 2016 in order to cover the spaces of the outskirts with art, and to democratize and empower a movement of visual art. The project included eight workshops with different artistic modalities (mosaic, masks, metal and wood art, pottery therapy, pinhole photography, canvas painting, and graffiti) and visual interventions on the rooftops of the outskirts. Moreover, a traveling exhibition in three rooftops of the city of Salvador attracted hundreds of people to see and experience the beauty produced by the local residents. The project was sponsored by the Municipal Edict “Art Everywhere”, and promoted by Fundação Gregorio de Mattos, a governmental agency for support of cultural initiatives. “Occupying” is an act of resistance, mobility, of transformation. We occupy rigid structures, inflexible, and downstream operations and within them we try to reorganize the ways of doing, thinking, and socializing. In this sense, the act of occupying in itself is a very expressive and symbolic act of reorganization, and more than just an act of defiance and protest. #OcupaLajes was conducted by a team formed by community members and professionals with experience in peripheral neighborhoods, mainly as educators. The experience was very successful, even when facing many challenges. One of the main challenges consisted in matching activities with the users. The workshops were planned according to age-specific groups. However, these criteria were overruled; both children and adults wanted to participate in workshops that were not compatible to their ages: Dona (50 years old), participated at a pinhole (a kind of handcraft) workshop for teenagers, whereas Gabriel (10 years old) did workshops of masks

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meant for participants far beyond for his age. He was hurt, because people said that someone else had to modify his masks and he even had a fever because of that. The situation required intervention by the team. We conclude that art is beyond age.

5.5 How Can Art Bring Rags to Riches? Some of our results are evident indirectly in the numerous activities we have initiated or have been part of. In the period 2010–2017, almost 30 projects have been carried out in the full process of applying for funding, organizing the people involved, establishing partnerships, supporting artistic expressions, working on nonformal education, and supporting the refinement of the skills developed during these beauty education processes. We have been supported by municipalities, university schools of architecture, Biennials, and TV channels, but most projects rely on our own personal and financial resources and initiative. We believe that our work in culture, art, and education is meaningful to the lives of thousands of people. As citizens, we are responding to social and cultural demands that are ignored or neglected by the governments and social institutions. Having studied and witnessed the painful and overwhelming reality of violence in the outskirts, we are intensely committed to the mission of promoting human development in adverse contexts through the encounter with the beauty and the works of art present and produced in the community and reunited in the Acervo. As researchers we have received financial aid in the form of research grants to support our research of following, systematizing, and analyzing the experiences carried out in the Acervo. Recently, the City Hall and the State, through their cultural departments, supported two specific stages of the project “Ocupa Lajes” (Occupy the Lajes, 2016 and 2018), which consisted in developing comparable activities in other areas in the outskirts of Salvador. Concerning the specific contents of the activities at Acervo da Laje, the themes have varied and range from research on Invisible Artist, producing documentaries on The Beauty of the Suburbs, to a “Pinhole Photography Day”, a workshop on Therapeutic Pottery, several photo exhibitions, readings, lectures at universities and museums, dance festivals, and crafts of many kinds. Participants in these activities were all residents of the outskirts, of different ages and they became part of the promotion of a new visibility of the territory, its beauties, identities, as well as the constitution of a new perception about the outskirts and its potentialities. Among these activities, we can also highlight the participation of local artists in many opportunities, which resulted in their works and artistic expressions being broadcasted on TV channels, in newspapers and on the Internet (Santos, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a). Residents in the local environment have many skills. It is no exaggeration to say that the outskirts is a real melting pot of artists and professionals working in all possible fields; they are not paralyzed, they try hard to build adventures in life. Despite the adverse situations, here is a nonstop, constantly active, spring of creativity. Below

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Table 1 Summary of activities undertaken in Acervo da Laje Artistic expression developed

Creation process, authorship

Exhibition

Audited public

Art on Metal

Individual

X

Youth and adults

Wood Art

Individual

X

Adults

Observation drawing

Individual

X

Children and adolescents

Patrimonial education

Collective

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

Art Exhibitions

Collective

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

Documentary photography

Individual

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

Pinhole Photography

Collective

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

Graffiti

Collective

X

Young people and adolescents

Reading

Collective

X

Children and adolescents

Masks

Collective

X

Children and adolescents

Mosaic

Collective

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

Painting on canvas

Individual

X

Teens and young people

Pottery therapy

Collective

X

Children

Samba de roda and popular expressions

Collective

X

Children, adolescents, young adults, and adults

we have mapped the skills related to artistic, cultural, and aesthetic expressions that have been developed in Acervo da Laje in recent years (Table 1).

5.6 The Development of Skills—The Development of Youth Beauty has surely to do, for the youth, with the possibility of expressing a skill or knowledge that is born from the individual and from him or her reaches other people. This definitely changes the perspective and direction in the process of becoming a person. Cultural resources are essential to human beings, and they can be dramatically important under conditions of social vulnerability, where enormous adversities are faced and every positive resource can make a big difference in the lives of children and adolescents. We have published elsewhere case studies that illustrate well this impact (Alcântara & Ferreira-Santos, 2009; dos Santos, Ferreira-Santos, dos Santos, de Reis, & Ferreira-Santos, 2017; Ferreira-Santos, 2009; Ferreira-Santos, Illuminati, & Bastos, 2012; Santos, 2014, 2016b; Reis & Ferreira-Santos, 2015).

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Each young person is active in his or her own way. Movement and expression are constantly showing some of their personal characteristics, and we commonly find them questioning and searching in life. In their everyday movements, they seem to want to realize themselves as well as to be recognized for their abilities and competencies. There is a meaning, when that happens, that restores points that can be considered difficult in the journey. Here, then, the utility of beauty emerges: it restores and gives new meaning to experiences. If situations of violence, poverty, and unemployment, as are common experiences to the young people here, on the one hand, act as lethargic and oppressive forces, then, on the other hand, beauty created through art integrates and gives a new meaning to life. In the following section of the chapter, we present two examples that illustrate the experience we have lived at Acervo da Laje. They are both related to the matters of death and eternal morning that is characteristic to the experiences of children and young people from the Outskirts.

5.6.1

The Three Brothers

The first example is related to the works of artist Raimundo Santos Bida. His painting depicts three young boys playing musical instruments and one of them is wrapped in a placenta; young boys from Brazilian people’s formation (see Fig. 11). In the very same week that Raimundo Santos Bida’s painting reached Acervo da Laje we heard of three young brothers who were murdered by drug dealers while the fourth brother was at work. This was a moment of perplexity and incommensurable pain for the people of outskirts. The parallel between the scene depicted on the painting and the tragic events in real life had no explanation. Yet through it something of the human in its most refined elaborations reached the people of the periphery when we felt how human being are reduced by the experience of pain. However, there is some certainty: before the other, in front of the artwork, the other one grows, reveals itself and the encounter happens, the epiphany comes to light, a life that is renewed, because it has new sense that emerges in the encounter, experience, and interactions with the art. It is in this relationship or encounter with the beauty that the other is reborn. In this way, the encounter with this artwork in the context of violence and psychosocial risk has symbolic and restorative function and as such is an important contributor to human development. Art restores because it recomposes, on the symbolic-cultural plane the deficit that the social inequalities that perpetuate in Brazil have created. It restores the right to beauty and to the canonical aesthetic elaborations that have been denied to peripheries and are hosted in the museums of the urban centers. Violence brings discouragement, pain, impotence, and mourning; yet, art can provoke in us new elaborations about life, death, fate, and its mysteries. In short, art educates for fundamental issues: happiness, destiny, life, love, and transcendence beyond the trivial and ephemeral. Elaborating feelings, projects in various aspects of human experience, art has a restorative role, for example, in times

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Fig. 11 The painting by Raimundo Santos Bida

when young people are killed, we are left with the unaccountable experience of “eternal mourning” that abounds in social networks as an expression of young survivors’ pain. On the walls of both social networks and the outskirts of the city written in black ink, the same words are repeated: “eternal mourning.” However, what does it say without elaboration? The peripheries have typically been denied the access to art and when this hegemony is broken by the gesture of the artist who donates his unique artwork so that it remains in the periphery, he is breaking this historical and perverse exclusion. Moreover, the power of the artwork is precisely to break the structures of imponderable and impossible, communicate between worlds previously considered incommunicable, but now possible. The artwork thus opens up a dialogue that so far was impossible.

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“I See My Brother Die”

The second example is related to our experiences in the mosaic (tiles) and canvas painting workshops that are usually attended by children and adolescents who visit the space to see the artists and talk to them. The particular meeting considered in this example took place during a workshop, in which the mosaic artist was teaching children and young people the technique to break the tiles and paste them into the base creating colorful objects in diverse shapes. The artist Zaca Oliveira was working with the audience when some kids who knew him because of their previous collaboration came to greet him and talk to him. At such moments, we get the opportunity to talk about the projects of the participants. In one of these dialogues, we asked the children to tell us about their dreams. We were surprised when a 9-year-old boy answered: “I see my brother die”. In art workshops, life experiences are updated and evaluated. And in art, life and death always meet and cross in the context of the mystery of the artistic making, which implies the emergence of something new, a creation, in a unique way. Creation appears dialogued and participatory, in action during moments of deliberate attention over a work that, between playful and artistic makes something new arise, and protects those who are vulnerable. Artwork thus opens up a space to dialogue about intense yet often hidden topics and experiences. As professionals working with children and young people, our role is to listen, to take care of the wound opened up through beauty, and heal it with the artwork made. Nevertheless, there is always a search that starts when a person is touched by art. Art has no filter and we need to be ready to face situations like these that show us that, in periphery life, kids already feel the fear for life and death experience, or at least an expectation of it in their horizon, reaping their beings, leaving them the feeling of becoming an orphan. When violence against young people becomes banal, the violent deaths that are perpetrated in the urban environment in the periphery of Salvador, by extension, have an impact on children and adolescents of a younger age. This means that they are, from a very early age, developing an anticipatory memory/experience of violence and death of relatives and other known people. Yet, despite these fears, and anticipations, there is always an imperative force of human development that surpasses these fears and experiences of grief. Hearing about a dream that is about the expectation of death from a young child reveals that there is something harmful in the life of our children and adolescents. It shows the denial of rights and reveals a lack of spaces to speak up. Yet, art and artistic work creates a space to dialogue about the impact that violence has on these young lives. In environments that are characterized by situations that threaten life trajectories, the impact is real and anticipated for the lives that have just started. It is therefore important to be able to talk about these experiences. We need to be able to create and not turn into banality what emerges from the educational process, for it is an important aspect of the development of artistic actions and play a fundamental role in the elaboration of life projects. The visual and plastic art, in its various expressions, can contribute to the elaboration of these wounds and losses, or anticipations of the possible losses, considering

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previous experiences in the early stages of development. To dwell in a workshop and talk with an educator who understands can guide trajectories previously considered improbable, but now possible because of this first experience lived. Technique and the affection also allow this new perspective on the ways of elaboration that art can promote in children and adolescents in situation of social vulnerability. The staff who produce these workshops must have technique and affection. In this sense, the work with art needs to dialogue with psychology and education, to ensure that new learning processes and elaborations take place: what is it like to live from a very early age with a dream in which death and violence are part of the life of a 9-year-old child? What is the role of art in the life of a child who has a recurrent dream like this in such an early age? What kind of future is this? Despite these anticipations of death, the last word about life is life. And art is a way to elaborate these experiences.

6 Concluding Thoughts Research has pointed out that beauty is expressed by culture in its manifestations and it is a path of orientation of the trajectories of young people that inhabit the outskirts. It becomes a space where they can stand up to violent situations, since it has an educational role, which brings out human demands of achievement and contributes to development, as identified by Japiassu (1999). The promotion of cultural activities can lead young people toward more inclusive practices, giving them a voice, generating protagonism and the discovery of new life projects. Schools, social projects, and local associations can be constituted as protective factors for the young people when they take part in activities that use art as an educational tool in their spaces. The actions carried out by Acervo da Laje in the outskirts of Salvador have brought a new reality to the families living there by emphasizing aspects related to the arts and culture which were little valued and made available in these contexts until now. The experience of Acervo da Laje and its insertion into a vulnerable area has indicated to the elaboration and development of theoretical–methodological concepts focusing on the use of visual arts to confront adverse situations. Additionally, it also points to the development of educational processes based on art, memory, and culture. As a relevant contribution, we point out the deeper thinking on the concept of poetics of development, which implies a more focused and dynamic view on developmental trajectories in adverse situations through the encounter with the elaborated cultural beauty. In the same way, there is an impact of beauty over violent situations, creating symbolic factors of protection and new perspectives for children, teenagers, and young people who have access to these works of art. This is an unprecedented fact in Brazil, since art spaces are generally located on city centers, far from the population of periphery, implying a historical exclusion of them. The Cultural Psychology of Development contributes in a specific way to the analysis of the impact of the symbolical functions in the processes of imagination

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and concepts that are internalized by the inhabitants of the periphery, bringing new possibilities of insertion on new symbolic and cultural contexts. For the education in communities, these proposals point to the development of new, more inclusive, semiotic elaborations that bring the residents of peripheries into more protagonist roles in their life context. Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Ana Cecília Bastos for her support and help in translating and editing of this chapter.

References Abbey, E. (2006). Perpetual uncertainty of cultural life: Becoming reality. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of socio-cultural psychology (pp. 362–372). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alcântara, M. A. R., &Ferreira-Santos, J. E. (2009). Relational systems under poverty: Cal changes, urban violence and its impacts on everyday life. In E. P. Rabinovich & A. C. S. Bastos (Eds.), Living in poverty. Developmental poetics of cultural realities (pp. 347–371). Charlotte: IAP. Bastos, A. C. S., & Abbey, E. (2012). Quando a vida constrange a poética: uma análise de narrativas de pais sobre projetos de vida para seus filhos adolescentes. In E. P. Rabinovich & A. C. S. Bastos (Eds.), Poética da família e da comunidade (pp. 37–65). São Paulo: Annablume. Becker, H. S. (1977). Mundos artísticos e tipos sociais. In G. Velho (Ed.), Arte e sociedade: ensaios de sociologia da arte (pp. 9–26). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editores. Candido, A. (2005). Prefácio. In J. E. F. Santos (Ed.), Novos Alagados: histórias do povo e do lugar (pp. 13–14). Bauru, SP: EDUSC. de Oliveira, R. C. (2000). O trabalho do antropólogo (2nd Ed.). Brasília: Paralelo 15; São Paulo: Editora UNESP. dos Santos, D. C. P., Ferreira-Santos, J. E., dos Santos, L. S., de Reis, S. O. S., & Ferreira-Santos, V. S. (2017). Acervo da Laje: espaço e memória do Subúrbio Ferroviário de Salvador. Ferreira-Santos, J. E. (2009). Transitions through adolescence in Novos Alagados: Reflections on an experience report (1995–2006). In E. P. Rabinovich & A. C. S. Bastos (Eds.), Living in poverty. Developmental poetics of cultural realities (pp. 159–173). Charlotte: IAP. Ferreira-Santos, J. E., Illuminati, M., & Bastos, A. C. S. (2012). Photo essay: Images from Novos Alagados: The beauty of the woman. In A. C. Bastos, K. Uriko, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Cultural dynamics of women’s lives (pp. 601–614). Japiassu, R. O. V. (1999). As artes e o desenvolvimento cultural do ser humano. Educação & Sociedadeno, XX(69), 34–59. Laplantine, F. (2000). Aprender antropologia. Trad. Marie-Agnes Chauvel. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Laplantine, F. (2005). La description Ethnographique. Paris: Armand Colin. Rabinovich, E. P., & Bastos, A. C. S. (2012). Sobre a poética: uma historicidade compartilhada. In E. P. Rabinovich & A. C. S. Bastos (Eds.), Poética da família e da comunidade (pp. 27–36). São Paulo: Annablume. Reis, L. P. C., &Ferreira-Santos, J. E. (2015). The experience of mothers from the railroad suburb of Salvador, Bahia. Conceptualizing and empowerment in adverse conditions. In: K. R. Cabell, G. Marsico, C. Cornejo, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Making meaning, making motherhood. Annals of cultural psychology (pp. 107–131). Charlotte: IAP. Santos, J. E. F. (2010). Cuidado com o vão: repercussões do homicídio entre jovens da periferia. Salvador: Edufba. Santos, J. E. F. (2014). Acervo da Laje: memória estética e artística do Subúrbio Ferroviário de Salvador. São Paulo: Scortecci.

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Santos, J. E. F. (2015a). Boundaries between art and education: the case of the Laje Collection. In G. Marsico, V. Dazzani, M. Ristum, & A. C. S. Bastos (Eds.), Educational contexts and borders through a cultural lens: Looking inside, viewing outside (pp. 241–253). New York: Springer. Santos, J. E. F. (2015b). As famílias do Subúrbio Ferroviário de Salvador e o acesso à memória, arte e cultura no Acervo da Laje: um relato de experiência. In A. C. S. Bastos, L. V. C. Moreira, G. Petrini, & M. R. A. Alcântara (Eds.), Família no Brasil: recurso para a pessoa e sociedade (pp. 541–552). Curitiba: Juruá Editora. Santos, J. E. F. (2016a). Educação, arte e memória: a experiência do Acervo da Laje. In S. R. M. Souza & L. Santos (Eds.), Entre-linhas: educação, fenomenologia e alteridade (pp. 189–201). Salvador: EDUFBA. Santos, J. E. F. (2016b). Periferia, periférico. In: Coser, S. (Ed.), Viagens, deslocamentos, espaços: conceitos críticos (pp. 272–279). Vitória: EDUFES. Santos, J. E. F. (2017). Fieldnotes. Salvador. Simão, L. M. (1999). A relação evolução – cultura no marco da epistemologia evolutiva contemporânea a partir das concepções de de Vygotsky: um exercício para debate. In A. M. Carvalho (Ed.), O mundo social da criança: natureza e cultura em ação (pp. 103–111). São Paulo: Casa do Psicólogo. Valsiner, J. (2012). Fundamentos da Psicologia cultural: mundos da mente, mundos da vida. Porto Alegre: Artmed. Vygotsky, L. S. (2003). Psicologia Pedagógica. Edição comentada. Porto Alegre: Artmed.

José Eduardo Ferreira Santos has a Bachelor degree in Pedagogy (UCSAL—Catholic University of Salvador), Master’s degree in Developmental Psychology (UFBA—Federal University of Bahia), and a Doctoral Degree in Public Health (Federal University of Bahia). He has completed his Post-doctorate in Contemporary Culture (PACC–UFRJ—Programa Avançado de Cultura Contemporânea–Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). Currently, he is a researcher and professor in the program of Family and Contemporary Society at the Catholic University of Salvador in the National Post-Doctorate Program (PNPD–CAPES—Programa Nacional de PósDoutorado–Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) and is the curator of the Acervo da Laje.

Chapter 9

Commentary to Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education Rebeca Mejía-Arauz

Abstract This commentary discusses the contributions of Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers and Thorpe; Colliver and Lee-Hammond; Verissimo, Martim, and Guimarães; and Ferreira Santos which point to the urgent need of developing a culturally responsive education in communities with a history of colonization. These communities have been treated under a deficit model such as it has been the case of many indigenous communities in the world, or other vulnerable groups. The authors of the four chapters argue for a transformation of the institution of schooling toward an educational model that promotes children’s development in accord with the cultural practices, knowledge, and traditions of their communities. The chapters provide important accounts of communities in which often education in schools focus on content that is culturally strange to children and that organizes learning through forms of interaction that are unfamiliar to them. The commentary discusses how throughout the world, education has remained static and focused on the teaching and learning the content matter, rather than focusing on the developmental needs of the children.

The chapters in this part describe cases of indigenous and vulnerable communities regarding the right for children and youth to have access to a kind of education relevant to their lives, their cultural groups, and to their development as members of societies that share cultural values, traditions, and practices. This is an education that is not based on knowledge acquisition but instead involves the development of the person with a cultural identity that is in accord with his/her own cultural practices, values, cultural knowledge, and traditions. It is an education that does not involve an alienation from their own culture but instead, is both, culturally situated and provides knowledge and experience to be part of the world. In many countries, education has been influenced by mainstream tendencies often involving histories of colonization. This is the case regarding the communities pictured in the chapters by Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers, and Thorpe; Colliver and R. Mejía-Arauz (B) Department of Psychology, Education and Health, ITESO University, Guadalajara, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_9

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Lee-Hammond; and Verissimo, Martim, and Guimarães. The chapter by Ferreira Santos presents us the case of a community with a history of poverty and social vulnerability, which shares with the communities described in the other three chapters the experience of invisibility or disregard of the value of their own community in terms of the access to an education relevant to their lives. These chapters do not argue for a type of education with the aim of preserving the communities in isolation; it is about the transformation of the institution of schooling in a way that counteracts a deficit model with an education that promotes children’s development in accord with their cultural practices, knowledge, and traditions. To date, in many places in the world, schools follow a model of education that is decontextualized of the usual practices of everyday learning (Rogoff, 2003; Scribner & Cole, 1973). In many places, education is not even a preparation for future work but just a collection of practices for the acquisition or accumulation of knowledge, inert knowledge, that may or may not be of any use in the immediate or in a distant future. Although it could be expected wide variation in educational systems around the world, perhaps formal education in schools is one of the social institutions that seems more similar in different parts of the world and that has not evolved as necessary (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). As mentioned in the presentation of this book, as it is now, for many, the educational system is an absurd global abstractum (see the editors’ introduction). In this sense, education has rarely been implemented in indigenous communities in a way that adapts to and take into account the cultural values and practices of these communities. However, the chapters presented in this part give examples of transformation of educational systems to promote a culturally situated learning and development for children. Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers, and Thorpe’s chapter about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities explains how even when there are clear orientations in official educational programs to include local cultural traditions as part of the educational curriculum, the social organization of learning, and the curriculum still reflects the prevalence of western worldviews of education, the use of a nonnative language, and inequity among non-indigenous and indigenous people in schools. They give a very clear account of a long history of exclusion, marginalization, and social and educational inequity that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, which is a history that seems to be shared with many other indigenous communities in the world. Despite the efforts for inclusion of Indigenous practices and perspectives in education, the authors point out several relevant aspects of major concern that still show the distance and discontinuity between home cultural practices and school practices that carry in themselves the lack of recognition of the cultural value of these communities. In their chapter, Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers, and Thorpe draw our attention to the idea that educational programs, as well as families, are responsible of ensuring a smooth transition of children as they enter school. Following the concept of cultural security, these authors discuss an experience of the second author, of a transition program which included culturally situated curriculum content, school activities, and teaching that facilitated children’s transition from home to school in a way that could provide a better support for learning in the following years of schooling. In their perspective, this should be a common effort

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involving families, the community, and the programs provided by early childhood services for a better transition between home and school. These common efforts should be oriented toward providing an environment that is familiar to the children, in which socio-emotional needs are considered, making sure children feel safe and secure. This, as Miller et al. point out, provides a platform not based on the usual content of a school curriculum, but on the building of a cultural identity and resilience that makes a solid foundation for learning. This socio-emotional and culturally situated perspective could be considered central for the children to feel safe and secure as they enter school. This is innovative in the sense that these two aspects are usually disregarded in the curricula of schools; not only children in their entrance and early years of school need this kind of environment, but all children throughout school. In a similar line of culturally relevant education, Colliver and Lee-Hammond in their chapter point out how often the process of colonization permeates educational systems, forcing a prevalent set of cultural assumptions and traditions onto the ones of native or indigenous groups. As these authors discuss, this is the case of the Australian context, in which European heritage approaches to learning have been forced onto Indigenous students, with little understanding of the cultural practices or an attitude of responsiveness to Indigenous communities. In their chapter, Colliver and Lee-Hammond show that it is possible to implement and adapt models such as the one proposed by Hedegaard, to facilitate an adaptation of the school system to the educational and developmental needs in a way that is culturally situated and culturally responsive. One example they provide that is particularly impressive describes the difficulties children face when the content and ways of teaching are foreign to them; when the tasks and activities belong to a very different context and the children’s knowledge, language, and everyday practices are not taken into account as a foundation for their learning. They narrate the experience of a child who is supposed to work on the letter V with a card with pictures of a violet and a violin, when both are objects that are not usually present in the context of life of this child and of his community. Any child in this situation would feel uncertain and puzzled with what is expected of him/her. This is not only about placing the child in front of “new” knowledge, but rather is a strange, foreign context for learning, it is about a discontinuity in experiences that affect the way children build their cultural identity and self-esteem. This is not what education should provide for the development of children, and yet these are the kind of experiences that children face every day in schools. Colliver and Lee-Hammond follow this example with an illustration of how the letter V can be facilitated using more meaningful familiar experiences for the child using references to the setting of his community and the cultural practices of social interaction. Not only for this child, but for his peers, this resulted in a more meaningful involvement with learning. Beyond this specific example, Colliver and Lee-Hammond following and adapting Hedegaard’s model propose a series of strategies by means of which teachers could try to understand more intently, the cultural practices of the communities their schools serve, and the distance with school practices. The main point is to try to incorporate as part of the usual school practices culturally relevant forms of learning that reflect the cultural practices and knowledge of the children’s community. Such model involves

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a transformation of schools. Colliver and Lee-Hammond not only address the need for changes in education in accord with the needs of indigenous groups, but also provide very clear points about how this line of research requires and benefits from following an Indigenous Methodology. Although research methods are not the main point of discussion here, it is also about respecting cultural groups in the same way the educational system should respect them. In a very different part of the world, but with similar educational problematics, Verissimo, Martim, and Guimarães give an account of the history of indigenous communities in Brazil and their fight to the present day for their rights for their land, health, and an education according to their cultural practices and values. The authors describe the collaborative work between Guarani communities and an Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, to implement actions for the defense of the rights of these communities concretized in the establishment of a House of Indigenous Cultures in this University. The history of indigenous communities in Brazil shares some similarities to other indigenous histories in Latin-America, and with the Aboriginal and indigenous communities in other parts of the world, such as those described in the other chapters in this part of the book. For example, histories of inequity and imposition, which are part of our present days. Countries to which these communities belong have fought for their independence more than a century and yet indigenous communities are still in disadvantage and struggling today to follow their traditions and ways of raising and educating their children and youth. A point to consider is that these communities are not isolated or static in their cultural practices and traditions; they are part of the contemporary world and as any other societies their practices change and evolve; however, many of these indigenous communities provide us with models of community development that involve holistic concerns for impacts on human life and the natural resources of the earth. Western ways of life could learn from these models to improve other cultural practices and educational systems. In Verissimo, Martim, and Guimarães’ chapter, they give an account of the process followed by the Guarani community along with the Institute of Psychology of the University of Sao Paulo, to make sure the Guarani communities preserve their millennial knowledge and socialization practices. An important emphasis in this process is the relevance they give to focusing on the development of their children and youth in the Centers for Indigenous Education and Culture, but also later and with more complex goals, in terms of a continuation of the Guarani cultural worldview and philosophy, in the House for the Indigenous Cultures. The process they describe and which occur throughout a period of years is based on dialogue in several lines of interest, the writing of several reports, a complex process of recognition of different aspects of the culture that were considered in the construction of lines of education. In this process, it is important to note the recognition of the differences of the interests of a Guarani socialization in comparison to the purposes of a Western type of school based on the goals of industrialized societies. In the fourth chapter in this part, Ferreira Santos presents us an alternative form of education through giving access to children, youth, and a community in the city

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of Salvador, Brazil, to the development of artistic abilities and their participation in an art Center, Acervo da Laje. Ferreira Santos describes how through involvement in art education and artistic expressions, a community stigmatized by stereotypes linked to poverty and violence transformed their social and community memories, incorporated beauty as part of the community history and promoted the development of artistic potential and capabilities in children and youth. As the author points out, it is an original social project that “contradicts the common notion that there is no creativity, art, history and aesthetical values in the outskirts” (p. 126) of the city of Salvador in Brazil. By producing art that refers to the same neighborhood, the participants represent their space of life with different perspectives, and in such a way, by appreciating their space, and making it visible, the artist becomes visible as well, and at the same time, transforms his or her own social and cultural identity. Invisibility of the child or any student, as a person, often occurs in schools. An education that focuses on content that is culturally strange to children and that organizes learning through forms of interaction that are unfamiliar to them is not a kind of education built on developmental aims. With this, as Ferreira Santos puts it, it is about a form of empowerment for this community. Ferreira Santos refers to the perspective of developmental poetics to point to the importance of art as a way of transformation of life. In this perspective and through the participation in producing art and interacting with artist in workshops in a space constructed for this purposes, human development and education goes beyond the idea of acquisition of knowledge which is still so much embedded in formal education, it is a way in which children and youth realize they are capable of producing beauty and art; products and active learning very different than the kind children are expected to produce and engage in schools. Acervo da Laje also changes the perspective of how cultural institutions should be accessible to all members of a society and not to elite individuals. It is organized as an open space for people of all ages. It is not about going to look at exhibits or paintings or other kind of art, as is the usual way in most museums of art, but through involvement and participation the community makes this space its own. They are not there just to contemplate but to discover the art in themselves and in such way, they find value and a source of resilience in themselves. They can interact with artists, talk to them, learn by observing while the artist is working or they work along with the artist. This form of participation can be for individual or collective productions, all of which also builds a new sense and perception of their community. The work Ferreiro Santos and others are doing in the Acervo da Laje, not only focuses on learning about art in itself, but it is about the development of the whole person, a person that may have experienced the violence of his or her context. As he describes, some vulnerable experience in the lives of the children, such as fear or the feelings experienced with the violent death of a close relative may emerge while they work on a piece of art; then they work with this. This is not something that could be easily elicited in a formal school subject or topic. As Ferreira Santos explains, through art education and participation in non-school forms of art workshops and activities, children, youth, and adults transform the views of themselves and of the

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value of their community and in such way at the same time transform their cultural identity. The chapters commented upon here present the urgent need and examples for changes in education and in the opportunities societies provide for the development of their children and youth. Indigenous communities around the world had faced the supposedly well-intended idea of integration to a “civilized” society, but this has always carried the implication of considering indigenous communities as uncivilized, ignoring their cultural organization, values, knowledge, and traditions. The institution of schooling has played an important part on this. The paradigm of learning in conventional educational systems to date remains centered on the transmission of knowledge, which involves a rigid and vertical social organization of learning. This paradigm of education is not oriented toward supporting and providing the conditions for the development of children’s potential; it is not focused on the development of the person, with her/his individual and cultural identities, but on the standardization of learners. If development was the main purpose of formal education, then the organization and content for learning should be culturally situated because an important part of a child’s development involves belonging to a social group and a cultural identity. While the distance and discontinuity between school and home and community practices is so evident regarding students from indigenous communities, this is also the case for many other children whose living conditions and home practices are not close to those of school. Children in communities in socially and economically vulnerable conditions often do not have rich literacy environments before entering school, and so, they also face unfamiliarity and difficulties at school (Mejía-Arauz, Reese, Ray Bazán, Goldenberg, & Torres Armenta, 2011; Reese, Mejía-Arauz, & Ray Bazán, 2012). For many children, particularly those who experience school as so distant to the practices of their communities, school becomes a foreign world, challenging to their self-value, and in turn it may become uninteresting, if not boring. The chapters in this part of the book orient us to a different way of conceiving education, ways that are inspired by the traditional ways in which indigenous communities organize learning and development for their youth, and the way art is promoted as nonformal education, in a community that faces a context of poverty and social vulnerability. The chapters point to the need of important transformations in schools. On one hand, it is about how culturally situated activities would promote better and more meaningful engagement on the part of the children. But it is much more than that; it is about considering as most important the development of the person as a member of a society with certain cultural values, traditions, and practices which all together respond to a world view, a philosophy of life. As Verissimo, Martim, and Guimarães point out, it is about the recognition of millennial knowledge, not only as content but also in the forms of engagement of the new generations with their own culture. Because of that, it is not enough to include some home culturally situated practices in schools and to continue with the educational paradigm implemented for so long. Coppens, Alcalá, Rogoff, and Mejía-Arauz (2016) discuss how, in several indigenous communities in the Americas, the social organizations for learning outside the schools follow a collaborative paradigm, while in contrast, schools have

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maintained a segregation paradigm. In schools, children are not expected to collaborate or participate observing and pitching in as part of the learning process, as in the collaborative paradigm, but to master content in an individualistic process of learning. Then, to reduce the distance between these two cultural paradigms for learning, radical changes would be required. School organizes interaction in very different ways, often not compatible with the ways of interaction in informal learning in the context of Indigenous and other communities (Coppens, Alcalá, Rogoff, & Mejía-Arauz, 2016; Rogoff, 2014). Learning, and guidance or teaching, is not universal; it can take many forms due to cultural practices, values, and the social organization of human relations (De Hann, 1999). The four chapters in this part show how formal education involves age segregation, fragmentation of social bonds, and a social organization of school that promotes social division and vulnerable people (Verissimo, Martin, Guimarães, this volume). The work by Rogoff and colleagues has demonstrated how in some indigenous communities the social organization of everyday family and community activities provide children with opportunities for participation through observing and collaborating or pitching in, to the extent each child can, and in this way the child learns and is motivated to participate and learn, while at the same time the child develops a sense of belongingness to the group (Mejía-Arauz, Correa-Chávez, Keyser, & Aceves-Azuara, 2015; Rogoff, 2014; Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz, & Correa-Chávez, 2015). In contrast, Western schooling for indigenous children has become as in the cases demonstrated in the chapters commented here, a place in which children experience prejudice, social violence, and the loss of agency. This is not only the case of indigenous children in mainstream educational systems, it happens in many other mestizo communities. If school programs do not change its main purpose in terms of the developmental paths of children from different cultural backgrounds, but rather children are expected to conform to decontextualized learning, and the social organization for learning disregards the cultural practices that have been part of how communities socialize their children, school will continue to be the place to educate passive learners with no agency.

References Coppens, A. D., Alcalá, L., Rogoff, B., & Mejía-Arauz, R. (2016). Children’s contributions in family work: Two cultural paradigms. In S. Punch, R. M. Vanderbeck, & T. Skelton (Eds.), Familial and friendship relations and spatial socialities (Vol. 5). Heidelberg: Springer. De Haan, M. (1999). Learning as cultural practice: How children learn in a Mexican Mazahua Community: A study on culture and learning. Amsterdam: Thela Thesis. Mejía Arauz, R., Reese, L., Ray, A., Goldenberg, C., & Torres, V. (2011). El ambiente alfabetizador en familias y comunidades y su relación con el aprendizaje de la lecto-escritura. En Frisancho, S., Moreno, M. T., Ruiz Bravo, P. y Zavala, V., Aprendizaje Cultura y Desarrollo. Perú: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Mejía-Arauz, R., Correa-Chávez, M., Keiser Ohrt, U., & Aceves-Azuara, I. (2015). Collaborative work or individual chores: The role of family social organization in children’s learning to collaborate and develop initiative. In J. Benson (Series Ed.), M. Correa-Chávez, R. Mejía-Arauz, &

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Rogoff, B., (Volume Eds.), Children learn by observing and contributing to family and community endeavors: A cultural paradigm (Vol. 49). Advances in Child Development and Behavior (pp. 25–51). London: Elsevier. ISSN 0065-2407. ISBN 9780128031216 Reese, L., Mejía-Arauz, R., & Ray Bazán, A. (2012). Mexican parents’ and teachers’ literacy perspectives and practices. Construction of cultural capital. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(8), 983–1003. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press. Rogoff, B. (2014). Learning by observing and pitching into family and community endeavors: an orientation. Human Development, 57, 69–81. Rogoff, B., Mejía-Arauz, R., & Correa-Chávez, M. (2015). A cultural paradigm—Learning by observing and pitching in. In J. Benson, M. Correa-Chávez, R. Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, B., (Eds.), Advances in child development and behavior, children learn by observing and contributing to family and community endeavors: a cultural paradigm (Vol. 49). Advances in Child Development and Behavior (pp. 1–22). London: Academic Press. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1973). Cognitive consequences of formal and informal education. Science, 182(4112), 553–559. Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1989). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning, and schooling in social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rebeca Mejía-Arauz is Emeritus Professor/Researcher in the Department of Psychology, Education and Health at ITESO University, Guadalajara, Mexico. She obtained the doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the M.Sc. in Social Psychology by the London School of Economics, and a specialty in Cognitive Development by ITESO University. Her research focuses on sociocultural and cognitive development, specifically on social interaction, participation, and communication in the context of informal learning. Her current research projects focus on how everyday family life in urban contexts affects the sociocognitive development in middle childhood; on cultural variations in children’s interaction, communication, and participation in out-of-school activities in urban and indigenous contexts; and on cultural and intergenerational family transformations affecting children’s participation in cultural activities and their education and development. She is member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) in México. She received the award for her Research trajectory and contributions to knowledge in psychology from the Society of Intervention Psychologists of Jalisco México in 2014.

Part III

Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives

Chapter 10

Identity in Education and Education in Identities: Connecting Curriculum and School Practice to Students’ Lives and Identities Moisès Esteban-Guitart Abstract The main thesis we intend to defend in this chapter of the book is that deep learning (meaningful, significant learning) is based on the recognition and transformation of learners’ identities. This assertion, which shall become our working hypothesis, assumes three theoretical principles: (1) that human identities are culturally situated and distributed; (2) that there is a constitutive link between learning and identity; and (3) that sense (significant experience) plays an important role as a learning generator. We shall illustrate these theoretical principles by describing some educational experiences that epitomize what our main thesis entails. The link between learning and identity supposes an incorporation of the learning processes and the educational–curricular activities—which become vehicles of identity mobilization—within the identities of the students (i.e., within the significant experiences they have of themselves and of that which surrounds them).

The thesis that I am going to defend in this chapter is the same one that underlies my recent work on the notion of funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, 2014, 2016). My working hypothesis is: Deep learning is facilitated when it stems from, and transforms, learners’ identities. This idea, which is based on three theoretical principles, shall be explained using a number of different illustrative examples. The principles emerge from a vision of learning forged in the sociocultural tradition or historical–cultural psychology of Vygotskian orientation. The examples are inspired by the funds of knowledge approach, which emerged in Arizona, USA, in the 1980s with the aim of overcoming deficit thinking in education by means of the educational use of the knowledge, skills, and practices of families of students who were greatly under-represented in school cultures (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Llopart & Esteban-Guitart, 2018; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and The European Regional Development Fund (European Union) [grant number EDU2017-83363-R]. M. Esteban-Guitart (B) Department of Psychology, The University of Girona, Girona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_10

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McIntyre, Rosebery, & González, 2001). More specifically, the educational interventions described in this chapter involve particular contemporary uses of the funds of knowledge approach (Esteban-Guitart, Serra, & Llopart, 2018; Jovés, Siqués, & Esteban-Guitart, 2015; Llopart & Esteban-Guitart, 2017; Llopart, Serra, & EstebanGuitart, 2018; Subero, Llopart, Siqués & Esteban-Guitart, 2018; Subero, Vila, & Esteban-Guitart, 2015; Subero, Vujasinovi´c, & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). In this sense, my aim here is to set out these principles and empirical examples with the ultimate aim of justifying the abovementioned hypothesis. But first we need to put into context the notion of funds of identity.

1 How We Arrived at the Term Funds of Identity The notion of funds of identity emerged from a convergence of two other approaches: the “Multi-method autobiographical” approach developed by Bagnoli (2004) and the “Funds of knowledge” approach developed by Moll and others (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). My first contact with Bagnoli’s work came in 2006 when I was on an academic stay at the Leeds Social Sciences Institute in England. Bagnoli was, at that time, developing a multi-method approach, using a combination of projective techniques (such as identity drawings) and narratives (such as life story interviews), to analyze the narrative construction of identity in migrants. The purpose was to transform the person being “researched” into a co-researcher and to generate narrative productions about themselves through a variety of media (photographs, journals, interviews) over a period of time—in this case, 1 week (Bagnoli, 2004, 2009). I adopted this methodology, particularly the identity drawing, in my doctoral thesis and in later work analyzing the relationships between education, culture, and identity in Chiapas, Mexico (Esteban-Guitart, Börke & Monreal-Bosch, 2015; Esteban-Guitart, Nadal, Vila & Rostan, 2008; Esteban-Guitart, Monreal-Bosch, Perera & Bastiani, 2017; Esteban-Guitart & Vila, 2010). Four years later, in 2010, I was on another academic stay at the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies of the University of Arizona where I got to know firsthand the work led by Luis Moll, Norma González, Marta Civil, and Iliana Reyes, among others, about the funds of knowledge approach. My interests in the mechanisms involved in the narrative construction of identity, together with the notion of funds of knowledge (the skills and knowledge that families accumulate throughout their life experiences as a result of their participation in various sociocultural practices) led us to formulate the notion of funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, 2014, 2016; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014a, 2014b; Saubich & Esteban-Guitart, 2011). Specifically, the notion of funds of identity emerged with three aims: (1) to develop an approach to the construct “identity” that had educational implications; (2) to enrich the ethnographic research carried out (as part of the funds of knowledge approach) when teachers visited the homes of some of their students, by incorporating material

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(or “identity artefacts”) made by the students themselves; and, finally, (3) to complement the level of analysis of the school/household (teachers/family) relationship with emphasis on the identity experiences and perspectives of the learners as potential material with which to articulate educational practice and performance. Let us now look at the basic concepts of the idea of funds of identity in the light of the three theoretical principles that underlie our working hypothesis which is that deep learning is facilitated when it stems from, and transforms, learners’ identities.

2 The First Theoretical Principle: The Notion of Funds of Identity In recent years, academics have returned to the work and legacy of Lev Vygotsky with the aim of emphasizing certain notions (such as, for example, “lived experience” as a unit of analysis) that transcend the instrumentalism of Vygotsky that has traditionally been disseminated in the West (Yasnitsky & Van der Veer, 2016). I believe that the most important aspect of these “revisionist studies” is how they have shed light on the rich legacy of Vygotsky’s work and understanding. In particular, his ideas on meaning, sense, emotions, and subjectivity have all been suggested as important advances (Fleer, González Rey & Veresov, 2017) and such ideas are being extensively developed today by González Rey (2009a, 2012), González Rey, and Mitjans (2017). Together they underlie the notion of perezhivanie (a lived experience) as a unit of analysis, as can be found in the final re-publications of Vygotsky (1996), and some previous ideas developed in his book, Psychology of Art (González Rey, 2012). There are, of course, different interpretations of the notion of perezhivanie (Clarà, 2016), due mainly to the fact that, like many other of his ideas, it is not fully developed in the surviving texts, but rather, intuited in Vygotsky’s work. Despite this, it does have, in my opinion, a number of repercussions when it comes to addressing the construct of identity. We have experience of ourselves; we recognize and we interpret ourselves, and this recognition of our “own self” is the result of our cultural transactions with the world and of our particular biography—which is socially, and culturally, mediated, and distributed. In this sense, identity is situated in the sphere of experience: “A configuration of experiences, activities, representations and feelings, recurrently occurring in a given type of social (material and symbolic) setting- it is one of the various regular, stabilized patterns of experience in which a person is likely to engage on a regular basis” (Zittoun, & Gillespie, 2016, p. 8). The lived experience we have of ourselves could well be an initial definition of identity. More specifically, that which for us is meaningful, relevant and makes sense could well be what defines and characterizes us as a person: one who is, of course, still under construction, still prone to contradiction and change, etc.

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In this sense, William James was probably the first to establish an “empirical” (“non-metaphysical”) conception of the self. He called it the “empirical self” or “me” (James, 1890/2007) and defined it as follows: All that he is tempted to call by the name of me. But it is clear that between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attacked (p. 291).

From this perspective, whatever we may consider “ours” (mine), such as objects, people, or places that are part of our experience and which are meaningful to us, can be considered identitary material and expression. And through significant, relevant things, we enter into the realm of meaning: that which has value for me from my biography and my cultural transactions with the world. The meanings of words are the result of standardized, arbitrary, and conventional collective negotiation: in a word, agreements. We arrive at an agreement that a chair, love, or World War II are “x”, “y”, or “z”, and put them in a dictionary, in Wikipedia or in a PowerPoint presentation. However, the qualia of such objects, experiences, or events is subjective. Due to previous cultural experiences, of the multiple horizons of meaning available, I might consider love to be a negative thing, because my biography is marked by a failed relationship. This is the sense (affective-intellectual lived experience) that love has for me, with the possibility of it being very different in another moment of my life or for another person. This is where we make progress in the initial definition that I proposed. Identity is the dynamic lived experience that we have of ourselves, that is to say, all that which makes sense to us is relevant and meaningful and may comprise people, objects, institutions, places, and practices that make up the framework of our identities or identifications. The funds of identity theory stems from this premise, i.e., it assumes—as other theories do (see Zittoun, 2006)—the situated and distributed character of human identity (Esteban-Guitart, & Moll, 2014a, 2014b). It considers that a cultural artefact conforms and forms part of one’s identity, in the same way as can a geographical space, an institution, a significant person or a cultural belief that manifests itself in a particular production of identity. Identity “is” in the minds of people, but also, necessarily, outside of them, in the things that they do, to the degree to which they are incorporated as relevant or in which they are part of the extent of their sense of self. For a child, it might be a doll they play with every day, for an adult it might be their marriage, the Catholic Church or work. Such elements are both the bricks and the mortar of the person: they are what characterizes them, that which is part of their “reality” and lived experience. In this sense, I am in complete agreement with Zittoun (2007) who says that the use of symbolic resources (cultural elements such as books, movies, or songs; or symbolic systems such as belonging to, and the rituals of, certain religious, political or ethical beliefs) are the basic material (the “developmental resources”) that allow people to address unfamiliar situations in their daily lives. And for me, identity— in constant, ongoing construction—is one of these phenomena that each individual

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addresses with the help of these “symbolic resources” (Zittoun, 2006, 2007); but they also do so with the help of geographical spaces, and the significant people or social institutions that comprise and regulate the whole range of human sense and action (Esteban-Guitart, 2010). Thus, although identity is in the first person, there is an irreducible tension with the second person (the cultural voices through which we know the available horizons of meaning), as well as with cultural narratives (ultimately the views, discourses, and other identitary objects that exist prior to an individual’s existence) and hence, identity also has a collective, genetic, historical character (Esteban-Guitart, & Ratner, 2011). That is to say, the subjective lived experience of what happens to us (and that of our own selves in the strict terrain of identity) is inseparable from the social spaces of communication, and inseparable from cultural media and devices. In other words, identitary definitions and expressions emerge in the course of experiences contingent with a lived history that expresses symbolic-affective productions of society. One of the flaws that I believe is to be found in many of the theories of identity in psychology has been precisely to divorce identity from the whole lived biography, including the interests, the people, and objects as well as the spaces in which such experiences occur. In short, according to this first theoretical principle, we understand identity to comprise the objects (cultural artefacts), the significant people, the geographical spaces, the social institutions, and the activities–practices that comprise the extent of the sense of self or the lived experience that we have about ourselves. Take, for example, the following definition of identity: “The most important thing for me is my family; my partner is fundamental—and my job. I define myself as a father and psychologist.” In this definition, there are three particular funds of identity: the family as a social institution, the partner as a significant person, and an identitary activity-practice, i.e., a particular profession. But other definitions might include references to physical spaces such as a community, a village or a city, a river or the sea (geographical funds of identity), and even references to physical-symbolic objects (artefacts) such as a flag or a song. This enriches the traditional conceptualization of social identity provided by Tajfel and Turner (1979) reduced to the individual’s self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. Indeed, the social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to explain intergroup behavior. The funds of identity theory emerged from the funds of knowledge approach to educational purposes (Esteban-Guitart, 2016; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014a, 2014b). Having defined the construct—identity—I now propose to justify the constitutive two-way relationship between learning and identity.

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3 The Second Theoretical Principle: Learning Means Transforming Identities Various authors have described the close links between learning and identity (Lave, & Wenger, 1991; Ligorio, 2010; Polman, 2010; Sfard, & Prusak, 2005; Silseth, & Arnseth, 2011; Wortham, 2006). Before such studies came to light, the prevailing theories on learning were limited to cognitive processes of knowledge transformation, such as, for example, Ausubel’s Meaningful learning theory (Ausubel, 1963). However, what these later scholars emphasized, rightly from my point of view, and in line with Bruner’s Scaffolding metaphor (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976), is that learning involves transforming one’s participation in a given community of practice; and what this, in turn, implies is a transformation of the identities in question. It is a process of social membership, of adopting certain ways of being and behaving by means of co-participation within communities of practice or among groups of people with shared interests. According to Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 29): Learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and (…) the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a community. “Legitimate peripheral participation” provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts, and communities of knowledge and practice. A person’s intentions to learn are engaged and the meaning of learning is configured through the process of becoming a full participant in a socio-cultural practice. This social process, includes, indeed it subsumes, the learning of knowledgeable skills.

For example, when a person becomes a professional soccer player or university teacher, their initial participation is legitimate but peripheral (they begin on the bench and play only a few minutes; or their first classes are more or less adequate). As the processes of cultural appropriation (learning) take place, they become more of a protagonist and their participation becomes more central (they play whole games; they give some really good classes). But in this process there is also a transformation of identity: the person adopts certain modes of speech, manners, and objects of the soccer player or of the university professor, being able to incorporate them all into their vision of themselves. “I consider myself a professional soccer player.” And with it, they adopt “certain ways of being” of behaving, of dressing of referring to themselves. “That’s football; you can’t win them all.” etc. There is a deontic aspect to such cultures and identities, that is to say, there are certain rules on how to behave, dress, and talk. Thus, in a particular space, situation, or context, one can feel recognized as a “certain type of person”: a soccer player, a university professor, a parent, a mason, a politician, or a lover (Gee, 2000). In short, a learning process can—indeed it should—lead to a twofold process of transformation: one is behavioral, relating to action, and the other is identitary, relating to one’s representation or experience of oneself. The result of learning things about sustainability might induce us to modify our practice (for example, by recycling more), as well as to incorporate various values and discourses relating to protecting the environment; we might even begin identifying ourselves with political parties, as

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a political emblem, lobbying for sustainability (“I identify with The Greens, I believe we need to care for the environmental and to combat the high levels of existing pollution.”). That is why learning, rather than simply resulting in the acquisition of knowledge (although this also occurs), can potentially transform the vision we have of ourselves and everything that surrounds us. My thesis is that profound learning is precisely that which turns the learner into an object of transformation in two levels: first the behavior is transformed (some competence are acquired, for example), and second the identity is enriched by incorporating values, discourses, and so on. That is to say, what underlies the appropriation of certain cultural content or competences is a transformation of identity. In this sense, the notion of “connected learning” reflects how a personal interest can, with the help and collaboration of a peer group (or mentors or adults) and through involvement in creating artefacts and activities, become linked to academic, civic, or professional content (Ito et al., 2013). From what we have discussed so far—the situated and distributed nature of human identities and the link between learning and identity—our third theoretical principle emerges: meaning has a generating role in learning processes. We shall explore this principle in the following section.

4 The Third Theoretical Principle: Deep Learning Involves Meaning but also Sense The distinction between meaning and sense is central here. It is based on the Vygotsky’s work. In particular, in the Thinking and Speech (Vygotsky, 1987) and other works of the last Vygotsky (González Rey, 2009b). Meaning can be characterized as stable understanding of something (such as an entry in a dictionary). Sense, on the other hand, differs with each individual and also over time. It refers to the personal understanding at a point in time. “A word’s sense is the aggregate of all the psychological facts that arise in our consciousness as a result of the word. Sense is a dynamic, fluid and complex formation which has several zones that vary in their stability. Meaning is only one of these zones of the sense that the word acquires in the context of speech” (Vygotsky, 1987, pp. 275–276). In the realm of education, we could say that learning involves meaning (meaningful learning) but also sense (subjectivity, identity transformation). Let me explain this. Understanding the optimal conditions for improving the processes of learning is one of the most exciting fields in psychology and the educational sciences. Some of the conditions identified include (a) fostering the agency of the learners (allowing them active control over their learning processes); (b) facilitating the integration of conceptual content with factual or procedural knowledge; and (c) facilitating the connection between prior knowledge and new knowledge (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). This last idea, which was developed from the cognitive tradition of Piaget (1975) and especially Ausubel (1963), entails a definition of learning as a

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process of connecting meanings. In other words, prior knowledge is the foundation upon which we build new knowledge. For example, knowing about the notion of energy allows us to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. Thus learning means relearning: returning to previous knowledge, either to enrich it, to adjust it, modify, or transform it. However, I believe we must go beyond this merely cognitive view of learning. In my view, prior knowledge and know-how are not confined simply to conceptual or factual information, such as Newton’s second law or how to add up numbers; above all it involves alluding to the totality of the experience that underlies the set of identities of the learners. My proposal is that the school, and the educational act in general, must begin from these identitary experiences. In other words, it must begin not only from meaning but above all from the sense that the learners construct. And sense is an affective-intellectual aspect resulting from participation in diverse activities and communities of practice. It is not, however, a finite product but is situated and distributed. Hence, it is refreshed in every communicative act, in every educational situation. For me, learning is more than the ability to remember and integrate meanings. It is above all a process of transformation of identities which, as I have said before, must begin, precisely, by recognizing such identities, an aspect I shall return to in my final conclusions. For now, suffice to say that deep learning (with meaning and sense) requires investment in identity: the projection of those aspects one considers relevant and meaningful; a projection that can lead to an updating of that identity, that is, with a new vision about ourselves and that which surrounds us. This is why, for me, personal connections are a mediating strategy in the learning process, as is the creation of identity artefacts. By identity artefact, we mean a type of material (texts, images, photographs, videos, or multimodal combinations) produced by learners who, in creating them, invest certain aspects they perceive as significant in relation to the perceptions or experiences that they have about themselves (i.e., what for them makes sense) and which, furthermore, can be included and used in an academic context with educational goals, such as, for example, to improve literacy competences (Subero, Llopart, Siqués & Esteban-Guitart, 2018). “We believe funds of identity are inscribed into such identity artefacts (drawings, documents, images, tasks, etc.) and transported throughout the different sites connected to a person’s life trajectory. In our view, these artefacts can be used as resources for establishing connections within schools and beyond them. This implies seeing the students’ funds of identity as resources for learning and seeing schools as a context that must also be linked to other practices and activities in which people are involved” (Esteban-Guitart, & Moll, 2014b, p. 70). In other words, what we refer to here as deep teaching or learning is based on channelling educational action and linking content and curricular competencies with material produced by learners that embodies whatever forms part of their scope of meaning: whatever, for the learner, is most significant and relevant. These identity artefacts allow the teacher to link the academic contents with the significant experiences and contexts of life of the students. That is, they can connect the curriculum

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with the experiences and identities of the learners, which also develops into what we call deep learning. Let us look at two examples of this.

5 Example 1: Identity Drawings in the Context of the Funds of Identity Approach In the context of Catalunya (Spain), we have carried out a reinterpretation of the funds of knowledge approach based on the aforementioned notion of funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, & Vila, 2013; Jovés, Siqués & Esteban-Guitart, 2015; Saubich, & Esteban-Guitart, 2011). Specifically, the work is based on the notion of funds of identity and the Multi-method autobiographical approach Bagnoli (2004), both of which we have mentioned above. In the context of this multi-method approach, one of the strategies suggested was the self-portrait or identity drawing. The instruction provided was: “Could you try to draw who think you are right now? You can add, if you want, what for you are the most significant, important things, people, places, and institutions.” In the case of young children, the emphasis was on the things, places, and people they like the most, rather than the most significant and important words. This method was used with the aim of identifying students’ funds of identity, i.e., the people, artefacts, practices, institutions, and places that were inscribed and projected in the definition—represented visually—that the children made of themselves. The result was an identity artefact, i.e., a production by the student through which the meaningful elements that constituted their interests, hobbies, and significant others were visualized. It was a graphical representation that showed the mediated nature of identity, and its distribution in those agents, objects, places, and institutions that the individuals considered significant. Thus, the funds of identity approach, as previously suggested, imply the addition of one more unit of analysis to the funds of knowledge approach, which attempts to identify the resources, strategies, knowledge, and skills that a given family unit has at its disposal. The additional units of analysis are the students’ funds of identity. The ideal outcome is to connect the educational–curricular–didactic activity with the family’s funds of knowledge and the learner’s funds of identity. The experience was carried out at a state primary school, in a class for 7-year-old boys and girls in northern Catalonia (Spain). The class consisted of 24 students with a mixture of first languages: 9 Catalan, 5 Spanish, and 10 of from immigrant families, most of whom were Berber speaking, from Morocco. The teacher visited the home of one of the students of foreign origin who had problems with school performance; the relationship between the family and the school was also poor. After the ethnographic visit, the teacher identified several of the family’s funds of knowledge, including agriculture (the father worked on a farm), religion, multilingual skills, and cooking. In addition, the teacher applied the technique of identity drawing with the student and observed how the farm animals not only appeared as funds of knowledge, but

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also as funds of identity. The boy in question would often cycle with his father to visit the farm where he worked (see Fig. 1). Taking the farm animals as a theme, the teacher designed a didactic unit whose academic objectives included, among others, understanding the difference between the oviparous and viviparous animals, and classifying the animals according to what they eat: herbivorous, carnivorous, or omnivorous. To do this, the teacher included a class visit to the farm where the child’s father worked and the students observed and documented, through photographs, what the animals ate, how they lived, the difference between oviparous and viviparous, as well as other characteristics of the animals (Jovés, Siqués & Esteban-Guitart, 2015). The didactic unit itself is not the main point of interest here; what really matters is how the teacher linked the academic objectives with the funds of knowledge and identity of one of her students. So it is to be expected that, especially for this particular student, the activity, besides being significant, would make complete sense since it was connected to his identity, understood as the set of aspects that the person considers most significant, most valued, and which represents him best. It is in this sense that the identity drawing in Fig. 1, used for educational–pedagogical purposes, can be considered an example of an identity artefact. Fig. 1 A student’s identity drawing

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Other experiences conducted in other countries provide further examples on the applicability and generalizability of the model described above (Poole, 2017a, 2017b; Subero, Vujasinovi´c, & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). However, I would like to describe another example here, which, even though it is not based on the funds of identity notion, illustrates the connection between curricular content and students’ personal experiences and perspectives. It is also another example of the processes of deep teaching and learning.

6 Example 2: Making Text-to-Self Connections Through Visual Art In 2010, the artist and writer Jeannie Baker published a children’s picture book called Mirror in which she describes a typical day in the lives of two children and their families: one child lives in a large western city (Sydney, Australia) and the other in a small community in Morocco (North Africa). These are two very different sociocultural contexts and the story explores the contrasts and parallels between the various routines and practices in each place. Mantei and Kervin (2014) describe an experience in three elementary schools in Australia in which this book was used to foster connections with the personal experiences, values, and beliefs of 9- and 10-year-old schoolchildren and their families. The objective was to develop competences in literacy based on linking school practice with the lived experiences of the learners. To this end, they employed what I have previously referred to as identity artefacts (Subero, Llopart, Siqués & EstebanGuitart, 2018); specifically in this case, artwork. “We planned a literacy experience that created space for students to make text-to-self connections through visual art as they engaged in a picture book” (Mantei, & Kervin, 2014, 78). The experience was organized within the framework of what are known as “literature circles” (Daniels, 2002) through which, by means of “meaningful discussions” (Evans, 2001), connections are elicited and encouraged between the main characters (in this case, the two children from the two different countries), and the readers (the 9- and 10-year-old schoolchildren). In particular, the “Tell Me” model designed by Chambers (1993) was used to foster the relationship between the readers and the characters and contents of the book. The same three-step protocols were implemented in each of the three school centers, to be used within the framework of the literature circles. In Interaction 1, the students read the book Mirror in pairs and individually. They then used the Chambers (1993) “Tell me” model for approximately 45 min, with the aim of sharing interpretations and establishing personal connections with the book. The “Tell Me” model is based on procuring answers to questions such as: What especially caught your attention? Are there any questions you would like to ask? Tell me about the ways it was the same or different for you. etc. After the interlocution with the book through questions such as these, the teachers introduced the visual art task for Interaction 2.

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In this interaction, which takes place over the following week, the students establish a dialogue with the book by creating personal responses to various contents of the text. The authors call these responses “text-to-self connections” (Mantei, & Kervin, 2014, p. 80). In this interaction, the theoretical principles we described above are revealed and illustrated. Learning begins from the experience (the identity) of the learner in order to potentially transform it. School learning (in this case literacy skills and artwork) merges with the identities of the students (personal experiences or the content of their lives that are connected with the content described in the book). Finally, in the third and final interaction, the researchers meet with the students 7–10 days after the first interaction to share the text-to-self connections that the learners had made and to further explore Mirror again using Chambers’s model (1993) for about 45 min. For my purposes here, I am especially interested in focusing on interaction number two in which the children received the following instruction: 1. Choose your favorite part in Mirror. 2. Use the white cardboard sheet to show us how it makes you think about your own life (your artwork). 3. Complete the writing sheet (Some things I want to tell you about my artwork). 4. Bring the book, your picture, and your writing to school on (a particular day). This task was carried out at home, and students were free to use whatever materials and presentation they wanted to: drawing, collage, photographs, etc. The final artworks are windows into the children’s personal experiences, their interests, beliefs, the people around them, their practices, and their way of life (i.e., what we have referred to as their funds of identity). In one drawing, for example, there is the protagonist with his family and their passion for the local rugby league football team, the “Tigers”, connecting the sport with the same team mentioned in Mirror. In other artworks, family routines appear and are compared with the characters in the book. In any case, what we want to emphasize here is that in all these artworks, the students project their identities—what for them is meaningful; what makes sense— such as certain hobbies and activities, people they refer to or cultural objects. This artwork is then used by their teachers in school contexts to improve literacy as well as artistic skills. So we have, on the one hand, the identitary output (reflecting the learner’s way of life) and school learning (literacy and art) on the other. Furthermore, there is the potential for transforming the vision the students have of themselves and of what surrounds them, for example, stemming from an understanding of the cultural diversity existing on the planet.

7 A Critical Stance: Some Risks and Challenges As illustrated in the various examples given, there are a number of different devices (identity artefacts) that can facilitate personal connections between academic content and learners’ identities, or that can, in other words, mobilize the learners’ funds of identity in order to connect their learning experiences both in and out of the formal

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educational context (Esteban-Guitart, 2016; Subero, Vujasinovi´c & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). In the same vein, we have identified various strategies aimed at contextualizing the curriculum (linking content relating to literacy, mathematics, and natural and social sciences with learners’ lifestyles and identities). For example, (1) contrasting a set text with personal experiences (as in the work by Mantei, & Kervin, 2014 described above); (2) carrying out empirical studies on the living conditions of students; and, finally, (3) using the popular culture of learners as an instrument to link the curriculum with their interests and modes of expression (Llopart, & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). However, I would like to mention a risk and challenge of the approach presented here. The examples provided illustrate the relationship between identity artefacts and learning but there is no presentation or discussion of actual empirical results (including concrete measures of learning by using identity artefacts). In that regard, research on the impact of these particular approaches is needed.

8 By Way of Conclusion: Identities at the Heart of Educational Activity The main thesis of this chapter, and the working hypothesis under discussion, is: Deep learning is facilitated when it stems from, and transforms, learners’ identities. This claim involves our assuming two things. In the first place, educating means constructing personal versions and promoting certain ways of seeing oneself and the world. If this is true (and I honestly believe that it is, i.e., learning entails identity transformations), then forming inclusive, generous, critical identities should be an objective of educational programs and practice. Second, the beginning of the educational act is the recognition of the biographies and reference points of the learners. That is to say, as I have tried to argue with regard to the third theoretical principle, not only must we start from the students’ previous knowledge, but, above all, from the way they see themselves and what, for them is meaningful, relevant, and makes sense. This act of recognition, especially in the case of identities that have been silenced, under-represented, or ignored, has clear affective repercussions. In other words, to educate is also to legitimize voices (even those that may sometimes cause disquiet) so that they can be recontextualized toward civic, pro-social, academic discourses. And for this, we need to give a leading role to the learner, to facilitate processes of identity investment from which to identify and make explicit their particular activities/practices along with their geographic, social, cultural, and institutional funds of identity. It seems to me this is particular relevant in the context of the central theme of this book: the importance of local cultures and the interplay with globalization. In other words, the process of globalization should not neglect local identities and cultures. Rather, globalization should mean recognizing and celebrating cultural diversity to more inclusive societies. School settings are important agents where it can be

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possible. “Deep teaching”, teaching that relate to the subjects, can be a social and cultural artefact to promote inclusive values. Contrary, superficial teaching, teaching that neglect the students’ lives and identities, can facilitate the perception of the school as something meaningless, irrelevant, without any sense. In a practical way, the deep teaching can be achieved using a variety of different resources, such as artwork (as illustrated above), i.e., artefacts that can themselves become vehicles of mediation through which connections can be made between learning experiences that take place inside and outside the school (Esteban-Guitart, 2016) and curricular contents, civic or pro-social identities and competences such as awareness and respect for cultural diversity, sustainability, or gender equality. This is what lies behind the title of this chapter: the identities of students become the beginning of education and also its ultimate purpose. And the material of identities is life itself. My colleague and friend, Luis Moll, shared a little-known statement by Vygotsky from 1926, with which I would like to end this chapter (Moll, 2011): Our only concern is that there exist within the very nature of the educational process, within its psychological essence, the demand that there be as intimate a contact, and as close an interaction with life itself as might be wished for. Ultimately, only life educates, and the deeper that life, the real world, burrows into the school, the more dynamic and the more robust will be the educational process. That the school has been locked away and walled in as if by a tall fence from life itself has been its greatest failing. Education is just as meaningless outside the real world as is a fire without oxygen, or as is breathing in a vacuum. The teacher’s educational work, therefore, must be inevitably connected with his/her creative, social and life work (…) In the city of the future, there will not be any one single building from which we might hang the sign, “school,” because the very word “school” will be absorbed altogether in work and in life, and schools will be held in factories, and in the public square, in museums and in the hospital and the churchyard. (Vygotsky, 1997, pp. 345–346)

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Catalonia Spain. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 68–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015. 03.001. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ligorio, M. B. (2010). Dialogical Relationship between Identity and Learning. Culture & Psychology, 16(1), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X09353206. Llopart, M., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2017). Strategies and resources for contextualizing the curriculum based on the funds of knowledge approach. A literature review. The Australian Educational Researcher, 44(3), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-017-0237-8. Llopart, M., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2018). Funds of knowledge in 21st century societies: Inclusive educational practices for under-represented students. A literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50, 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1247913. Llopart, M., Serra, J. M., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2018). Teachers’ perceptions of the Funds of knowledge approach: benefits, limitations and areas for improvement. A qualitative study. Teachers and Teaching, 24, 571–583. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1452729. Mantei, J., & Kervin, L. (2014). Interpreting the images in a picture book: Students make connections to themselves, their lives and experiences. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 13, 76–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1314. McIntyre, E., Rosebery, A., & González, N. (2001). Connecting curriculum to students’ lives. Porstmouth, NH: Heinemann. Moll, L. (2011). Only life educates: Immigrant families, the cultivation of biliteracy, and the mobility of knowledge. In P. R. Portes & S. Salas (Eds.), Vygotsky in 21st Century Society: Advances in Cultural Historical Theory and Praxis with Non-Dominant Communities (pp. 152–161). New York: Peter Lang. Piaget, J. (1975). L´equilibration des structures cognitives: Problème central du développement. París: Presses Universitaires de France. Polman, J. L. (2010). The Zone of Proximal Identity Development in Apprenticeship Learning. Revista de Educación, 353, 129–155. Poole, A. (2017a). “I want to be a furious leopard with magical wings and super power”: Developing an ethico-interpretive framework for detecting Chinese students’ funds of identity. Cogent Education, 4, 1316915. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2017.1316915. Poole, A. (2017). Funds of Knowledge 2.0: Towards digital funds of identity. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. 13(C), 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.02.002. Saubich, X., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2011). Bringing Funds of Family Knowledge to School. The Living Morocco Project. REMIE: Multidisciplinary Journal of Educational Research, 1, 57–81. https://doi.org/10.4452/remie.2011.04. Sfard, A., & Prusak, A. (2005). Telling identities: In search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. Educational Researcher, 34(5), 14–22. Silseth, K., & Arnseth, H. C. (2011). Learning and Identity Construction Across Sites: A Dialogical Approach to Analysing the Construction of Learning Selves. Culture & Psychology, 17(1), 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X10388842. Subero, D., Llopart, M., Siqués, C. & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2018). The mediation of teaching and learning processes through identity artefacts. A Vygotskian perspective. Oxford Review of Education, 44(2), 156–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2017.1352501. Subero, D., Vila, I. & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2015). Some Contemporary forms of the Funds of Knowledge Approach. Developing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Social Justice. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 4(1), 33–53. https://doi.org/10.4471/ijep.2015.02. Subero, D., Vujasinovi´c, E., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2017). Mobilising funds of identity in and out of school. Cambridge journal of education, 47(2), 247–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X. 2016.1148116. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–37). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

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Vygotksy, L. S. (1996). Psicología infantil. Obras escogidas, vol. 4. Madrid: Visor. Vygotski, L. (1997). Educational psychology. Roca Raton: CRC Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and Speech. In R.W. Rieber & A. S. Caron (Eds.), Collected Works of L. S Vygotsky (Vol. 1, pp. 43–288). New York. Plenum Press. Wood, D., Bruner, J. S. y Ross, G. (1976). The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89–100. Wortham, S. (2006). Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identity and Academic Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yasnitsky, A., & Van der Veer, R. (Eds.). (2016). Revisionist revolution in Vygotsky studies. London: Routledge. Zittoun, T. (2006). Transitions. Development through symbolic resources. New York: Information Age Publishing. Zittoun, T. (2007). The role of symbolic resources in human lives. In J. Valsiner, & A: Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology (pp. 343–361). New York: Cambridge University Press. Zittoun, T., & Gillespie, A. (2016). Imagination in human and cultural development. London: Routledge.

Moisès Esteban-Guitart is Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Girona and Professor collaborator at the Open University of Catalonia (Spain). He is the Director of the Institute of Educational Research at the University of Girona. He made predoctoral visits to the Intercultural University of Chiapas (Mexico) and the University of Leeds (England). He carried out postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Cultural Research and Education (California, USA) and was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona (USA), and the College of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder (USA). He is the editor of the journal Papeles de Trabajo sobre Cultura, Educación y Desarrollo Humano [Working Papers on Culture, Education and Human Development]. His research activity spans the fields of cultural psychology and educational research and he has published widely on issues of identity, cultural diversity, and education. His most recent book is Funds of identity. Connecting meaningful learning experiences in and out of school (2016, Cambridge University Press).

Chapter 11

Using Symbolic Resources to Overcome Institutional Barriers: A Case Study of an Albanian-Speaking Young Woman in Switzerland Teuta Mehmeti and Tania Zittoun Abstract The school failure of migrant children is often explained by their supposed cultural deficit and by mechanisms of social inequalities reproduced by the school institution. However, such hypotheses fail to account for learning trajectories that would escape from social or cultural determinism. For this, we need to turn to students’ own school experiences, about which little is known. In this chapter, we draw on a sociocultural psychological approach that considers the interdependency between sociocultural contexts and personal life trajectories to go beyond a deficit approach. More specifically, we examine how migrant children’s uses of cultural elements can support their meaning-making when confronted to settings preventing their involvement. By means of a case study, we show how a young Kosovar woman in Switzerland performed well at school, overcoming social and institutional barriers. We, moreover, show how rather than nurturing a conflictual relationship with the school institution, she could draw on different symbolic resources that favored her involvement at school. We thus argue for the necessity to study school experiences of migrant children as dynamics involving a creative dialogue between home and school through the use of cultural and symbolic resources, and discuss theoretical and practical implications of such a perspective.

1 Introduction Studies on school success have recurrently shown that migrant children often drop out mainly because of the mechanisms of social inequalities reproduced by school institutions. However, such approaches fail to account for trajectories that escape from social or cultural predictions. For this, we need to turn to students’ own school experiences, about which little is known. T. Mehmeti (B) · T. Zittoun University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] T. Zittoun e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_11

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This chapter proposes a sociocultural approach that admits that sociocultural contexts shape people’s life trajectories, yet consider that these cannot strictly predict and explain them. We thus combine an analysis of sociocultural settings in which people live, with their subjective perspective. In order to do so, we focus on people’s use of cultural elements that support their meaning-making when confronted to settings preventing their involvement. We present the case of a young Kosovar woman in Switzerland who performed well at school, hence overcoming social and institutional barriers. We, moreover, show that, rather than nurturing a conflictual relationship with the school institution, she draws on different symbolic resources that favor her involvement at school. As a whole, we thus propose to overstep a deterministic view of the role of culture in school success trajectories and show how students can creatively use various cultural elements, found at home or at school, to define and support their successful school trajectory.

2 Beyond “Cultural Distance” at School: Drawing on Sociocultural Psychology In this first section, we briefly retrace existing approaches to school failure of migrant children: we summarize some important approaches in the sociology of school inequalities, focusing on structural dynamics, then remind studies that account for the person’s perspective in these dynamics, before proposing a sociocultural approach that has the potential to integrate these two perspectives.

2.1 The Sociology of School Inequalities School failure of specific social groups has been an interesting question for sociologists. Since the 60s, studies have underlined the influence of the social and cultural origin on students’ chances for high achievement at school (Bernstein, 1973; Bourdieu, 1966, 1984; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964, 1970; Duru-Bellat & van Zanten, 2002). In the French literature, Bourdieu (1966) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1964, 1970) have developed the theory of “reproduction” to designate this mechanism by which the school system maintains social inequalities. Bourdieu and Passeron (1970) call “symbolic violence” the imposition of such cultural arbitrary power. From this perspective, students’ cultural background (cultural norms, values, or rules shaped in their families) plays an essential role in their chances for high achievement at school. The notion of “habitus” thus designates what is acquired and stabilized as permanent dispositions (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984), and depends on different forms of capitals— social, economic, cultural, the latter influencing most inequalities at school: Each family transmits to its children, by means of indirect rather than direct ways, a certain “cultural capital” and an “ethos”. These are implicit and deeply interiorized systems of values,

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which define, among others, attitudes towards cultural capital and the school institution. The cultural heritage, that is different in each social class on these two aspects, is responsible for children’s initial inequality when confronted to educational challenges, and therefore, rates of success. (Bourdieu, 1966, pp. 325–326, our translation)

Beyond French sociological approaches of inequalities, studies on school failure and success thus often appeal to the notion of “cultural distance” to interpret school failure of disadvantaged groups (for a good review, see de Haan & Elbers, 2004). In a slightly different approach, Boudon (1979) has reversed Bourdieu and Passeron’s perspective, and stated that it is not only a matter of conflicts between social class cultures but of individuals’ rational choices; they construct their future projects in regard to their sociocultural background. These approaches thus highlight the links between macrosocial and microsocial dimensions in apprehending students’ school success or failure. However, as they explain the weak performances of disadvantaged groups as caused by their low sociocultural background, they can lead to a “deficit theory” (Cole & Bruner, 1971). In the next subsection, we thus propose an alternative to the structural view according to which culture creates a set of dispositions acquired by the individual and somehow repeated or reproduced (consciously or not) in different settings.

2.2 Social and Cultural Psychology on Cultural Differences at School The issue of how culture and social status can play an important role in the school achievement of students from specific groups (e.g., migrants, minority groups, discriminated communities, etc.) is still relevant and has also been investigated by authors who point out that learners themselves are actively engaged in the schooling process. Not only do they engage in activities of learning, in addition these are deeply related to who they are and how they are acknowledged by others, that is, their identities, which can be defined in link to their social or cultural belonging, or labeled as such by themselves, their families, or the school (César & Kumpulainen, 2009; Crafter & de Abreu, 2010; de Abreu & Elbers, 2005; de Haan & Elbers, 2004; de Haan, Keizer, & Elbers, 2010; Gorgorió & de Abreu, 2009; Prokopiou, Cline, & de Abreu, 2012). In addition, studies sensitive to the learner’s perspective also account for the fact that learning dynamics, involving relationship to teachers, peers, and objects of knowledge, are objects of interpretation: children engage in meaning-making activities (Bruner, 1996; Zittoun, 2016c). Eventually, issues in “learning difficulties” might be explained by the fact that the learners’ sense-making of the situation or the task does not correspond to the expected meaning it may have for the teachers and more broadly in the frame of the school institution (Bautier & Rochex, 1998; Charlot, Bautier, & Rochex, 1992; Kucera, Rochex, & Stech, 2001; Rochex & Crinon, 2011). But then again, the difficulty is that

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divergent sense- and meaning-making might precisely be explained by incompatible cultural or social differences, giving very little space for account for the fact that children might actually engage in learning or school success despite so-called cultural or social differences.

2.3 A Life Course Sociocultural Approach to School Trajectories Sociocultural and critical psychologies give themselves as object of study the life and experiences of people in their worlds of culture, and their mutual relations (Teo, 2015; Valsiner, 2012; Valsiner & Rosa, 2007). On the one side, these approaches describe and explain the dynamics by which a society—with its institutions, specific groups, social representations, and a semiotic system—creates the conditions for people’s lives, and shape their trajectories. On the other side, it also considers people’s subjective experiences of their social and cultural world, their own engagements in relationships and activities, and their creations, and uses of cultural elements. Within that frame, for this paper, we define a series of concepts that allows accounting for the trajectory of young students coming from families with a migrant history, the barriers they may meet at school, as well as the means that they find to overcome these. First, we approach school trajectories as part of the life course of the person. A “school trajectory” is the part of a child’s life that takes place in schools or is submitted to the evaluation of the educational institution, and its representatives. In addition, a young person has a life before, next to, and after her experiences of school—her overall life course. To apprehend it, we adopt a developmental perspective, which considers the experience of humans and societies as fundamentally temporal phenomena. We are especially attentive to people’s ways of conferring sense to their experiences, their long-term motives or engagements, their sense of continuity and change, and their imagined future (Bruner, 1990; Hviid, 2015; Zittoun et al., 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015a). Second, we define notions for designating the social world in which people live. On the one side, the notion of “setting” (or “context”) can designate the social and material environments that are independent of the person (Zittoun et al., 2013). On the other side, we need to account for people’s lived experiences within these settings. We use the notion of “spheres of experiences” to designate, on the side of people’s lifeworld (Lewin, 1936), patterns of activities, feeling and relationships recurrent enough for people to know that it is “the same” situation, even though they undergo some variations (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015a, 2015b, 2016). Hence, for a child in a stable family, mealtime can constitute one sphere of experience, whether it takes place at home or in a picnic field. From such perspective, thus, what is experienced as continuity or discontinuity between experiences at home or at school is not a priori given, and cannot be defined by a third-person perspective identifying a priori more or less distant or different “cultures”. Rather, we propose to consider the empirical

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question of the dynamics by which the children can establish some links between spheres of experiences, drawing elements from some as resources for the other, thus conferring sense in each sphere, and across these (Zittoun & Grossen, 2012). Third, to account for the reality of the social framing, we need to show how elements drawn by children can be acknowledged, or not, by teachers, other children, or any other representatives of the institution. Hence, a child might mention an advertisement in a philosophy class on beauty; although the argument may be logically valid, a teacher may refute it, on the ground that it is not considered as “real (school) culture” (Grossen, Zittoun, & Ros, 2012). Here, the relation established by a child between two spheres of experience is not socially acknowledged by the teacher in the frame of the literature class, in the school setting. By refusing social recognition to specific elements mentioned by children, the teachers thus play their role of gatekeepers, defining what is legitimate in the classroom, and with it, whom, and who can progress along what institutional route; they thus shape students’ school trajectories. Thus, fourth, in order to account for these dynamics, we will describe “institutional barriers” within a school trajectory by which, intentionally or not, the educational institution prevents a child to develop her life course as she wishes. In turn, we will use the notion of “resistance” to designate any thought, action, or externalization by which a person contests, questions, or challenges such institutional barriers (Duveen, 2001; Jovchelovitch & Priego-Hernandez, 2013). Finally, when a person uses various cultural elements or social representations to support or mediate these acts of resistance, we will consider that these are used as resources. Following our previous work, we will examine the uses of “symbolic resources,” designating people’s mention, reference or relating to existing of discrete cultural elements (such as books, songs, poems, or clearly defined parts of a given cultural system) (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010; Zittoun, 2016c). As a whole, then, we will examine students’ school trajectories as these are the part of a life course that is framed by the educational system. We will more specifically address the institutional barriers imposed on some children, manifested in dynamics of recognition (or their absence), and the acts of resistance in which children may, however, maintain school trajectories compatible with their life course, using for this a variety of symbolic resources.

3 A Case Study in Switzerland: Young Women from Kosovo and Their Use of Symbolic Resources The case study that we present here is part of a research project led by one of us on the school success of young Kosovo-Albanian women in Switzerland (Mehmeti, 2013). In accordance with our theoretical lenses, we first expose contextual aspects, before showing the specific school trajectory of a young woman, the obstacles she meets, and her resistance.

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3.1 Social Inequalities at School in the Swiss Context and the Case of Albanian-Speaking Students Switzerland is a country usually reputed for its strong educational system; it, however, also has one of the most selective ones in international comparison (e.g., Meyer, 2015). Even though equity has been improved according to recent national reports (e.g., Consortium PISA.ch, 2014), inequalities at school and subtle discrimination processes remain important (Felouzis & Charmillot, 2013; Felouzis & Goastellec, 2015). A recurrent finding is thus that low socioeconomic status and migration background negatively affect students’ possibility to access higher education in Switzerland (Consortium PISA.ch, 2010; Coradi Vellacott & Wolter, 2005; Gomensoro & Bolzman, 2015; Kronig, 2003; Kronig, Haeberlin, & Eckart, 2000; Meyer, 2015). In addition, some groups of migrants, such as Albanian-speaking students, are more systematically exposed to school failure, as they cumulate social, cultural, and institutional disadvantages. These students are particularly likely to be oriented in special school structures and they rarely get the opportunity to access to school tracks with high expectations (Becker, Jäpel, & Beck, 2011; Burri Sharani et al., 2010; Kronig, 2003; Schader, 2006). Beyond difficulties encountered at school, Albanian-speaking communities have also faced difficulties in their integration to Swiss society during their three successive migration waves (in the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s), each corresponding to Switzerland’s specific economic challenges and accompanying migration policies (Aarburg, 2002; Leuenberger & Maillard, 1999). Tensions were mostly visible during the 1980s and 1990s when Switzerland was facing economic difficulties (Piguet, 2005), and former Yugoslavia was suffering from a growing climate of insecurity. At this time, highly qualified workers and students moved to Switzerland to seek for asylum; the country considered these asylum applications as contributing to its economic difficulties, and consequently newly arrived Albanian-speaking people were met with an increasing xenophobia.

3.2 Young Women from Kosovo in Switzerland and Their Success at School Our research project focused on Albanian-speaking students that encountered school success, and especially on the cases of young women studying at a Swiss University. These women combine the disadvantages mentioned above, together with negative social representations of the status of women within the Albanian-speaking community in Switzerland (Burri Sharani et al., 2010; Dahinden, 2010). Given these a priori obstacles, or barriers, we consider young women from Kosovo who performed well at school as an extreme, or atypical case (Flyvbjerg, 2006), worth studying to understand school achievement of young migrants. Data were collected in two steps, with 16 young women born in Kosovo (20–26 years old) and arrived in

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Switzerland between 1989 and 1998, attending a Swiss University for either a BA or MA degree. First, and inspired by a technique called “knowledge assessment” (“bilans de savoirs,” Bautier & Rochex, 1998; Charlot, 1999; Charlot et al., 1992), we asked the participants to write a text about their school trajectory, based on two questions: “If I had to describe my school trajectory I would say that…” and “If I had to describe myself regarding my school trajectory I would say that…”. 15 of the 16 participants wrote such a text. Second, we conducted semi-structured and biographical interviews with the 16 participants. French was the dominant language for the interviews, but sometimes the participants also spoke in Albanian, a language shared with the interviewer. We adopted an abductive approach (Valsiner, 2014a, 2014b; Zittoun, 2016b) and a reconstructive method (Rosenthal, 2004) to analyze the data, consisting in the collected written texts and the transcribed audio-recorded interviews. Following our theoretical assumptions, we then selected elements that could participate to our understanding of these students’ experience of school and migration (biographical and historical elements on the family, migration movements, difficulties and tensions encountered, resources). In total, 8 out of the 16 participants are from families where at least one of the parents did achieve a high degree (tertiary) in their country of origin, and among them four had both parents who did so. However, the migration implied that only three of such families reached a corresponding professional position and its socioeconomic status in Switzerland. Hence, as it is the case in other migrant groups, the families of the young women we interviewed had experienced social disqualification (e.g., Haug, 2006), and lived below their aspiration. Their official socioeconomic status in Switzerland was thus often discrepant with what sociology would consider as their cultural capital. In addition, the young women recurrently mentioned negative social representations against Albanian-speaking communities and students in Switzerland, especially among teachers. The interviewees often mentioned the tensions they experienced, because of these two aspects. Our overall analysis, however, revealed that these young women, rather than internalizing negative representations or being discouraged by the obstacles met, eventually transformed them into motives for investing into school learning and achieving high success. We also showed how, rather than suffering from the distance between home and school spheres of experiences, they used cultural elements found in both as symbolic resources to build bridges between them. Finally, we showed how these resources supported long-term meanings conferred to their school trajectories (Mehmeti, 2013). In what follows, we show one case study, that of Herolinda, as exemplum (Flyvbjerg, 2011) that illustrates particularly well the dynamic of resistance to institutional barriers met with by young persons with a migration background.

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4 Using Symbolic Resources to Overcome Institutional and Social Barriers: Herolinda’s Case Herolinda was born in Kosovo and moved to Switzerland aged 4. As Fig. 1 shows, she then experienced different conflicts or tensions in relation to school, all of them due either to discrimination or institutional barriers. We will briefly expose conflictual moments with institutions, and how they participate to the sense Herolinda gives to high achieving at school; we then present her uses of symbolic resources, supporting sense-making, involvement at school, and more generally, long-term engagements.

4.1 Finding Sense in a Successful School Trajectory beyond A Priori Barriers Even before starting school, social and institutional discrimination was present in Herolinda’s history, initially directed toward her brother and her parents. Indeed, her parents, who worked as accountants in Kosovo, were prohibited from working when the country was under occupation. Her parents moved to Switzerland in the 1990s, corresponding to a period of instability in their home country. As the young woman explains, her parents did not plan a long stay: “when we came, my parents thought that it was for two years.” In Switzerland, the socioeconomic status of her family was also negatively affected. Indeed, neither of her parents tried to have their diplomas recognized, as it required some time investment (i.e., by taking classes). Thus, both her parents worked in Switzerland in domains different from their trained profession.

Fig. 1 Herolinda’s meaningful experiences regarding her school trajectory

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Her father did different unqualified jobs, working at times in the fields, at others on buildings sites; a company employed her mother for dusting computer tools. Herolinda also experienced discrimination early in her school trajectory, this time targeting her brother, mocked by the other pupils for his weak competencies in French: When I was in my second year at pre-school (…) my brother he was thus in his first year (…) and he had a class where there were only Swiss farmers, they used to bother him, and this annoyed me and I went to defend him all the time (…). I couldn’t bear that the others were treating him as a foreigner (…) and they said strange words that we, we didn’t understand (…) this was the only negative point otherwise the teachers and all they were really nice (…) and well that’s it, I think that we both learned to talk [French] quite quickly

These two first barriers met by the family in Switzerland could have discouraged the young woman to become an active learner in a hostile society. She, however, resisted to these first tensions and tried to reach continuity across her spheres of experiences. Two elements seem particularly to have supported her involvement at school. First and probably as response to this disqualifying experience, Herolinda’s parents’ discourse to their two children promoted the importance of achieving well at school in Switzerland in order to open up good opportunities. In turn, the young woman seems to have invested this discourse thus promoted in the family sphere of experience, enough to support her involvement in her school sphere of experience: Well let’s say that my parents, they both finished the college in Kosovo and they are both [trained as] accountants and since we were young they say see, we finished a school, we cannot do our initial job in Switzerland, we are obliged to work as housekeeper or I don’t know what (…) jobs that they are not expected to exercise in fact, and I always said to myself: me, I am lucky to do what I want to do, to choose what I want, and then work in good conditions, so I will think well and chose well my job. For me it was important to find what I wanted to do. (…)

Herolinda seems to contrast a discourse of imposition in what regards her parents’ situation (“we are obliged to do”) and her own freedom of choice (“I can choose what I want” and “I will chose my job”); she thus considers herself as “being lucky” to have this opportunity. It is thus not the parents’ discourse solely that encourages Herolinda to become an active and successful learner but rather the personal sense she gives to her parents’ history. Even if we will see that Herolinda was not a priori free in her choices at school, we can notice that the young woman seemed to actively seek out this freedom. Second, the experience of her brother’s discrimination—for which the young woman seems to blame neither the teachers nor the school—seems to contribute to the sense she has conferred to the fact of being foreigner in Switzerland, and hence in the Swiss educational system. She thus started her written text by saying: “I had to fight. During my compulsory school I lived in a small town where there were a lot of foreigners and in particular a lot of Albanian who had not, for most of them, good results at school.” However, rather than internalizing these negative social representations, she on the contrary developed a posture of resistance: she wanted to

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prove the Swiss society that Albanian-speaking children were not necessarily bound to school failure. Following these episodes of tensions felt by significant others, Herolinda mentions several episodes that can be seen as institutional barriers affecting her directly. The Swiss educational system is particularly selective, exposing students to repeated selection procedures along their curriculum, each favoring or hindering their access to high studies. From their 5th or 6th school year—depending on the different regions from Switzerland and their specific educational system—students are oriented in the three main school tracks for secondary school. The highest level of these school tracks allows students to access to high school, and then potentially to University, on the condition that they have good marks. The lowest school track is usually frequented by students who will complete an apprenticeship. These different phases are thus part of the educational system itself, and teachers have an important power of decision in orientating their students toward one or another school track. In the case of Herolinda, her school experience was strongly affected by these important phases of selection. Indeed, as illustrated in Fig. 1, at each important phase, Herolinda experienced some institutional barriers. These barriers were mainly created by teachers and, surprisingly, supported by her parents. A first significant barrier can be observed during the “orientation cycle.” Based on her good school marks, Herolinda expected to attend the highest track—precollege—which would allow her attending high school and later University as she planned. However, the teachers used different arguments to prevent Herolinda’s orientation toward high-level school tracks. First, during her 5th school year, her final mark, 8.3/10, did not allow her to directly frequent the highest-level school track. According to the young woman, in such case, a discussion should have taken place at a teachers’ meeting. Her main teacher did, however, not follow this procedure, and he even showed reluctance to let her access the pre-college section. She thus followed the middle section during her 6th school year, and was not reoriented toward the highest level of school track, despite her very good marks. In contrast to a supporting discourse around school aspirations for their children, the parents have, in this case, aligned their position with those from the teachers: In the 5th and 6 th school-year, when all the decisions were made (…) they were on the teacher’s side because they thought to themselves that they are teachers, it is their job, they know what they do, it’s not up to us who come from Kosovo to teach them how it works in Switzerland (…) so they said that it was my fault, that I did not work enough etc. (…)

Moreover, when the teachers proposed Herolinda to repeat a class as an institutional strategy to access the wished school track, her parents perceived it negatively and they refused to let her do so. Talking about this, the young woman drew upon a social representation: “you know, by us ‘she repeated a class’ [(says these words in Albanian)].” In the Albanian context, repeating a class is indeed very negatively valued. The parents did thus consider the teachers as legitimated authorities within the educational institution and did not contest their opinion. The young woman seems to

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have suffered from this lack of support during this orientation cycle which, in turn, was reflected in her low marks: At that moment, as my parents, and the teachers too, made me feel it, I was thinking to myself it’s me who is lousy (…) I was lousy, I was lousy, I was a lazy person so I have only what I merit in fact, and by the way the next semester (…) when they decided that I would be in the general section, I had the worst marks in my life (…) because I was totally demotivated by school (…)

The same kind of barrier can be observed during Heroldina’s last year of compulsory education (9th). There again, her teacher prevented her from accessing to high school by refusing to sign her application for an alternative route to access high school—engaging in an additional year to prepare her entry—arguing that it would cost her too much, which she wouldn’t achieve it and that she hadn’t good enough marks, although the young woman reports having had good ones (8–9/10!). In this case, again, the parents did not blame the teachers or school but their own daughter, telling her that it was her fault if she did not have good marks enough. The teacher also refused her application for a lower section in high school and even encouraged her to start vocational training. The young woman had to fight for her choice alone, without benefiting from any direct support, neither from school actors nor from her parents: So I wanted to apply for that [high school in the diploma section] and the teacher did not want it neither (…) and I said ‘no, but I don’t want to make an apprenticeship there is nothing that I am interested in, I have the marks, stop messing around’. And we did a meeting with both my parents and the teacher tried to convince my parents that I need to do an apprenticeship and so. I was so angry, I was hysteric (…) I turned mad, I was shouting at him [the teacher], I told “you are not normal, I want to do this”, and finally he agreed to sign for my application for high school.

In contrast with the teacher’s assessment, she received a reward from the municipality—the institution thus sending a very paradoxical evaluation of her skills and possible futures: We finalized the marks, the exams, and it turned out that I had the best marks in all the commune in fact. And I didn’t know it at all and I came to the diploma ceremony and he says “Herolinda T.”, diploma stuff, with exceptional prize from the commune for the best marks, I was like “me?”, I thought that I was so lousy (…) so e I think I had the best mark, I had like 9.7 in the exams, something like that, and this was even better than all the marks in the pre-college section but do you see we cannot really compare (…). So I was the best mark for the general section for all the commune and then the teacher came and excused himself “I underestimate you and so on” and I was like, I was so annoyed that I just looked at him and left

This event seems particularly interesting, as it shows how tensions may arise in the young’s woman’s school sphere of experience, notably due to contrasted, or even contrary, messages sent by different institutional actors having authority over the same educational setting. Indeed, while the teachers hardly recognized her competencies and supported her school aspirations, an external institution on the contrary acknowledged her good performances at school.

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Finally, because of these obstacles, Herolinda needed to attend a private school for acceding University after all. Here again, more structural aspects could have led the young woman to abandon her project of attending a Swiss University. Indeed, as she explained it, her parents could not easily afford this school, nor could she apply for a grant because it concerned a private school. She, however, overstepped these barriers: she financed it herself, working hard to do so: “During the day I went at school, in the evening at work until 10, I went home and slept, I did not review anything all the week long I did nothing, during the week-end I worked like a freak.”

4.2 Turning Barriers into Challenges to Overcome In the previous section, we saw that notwithstanding the two main barriers and ambivalences experienced during her school trajectory, Herolinda found sense in performing well at school and being a successful student. First, we saw that the difficulties faced by her parents and her brother contributed to the sense she conferred to school as an institution allowing a freedom of choice, and that is worth working hard for achieving in it. At the same time, school—and even Switzerland probably— was perceived as a place where immigrants do not have an easy access to both high-level school tracks and work, and this probably also sensitized her to negative social representations against Albanian-speaking students. It is in this sense that she reinterpreted the barriers set by the teachers during the orientation: it’s true that there were a lot of prejudice [against Albanians] and I think that this also played a role at the moment when there was the class orientation, because they thought to themselves that, anyway, Albanians do not work, they don’t have a school culture in fact (…) I think it is was what they thought to themselves.

Her claim saying that she “had to fight” seems thus to become, as her school trajectory evolves, a growing motive for high achievement at school. It is as if fighting against inequalities became a meaningful aim in regard with performing well at school. Contrasting to what a French sociological approach could have predicted, we observed that Herolinda’s school experience does not reflect a pure reproduction of her family’s school ethos. Rather, we see her active reinterpretation of her school experience and the social and institutional barriers she met, together with her migration history. Focusing on the young woman’s use of symbolic resources, we push this last observation one step further.

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4.3 Using Symbolic Resources for Resistance and Long-term Engagements The two previous sections shed light on the difficulties encountered by the young woman and the meaning-making process that still favored her active participation at school. Here, we focus on the resources that Herolinda could use to support such active resistance. Our analysis reveals two interdependent uses of resources: on the one side, Herolinda used cultural elements as symbolic resources at specific moments of her school trajectory (Fig. 2). On the other hand, she used others as long-term resources (see Fig. 3), as if these were contributing to give sense to her school trajectory. In Fig. 2, we thus observe that two cultural elements were particularly relevant during difficult moments at school. First, talking about books, Herolinda starts by saying that she has always appreciated reading, as it allowed her to deal with different challenges (i.e., “how to manage conflict (…) how not to be depressed if you get a bad grade, etc.”). Reading seems thus to have allowed her to develop an imaginary sphere of experience, where her experienced tensions (e.g., being bothered by schoolmates, receiving bad grades) became manageable. She thus says that she really “learned a lot in books, whether [she read them] for school or for [her]self.” She then mentioned a specific book that she still remembered: At one time when I felt not really supported by my parents. I read that book, I don’t remember its title, but it was the story of a little girl called Nadira, (..) she lived in France and she was from Maghreb and she wanted to go to school. And nobody supported! And then I thought, “oh that’s so cool, at the end she makes it” (..) I found that so cool, I adored that book I read it twice I think, it was very small, written large for children, I loved it.

In this case, the book seemed to have deeply resonated with her own experience (i.e., negative experiences with school teachers, lack of support), and thus it took a

Fig. 2 Herolinda’s symbolic resources to overcome specific barriers

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Fig. 3 Herolinda’s symbolic resources to support long-time commitments

very personal sense—beyond its shared meaning. It is as if reading a “happy ending” in this book, in which the main character’s story is close to her own one, helped and encouraged Herolinda’s involvement at school. Such semiotic mediation allowed distancing herself from her own experience and imagining positive openings. In turn, this probably helps the young woman to make sense of her will to perform well at school. In that sense, she used that book as symbolic resource (Valsiner, 1999; Zittoun, 2006). Herolinda used other cultural elements to support her involvement at school. Indeed, she also mentioned TV series, and especially Heartbreak High: I remember when we were young, there was a TV series called Heartbreak High, and it happened in a school and so on and I think that it influences when you are young, I do not have a concrete example but there were plenty of times where they had tests (…) and they failed or suddenly they had to work on themselves and make an effort and you say to yourself: “that is they did it, I also must do it”.

Again, Herolinda seemed to identify with students’ experiences depicted in the TV series, allowing using it as symbolic resource. We see here a good illustration of how a fictional element is turned into concrete personal motives for the young woman’s school sphere of experience (“he does it, I need to do it also”). Identifying with the characters in the TV series she appreciated seemed thus to also support dynamics of imagination that, in turn, favored Herolinda’s engagement. Moreover, we can make the hypothesis that the choice of watching such TV series was probably linked to the young woman’s concerns and attitudes toward school, as both the characters and the social and institutional settings depicted in this TV Series1 illustrate dynamics and attitudes of resistance. 1 As an illustration, the Wikipedia page for “Heartbreak High” describes it as follows: The program

dealt with the students of the fictional Hartley High (…) a tough high school in a multiracial area of Sydney.

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As illustrated in Fig. 3, other cultural elements took a personal sense in Herolinda’s school and life trajectory. Herolinda thus mentioned Albanian poems and other elements of the oral tradition such as, for instance, “work work night and day in order to see a little bit of light” (a well-known quotation from an Albanian writer, Naim Frashëri); or this other, shared by her grandmother; “work work because you will rest enough when you die,” that, as crystallized cultural elements, became symbolic resources to support her idea that working is important in order to achieve goals. Finally, Herolinda turned historical characters as semiotic resources to support her active posture against discrimination and inequalities (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010). Starting by explaining that her parents considered the Albanian history as something very important, she says that they talked a lot to their children about “Shote Galica (…), the flag’s celebrating day, Rugova, politics, the war, the invasion of the Turks ((laughs)), Skanderbeg.” These historical characters (Shote Galica, Rugova, Skanderbeg) are reputed in the Albanian tradition for their active role in Kosovo’s and Albania’s history, because they resisted occupants. Moreover, in the Albanian context, the celebration of the flag, history around the invasion of the Turks can also be linked to acts of resistance. Mentioning these elements might reflect Herolinda’s pride or attachment to the cultural system transmitted in her family. However, she does not seem to refer to these historical events and characters to promote nationalism, but rather, for their intellectual aura. Interestingly, Herolinda thus explains the importance that the figure of Ibrahim Rugova took for her: H: I think that in my family, in my nearest one as much as in my larger one, really Ibrahim Rugova was the emblematic figure (…) representing the successful Albanian (…) an intellectual who studied, pacifist, who wants the good for his country (…) it is, it is the model (…) T: And you had him in mind sometimes? H: Ah but always. Besides, in my living-room, if I am not wrong, there is a picture of him, I don’t know if it is still there but I think it is, it is so usual that I don’t remember anymore what it gives [in the living-room], but it is something that always stays in our mind (…) I remember when we were young, when it was the war [in Kosovo], we followed our parents in the demonstrations in Bern, or in concerts (…) for charity, etc. (…) so this was always omnipresent.

The political figure of Rugova and what he represented for Herolinda’s parents was crystallized in the picture in the family’s living room. Interestingly, Herolinda underlines the stability of the figure over time, and also, the sense it took for her: an “emblematic figure (…) representing a successful Albanian (…) an intellectual who studied, pacifist, who wants the good for his country.” We can make the hypothesis that Herolinda can thus use the figure of Rugova, this time acknowledged and shared with her parents, as semiotic resource. First, thanks to its stability, it seems to allow her establishing a sense of continuity between her school and home spheres of experience. Second, his intellectual aura as well as his leadership seems to contribute to reinforce her life motives such as fighting against discrimination, achieving the wished job, thanks to school, and answering to her more abstract and intellectual interests. Overall, the young woman’s use of the diverse symbolic resources resonates with her concerns and tensions felt at school: thus, she probably internalized and external-

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ized the idea that working hard at school can help her go beyond the a priori barriers set by the teachers. Moreover, the identification to characters that both defended their home country and transmitted a positive image of it probably sustained the young woman’s involvement at school and her motive to go beyond Swiss prejudice against Albanian-speaking students and communities.

5 Discussion and Conclusion In this final section, we come back on our demonstration and draw some implication for theory, research, and practice. The present chapter first stated limitations in some macrosocial explanations of school difficulties, as well as static evaluations of “cultural distances.” Rather, in order to highlight the sociocultural dynamics at stake, we adopted a life course perspective that allowed retracing the particular case of the institutional setting in which young Albanian-speaking school trajectory have taken place in Switzerland in the last 20 years. We chose to concentrate on the trajectories of young women from Kosovo accessing a Swiss University against all sociological predictions. Focusing on one particular case, we showed that “cultural differences” or “inequalities” manifest themselves at the level of daily interactions between children and teachers and learners within classroom frames, and are redundantly expressed in moments of orientation, career choices, or recognition of school achievement. Hence, it could be shown that the young woman met a series of institutional barriers meant to orient her school trajectory toward vocational apprenticeship against her will and capacities. Our analytical perspective, however, allowed to show that the same young woman used cultural elements met both at school and at home as symbolic resources to support her commitment in learning, and more generally, to interpret these barriers as injustices to be fought. We also showed that such symbolic resources could also support resistance, long-term commitments into education, facilitate the establishing of continuities between spheres of experiences, and generally speaking, support the sense she conferred to her school trajectory and its emancipatory role in her life course. A first theoretical implication of our analysis is a plea for the de-culturalization of the analysis of school inequalities in the case of learners with a migration background. Explanations that start with the premise that there are some “cultural differences” between home and school can only end up in tautological statements (Valsiner, 2014a) and do not allow for identifying the dynamics by which school trajectories are shaped, prevented, or facilitated, both by institutional settings and by learners. In contrast, sociocultural psychology has largely the conceptual power to explain dynamics at stake without coming back to such conceptual weaknesses (Cole, 1996; Marková, 2016; Ratner, 2012; Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato, & Dazzani, 2016; Valsiner & Rosa, 2007; Zittoun et al., 2013). Indeed, our analysis showed that, a priori, many factors prevented the young woman from realizing her project and answering to her aspirations. First, the teach-

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ers implicitly promoted the image of a very selective school system, in which the (arbitrary) decisions of teachers can play an essential role in orienting the school trajectory of their students. We, however, observed that even in this frame, some tensions could arise, when different actors promote different discourses around the same institutional setting. Second, we saw that the young woman still found resources to overstep the different barriers and follow her own projects, drawing on the one hand on her family history and its aspirations toward school, and on the other hand, on cultural elements that she could use as symbolic resources. Drawing on these elements, the young woman was thus able to link her different spheres of experiences, from home to school and back. What is remarkable here is that we did neither find traces of teachers’ or school’s efforts to facilitate this process of linking two a priori distanced spheres of experience, nor dynamics of recognition of the young woman’s resources, although these dynamics are of great importance in learning processes (e.g., Chronaki, 2009; Zittoun, 2014). Hence, we invite scholars and practitioners not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of “cultural distances” or “differences”, but rather to identify the social, relational, and symbolic dynamics by which these are enacted and manifest. In terms of practical implication, this stance invites us to do more than acknowledge students’ home “culture”. A whole strand of studies encourages the acknowledgement of families’ and communities’ cultural models, history, and educational strategies, in children’s relationship to school (Delcroix, 2009; Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Ogbu, 1992; Zéroulou, 1988). Yet, such initiative also entails the risk of essentializing specific cultural systems and reifying the very notion of culture2 . With another strand of studies, we rather argue that a form of recognition of cultural elements that make sense for student, even out of school, might support their engagement in learning (Abbey & Bastos, 2014; Abreu & Hale, 2011; Bøttcher, 2014; Grossen et al., 2012; Zittoun & Grossen, 2012). As a second theoretical implication, we hope that our analysis has shown the relevance of an approach that combined an analysis of institutional dynamics with that of a first-person perspective for approaching educational issues (Zittoun, 2016a, 2016b). We believe that such an analysis contributes to show the centrality of dynamics of sense-making in learning and instruction (Bruner, 1977, 1990; Rochex, 1998; Zittoun, 2016c). In this sense, we also hope that such analysis can call for more empirical documentation of school trajectories in the specific contexts, highlighting the perspective of the person herself, and identifying what symbolic resources she uses, rather than imposing a reconceived idea of what “the culture is.” Now, do we imply that such young students’ school achievement despite institutional barriers depends, in final analysis, on their hard work, personal will and commitments, that is, merit? We believe that such an individualistic reading has no grounding; in effect, our analysis has shown that students may resist school and family barriers to their learning, if they can identify and mobilize various resources, allowing them to imagine possible futures, define values, and support commitments. 2 In

this sense, see, for instance, the interesting discussion proposed by Hviid & Villadsen (2014).

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However, the identification of such cultural elements, their uses, and their understanding are highly dependent on social, affective, and relational dynamics of recognition and support, whether from teachers, peers, or family members. In that sense, resistance to institutional obstacles, as well as one’s capacity to shape one’s developing life course, is highly social and cultural dynamics (Hviid, 2015; Radiši´c, 2011). Finally, the educational system is one of the most powerful enterprises by which societies cultivate children and young people into the adults that are their members. Although education is both a fundamental right and a need for human development, it also can become the ground of reproduction of social inequalities and thus reinforce differences and inequalities. On the other hand, the global growing attempt to standardize education can lead to on an idealized vision of unity in education that prevents recognizing more marginalized groups and their practices. To what conditions could then education preserve human integrity and sense-making? We hope that, thanks to our sociocultural and critical stance, we have sketched some elements of response and routes for further enquiry.

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Zittoun, T., Valsiner, J., Vedeler, D., Salgado, J., Gonçalves, M., & Ferring, D. (2013). Human development in the lifecourse. Melodies of living. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Teuta Mehmeti is Ph.D. student and Lecturer at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Her main research concerns children’s thinking and meaning-making processes while dealing with school tasks and activities, more particularly in cases of school failure. She also works within an interdisciplinary team on children’s argumentation and reasoning processes. She currently collaborates on a project around mobile children at school. Tania Zittoun is Professor in Sociocultural Psychology at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). She studies learning, imagination, and development in the life course. Her current fieldworks include regional case studies, related to mobility and aging. She is Associate Editor of Culture & Psychology, and her last books are Imagination in Human and Cultural Development (with Alex Gillespie, Routledge, 2016) and the Handbook of Culture and Imagination (OUP, 2018, coedited with Vlad P. Glaveanu).

Chapter 12

Teacher Identity in Structural Reflective Workshops: A View from China Zhou Li-Hua, Li Xiao-Wen, Wu Aruna and Gao Ya-Bing

Abstract There have been mismatches between Chinese traditional educational culture and pedagogical practice in today’s classrooms, as well as between societal needs of students’ autonomy development and the limitations of teacher training in contemporary China. These point to the demand to focus on the development of teacher identity. Previous research has been conducted on the identity formation of student–teachers, yet there have been few efforts to study the identities of Chinese teachers in in-service training. Drawing upon the Dialogical Self Theory (DST), the purpose of this study was to elaborate on identity negotiations by identifying the main I-positions of Chinese teachers in structured reflective workshops. Nine teachers coming from the same school participated in the research. In one academic year, 13 workshops were held, excluding the summer and winter breaks. Data were analyzed using a content analysis approach with constant comparison. The results showed that, first, Chinese experienced teachers were subject to the main tensions between a “controller” I-position and a “partner” I-position. Second, three forms of negotiations between these two I-positions were evident in the workshops, namely, inhibiting the previous I-position, conflicting I-positions, and dialogue between Ipositions. The presence of these negotiations indicates that the structured reflective workshops serve as a vehicle to promote the development of experienced teacher identity.

Z. Li-Hua (B) · G. Ya-Bing Zhejiang International Studies University, Hangzhou, China e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] G. Ya-Bing e-mail: [email protected] L. Xiao-Wen East China Normal University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] W. Aruna Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_12

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1 Introduction It is well known that teachers have great influence on students. Researchers have pointed out that teacher identity plays an essential role in how teachers interact with their students (e.g., Lee, Huang, Law, & Wang, 2013). The study reported in this chapter was initiated by the need to develop teacher identity. Such need came from the mismatch between Chinese traditional culture and pedagogical practice in schools of present-day China. Also, we noticed a demand to promote the development of teacher identity, given the mismatch between increasingly societal needs of students’ autonomy development and the limitations of teacher training in China. We introduced the structured reflective workshops to transform tensioned dialogues in teacher identities to creative fits. In order to do that, we analyzed teachers’ dominant I-positions and their negotiations in the workshops.

1.1 A Pressing Need to Develop Teacher Identity in China 1.1.1

The Mismatch Between Traditional Culture and Practice in School

China is rich in traditional education and cultures, in which the Confucian educational idea is especially outstanding. In the first sentence, the Analects of Confucius says, “Isn’t it a great pleasure to learn and then constantly practice what you have learned,” which particularly highlights the important role of “learning” and “eagerness on learn.” Confucius defines learning as one kind of autonomous, lifelong, and practical activity. Such an emphasis on autonomous learning is in perfect accord with societal demands of present-day China. And as one of the basic needs, the satisfaction of students’ autonomy is essential for their positive development (Zhou, 2016; Zhou, Li, Yang, & Ren, 2017). Whether or not the students are eager to study is related to their teacher teaching. Confucius emphasizes the important role of teacher–student relationships. He writes on being “close to the teacher and then believe this teacher’s doctrine,” that is, students will trust their teacher’s teaching only when they are close to their teachers. A crucial prerequisite for this strong bond between teachers and students is “Li” (i.e., student’s respect for their teachers). Confucius emphasizes on the importance of “the teacher’s dignity,” the absolute authority of the teacher. In line with the above traditional culture, the practice in present Chinese schools tends to respect the authority of teachers and require the obedience of students, which inclines to be hierarchical (Li, Wu, Li, & Zhuang, 2012; Wu, Li, Zhou, & Zhang, 2017). A typical example is the misunderstanding about hitting students. In China, there is an old saying that “hitting shows affection and scolding shows love.” Sometimes both children and parents consider the teacher’s controlling methods (e.g., hitting and scolding) as the sign of love and caring. This contradicts the emphasis of

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Confucius’s “Li”, which implies not only that students must respect their teachers but also that teachers need to do their best to receive their students’ respect (Zhou, 2016). In order to foster mutual respect and trust, teachers need to interact with students in productive ways. Nowadays, the government prohibits teachers from hitting pupils; however, teacher control and student obedience are still embedded in the Chinese classroom (Zhou, 2016; Zhou, Li, & Wu, 2012). Certainly, obedience plays a huge role in social harmony and stability. However, a practice of strict control with excessive demands on students’ obedience can damage the development of autonomy (Reeve & Jang, 2006). All in all, traditional educational culture underlines that teachers need to do their best to keep pupils and teachers close, and in such closeness students can learn more from their teachers. It is essential for students to respect their teachers. However, hitting and scolding will neither increase students’ respects nor promote teachers’ dignity. Thus, teachers need to develop their teaching to earn the respect from the bottom of the students’ heart.

1.1.2

The Mismatch Between Societal Needs of Students’ Autonomy Development and the Limitations of Teacher Training

The contemporary Chinese society has realized the importance of students’ learning autonomy, which is not only a vital goal of national education but also a significant direction of basic educational reforms in China (Zhou, 2016). Furthermore, the Chinese government has been aware of the necessity to provide high-quality teaching to facilitate students’ autonomy development. With special funds and clear requirements of training hours (e.g., 360 training credits within 5 years), teachers have the opportunity to take part in a series of in-service training sessions. To some degree, these training sessions provide more opportunities to develop teaching methods. Yet, there remain some salient problems, which will be presented next. First of all, there are a considerable number of “spoon-fed” training sessions. Such training sessions are generally given as lectures by a particular professor who is only familiar with the pedagogical theory. Because these professors have no previous experience in actual teaching practice, teachers consider these training sessions as separate from their day-to-day practice, and thus these lectures elicit weak pertinence to the practice. Even though some teachers show enthusiasm in these lectures, afterward, they find that it is difficult to transfer the pedagogical ideas into practice. In other words, teachers probably lean toward a low degree of pedagogical reflection (Dowling, 2006). Few teachers are sincerely interested in the “spoon-fed” training sessions. However, in order to accomplish the goal of 360 in-service training credits, teachers still take part in these training courses. Thus, the effect of this kind of “spoon-fed” training session remains productive only on the surface. Second, and in the opposite extreme, training courses that focus narrowly on various techniques still prevail in the present training sessions for in-service teachers. In order to enhance teachers’ motivation to participate in the in-service training courses, these teacher-training sessions place much emphasis on the specific

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techniques without dealing with their relation to pedagogical theory. Such training sessions often include various teaching skill competitions, such as competitions of “different instructional designs for the same lesson” or “the same instructional design for different lessons.” These competitions may promote teachers’ development in specific teaching skills. However, they put teachers under a great deal of stress, for the winner, the loser, and even for the other observers who do not take part in the competitions, and thus the training outcome remains meager. Third, teachers get confused about different pedagogical concepts that are discussed in various training sessions. These pedagogical concepts may be consistent, inconsistent or even in conflict with one another. Sometimes, teachers’ teaching beliefs and practical experience seem to contradict with these pedagogical concepts. But during the training sessions, teachers are inclined to meet the professors’ interests rather than to investigate what are their own pedagogical interests and beliefs (Lü & Yan, 2005). Consequently, the coexistence of incompatible pedagogical concepts makes it difficult for teachers to work solely according to their beliefs and intentions. Being exposed to these incompatible pedagogical concepts, teachers need to develop a capacity to build a coherent pedagogical system, which they can follow in their daily practice. It is important to note that the teachers themselves, rather than the teaching skills, make the class ‘look” unique (Walkington, 2005). Teachers apply the same method in the classroom in different ways. In other words, it is their inner teacher identity that influences their teaching practice. In sum, on the one side, the in-service training sessions in Chinese educational system are offering teachers many opportunities to develop new concepts and skills. On the other side, teachers feel pressured to study the constantly changing knowledge and theories (Li, Zhang, & Zhou, 2011). Scholars have suggested that teacher-training sessions need to shift from periphery variables (e.g., skills) to core variables (e.g., teacher identity) (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). Following this line of reasoning, the workshops conducted in the study reported in this chapter attempted to overcome some of the above problems.

1.2 Teacher Identity in Dialogical Self Theory There are some differences between modern and postmodern perspectives on identity. The modern perspective tends to view identity as a static trait. However, the postmodern perspective considers identity as an ongoing process through nonstop interactions with different contexts (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Both perspectives have their merits and weaknesses. DST provides a promising framework for combining the modern perspective with the postmodern perspective (Hermans & HermansKonopka, 2010). The central point of the DST is that identity in itself is a fluctuating system, in which a set of autonomous I-positions is constantly in movement and negotiating with one another (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Hermans, 2001). Within identity, different I-positions are “voiced” to exchange information (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Bell & Das, 2011; Sanderson, 2008). However, during these processes

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of negotiations, the individual may still try to maintain an inner coherence. This means that identity entails a dual process which is both temporally fluid and stable (Hermans, 2001; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2001). According to the concepts of DST, teacher identity is an ongoing and creative negotiating process between different I-positions (i.e., the internal dialogue) and with the other (i.e., the external dialogue) (Beijaard et al., 2004; Winters, Meijers, Lengelle, & Baert, 2011). There are frequent tensions and ambivalences between different I-positions, such as between dominant and subordinate I-positions. When such tensions and ambivalences reach their maximum, a process calls “mutual-in-feeding” (Valsiner, 2002) may occur. Similar to a cyclical relation, two main I-positions can shift from the dominant to the subordinate and then quickly return to the dominant. On such occasions, without external support, it is difficult for the inner self to overcome the ambivalences (Ribeiro & Gonçalves, 2011). The development from the mutual-in-feeding to a new dialogical relation needs an appropriate support, which contribute to the process that these two I-positions dialoguing with each other rather than being in deep tensions and ambivalences. DST proposes that the process of identity development can be expressed as a trajectory leading from one I-position to other I-positions, and then, from I-positions to a meta-position, and finally, from this meta-position to a possible promoter position (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010; Valsiner, 2004; Winters et al., 2011). The meta-position is very valuable to the teacher, since it allows reflections upon their inner I-positions from a distance (Winters et al., 2011). Importantly, this meta-position may develop into a promoter position, an I-position capable of taking action or at least intending to do so (Winters et al., 2011).

1.3 Previous DST-Based Research on Teacher Identity Through Self-reflection The above innovating process of I-positions does not occur by accident; instead, it can be created through various activities. Previous studies have revealed that teachers construct and reconstruct their identity through self-reflections on their beliefs, experiences, and practices (Dowling, 2006; Walkington, 2005). For example, Ligorio (2010) found that the narrations and dialogues in forums, chat rooms, and other online environments played an important role in the construction of identity. Using analytic memos, Phillips and Carr (2007) studied the emergence and construction of 34 pre-service teachers’ identities through critical reflections. Bloomfield (2000) discussed the emerging identities among student teachers through the use of the Internet and a “bulletin board” facility. Both Millar, Marsh (2002) and Clarke (2008) have stated that reflective discourses played a particularly significant role in the formation of teacher identity. The previous studies in this field have two features in common. The first one is the focus on student teachers, who would soon leave the university to become professional teachers. However, as is well known, teacher identity is an ongoing

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process throughout the entire professional life. An assessment of student–teacher’s identity can thus not be taken as a representative of teacher identity formation as a whole. Consequently, it is necessary to focus on the identity construction and reconstruction of experienced teachers. Second, the majority of previous studies have been conducted within Western mainstream educational systems (Scotland, 2014) and there is a significant gap with regard to research on teacher identity in non-Western societies. Little is known about the construction of teacher identity in Eastern collective educational cultures. The present research attempted to explore how experienced teacher identity in China evolved during the training sessions which we named as the structured reflective workshops. With clear steps, in these structural workshops, teachers were encouraged to engage in self-reflections through the discussions of concrete educational cases. We hypothesized that these workshops could provide a possible approach to influence the development of teacher identity. Two research questions were defined: – What were the main I-positions among experienced Chinese teachers? – What kinds of I-position negotiations were present in teacher identity development?

2 Method 2.1 Participants and Context Nine teachers coming from a 9-year compulsory education school in southern China participated in the study. This school is located in an urban–rural district, containing a mixture of families, such as city people, countrymen, and migrant workers having various socioeconomic statuses, holding different occupations and leading different lifestyles. Consequently, students in this school differed greatly in their family backgrounds. They had various study habits because of different academic levels. Due to the complicated student backgrounds, teachers in this school had to face many challenges. Five of the original sample of 14 teachers did not participate in all workshops and were thus excluded from the following analysis. Six of the nine participants were female. The average age was 30.88 years with a range of 29–34 years. Their teaching experience ranged from 5 to 10 years. All teachers took part in the workshops on a voluntary basis. None of teachers had prior knowledge of Dialogical Self Theory or structured reflective workshops.

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2.2 Procedure Each teacher participated in 13 workshops, which were held in the evening, after school hours throughout an entire school year, excluding summer and winter breaks. Most workshops were held in the same room, once every 2 weeks. Each session was announced 2 days before. All sessions were audio or video recorded for research purposes only. Teachers were not familiar with participation in self-reflective activities (Horn & Little, 2010). To help them to express their viewpoints freely, rather than an open workshop, we used the reflective workshop with clear structure and steps. Two of the authors acted as the facilitators of the workshops. Each workshop had four steps based on the Balint’s procedure (Haber, 2011), which we assumed provided a good framework for communication. The first step was to ask a teacher to report a case that was troubling her/him. The reporting teacher who stated the case introduced the case and clarified the problem that he or she needed to be helped with. The other teachers were requested to listen carefully. This part of the workshop took 10–15 min. We identified the dominant I-position of the reporting teacher in this step. The second step was to reflect upon the “micro backgrounds” of the case, which were obtained through a series of questions and answers. Specifically, the reporting teacher answered the questions asked by the other teachers. The questions were about the details of the case. The other teachers were not allowed to ask a barrage of questions nor questions criticizing the reporting teacher. This part took about half an hour and aimed at understanding the students in the case from various perspectives. The third step was to identify the different methods used by each teacher. In this step, the reporting teacher sat outside of the circle, turning his or her back toward the group, while listening to the other teachers without interfering. The group of teachers expressed their ideas and methods by treating the case as if it was a problem they were encountering. The use of first-person “I”-statements was required. This step took approximately 30 min and provided an opportunity for the teachers, especially the reporting teacher, to reflect upon the case from a certain distance. The fourth step in the procedure was to summarize the experiences. At the end of the workshop, the reporting teacher rejoined the group and presented her/his main experiences, especially the new perspectives. At this time, each member could share their ideas, feelings, or confusion. This final step took about 10–15 min.

2.3 Date Sources and Analysis Data was collected in the 13 workshops based on the content of workshops. The records were transcribed verbatim. As it is potentially invalid to judge or track down an I-position on the basis of a single word (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011), we attempted to track down the I-positions on the basis of words, phrases, and ideas which were

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stated in the workshops. The authors worked together to analyze each workshop based on the framework of DST (Dowling, 2006). We discussed the main findings from our separate analyses until consensus was achieved. In order to answer the first research question, two coding categories were formulated: the modality component (i.e., evaluation of the tone of teachers’ speaking as flexible or monological), and the relational component (i.e., evaluation of the perspectives as teacher-centered, student-centered, or both) (Lee et al., 2013; Winters et al., 2011). To answer the second research question, we looked for the possible I-positions, meta-positions, and promoter positions (Winters et al., 2011). In the workshops, meta-positions were identified when teachers’ voices were reflective, and the promoter positions were identified when teachers talked about how they used different methods to satisfy students’ needs in their daily practice.

3 Results 3.1 Teacher Identity with Different Dominant I-Positions There was one main ambivalent tension among experienced teachers, that is, the conflict between seeing themselves as a students’ controller and as a students’ partner. We defined the former as the controller I-position which was voiced as “I as a teacher with authority” and the latter as the partner I-position which was voiced as ‘I as a teacher who facilitates students’ learning.” The different characteristics of these two main I-positions are described below.

3.1.1

The Controller I-Position

Teachers holding this dominant I-position tended to use the autocratic teaching style and be eager to be treated as an authority. They paid extensive attention to their leading role and students’ obedience, which made them lack the ability to understand their students. These were the key characteristics: Negative perspectives. Teachers with this dominant controller I-position were inclined to detect problems or shortcomings and they easily made negative judgments about students and others. Monological modality. These teachers lacked the sensitivity toward students’ changes; they felt frustrated and were more likely to speak with an undeniable or injunctive tone, such as “you should” or “you must”. In their teaching practice, they tended to be monological and lacked the ability of take students’ perspective into consideration. A representative statement of the controller I-position is given below: …I had a conversation with Li, but he did not listen to my advice. This student had four main problems: the first one was that he had a problematic individual life style…Secondly, his family had many problems, for example, his parents were indulgent with him…I feel that

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this student can be dangerous…How can I make him realize the problem of himself and then make him change…I have used all kinds of methods to help him, but there was no big effect…recently, I haven’t been able to observe any positive change, and I even found a change for the negative in other aspects. (Teacher A)

According to the uncompromising negative evaluations, we could judge the dominant position to be the controller I-position. This teacher was immersed in her own perspectives without the comprehensive evaluation of those of the student. Hence, such teachers with the dominant controller I-position tended not to have any dialogue with their students. In the workshops, several expressions reflected this I-position, such as “I am a teacher too tired to improve my work” or “I am a students’ problem-solver.” We found seven teachers with dominant controller I-positions in our sample.

3.1.2

The Partner I-Position

Opposite to that, teachers who used the partner I-position showed positive attitudes toward students, and these teachers were good at understanding and respecting students. There were two main characteristics of this I-position: Positive attitudes. Teachers with this dominant I-position were sensitive to students’ advantages and changes. They were also good at encouraging students effectively. Flexible modality. This I-position was voiced in a flexible and soft tone, e.g., “if”, “maybe”, “probably”, “possibly”, “sometimes”, taking different perspectives into account. A representative example can be seen below: On one occasion, Lan (student) seemed as if she didn’t feel very well. She kicked the door for a long time; her roommates were shocked. Usually, she could chat with others, but sometimes, we could not understand what she said and felt lost. All in all, her classmates considered her to be a selfish and odd person… I had the same feeling sometimes…sometimes, I tidied up her clothes or desk and talked with her, and I could see a smile on her face rather than a gloomy look…She has the advantage that she is very responsible. So sometimes, I let her do something as my assistant… (Teacher B)

Teacher B conveyed a more flexible modality by the words “as if”, “sometimes”, “could”. She also gave positive guidance to this particular student and paid close attention to the student’s inner merits. In a similar manner, we discovered other voices in favor of the partner I-position, such as “I am a good listener,” “I am a considerate and empathic teacher,” or “I am a teacher treating all students equally.” It is important to note that the experienced teachers who participated in the current research represented a blended configuration of the controller and the partner Ipositions. However, teachers saw these two I-positions with different priorities. There were two teachers with the dominant partner I-position, and these two teachers built a good teacher–student relationship through the dialogue with their students.

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3.2 Negotiations Between Partner and Controller I-Positions In the following section, we focus on the different forms of negotiations between the controller and the partner I-position in the structured reflective workshops.

3.2.1

Inhibiting the Previous I-Position

At the beginning of the workshops, inhibition was found. At this point in time, teachers did not know what to do or what kind of training sessions they were facing. They followed the workshop facilitators with great caution and obeyed them by inhibiting their dominant I-position. Teacher A was the teachers with a dominant controller I-position and reported a case in the first workshop (see the first extract). In the fourth step of the first workshop, after having received different viewpoints of other teachers, she expressed her feelings in the following manner: I find it very important to use professional psychological counseling to support students (laughed and spoke with a fast and light tone which contained a little ridicule). Then (adjusted the tone back to normal and spoke slowly), I can look for his advantages and guide him accordingly. Maybe it is useless to do it by this way, but I guess I have to do so… (Teacher A)

We noticed that Teacher A voiced a partner I-position (e.g., “support students,” “look for his advantages”). However, we argue that the controller I-position was only periodically inhibited and still in the dominant position. In fact, she showed disagreements with the partner I-position voice as she quickly rejected it (e.g., “useless to do,” “I have to”). As a result of the first workshop, the voice of partner I-position started to emerge through inhibiting the dominant controller I-position.

3.2.2

Conflicting I-Positions

This form of negotiation could be found when the tensions between the controller I-position and the partner I-position were the strongest, which resulted in a kind of mutual-in-feeding relation. The following extract concerns a student whose academic performance was getting worse, as reported by Teacher C. …Some teachers thought the reason (why this student’s performance become worse) was because of his parents’ divorce, but not every child cares about the parent’s divorce so deeply…and he does not care (about the divorce of his parents) that much. Otherwise the reason may be that he plays too many online games, which may have a negative impact on his learning. But according to his parents, his situation of playing online games has not achieved the degree of Internet addiction. It may also be due to the pressure because he was in the best level of class in his school…It is necessary for me to keep in-depth communications with him and to find out the true reason (said slowly with an emphasis)… then, I want to stimulate his inner spirit, just as one teacher has discussed before, I shall try to increase his motivation, to help him become better… (Teacher C)

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The above “but” statements showed a strong experience of conflict. This form of negotiation presented others’ perspectives with both agreement and disagreement, which was reflected and was traced as a meta-position. Teacher D said, “I am tired because of the work overload. However, through the workshops now I have the chance to self -reflect.” Furthermore, although more and more expressions were voiced according to the characteristics of the partner I-position, such as “to keep having in-depth communications with him,” “stimulate his inner spirit,” and “try to increase his motivation,” Teacher C was easily dragged back to the dominant controller I-position with “but” statements.

3.2.3

Dialogue Between I-Positions

When teachers’ perspectives could change depending on the different educational situations, we considered that there were dialogical negotiations with the coalition of two I-positions (“I as a teacher both as a controller and a partner”). It was particularly valuable for Teacher E who displayed the characteristics of a promoter position, which happened in the real educational context: Four or five days ago, several students came into my office and complained about the nasty food of our canteen. At that time, the only thing I did was to listen for nearly 30 min. Really, that day, the only thing I did was to stay patient and listen. And then, I deliberately complained about the food and told students that I had to eat the same food. At last, one of the students said: ‘We know that it is no use to tell you about this, because you also can’t solve this problem. But we feel better now. You are not like other teachers who laughed at us and told us it is just because of your low food standard.’ … After the workshops, I think it became easier to understand students’ different behaviors. (Teacher E)

The expressions of “I deliberately complained” showed that the perspectives were shifting between teacher and students, which may be the result of the dialogical negotiation between the controller I-position (e.g., “I as a teacher to solve the problem”) and the partner I-position (e.g., “I as a teacher to listen patiently”). And finally there developed a promoter position (e.g., “I as a teacher who understands students”). Such statements of promoter position were expressed by other teachers. Teacher A said, “Through the workshops, now, I can better handle the practical problems.”

4 Discussion It was necessary to mention that we did not plan to explore every I-position of experienced teachers. The primary goal of these “tailor-made” workshops was not to find a solution to each case but to provide a safe and trustful platform for teachers to communicate with each other and be exposed to multiple perspectives. By providing a space for negotiations, we suggest that these workshops can help the teachers to shift between different I-positions, move to a new meta-position, or develop a novel promoter position.

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4.1 The Tension Between the Controller and the Partner I-Positions Our study revealed that there were conflicting I-positions among teachers. The different modalities and evaluations of these two I-positions would be in line with Fairclough’s (2003) model of identity formation. There were plenty of teachers’ monological viewpoints in the workshops. Teachers with a dominant controller Iposition were likely to negatively evaluate others with the so-called undeniable or monological modality. They judged their students within the undeniable modality with words such as “should” “must”, in a monological way without the dialogue with their students. Opposite to that, the partner I-position entailed more positive evaluations and a much softer or flexible modality. In addition, and related to dialogues that were “authoritative and internally persuasive” (Bakhtin, 1981), the controller I-position was similar to the authoritative dialogues that required students to accept what teachers said, and tended to be teachercentered. However, teachers with the dominant partner I-position, as “internally persuasive,” were inclined to open a dialogue with their students and then to establish a partner relationship with them. As a matter of fact, China is a hierarchical society in nature. In the educational field, the mainstream teaching still highly demands for the students to be obedient. Thus, it is easy for teachers to deeply and unconsciously immerse themselves into the controller I-position, which creates a distance from their students. In the present research, teachers with a dominant controller I-position were difficult to accept different perspectives, unable to take students’ perspectives into account, and likely to negatively evaluate their students. Hence, for these teachers, their relations to students were easy to be strained because of the tensions between teacher’s control and student’s autonomy. In addition, the partner I-position paid attention to the equal relation between teacher and student. But having grown up in the hierarchical culture, living in the authority culture, Chinese teacher identity would have a strong voice of controller I-position, which was the dominant I-position. To be equal to students, or to be controlling to students, this is always a question. Under this situation, it was neither the controller I-position nor the partner I-position that would lead to efficient education. A competent teacher was the one who could shift flexibly between these two I-positions through the dialogue with each other.

4.2 Three Forms of Negotiations Between These Two I-Positions DST has proposed that there were three kinds of self-innovations, that is, to introduce a new I-position, to move an I-position from the background to the foreground, and to establish a new subsystem by forming the cooperation of two or more I-positions (Hermans, Kempen, & Van Loon, 1992; Ligorio, 2010). Thus, the development of

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teacher identity can be found by tracking down the innovations of I-positions. The results showed that teacher identity involved three kinds of negotiations. Unlike the notion that people defend their original identities in the beginning of the dialogue (Bohm, 1985; Metcalfe & Game, 2008), experienced teachers in our study initially inhibited their previous dominant I-position. The workshops were developed based on Western ideas and practice, which were very different to teachers’ previous training. But because of the traditional culture of “following the leader/teacher,” each teacher conformed to the rules set by the workshop facilitators, that is, they attempted to inhibit their inner discomfort, instead of defending their dominant Iposition. It might be the authoritarian culture that made these teachers directly agree with whatever the workshop facilitators proposed. Even if they had different ideas, in order to show their respect, they obeyed the facilitators by suppressing their inner I-positions. We did not deliberately deal with these kinds of negotiations, but we paid much attention to establishing a safe atmosphere in the workshops. Conflict negotiation was found when the tensions and ambivalences between two main I-positions reached its maximum. This is similar to the cyclical relation of mutual-in-feeding (Valsiner, 2002). In this case “the self-system is dynamic, but not developmental” (Valsiner, 2002). This meant that conflict negotiation only contributed to the quantity accumulation, while a qualitative leap would have been required for a developmental change. Although teachers voiced a partner I-position, they moved soon back to their familiar way of interacting with and understanding their students. Hence, this kind of negotiation was simply dynamic with the quantity accumulation but lack of the qualitative leap in a real developmental way. Although conflict negotiation might block the development of teacher identity, it played a role in triggering the innovation of I-positions (Bell & Das, 2011). In the workshops, when the teachers voiced a partner I-position from time to time, their controller Iposition was impacted and broken and then became less dominant than before, which would lead to the third kind of negotiation. After the workshops, a new coalition of various “voices” was introduced, which was a dialogical coalition of “I as both a controller and a partner.” As mentioned earlier, given Chinese traditional educational culture, to encourage each teacher to develop the dominant partner I-position seemed to be neither practical nor necessary. Prior research based on the data from 20,178 questionnaires among Chinese students from Grade 3 to 8 coming from 15 provinces has reported that teachers with the authoritarian teaching style had better relationships with their students, compared with teachers who used democratic teaching style (Li & Wang, 2015). So it seems that the coalition of two I-positions would be good for teaching. With this coalition, teachers can give enough time to their students and listen to students’ thinking in the real educational setting. Instead of isolating and separating, the controller and the partner I-positions can thus dialogue with one another and work together for the efficient teaching practice.

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4.3 The Reasons for Teacher Identity Negotiations in the Workshops Teaching–training sessions in China need to promote teachers to be more competent to deal with emergencies in their classrooms. We have argued that a vital key to such end is to develop teacher identity. The traditional educational culture in China is aligned with the controller I-position. This was not only presented by the relation between teachers and students in the classroom, but also reflected by the relation between the facilitators and the participants in the workshops. However, the controller I-position was always related to the negative evaluation of students, as well as being monological without the dialogue with students. For Chinese experienced teachers, this I-position was in the dominant position but not beneficial for the development of students’ autonomy. However, the aim of the present research was not to wipe out the controller I-position but to facilitate the negotiation between different positions related to teacher identity, which promoted the teachers to be more dialogical. The first reason for promoting the negotiations of I-positions was related to the exchange of different viewpoints. Metcalfe and Game (2008) noted that there would be no learning without a dialogical experience with the differences. In the workshops, participants listened to different viewpoints concerning the same case. When they shared similarities and differences with each other, teachers learned to be much more open to others’ opinions, which happened to break their old views of the case and increase the dialogue with different voices of various I-positions. In addition, from the semiotic meditational perspective (Valsiner & Rosa, 2007), the structured reflective workshops inspired the process of internalization and externalization. Externalization happened when teachers expressed their internal viewpoints to the public. When teachers added others’ viewpoints into their teaching belief, the internalization happened (De Mattos & Chaves, 2013). The four steps of each workshop were just an ongoing iterative process, that is, to internalize external experiences into one’s self-system, and subsequently, through different discourses, to externalize their own ideas to other’s self-system. Second, the reconstruction of I-positions was facilitated by the reflection through listening, discussing, and negotiating in the workshops. Previous research has stressed that engaging in reflective discourses gives teachers the opportunity to facilitate their identity formation. For instance, Scotland (2014) found the exposure to different pedagogical discourses would inspire teachers to reflect upon their own identity. Alsup (2006) also demonstrated that pre-service teachers developed their early professional identities after teacher preparation courses, through building negotiations between the discourses of the personal belief and their professional identity. And Pearce and Morrison (2011) suggested that the interactions with colleagues, students, and students’ families played a crucial role in the identity formation of early career teachers. Last but not least, the establishment and maintenance of a safe atmosphere in the workshops was a decisive factor for the emergence of these negotiations. It always takes courage for a teacher to describe a challenging case, especially to state

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what they have already done and what might have proven to be ineffective (Horn & Little, 2010). Additionally, it is uncommon for teachers to just focus on issues without negative evaluations, which they are very accustomed to. In order to help teachers, the major principle of this workshop was unconditional acceptance without negative criticisms. In the workshops, teachers needed to follow the rules set by the facilitators. Although the Chinese traditional culture has a great impact on teachers and leads them to obey the leader, at the beginning of the workshops, there were tensions between teachers and facilitators. The facilitators did not evaluate what teachers had done or instruct teachers to solve the problem, but focused on helping the teachers to establish close relations with each other. The workshop facilitators devoted much effort for the ongoing support with necessary professional abilities, that is, the knowledge of the primary–secondary education system in China and the skills of psychological consultation. These two aspects were critical for the establishment of a safe atmosphere in the workshops. Additionally, both facilitators had more than 15 years of practical experience in teacher training. They were acquainted with teachers’ working routine, which helped them to get along well with these teachers.

5 Limitations and Conclusions One limitation of the present research concerned the participants. Some teachers dropped out in the early period of the research. Future research might illuminate their reasons for dropping out. A second drawback was related to the size of the sample, which is not the representative of all of the in-service teachers in China. Future research would include other teachers with different backgrounds to reconfirm the findings. All in all, to date, there has been considerable research concerning teacher identity. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have taken up the challenge of exploring the I-position negotiations among experienced teachers in China. The preliminary evidence has shown that experienced teachers in the current study often experienced the conflict between the controller I-position and the partner I-position. After the structured reflective workshops, these two I-positions negotiated with one another and built a new alliance. By providing a space for releasing the tensions between different I-positions, the findings suggest that these tailor-made workshop could serve as a dialogical training pattern to stimulate the development of teacher identity. Acknowledgements The authors greatly thank Professor Jaan Valsiner for his powerful comments on initial ideas about this work and Editors Pernille Hviid as well as Mariann Märtsin for their helpful works and proofreading for this paper. This research was partly supported by a grant from Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of Zhejiang Province (No.: 13NDJC071YB).

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Zhou Li-Hua Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Zhejiang International Studies University, Hangzhou (China). She conducts research in educational and developmental psychology and her specialty is how contextual and personal factors play a role in students’ positive development. Li Xiao-Wen Ph.D., is Professor at the East China Normal University, Shanghai (China). She has done series of research about self-development among children and adolescents. She aims to explore the construction of school cultural ecology of guiding the development of students. Her present work focuses on the children’s cultural activity and their potentiality induction.

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Wu Aruna Ph.D., is Lecturer at Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai (China). Her research interests are focused on students’ self-development. She has published research in the areas of how cultural factors impact on the formation of children’s self-defensive regulation. Gao Ya-Bing is Professor at Zhejiang International Studies University, Hangzhou (China). She specializes in child developmental psychology and school counseling. Currently, she is working on the structured group counseling for primary and secondary schools.

Chapter 13

Children’s Development: Between Personal Engagements and Curriculum-Based Preschool Practices Jakob Waag Villadsen Abstract During the last decades, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has received increasing local and global attention as a period and means to enhance in particular students’ academic learning. As such, ECEC has become part of the global investment in learning, and the global competition on knowledge. This renewed attention has in effect led ECECs to redirect their practices in an attempt to align with the overall political goals. This is particularly visible in the application of evidencebased educational methods and programs, which promise certain desirable learning outcomes. Implicitly, State policy goals are expected to operate as developmental goals of the single child or group of children. In this chapter, the question of evidence is investigated by focusing on the developmental implications of the political and practical efforts on the children living in the ECEC arrangements. Children’s development is approached through the concepts of personal engagement and life concerns with and in the world. Foundational to this approach is that developmental processes do not occur bypassing the developing person and his/her sociocultural life. Thus, the perspective emphasises the dynamic relation between the personal and collective level of culture as an inseparable analytical unit, while conceptualising development as a personal mode of being in this relation. Based on an empirical analysis of Danish children´s life in ECEC, it is argued that the current credo of evidence should reconsider its focus by building methodologies (rather than methods), which are sensitive to the cultural dynamics which constitutes the units in children´s construction of a cultural life course.

1 Introduction In this chapter, the phenomenon of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is approached from a cultural and existential psychological perspective on the becoming of the person. In general, ECEC is a broad field covering various practices—from J. W. Villadsen (B) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_13

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specialised institutions targeting children with special needs and/or with particular vulnerabilities to the regular provision of ECEC in various forms of non-parental care and education settings, such as day-care centres, preschools, nurseries and so forth. This chapter addresses the phenomenon of ECEC through an empirical investigation of ECEC practice within Danish day-care services. The intention is to elaborate on the conceptualisation of human development in general—based on an investigation of the specific developmental context of ECEC. In doing so, the purpose is to move beyond the outcome-oriented understanding of ECEC, as we aim to relate the “effects” on the development of children’s psychological functions and the conceptualisation of the developmental whole of the person through the specific developmental processes within institutional life in ECEC institutions to children’s construction of the cultural life course. Hence, the chapter aims to bring the person back to the core developmental analysis by emphasising the person–environment relation as the analytical unit. As an entry point for the empirical investigation, some of the current trends within the field of ECEC will be presented and discussed in order to highlight the need for conceptualising the developmental processes behind the various effects of ECEC. From there, the chapter enters into the field of developmental psychology from a cultural and existential perspective. Although developmental psychology largely has neglected ECEC as a developmental context, the discipline has nevertheless influenced ECEC practices, though it has had such applied branches from its outset (Lerner, Wertlieb, & Jacobs, 2005). Nonetheless, I will argue that these applied fields are in themselves insufficient for accounting for the dynamicity of the development and that they fail in providing practitioners with sufficient information on the developing system. Through an empirical analysis of microgenetic processes within ECEC activities, the basic argument will be that the common emphasis on culture as either a context or a variation of development overlooks the organising “nature” of culture in the (cultivating) process of relating children and the environment. To elaborate on the cultural processes between the developing person and the collective, (in) which the person lives an existential analytical perspective, such processes will be integrated into the cultural analysis.

2 From Local Engagements to Global Standards—Exemplified by Danish ECEC Services ECEC has become internationally widespread, and today, it occupies a central position for global and local policy-makers in their attempts to improve living conditions and developmental possibilities for future societal citizens. The very idea of investing in childhood education as means to improve the conditions and possibilities for children and society at large has a long history, most evidently seen in the school system. Contrary to the history of school education, the regular provision of ECEC services generally originates in ideas and needs that have little to do with children

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but much to do with their mothers and their inclusion in the labour market (Dencik, Jørgensen, & Sommer, 2008). As with the emergence of ECEC, the current development needs to be understood in relation to the labour market, although in a more direct sense: rather than providing a workforce through mothers, children themselves have now become the object of labour force production. This is evident in economical discourses such as “lifelonglearning”, which focuses on children’s early and systematic development of skills so that they can be ready for school and thus be incorporated in the production of the future labour force (Brinkkjær, 2013). This is by no mean restricted to the Danish context but represents a global trend including the OECD (e.g. Starting Strong and PISA assessments), UN (e.g. Education 2030 agenda) and EU, which have appointed ECEC as the investment with the highest societal return. An illustrative example is the Lisbon treaty of the EU, which had an overall aim of making the EU a competitive economy with full employment by 2010. This treaty addresses a re-organisation and standardisation of education, in terms of descriptions of objectives for areas and subjects with eight key competences (Jensen, Broström, & Hansen, 2010). The link between education and economic cooperation is expressed in the EU Commission’s communique to state members: They (the state members) should develop policies for the whole lifelong learning continuum which take full account of efficiency and equity in combination and in the long term, and which complement policies in related fields. (…) Pre-primary education has the highest returns in terms of the achievement and social adaptation of children. Member States should invest more in pre-primary education as an effective means to establish the basis for further learning, preventing school drop-out, increasing equity of outcomes and overall skill levels. (European Commission, 2006, p. 5)

Making such a link between ECEC and the labour market not only constrains the quality of ECEC to a matter of education but also engenders a situation where societal production and global competition become the frame from which the issue of education gains its validity and meaningfulness. The demand for globalised competition obviously requires an object of competition, and here, the educational system offers a set of shared goals, which can be standardised into tools for global comparison. Such thinking is not unique to ECEC but exists wherever universal standards of products, production and communication are developed in order to operate in the global market and meet the needs of consumers. The guiding principle of standardisation within most practices is the concept of evidence-based practice, where the practice proven most effective compared with others becomes the gold standard. In that sense, the combination of an educational focus and global evaluations can be understood as both the product and the producer of globalisation, in which the driving force of making practice more effective is the global and standardised (ranking) system. This makes comparison possible and competition reasonable. Whereas the earlier development of the ECEC field consisted of creative attempts to make new and better practices out the old ones, today it is simply a matter of identifying the best (practice) and applying it. As Jensen et al. (2010) have argued:

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This way, by claiming that it is both possible and reasonable to compare performance anywhere in the world, irrespective of context, best practice is a powerful tool for governing at a distance (Dahlberg et al. 2007), bringing what Jensen (2005) calls ‘the discourse of manuals’ into the day care and teaching professions. (Jensen et al., 2010, p. 247)

To a large extent, it makes sense that the administrative and political levels are devoted to calculating the efficiency of performance. The problem that emerges is one of “methodolatry” (Danziger, 1990), where one kind of methodology is perceived as the only valid source of knowledge that concerns the object. Currently, this seems to be the case in many European countries and in the US (e.g. under George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” act). Jensen and colleagues summarise this tendency as a movement towards: • the increasing use of standards and manuals; • the use of narrow intermediate aims and indicators to measure children’s achievements; • the use of a variety of evaluation and test methods; and • the implementation of quality reports, which make preschool teachers and daycare professionals responsible for their work—so-called accountability (Jensen et al., 2010, p. 250). The argument behind this movement is that an early “kick-start” in the shape of educational stimulation will give children (and society) a head start in global competition. It builds on a linear developmental logic where preparation for school life is achieved by introducing school practices earlier on (Dencik et al., 2008). Several aspects of this logic call for closer investigation. First, the logic seems questionable from a developmental perspective, since it tendentiously reduces the developmental process of becoming educated to the development of isolated skills. We know from life course theory (Elder & Shanahan, 2006) that the timing of events and situations (e.g. marriage, military training, education) in a person’s life course alters their impact. Hence, early introduction to educational practices indicates not only an early learning trajectory but also a change in the quality of the trajectory. This corresponds to Vygotsky’s conceptualisation of development as a developmental whole, where a change in one part of the whole generates possibilities for change in other parts of the whole. Vygotsky, himself, noted play activities as one part of children’s life and development, which generate conditions for engaging in later formal educational activities (Vygotsky, 1967). Such arguments challenge simple linear developmental causality. Second, the idea of identifying best practice, the gold standard for achieving success in global competition, seems to overlook the fact that fixation of educational goals and the standards produced to reach them is a poor solution in a competition, where change is the name of the game. This is one of the paradoxes of any educational effort: all educational interventions include purposeful guidance of the other towards an uncertain future (Nissen, 2006; Valsiner, 2008). The introduction of global and fixed standards might bring some certainty to educators, but it potentially generates as closed system in which the educational effort is purposeful only within the educational system, independent of the ongoing and unpredictable changes of society and children’s lives.

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In the following, I will investigate how these current trends manifest within Danish ECEC practice and how these manifestations guide the developmental and educational processes of children. Thus, the orientation shifts from the evaluation of “best” and “worst” practices towards the general developmental principles underlying these uniquely configured cases of development. This is done through an empirical investigation of Danish children’s participation and development within Danish ECEC.

3 The Theoretical Perspective and the Empirical Context The data presented in the following stem from an investigation of children’s development in relation to ECEC practices and is part of a Ph.D. project: The Institutional Life Course: Children’s development through day care. The overall aim has been to investigate the relationship between the personal development of children and pedagogical practice as they intertwine over time. By emphasising the personal development of children, it is stressed that the social environment does not “mould” or “shape” the developing human being; rather, it provides guidance and resources to the person’s construction of himself/herself (Branco & Valsiner, 1997; Hviid & Villadsen, in press). This construction of oneself becomes a personal concern, emerging in the process of living, yet this process is organised by the sociocultural world in which the person lives (Josephs & Valsiner, 2007). The basic premise of such a focus is that it must mean something to be a living and participating being, and this mean(ing), as it is experienced by the person, becomes the basis of participation in institutional life (Villadsen & Hviid, 2017). Thus, the methodological frame adapted in this project attempts to integrate the personal and social level of development, as they transform through the cultural life course. Here, the focus is on how different collective spheres of meaning production in the person’s everyday life become meaningful parts of the personal cultural life course. The project has followed 16 children enrolled in four ECEC centres (4 in each) over a period of 2.5 years, from 2014 to 2017. The children were between 3 and 4 years of age at the onset of the project and approximately 6 years old when the project ended at the children’s transition to elementary school. Data collection was carried out in clusters of 2–3 days in each ECEC centre in intervals of approximately 2 months, making a total of 11 clusters in each institution. During these clusters, participatory observation (Hedegaard, Fleer, Bang & Hviid, 2008) of various activities was carried out, along with interviews of children and staff, in relation to both the observed activities and a more general level of the shared life in the day-care centre. In the final clusters, life-map interviews (Hviid, 2008; Hviid & Beckstead, 2011) were conducted with all children enrolled in the project as an invitation to reflect on the life course within the institution. Here, children drew maps of their institution and, based on request, drew what they found important in the institution (what was fun or not-fun, what considered necessary and so on) while dialoguing with the researcher.

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3.1 Personal Engagement and Educational Goals In the following, the analytical focus will be on pedagogical practice and more specifically on the educational activities organised by pedagogues in relation to the developmental possibilities such activities generated for the participating children. The analytical strategy departs from the overall question of the personal dimension of the developmental processes and focuses on the convergence, divergence and negotiation of perspectives in the meaning-making processes (Branco & Valsiner, 1997) between children and pedagogues in the educational activities. Since 2004, Danish ECEC services have emphasised learning dimension of their practices, with a basis in the legal obligation to work, document and evaluate educational practice according to six developmental themes of the Danish curriculum act (Retsinformation, 2004). Across the institutions in this study, there was a clear tendency to spend morning hours on adult-structured activities that related to these six themes, whereas the afternoon hours consisted of play and child-organised activities. In everyday conversations and through interviews, the staff articulated these practices as separate and with little internal relationship. Generally, the morning activities were given more importance and weight—in relation to both exercising educational professionalism and facilitating children’s learning. The official vision of the municipality also explicitly expresses this arrangement of institutional life, where morning activities should be reserved for systematic interventions addressing children’s learning, while “free” afternoons generate possibilities for play and friendships. This is in line with Plum’s (2012a, b) analysis of the present discourses in Danish ECEC services, which she characterises as an emergent optimisation in relation to the image of the “learning child” (Plum, 2012a, p. 503). In contrast to this prominent position, given by the staff, the children merely mentioned the learning activities organised by the staff in interviews, and when asked specifically, they were mostly seen as “boring” and as something “the adults decide”. Of course, this does not imply that they are useless and unimportant in children’s life and development but rather indicates that children and staff hold different perspectives on the various activities. The following observation of one such activity centre on two curriculum themes: “nature & natural phenomena” and “cultural forms of expression & values”. From a pedagogical perspective, the purpose here is to work with art/cultural productions that express seasonal change (i.e. nature) while working with different materials available for cultural forms of expression. Ida (pedagogue) and three children (age 3–4 years) are sitting at a table with paper, scissors, glue, glitter (snow effect), and other materials. They are occupied with making winter trees. Ida has just shown the children how to “use” the material with her prepared template and is now helping Michael and Emma. Peter sits quietly by himself, focused on the activity. After a little while, Peter looks at Ida and says: “Look!” while showing her the paper. Ida: “That is very fine – can you cut it a bit more?” (to make it smaller). Peter: “Sure” (smiles). After cutting, Peter shows it to Ida once again, and Ida picks it up while saying that’s “a nice branch”. Peter looks surprised and asks if it is a branch. Ida: “Yes, for the tree we are making”. Peter: “Oh…I see”. Ida: “It is fine now; just glue it on the paper”. Peter places

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the branch on the big paper and starts to press it onto the paper. When it does not stick, he presses even harder and his head turns red. Ida is helping Michael, and when Peter turns to me in frustration, I tell him that he needs to put glue on the branch, but Peters replies is that he “can’t glue it”. Ida looks up and repeats what I just said, but this only makes Peter hit the paper in what appears to be a frustrated attempt to make it stick. Ida tells Peter that she will show him how. With a pencil she adds fluid glue from a plate on the branch and returns it to Peter. Peter places it on the big paper while telling me: “I just forgot to paint it”. After the activity, Ida explains: Peter is a smart boy but oh…. You have to watch out for his temper.

This excerpt is exemplary of the trend within the field as it emerges in my data and in studies of other researchers (Plum, 2012a, b; Hviid & Plotnikof, 2012; Jensen, Broström & Hansen, 2010; Krejsler, 2012—for an overview, see Villadsen & Hviid, 2017). Here, the educational practice is so focused on the outcome of the learning activity that the pedagogue loses her sensitivity towards the actual process of learning: Peter is actually engaged with the material and tries to make sense of how to use it; however, the pedagogue does not take part in this production of meaning but is almost solely focused on the production of trees. On the other hand, Peter was not even aware that they were making trees, nor that glue comes in other forms than the stick that they usually use. Plum (2012b) has argued that under the current administrative credo of ensuring and optimising the learning and development of children, pedagogues tend to perceive children through the objective and scientific lens of the “learning child”. The institutional logic behind the occupation with predetermined objectives seems to build on an idea where a given activity (e.g. the making of winter trees) is identical to a given developmental outcome (e.g. learning about natural phenomenon, such as seasons); thus, there is a one-to-one relationship between psychological development and the objective of activities (Lima & Hviid, 2012). In this logic, the documentation of activities documents the children’s learning. Development here is detached from children’s engagement and perceived merely as a matter of the development of certain skills and functions, known to be important in an objective line of development. In this sense, preparation for school equals school training. By showing Peter’s experience and engagement in the activity, I argue that there is a difference between the collective activity and the personal participation in this activity. In his sociological life philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), Simmel noted the difference between the objective societal culture in front of the person and subjective culture of the person in the ongoing cultural production of meaning (Vandenberghe, 2009; Josephs & Valsiner, 2007). His concept of Beruf, which has the double meaning of profession/position and vocation/calling, highlights the relation between the objective and subjective culture: On the one hand, society produces and offers in itself a ‘place’ which, although it is different from other places in content and delimitations, can nevertheless be occupied in principle by many individuals, and for this reason becomes something anonymous; and on the other hand, despite the general character of this place, it is grasped by the individual on the basis of an internal “call” (Ruf) or qualification that is experienced as fully personal. (Simmel, 1922, p. 60, translated in Vandenberghe, 2009, p. 82)

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What Simmel here addresses is the experiential dimension of the personal being; he labels it as the subjective cultural dimension of the cultural process—or simply cultivation. This attention to the experiential dimension is not unknown in psychological and pedagogical thinking. Both Dewey and Piaget, who have had a strong influence on Danish pedagogy under the notion of “progressive education” (often labelled “reform pedagogy” in Nordic countries), emphasised the child as a constructive agent in his/her course of development. For both, development centred on the children’s activity with the environment. In this particular day-care institution, this kind of thinking is evident in one of the main and explicit pedagogical slogans: What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand. There is no doubt that this emphasis on children’s experience and engaged involvement with the world is important for pedagogical practice and brings the person back as an active part of the educational process. The focus on development and education as personal processes of relating to the environment can be understood as a shift in orientation within the classical philosophical scheme of content versus form. Traditionally, psychology as a science has been (and to a large extent remains) preoccupied with explaining psychological phenomena as compositions of functional elements, while the experiential orientation offers a move towards understanding the (life) form of the coherent functional whole. However, it often does so at the expense of the cultural knowledge and meanings that already exist in the social world around the child (Engelsted, 1989). If the child is to “discover” the objective structures in the environment through active experience, as Piaget (1971, 1973) suggested, or to make meaning based on the experience of the social consequence of action, as Dewey (1930, 1966) indicated, the whole developmental process becomes restricted to the immediate relation between the child and environment as it unfolds for each individual (Engelsted, 1989). In this sense, the phenomenon becomes (re)presented by its positive appearance and its stable form. An examination of the historical and philosophical roots of both Dewey and Piaget shows why the positive appearance becomes the basis for understanding the phenomenon. While both of them drew on the philosophical ideas of the European continent, Dewey was also influenced by the emerging American ideologies of universal democracy and equal opportunity for all (Valsiner, 2017a). Thus, whereas Piaget tended to emphasise the progress of human rationality and its uncovering of the true order in the world (rooted in thoughts of Enlightenment), Dewey developed a pragmatic stand, advocating for the plurality of reality and the function of the social consequence of action as the basis for evaluating knowledge— on which American democracy should be built. In both cases, the ideal form of either, the rational or the democratic man, was taken not only as the outcome of the developmental process but also as a self-organising principle that governs the path towards the outcome. The focus on the immediate relation results in the fusion of the environment and the active individual into a uniform system depicting the ideal human form. The negative understanding, which does not appear in the form of the phenomenon, nonetheless reveals itself through what the form is not, but what it could have been is left out of the comprehension (Engelsted, 1989; Valsiner, 2000). The

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negation of the form is of course not necessary in order to understand the form, yet it is crucial in order to comprehend the phenomenon (Engelsted, 1989). It is only by elaborating on the otherness of the form that the content of the phenomenon (of the components of the system) re-emerges as meaningful units constituting the whole. For instance, the otherness of the rational and the democratic man is not simply irrational and undemocratic but various kinds of life forms that operate in a meaningful way, with a whole different set of units within its unity. Of course, the positive understanding of the form is important, but it is no more important than understanding the negative one. For Simmel, the premise is that both understandings are equally adequate and thus also in themselves equally insufficient (Vandenberghe, 2009). An understanding of how the person’s development is constructed through the relation to the environment has to relate to the understanding of how the environment is constituted, since the human environment in general is made by humans (Simmel & Hughes, 1949; Levine, 1971). This does not imply that the two levels fuse; rather, they constitute each other—a point that also is found in the tradition of Leontiev (1979) and Vygotsky (1971), where the distinction between personal sense and collective meaning indicates the same constitutional process. Of course, the two dimensions can be in convergence in the sense that the personal (subjective) and the collective (objective) cultures orientate towards the same goal (e.g. how to make winter trees). However, while the pedagogue purposefully organises the collective practice as “preparation for school”, it seems to be a reductionistic to assume that Peter perceives it the same way. Most often, the personal development of children actually manages to proceed in convergence with the collective processes of cultivation and to occur in accordance with the collective of the given society. In this case, the personal level of the meaningmaking seems to vanish in what appears as a simple reproduction of or assimilation to the collective meaning structures. In this sense, it follows Dewey’s and Piaget’s positive account of the development process, which the personal life is understood on the basis of its (social or structural) form. Here, the personal level becomes irrelevant for the developmental explanation of the process, only to re-emerge in cases where children fail to follow the norm and thus do not reproduce collective meanings and actions (Mammen, 1996; Hviid & Villadsen, 2018). This seems to be the case in the above excerpt, where the personal aspect of Peter’s participation is reflected in the common psychological term of temperament by the pedagogue. The fact that the personal dimension of the cultivation process appears in the case of developmental “failure” does not indicate that normal “successful” development is impersonal by nature. Rather, the recognition of convergence generates an epistemological condition that makes it tempting to jump from similarity to sameness and from there to fusion. It is this problem that Simmel aims to conceptualise and overcome with the notion of Beruf: the person is always recognised in the form of an objective or collective position (e.g. as student), while the personal content of this position (as what it means for the person) only expresses fragments of the whole personal being. In this sense, the development of the person takes form as a tragedy, where the collective is both the foundation that makes the emergence of the personal level possible and the constraint that makes it impossible. In Simmel’s work, this

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is “the formal structure of life” (Simmel, 1922, p. 1, translated in Vandenberghe, 2009), where “the essence of human life is that the vital conditioning of these particular moments is the existence of its opposite” (Simmel, 1992, p. 685, translated in Vandenberghe, 2009). For Simmel, it is on the boundary between the possible and impossible, between the objective and non-objective, that the personal life emerges: By virtue of the fact that the door forms, as it were, a linkage between the space of human beings and everything that remains outside it, it transcends the separation between the inner and the outer. Precisely because it can also be opened, its closure provides the feeling of a stronger isolation against everything outside this space than the mere unstructured wall. The latter is mute, but the door speaks. It is absolutely central for humanity that it set itself a boundary, but with freedom, that is, in such a way that it can also remove this boundary again, that it can place itself outside it. (Simmel, 1994, p. 7)

Pointing at Peter’s engagement with the environment is one way to articulate Peter’s disclosure of fragments of his personal being in more concrete and existential ways than the door metaphor applied by Simmel. As Josephs and Valsiner (2007) have remarked, what follows from Simmel’s (and others) ground-breaking conceptualisation of the individual and the social as “something” constituted by the ongoing processes of cultivation is a meticulous specification of the systemic units and their dynamic relations, either leading to active maintenance of the system or to novelty (p. 53). In other words, it specifies the content and relationship. In the following, I will try to specify the units and dynamic processes within this system by elaborating on the concept of engagement as an existential psychological approach to “the door” between the subjective and objective culture, attempting to make it both theoretically and methodologically possible to understand the person beyond a simple bundle of functions.

3.2 Engagements as Fragments of Personal Life Concerns in Educational Practices The analytical understanding of Peter as an engaged person participating in the collective activity is based not on the activity in itself but on his participation in various activities across different contexts and over a relatively long time. The way Peter engaged in the activity above is, according to my data, not unusual. Peter was the first child to notice that I always carried two pens, and he asked me whether this was because I wrote with two hands. He seemed a bit disappointed to learn that the second was a backup. He also noticed that I always wear a shirt, and he asked his parents why this was the case. For Peter, I was just as much an analytical object as he was to my research. I am sure that a stranger entering his institution amplified his analytical attention; it did so because it somehow was meaningful to Peter. Peter’s engagement in understanding the logic and reason “behind” things seemed to be a general concern. For instance, when a pedagogue told the children at the morning gathering that they needed to whisper because she had “lost” her voice and could not speak loudly, Peter stalled in a later activity of drawing on paper, because the

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Danish name for “an eraser” has the same syllables as “whisper”: “viske-læder” (eraser) and hviske (whisper, with a silent h). He stopped his activity and required an explanation of the logical relation between the two words and thus ended up not finishing the assignment. Peter also expressed persistent engagement in making meaningful meaning in my interviews with him. Near Christmas, I participated in Christmas activities and conducted an interview with Peter where I sought to get his perspective on these activities. However, when sitting in the meeting room of the institution – as we had done before – he did not really answer my questions but gazed on a book on the shelf behind me. After several attempts to address the theme of daycare Christmas, Peter asked me how on earth the ECEC centre could have such a big house and so many books, because both were really expensive. I explained that the centre received money from the municipality and that his and the other children’s parents paid some money, every month. Peter refused this explanation, saying that it could not be so since his parents did not owe money to anybody, and on this, he was certain. I said, in that case, I did not know, but we could ask Morten (the day-care manager). Peter accepted this solution, and after a few minutes of painful interviewing, where I did most of the talking, Peter concluded that now would probably be a really good time to ask Morten about the books. At Morten’s office, where Morten held a meeting with his executives, Peter was given the explanation that the institution got some money from the mayor and that the expensive books were bought over many years. Peter accepted the answer, and when I asked him if we could return to the interview, he politely told me that this is not really meaningful when the (his) question was already answered.

Looking across the various contexts, it seems clear that Peter did not “just” participate in shared and collectively organised activities; he did so through personal engagement that made partaking in the meaning-making processes meaningful to Peter.

3.3 The Existential Foundation of Personal Culture In order to make sense of the engagements in the various microgenetic activities, it becomes necessary to relate the fragmented expressions of the whole person to other fragments in order to understand their logic in relation to the whole. Heidegger (1962) characterised the human being as “being there” (Dasein), which emphasises that it is a being-in-the-world—the Being of Dasein is “Being-in-the-world”. One important point in Heidegger’s characterisation of the being as a being-in-the-world is that the intentional act—as Heidegger portrays Husserl’s use of the concept—is not just grounded in the meaning-making relation of the subject–object; rather, it relates to a more global being of the lived life that makes the intentionality (aboutness) of the meaning-making process meaningful (Bertelsen, 1994). As such, the concept of engagement is a negation of an intentionality act into an existential act as it relates the personal aboutness to the construction of a meaningful life. From this perspective, human being(s) cannot be understood independently of the world in which they are always already experientially and practically engaged. To be a human being implies being concerned with and caring for ones being (in the

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world), and as such, people do not observe their lives but rather live their lives in particular (personal) ways. However, the life concerns of a person belong not to the person in classical terms but to the living-in and living-with world in which the person co-constructs by being there. This is the fundamental structure of living processes, which constitutes human existence: When Dasein explicitly addresses itself as “I here”, the locative personal designation must be understood in terms of the existential spatiality of Dasein. When we interpreted this (§ 23), we already intimated that the I-here does not refer to an eminent point of an I-thing; rather, it understands itself, as being-in, in terms of the over there of the world at hand where Dasein dwells in taking care. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 120, original italics)

It is within this structure that the concept of life concerns and engagements is grounded as an analytical perspective on the development of the personal life course. As analytical concepts, they are particularly grounded in Heidegger’s notions of attunement, understanding and articulation—as elaborated in the work of Gendlin (1978). From this perspective, Peter’s participation in the collective arranged practices can be understood as an expression of a personally meaningful engagement only in relation to his personal life concerns, which exist as an existential orientation at the mesogenetic level (Branco & Valsiner, 1997), representing a more distributed temporal developmental frame. Personal life concerns can thus be conceptualised as a kind of tertiary artefact (Wartofsky, 1979), since they exist without any direct reference to the concrete activity, which gives them a general form that makes it possible to mediate participation in various concrete activities. In contrast to other tertiary artefacts, personal life concerns are existential in the sense that they are a self-constructed generalisation of the person and collective, guiding the person’s caretaking of her/his being. Thus concerned, one experiences and participates in concrete practices on the basis of one’s being—and one’s actions, communications and emotions are expressed, defended, elaborated or given up in the light of personal life concerns. Personal life concerns thus constitute and develop as a basis or a mode of being engaged in and with the world. It is through this covalent relationship between engagements and life concerns that a personal sense is expressed and constructed in the living experience. In this sense, the relation between life concerns and engagements constitutes a kind of attunement [or befindlichkeit to use the term of Heidegger (1962)], which is the process of sensing or finding oneself in a situation and it generates the basis for all forms of being in—for instance, being in a sad mood or being in a happy mood (Hviid & Villadsen, 2017). Personal life concerns exist and emerge as an implicit orientation or understanding of the process of being attuned, while the process of being engaged emerges as an articulation of the meaningful possibilities embedded in this orientation and understanding. Here, articulation refers to Heidegger’s use of the concept of articulation (gegliedert), which means being interconnected, being linked, being structured and having interlinked links, such as a body with articulated limbs. In this sense, it differs from speech as such but refers to the process of relating and linking the implicit understandings of our attunement with the world in which we are attuned.

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The articulation in Heidegger’s terminology represents an openness of our existence in the world and an exploration of its possibilities—to articulate is to live further. Personal life concerns as a basis for our articulated engagement thus “play” a major role in the personal process of relating the immediate activity to other spheres of experience and in the construction of the cultural life course. Our existence speaks to us in our sensed experience, while our own speech represents a different level of our experience. The three parameters of attunement, understanding and articulation are in the framework of Heidegger’s co-constituted existentials of our felt sense of being there (Gendlin, 1978). Their relationship represents not a cognitive process but a foundation for what might emerge as a cognitive process. This is without saying that the cognitive process is in there. Attunement, understanding and articulation represent an implicit felt sense of being in, which can become an object of our cognitive reflection and interpretation. However, while the cognitive process from some perspective can be understood as internal processes made up of separable units, the felt sense of being in and with the world can only be understood as living in context, where the person engages in the context on the basic of a care and concern for his or her being there. Let me elaborate on the relation between the level of personal life concerns and engagement and their relation to the life course of the person with another empirical case: Over a period of 2.5 years, a pattern seems to have to emerged in Julia’s engagements across different activities: in many activities, Julia seems to be “lagging behind”. When the children have finished their meals and leave the tables to go out to the playground, Julia still sits and eats her food. When the children are in the wardrobe putting their clothes on, Julia remains sitting in her spot and again is left behind. Over the years, Julia and her group moved “classrooms” and got new pedagogues. Julia maintains this pattern through all the transitions, and the pedagogues seem to be aware of the pattern. Some of the pedagogues express it as a sign that Julia is developmental lagging a little behind the other children, whereas others express concerns for a possible marginalised position in her peer group and wonders whether Julia’s behaviour is an expression of unhappiness related hereto.

No one intervened to solve their version of the problem, except for a few conversations with the parents concerning their training in putting clothes on and taking them off and in helping Julia focus on eating during lunches. In this sense, the staff’s articulation of Julia as lagging behind and their solution of training in getting dressed and concentrating on eating during meals reveal the aforementioned understanding of children as a set of more or less developed functions. The other understanding of Julia being marginalised in her peer group simply jumps from an explanation of the form (of behaviour, which does not fit with the normative form) grounded in psychological functions to an explanation grounded in functions of the social group. However, it does not lead to any intervention, which might be explained by Julia in general appearing to be quite happy and appreciated by the other children in other contexts. My analysis points in a different direction. When I one day sat next to Julia in the wardrobe and offered to help her with the shoes, she looked at me with surprise and whispered “no, no” while hiding her shoes under the bench. After all the other

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children ran outside and the pedagogue sat down next to her, Julia instantly began to tell a story from the weekend. This repeats itself on a daily basis, although the theme of the conversation varies. The same thing went on in the lunch session. Julia was chatting with the pedagogue who was cleaning up, while she did not really eat anything. Given these examples along with my own challenges in ending my interviews with her, I have an impression that Julia was neither feeling unhappy nor lagging behind in any particular function but was engaging in the situations differently from the pedagogical practice. For Julia, the company and conversation with important adults in her life was a major concern of her life. Thus, she developed a way to engage in situations that made the company available despite the busyness of the adults in her life. The point here is not that it is unimportant for her to finish her food on time or become capable of putting on her coat and outdoor shoes but that there is a divergence between the concerns of her life and the collective intentions of the practice—which is left unnoticed by the practice. In fact, pace of eating and getting dressed are collectively held developmental milestones that are deeply integrated in the arrangements of the societal child institutions. Hence, the pedagogical attention towards children’s relation to collective form makes sense. However, reducing the problem to a matter of psychological functions neglects the level of the developing person and the life in which these functions becomes functional. While a divergence of engagements or perspectives in an activity represents a possible movement towards the emergence of novel engagements and life concerns and consequently a reconstructive process that generates a new pattern of interaction (Branco & Valsiner, 1997), this does not seem to be the case for either Julia or the pedagogical practice. Instead of a negotiation or re-configuration of life concerns, it seems that Julia successfully resists the pedagogical efforts and maintains her own life concern as the basis for engaging in the activity. Just as in the case of Peter, the staff leave it up to Julia to align with the collective concerns and purpose of the activity. The pedagogues do not acknowledge the engagements and life concerns of the children, and their activities are not purposefully dialoguing with them. In both cases, the engagement and meaning-making take a different direction than pedagogically intended.

3.4 From Shared Concerns to the Emergence of Resistance From the perspective outlined, Julia’s life concerns are not to be understood as something in Julia—e.g. as a trait or a disposition. Rather, they are to be understood as emerging in the historical process of being in the world with others, and in this sense, they are contingent on the sociocultural organisation in which Julia is embedded. Human beings live in an ever-changing and unpredictable world, both from the perspective of the person and in more general terms (Valsiner, 2015). When living with and engaging in this fluctuation and variability, children constantly experience

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being there in ever new ways, leading to confirmations, transformations and the emergence of personal life concerns (Bertelsen, 1994), which generate the foundation for the future cultivation of the cultural life course. Evaluating children’s being in terms of lagging behind (or being ahead for that matter) only seems to block an understanding of the scope of possibilities (Hundeide, 2005), in the meaningful and functional relation established between children and their sociocultural environment. While Julia seems to remain guided by a relatively stable set of life concerns when engaging in the above activities, this does not seem to be the case for Ida. In contrast to Julia, no one considers that Ida is lagging behind. In the wardrobe, Ida was not concerned with getting adult company; rather, she was interested in getting one of swings on the playground, so she dressed fast and ran off to the playground. Ida continued to compete for the swings even after she lost interest in the swings, only to sit exulted when rest of the group came to the playground. In this sense, “swinging” did not appear to be her concern; rather, the challenge of getting them was. Challenge was indeed something Ida engaged in, and when she got a wardrobe away from the rest of the group with a few other friends—when the room was overcrowded and they needed room for some of the younger children—she managed the challenge of taking care of getting dressed and keeping track of her clothes without adult supervision. Ida was considered a competent girl and proved this in many situations. However, as the following example indicates, Ida was not always up to the challenges in the adult-organised activities. Ida and the group had for some weeks worked with the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” as a theme in different activities. The staff had read the story to the children, and the children made drawings of the story. In addition, they had talked about making a play of the fairy tale, and the staff prepared this by collecting clothes and scenery materials. The staff decided that the character of the wolf could be the object of departure for working with two learning themes: “nature & natural phenomena” and “cultural forms of expression & values”. They presented the wolf on the iPad. They listened to the wolf howl and examined wolf tracks. The staff then introduced the activity of making wolf tracks by painting with their foot(prints) on long pieces of paper. The children gathered around the paper and were instructed to pull off their socks. The children did so, amazed by the length of the paper. A child got the soles of her feet painted, and she was instructed to walk on the paper, on the tip of her toes, mirroring footpads of a wolf. The girl was corrected several times to stay on the tip of her toes, and finally, the pedagogue held her feet while saying “see that is a wolf track” while looking at the red and yellow imprints on the paper. The other pedagogue called for the next child, who a bit resultantly approached the pedagogue. At the same time, some of the boys around the paper began to put their socks back on and disappear into another room. The procedure repeated itself; the girl showed difficulties in following the instructions and was corrected. Then, it was Ida’s turn. She had her feet painted while laughing as the paintbrush tickled. She started to walk but stopped the very moment the pedagogue started correcting her walking. She looked at me and then at the pedagogue, and then while looking at the pedagogue, she demonstrably stamped through the paper, finishing with a “that’s it”.

In this activity, there appears to be a movement from a convergence of engagements between the children (as persons), the child collective and the staff towards a divergence of engagements. While some children simply left the activity, Ida’s participation can be understood as resistant participation. The emergence of resistance

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is understood here as a meaningful counter-engagement to the educational effort of pedagogical practice. Hence, the resistance is an engaged articulation that insists on the personal meaningful possibilities in the activity and thus maintains a space for the oppositional relation between the subjective and objective aspect of the process, which is collapsed by the high degree of formal instruction. One can argue that the resistance is not just a refusal of the other but just as much an articulation of the non-other part of the other (Villadsen, 2017)—as making “space” for the subjective culture within the collective or objective culture. In Ida’s resistance, she is not just closing a “door”, as Simmel suggested, or rather, the door does not only close on the one side of the wall. When Ida is setting a boundary for the pedagogical activity, she is quite demonstratively suggesting a re-organisation of the form(at) of the activity and the challenges that do not appear meaningful to her and out of the scope of her “opportunity situation” (Hundeide, 2005). Ida could easily have done as the boys and just left the activity. Instead, Ida’s engagement in the activity can be understood as an articulation and exploration of the possibilities existing in her being there within activity, which would not reduce her to a simple object for the pedagogical intentions. In Simmel’s work, this is conceptualised in the aforementioned tragedy where the person’s life becomes anonymous, as a simple mirror of the objective (collective) culture. In Heidegger’s work, it is conceptualised as the loss of authenticity. The concept of authenticity is a translation of Heidegger’s German neologism Eigentlichkeit, which stems from the term eigentlich, meaning really or truly, while building on the stem eigen, indicating own or proper. In Heidegger’s work, authenticity indicates that life, action and participation in practices express a genuine disclosure of Befindlichkeit and its implicit understanding in the situation in which we find ourselves or have lived ourselves. Here, Heidegger also operates with a specific temporal structure or rather temporal relation, since actions that reflect our being there with all our felt sense of Befindlichkeit and its implicit understanding point not only backwards to whom the person “was” but also forwards in the only authentic way of moving forwards. From this perspective, Ida’s resistance could be understood not just as resistance towards the activity but rather as resistance towards what she would become by subordinating to the position offered by the activity. In order to avoid this, Ida’s demonstrative action could be understood as an attempt to change the situation and activity in a direction where new personal and collective engagement could emerge. Ida does not seem to succeed with her engagement in the activity above, but this does not make her engagement disappear. On the contrary, it expresses itself as a general life concern of her institutional life. A common pattern in Ida’s engagement in the activities organised by the adults is that she refuses to cooperate, even when she is given a privileged position, as the following example demonstrates: One morning Ida met me with “It is Wednesday”, telling me that she was told that I would come on a Wednesday. A few minutes later, we were in the morning gathering circle, and the pedagogue ran over routinised questions, such as weekday, weather, and the program of the day. Ida was asked which day it was, since no one else knew. Ida looked at me smiling and then at the pedagogue and said that she had no idea.

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Of course, it could be argued that Ida is just playing with the adults as children sometimes do or that she is positioning herself in relation to me being present. I do not consider this to be the case, and when talking to the staff about this and other incidents, I was told that this was a general pattern of Ida’s participation in many contexts and activities—even despite being offered a (from the staff´s perspective) challenging position, which generally is a concern of Ida’s life. As the staff explained, Ida has a mind of her own, and when she has set her mind on something, such as refusing to participate, there is nothing to do about it. In my interviews, Ida herself expresses little interest in the pedagogical organised activities. Interestingly, when making the life-map interview close to the time of transition to school, the first thing Ida and Julia put on their map (as an important experience in their institutional life course) is the “Little Red Riding Hood” activities. When talking about the activities, the girls express that it was fun to do the play, and they describe in detail who played which roles, although 2.5 years had passed. However, neither of them refers to the adult-structured parts of the project. In fact, Ida altogether avoids mentioning any educational parts in the interview, and when asked directly, she replies, that these activities were unimportant. This is common for the participating children: they rarely mention the educational activities organised by the adults in the life-map interviews, and when asked directly, they most often explain that these were neither important nor fun—but something the adult decided. This is consistent with other findings and indicates that children consider peer-organised activities and play to be most important (Koch, 2018). However, this does not mean that staff are unimportant or that children do not learn from the adult-organised activities. Children are often quite keen of the staff, mentioning how they have fun together and how the staff help the children in organising plays. Nonetheless, activities initiated by adults appear to be of little concern for the children. In Ida’s case and to some extent in Julia’s case, I would even argue that these activities functioned as catalysers (Valsiner, 2017b) for the development of a personal life concern of resisting the collective form suggested in the educational activities. Apart from missing out on the content of these learning activities, resistance towards education—as an evolving form of participation—seems to be a high price to pay for a practice that was expressly set up in order to prepare children for education.

4 General Discussion Moving beyond the empirical context of this study and into international findings regarding the effect of ECEC seems to only support this understanding of education as more than just a matter of functions and skills (for a review see, Villadsen & Hviid, in press; Dencik et al., 2008; Sommer, 2015). The overall picture from such studies on the effect of ECEC indicates that the scholastic approach to ECEC, which currently seems to govern the field, might offer a set of developmental possibilities related to specific skills and functions. Various studies have documented that children coming from scholastic environments with a redundancy of adult-initiated activities organ-

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ised around predefined educational objectives in general perform better at school entrance on parameters such cognitive and academic abilities than children coming from less adult-structured and educational environments. However, longitudinal studies that follow children beyond school entrance also significantly and quite consistently document that this positive effect of the scholastic environment vanishes or turns into a negative effect over the school period, as indicated by outcomes such as poor academic achievement, lower social competences and lower level of experienced well-being. Based on this evidence, researchers within the field have for long pointed at the development of commitment and motivation as the central sources for later school performance, whereas cognitive and academic skills are of less importance in the early educational period (Berrueta-Clement, 1984). I believe that the cases above transcend this understanding, which just represents a descriptive outcome at another level. Children as human beings in general are by their very existence motivated and committed to their (life) courses and are, in this sense, developing and learning by nature. Hence, the challenge for developmental science is not to account for the development of motivation and commitment of children to their life course but to account for the directionality of this life course and how it, despite the variation in the children’s developmental and living conditions, develops in a relatively stable direction. The theoretical and methodological approach of Cultural life course is one attempt to engage in this challenge, which I here have illustrated through empirical analysis (for an introduction to the cultural life course approach, see Hviid & Villadsen, 2018). In the analysis of Ida’s, Julia’s and Peter’s participation in the institutionally arranged activities, I have pointed at the processes of cultivation, conceptualised as engagements and life concerns, as being productive in understanding participation as directed towards a personal sense and meaningfulness within the life course—without inflicting psychological categories such as personal characteristics, skills and IQ. The genuine point of introducing these concepts to the pedagogical setting and the developmental analysis has been to understand children’s participation as guided by the directedness (aboutness) of the person in the situation while insisting that these directional dimensions are not static elements of the person existing but dynamic processes that relate microgenetic engagements in/with the activity and mesogenetic life concerns of global being in the world. It is in this “door” of openness to the world that the pedagogical efforts of purposefully guiding the meaning-making or learning processes can partake—so that new meanings and skills emerge as functional and meaningful objects for the developing person. I do not argue that curriculum objectives and pedagogical goals and concerns are inappropriate means in ECEC practices. On the contrary, I would, with reference to Heidegger and especially Simmel, argue that such collectively appointed objectives are indeed important for children because they shape and (in)form the life and provide our being with directionality—without such oppositional forces between the person and collective, life would be a formless existence. This is one side of the tragedy of cultivation. The other is the one of uniformity, where the personal only exists as a mere form of the collective. Children construct their life courses on the border between these two tragic lines of cultural development, and pedagogical practice

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needs to work systematically on how to provide meaningful guidance in children’s development of their personal life concerns, in the company of and in accordance with others. By doing so, pedagogical practice can support the personal construction of a cultural life in a direction, which is both sustainable and meaningful for the person and the collective. This suggestion signifies a move away from evidence-based methods towards an evidence-based methodology, where the personal and collective concerns are explored and negotiated in activities oriented at functions and skills of future importance. The point is that education does not need new methods (in form of best practices) but rather needs methodological reflection and knowledge, which makes it possible to choose or create an adequate method under a concrete set of conditions. Here, knowledge of the educational process is the starting point, not its outcome. Hence, moving towards a pedagogical methodology is an orientation away from the application of the “toolbox” of readymade methods. In this frame, the fact that methods have proven their effect somewhere might be relevant in the cultural production of goals-oriented practices, which becomes effective exactly here—in the sense that it gives a meaningful direction for both children and educational practices for which the overall goal is to prepare children for further education. One suggestion could be for pedagogical practice to start a systematic exploration of the personal concerns of children and communities of children, through observations and dialogues across various life situations, followed by the creative process of turning them into collective activities that are adequate in guiding the personal and the collective from the concrete present towards the future life course. This idea is not new and has historically been the core idea of a variety of strong traditions in different places in the world (see, e.g., Freire, 1973; Canevaro, Lippi, & Zanelli, 1988). In Denmark, the day-care tradition has never settled on its subject matter (as the core purpose of the practice), and this has generated much debate, innovation and confusion over the years. The current resolution to escape this confusion has been to decide on the methods before the subject matter. In this sense, pedagogical practice has emulated other practices that “treat” the human being in an evidence-based fashion. While this might bring certainty to the field, it also suspends the practice from the social realm of its object. Human practices are by nature more defined by their goal-generating capacities than by the goals they attempt to fulfil. The social realm of education is not a static phenomenon, and the construction of the subject matter and production of methods cannot be evaluated as two separated enterprises. No educational practice has, as its one and only goal, the production of individuals who fulfil the needs of society; rather, the aim is also to produce members of society and to thereby participate in the very production of society—including “its” needs. Currently, the focus on the kick-start of early education seems to leave children on their own in this process of becoming members and producers of the societal practice of schooling.

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learning. Book series: International Perspective on Early Childhood Education and Development (vol 15). Switzerland: Springer. Villadsen, J. W. (2017). A history of resisting the concept of resistance in the thinking on human thinking. In N. Chaudhary, P. Hviid, G. Marsico, & J. W. Villadsen (Eds.), Resistance in everyday life: Constructing cultural experiences. Singapore: Springer Nature. Villadsen, J., & Hviid, P. (in press). ECEC practices and the cultivation of children’s life courses— Reviewing International findings of developmental effects of ECEC. Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet Psychology, 5(3), 6–18. Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). Tænkning og sprog. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Wartofsky, M. (1979). Perception, representation, and the forms of action: Towards an historical epistemology in models: Representation of the scientific understanding. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 48, 188–210. (New York, NY).

Jakob Waag Villadsen is Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His primary attention is on early childhood development in educational settings, focusing upon subjectivity: how it emerges, develops and is preserved in the cultural life course of the individual—lived and shared with others. Empirically, his Ph.D. project focuses on the relation between pedagogical organisation of the institutional life and children’s development of a cultural life course, investigated in a longitudinal case study running for 2.5 years. Among his recent publications are “The History of Children’s Engagements in Danish Child Care” (Villadsen & Hviid, 2016), “Playing and Being: imagination in the life course” (Hviid & Villadsen, 2017), “The Development of a Person: Children’s Experience of Being and Becoming within the Cultural Life Course” (Hviid & Villadsen, 2018) and the co-edited book “Resistance in Everyday Life: Constructing Cultural Experiences” (Chaudhary, Hviid, Marsico, & Villadsen, 2017).

Chapter 14

Commentary to Part III: Cultural Perspectives on Self/Identity Issues, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources Angela Uchoa Branco

Abstract Culture consists of a key concept that allows us to conceptualize and theoretically elaborate on how meaning-making processes (semiosis) and contextualized practices promote human development along the life course. Here I comment on the clever contribution the chapters in Part III make, on the value of creation and use of cultural elements transformed in personal symbolic resources to overcome social barriers, and on issues relative to self-identification phenomena and to selfrelated concepts. From a dialogical cultural psychology perspective, my analysis of the contributions ends up by suggesting that the construction of novel dynamics within school’s classrooms requires the adoption of a true dialogical paradigm by teachers, associated with the encouragement of students’ protagonism. If we do this, then students’ voices (as Villadsen, in this volume proposes) and cultural elements and interests (Mehmeti and Zittoun, in this volume; Esteban-Guitart, in this volume) would be taken into account, and educators would assume a sensitive and efficient novel position (Zhou et al.). Last but not least, I underline the central role of affectivity in promoting all sorts of change concerning the improvement of educational systems.

The increasing acknowledgment of the core role played by culture in human development in contemporary scientific literature has progressively found its way into the topic of education and educational institutions (Bruner, 1996; Ligorio & César, 2013; Marsico, 2017, in press). From widespread debates over issues like educational goals, methodologies and teachers role, especially during the last two decades, culture emerges as a key concept that allows us to conceptualize and theoretically elaborate on how meaning-making processes (semiosis), historically elaborated in contextualized practices, consist of the very foundational roots of human development along the life course. The broader, complex, and systemic concept of “culture”—encompassing the mutual coconstruction of social practices (Rogoff, 2003) and the semiosphere (Lotman, 1984)—operates together and in interaction with the A. U. Branco (B) University of Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_14

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notion of human agency (D’Arms & Jacobson, 2015) to guide the person throughout life course. Cultural psychology builds on two major principles that operate simultaneously, namely, (1) cultural canalization processes and (2) human agency. Cultural canalization processes, on the one hand, constrains human development by the existence of active cultural contextual barriers, from physical structures/materials to all sorts of semiotic suggestions, including explicit and subtle social messages. On the other hand, constraints and social suggestions foster and promote human development in specific directions. Cultural canalization, though, does not determine human developmental trajectories, due not only to unexpected events but, as well, due to the constant operation of human agency. The latter is the human condition that grants the person’s own participation in her/his development through individual’s subjectivity, which encompasses, among other dimensions, the person’s understanding, intentional and non-intentional goals, values, and will. Therefore, when we investigate human development and learning we can only offer some probabilities in terms of developmental pathways, because life is dynamic, often unpredictable, and the agentic nature of human beings is simultaneously at work. People’s developmental trajectories not rarely surprise experts, what irrefutably demonstrate why, in contemporary science, we should adopt an open systemic and dialectic logic (instead of formal) to make sense of human phenomena. This new paradigm is certainly more adequate to deal with processes’ contradictions and complexities, which work in both predictable and unpredictable ways (see Fogel, Valsiner, & Lyra, 1997, on the matter of determinism versus indeterminism). To summarize some of the major theoretical principles of a cultural psychology approach (Bruner, 1990; Marsico, 2017; Valsiner, 2014; Valsiner & Rosa, 2018), it departs from an open systemic view of the person, who belongs to and develops along the irreversible time through social interactions within cultural contexts. The person (as an open system) and her contexts (open systems) reciprocally coconstruct each other and develop along time, as dialogical, complex processes occur at both personal and contextual levels. In short, cultural psychology emphasizes the role of cultural constraints, structures, and canalizations, as well as the role of the constructive individual. Cultural psychology elaborates on the centrality of semiotic processes to reveal the intricacies of human phenomena, and a particular human dimension has gained an increasing significance in the theory: affectivity. Emotions, feelings, and affects have a core role in semiotic processes, as explained elsewhere (Branco, 2018; Valsiner, 2014; Zittoun, 2012). The reason I bring forth the topic of affectivity relates to my goal of elaborating on the matters approached by the authors of the four chapters of Part III of this book. My commentary addresses issues of cultural perspectives on self/identity, prejudice, and symbolic resources, and my focus upon affectivity draws on the recognition that such issues are soaked with feelings and emotions, the raw material that generates personal beliefs, values, and motivations. As values and motivation configure the subjective goal-orientated stance guiding the person’s perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions (Branco, 2018), they must be analyzed to investigate topics concerning self/identity, learning, and development. They may

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also explain the origins of social barriers preventing a person to achieve his full development along the life course. The four chapters composing Part III provide readers with intriguing ideas that originate questions concerning central issues pertaining to educational institutions’ goals and modus operandi. Next, I discuss Mehmeti and Zittoun’s clever contribution, which stresses the value of the creation and use of cultural elements transformed in personal symbolic resources to overcome social barriers. The authors refer to them as institutional cultural barriers, which I further understand as prejudices, frequently existing in educational contexts (later, I also suggest how to overcome them). The other three chapters of Part III build on self-identification phenomena, and trigger interesting, nontrivial reflections upon this subject. Then, I analyze some of the conceptual difficulties—and possible fruitful solutions—to make sense of self-related concepts from a dialogical cultural psychology perspective. Once again, it is worthwhile to keep mind that my focus of analysis will remain upon cultural psychology contributions to the study of “culture in education and education in culture.”

1 Cultural Barriers, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources While most social institutions—as socio-historically constructed cultural contexts— tend to be conservative, schools and other educational institutions are especially characterized by the presence of explicit and implicit contradictory goals. Schools’ official goal is to promote learning and human development by offering the necessary contents and tools to prepare society’s novice members to properly exert a productive role within the system. This would mean fostering not only predefined appropriate skills and capacities but also creativity, open minds, and autonomy to support society’s own development and changes. Notwithstanding, as we read traditional and current literature on this subject, we verify that educational institutions tend much more to reproduce the society’s status quo, from knowledge reproduction to social stratification and general conservationism (Bourdieu, 1994; Charlot, 2002). However, educational institutions still consist of the best formative context where people can learn to critically analyze traditional knowledge and practices in search for alternative pathways to develop scientific thinking, new ideas, to re-evaluate old values and beliefs, and to create new life perspectives. In short, schools constrain but also promote human development. Therefore, the dynamics emerging from this inherent contradiction allows educational institutions to be a privileged domain to foster change, transformation and, consequently, human and social development. What happens, though, when children and adolescents face significant barriers to their learning and self-development within school contexts? To address this issue is a necessary endeavor for all those who see themselves or qualify as educators. Barriers come from diverse domains, from lack of infrastructure to inadequate teacher training, but here I want to concentrate the analysis on another kind of barrier, the one addressed by Mehmet and Zittoun in their chapter. I denominate this barrier

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as social prejudice. So, how to conceptualize and practically deal with prejudices within school contexts? Prejudices are multiple and diverse (Allport, 1954/1979; Dovidio, Glick, & Rutner, 2006), and exist almost everywhere in our societies. According to Madureira (2007), prejudices are rigid affective-semiotic barriers that prevent people from positively relating to members of specific social groups (often minorities), targeted for their so-called differences regarding a supposed “normal” social rule, or social desirable characteristics (“good” vs. “bad”, “moral” vs. “immoral”, and so forth). Prejudices flourish—deeply rooted in affective-laden beliefs concerning the inherent deficiencies and faults of the “other”, namely, those who do not belong to the hegemonic social group in a certain historical–cultural context. The issue of “us” versus “them” is well-known worldwide (Berreby, 2005), and prejudices against minorities (African-Americans, Jews, LGBT+, migrants, and so on) consist of a key obstacle to the coconstruction of democracy and a culture of peace. Mehmet and Zittoun’s chapter provides an excellent analysis of school failures of migrant children, a serious contemporary problem. Beyond illuminating the issue, the authors contribute to the democratic effort of deconstructing prejudices by pointing out, and analyzing, the barriers created by teachers, while analyzing the use of cultural, symbolic resources by a student to overcome those barriers. They discuss a case study involving Swiss teachers and their ingrained prejudiced beliefs about the “deficiencies” of those belonging to minority groups, in the case, Albanian children. The authors nicely demonstrate how Herolinda, an Kosovoan female student, developed a strong motivation to prove her teachers wrong along her school years, with the help of cultural elements that mediated her acts of resistance. By creating and making use of symbolic resources, she refused to accept her teachers’ low expectations and evaluations, and persisted with her goal to prove to the Swiss society that Albanian-speaking children were not necessarily bound to academic failure. What is particularly interesting in Herolinda’s case is that the major barriers created for her development were mainly imposed by her teachers: having achieved a good academic performance, the girl expected to attend the highest institutional track that would allow her to go to high school and, later, to the University. Her teachers, though, resisted this idea and were successful in convincing her parents about her inaptitude to progress to higher education. Despite all of this, Herolinda struggled against those negative social messages and low expectations, and developed a strong self-confidence that—allied to persistent goals, a life project, and various cultural resources as books, poetry, TV series, historical heroes, and KosovoanAlbanian traditions—empowered her to face social prejudice and adversity. The reward she obtained from the Municipality (a noneducational institution), due to her good performances at school, amazingly demonstrates the degree of prejudices Herolinda had to face along her school years. The question, then, is, How can schools contribute to deconstruct prejudices and empower all students? This is not an easy matter because values and prejudices are deeply rooted in people’s affective-semiotic sense of self (Branco, 2018). Nonetheless, prejudice deconstruction is not an impossible task, and teachers can become a main source of prejudice deconstruction due their social authority and their possibility

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to coconstruct trust relationships with students (Markova, 2013). Before deconstructing prejudices among students, though, teachers themselves need to revise, reflect upon, and dare change their own prejudiced cultural values and beliefs. However, simply trying to convince teachers or students to abandon prejudiced beliefs by only providing them with scientific information and knowledge about human development is not enough. In fact, the deconstruction of biases and prejudices demand a much more systematic, critical, self-reflexive, and intensive work to mobilize and transform deeply ingrained emotions, values and beliefs, throughout dialogical coconstructive discussions about such affect-laden issues.

2 Identity and Self in Educational Contexts Three of Part III’s chapters elaborate on the important issue of the subject and his/her identity in educational contexts. This issue, though, requires a broader theoretical analysis of the topic as well as a general appraisal of the heuristic value of the concept of identity as a productive tool to examine what happens inside schools’ classrooms. Esteban-Guitart’s chapter use the concept of children’s identity in connection with school’s curriculum and pedagogical practices. Lihua Zhou et al. address the relations between teacher’s identity, values, and interactive patterns as the researchers invite teachers to participate of reflective workshops. Villadsen does not mention the concept of identity but, instead, draws his arguments on the need of educational practices to give priority to students’ personal concerns as individual subjects.

2.1 Identity or Self? Esteban-Guitart claims as his working hypothesis that “deep learning is facilitated when it stems from, and transforms, learners’ identities.” He utilizes the notion of “funds of identity” (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, 2014, 2016) as a privileged way to generate “deep learning” by engaging children in pedagogical activities that make use of cultural (identity) elements. He explains that the concept he elaborated emerged from a convergence of two approaches, namely, the “multi-method autobiographical” approach developed by Bagnoli (2004) and the “funds of knowledge” approach developed by González, Moll, and Amanti (2005). In fact, a multi-model autobiographical approach, making use of life-story interviews, drawings of the self, and a variety of media (photographs, journals, etc.), actually, proves to be a productive way to motivate and engage children not only in research projects (Roncancio-Moreno, 2015) but also in pedagogically oriented activities. As the author points out, the “emphasis on the identity experiences and perspectives of the learners (consists of) a potential material with which to articulate educational practice and performance.” The same is true for the use of cultural knowledge and skills that students’ families share in their everyday lives, because this is an

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excellent strategy to bring school activities closer to the cultural universe of students, fostering higher levels of motivation and self-confidence. Notwithstanding, the assertion that “deep learning is facilitated when it stems from, and transforms, learners’ identities” needs to be revisited. What is deep learning? The way developmental psychology conceives the concept of “learning”, it either happens or does not happen, consequently a notion of superficial learning is hard to sustain. Furthermore, why do learning necessarily entail identity changes or transformation? People can learn about a certain subject without this learning inevitably leading them to identity transformations. This matter requires an examination of the meaning of identity as a fruitful theoretical concept to be applied within this theoretical context. Esteban-Guitart defines identity as “the dynamic lived experience that we have of ourselves…”, and proposes that it encompasses everything “that makes sense to us, is relevant and meaningful and may comprise people, objects, institutions, places and practices that make up the framework of our identities or identifications.” According to the author, the concept of identity seems to include a lot more than it means within the scientific framework of social and developmental psychologies (Dovidio et al., 2006; Erickson, 1994; Hall, 1997, among others). The concept’s description by the author suggests that other terms (conceptually close, but not synonymous of the term identity) should be employed, namely, concepts of “self” (Hermans, 2001) or “subjectivity” (Rey, Martinez, Rossato, & Goulart, 2017). Ligorio and César (2013), in their book about the interplay between learning and identity, provide an interesting explanation on “how psychology evolved from the concept of identity to that of the Self” (p. xiii), and this should be taken seriously by both psychologists and educators. The individual self is conceived as being socio-culturally generated, dynamic, multiple, dialogical (Colapietro, 2006; Hermans, 2001; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010), and developmental (Branco, 2018; Valsiner, 2014), a concept much more flexible and adequate to be employed in educational contexts. I particularly find the proposition of a multiple, distributed, and plural “identity” as an oxymoron that may confuse rather than clarify the theoretical use of the concept. This in line with Ligorio and César (2013) when they assert “The lexical root of the word ‘identity’ means idem that is ‘the same’” (p. xvi). Taking into account that the Dialogical Self Theory, solidly elaborated by Hermans and colleagues (Hermans, 2001, 2018; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010) especially addresses the issues of positionings’ distributions, dynamics, and dialogicity, I would argue that a Dialogical Self terminology is much more adequate to investigate the connections between schools’ practices/curricula and students’ culturally coconstructed selves (Valsiner, 2014).

2.2 Teacher Identity and Interactive Patterns Lihua Zhou et al.’s chapter investigates the development of teacher identity as they present their study on possible changes experienced by Chinese teachers while par-

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ticipating of reflective workshops about their interactions with students. While the study’s goal is extremely relevant, I found it difficult to make sense of the theoretical approach adopted by the authors. They make use of many concepts that are not clearly defined or explicit along the text. For instance, the concept of identity—based on which theory—is used together with a presumed adoption of Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory. The authors claim to adopt the DS theory, but develop their analysis based on a strict dichotomy between a “Controller I-Position” versus a “Partner IPosition”, in reference to teachers. This simplistic and equivocal use of the theory pervades the whole text, since the DST is a theory of Self, and not identity, but both concepts are used by the authors without further explanation. It is worth mentioning that the Dialogical Self Theory is dynamic, plural, and complex nature. Therefore, to adopt the theory entails an analysis that goes far beyond the categorization of two antagonistic “identities” based on teachers’ talk. For instance, how to explain the fact that one teacher sees herself as a “partner” but is actually authoritarian with her students? What if, during the workshops, instead of engaging in real negotiations, a teacher positions herself differently just as a strategy to please the facilitators? Also, how do they make sense of the likely possibility—theoretically sustained by both DST and the developmental approach of cultural psychology—of teachers presenting complex, multiple, and contradictory I-Positions, depending on the specific relational contexts of their interactions with students? Despite the abovementioned problems, though, I found Lihua Zhou et al.’s chapter a fortunate and relevant contribution for the promotion of teachers’ development. The dynamics implemented in the workshops seems to have facilitated the coconstruction, by teachers, of a more dialogical perspective, and may have played a significant part in their internalization of more sensitive and dialogical positionings toward their students. Another point, though, deserves attention. The authors explain, “teachertraining sessions place a lot of emphasis on the specific techniques without dealing with their relation to pedagogical theory. Such training sessions often include various teaching skill competitions.” Here I would argue that negotiations of the very meaning, goals and values of education and school practices are necessary, for there is an inevitable link between educational goals, theory, and cultural values. Therefore, the discussions of the three elements are important in order to mobilize teachers’ positionings and beliefs. For example, I think it is particularly relevant to discuss why competitions do not help the coconstruction of a dialogical approach to education, while cooperative practices do (Branco, 2009).

2.3 The Student as School’s Major Concern Villadsen’s chapter, while analyzing children’s development through personal engagements and preschool practices, does not use either self or identity as concepts to highlight the urgent need of pedagogical practices to bring the child back to the core. I would say his arguments also apply perfectly to students of all ages. He criticizes evidence-based practices aligned to globalization, standardization, and

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competition, which mainly invest on teaching cognitive academic skills and abilities to students. In his study with 16 children using observation and interviews, for a period of two and a half years at four early childhood education centers in Denmark, he cleverly demonstrates how teachers may figure mistaken interpretations to evaluate children’s motives, capacities, performances, and development. He interestingly interprets fragments of children’s engagement—and their refusal to engage in teacher’s proposed activities—as indicators of their core interests and personal life concerns in educational practices. The notion of “personal life concerns” then is employed as a key concept in his theoretical elaborations. According to the author, “Personal life concerns thus constitute and develop as a basis or a mode of being engaged in and with the world.” Later he adds, “Personal life concerns as a basis for our articulated engagement thus ‘play’ a major role in the personal process of relating the immediate activity to other spheres of experience and in the construction of the cultural life course.” The point I would like to underline here is that, as we read his text, the concept of “personal life concern” is too close to the concept of individual goal orientations, which emerge from individual’s specific values and beliefs. If this is the case, I wonder about the need to introduce a new terminology, even though the author argues he approaches the issue not only from a cultural perspective but, also, from existential philosophy. In my view, to contribute to more elaborated definitions of concepts used by cultural psychology—like values and beliefs—would be a more appropriate venue than to come up with new terminologies that may not add much to the understanding of the phenomena under investigation. Villadsen’s conclusions on the necessary priority given to the person, the subject (children in his text), as I see it, are of great importance. As he reckons that “The pedagogues do not acknowledge the engagements and life concerns of the children, and their activities are not purposefully dialoguing with them,” and “In both cases, the engagement and meaning-making take a different direction than pedagogically intended,” he well summarizes a serious problem produced by the equivocal pedagogical view that still persist among many educators. By moving away from the application of a “toolbox of ready methods,” as the author suggests, teachers should make use of key cultural elements of students’ lives (Mehmet & Zittoun, this book) to come up with creative activities able to motivate and engage them in the construction of their own development.

3 Monologism Versus Dialogism in Educational Contexts For too long a monological view on education has prevailed in most schools all over the world. Teachers and other adults have played a sort of undisputable authoritative—usually authoritarian—role as the source from which emanates, or springs out, all knowledge and wisdom students need to take in. Teacher relations to students, therefore, become too vertical and marked with an asymmetry that ends up inhibiting students’ questionings, contributions, and active participation of teaching–learning processes. This happens despite of high-prestige theorists in education and psy-

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chology (Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner, Freire) arguing for a more dialogical approach to education. Theorists do so exactly because all recognize the necessary active and constructive participation of students in teaching–learning processes. Yet, traditional monological practices persist, and little actually change concerning teachers’ conduct within classrooms. Why is it so difficult for educators to adopt a real dialogical approach in educational settings? Many are the difficulties encountered by teachers and school staff to promote substantial changes in their practices. Here, I highlight those I see as the most sensitive and relevant. The first obstacle consists of the lack of appropriate training and formation—both basic and in-service—to prepare teachers to face the significant costs of adopting a more symmetric, dialogical relation to their students. Such costs are considerable in two complementary ways. First, new and creative activities must be proposed and negotiated with students, entailing a lot of work. As teachers empower their students, they need to build up their own personal affective strength, in order to increase their self-confidence to face episodes in which students may pose difficult questions or oppose teachers’ ideas, competence and, eventually, their leadership. The second obstacle are teachers’ existential beliefs and cultural values: in our competitive, hierarchical and individualistic societies, many people believe in a “natural” order and rigid distinction between those who detain all knowledge and authority, and those who should submit to their guidance and control. How to induce, thus, selfreflectivity, self-evaluation and a critical appraisal of educational goals and practices among teachers? As values and beliefs are too deeply rooted in people’s affectivesemiotic psychological domains, novel ideas, practical approaches, and experiences need to be created and implemented to facilitate personal changes and development. There is no doubt all obstacles would be easier to overcome if new public policies concerning educational systems were put into effect. However, educators should not wait for this to happen, because in democratic societies schools can still do a lot to transform everyday practices of education. Markova (2013) presents a superlative analysis of the manners through which our individualist culture and epistemology undermine the implementation of a dialogical approach within educational institutions. She criticizes the emphasis on human rights in detriment to the development of a moral perspective capable of fostering social responsibility, prosocial values, and citizenship. She concludes by inviting educators to overcome the individualist rationality in learning and education, and, instead, to advance the adoption of dialogical practices. In line with her arguments, I add that the adoption of a dialogical approach (Matusov, 2018) is not just a matter of communication and knowledge construction, but, mostly so, of a new paradigm and epistemology that demand substantial changes in people’s existential assumptions and endeared values. If we embrace a dialogical paradigm, it will not be so difficult or dramatic to acknowledge students’ protagonism, to listen to their voices and to coconstruct novel dynamics within our classrooms. Then we would seriously take into account students’ voices (as Villadsen propose), cultural elements and interests (Mehmet & Zittoun, Esteban-Guitart), and find ourselves in a novel position as a sensitive and dialogical teacher (Liah et al.). As a last but not least reminder, I deem appropriate to underline

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the central role of affectivity in all change, developmental processes, and conclude with Marsico’s words (2017), as she elaborates on Jerome Bruner’s legacy: “any teaching-learning process is first and foremost and intensive affective and relational experience” (p. 765).

References Allport, G. W. (1954/1979). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Bagnoli, A. (2004). Researching Identities with multi-method Autobiographies. Sociological Research Online, 9(2). Berreby, D. (2005). Us and them: The science of identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, P. (1994). The field of cultural production. New York: Columbia University Press. Branco, A. U. (2009). Cultural practices, social values, and childhood education. In M. Fleer, M. Hedegaard, & J. Tudge (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2009—Childhood studies and the impact of globalization: Policies and practices at global and local levels (pp. 44–66). London: Routledge. Branco, A. U. (2018). Values, education and human development: The major role of social interactions’ quality within classroom cultural contexts. In A. U. Branco & M. C. Lopes-de-Oliveira (Eds.), Alterity, values, and socialization: Human development within educational contexts (pp. 31–50). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Charlot, B. (2002). A violência na escola: como os sociólogos franceses abordam essa questão. Sociologias, 4(8), 432–443. Colapietro, V. (2006). Practice, agency, and sociality: An orthogonal reading of classical pragmatism. International Journal for Dialogical Science, 1(1), 23–31. D’Arms, J., & Jacobson, D. (2015). Moral psychology and human agency: Philosophical essays on the science of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dovidio, J., Glick, P., & Rudman, L. (2006). On the nature of prejudice. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Erickson, E. (1994). Identity and the life cycle. New York: W. W. Norton. Esteban-Guitart, M. (2012). Towards a multimethodological approach to identification of funds of identity, small stories and master narratives. Narrative Inquiry, 22(1), 173–180. Esteban-Guitart, M. (2014). Funds of Identity. In T. Teo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 752–757). New York: Springer. Esteban-Guitart, M. (2016). Funds of identity. Connecting meaningful learning experiences in and out of school. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fogel, A., Valsiner, J., & Lyra, M. (1997). Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hall, S. (1997). Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. In A. D. King (Ed.), Culture, globalisation and the world-system: Contemporary conditions for the representation of identity (pp. 41–68). Basingstoke: Macmillian. Hermans, H. (2001). The dialogical self: Towards a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 243–282. Hermans, H. (2018). Society in the self. New York: Oxford University Press. Hermans, H., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counterpositioning in a globalizing society. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Ligorio, B., & César, M. (2013). Interplays between dialogical learning and dialogical Self. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Lotman, J. (1984). On the semiosphere: Sign systems studies, 17, 5–23. Madureira, A. F. (2007). Homophobia as a boundary phenomenon: The dynamic dance between different tensions. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41, 326–342. Markova, I. (2013). Dialogical knowing and believing: Trust and responsibility in the context of learning. In B. Ligorio & M. César (Eds.), Interplays between dialogical learning and dialogical self (pp. 3–26). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Marsico, G. (2017). Jerome S. Bruner: Manifesto for the future of education. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 40(4), 754–781. Marsico, G. (n.d.). Cultural psychology of education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer (in press). Matusov, E. (2018). Chronotopic analysis of values in critical ontological dialogic pedagogy. In A. U. Branco & M. C. Lopes-de-Oliveira (Eds.), Alterity, values, and socialization: Human development within educational contexts (pp. 1–30). Switzerland: Cham. Rey, F. G., Martinez, A. M., Rossato, M., & Goulart, D. M. (2017). The relevance of subjective configurations for discussing human development. In M. Fleer, F. G. Rey, & A. M. Martinez (Eds.), Perezhivanie, emotions and subjectivity: Advancing Vygotsky’s legacy (pp. 227–243). New York: Springer. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press. Roncancio-Moreno, M. (2015). Dinâmica das significações de si em crianças na perspectiva dialógico-cultural. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Brasilia. Valsiner, J. (2014). Invitation to cultural psychology. New Delhi: Sage. Valsiner, J., & Rosa, A. (2018). The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (2nd ed.). London: Cambridge University Press. Zittoun, T. (2012). Life course: A socio-cultural perspective. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 513–535). New York: Oxford University Press.

Angela Uchoa Branco is Professor Emeritus at the University of Brasilia (Brazil) and teaches at the Human Development Processes Graduate Program, Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia. She was a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina, at Duke University, at Clark University (USA), and at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). Her research interests and publications include the development of human values, ethics and moral development, cooperation, competition and individualism, and the development of dialogical self. Among her publications are the books: Communication and Metacommunication in Human Development (Branco & Valsiner, 2004), Cultural Psychology of Human Values (Branco & Valsiner, 2012), Diversidade e Cultura de Paz na Escola (Branco & Lopes-de-Oliveira, 2012), Cooperação na Educação Infantil (Palmieri & Branco, 2015), Bullying: Família e Escola Enfrentando a Questão (Manzini & Branco, 2017), and Alterity, Values and Socialization: Human Development within Educational Contexts (Branco & Lopes-de-Oliveira, 2018).

Chapter 15

Editors’ Conclusion: Imagining an Education for “Good Life” Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin

Abstract In concluding this volume, we come back to the questions that guided this book, namely, to explore when and how does the educational intrusion become a resource for individual and collective creativity, and when does it create unconstructive or destructive tensions for the individual and/or for the community. We consider the suggestions developed in each of the chapters and through that build a bricolage of knowledge on cultivated education that cultivates people and vice versa. Furthermore, we suggest to view the relationship between societal, community and personal values, interests, and concerns that feed into the construction of “good education” as a dynamic and evolving dialectic, where the aim is not the resolution of tensions, but rather a constructive engagement between various voices and perspectives. We argue that while antagonistic contradictions lead to the othering of children and students in education, and of education for children and students, constructive contradictions have the potential to generate knowledge from the tensioned dialogues, not only showing concern for its already cultivated children and students, but also paving the way for the usability of education in the community.

1 Exploring the Relationship Between Culture and Education In concluding this volume, we come back to the central idea of this book—to bring together a group of educational and developmental researchers and scholars in order to learn from each other and together construe understandings that unite education and communities and their people in sustainable ways. P. Hviid (B) Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] M. Märtsin Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Hviid and M. Märtsin (eds.), Culture in Education and Education in Culture, Cultural Psychology of Education 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1_15

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But how do we learn across such varied cases? From a cultural developmental point of view and as articulated in the introduction, we suggest that it makes no sense to employ a set of abstract qualities, or tertium comparatonis, by which to compare the various dimensions of the cases. Such an activity reduces the cases to specific (comparable) quantities of certain qualities (in our case, e.g., “learning” and “teaching” standards) yet beyond that, the cases become irrelevant noise. Instead, we want to maintain the cases, in their complex and dynamic historical and cultural uniqueness, and try to look beyond them for patterns of evolving meaning in the interplay between society, education, community, and human learning and development. We do not intend to synthesize across the case studies, but rather try to point to some of the resources buried in these texts; as in a bricolage of knowledge and ideas on cultivated education that cultivates people and vice versa. In creating this bricolage, we aim to think across unrelated—or remotely related— pieces of knowledge and disciplinary strategies, in a search for new patterns, new understandings (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). We invited researchers and scholars from very diverse geographical locations and disciplinary backgrounds to participate in this book project, arguing that we have genuine reasons to do so more than ever before, as goals of education and learning of the young human beings in our communities are increasingly articulated and determined by others. The chapters and the commentaries that we received support this understanding. Many contributions in this book have lamented about the dire consequences of the interactions between the educational system and the presently prevailing larger sociopolitical ideologies, and the way education has morphed into something unwanted and alien as a result of these interactions. The authors who have considered western educational contexts have analyzed the effects of the neoliberal educational approaches, not only in the light of students/children’s learning, but also in the light of their existence as human beings and their living—outside educational arrangements. They have argued that in contemporary educational practices normative questions about “good education” and “good life” have been replaced by questions about educational technologies and techniques that aim to optimize students’ learning outcomes and that should work everywhere and for everyone. In a similar vein, the authors from non-western cultural contexts have raised concerns about the continuing negative effects of colonization, westernization, and standardization of local educational systems and practices. They too have suggested that in the process of implementing standardized technologies and techniques, the educators and students are in difficulties creating sustainable ways of organizing the relation between education and communities. The authors from both research contexts point to the fact that the relationship between culture and education is tense and for many characterized by a sense of estrangement and alienation. Our aim in this book has been to consider whether there are productive and creative ways forward from these tensions. However, in considering these possibilities in this concluding chapter, we do not want to sound naïve, for we are acutely aware that the developmental situations of our children and their families are highly diverse. It is well documented that an education, which productively relates to the cultural resources of humans, rather than solely to the

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individuals, can make a very positive difference to a community (Hedegaard, 1996; Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005; Moll & Greenberg, 1990). However, it is only one, albeit important, piece in a much wider picture of societal resources necessary to the achievements and thriving of children, young people, and communities. Communities do not need only schools that build on the cultural practices of the community and participate in the development of the culture; they need healthy, safe, and caring societal structures and possibilities to achieve decent living standards (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005). Even a brilliant education system cannot compensate for a general scarcity in a community. Keeping this in mind, we cannot but admire the strength of educational projects that are carried out in the face of adversities, some of which are described and discussed on the pages of this book. In the following, we aim to highlight some of the dynamics we found compelling in and across the chapters. In so doing, we will draw upon further resources of this volume, as we build on the three commentaries. We include some of the thoughts developed in these contributions as a way of enriching this concluding chapter.

2 A Choir of Voices All the chapters in this book deal with the dynamics of negotiating the processes of engagement and resistance in-between societal expectations and goals, community interests and values, and personal interests and concerns. The educational institutional arrangement is seen as actively participating and mediating these processes. In this multi-voiced choir of interests and needs, education is expected to maneuver in productive and creative ways and meet the various expectations. In concluding this book, we want to pick up on the importance of considering the ways in which this multi-voicedness is maintained and supported or silenced and suppressed by the educational system. We read about such persistent suppression in the chapter by Szulevicz (Chap. 2), where the communication in the classroom is interpreted as disruptive “noise”, a nonsense obstacle to the continued teaching. In a cultural developmental perspective, we assume that this “noise” must be about something, and relate to something in the pupils’ lives inside or out of school—or in between—and thus be of value to the education. But for reasons related to the outcome-based performance of the schools, it is managed as an unwarranted obstacle. Villadsen’s chapter (Chap. 13) on young children’s participation in preschool education seems to point in the same direction although replacing the interpretation of “senseless noise” with categorizations of the children’s relative development or temperament. However, and also on a Danish local level, we see, as in Klitmøller and Jensen’s chapter (Chap. 3), cracks in this brick wall and possibilities of turning students’ experiences into valuable contributions to the education and following that, new educational potentials in moving from learning to Buildung. Taking together, this points toward an ongoing unsettledness on how to include the young participants’ experiences (and voices) in educational settings without education losing its authority, for it might appear, that including these experiences

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and voices threatens the outcome of education. Exploring the possibilities of incorporating the developmental conceptualization of “the social situation of development” (Bozhovich, 2009; Rey, 2009; Vygotsky, 1994) in the educational methodology, as Thompson suggests in his commentary, might be a way forward. Hannah Arendt’s work on creative conservatism in education, which we will soon return to, is also built on dynamic ontologies which could replace rigid either/or methodologies (education or children’s perspectives) with a more dialogical alternative (Arendt, 2006; Gordon, 1999). The Brazilian contributions offer us insights into a historical long struggle of making education into a culturally sensitive and responsible space. It is noteworthy that both Brazilian contributions (Lima et al. and Santos) examine such potentials while keeping gates to general societal education quite firmly closed. As the Amerindian educational project (Chap. 7) is under construction and a part of a much bigger community project, we reason that it needs time to develop its own voice and vision, and that might be easier to do without interference from western practices. However, in the process of building their educational platform, the participants reflectively dialogue with the western education, as a way to develop their own voice. They, for example, question the social orchestration of the classroom in western settings as their way forward, as it violates their cultural philosophies of learning together. In Santos’s project (Chap. 8), common educational systems are not mentioned, but from the general description of the image of the community and its habitants, we understand this as a protection from further stigmatization and as a bottom-up opportunity to redefine and refine local cultural values and personal dignity and strength. Lima et al. (Chap. 7) envision the future relationship between the Amerindians and the western-oriented groups as an interaction between self-constrained yet open systems, and in the project of Santos, colleagues and participants decorate the city, far beyond the local community. Rebeca Mejia-Arauz (Chap. 9) notices this in her commentary, and along with that applauds the community inclusiveness, the contextualized approach to education and the focus on the level of the person (rather than the level of function) that is evident in these chapters and in the other case studies discussed in chapters of Part II. She suggests that these dimensions can prove beneficial when working with other vulnerable communities. Maybe, Mejia-Arauz argues, these insights could work as potential stepping stones in the improvement of all education systems, including those embedded in neoliberal agendas? We also notice Thompson’s (Chap. 4) recommendations in his commentary to Part I to take a closer look at those educational institutions and situations, which allow risks, uncertainty, and unpredictability, and are willing to collaborate with students’ engagements, no matter how unorthodox or different these might be. He argues that institutions “that resist neoliberal pressures of performativity are key to potential development of marginalized learners” (Thompson, this volume, p. 53). His suggestion to focus on uncertainty and risk thus points to the idea that ambivalence can trigger change and development and open up possibilities for new trajectories into the future (Abbey, 2012; Märtsin, 2018). This focus on ambivalence that can foster the development of new meanings and new practices is evident also in the chapter written by Chinese educationalists

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and researchers (Chap. 12). It is very illuminating in its subtle ways of describing the processes of resistance and development. Caught between various educational ideologies and epochs in Chinese societal history—while also looking toward western traditions, including its neoliberal trends for inspiration—the authors present an educational system in its development. It is emotional, engaging, and resisting—it is ambivalent and as such, we suggest, the Chinese educational system seems to have strong potential for generativity. In the Australian contributions, we see attempts to bridge and merge ideas of western and local community. These are interesting as they point at unsettled issues and potential developments as well as—perhaps—incompatible barriers. As the chapter by Lima et al., the chapter by Miller et al. (Chap. 5) highlights the mismatch between traditional ways of conducting life and the social orchestration of the school, as it violates the necessities to maintain relational bonds within families when certain family members are at school. Through the use of yarning as an indigenous methodology Miller et al. also point at the need to allow the local voices, ways of speaking and thinking into the school context, as well as avoiding the entry of certain stigmatizing discourses. Along similar lines of thought, Colliver and Lee-Hammond (Chap. 6) describe creative ways of including local beliefs in the education, here in the shape of visits to local elders and meaningful places. These educational methodological considerations are indeed interesting. However, and according to Colliver and Lee-Hammond, there still persist major obstacles with regard to choosing contextually relevant content in teaching. This reminds us of a long tradition of research repeatedly pointing out the need of contextualizing school content (Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011; Freire, 1970; Gay, 2002; Gutiérrez, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll & Greenberg, 1990; Paris, 2012). In other words and with reference to Colliver & Lee-Hammond (Chap. 6), that supporting the learning of the letter “V” with a picture of a violin is of little help, when the object “violin” does not exist in the local community. A maybe even bigger challenge concerns the relation between the overall logic of the teaching and the general beliefs of the local communities. As we have come to understand it, both Aboriginal and Amerindian communities draw on holistic worldviews (Grieves, 2009; Rival, 2012) where dynamics, dialogues, balances, and fragile interdependencies with other human beings, with the plant and animal kingdoms, with mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers, seasons, and planets are at the center of attention. Respect and sensitivity to those delicate balances are in the forefront of traditions and daily living. In western terms, such philosophical worldviews could be considered as fundamentally ecological—and urgently needed on a global level (see also commentary by Rebeca Mejia-Arauz (Chap. 9)). How do such worldviews match daily education in schooling organized according to western standards and worldviews? Drawing on various proposals Hedegaard and Chaiklin (2005) distinguish between empirical, narrative, and theoretical modalities of knowledge. In their analysis, they characterize the common western education as mostly relying on an empirical and technical modus. Here, knowledge is thought to be processed by small bits and pieces, “… as mental building blocks that can be stacked up, or as puzzle pieces that can be collected” (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005,

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p. 53) that only later in the school life are or might be brought together or related to conceptual knowledge, theories of a more overarching and holistic kind. Drawing on Hedegaard and Chaiklin’s general recommendation of conceptual teaching, we tend to think that such theoretical knowledge, which does represent some holism, is much better suited to the holistic thinking of pupils from these communities, a modality they have already acquired in their everyday lives. Offering bits and pieces of abstract knowledge and unrelated techniques makes little sense to a child, who already reasons and solves problems in much more complex ways. Moreover, the narrative and dialogical mode of thinking and solving problems, which Bruner (1986) pointed out, is already present in both the Amerindian and Aboriginal communities, through, for example, yarning, and could be appropriated by education. We thus reason that not only the content, but also the modalities of offering and co-creating knowledge—as well as the social orchestration of the school deserve much more attention in order to make the educational system productive and sustainable. The analysis above, recommending a multi-voiced education can be objected by perspectives, which foresee risks in disturbing cacophonies and destructive outshouting of knowledge and knowledge traditions of the education. Our suggestion rather points in the direction of building an educational methodology on the dialogue (or dialectics) between the voices already present. Arendt (Arendt, 2006; Gordon, 1999) proposes maintaining foundation in education while supporting children’s engagement in relating, resisting, and renewing the world and to act, to reinvent the world in her conservative creative (authoritative) education. Hedegaard (1996) and Hedegaard and Chaiklin (2005) work to establish dialectical developmental processes between children’s everyday concepts and scientific concepts, and Matusov (2015) builds on dialogism in articulating his perspective on democratic dialogical education. None of these approaches disregards the knowledge tradition as such, but their focus is on the generative interdependency rather than on one or the other viewpoint. As a final insight, we wish to highlight the personal engagements and concerns of children and pupils taking part in education. From the case studies included in this book, we find no unexplainable disengagement, resistance, or obstruction among the children and pupils. Rather, we read children’s and young people’s insisting attempts to dialogue with educational arrangements, trying to co-create it, to join in, start a dialogue, or to reject its proposals. In Villadsen’s chapter (Chap. 13), we meet very young children counteracting the order of preschools or rejecting their preset goals. In Mehmeti and Zittoun’s chapter (Chap. 11), we meet a young woman trying to overcome the institutional trajectory set before her as an Kosovo-Albanian migrant in Switzerland. We understand these incidences as vital acts that aim to preserve personal integrity and to pursue what they consider to be them, as persons. As we discussed in the introduction, Valsiner (2008) has suggested that education can be understood as “benevolent violence,” as a collective system of knowledge breaking into the personal system of a young human being, in order to create foundation for him or her to make a richer life with the educational resources as a new repertoire. If he is right in his analysis and in his view of the relationship between educational and personal systems, then it seems to us that some of these educational “breakins” have gone terribly wrong as they seem to be unaware of the system they break

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into or choose to ignore it completely. In these cases, educational attempts risk undermining dignity and integrity on personal or cultural level or both. To us, it seems reasonable to differentiate much more clearly between difficulties in learning and resistance to learning (Hviid, 2016), where the latter points to protection of personal concerns and integrity. Esteban-Guitart’s chapter (Chap. 10) aims to readdress this challenge trough a diverse set of methods meant to track children’s engagements and cultural resources in order to change devastating violence to benevolent violence—as education is meant to be. In the chapter by Santos (Chap. 8), we see the fruits of such processes unfolding as an ongoing poetic cultivation of a neighborhood, which is left to its own to develop personal and collective resources. While the cultivating work of Santos and his colleagues probably contains to most coherent and holistic educational methodology presented in this volume, it is at the same time a system under severe and permanent threat.

3 Dialectics of the Educational Situation In their unique ways, the contributions in this book point to the importance of recreating a kind of education where the objective is to guide children and young people toward becoming “educated people”—people that have established a responsible relationship with oneself, with the others, and with the society they inhabit (see also Vardekker’s chapter (Chap. 1)). In her commentary to Part III, Branco (Chap. 14) argues that there is a need for continued and refined conceptual work in the area of cultural psychology of education and learning. In particular, she raises critical questions about the conceptualizations of such concepts as “identity” and “self” and draws our attention to “beliefs and values” as important guiding and organizing principles of human living. In concluding this book and continuing to build our bricolage of ideas, we want to build on these ideas and offer some initial thoughts for conceptual work in relation to these concepts and for the re-creation of the educational system. In dealing with the dynamics of negotiating the processes of engagement and resistance between societal expectations and goals, community interests and values, and personal interests and concerns, it is easy to start building up strong oppositions and create solid demarcation lines between various voices and perspectives. Local cultural values can become opposed to the global trends of standardization; western ideals become distinguished from the indigenous worldviews; personal concerns of children and young people get contrasted with the goals and practices of schooling. What comes to the forefront in this kind of conceptualization are the differences, the incompatibilities, the closing off, or suppression of certain perspectives, voices, and values. We want to point to another way of conceptualizing these tensions and differences. As we have already argued, from the cultural developmental perspective, tensions and differences are inherent in any developmental situation as they trigger change and innovation. In fact, a tension-free situation, where certain voices are suppressed, muted, and abandoned, becomes problematic from the point of view

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of development, while ambivalence and conflicts, albeit sometimes hard to tolerate, creates opportunities for things to become different and otherwise. Thus, we suggest to conceptualize the relationship between societal, community and personal values, interests, and concerns that feed into the construction of “good education,” not as striving toward a status quo or equilibrium where tensions between various voices are resolved as this would lead to unwanted stagnation. Instead, we argue for the dialectical conceptualization of educational situation, where tensions are not something to avoid or resolve once and for all, but rather the fundamentals and necessary characteristic of this developing system (Singh, Märtsin, & Glasswell, 2015). However, we suggest a distinction between antagonistic and constructive approaches to these contradictions, which to our opinion needs to be addressed and dealt with. When contradictions are approached in antagonistic ways, as is reported in some of the case studies analyzed in this book, the educational purposes, goals, and the whole educational activity reject that the tensions are informative to the ongoing development and change of the education. In such cases, tensions might be interpreted and acted upon as meaningless “noise”, as pupils’ resistance to become educated or as pupils’ learning difficulties. This tendentiously doubles the trouble in the shape of personalizing the contradiction “in” the students or “in” their families and constructs it as something they need to make sense of. Simultaneously, it renders the education less usable (to the degree of it becoming useless) in the student’s or child’s everyday life in the community, outside education (Hviid, 2016). On the other hand, an education, which generates knowledge from these tensioned dialogues and develops through that continued dialogue, not only shows concern for its already cultivated students/children, but also paves the way for the usability of education in the community (Hviid & Villadsen, 2014). In the introduction, building on Valsiner’s conceptualization of educational intrusion, we wrote that in this book we wanted to explore when and how does the educational intrusion produce a constructive surplus of individual and collective generativity, and when does it create unconstructive tensions for the individual and/or for the community. The contributions to this book have given us some rich examples of both of these scenarios and offered some innovative conceptual tools for illuminating these questions. Our own answer to this question lies in the dialectic conceptualization of the educational situation. Here, we have wanted to make a distinction between antagonistic and constructive approaches to these dialectics. For as several case studies in this book evidence, new ideas and knowledge for the individuals and communities can emerge from the tensions between various perspectives and voices, when these are held (and dealt with) in their dynamic developmental relationship, rather than being deformed in a way that the striving for the “best outcome” leads to marginalization, stigmatization—in short, othering. Othering students or children tragically risks to “other” the very cultivation that the educational institution strives so hard to offer. We thus envision an educational situation, where multiple

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perspectives are recognized and tensions and ambivalences between these perspectives are acknowledged and valued as seeds for imagining new opportunities for a collective, sustainable future.

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Pernille Hviid is trained as preschool teacher and has a M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen (Denmark). She studies developmental processes within the cultural life course, emphasizing the interdependency between personal and collective levels of meaning-making. Empirically, she have conducted studies of children’s experiences of being, focusing on engagement and resistance, as it emerges and persist within the cultural life course. In addition, she has worked with the organization and the managerial practices of public preschools in Denmark, aiming to develop local alternatives to New Public Management. She has edited the online journal Outlines—Critical Practice Studies (2012–2018), co-edited (with Wagoner and Chaudhary) the series Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures in Cultural Psychology (2014 and 2015), and the volume Resistance in Everyday Life: Constructing Cultural Experiences (2018) (with Chaudhary, Marsico, and Villadsen). Recently, she contributed to The Sage Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education (in press) with “Educational play-supervision—playing and promoting children’s development of meaning”. At present, she and a group of scholars collaborates on investigating the role preschools play in Danish, Japanese, and Chinese communities and their contribution to children’s cultivation. Mariann Märtsin is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and Research Fellow in the Institute of Natural and Health Sciences at Tallinn University (Estonia). Her primary area of interest is identity processes as these relate to experiences of education, migration, and major lifecourse transitions in adulthood. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who draws her inspiration from semiotic cultural psychology.