Interculturality : Practice meets Research [1 ed.] 9781443854627, 9781443845236

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Interculturality

Interculturality: Practice meets Research

Edited by

Martina Koegeler-Abdi and Richard Parncutt

Interculturality: Practice meets Research, Edited by Martina Koegeler-Abdi and Richard Parncutt This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Martina Koegeler-Abdi and Richard Parncutt and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4523-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4523-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii List of Tables............................................................................................ viii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Martina Koegeler-Abdi and Richard Parncutt Part I: Intercultural Education and Political Practices Chapter One............................................................................................... 14 Partnership Research about “Difference”: Co-constructing Local Educational Policy Ruth Boyask, Arnet Donkin, Sue Waite and Hazel Lawson Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 Deadly Symbiosis: How School Exclusions and Youth Crime Interweave Matt Clement Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 51 Transcultural School Social Work: A Case Study of Children’s Rights in Practice Sharon Schneider Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 71 Cultural Meaning Systems of Learning and their Influences in the International University Context Marieke C. van Egmond, Alexis L. Rossi and Ulrich Kuhnen

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Part II: Difference and Inclusion Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 88 The Traveller Economic Inclusion Project: An Inclusive and Intercultural Approach to Research Margaret Greenfields and Andrew Ryder Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 109 Neuland: Refugees and Austrian Residents Get Connected Margerita Piatti and Thomas Schmidinger Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 130 Race, Genes and Culture Ulrich Kattmann Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 149 Nextdoor/Quartier: Improving Social Cohesion in a Brussels Neighborhood through Research and Design in Interaction Johanna Kint, Oscar Tomico and Inge Ferwerda Part III: More than Words: Communication and Interaction Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 166 Multilingual Graz: From Research to Practice Barbara Schrammel-Leber and Daniel Lorenz Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 185 Managing Eastern and Western Christians in an Organization Barbara Mazur Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 202 Building Bridges: Literature across Borders Manju Jaidka Contributors............................................................................................. 217

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 4-1. Mean virtue orientation for the cultural clusters of students and faculty Fig. 4-2. Ratings of the experienced ease with which students exhibit mind oriented behaviors, and the degree to which faculty value these behaviors Fig. 4-3. Rated explicitness about pedagogical principles, rated by under-graduate students and faculty themselves Fig. 4-4. Perceived need for intercultural training, as indicated by both students and faculty for own and other group Fig. 6-1. Map of Austria, red: Lower Austria Fig. 6-2. The districts: Mödling, Baden, Wiener Neustadt, Neunkirchen, Korneuburg, Hollabrunn, Mistelbach Fig. 7-1. Genetic differences within and between groups of different geographical origin Fig. 7-2. Genetic distances (next neighbourhood) of mitochondrial DNA (Control Region 1) between individuals of populations of the Great Apes and Homo sapiens Fig. 7-3. Overlapping bell curves of two groups or populations Fig. 8-1. In the metropolis we are all strangers. Brabantwijk graffiti, Brussels Fig. 8-2. Images illustrating the concept of “Mapping your neighbourhood” Fig. 8-3. Images illustrating the concept of Nouvellesd’ici Fig. 9-1. / Fig. 9-2. / Fig. 9-3. Bilingual Signs Fig. 9-4. Multilingual information board for tourists Fig. 9-5. / Fig. 9-6. “Bottom up” bilingual signs Fig. 10-1. Religious denominations in Podlaskie Voivodeship

LIST OF TABLES

Tab. 3-1. Tab. 6-1. Tab. 6-2. Tab. 7-1. Tab. 7-2.

The overview of the basic human needs Example for Funding for one year Projekt Neuland Isolation as a scientific idea Parallels between the formation of racial prejudices and the biological classification of races Tab. 7- 3. Different kinds of racism and their consequences for human life Tab. 10-1. Management aspects in Catholic and Orthodox culture

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the support of innumerable people and we sincerely thank all the volunteer reviewers, both practitioners and scholars, that have helped to make this publication possible. The peer review procedure was carried by a diverse, international community of scholar-practitioners; we thank Thomas Acton, Roswitha Al-Hussein, Pablo Argarate, Ling Chen, Tanguy Corry, Domenica Dominguez, Lauren Esposito, Crystal M. Fleming, Paul Gorski, Daniela Grabovac, Christina-Alina Grundner, Rita Hayward, Martina Hengst, Bettina Kluge, Thomas Lang, Richard Leslie, Edith Marko-Stoeckl, Sunita Mukhi, Silke Strasser, EK Tan, Barbara O’Toole, and Tracy Walters for generously sharing their expertise. This book is based on contributions to the conference cAIR10, which is built on an even broader network of supporters. This conference would never have happened without the support of Simone Schumann, who worked as conference assistant in 2008 until 2009, the practice and research committees that evaluated project submissions, the administrative support of Michaela Schwarz and the students who assisted voluntarily with the running of the conference: Sonja Zechner (coordinator), Hakim Abdi, Lisa Taschler, Meltem Elmas, Martina Haindl, Maria Ortner, Maria Hecher, Martin Winter, and Sarah Zapusek. We thank Johannes Lehner for website design and congratulate Alexandra Streitfelder for winning the cAIR logo competition. For financial support for the conference we thank the Zukunftsfond der Republik Österreich for their generous grant, but also the City of Graz, the Austrian Federal Ministery of Research (BMWF), the Province of Styria (Land Steiermark), the University of Graz, and a private sponsor, K. D. Brühl. Finally, we thank treffpunkt sprachen and the following local NGOs in Graz for the valuable collaboration: Afro-Asiatisches Institut, Caritas Steiernark, Danaida, Helping Hands, Megaphon, ISOP, Omega, SOMM, Welthaus and Zebra.

INTRODUCTION MARTINA KOEGELER-ABDI AND RICHARD PARNCUTT

Interculturality has always been a part of the human condition, but in an era of accelerating globalization, questions of interculturality have become crucial. Human quality of life and survival increasingly depend on how inter– and transcultural issues are addressed. Intercultural contact zones, conflicts and opportunities are becoming more widespread, frequent, and interconnected. The rising importance of interculturality is reflected by a growing frequency of media reports addressing inter– and transcultural phenomena, which in turn are influencing political strategies and election campaigns. Social and cultural configurations are constantly changing, and cultural representations are constantly being renegotiated. Technological advances and economic constraints are increasingly provoking and promoting the international mobility of cultural groups and cultural goods. Global issues such as environment, defense, finance, and the distribution of wealth and resources increasingly require cross–cultural cooperation. More and more political parties, decision makers, and NGOs of all persuasions are regarding inter– and transcultural issues as central to their work. To ensure its long–term survival, the human race is increasingly challenged to create global democratic institutions to regulate economic interactions (transactions on global markets, global taxation), and to prevent and mitigate damage to the environment (emissions, pollution, deforestation, fishing). Such institutions must inevitably deal not only with extreme inequalities in economic and social capital, but also with cultural differences. The literature on interculturality tends to focus on aspects of interculturality, rather than consider the problem as a whole. The practically– oriented literature focuses on areas such as intercultural competence, communication, teaching, or theater. The research–oriented literature confines itself to the disciplinary boundaries of education, anthropology, philosophy, religion, communication, or literature. In this book, we aim for a broader view. We do not focus on any single area of practice or

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research. Instead, we ask the general question of how to best bring together theory and practice in any and all areas of interculturality. We promote a holistic view of interculturality that is based on cultural groups and boundaries as they exist in today’s world. We bring together diverse context–specific strategies to get a more comprehensive meta–perspective on interculturality, such that the knowledge and experience gained at one intercultural border may be applied at another. By attempting to bridge the gap between practice and research in different areas of interculturality, we aim to create a platform for the intercultural exchange of both practices and knowledge, and to promote dialogue between practitioners and researchers of all kinds. To our knowledge, no previous publication has approached interculturality and intercultural issues from this angle. A comprehensive and holistic approach to interculturality requires that we simultaneously transcend three different kinds of intercultural boundary. First, there are boundaries between “ethnic” cultures at different hierarchical levels from continental (e.g. European versus African) to (sub) national (cultural groups within a single country). Second, most research, and most research about interculturality, can be divided into humanities (such as history and literature studies), sciences (such as empirical sociology and neurosciences), and practically oriented disciplines (such as education and medicine). These three overarching groups of disciplines have often functioned almost independently of each other. Scientists, for example, know remarkably little about the main questions, approaches and values of the humanities, while humanities scholars for their part are similarly surprisingly poorly informed about the sciences. This situation prompted Snow (1960) to speak of “two cultures”, and half a century later little has been done to address the problems that he identified. Third, and this is the main focus of our book, universities traditionally address intercultural issues through research, while governmental and non–governmental organizations primarily approach interculturality through practice. We may thus speak of three kinds of intercultural division, which could be labeled ethnic, epistemological, and research–practice. All three involve difficulties of communication and interaction that are linked to different ways of thinking, communicating and problem solving, and all three may be hindered by a general lack of knowledge and awareness about the detailed nature of these differences.

The Conference on Applied Interculturality Research The book is based on contributions to the first Conference on Applied Interculturality Research (cAIR), which was held at the University of

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Graz, Austria, from 7 to 10 April 2010. Fifty project summaries were submitted to cAIR10; their authors lived in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, United Arab Emirates, the UK and the USA. Most of these countries were also represented at the conference. The conference was organized by the editors of this book and financially supported from a number of different sources without whom the project would not have been realized. They are the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria (Zukunftsfonds der Repubik Österreich), who provided most of the funding; the City of Graz (Stadt Graz); the Austrian Federal Ministry of Research (Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung); the Province of Styria (Land Steiermark); the University of Graz (Karl– Franzens–Universität Graz); and a private donor (K. D. Brühl and Sons, Graz). The acronym cAIR refers not only to the conference that took place in Graz in 2010, but also to the general concept and direction of that conference, as embraced in different ways by follow–up conferences and by this book. cAIR is a response to the rising importance of inter– and transculturality in national and international politics, civil society, research and education reflected by the increasing frequency of media reports addressing inter– and transcultural phenomena and questions of all kinds. Like interculturality, the goals of cAIR can be approached in different ways. One approach is to divide the promotion of positive aspects from avoidance of the negative aspects. On the positive side, cAIR promotes constructive intercultural communication and understanding, which can be seen as an aspect of social well–being. On the negative side, it combats racism and xenophobia. These two aspects interact and are often inseparable. The aims of cAIR, and of this book, also include the following: • • • • •

to support civil society, government and education by improving the accessibility and usefulness of research that is relevant to their concerns; to empower researchers in all areas of inter– and transculturality and all relevant disciplines to contribute positively to social and political developments; to facilitate interactions between practice and research in all areas of interculturality; to motivate NGOs, governments, academics, schools and universities to support each other and to offer them a framework; to encourage universities to invest their personal, academic and financial resources in Applied Interculturality Research—a promising area of interaction between research and society; and

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•

to promote high–quality projects by subjecting all submissions to careful, constructive quality control by international experts.

cAIR regards all groups, actors, approaches and opinions as equally legitimate and valuable, provided they are consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. cAIR also respects existing boundaries between cultural groups, however blurred. On that basis, cAIR promotes constructive discourse among communities with related goals. At the same time, cAIR strives for high standards of quality, relevance and impact by carefully evaluating project submissions. As far as possible, evaluations are carried out within corresponding (sub–) communities (areas of practice; academic disciplines). cAIR does not support unlimited freedom of speech and does not offer a platform to any project that the organisers or evaluators feel might exacerbate xenophobia or discrimination of any kind.

Aims of the Book This book makes the concept and content of cAIR accessible to a wider public. We wish to improve the accessibility and usefulness of both good intercultural practices (by governmental and non–governmental organizations in any country, as well as schools and media) and good interculturality research (in universities, research institutes and outside of research infrastructures, in any country). We aim to promote high–quality projects that help practitioners to benefit from research, and/or researchers from practice. We hope to provide NGOs, politicians and researchers in all areas of interculturality, as well as the general public, with an accessible overview of possible research/practice exchanges and models for mixed communities of practice in academia and politics. The primary aim of this book is to bring together practitioners and researchers in diverse areas of interculturality and encourage synergetic interactions between and among them. Intercultural work can be divided up and approached in different ways, but we are particularly concerned with the relationship between practice and research. On the practical side, most non–governmental organisations (NGOs), and many governmental organisations, are concerned—directly or indirectly—with issues of interculturality. On the research side, more and more research communities in humanities, sciences, education, law, economics and religious studies are turning their attention to intercultural issues. The persistent gulf between practice (governmental and non–governmental organisations, schools, media) and research (universities, institutes) suggests that there is

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considerable potential for synergetic interaction between these two groups. The contributors to this book bring together practice and research in different areas of interculturality in different ways and to varying degrees. Their individual chapters provide models of good practices with implications beyond the specific subject matter at hand. Given this background, we propose that solutions to intercultural problems can be approached best by a combination of equality and strategy. By equality we mean equality of opportunity: all relevant parties (national cultures, academic epistemologies, practice and research) should first be put on an equal footing to create a level playing field. On that basis, we strive for the rational development of strategies to solve intercultural problems, taking advantage of the knowledge and experience of all relevant actors; these may also involves new infrastructures to promote intercultural communication. The cases and projects presented in this book vary in background and discipline, but all have in common that they bridge the gap between practice and research, and all promote equality and strategy development in a specific area. We aim to explore these various interconnections, make their potential synergies visible, and provide concrete recommendations that may be of value to a multidisciplinary audience. Finally, we aim to create environment in which unpredictable new synergies can arise as the diverse professional, national and academic associations of contributors and readers interact with each other in new ways. In this spirit, submissions were not limited to specific topics, beyond the general requirement of addressing central issues of interculturality in terms of interaction between practice and theory. Instead, reviewers evaluated the quality of the relevant practice and research represented by the chapters, which ultimately reflected the authors’ expertise and experience. All contributions are written either by partnerships/teams of researchers and practitioners or by individuals with relevant expertise and experience in both intercultural practice and intercultural research.

Defining Concepts Many of the central concepts presented in the book have different possible definitions, or their definitions are unclear because they are relatively new or their usage is changing. Our approach to defining or explaining selected central concepts follows; it is inspired by discussions of definition that took place at cAIR. Please note that the contributors to

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the book were not bound to our definitions and may have used the same terms differently. We use the term intercultural in the broad sense of any interaction between any cultural groups. Our understanding of the term cultural group is similarly general: it is a group of people with a common identity (an accepted label or linguistic marker for the group, and a feeling of belonging to it), common forms of behavior (including but not confined to customs, traditions, manners, expectations), common ways of seeing the world (including but not confined to religions, other beliefs and philosophies), common ways of communicating (including but not confined to languages) and/or perceptible signs of group membership (varying along a scale from voluntarily to involuntary, and including clothing, ways of talking, and skin color). Examples of cultural groups include national cultures (Turkey, Peru), language groups (Shipibo, English), subcultures (lovers of heavy metal or classical art), social classes (mega–rich, middle class, workers), genders (including transgender), sexual preferences, disabilities, age groups—in short, any feature with which a group of people can identify and upon which they can, if they choose, develop and experience a sense of community. A particularly interesting and relevant example of a cultural group is a community of practice (Wenger, 1998)—a group of people who identify with each other not primarily because of who they are (however defined), but because of what they do. A community of practice has common professional or artistic activities; examples include pianists, accountants, hobby pilots, and bird watchers, but also members of religious groups who identify themselves by means of traditional or codified customs and behaviors. According to Spencer–Oatey and Franklin (2009: 3), “an intercultural situation is one in which the cultural distance between the participants is significant enough to have an effect on interaction/communication that is noticeable to at least one of the parties”. Cultural distance may be regarded as a negative aspect of intercultural communication, but it can also be seen as an advantage and an opportunity. Any reduction of cultural distance by overcoming intercultural hindrances can lead to new intercultural communication. The future consequences of such communication are both significant and unpredictable. Similarly, the future impact of intercultural practice and research, and of the contributions to this book, can be difficult to predict. We do not know in advance where and when the effects will be felt, or by whom. That unpredictability is reflected by the diverse thematic spectrum of this book. When considering questions of interculturality, it is important not to oversimplify concepts of culture. Cultural boundaries are generally fuzzy,

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subjective, and in a state of flux. They are also structured in overlapping hierarchies and networks. Most people (including those without a recent background of migration) have multiple identities in the sense that they belong simultaneously to different cultural groups; we may speak of cultural hybridity. Cultural identity is generally ambiguous and context– dependent: the identity that a person feels or the cultural behaviors that she exhibits depend on the context in which she finds herself—the people she is with, the location, the situation. Finally, each individual is actively involved in the construction and negotiation of cultural boundaries. In the sociology of academia, the creation, reinforcement, questioning and dismantlement of boundaries between disciplines has been called boundary work by Gieryn (1983)—a concept that can be applied more broadly to the symbolic boundaries that demarcate any kind of cultural group, including class/economic, ethnic/racial, gender/sex, professional, national or geographical (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). The concept of interculturality generally includes transculturality; interactions between cultures generally change the cultures themselves. For example, the Egyptian Coptic community in Graz, Austria, is not the same as Coptic communities in Egypt, because the people in Graz have adapted to their situation in Graz.During that time they may not have adapted to changing social and political constraints in Egypt. It is therefore misleading to speak of cultural groups as if they were constant. All of the above–listed features of cultural groups (their behaviors, Weltanschauungen, linguistic and perceptible markers and so on) can change with time as a function of their changing situations, aspirations, constraints and intercultural interactions. The word integration is often used in the general sense of a solution to problems of interculturality. This may be coupled with the tacit assumption that only migrants must change or adapt. When migrants arrive in a new country or city, they are expected to “integrate” while the “locals” (those who had been inhabiting that piece of land for a longer period of time) merely observe. The locals consider (perhaps correctly) that they have more rights than the newcomers, which justifies the implicit belief that only the migrants need to adapt. In reality, any society is changed by any influx of migrants of any kind. The locals inevitably adapt— just as the migrants do. The cultural groups to which both sides belong are changed by the interaction. Of course, both sides still retain important features or their original identity; the result is an increase in the multiplicity, ambiguity and context–dependency of their cultural identity. In this book, we use the term “integration” in this complex sense. It is generally an interaction that changes all participants.

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We define a “practitioner” as any person who is professionally involved in any practical project or activity in any area of interculturality. That includes project directors/leaders, supervisors, coordinators, administrators, organisers, planners, developers, activists, artists, musicians, actors, teachers, educators, social workers, publishers, advisors, consultants, officials, promoters and policy makers. Similarly, we define a “researcher” as any person who is qualified in a relevant academic discipline (e.g. humanities, sciences; economic, legal, religious studies) and professionally involved in research in any area of interculturality. Interculturality research addresses all kinds and aspects of inter– and transcultural interaction.

Multidisciplinary Review Procedures cAIR, and consequently this book, aims for an unusual combination of breadth (all areas of interculturality practice and research), constructive collaboration (interactions among those areas—especially between practice and research); and quality (ensured by fair, helpful evaluation procedures). It has not been easy to simultaneously approach these three goals. The greater the breadth, the more difficult the quality control, because experts from one area are not necessary experts in another, and accepted procedures for quality control are different in different areas. Similarly, collaboration becomes more difficult, the more distant two cultural groups lie from each other. Different cultural groups may also bring very different expectations to a common project such as cAIR. That also means that they have different implicit conceptions of quality. We considered this problem when deciding who would organize which aspects of the conference and who would edit this book. The two editors belong to the humanities and natural sciences respectively, which forces us to constantly negotiate this one boundary of different standards between us. However, due to the wide practical and disciplinary range, quality control needed a similarly broad spectrum of experts beyond our narrow editorial supervision. At the risk of imposing a Western academic concept of quality onto such a broad project, we have attempted to ensure a high standard by a multi–level peer–review procedure. Peer review has the advantage that the people doing the reviewing belong (as far as possible) to the same cultural group as the people being reviewed, and so share ideas about quality and quality control as well as common ways of communicating. Although existing academic models are culture–specific and infected by the neoliberal spirit of our times, we had little alternative but to follow their broad direction; the same problem was encountered, incidentally, by the

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Conferences on Interdisciplinary Musicology and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies upon which cAIR was modeled. The main aim of those research infrastructures was to bring together humanities and sciences in all areas of music research; by analogy, cAIR aims to bring together practice and research in all areas of interculturality. Our review procedure was divided into three stages. In every stage, we aimed to remain sensitive to the different approaches to evaluating quality of practitioners and researchers, as well as other cultural groupings. In the first stage, which was double blind, contributions to the conference program were independently reviewed by two experts: one a practitioner and one a researcher in the specific area of the contribution. On the basis of those reviews, contributions were either accepted or rejected; a contribution was only rejected if both reviewers, practical and research, independently recommended rejection. In the second stage, conference presentations were invited to this book on the basis of their quality, as judged by the editors or other conference participants, as well as the relevance and diversity of addressed topics. In the third stage, invited written contributions to this book were reviewed by two experts—again, one a practitioner and one a researcher, and both working in the specific area of the contribution. As far as possible, these final reviewers were not the same as the original reviewers of the corresponding conference submission. Reviewers at this stage were offered the opportunity to remain anonymous, and most of them did.

Overview of the Book This book is organized into three different parts, each grouping chapters from different disciplinary backgrounds around a common theme: Part I—Intercultural Education and Political Practices, Part II—Difference and Inclusion, and Part III—More than Words: Communication and Interaction. The team around Ruth Boyask, including scholars and practitioners, opens Part I with their contribution “Partnership research about ‘difference’: Co–constructing local educational policy.”Their work applies person–centered methods to approaching young people on equal terms and learning about their experience of diversity in British schools. Together with the Plymouth City Council they apply their findings to create more equitable school policies in their local context. Matt Clement also works with British youth and school policies, but his research on “Deadly Symbiosis: How school exclusion and juvenile crime interweave” analyses the consequences of school policies as institutionalized forms of inequality that marginalizes and criminalizes certain children, taking class

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into consideration as another aspect of interculturality. Sharon Schneider’s “Transcultural School Social Work: A case study of children’s rights in practice” analyses the relationship between student suspensions and their ethnic backgrounds, and develops a human rights–based social work approach to enhancing the wellbeing of a diverse student body. In the last chapter of Part 1, Marieke van Egmond and her colleagues look at “Cultural meaning systems of learning and their influences in the international university context.” They reflect on the philosophical underpinnings of learning beliefs and their impact on higher education in an international university in Germany, asking students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds what constitutes learning for them. Their findings have already been implemented in intercultural training and orientation programs for faculty and incoming students. Part II addresses the question how to theorize and at the same time work practically with intercultural difference. Andrew Ryder and Margaret Greenfields’s chapter on “The Traveller Economic Inclusion Project: An inclusive and intercultural approach to research” presents the work of the “action research project” on the economic inclusion of Gypsies and Travellers in the UK. Their methodology exemplifies the interaction of practice and research on equal terms in that community members participate in the research and co–produce the methodology. Their chapter reviews the potential of this approach for social change and its implication for research processes. In “Neuland: Refugees and Austrian residents get connected,” Margerita Piatti and Thomas Schmidinger facilitate and analyse personal intercultural communication in a specific majority/minority setting. The Neuland project promotes and supervises a buddy/tandem system between Austrian residents and refugees in a rural area of Lower Austria to build a community and decrease prejudice. The members of each tandem learn from each other in a series of formal and informal meetings. The chapter on “Race, genes, and culture” by Ulrich Kattmann theorizes “racial” difference as a social construct from a biological point of view. Kattmann offers an overview of the developments that lead to the correlation of physiological markers and so–called races, and he deconstructs these assumptions that have long been a fundamental source of racism. The chapter closes with a suggestion about how to address and deal with the very real effects of the fictional concept of race in daily life. Johanna Kint’s team presents the chapter “Nextdoor/Quartier: Improving social cohesion in the Brussels neighborhood through research and design in interaction”, which asks how the design and shaping of urban spaces affects communities and intercultural exchange. She describes how students experienced the creation and implementation of design

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suggestions for a “migrant neighbourhood” in Brussels, and analyses not only the societal relevance of their research in a specific location, but also the necessity, and challenges, of including the inhabitants in design decisions and their implementation. The contributions in Part III aim to integrate practice and research in diverse areas where not only communication, but also practical cooperation come into play. In the chapter, “Multilingual Graz—From research to practice,” a team led by Barbara Schrammel-Leber maps out the linguistic diversity of Graz, Austria. They present their approach to the task of creating a database about linguistic diversity and its manifestations in city life. They then examine the role of language documentation and sociolinguistic interpretation in the development of institutional language policies. The team has also created a public exhibition and teaching materials based upon their research. Barbara Mazur addresses a different, and often overlooked, aspect of intercultural business communication and diversity management: religion. Her chapter “Managing Eastern and Western Christians in one organization” examines the role of Orthodox and Catholic religious affiliations in management, intra–company cohesion, and hiring practices in a Polish business context, and aims to sensitize management practices accordingly. The book closes with a contribution by Manju Jaidka, who describes the practice of transculturality through her own literary journey in “Building bridges: Literature across borders.” Her work brings together theoretical and practical reflections on interculturality by asking what it means to engage holistically with this world as a practitioner/teacher, scholar and transnational promoter of literary exchange.

Works Cited Gieryn, Thomas F. “Boundary–work and the demarcation of science from non–science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists.”American Sociological Review 48.6(1983):781–795. Lamont, Michèle, &Molnár, Virág. “The study of boundaries in the social sciences.”Annual Review of Sociology 28(2002):167–195. Snow, Charles Percy. The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960. Spencer–Oatey, Helen and Peter Franklin. Intercultural interaction: a multidisciplinary approach to intercultural communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Wenger, Etienne. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

PART I INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION AND POLITICAL PRACTICES

CHAPTER ONE PARTNERSHIP RESEARCH ABOUT “DIFFERENCE”: CO–CONSTRUCTING LOCAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY RUTH BOYASK, ARNET DONKIN, SUE WAITE AND HAZEL LAWSON

Abstract We consider how a partnership between two universities in the South West of England and a unitary local authority was put to work to mutual benefit. We show how research might directly inform local policy by grounding research in a local authority’s practical needs to address ethnicity and racism, maximising the impact of our research and responding to international developments in evidence–based policy. The study explored the potential of young people to act as expert informants in social policy decision–making by asking them to identify how they differed from one another, which differences impacted upon their schooling and comparing these differences with generic social categories such as ethnicity, gender, class, disability for example (Boyask et al., 2009b). One response to the findings of the project was a structured reflection upon the capacity of our local authority partner to enact policy initiatives informed by the young people (Boyask et al., forthcoming 2013). Our investigation suggested that while some national policies intended to provide for individual needs in recognition of diversity, in practice this was difficult. Most local policy decisions were made on the basis of the needs of social groups identified through centralised data gathering (such as school test scores and numbers of children accessing free school meals). We recognise tensions for local authority officers who must follow recent national policy directives that prioritise both social

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group and individual needs. And finally, we suggest that dialogic partnerships between researchers and policy officers can inform policy decision–making by taking account of contextual understandings of social categories on the one hand, and dislodging the power of nationally defined categories of difference on the other.

Introduction There are inequities within society that manifest themselves as trends in the social outcomes for some groups of people; groups are defined, for example, through ethnicity, gender, class, disability. Yet individuals are unique, experience group membership differently and consequently have different outcomes. This highlights a central dilemma for social policy that needs to be confronted in the pursuit of social justice: if policy–makers respond only to group needs and redistribute social goods accordingly, then individual needs may be overlooked; however, emphasising the uniqueness of each and every individual and attending to needs on that basis homogenises difference and is likely to reproduce existing social inequalities within society. While social policy has traditionally been concerned with redistribution of social goods along group lines, there is a tendency in recent policy initiatives to focus upon providing for the needs of individuals, articulated through national policies in England such as “Every Child Matters” (DfES, 2003) and “Personalised Learning” (DfES, 2006). The social sciences have long sought to resolve the relationship and tensions between the individual and society theoretically; for example, Tajfel’s (1974) theory of social identity in social psychology or Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration in sociology. However, while such arguments are theoretically robust and even translate quite readily to policy texts, conceiving of how their subtleties might work to influence practice is much more difficult (see Boyask et al, 2009a). Whilst the dominant assumption about the relationship between policy and practice is one of transmission, the actualisation of policy is inevitably much more complex (Ball & Bowe, 1992; Kaur et al, 2008). So for example, the individual has been inserted at the level of policy rhetoric in policies, such as those above, yet implementation efforts continue to be centred upon social categorisation (Boyask et al, 2009a). Our chapter engages with this problematic within a partnership between two universities in the South West of England and a unitary local authority. Together we have been researching young people’s individual experiences of school and using these findings to explore through dialogue within one another the potential

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of a research partnership for informing the enactment of local policy in consideration of the problematic of individual and group needs.

A Local Stimulus for Research Partnership A conversation with our local authority partner particularly highlighted this problem for us. In a discussion on what our partnership and the results of our small scale study might contribute to his work and that of his colleagues in the local authority, he said that “we can only work within those established categories that are handed down to us” (Donkin, Arnet; Conversation 25 January 2010). Arnet experiences the weight of authority conveyed through national policy, and finds his capacity to define and act upon difference limited by handed–down categories. When enacting policy from the top down, he says that: it’s easy to forget that what we are working with are human beings who have a complex multiplicity of identities and that the way any individual will experience life will not be as ‘a black person’ or as ‘a looked after child’1 but actually they will experience life through the interactions that they have with a whole range of different people and each of those people that they interact with will actually create their identity in a slightly different way (Arnet Donkin).

In essence, Arnet lives the central dilemma between social and individual difference that we are intending to address through our work together. It has been the intention of our work to date to refine our knowledge of non–categorical experiences of difference through researching the subjective experiences of young people in relation to difference and diversity and to use this knowledge for developing nuanced practices in school and other social institutions that neither homogenise nor over–generalise difference. The importance of this work for us is that despite a constant flow of social policy initiatives that intend to address social inequalities, inequalities are entrenched within our society, and there is evidence to suggest these are exacerbating within particular communities (e.g. Blanden and Machin, 2007). To extend his capacity to respond equitably to need, Arnet must reconcile action upon two conceptualisations of difference, his utilisation of social group categories and his recognition of unique difference (see Lawson et al, forthcoming 2013). This reconciliation is necessary to enable him to negotiate the potentially over–generalising 1

“Looked after children” are subject to a care order or voluntarily accommodated outside the home by the local authority under the Children Act 1989.

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effects of the former and homogenising effects of the latter. Whilst his reflection upon the complex multiple identities of our young people participants reminds us that we share theoretical conceptualisations of difference, his accountability to national policy frameworks highlights the complexity of using these conceptualisations within practice. Working in partnership, we are ever mindful of the intractability of our task to find a balance that accommodates this tension. In this chapter, we draw upon our project of working towards more equitable and nuanced responses to difference through a partnership between university researchers and a local authority. We proffer our hopes for working towards solutions, and also lay bare some of the difficulties we have experienced in taking forward our project. We focus our analysis through a recount of an exchange between two partners of this project, Ruth Boyask (researcher) and Arnet Donkin (policy adviser). The research team has worked to frame transcribed elements of a conversation between Ruth and Arnet that present the process of co–constructing understanding of difference, also drawing upon the report of the collaborative small scale study co–authored with Hazel Lawson and Sue Waite (Boyask et al, 2009b). This conversation was centred on the findings of the study, Arnet’s response to the report of those findings and a discussion on how we might use those findings with others at Plymouth City Council. The overall study occurred just prior to the election of a new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010. The changes in government and policy direction have resulted in change to the role of local authorities in social provision. Under the rhetoric of personal responsibility and professional autonomy the substantive role of local authorities has shifted from social service providers to strategists and commissioning agents (see DfE, 2011). The enactment of the new policy focus is significantly influenced by wider economic issues. Local authorities have recently had their budgets cut, forcing them to implement the new direction alongside making substantial financial savings. While the changes have been underpinned by an espoused commitment to localisation, the focus upon economic efficiency has resulted in many challenges for fair distribution of social services. The changed locus of responsibility from central to local control suggests some consonance with our own work, yet we are concerned that responsibility has been devolved without reference to the concept of an overall social good nor adequate resources for localised provision.

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The Context for our Study The project team consists of three university researchers (from two universities in the South West of England) and a senior advisor to a local authority within the South West region, in the urban centre of Plymouth. The South West of England is a particularly important place to examine difference. It is accountable to national strategies regarding diversity, yet demographically there are fewer apparent differences as opposed to other regions in England. While Plymouth is distinctively more diverse in its ethnic and religious communities than other smaller areas and centres in the South West, compared with other English cities it is relatively culturally homogenous. Plymouth differs quite markedly from multi–cultural, multi–faith London, whose problems are normalised within most national policy (Ball, 2008). We are interested in how difference is experienced within our particular social context, and in what respects these experiences of difference might be better served by policies which resonate with the nature and characteristics of the population within this particular locality. We are attempting to find ways to negotiate between social and individual differences, researching specific experiences of difference and identifying within our data, discourses of social and individual difference. There are substantial datasets and recurrent data gathering within both research and policy spheres that distinguish on the basis of social group difference (for example, the National Pupil Database). While such approaches are concerned with the application of predetermined categories of difference, the categories themselves are not fixed. Changing concepts of equity result in changes to the categories. For example, as the human rights discourse embodied in the United Nations declaration of 1945 fragmented and came to include race and gender rights, it became more important for social provision that government agencies tracked ethnicity and sex (Boyask et al, 2009a). As individual differences assume greater importance within the current diversity discourse, categorisation also changes. Arnet identifies a new category he has been given to work with: It is interesting that we now have got a new category around socio– economic deprivation, so that has suddenly been identified and recognised who you are, if you are a white working class boy. It has been there for a while, but now it is officially there. So now we can actually target resources into that area (Arnet Donkin).

Recognition may occur unofficially or emerge through the normal course of his work, but Arnet attributes significance to official recognition,

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in that it enables him to put in place processes for redistributing social goods that are intended to change the material conditions of recognised identities. Yet his comment also implies that difficulties may arise when local authorities work from policies that recognise diversity or individual differences and not discrete social group categories. How do you make decisions about targeting resources without official categories? The categories that influence policy concerned with social provision have proliferated, and the increase in numbers is also accompanied by substantive data gathering that has extended beyond categorisation to collect information about personal differences. For example the variables included in the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)’s Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) are intended to measure both social group differences (e.g. parental socio–economic status as a measure of class) and individual differences (e.g. personal characteristics). While we are yet to determine how best policy makers may make use of knowledge about individual differences to enhance social provision, we feel that improved understanding of the ways that young people differ from one another is important. However, we think the methods of data collection used by studies such as LSYPE do not go far enough. The LSYPE data collection, consisting of a questionnaire completed through face–to–face interview and some self–completion, makes assumptions about and constrains possible responses. The survey defines which individual differences between the young people are significant to their outcomes.

Grounding Policy through Local Insight Our empirical work to date has started from a premise that young people themselves are a valuable source for insights on difference, to the extent that they can inform us about the kinds of difference significant for policy and practice. We maintain that these insights are best acquired through methods sensitive to diversity that reflect how participants choose to express their experience of difference as their substantive understandings of differences, such as allowing participants to choose personally and culturally appropriate modes of response (Waite, Boyask & Lawson, 2010). In February 2009 Plymouth City Council funded a small study that explored methods for prompting and capturing young peoples’ recollections of difference throughout their life course, which generated some preliminary findings about the nature of those differences (see Boyask, Lawson, Waite & Donkin, 2009b for the research findings). We recruited forty 18–20 year olds whose “home town” was Plymouth and

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invited them to attend a research evening. 17 young people attended the evening and two chose to withdraw by leaving the session early. The evening started with a 45 minute performance by four actors from the Mirror Mirror theatre company, who used Playback theatre (see Rowe, 2007) to stimulate the participants’ recollections of difference at school. For the first four minutes each of the actors briefly told a story of difference from their own experience, and their narrative was followed by them and their fellow actors “playing back” or acting out the story. These were followed by narratives from the participant audience, similarly played back by three of the actors and facilitated by the fourth in the role of conductor. During the following 55 minutes the participants were broken up into three groups facilitated by the Playback actors and observed by researchers undertaking three different activities. The first activity was a small group discussion on words and ideas about difference, intended to explore appropriate language to use with young people with different educational histories. After this discussion, participants were asked to make an individual choice of expression to represent their recollections of difference at school using video diary, conceptual mapping, and timelines, for example. Finally the small groups came back together to discuss the kinds of times, places and people who had been significant in their recollection. The whole group reconvened for a final 15 minute plenary session facilitated by the theatre company. Whilst the findings from the evening were largely methodological (for further details, see Waite et al, 2010), we also generated some preliminary findings that represented the young people’s conceptualisations of difference. Through this project, the project team has come to characterise the tension between social categories and individual experiences as one between the general and the specific. That is, social groups or categories are formulated from generalisations about the experiences of individuals, yet our investigations of specific cases reveal that subjective experiences do not readily map onto such generalisations. Some young people within our study recalled difference as a much more personal and nuanced phenomenon, often closely associated with temporal, spatial and relational aspects of their life experience. For example, one young woman suggested there are differences between primary and secondary school. “In primary school they keep you repressed, they don’t tell you about the world” (audio–recording, 19th February 2009). She suggested that growing up happens in secondary school when you are forced to confront real–life challenges like taking national qualifications. Even when experience of difference did accord with official categories, our data suggested that young people’s identification with social group categories had been

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structured by the categorization and labelling that occurred through their engagement with social policies and institutional practices. For example, one young man who had a clear class consciousness had attended a fee– paying special school where other students were privately funded, yet his fees were paid by the local authority. Moreover, identification with a social category (either one’s own or how one is identified by others) may act as a limit upon individual potential and agency rather than open opportunities and new possibilities as intended by reformist policies. This same young man complained about the class disjuncture that he experienced at school and its impact on his relationships with his peers. In follow up research team discussions we have wrestled with the dynamic between subjective experience and the categorisation that is the main driver of funding and provision. We are interested especially in how subtler awareness of the experience of difference, which can be developed through co–constructing understanding through research, might prove useful when shaping provision at a local level. In the next section, we consider the local authority partner’s response to the research.

Dialogic and Reciprocal Research/Policy Transfer In this section, we reflect upon the dialogue prompted and supported by our research. The project team engaged in conversation around issues of difference and diversity for over a year. In that time we shared our thinking and developed some congruence in some fundamental assumptions about difference. We recognise the problematic nature of labelling, and suggest that these problems are highlighted when predetermined categories are transposed to a culture unfamiliar with such generalisations. In the remainder of the chapter we use a combination of written narrative and transcribed excerpts from one of a series of conversations recorded by the project team to capture our collaborative construction of knowledge. While discussion amongst the university researchers has subsequently been developed through our collaborative writing, conversation seemed to be a more equitable way of co–constructing knowledge with our local authority partner (see Waite et al., 2010 for more on our commitment to person–centred research). Arnet: Ethnicity, how do we define that? It’s not so straight forward really. The danger is if we just talk about people by those constructs we then start to define who those people are. This morning I was in a school talking about how that school could develop more positive attitudes towards pupils from different ethnicities and backgrounds and we specifically started talking about gypsy travellers and Romany groups because the area that the

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Chapter One school is in currently has, well they haven’t had anybody from that group for the last four years. So it has sort of become an unknown, however, the area is also an area that has been, one of two areas in the city that has been designated as a potential area for a new site, travellers’ site, and so their attentions, if that planning permission goes through, then the likelihood is that that school will start to receive more travellers, so my question to the school was “What could you be doing to help people better and understand something of that culture”, and then we started talking about who we are talking about when we are talking about gypsy and travellers…. Ruth: because they are all different. Arnet: They are all different. There are those that are really travelling and who will be here for a week or two weeks and then will move on, but then there are those that actually just buy a house and live in a house but are still gypsy, Romany people and are of that tradition and ethnic background. So it is very complex…the danger is, if we just go by that label then actually we perpetuate the stereotype. So somebody comes in, you are a gypsy traveller. Tick. That’s what you are, so that’s how we will respond to you, but actually that person may not fit that mould.

If gypsies and travellers had been commonplace within the school, then experience alone could have helped them to recognise the variations that underpin this general category. However, developing nuanced understanding becomes more difficult in an unfamiliar culture and is more likely to result in instrumental implementation of policy. That is, the experiences of individuals become associated with general categories, whether they hold true or not, and provision is measured through ticking boxes. This offers a powerful argument for ensuring that research on difference occurs in areas which have fewer apparent social group differences. Whilst national policy may provide for categorical difference that is determined as important at a national level, how can we support local policy–makers and practitioners (who are also working on the ground) to enact such provision when they lack insight derived from personal experience?

Sensitivity to Local Understanding and Experience of Difference How do you sensitise professionals to the need to respond and reflect upon individuals’ differences?

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Arnet: I guess one of the things that we are trying to promote in the city is for schools to develop links with schools in other areas, whether it is abroad or whether it is in the UK. And because it is about actually meeting people and actually having relationships, dialogues with individual people. In a sense when you meet somebody you don’t put them into a box do you? You don’t sort of suddenly in your head go ‘tick’. You might categorise in a very broad sense. You might look at somebody and think that person is black or that person is Asian, but you wouldn’t go into that sort of fine detail that we go into, in that way of categorising ethnicity, through policy. What you are more interested in, what we notice with children is that they very quickly look for areas of similarity. So they very quickly start talking about music interests or sport interests and discover actually, you know, we both like the same rap music or actually they like Goth music and we like whatever. And that is the difference. It suddenly starts to emerge, we don’t like them not because they are Asian, but we don’t like them because they don’t like rap music and we like this music. And it is sometimes as simple as that. Or they like Arsenal and we like Tottenham. And that is what is on top for them as opposed to the ethnicity, sometimes we as policy makers jump to the wrong conclusions about why people don’t get on because actually there is, if you like, street culture, which is transient and it’s those things that sometimes make more difference to young people than what we perceive to be categories of difference. We are talking about how we actually build relationships with and understanding of people from different cultures. It is not just as simple as saying we will try and expose you to Asian people socially—such a broad category.

Through Arnet’s responsibility for addressing disparities in the social outcomes of different ethnic groups, he is able to create opportunities for schools to expand their knowledge of difference through extending their experiences. However, in the preceding paragraph Arnet is teasing out the subtleties of difference, revealing that the activity he promotes under the auspices of provision for ethnic minorities may have little direct connection with ethnic categories. When the subtleties that Arnet describes are compared with our study’s findings on the nature of young people’s concepts of difference we find there are two main implications. First, Arnet’s view corresponds to our finding that young people’s conceptualisations of difference are phenomenological rather than categorical, and a result of their particular set of experiences. Arnet suggests provision should similarly be experiential, and that widening experience will improve relationships between people of different ethnic backgrounds. This suggests that successful policy interventions can be developed at the level of experience and that enacting such policy in practice requires awareness of how

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understanding is formed by experience and relating experience to pre– existing schema. However, a second implication corresponds to the potentially miseducative nature of experience (Dewey, 1938). The second finding from the pilot study was that some young people’s conceptualisations of difference were categorical to a greater degree than others, and this appeared to be directly related to their experiences. Through their encounters with social policy and provision they became more sensitised to the categories used to differentiate one group from another within social institutions. In the case of the young man in the example above, this had negative implications for how he viewed differences in terms of both his own identification as someone who was different and how he viewed others as different from himself. These implications warrant further consideration within an environment where difference is exceptional, such as the case of ethnic diversity in the South West, not least because of the difficulties people working at the local authority level have in defining difference for themselves or responding to the differences they encounter in their particular contexts. If policy–workers lack the awareness or autonomy to define and intervene in the conditions of their own specific and local circumstances, their professional practices can have profoundly miseducative effects. Arnet: Our capacity [to define difference] is to work within those established categories [such as ethnicity] and to signpost to schools and other agencies the need to prioritise, or not, activity for those groups and according to some fairly tight empirical data which will be about achievement or about exclusion or health data and so on, and the moving around of resources, financial resources and other resources to meet perceived needs within those categories and then to support that by a layer of training so that the resources get used in a way that we believe is going to be most effective to tackle what ever the issue is. So yes, within the local authority it’s quite limited in terms of, you know, our manoeuvrability on this.

Mediating between National and Local Policy The restricted manoeuvrability at the local authority level should be viewed within a wider national policy context. National drivers such as the government’s National Strategies for schooling (DCSF, N.D.) reduce the autonomy of local authorities and affect their capacity to make regional education decisions. Arnet: The way we have to work is defined, via national strategies, they set the agenda basically and we have to respond to that agenda. Whilst

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national strategies are not compulsory, it’s very hard to do something outside of that agenda. You have to be very clear and committed to wanting to go in a different direction from national strategies. It will be interesting to see what happens after 2011 when, you know, the Government decides to lose national strategies, so we will wait and see how that will be. But the rhetoric at the moment is that the autonomy goes back to schools, so I’m not quite sure where that will leave the local authority either. So there is a shift from centralised control right down to very local level at school level and I am very curious as to where local authorities will sit within that new frame.

It may also be that the formation of a coalition Conservative/Liberal government in May 2010 committed to increasing self–government of schools and reducing local authority influence reinforces the tendency for less mediation of general policies for local circumstances. Greater freedom might enable schools to be more responsive to their particular communities, but might also increase the danger of a fragmented and inadequate understanding of difference outside their experience. In spite of these challenges, Arnet feels that he is trying to take greater account of young people’s own experiences of difference in his work. He had recently been drafting Plymouth City Council’s inclusion policy for children and young people. He has previously mentioned this policy at project team meetings, suggesting that our pilot study findings would be useful to his draft. Arnet: What I am currently doing is going around visiting about 15 different schools talking to groups of young people about what was written in here and what their experiences of some of those principles that are in here and I am asking them to say right you need to write down some anecdotes of their personal experiences of those principles, I will take some of those and they will get written into the final draft, so within a document that is full of policy speak there will be some voices of young people that will be coming through but hopefully it will help to ground the policy speak in real experience and I think that creates a bridge for people reading them, so that it can be translated from a systems approach to a human level approach.

In other words, Arnet is using cases or vignettes from young people’s experience to illustrate his policy constructs. They function to exemplify the fundamental existence of social group categories and associated outcomes.

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Some Concluding Thoughts As their conversation comes to a close, Ruth asks Arnet to consider whether there is further application for our findings: Can the local authority do something more than reuse authorised categories of difference as the prompts for young people’s recollections of their own experiences of difference? Our findings indicate that implications arise for young people just through receiving the categories that are ascribed to them. How might this discovery alter the future ways that policy – makers and practitioners perceive and respond to their differences? As researchers, we have witnessed the tension for policy makers and implementers positioned between structure and broad brush categorisation on the one hand and local knowledge and sensitivities on the other. Funding and accountability usually follow the former; while the latter call for more situated responses. While current policy has changed the balance and directed accountability for social provision to the local level, we fear that the accompanying demand for economic efficiency has reduced the capacity for local authorities to act upon the needs of individuals. Thus, the advantages of attending to specificity may be lost in the current policy climate, emphasising the importance of macro–level policy that appropriately supports local policy enactment.

Implications for the Future There are two important considerations in determining a future course of action from our experiences in our research/policy/practice partnership. Firstly, we need to acknowledge the difficulties of changing social practice. The work of the local authority is affected by tacitly held beliefs and knowledge about professional roles at the level of individuals, and it is this that we believe can be altered through partnership and ongoing dialogue (Boyask and Quinlivan, 2008). Understandably the work of the local authority is also affected by accountability to national policy priorities, and change at this level is much more difficult to effect. While Arnet recognises that national policy frameworks are insufficiently subtle to intervene in the full range of differences that affect children and young people’s social outcomes, at a material level his work is structured and shaped by those external forces. Pure research can circumnavigate the complexities of power and knowledge through describing their production (through Foucault’s discourse analysis for example); applied research must grapple with the effects of power and knowledge on social practice. Changes in understanding are required by university researchers attempting

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policy–practice–research partnerships. In attempting to work together for change, we must be prepared for compromise. The research practice interface must not be viewed as unidirectional but as a dialogic and reciprocal endeavour. Second, we need to consider for policy and practice the implications of tensions between social group and individual approaches to difference. Whilst there is within a categorical approach to difference the risk of personal constraint, we must retain perspective on what is lost when we ignore social trends in inequalities. Debate continues on how we might close the gaps between the most socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups within the United Kingdom, yet it is generally appreciated that overall changes to social provision in the modern period have improved outcomes and quality of life for a larger proportion of the population (for example, see Paterson, 2001, regarding education). Debates also rage on the extent and nature of individualism within society (see, for example, Peters & Marshall, 1996 on the individual in post–modern society). In acknowledging individual differences, are we empowering previously disaffected individuals or are we advocating for a radical individualism that counteracts communitarian values? Whilst policy in recent years has sought to represent increasing regard for individual differences, we suggest that such representations are difficult to enact in ways that do not harm the social good. These considerations suggest to us a dialogic course of action. When working with categories, such as ethnicity and disability, how the meaning of these categories change for individuals through their experiences can be considered. The aim would be to show how context, in particular temporal, spatial and inter–relational contexts, affect the lived experience of categories of difference and consequently affect outcomes. For example, one might examine how individuals’ location in the South West of England may affect their perception of their own and others’ ethnicity. Arnet: My immediate thought when you talk about that is, I immediately went to thinking about the social construct and disability and a conversation I had with a friend of mine in London who was a thalidomide victim, who is very, very strong. Who is very clear in saying how it was the context of the environment that disabled him, it wasn’t his disability it was actually… Ruth: …the way it was responded to. Arnet: the way people responded to him. How they build houses. Where people put the light switch, things like that, that actually disenabled him and made him feel disabled in different places. And you know, that is quite

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Chapter One strongly embedded in disability theory but actually talking to him it was very powerful that message. And so when is a black person a black person, when they are in Plymouth surrounded by white people, how black can you be?

While this work has the potential to expand social categories so that policy–workers at Plymouth City Council can develop more nuanced responses to the specific cases that they encounter, we also feel that more work needs to be done to dislodge the power of categories of difference defined at a national level. In keeping with our dialogic approach to partnership, we hope that the discussion will contribute to policy–workers’ professional practice, but we also intend that it will serve a purpose for the project team in working towards the goal of improving our understanding of how research into subjective experience may better inform policy and practice. There is an emergent interest in dialogue between social researchers and national policy–workers, exemplified in the field of education in the United Kingdom with the development of a special interest group for educational research and policy–making in the British Educational Research Association. Under the previous government, the Department for Children Schools and Families organised workshops that intended to help focus on improving responses to difference through existing social policy and generating recommendations for future development. However, we suggest that these may not acknowledge sufficiently the complexity and challenges of translation from awareness to practice. They would be strengthened by local articulation of research and policy that supports mediation of the general to the specific. Through using forums such as our partnership for the dual purpose of deepening understandings of both policy and research, the impact of research such as that described here could be substantially enhanced through the development of policies (at institutional, local authority and national levels) for children and young people that have greater sensitivity to and recognition of personal experiences of difference. We would strongly advocate the importance of supporting in–depth locally responsive social research in addition to large scale, generalizing studies in order to develop policy responses which do not over–generalize nor homogenize cultural difference.

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Works Cited Ainscow, M., Conteh, J., Dyson, A., and Gallanaugh, F. “Children in primary education: Demography, culture, diversity and inclusion.” University Research Report No. 5/1. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2007. Ball, S. Class strategies and the education market: the middle class and social advantage. London: Routledge Falmer, 2003. Ball, S.J. The Education Debate. Bristol: Policy Press, 2008. Ball, S., J. & Bowe, R. “Subject departments and the 'implementation' of the National Curriculum policy: an overview of the issues.” Curriculum Studies 24.2 (1992): 97–115. Blanden J, and Machin S. Recent changes in intergenerational mobility in Britain. London: Sutton Trust, 2007. Boyask, R., Donkin, A., Waite, S., and Lawson, H. “Autonomy and governance in local authority provision for children and young people,” Policy Futures in Education, 11.5. forthcoming 2013. Boyask, R., Carter, R., Waite, S, and Lawson, H. “Changing Concepts of Diversity: Relationships between Policy and Identity in English Schools.” Educational Enactments in a Globalised World: Intercultural Conversations. Eds. K. Quinlivan, R, Boyask and B. Kaur, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2009a. 115–128. Boyask, R., Lawson, H., Waite, S., and Donkin, A. “The Diversity Project: Summary Report on Findings: Focus Group Evening.” Research Report, University of Plymouth; University of Exeter; Plymouth City Council, 2009b. Boyask, R. and Quinlivan, K. “Professional identity and performance within turbulent school cultures,” European Conference on Educational Research, University of Gothenburg. Sept 10–12, 2008. Dewey, J. Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Donkin, Arnet and Boyask, Ruth. Audio–recorded conversation. 25 January 2010. Great Britain. Department for Children Schools and Families. The National Strategies. No date. Web. 25 May 2010.

—. Department for Education (DfE). Support and Aspiration: A New Approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability. London: The Stationery Office. 2011. —. Department for Education and Schools. Every Child Matters [Green Paper] 2003.Web. 14 March 2008.

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Giddens, A. The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge : Polity, 1984. Lawson, H., Boyask, R. and Waite, S. “Construction of difference and diversity within policy and classroom practice in England.” Cambridge Journal of Education, forthcoming 2013. Kaur, B., Boyask, R., Quinlivan, K., and McPhail, J. “Searching for equity and social justice: Diverse learners in Aotearoa, New Zealand.” The education of diverse populations: A global perspective. Ed. G. Wan. The Netherlands: Springer Science and Business Media, 2008: 227– 251. Paterson, L. “Education and Inequality in Britain,” paper prepared for the social policy section at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Glasgow, 4 September 2001. Web. 5 April 2010. Peters, M., and Marshall, J. Individualism and community: Education and social policy in the postmodern condition. London: Falmer Press, 1996. Reay, D., Crozier, G., James, D., Hollingworth, S., Williams, K., Jamieson, F. and Beedell, P. “Re–invigorating democracy? White middle class identities and comprehensive schooling.”The Sociological Review 56.2 (2008): 238–255. Rowe, N. Playing the other: Dramatising personal narratives in playback theatre. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2007. Print. Tajfel, H. “Social identity and intergroup behaviour.”Social Science Information 13 (1974): 65–93. Waite, S., Boyask, R. and Lawson, H. “Aligning person–centred research methods and young people’s conceptualisations of diversity.” International Journal of Research Methods In Education (2010): 69– 83.

CHAPTER TWO DEADLY SYMBIOSIS: HOW SCHOOL EXCLUSIONS AND YOUTH CRIME INTERWEAVE MATT CLEMENT

Abstract The fate of the most marginalised youth has long been a key theme as social scientists have sought to analyse and explain this condition. This paper attempts to measure the extent to which different institutions, the education sector and the criminal justice system, operate in a way that leads to a small section of youth being separated off from their peers in a process of exclusion from school and inclusion within the criminal justice system (CJS). It addresses current UK policy concerns about the scale of non–involvement in education amongst teenagers, how current processes of austerity are exacerbating these problems, as reflected in England’s riots of 2011.The psychological and social consequences of this condition are discussed, drawing on Marx, Elias, Bourdieu and Wacquant. By promoting greater recognition of the scale of marginalisation it promotes the value of intercultural research and practice.

Research Background This project compiles evidence of the mentalities and behaviour generated by anti–social or marginalising effects, gathered from youth involved in the juvenile justice system, through interviews to capture aspects of their life histories that illustrate the phenomena alongside quantitative data collected to measure the key factors determining inclusion in this decivilising process, that forms the life—world or habitus—a product of long–term interdependency generating modes of behaviour and self–control amongst social figurations over time.With Marx, this paper

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argues that the chief “anti–social sources of crime” (Marx, 1971: 33) are not the merely symptomatic antisocial behaviour of the accused, but, rather, society’s desocialising failure to maintain a marginalised minority within the state education system. Statistical evidence for the backgrounds and status of criminalised youth highlights a disturbing triangulation of school exclusion, residential social care and delinquency—which contributes to the recent record numbers of young people in custody in Britain.

Research Aims and Methodology This collaborative project between myself and the Performance and Analysis Team at Bristol City Council aims to compile quantitative data gleaned from the Youth Offending and Education databases in order to trace the correlation between school exclusion and youth offending in a typical UK city. Looking at 2 cohorts (i.e. year groups) of young people aged 16–18 to see what percentage of offenders had their education disrupted by significant amounts of exclusion from school. The motivation for carrying out this research came from my experience as a practitioner, supporting the rehabilitation of those found guilty of offending between the ages of 12 and 18. Between 2006 and 2010 the impression I gained from the situation of the young people with whom I had been involved was that many of them had failed to regularly attach themselves to the secondary school system. The pattern of behaviour varied. Some had been officially excluded from their selected secondary school and their subsequent transfer to another institution had been problematic: Some had remained on a school’s roll but not attended regularly: Some young people had never been allocated a school—their absence was therefore not noted and the systems of the local education authority were effectively unaware of their existence. My job role is within Bristol’s Youth Offending Team; a multi–agency partnership of professionals from different backgrounds such as social work, teaching, the police service and youth work. Our role is to support the rehabilitation of these young people: Central to this is identifying the biggest barriers to their inclusion in the norms and routines of teenage life, and regular school attendance is widely recognised as a vital element in this process. This subject is frequently aired at team meetings, as many practitioners feel that ensuring school attendance could go a long way towards overcoming marginalisation, and often found themselves frustrated by the fact that schools, social workers, parents and often the young people themselves do not prioritise securing educational inclusion.

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Another problem hampering the resolution of this dilemma is the way in which official statistics do not state its scale accurately. Government targets tend to focus only on those officially excluded, constituting only a small fraction of those not in school. Key figures are represented as a percentage of the whole school population rather than concentrating on how acute the problem is within particular marginalised minorities. Both these measures tend to underplay how significantly this exclusion impacts upon those least able to overcome it. Taking the annual cohort of Bristol’s young people involved in the criminal justice system (approximately 300), I discovered that 142 were on record as having some significant disruption to their secondary education—almost 50 per cent.1 By gathering information on the levels of secondary school exclusion within this cohort, we can establish whether this phenomenon is sufficiently statistically significant to form part of the explanation for rates of delinquency. Also, many young people excluded from school end up receiving education other than at school. This has been recognised in a recent government report “Ending Gang Violence” which says of one study by UK gang expert John Pitts: “almost two–thirds of gang members in the study had been permanently excluded from school, and there is evidence that exclusion from school can accelerate offending and anti– social behaviour. This can often start with repeat truancy. To address this serious issue, we have announced that we will reduce the persistent absence threshold from 20% to 15%” (Home Office, 2011:17).Clearly the Alternative Education programme is failing; creating desocialisation due to young peoples’ separation from both mainstream provision and their peer group. The graphs produced should be symptomatic of the scale of the issues around young peoples’ exclusion and offending behaviour in UK cities generally, as Bristol is in many ways a typical UK provincial city: so the results have national policy implications about how educational entitlement is regulated. Also I aim to cross–reference these individuals with those registered as looked after, i.e. young people whose parenting responsibility lies with the state, to assess the degree of correlation between the two – and how authorities in loco parentis could do more for the children in their care. This phenomenon of significant levels of school exclusion amongst the most marginalised is generally understood at a common sense level by many professionals working with disadvantaged young people—but not counteracted by regulatory strategies within the 1

Figure is an average of the total number of people live on the database of Bristol’s “Youth Offending Information Service” (YOIS) between 2007–11 (author’s research notes).

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relevant social care, criminal justice and educational institutions. By assembling a set of figures that show reliably the scale of the problem professionals working in this sector will be empowered to make the case for allocating increased time and resources with the aim of ensuring that entitlement to education is a reality for all young people. Quality intercultural research could therefore improve practice—and impact positively on the life chances of a vulnerable group, who often make poor transitions from youth to adulthood when their educational entitlement is neglected by those institutions formally committed to the process. Previous to this quantitative study, I carried out ethnographic qualitative research—collecting notes and compiling case studies based upon several years of visiting a selection of teenagers at Ashfield Young Offenders Institution whilst working for the Youth Offending Team, a multi–agency partnership of social workers, teachers, youth workers, police officers and court specialists based in Bristol, the provincial ‘capital’ of south–west England. My research focus here was the phenomenon of teenage knife crime. As a participant observer in these young peoples’ situations, my position was not neutral— rather, it was a part of the “street level bureaucracy” that works for their reform and rehabilitation (Lipsky, 1982: 1). Such limited empirical evidence as was presented in three case studies described the dilemmas inherent in the situation of those committing these crimes: what factors precipitate their actions, and how social policy responds (Clement 2010a).This chapter will unravel some of the processes underlying this scenario, noting the correlation between their adopting risk–laden survival strategies and the degree of socialisation they receive through school attendance. Maggie Atkinson, the UK Children’s Commissioner, recently highlighted the significant degree of illegal exclusion from school that is occurring nationwide, noting the various ways that headteachers can persuade parents not to appeal against their child’s removal from school, and turn a blind eye to the persistent absence of those pupils they believe will undermine the school’s overall standard of academic achievement. The research underpinning Atkinson’s report highlighted that over half of those young people with a criminal record had experienced exclusion from school (Atkinson, M. 2012: 2). This city–wide study should compliment Atkinson’s research and allow the construction of a statistically valid evidence–base, demonstrating the decivilising process which literally degrades the life–quality of this most marginalised group, as well as generating risk of harm to their peers, their families and other victims. This clearly has remedial implications for future cohorts whose absence from the socialising benefits of school attendance will tend to exacerbate

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their decivilisation and, in some cases, strengthen attachments to the alternative role models of the informal economy of the street gang. Over time, this research could allow the local authority based collaborative research team to track the costs of care interventions and institutional fees associated with the various agencies that have intervened during these “poor transitions” for the most marginalised young people; in order to demonstrate the unsustainability of the sticking–plaster social policy whereby young people excluded from school are placed on “alternative education” programmes that lack the socialising capacity of mainstream academic institutions (Barnardos, 2010: 2). Anecdotal evidence from my experience of working with dozens of young people within the criminal justice system would seem to suggest that the coincidence of these two factors may be statistically significant. By compiling a rigorous profile of this degree of symbiosis, it is hoped that the city authorities can be presented with incontrovertible evidence of the social cost of allowing some pupils to opt out of their statutory education. The policy implication is that more money and resources targeted at keeping these young people in schools would be well spent if it resulted in a subsequent reduction in their rates of incarceration. The latter is a powerful experience for any young person to go through, costing the state a considerable amount in accommodation fees, and inflicting a corrosive institutionalisation upon these vulnerable youth that seems to play out in high levels of recidivism and difficulty in positively reintegrating into society. I maintain that re–regulation of the school system to ensure pupils do not remain excluded can only occur if local education authorities regain control over school admissions. As things stand, the competitive nature of current educational legislation ensures no school has an interest in retaining excluded pupils, rather the reverse, so this minority find themselves lost, removed from the educational mainstream. In order to live up to the promise of recent legislation that Every Child Matters we need to give local authorities the powers to ensure re–inclusion takes place. Over time, this research will be compiled through collaboration with the Performance and Analysis Team at Bristol City Council, cross– referenced with information from the Youth Offending Team database: This could allow the team to track the costs of care interventions and institutional fees associated with the various agencies that have intervened during these poor transitions for the most marginalised young people; in order to demonstrate the unsustainability of the sticking–plaster social policy whereby young people excluded from school are placed on

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alternative education programmes that lack the socialising capacity of mainstream academic institutions. For these “teenagers under the knife” (Clement, 2010a: 439), this process of marginalisation is already having a decivilising impact: Advancing austerity could widen the ranks of those exposed to this level of insecurity, heightening fears of loss of status and damaging the fabric of everyday life. By demonstrating the “triangulation” effect of the three social factors – youth offending, young people “looked after” by the state and exclusion/absence from secondary schooling I hope to outline both the scale of the problem for this alienated minority, and how the lack of positive socialisation through education has disempowered them from overcoming advancing marginalisation. The rising level of re–offending amongst this group, despite a recent fall in the numbers incarcerated in Young Offenders’ Institutions (YOIs), is testament to the way in which neoliberal economic models and policies have institutionalised inequality in the outcomes of young people. This can allow new cultural forms to emerge outside the rigidities of the previous system of industrial structuration, which challenge assimilation and pose new problems of integration for society as a whole. By re–introducing a degree of educational regulation, it is possible that some of the more unpredictable and anti–social outcomes of this decivilising process could be overcome. Below I discuss how previous analysis of youth transitions informed this intercultural project.

Implications Having previously worked as a secondary teacher in a Bristol school, the author wished to research the degree to which school exclusion necessarily led to broader societal or social exclusion, typically expressed through juvenile delinquency. Research into levels of juvenile delinquency is a well–trodden field in sociology; ever since McKay and Shaw tracked youth crime rates in different areas of Chicago to reinforce Burgess’ concentric zone theory, which explained how social inequalities are represented in city space (Park et al, 1983: 15; Smith, 1988: 5).The validity of this particular research programme is its intercultural focus on identifying which factors are triggers for its acceleration, and how interested parties can work together to ameliorate the condition. There is currently a need for a renewed focus on levels of UK youth delinquency as a litmus test of society’s capacity to promote social cohesion, as the 2011 English riots made only too clear (Clement, 2012b: 127): If school exclusion is a statistically significant predictor of youth crime then

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research and practice that focuses on breaking down this deadly symbiosis must have a high value. Most recently, Jean Kane’s research has empirically tested this theory—namely that “the young people most vulnerable to social exclusion were also those most likely to be excluded from school” (Kane, 2011: 16).The context is one where: The apparent paradox between policy which emphasises inclusion but continues to exclude begins to look false: social inclusion policies are not at odds with exclusion. Rather, they have helped to solidify the economic identity of one group as needy and different from other groups, set apart by virtue of their reliance upon government welfare (Kane, 2011: 18).

Another facet which my earlier research has explored involves describing some of the social–psychological consequences of this process, using Elias’ notion of the civilising process to measure how these excluded young people may be mentally affected by the lack of socialisation and integration caused by their educational exclusion. By combining Wacquant and Elias I wanted to ask is this process decivilising? (Clement, 2010a 440)And, despite their intentions, are some government policies toward the excluded actually reinforcing these mentalities by pathologising them i.e. placing an anti–social stigma upon them through arrests, curfews and anti–social behaviour orders (ASBOs)? (Rodger, 2008: 3).Marx was explicit on this point: Crime must not be punished in the individual but the anti–social sources of crime must be destroyed to give everyone social scope for the essential assertion of this vitality. If man is formed by circumstances, then his circumstances must be made human (Marx, 1971: 32–33).

The implication is that this long–term institutionalisation of inferiority is breeding behaviour that could be characterised as a “decivilising spurt” (Elias, 2000: 253), where codes of violence play a greater role in everyday living. This leads to the principal research questions: What are the implications of this growth of anti–social conditions for today’s urban outcasts. Will this minority who are becoming reluctant gangsters, grow in proportion as their “advanced marginality” (Wacquant, 2008: 1; Squires and Lea 3) leads to “a world of gangs” (Hagedorn, 2008: 1). Can their situation be ameliorated if their subculture can be positively integrated through their guaranteed inclusion in the school system?

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From “Learning to Labour” to Social Exclusion In order to understand how the transition from school to work can be interrupted in this fashion, derailing young people from more functional career paths, it is necessary to analyse the historical context whereby the relatively “secure’” transitions of the post–war era have been transformed through the last three decades of neoliberal economics (Goodwin et al 2002).At the end of the thirty years of welfare state expansion in Britain and Europe which had been characterised by rising working class living standards and expectations – Paul Willis chronicled how this process worked in secondary schools in his influential text “Learning to Labour: How working class kids get working class jobs”. He demonstrated the way in which the least academically able cohort of the school system acted out their rebellion within the school system – in preparation, he argued, for their absorption into the low–skilled employment sector upon leaving school (Willis, 1977: 18). After the decade of mass unemployment in the 1980s and the substantial reorganisation of the economy in the subsequent 30 plus years, these secure opportunities were no longer available and the rigid demarcations and classifications of the industrial era no longer seemed to apply. Whilst the overall level of educational achievement was rising, the bottom section of the cohort seemed more detached, or “excluded” from the bulk of society. Often this process of exclusion began with its namesake – i.e. exclusion from school, which increasingly appeared to deal a severe blow to young people’s ability to re–attach themselves to the education system. As Bourdieu stressed, in order to [g]rasp the essential of each person’s idiosyncrasy and all the singular complexity of their actions and reactions sociologists must uncover the objective structures past and present expressed in the actual academic institutions through which they traverse” (Bourdieu cited in Atkinson W., 2010: 10).

The thirteen years of UK Labour government from 1997 to 2010 included a theoretically sophisticated programme of social policy designed to address the problem of widening social exclusion in Britain’s most deprived areas. One aspect of this was the formation of “multi–agency partnerships”, which would allow public sector workers to collaborate in resolving issues of deprivation which are so often interlinked. One example is the Youth Offending Team, an institution formed in the early 2000s to address juvenile delinquency, which combines social workers, police officers, teachers and other support workers. By linking up and

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carrying out interventions based around joined–up working, a picture has emerged of where the systemic failures tend to cohere, and what allows those excluded from the protection of mainstream institutions to become detached and marginalised from the norms of everyday life. Social exclusion has been recognised since the 1980s as a product of the institutionalisation of patterns of unemployment and deprivation in poorer areas. This “jobs gap in Britain’s cities” (Turok, 1999: 1) has been complimented by an extensive educational re–organisation, which has left a secondary “schools gap” in the poorer localities of cities such as Bristol. At the same time the local area education authorities have lost the legal power to regulate and ensure a comprehensive education for all, which has resulted in a minority being either excluded from, or choosing not to attend, secondary school. The fact that this is now affecting a second generation of young people, many of whom whose parents were the victims of the first generation of mass UK unemployment in the 1980s, exacerbates the presence of negative role models and creates an alienating life world or habitus for today’s marginalised youth. At the same time, Britain’s level of incarceration continues to rise alongside growth in global prison population, it is the highest in Europe outside Turkey: In 1993 the UK prison population was 45,000; by March 2012 the figure had almost doubled to a staggering 88,434 (Ministry of Justice, 2012).These national trends are reflected in the story of Bristol, the regional capital of the South–west and England’s fourth richest city.

The Poverty of Education Deindustrialisation in Bristol through the 1980s and 90s has been accompanied by social decline in “neighbourhoods of relegation” (Wacquant, 2008: 114).One notable aspect of this phenomenon has been school closures: Falling pupil numbers in schools in poorer areas have been largely caused by the effects of the 1988 education act which allowed academically successful schools to grow at the expense of their neighbours. Inevitably those in areas of social housing have lost out in this beauty contest and Bristol has closed 5 secondary schools in areas of social deprivation in the last decade. Not only has this decivilised the environment and encouraged families traditionally less engaged with the school system to conclude that they need not participate in schooling, it has degraded the quality of those remaining schools in poorer areas, as more conscientious parents feel increasingly obliged to move their children out of schools labeled as failing: The whole process is a vicious circle—a self–fulfilling prophecy. This has created a type of educational

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apartheid with the gap widening between the rising prospects of the bulk of pupils, contrasting with worsening circumstances of many of those living on council estates. Indeed, the whole project of social mixing across the working class which council estates represented has been undermined by the widespread selling off of council houses since the early 1980s, which, in turn, has tended to remove aspirational residents from these areas and tip the social balance towards the sort of culture of poverty or underclass2 existence described in many accounts of social problems. The poverty of Bristol’s secondary school system can be explained by this type of discourse. Despite being the UK’s fourth richest city, its secondary school results in terms of exam scores at 16 in 2009 were the second–worst in the country. This led to some official recognition of the problem and there have been significant improvements in the city’s league table position since then. The majority of the secondary schools have become academies—funded directly by national government with less local oversight and accountability. In the process two formerly fee–paying schools have joined the state sector and their high GCSE results have helped to lift the overall percentage of successful Bristol pupils. Another reason for Bristol’s historically poor results is the high level of attendance at private (public) schools—18%—which removes some high scorers from the end results: Also, many parents bus their children to outlying schools which boosts the scores of neighbouring areas at Bristol’s expense. This, plus the closure programme, had hollowed out the old model of city provision from the early 2000s to 2009 with predictable poor results (Clement, 2006: 5). Before the 1988 education act, local education authorities controlled school provision and managed the budgets, employed the teachers and regulated its outcomes. This meant a person who school A felt compelled to remove was re–accommodated at school B—usually the nearest alternative institution—with comparatively little difficulty. As all schools were liable to take these excluded pupils they recognized there was no point excluding except as a last resort, and tended to be imaginative in their efforts to retain pupils. However, the imposition of a national curriculum pressurised schools to standardise their provision and undermined the efforts of schools to vary their methods to ensure pupils remained motivated, leading to greater retention (Ball, S., 2008: 28). Above all the act gave headteachers control of their budgets and responsibility for selling their product—all of which added to pressures to exclude those deemed to be undermining the education of others through 2

Both these terms are contentious, constituting labels which then devalue those people to whom they are attached.

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disruptive behaviour, or likely to reduce the school’s academic standing by their lower than average exam results. Inevitably, by 1990 school exclusions began to rise: Not only were headteachers keen to exclude the minority of undesirable pupils, whose poor behaviour and academic potential makes their education expensive and their presence potentially disruptive for other pupils, they also fought not to admit other excluded pupils from neighbouring institutions. Even though this problem has been recognised by subsequent educational policy–makers, their reluctance to dismantle these regimes of competition has prevented measures to reduce exclusions from working. Instead, in order to meet targets that government has set to reduce exclusions, education authorities have encouraged the establishment of alternative education provision in the form of private projects not based in school premises that end up having a far more minimal impact upon the young people concerned: They do however have the advantage of allowing the authority to no longer count these people as “excluded”, although in terms of the school system they undoubtedly are. The Department for Education recently reported rather bluntly that: In 2009/10, 5020 pupils were permanently excluded from their secondary school. Most were sent to alternative provision such as Pupil Referral Units. Latest statistics show that only 1.4 per cent of pupils in alternative provision achieved five good GCSEs including maths and English. The Government believes this is not good enough (Department for Education, 2011).

This statement was part of a press release announcing a new initiative whereby “headteachers will be responsible for ensuring that the pupils they exclude continue to receive a decent education” in a trial involving around 300 schools (ibid.). Such initiatives are welcome of course, but risk understating the scale of the problem by only turning the lens on those pupils officially permanently excluded, missing out those who never appear on the rolls or end up out of school without being registered as formally excluded by any institution. The result of greater competition in education is the penalisation of those the system labels losers, who become outcasts deprived of their entitlement through their alleged shortcomings: this process is an example of what Engels meant when he wrote: “The decision concerning the allocation is actually made by competition which is an entirely alien and fortuitous measure. Competition represents the cunning power which the strong can exercise over the weak” (Engels, 1961: 163). He was writing about how goods are divided

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up between different social classes, so his analysis is highly pertinent to the valuable public good of education. The recent Barnardo’s report, carried out by Demos, “In Loco Parentis” compares the “costs associated with good and poor care journeys” (45), in order to highlight the financial costs incurred managing poor transitions into adulthood. An earlier Barnardo’s report, “Failed by the system” in 2006, had illustrated how 79% of children in care had left school without GCSEs with predictably poor resultant life–chances. In other words, the financial and social costs of educational failure are becoming high enough to call into question the wisdom of the public policy framework that allows this state of affairs to continue. The change to secondary school provision inaugurated by the 1988 Education Act had assumed that market mechanisms, which incentivise institutions to compete for the maximum pupil cohort, will raise overall educational standards. However the changes to both the internal school regime, and differences between different schools’ outcomes according to their local area’s income levels as described above, have widened educational inequalities to the extent that a hard–core minority of teenagers have become outcasts from the system through school exclusion and non– attendance (Clement 2006). As Kane concludes: “Exclusion, especially repeated exclusion, increases existing inequality by undermining excluded pupils’ experience of schooling by alienating those pupils and their families from the education system” (Kane, 2011: 33). The reason why these matters of educational administration have such significance is the subsequent fate of those Wacquant calls “urban outcasts” (Clement, 2012b: 111).If their lack of education and social integration puts them outside the city’s job markets and their social peer groups, then the life–world of the marginalised youth discussed here is likely to be significantly removed from the expectations and values of the mainstream society. When visiting some of these boys who are currently incarcerated in the local Young Offenders’ Institution, I am struck by their casual attitude towards the use of violence, and weapons, as part of their daily lives. Many talk about having difficulty managing their anger and appear hypersensitive to apparent affronts; which in turn can lead to the sort of violent retaliation that constitutes their crime. This hypersensitivity may come from the lack of opportunity to be socialised through schooling, leading to an emotional immaturity that makes them vulnerable to such dangerous reactions Renowned expert on the UK gangland phenomenon, John Pitts has dubbed this group “reluctant gangsters”, the title of his recent book (2008): Small–scale drug dealers earn very little from their trade—but lack

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of other sustainable employment throws them back upon this meagre option—as Mike Davis epitomized, gangs “mint power for the otherwise powerless from their control of small urban spaces…these informal spatial monopolies equal entrepreneurial opportunity” (Davis, 2008: xi). The question of the degree to which the uneven urban development that condemns poorer zones to a subordinate status necessarily makes these neighbourhoods “zones in transition” (Park et al, 1983: 49) subject to social disorganisation is a complex one, which defies easy stereotyping.

Riots, Racism and Marginalisation As is typical of many UK cities, Bristol has seen a number of key events that have contributed to the break–up of the old regime of secure transitions built up in the welfare state era. This failure is attested by events: For example, the St Paul’s riot of April 1980 was the first major post–war civil disturbance in Britain; the swallow heralding the long hot summer of riots in British inner cities in 1981 (Kettle and Hodges, 1982: 3).Although the spark that occasioned the riot was heavy–handed policing, the issue—as Lord Scarman’s report highlighted—was unequal opportunities which were the fount of race and class prejudice. Black and white residents of the inner city protested at the lack of equal opportunities in employment that drove many into the informal economy of criminality and thus the heavy–handed policing and racial discrimination from an institutionally racist police force. Recent research has shown that white estates in poorer areas of Bristol were also affected by this sense of the need to express this marginalization: One, Southmead, rioted immediately after St Paul’s (Ball, R.,2010: 1) and another, Hartcliffe, 12 years later when this outer city area suddenly faced mass unemployment through factory closures, followed by social stigmatization and insensitive policing that led to the death of a local teenager in a similar manner to the French banlieues in 2005. In April 2011, Bristol was once again the harbinger of a national wave of riots—when hundreds of youth rioted on two successive Friday nights when police attempted to close down a squat adjoining St Paul’s—in what became known as the “Tesco Riot” (Clement, 2012a: 81). Further disturbances occurred here in August 2011 in the days following the outbreak of the English Riots. These events have, of course, been subject to extensive analysis as to their causes and consequences (Briggs, 2012: 5): The cancellation of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which allowed many poorer young people to attend further education college, just the month beforehand, has been highlighted as one factor

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promoting the sense of alienation and marginalisation of youth, alongside rising University fees and the widespread closure of Youth Services. A close study of the content of some young peoples’ justifications of their actions in the riots, as seen on television in the week of the August Riots seems to reveal there were a complex combination of factors which came together and created a rationale for their reaction to the circumstances in which they found themselves. One stated: “The government, they don’t care for us. They just leave us on the block—to do whatever we do”. His friend added: “The government they’re not thinking about us. They’re thinking about that pocket;” he gestured across the river to the towers of Canary Wharf, “one pocket that’s up there” (Sky, 2011). This comment inspired his colleague to launch into an outburst that is little short of a political manifesto: It is noteworthy because it stresses how these young men identify with the aspirations of their more ‘normal’ peers, and can clearly relate to how current austerity measures are contributing to their sense of alienation: They should put back on E.M.A. Help all those single mothers that are struggling. Uni. Cuts, everythin’—we’re not doin’ this for the fun of it. We’re doing it for money—to survive in this WORLD. But until we get that, or a little bit of support from the government, then it’s not gonna stop. That’s what I think innit (Sky, 2011).

John Heale, in his study of London’s gangland One Blood describes the “ghettoisation of the mind” (Heale, 2009: 89) that can result from long–term marginality and gang involvement: This can occur despite the fact that that their neighbourhood may have undergone physical regeneration, and lack the extremes of anomie associated with, for example, the true ghettos of contemporary US cities (Wilson, 2007:10). For these reasons Wacquant terms these areas “anti–ghettoes” (Wacquant, 2008: 51), suggesting that the communal institutions once forged by residents to compensate for their isolation are also lacking. Whereas in the US this leaves them bereft of state intervention, in Europe and the UK the state commissions a cluster of public services to fill the gap. This makes a difference: For example, in St Paul’s the old “front line” has been converted into a regular residential street by demolishing the old Black and White Café—the scene of the police raid that sparked the original riot—and building two replacement mock Georgian terraced houses to fill the gap. New arrivals would never know that this spot was for two decades Bristol’s principal area for street dealing of illegal drugs: A learning centre and local library have been built opposite and the area finally has its own publicly–funded community and sports centres. However, this record of

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capital investment was driven by rising inner city property values which were dramatically called into question in 2008’s bank quake, and the slow motion process of advancing austerity is already undermining the sustainability of communities closest to the economic margins of many Western cities.

A Decivilising Process The numbers compelled to enter the informal economy are already provoking a rising tide of gang–involved criminality in Bristol over the last year. The central M32 motorway runs through the inner city en route to the downtown shopping malls and riverside, bisecting the cities two largest multicultural neighbourhoods, Easton and St Paul’s. Bridges across the highway are scenes of increasing animosity and small–scale turf wars between gangs from the two areas. One Bristol youth aged 16 was stabbed to death in a case of mistaken identity and territorial rivalry at the World’s End pub in summer 2009: This is in the suburban working class suburb of St George in East Bristol, equivalent to zone 3 in Chicago School economist Ernest Burgess’ map of the typical evolution of cities. In the modern city the conditions breeding these symptoms of advancing marginality can be found in an urban sprawl extending beyond merely the inner city or out–of–town sink estates, as Heale’s London evidence suggests: The inhabitants of many working class areas are at risk. In a large provincial metropolis, the numbers of areas designated in need of neighbourhood renewal3 due to embedded patterns of long–term unemployment and reliance upon a growing unregulated, and often illegal, informal economy are growing. During the 2003 boom period Bristol identified 10 such wards within its boundaries (Clement, 2010b: 40), but this did not include East Bristol’s St George, nor the neighbouring Hillfields estate. The conditions of marginality appear to spreading out across wider swathes of what were once respectable working class neighbourhoods. This is not only a product of worklessness, symbolised by the fate of the urban outcasts described here, but also of what Karl Polanyi described as “Arbeitsleid (the disutility—literally ‘hardship’—of labour)”4: the increasing stresses incurred maintaining work in a climate of austerity and rising living costs, and greater risk of becoming less securely employed—generate advancing anomie.5 3

This term was coined by the last UK Labour Government in the early 2000s. cited in (Dale, 2008: 23) 5 An ethnography of the working poor is presented in Kathleen Newman’s ‘No shame in my game: The working poor and the inner city’ 4

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One other unknown factor confronting us when predicting the extent of this deadly symbiosis is the long–term effects of consecutive generations of mass unemployment concentrated in the most marginalised families. Long–term exclusion from school can be reinforced as an unavoidable reality by families lacking the regular rhythms of working life; no one to encourage you to get up, or set an example by not vegetating in front of day time television for example. Habits such as parental collusion in school non–attendance in order to gain joint leisure time can be built up into expectations of the daily life experience that militate against achieving a normal (socialised) schooling process. We do create our own life–world, but not in circumstances of our choosing, so the realities of the exercise of choice are perennially reflected through class prisms that describe our options with more or less limitations. This is why it is fruitless to merely condemn these examples of anti–social behaviour, which are themselves the inevitable product of attitudes bred in decidedly anti–social circumstances. Without this civilising transitioning process accompanying their pattern of everyday life, some ghettoised young people react against the anomie of their existence by an overly defensive stance of self–protection. This contemporary decivilising process creates a mindscape similar to those of previous pre–civilised societies that pre–dated welfare state capitalism in the world’s advanced economies: Figurations such as the knightly/warrior caste, the nineteenth century “gangs of New York” (Asbury, 2002: 1), or prohibition–era gangsters—a gang culture dominated by violence— conferred an aggressive mentality upon individuals as an instrumental survival goal. Norbert Elias liked to counsel his readers not to normalize their own (implicit) educated and civilised standards as applicable to all situations, reminding us that: The armour of civilized conduct would crumble very rapidly if…the danger of insecurity…were to break in upon us again, and if danger became as incalculable as once it was. Corresponding fears would soon burst the limits set to them today (Elias, 2000: 253).

As witnesses to the institution of a barbaric regime of fear in countries previously at the forefront of cultural modernism, social democracy and political experiment, both Elias and Polanyi recognized the dangers to democracy in the decade of economic depression—symbolized in their respective exile from Germany and Austria. They saw how human behaviour, complexity and interdependency were unravelled by this spurt

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of reaction. Their insights from the 1930s cockpit of war and uncertainty provide useful analytical tools for today’s intercultural sociologists.

After the Riots Writing in the same year as Marx, Dickens made an appeal to the hypocritical moralists of his day who condemned crime as a product of moral evil: Oh! Ye Pharisees…who soundingly appeal to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it has not been transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of generations, into the nature of the beast (Dickens, 2004: 221).

Just these types of attitudes have been on display from politicians and the media since the English Riots of 2011. It is all very well for the likes of Prime Minister Cameron to decry this “feral underclass” and talk of a “slow motion moral collapse” (Briggs, 2012: 15) explaining these events, but his refusal to seriously investigate the roots of the riots betrays a lack of concern for the plight of these urban outcasts. A recent report on Ending Gang and Youth Violence (Home Office, 2011: 23) has firmly committed, with the thin gloss of respectability gained from citing valuable academic research, to solve this pressing problem by pressuring schools to act faster on truancy by dropping threshold levels of acceptability and threatening to publish pupil absence data for all to see. It fails to recognise that the problem of rising school exclusion was initiated by the previous Tory government’s programme of education reform, which institutionalised a competitive educational meritocracy and compelled headteachers to exclude disruptive pupils in order to compete in the league tables by which they are judged (Ball, S., 2008: 102)—a policy maintained and exacerbated by New Labour and their concern with expanding school autonomy and introducing City Academies. Now the coalition government led by David Cameron has extended the market model still further by not only fervently pushing primary schools to deregulate and embrace Academy status too but introducing so–called Free schools which can effectively retain state subsidies but control who they admit—a model imported from Sweden where it has hardly been deemed a success. The extra autonomy that schools gain from attaining Academy status reduces the required level of reporting on pupils’ progress to the local authority, but national government has aimed to encourage retention of pupils by introducing fines for schools that permanently exclude pupils,

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which will no doubt act as an incentive to school management to devise creative ways of keeping young people attached to the institution. The Home Office rationale is explicitly outlined as maintaining attachment and social inclusion: If the education he [an excluded young person] received after his exclusion from school had succeeded in reengaging him, he might have been encouraged to stay on at 16 rather than sinking ever more rapidly into the illegal economy (Home Office, 2011: 21).

There is clearly a critical contradiction between the warm government messages to schools about enhancing their autonomy from the overall responsibilities of the local education authority as a whole and the cool directive to improve levels of attachment to educational institutions amongst this most marginalised section of the school–age population (Clement, 2012b). To conclude, the poor standard of education I have discovered amongst Bristol’s most marginalised youth is a statistically significant indicator of a deadly symbiosis with their involvement with the criminal justice system. Official measurements of school exclusion underplay this disproportionate and decivilising phenomena amongst one of the most vulnerable and volatile sections of the population, with riotous results.

Works Cited Asbury, Herbert. Gangs of New York. London: Arrow, 2002. Atkinson, Maggie. They Never Give Up on You. London: Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2012. Atkinson, W. “Phenomenological additions to the Bourdieusian toolbox: two problems for Bourdieu, two solutions from Schutz.” Sociological Theory, 28.1 (2010). 1–19. Ball, Roger. The Southmead and St. Paul’s Riots 1980. Paper to Regional History Seminar, University of the West of England. March 2010. Ball, Stephen. The Education Debate. Bristol: Policy Press, 2008. Barnardos, Demos. In loco parentis – a report on the financial costs of care journeys. www.barnardos.org.uk/in_loc_parentis , 2010. Accessed 31.5.2010. —. Failed by the system.www.barnardos.org.uk, 2006, Accessed 31.5.2010. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Understanding” The weight of the world. Ed. Pierre Bourdieu. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999.

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Briggs, Daniel. Ed. The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent Hook, Waterside Press, 2012. Clement, Matt. Educational Exclusion in Bristol. .www.bristolindymedia. org.uk , 2006, Accessed 1.12.2007. —. “Bristol: Civilising the Inner City.” Race and Class 48.3 (2007). 97– 110. —.“Teenagers under the knife: A Decivilising Process.” Journal of Youth Studies 13.4 (2010a): 439–451. —. “Local Notables and the City Council Revisited: The use of partnerships in Bristol’s regeneration” Social and Public Policy Review 4.2 (2010b). 35–49. —. “Rage against the Market: Bristol’s Tesco Riot.” Race and Class 53.3 (2012a). 81–90. —.“The Urban Outcasts of the British City.”Class Inequality in Austerity Britain: Power, Difference and Suffering. Ed. Will Atkinson, Stephen Roberts, and Mike Savage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012b. 111–127. Dale, Gareth. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Davis, M.“Foreword” Hagedorn, John. A world of gangs: Armed young men and gangsta culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008. i–xx. Department for Education. Press Notice. 17/10/11. Dickens, Charles. Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Penguin, 2004. [1844] Elias, Norbert.The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. [1939] Engels, Friedrich. Selected Writings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. Goodwin, J. and O’Connor, H. “Exploring Complex Transitions: Looking Back at the “Golden Age” of From School to Work.” Sociology 39.2 (2005). 201–20. Hagedorn, John. A world of gangs: Armed young men and gangsta culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008. Heale, John.One Blood: Inside London’s New Gang Culture. London: Pocket Books, 2009. Home Office Ending Gang Violence: Cross Government Report. London: HMSO ,2011. Kane, Jean. Social Class, Gender and Exclusion from School. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. Kettle, Martin. and Hodges, Lucy. Uprising! The police, the people and the riots in Britain’s Cities. London: Pan, 1982. Kuzmics, Helmut. “The civilizing process” Civil society and the state: new European perspectives. Ed. John Keane. London: Verso, 1988.

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Kuzmics, Helmut. and Axtmann, Roland. Authority, state and national character: the civilizing process in Austria and England 1700–1900. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Squires, Peter. and Lea, John. (eds.) Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality Bristol: Policy Press, 2012. Lipsky, M. Street–level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public service. New York: Sage, 1982. MacDonald, Rob. and Marsh, Jean. Disconnected youth: growing up in Britain’s poor neighbourhoods. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005. Marx, Karl.“The Holy Family” [1844] The Thought of Karl Marx Ed. David McLellan London: Macmillan, 1971. Ministry of Justice.www.justice.gov.uk .Accessed 2.3. 2012. Newman, Katherine. No shame in my game: the working poor and the inner city. New York: Vintage, 1999. Park, R. Burgess, E. & McKenzie, J. (eds.) The City. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983 [1925]. Pitts, John. Reluctant Gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Cullompton: Willan, 2008. Rodger, J. Criminalising Social Policy: Anti social behaviour and welfare in a de–civilised society. Cullompton: Willan, 2008. Sky Television News. Looters. 12.8.2011 Smith, Denis. The Chicago School: A Liberal Critique of Capitalism. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Turok, Ivan. The jobs gap in Britain’s Cities. London: Department of Employment, 1999. Wacquant, Loic. “Decivilizing and Demonizing: With Norbert Elias in the Dark Ghetto” The sociology of Norbert Elias Ed. Loyal, Stephen. & Quilley, Stephen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. —.Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977. Wilson, David. Cities and Race: America’s New Black Ghettos. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007.

CHAPTER THREE TRANSCULTURAL SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK: A CASE STUDY OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN PRACTICE SHARON SCHNEIDER

Abstract This chapter focuses on out-of-school suspension examining the relationship between behaviour, antecedent school and family factors. In this analysis, the biological, biopsychological and biopsychosocial-cultural needs of a secondary school student are viewed within the UN framework of Children's Rights. I argue that when basic human needs are not met, this can result in disruptive student behaviour. In order to provide and maintain a safe and inclusive educational environment conducive to social and emotional wellbeing, social workers and teachers are required to address the relationship between basic human needs and children’s rights. This includes the development of school policies and disciplinary protocols, which promote and foster a culture of dignity for all students. This has not always been the case with suspension policies and practices in Austria. Currently, the use of out-of-school suspension is losing ground as a provision to protect students and teachers from serious harm; especially when students are suspended for minor infractions associated with a low risk of harming self or others. While considerable controversy over the effectiveness of suspension remains, there is significant evidence indicating the negative effects. Evidence from international research conducted in schools in the USA, UK and Australia shows a strong correlation between school suspension, lower retention rates and negative effects on social cohesion. Austrian research on suspension is in its infancy, which has so far hindered discussions about the effects of suspension on student wellbeing and educational outcomes. This case study seeks to stimulate discussion and, more broadly based, further

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research on school suspension in Austria, and to highlight the practical possibilities of conducting social work scientific analysis of the underlying causes of school suspensions on multiple levels.

Introduction The past decade has seen rapid growth in the number of out-of-school suspensions, nationally and internationally. Embedded within behaviour management policy, school suspension is applied in an attempt to modify a broad range of student behaviours considered self-harming or to threaten the safety of students and teachers (Schulunterrichtsgesetz 1986 – SchUG) (Austrian Teaching Act, translation author). Therefore, suspension has both punitive and preventive aspects to its application. A punitive aspect is that the student is excluded from taking part in lessons and out-of-class activities for a fixed period of time (Schneider, 2007). Preventive is when suspension impedes the student from, for example, carrying out further acts of bullying against peers. However, a growing body of international research on the effects of school suspension shows it to be a problematic and contested approach to student behaviour management (Hemphill et al., 2010: 16; Wright et al., 2005: 63; Rendall and Stuart, 2005: 1071). In Vorarlberg, Austria, it is common practice for district school inspectors to refer suspended students to specialised counselling services. The purpose of this is twofold, namely, to facilitate reflection, and to address the underlying issues affecting student wellbeing. During counselling sessions at the agency involved in this research, young people in out-of-school suspension asserted that they were treated unfairly in school because of their ethnicity. This involved acts of verbal abuse by other students including name-calling with direct reference to their ethnic identity, and being told to return to their country of origin. Feelings students related to these experiences were those of fear, unease, sadness, distress and anger. They also described situations where they had been insulted and teased by peers. This often led to physical fights during recess or after school. Moreover, students talked about teachers prohibiting them from speaking their native language in the classroom and on school property. They also expressed concern that stigma attached to their ethnic identity would negatively impact education and career prospects. Through engagement with students, parents and teachers, the school community service agency “Zick-Zack” developed a multi-level approach positioning basic human needs and children’s rights in the foreground of social work interventions. This entailed establishing support networks reengaging students after an out-of-school suspension, devising inclusive

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school strategies and promoting the wellbeing and safety of all young people in school. Furthermore, support programs were developed and implemented to prevent cycles of ongoing suspensions. In their role as facilitators of children’s rights, social workers seek to identify and remedy practices harmful to young people. This role is consistent with social works mandate to promote and protect human rights and human dignity embedded in the global principals and standards of the International Federation of Social Workers and International Association of Schools of Social Work (Supplement, 2007: 7). From the micro intervention perspective, social workers respect and promote young peoples’ autonomy and participation building on their strengths, valuing and respecting the best interests of the person as an individual, and also as a group member, within a social environment. (Supplement, 2007: 9). This is combined with macro interventions identifying and responding to structures and practices that endorse unfair treatment and inequality of young people in families, school and the community in order to facilitate and strengthen the satisfaction of biopsychosocial-cultural needs. Biological needs play a vital role in protecting our bodies against violations, biopsychological needs stimulate our senses and help us perceive and orientate ourselves in relation the world, and our biopsychosocial-cultural needs incorporate the emotional care we require, our participation and belonging to social groups, and issues pertaining to social justice (Obrecht, 2005). International debates on the best interests of children and young people, from birth to eighteen years of age, emphasize children’s rights as a framework for practice and research to strengthen human dignity (Link, 2007: 235-236; Kerber-Ganse, 2009: 77-79; Covell and Howe, 2001: 13). Through enabling children’s rights to actively inform and guide practice and research, social workers contribute towards deeper understanding of cultural norms and values to improve the quality of young people’s lives. This paper is organised into three main sections. In the first section, I lay the analytical and conceptual background, and give an account of the main underlying assertions of the human needs theory applied in the case study (Obrecht, 2005). In the second section, I introduce the agency involved in the research, describe the case study and illustrate the complexity of student behaviour, which resulted in an out-of school suspension. Links between the students’ basic human needs and children’s rights entitlements are identified and discussed. The third section provides a summary of the research findings and implications for reflective practice in action.

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Definition of Transcultural The social work researcher and sociologist Silvia Staub-Bernasconi points out that there are different ways to perceive and define culture. Staub-Bernasconi describes culture as “Wissenssysteme” (“systems of knowledge“—translation author), as “...Bilder/Symbole, Theorien, Werte/Normen, Gesetzte, Pläne usw., die von einer bestimmten Anzahl von Menschen geteilt und weitertradiert aber auch kreativ weiterentwickelt und verändert werden1“ (Staub-Bernasconi, 2010: 335). Transculturalism is based on the premise that all human beings have the same basic human needs, which are met in different ways depending on the social or cultural context (Wronka, 1998). Transcultural social work uses universally accepted values, criteria and documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to evaluate traditional practices, and develop new values, standards and guidelines for practice (Staub-Bernasconi, 2010: 354). For peaceful coexistence, cultural and religious practices require examination to determine if they are conducive to the fulfillment of basic human needs (Ibid.: 355). The eligibility of children's rights as criteria for achieving and sustaining transcultural coexistence depends on the extent this framework enables young people worldwide to meet their basic human needs. The consequences of unmet basic needs cause human grief and suffering such as poverty, discrimination and social isolation (Martin, 2011). All people and cultures share these social issues that affect our survival - in other words they are transcultural.

A Theory of Basic Human Needs Human needs have been the focus of social science since the early 20th century. The author of a scientific social welfare theory, Ilse Arlt, pioneered the development of a human needs theory in Austrian welfare. Arlt’s theory was based on a catalogue of thirteen human needs necessary for “universal human flourishing”. That is a set of basic requirements for the wellbeing of people irrespective of their socioeconomic and contextual situation (Arlt, 1921: 53-74). Abraham Maslow developed his renowned theory of human motivation in the field of humanistic psychology. He posited that a person must first fulfill his or her most basic needs on the basis of a hierarchy of needs. For example, the need to satisfy the human 1

“pictures/symbols, theories, values/morals, laws, plans etc., shared by a specific number of people passed on and further developed and changed through creative means”—translation author.

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motivation for love/belonging can only be fulfilled when safety and psychological needs are satisfied (Maslow, 1943). The theory of human needs used in this study was developed by the Swiss sociologist Werner Obrecht and based on the moral realism of Mario Bunge (1989). Though there are similarities between these three theories of human need, Obrecht does not support the notion of a predetermined hierarchy of needs. Obrecht (2005) defines human needs as an internal condition regulating an organism’s state of wellbeing. The internal state of an organism is its intrinsic value, which maintains a specific range of properties and conditions, without which the organism cannot thrive (Obrecht, 2005: 47). Obrecht’s (2005) theory provides the framework for deeper understanding of human biological, biopsychological and biopsychosocial-cultural needs. Human beings are self-assured organisms with a highly developed nervous structure and neurological system influenced by internal physiological and external environmental factors (ibid.). These factors cause variations in the intrinsic values registered by our central nervous system, which motivates us to respond towards compensating our unmet need. Our basic needs must be met in order for us to develop and reach our full potential. Obrecht’s underlying assertion is that personal and/or social problems result if our basic needs are not met within a certain length of time. Obrecht uses the term “elastizität” (elasticity—translation author) in reference to the length of time in which a specific need must be met or compensated (Obrecht, 2005: 48). The tension of a need depends on the elasticity of that specific need. For example, our biological need for water is of low elasticity, which means that if we are unable to satisfy our need for water within two to three days our survival is severely threatened, and our entire organism will collapse (ibid.). However, the fulfilment of biopsychosocial needs, such as the need to belong, is not life threatening, but a requirement for human wellbeing. Therefore a person can survive for a number of years without this need being met. This also depends on a persons age and ability. For example this need will have lower elasticity for infants and children than for self-sufficient adults. The overview of the basic human needs developed by Werner Obrecht (2005: 47) (translation—author):

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Table 3-1 I. Biological Needs

III. Biopsychosocial-

II. Biopsychological

cultural Needs

Needs 1. For physical integrity which means avoiding: dirt, physical pain that reduces wellbeing (heat, cold, wet), injury and exposure to intentional violence; 2. For substances essential for autopoiesis: 1. Digestible biomass (metabolism); 2. Water (maintain fluid balance); 3. Oxygen (gases exchange); 3. For regeneration; 4. For sexual activity and reproduction;

5. For perception-related sensory stimulation through a) Gravitation, b) Sound, c) Light, d) Tactile Stimulus (sensory needs);

11.

For love, care and affection (love, friendship, active and passive), (need for love);

12.

For spontaneous help (the need to help);

6. For beauty in the things we experience (landscapes, faces, body integrity (aesthetic needs; need for aesthetic encounters);

13.

For sociocultural belonging through participation (membership in family, group, society (clan, tribe, ethnos, religion, nation state) (to be a member means having rights and fulfilling duties) (membership need);

14.

For noninterchangeable (distinct) identity (need for biopsychosocial identity);

15.

For autonomy (autonomy need);

16.

For social recognition (function, achievement, position) (recognition need);

17.

For (the exchange of) justice (social justice need).

7. For variation / stimulation (need for change); 8. For information guiding orientation and action that can be assimilated; 9. For subjective relevant aims, goals and hope for fulfilment (need for subjective meaning of life); 10. For actual skills, rules, and social norms to manage new and repetitive situations dependent on the relevant goals (control or competence need);

Obrecht asserts that human beings have instrumental values, and require resources to meet their basic needs. In many cases instrumental values are closely linked to philosophical values such as “life, freedom, equality, social justice, solidarity, social responsibility, peace and the

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absence from violence, human-nature relationships” (United Nations, 1994: 7-8). They concern the distribution of limited resources such as water, food, shelter and so on, which we require to compensate our basic needs. Thus, the fulfilment of our basic human needs place constraints on society and the environment (Obrecht, 2005: 57). Staub-Bernasconi argues that human needs are universal but the way in which our needs and legitimate wants are satisfied depends on our social, cultural and geographical context. Because we depend on social systems for our wellbeing and survival they have to be constructed in ways that enable us to meet our basic human needs and legitimate wants (StaubBernasconi, 2010: 192). Social systems are based on the cultural codes that we use to define our needs and to formulate goals for need satisfaction (Obrecht, 2005: 43). Cultural codes enable us to recognise and communicate our basic needs to other people who also use the same system of codes to identify their own needs. These systems of codes are directly linked to human right values.

Human Needs and Rights The International Federation of Social Workers regards the fulfilment of basic human needs as “an imperative of basic justice” (United Nations 1994: 5). Within the social work profession the fundamental nature of basic human needs and the necessity and entitlement that they be met have led to a ”transition from needs orientation to rights affirmation” (Ibid.: 5.). In this sense values provide legitimacy and serve as criteria for planning and evaluating social work interventions on micro, mezzo and macro levels. Jim Ife, in his understanding of how human rights framework can be used as a foundation for social work practice and social action, emphasises that the “concept of need” in its own right is both “complex and controversial” and “value laden” (Ife, 2007: 77). He contends that this depends on the background, theoretical underpinnings and focus of the social worker as a value based judgment and not a fact (Ibid.). However, the universality of human rights provides social workers with an ethical base on which to develop a universal framework for practice focusing on “meeting human needs and developing human potential” (United Nations, 1994: 4). The social work manual on human rights lists the following eight philosophical values on which a society is to be based so that people can met their basic needs (United Nations, 1994: 7-8):

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1. Life 2. Freedom and Liberty 3. Equality and Non-Discrimination 4. Justice 5. Solidarity 6. Social Responsibility 7. Evolution, Peace and Non-Violence 8. Relations between Humankind and Nature These values constitute symbolic and cultural benchmarks, by which social workers can identify a proposed course of action. They are independent of, if not incompatible with, funding auspices and employer policies and vital to professional social work practice. Wronka emphasises this in his statement “in short, human rights are statements of human needs” (1998: 24), which “transforms social work from needs-orientation towards rights affirmation” (United Nations, 1994: 5). Linking needs to human rights facilitates the understanding and acceptance of a human rights-based approach in social work (Martin, 2011). The first step of a rights-based approach is to identify and document basic human needs that are not being met in the context of day-to-day social work practice. This entails reflecting the findings of the social diagnosis with peers and supervisors to identify the degree by which the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has allegedly been breached. This includes devising an appropriate course of action. The next steps depend on the degree of the alleged CRC breach; first degree (low), second degree (middle) or third degree (high) (Wronka and StaubBernasconi, 2012: 79). The alleged breach of the CRC is discussed with the student, parents and teachers to establish a common goal in alleviating personal and/or social problems on micro-, meso- and macro-intervention levels. An important implication of children’s rights is that the vulnerable individual or group, whose rights are violated, does not have to fulfill a prescribed duty before being entitled to the protection of children’s rights (Ife, 2007). Given the current climate of school budget cuts and optimising educational outcomes no-tolerance behaviour policies are gaining ground in Austria as a response to challenging student behaviour. However, notolerance policies neglect to examine the underlying causes of student behaviour. Therefore it is essential for student wellbeing to shift towards proactive approaches in managing student behaviour in ways that do not conflict with children’s rights. In the Index for Inclusion Booth and Ainscow speak of six core values, “equality, participation, community, respect for diversity and sustainability” (2011: 21) that promote positive

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benefits for students and teachers, and foster a school culture in which everyone is of equal worth. Through rights-based practice, social workers support students in meeting their basic human needs by locating resources and assisting them to acquire the necessary means and develop skills.

Research The research conducted for this study used a qualitative approach for the in-depth analysis of a single case study concerning a secondary school student of Turkish descent, “Aisha” (pseudonym). During the second day of Aisha’s four-week out-of-school suspension she and her parents started directive counselling at the agency involved in this research. The case study of Aisha illustrates the complexities leading to an out-of-school suspension, such as student alienation, rejection by peers and the lack of understanding between student, parents and teachers. Aisha was an Austrian born Turkish national, fifteen years of age, attending her eighth year of compulsory education at secondary school. At the time of the research, Aisha had one more year until obtaining her secondary school certificate. Aisha was actively rejected by her peers and ignored by teachers. Due to headaches and nausea she was often absent from school. This meant that she missed out on school life, which could have increased her social interaction with peers. Her absenteeism, combined with forging her parent’s signature, led to an out-of-school suspension. The suspension deepened the rift between Aisha, her peers and teachers. The social workers counselling Aisha and her parents were engaged at school community service agency introduced in the following section.

The Agency The school community service agency “Zick-Zack” provides specialised counselling to students during out-of-school suspensions. As a school based service in Vorarlberg, it began operating in 1998. Zick-Zack is part of the umbrella organisation “Aqua Muehle Frastanz”, which is funded by the Vorarlberg Regional Child Welfare Department (Landesjugendwohlfahrt). Through a wide range of targeted; non-stigmatising programs for young service users, agency staff contributes towards strengthening young people’s social and emotional wellbeing. Casework and social pedagogy are used as methods for social work practice to support young people, parents and teachers during conflict and crisis situations. Casework involves student assessments, social diagnosis, crisis intervention, advocacy and referral. Social pedagogy, complementary to casework,

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incorporates social, cultural and experiential activities during and after school. These methods enhance student self-esteem and reciprocity in relationships with others, whilst supporting young people in overcoming barriers hindering their emotional and academic development. In addition, group discussions and exercises stimulate social interaction during which students reflect on their lived experiences.

Aims This study focuses on two questions to better understand the root causes of disruptive behaviour: 1. What are the causes of Aisha’s disruptive behaviour in school? 2. How are her basic needs and children’s rights interlinked? First, this study aims to undertake a social diagnosis using a multi-level approach to assess the fulfillment of Aisha’s basic human needs. Second, it links Aisha’s unmet human needs with corresponding Articles from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989). Third, it aims to determine and lay the corner stones of developing a science based action plan for transcultural social work by connecting unmet needs in the case study with children’s rights.

Method The case study method was used to examine a real-life situation and provide the basis for the application of ideas and extension of social work methods. It was based on data collected during counselling sessions with Aisha, her parents and class teacher. Identifying factors were changed to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. The social work systemic paradigm, a multi-level instrument developed for social work practice by Silvia Staub-Bernasconi and Kaspar Geiser, is used by social workers at the agency as an instrument to conduct social diagnosis (Staub-Bernasconi, 1998; Geiser, 2009). With the help of this instrument the persons’ unmet biological, biopsychological and biopsychosocial-cultural needs, deficiencies and deprivations are identified and analysed. During the analysis, the focus shifts from the individual micro and mezzo level, to the structural macro level. Integral to this process is the identification of the individuals unmet basic human needs, based on Obrecht’s list of seventeen biopsychosocial-cultural needs, Table 3-1.

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Data for the social diagnosis were obtained by social workers during six weeks of counselling with Aisha, her parents and class teacher. The interviews with Aisha were conducted at the agency twice a week in onehour sessions. As the analysis continued, it became evident that further indepth information was required from Aisha’s parents. This prompted social workers to conduct mediator interviews with her parents using open-ended questions conducted once a week for one hour. Two one-hour interviews were conducted with Aisha’s class teacher in school. Questions concerned Aisha’s basic needs satisfaction at home, and in school, based on Obrecht’s list of biopsychosocial-cultural needs, Table 3-1. A systematic approach was used in the data analyses, which involved methodically working through the case file documentation to identify recurring themes and categories (Ritchie and Spencer, 1994). Validation was achieved by comparing student perspectives, parent perspectives and teacher perspectives. Theoretical validation was achieved by regular presentations and discussions of emerging conclusions with agency social workers familiar with the dynamics of student, teacher and parent interviews. In identifying Aisha’s unmet biopsychosocial-cultural needs, four central dimensions were used: x x x x

Socioeconomic situation; Cultural-religious factors; Language and communication: Relationships.

Unmet needs were identified and linked to corresponding Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989).

Case Study: Aisha At the time of this study, Aisha lived with her parents and two sisters in a rented three-room apartment. Her mother, Fatma, recently lost her job as a machinist in a clothing factory. Her father, Ali, is a full-time assembly line worker. Over the past six years, Fatma and Ali experienced several months of unemployment and feel this to be the main reason for their precarious financial situation. Aisha describes herself as a fun-loving, secretive person. She is fond of wearing make-up and interested in fashion. She is keen to work in a fashion store when she completes school. Her Turkish culture is a source

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of pride and she is inspired by stories of life in the old country. Aisha speaks the regional Austrian dialect fluently, however she experiences difficulties reading and writing German. She has a basic understanding of Turkish and resorts to mixing German interchangeably with Turkish in conversations with her parents and relatives. Fatma and Ali hope their daughter will have a good education and find a secure job. In primary school Aisha was a happy and contented child. She had long-term relationships with peers and was fond of her teachers. During her second year of secondary school her grades start to drop. At first she reacts with concern and embarrassment about having the lowest grades in the class. However, after a few weeks, her grades no longer worry her and she starts losing interest in completing assignments. She becomes anxious about going to school and wants to stay at home instead. At first, Fatma and Ali are sympathetic and agree to inform the teacher that Aisha will not attend school because of a headache and bouts of nausea. Ali voices concern about his daughter’s mood swings attributing her headaches and nausea to mental health issues. Aisha misses school often, which means she fails or misses tests. After several weeks of regular school absence, Aisha’s teacher contacts Ali and Fatma and voices her concern about their daughters’ absenteeism. Ali, Fatma and the teacher discuss Aisha’s health problems and agree she will undergo a medical examination to establish the cause. The discussion with Aisha’s teacher alerts Fatma and Ali to the high risk of their daughter failing the school year. As a result, they insist Aisha attend school unless she has a sick note from the family practitioner. In counselling sessions addressing Asia’s school anxiety, the two main issues she grapples with are unfair treatment in class and being ignored and rejected by peers. The girls in Aisha’s class dislike her and show no interest in interacting with her. German speaking girls called her nasty names and tell her to return to her home country. The Turkish girls in her class who hold strong religious convictions, make-up horrible stories about her. During recess Aisha has no one to sit with. She avoids the teachers on yard duty because she does not want them to feel sorry for her. However, she wishes teachers would listen, be more supportive and understanding in class, and help her with German grammar and maths. Austrian school bureaucracy overwhelms Fatma and Ali and leaves them with a sense of powerlessness, enhanced by limited command of the German language, making communication with teachers difficult. Furthermore, they rely on their children and relatives to translate during parent teacher meetings. They feel that as immigrants with limited

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understanding of the Austrian education system, the teachers do not respect their opinions and preferences. The teacher describes Aisha as having an anti-social attitude, which she feels is also the reason for her poor disciplinary track record. She notes that Aisha has difficulties making friends and retaining positive relationships with her peers. She and other teachers are annoyed by her refusals to answer questions or complete assignments. Her German teacher criticizes her for being defiant and for ignoring classmates when they try and talk to her. The teacher did not respond to Ali’s earlier concerns about his daughters’ mental health asserting that she was just trying to miss school. Aisha is suspended from school after being caught forging her mother’s signature on a school absentee note. She is given an out-ofschool suspension for a fixed period of four weeks. The suspension is announced on grounds of her repeatedly disrupting lessons and therefore posing an ongoing threat to the academic achievement of peers. Ali and Fatma are ashamed and deeply troubled when they find out and are also concerned this will negatively impact Aisha’s chance of obtaining Austrian citizenship. The district school inspector refers Aisha to counselling at the onset of her suspension where she receives support from her social worker, who advocates on her behalf and renegotiates her return to school.

Human Needs and Children’s Rights in the Case Study Findings from the Aisha case study encouraged social workers to think about ways of connecting basic needs that were unmet with Articles of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). In this process they noted human needs are polyvalent and can therefore be linked to more than one Article (Wronka, 1998: 26-28). In the case study analysis I focus on the four key dimensions mentioned in the method section of this paper. The first dimension features the family’s socioeconomic situation, which was precarious. Fatma and Ali were unskilled factory workers with low-paying jobs. Added to this they had experienced several months of unemployment during which time they had very little income. This impacted Aisha’s access to education. She was unable to take part in school activities and excursions her parents had to pay for. Fatma and Ali feared stigmatization if they asked the school for financial assistance and decide that Aisha should tell her teacher she was not interested in the activities and excursions. However, Aisha’s response to not taking part in

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class activities was seen as a lack of interest and had negative consequences for her relationships with peers and teachers. It was interpreted as a refusal to participate in school activities that are an important part of her education and relationship building with peers. This meant Aisha was left out of shared group experiences beneficial for strengthening peer and teacher understanding. Aisha’s biopsychological need for variation, stimulation and change was not met (Obrecht, 2005: 7). This breaches Article 26 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the right to social security: Children—either through their guardians or directly—have the right to help from the government if they are poor or in need” (United Nations, 1989: Art. 26).

The second dimension features the cultural-religious factors. The characteristics of culture and religion reflect relationships and deeply held values and beliefs. The example in Aisha’s case is her being been told by her peers to go back Turkey because she does not belong in Austria. Aisha spoke of feeling unwelcome and not valued equally. Not been viewed as an equal resulted in Aisha ignoring her peers. As these rebukes continued Aisha avoided school to overcome the stigma her peers associated with diverse ethnic backgrounds. Aisha’s biopsychosocial and cultural need for social recognition was not realized (Obrecht, 2005: 16). This results in a violation of Article 2 of the CRC, the right not to be discriminated: The Convention applies to all children, whatever their race, religion or abilities; whatever they think or say, whatever type of family they come from. It doesn’t matter where children live, what language they speak, what their parents do, whether they are boys or girls, what their culture is, whether they have a disability or whether they are rich or poor. No child should be treated unfairly on any basis (United Nations, 1989: Art. 2).

The third dimension is related to language and communication. Aisha reported not being allowed to speak her native language in the classroom. Visits with relatives in Turkey were marked by communication problems. Aisha had limited ability to speak and understand Turkish. She strongly identified with her families country of origin but was unable to communicate with relatives who were unable to understand German. Aisha’s biopsychosocial-cultural to define her own distinct identity was not realized (Obrecht need 14). The CRC, article 30, is violated: Minority or indigenous children have the right to learn about and practice their own culture, language and religion. The right to practice one’s own culture, language and religion applies to everyone; the Convention here

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highlights this right in instances where the practices are not shared by the majority of people in the country (United Nations 1989: Art. 30).

The fourth dimension features relationships. The Austrian girls in Aisha’s class did not see her as an equal, but as a student with a cultural and linguist background of lower status. Turkish girls in her class rejected her based on their religious views concerning Aisha’s use of make-up and dress style. This resulted in Aisha’s biological, biopsychosocial-cultural for sociocultural belonging through participation not being realized (Obrecht, 2005: 13). In this case the CRC, article 29, is violated: Children’s education should develop each child’s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest. It should encourage children to respect others, human rights and their own and other cultures. It should also help them learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people. Children have a particular responsibility to respect the rights their parents, and education should aim to develop respect for the values and culture of their parents (United Nations, 1989: Art. 29).

Aisha’s situation was marked by a continuing problem of nonacceptance, and instances of overt rejection and discrimination on the base of her ethnicity by other students in her class. Her cultural and linguist values were not respected; she developed low self-esteem and was unable to engage with her peers and teachers. This resulted in her absenteeism from school. Her behaviour developed as a result of interactions within and between these sub-systems. Moreover, Aisha developed physical symptoms such as headaches and nausea as a direct result of these tensions. In assessing Aisha’s human needs and linking unmet needs to children’s rights strengthens a holistic perception of Aisha’s behaviour. Social workers are expected to offer quick-fix solutions for difficulties such as those that Aisha, her family and teachers had experienced. Identifying and understanding complexity across a wide range of circumstances, and devising a corresponding plan of action, is a time consuming process. To effectively tackle social problems social workers need to address barriers that stand in the way of social justice (United Nations, 1994). In Aisha’s case teachers held her solely responsible for class disruptions. In doing so, they neglected to reflect on leadership roles and teaching styles, and how these affected classroom management. Mary John (2003) in her writings on participatory practices in school argues that the base of conflicts between children and adults tend to lie within an asymmetrical distribution of power and resources. For teachers and students to engage in a dialogue sharing ideas and considering alternative

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viewpoints, conflicts must be depersonalised and the difference in power between the adult and child made visible.

Research Findings and Implications The case study increased the visibility and understanding of complex personal and social problems and how these issues give rise to disruptive behaviour. The multi-level systems approach helped social workers understand the complexity of Aisha’s situation, and to decide on the support needed for Aisha and her family. A method to link basic human needs with the children’s rights framework was developed and implemented. Social workers agreed that needs assessment is a time consuming process. The first step is to gain the trust of the young person and his or her parents and teacher. Upholding this trust, through working in an accountable and transparent way, ensures those involved identify and understand the benefits and limitations of needs assessment. Shedding light on student needs also means voicing concern when students are not afforded equal opportunity to belong to the school community. This goes hand in hand with devising a plan of action, together with students, teachers and parents to facilitate relationship building. This study shows that behaviour labelled as “disruptive” or “challenging” can be linked to unmet basic human needs. When needs are not met within a certain time, this can give rise to personal and social problems. The consequence of this is that young people’s rights are violated and their wellbeing compromised. Overall, the research uncovered a number of root causes of student behaviour that teachers and parents either intentionally or unintentionally disregarded prior to the out-of-school suspension. This strengthened social workers in their commitment to advocate for alternative disciplinary policies in which student, parent and teacher engagement and cooperation pays a central role. Practices in the agency and school that neglect the rights of the child were identified. For example, courses of action were discussed with teachers but not always with students prior to implementation. Strategies to deal with these practices at the agency level were developed implemented. This increased the active and meaningful participation of young people and contributed towards deepening social workers and teachers knowledge base and understanding of student behaviour. The strength of the study was the in-depth data collected on the case study combined with the willingness of agency social workers to openly

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discuss and reflect on the possibilities and challenges in implementing right-based approach to social work.

Reflective Practice in Action The results of the analysis were used to stimulate student, parent and teacher dialogue and to facilitate their understanding of discriminatory practices in school, the effects for students, and to reflect on constructive ways to respond. The findings offer a differentiated view on challenges within the context of diversity. Social workers were able to redress discriminatory practices within the education system, for example, students not being permitted to speak their native language in school. The agency developed an interview framework to guide the assessments process and ensure necessary data could be collected for the social diagnosis. Working with data from the case files allowed social workers to reflect on their knowledge base. The topics they deal with in every-day social work practice were identified and debated within national and international migration discourses. This process was also helpful for designing agency staff training programs. The case study proved to be helpful in prompting the social workers to reflect on the meaning and requirements of a child-friendly practice. This is closely linked to the overall theme of developing a practice conducive to a culture of human rights. Through the research it became clearer for social workers that children’s rights do not exist in a vacuum but are woven into the fabric of everyday life in the way that adults engage with young people. Students, parents and teachers have a general idea about what children’s rights mean, but lack a deeper understanding of the framework. Hence children’s and young peoples rights are perceived as an abstract set of principles difficult to apply in practice. Social workers identified this hurdle stating the lack of knowledge and understanding of the CRC to be one of the main reasons why parents and teachers were doubtful of its benefits. It is a common misunderstanding that young people have to fulfill obligations in order to be protected by children’s rights. The research showed adults were threatened by ideas of children’s rights being realised at the expense of their rights as parents and teachers. Working through these issues remains an ongoing and sensitive process. Debates on what it means for young people to have rights, and the effect of this on adults, generally strengthen adult commitment to child-friendly practice. It is crucial that young people and adults have a good understanding of the CRC and how children’s rights can be implemented. The underlying

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assumption is that there is a need for change in wider society to address and resolve the problem of unmet basic human needs and breached rights entitlements. This process goes hand in hand with rights-based social work as it entails identifying and confronting practices, which violate the rights of young people. With this research the agency has been able to reflect on its practice by implication and working with schools and district school authorities to better understand and address the root causes of student behaviour, which lead to out-of-school suspension. Round table discussions resulted in clearer school policies, which identified steps for teachers in cooperation with parents, to support students experiencing challenges. Every step taken in the direction of applying children’s rights to practice helps to set the provision, protection and participation of young people in society in stone.

Works Cited Arlt, Ilse. Die Grundlagen der Fürsorge. 1921. Vol 1. 2nd edition. Ed. Maria Maiss. Vienna: LIT, 2010. Booth, Tony and Ainscow, Mel. Index for Inclusion: Developing learning and participation in schools. Centre for studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE): UK, 2011. Bunge, Mario. Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 8: Ethics: The Good and the Right. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1989. Covell, Katherine and Howe, Brian R. The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada. Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada. Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2001. Martin, Edi. “Ethisch handeln in der Sozialen Arbeit—eine Operationalisierung.“ Walz, Hans, Teske, Irmgard, Martin Edi (Eds.). Menschenrechtsorientiert wahrnehmen – beurteilen – handeln. Ein Lese- und Arbeitsbuch für Studierende, Lehrende und Professionelle der Sozialen Arbeit. Mit einem Geleitwort von Silvia StaubBernasconi. Luzern: Interact / Opladen & Farmington Hills: Budrich Unipress, 2011. 145-196. Geiser, Kaspar. Problem- und Ressourcenanalyse in der Sozialen Arbeit. Eine Einführung in die Systemische Denkfigur und ihre Anwendung. 4.ed. Luzern: Interact / Freiburg im Breisgau: Lambertus, 2009. Hemphill, Sheryl A., Toumbourou John W., Smith Rachel, Kendall. et. al. “Are rates of school suspension higher in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods’ An Australian study. “ Health Promotion Journal of Australia 21.1 (2010): 18-24.

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Ife, Jim. Human Rights and Social Work. Towards Rights-Based Practice. Revised edition, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2007. International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). Social Work and the Rights of the Child. A Professional Training Manual on the UN Convention. Bern, 2002. John, Mary. Children’s Rights and Power, Charging Up for a New Century. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2003. Kerber-Ganse, Waltraut. Die Menschenrechte des Kindes. Die UNKinderrechtskonvention und die Pädagogik von Janusz Korczak. Versuch einer Perspektivenverschränkung, Leverkusen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2009. Link, Rosemary, J. “Children’s Rights as a Template for Social Work Practice.” Reichert, Elisabeth (Ed). Challenges in Human Rights. A Social Work Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press (2007): 125-238. Obrecht, Werner. Umrisse einer biopsychosozialen Theorie menschlicher Bedürfnisse. Geschichte, Probleme, Struktur, Funktion.. 1998. Zürich, Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit: 2005. Maslow, Abraham. “A Theory of Human Motivation.“ Psychological Review 50 (1943): 370-396. Rendall, Sue and Stuart, Morag. Excluded from School. Systemic Practice for Mental Health and Education Professionals. London: Routledge, 2005. Ritchie, Jane and Spencer, Liz. “Qualitative Data Analysis for Applied Policy Research.” Bryman, Alan and Burgess, Robert. G (Eds.) Analyzing Qualitative Data. London: Routledge, 1994. 173-194. Skiba, Russell and Rausch, Karega. “Zero tolerance, suspension, and expulsion: Questions of equity and effectiveness.” Evertson, Carolyn, M. and Weinstein, Rutgers (Eds.). Handbook for Classroom Management: Research, Practice, and Contemporary Issues. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 1063-1089. Staub-Bernasconi, Silvia. Soziale Arbeit als Handlungswissenschaft. Systemtheoretische Grundlagen und professionelle Praxis – Ein Lehrbuch. 2007. Bern / Stuttgart / Wien: Haupt, 2010. —. “Soziale Probleme - Soziale Berufe - Soziale Praxis.“ Heiner, Maja, Meinhold, Marianne, von Spiegel, Hiltrud, Staub-Bernasconi, Silvia. (eds). Methodisches Handeln in der Sozialen Arbeit, 2. edition. Freiburg im Breisgau: Lambertus ,1998. 11-101. Schneider, Sharon. Realisation of the Rights of the Child in Social Work. Possibilities and Challenges. Master thesis for the „Studiengang

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Master of Social Work - Soziale Arbeit als Menschenrechtsprofession”. Berlin: Zentrum für Postgraduale Studien, Typoskript, 2007. Supplement of International Social Work. International Definition of the Social Work Profession: Ethics in Social Work: Global Standards for the Education and Training of the Social Work Profession. London: Sage, 2007. Schulunterrichtsgesetz 1986 – SchUG. Section 9, paragraph 49. Retrieved August 18, 2012, http://www.hak-reutte.ac.at/bhak/ger/gesetze/downloads/schug.pdf United Nations. Centre for Human Rights, Geneva / International Federation of Social Works / International Association of Schools of Social Work: Human Rights and Social Work. A Manual for Schools of Social Work and the Social Work Profession. Professional training Series. No 1. 2nd edition. New York / Geneva: Human Right Centre, 1994. —. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Human Rights Resource Center, University of Minnesota. 1989. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/auok.htm Wright, Cecile; Standen, Penny; John, Gus et al. School exclusion and transition into adulthood in African-Caribbean communities. Project Report. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005. Wronka, Joseph. Human Rights and Social Policy in the 21st Century. A history of the ideal of human rights and comparison of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights with United Sates federal and state constitutions. Lanham, New York/London: Univ. Press of America, 1998. Wronka, Joseph, and Staub-Bernasconi Silvia. “Human Rights.” Lyons, Karen, Hokenstad, Terry, Pawar, Manohar et al. The Sage Handbook of International Social Work. London: Sage (2012): 70-84.

CHAPTER FOUR CULTURAL MEANING SYSTEMS OF LEARNING AND THEIR INFLUENCES IN THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY CONTEXT MARIEKE C. VAN EGMOND, ALEXIS L. ROSSI AND ULRICH KÜHNEN

Abstract In order to assess the need for future intercultural trainings for first– year students from a range of cultural backgrounds we conducted a quantitative survey study. The central question was whether subjective beliefs about learning differ for students from various cultural backgrounds. We based our hypotheses on the mind-virtue orientation theory by Jin Li which states that the beliefs about learning of students from Western educational contexts are primarily “mind oriented.” In this orientation, learning is defined primarily as a process of developing critical thinking skills. By contrast, we predicted the beliefs of students from contexts such as Asia to be more “virtue oriented.” In this orientation, learning concepts also stress the pursuit of moral and social development, with an emphasis on respect and diligence. The results of the survey were in line with the expectations and moreover supported the assumption that the beliefs about learning of students from diverse cultural contexts deviate from the beliefs of the mostly German members of faculty. Accordingly, the findings have inspired innovations in the intercultural training offerings at Jacobs University Bremen, the content of which are relevant to institutions of higher education that are experiencing an increasing diversification of their student bodies.

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Introduction In academia, learning is central. This is true for both faculty and students. For faculty, one might even say that learning is a central part of life. Not only is one engaged in a learning process personally by default when pursuing an academic career, but one also actively shapes the learning environment for the students that one teaches. Even research is conducted with the ultimate goal to learn something new about the object under study. Since learning is such an integral part of life within academia, its underlying assumptions are often taken for granted. We are already taught from an early age how a good student should behave, what the most appropriate learning strategies are and what we expect from both teachers and students in and outside the classroom. Within a mono–cultural environment it is therefore easy to forget that a long philosophical history preceded the way we think about learning today, which has had a distinct influence on classroom and learning processes. However, through the impact of globalization, hardly any academic environment can rightfully be called “mono–cultural” anymore. International mobility has become an increasing part of everyday life at universities around the world. According to recent OECD data, the number of students that are enrolled in a foreign country has doubled over the last twenty years and will continue to increase substantially until 2030 and beyond (OECD, 2011). International exchange in both research and higher education has thus become an important indicator of institutional quality (Teichler, 2004: 8). However, despite the increase in internationalization trends in higher education that stimulate the cultural diversity of campuses in many Western countries1, the core problems faced by international students often go unacknowledged. Another risk is that when observed, behaviors are misinterpreted, observations of individuals are generalized for members of the whole group or differing styles of communication lead to down– grading on oral or written exams. Chinese students are, for example, still commonly perceived by Western faculty to rely heavily on rote–learning, or as unwilling to participate in classroom discussions. When asked, 1

In this chapter, the notion of “Western” will refer to a cultural rather than a geographical distinction. Due to an emphasis on the European context, the term “Western” will primarily refer to the (Western) European context, with Germany as the main focus. The term East Asian on the other hand will refer to societies and educational systems that share the Confucian cultural background. The primary focus will be on mainland China, although the Confucian heritage countries typically also include the societies of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan (e.g., Biggs, 1996; Leung, 2001).

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international students therefore call for an increased understanding of the underlying meaning of academic practices and communication, as well as the distinct cultural assumptions about learning that are usually taken for granted in different cultural contexts, as reported by Fryberg & Markus, and Hanassab & Tidwell. The aim of this chapter is therefore to shed light on the cultural differences in the subjective construal of learning, or put differently, in beliefs about learning. For this assessment, we will start by describing a theoretical framework for the interpretation of cultural differences within academia and continue by presenting the empirical results that were obtained within this framework. Next, we will discuss how these findings have been applied in training and policy to improve the intercultural academic learning environment at an international university in Germany as well as how they might be applied to other diverse academic contexts.

Cultural Meanings of Learning Contemporary assumptions about core aspects of learning in the Western world are at least partly rooted in intellectual traditions that relate back to the philosophers of ancient Greece, like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Often considered to be the father of Western philosophy, primarily Socrates’ (469 – 399 B.C.) legacy still penetrates our thinking on what is the correct way to pursue knowledge. Famed for his public displays of questioning authority figures in Athens’ markets, it is the ‘Socratic dialogue’ that is still considered to be the optimal way of establishing whether claims can be regarded as valid or not. Doubt functioned as a starting point in this pursuit and, over time, the rules of formal logic were established as guiding principles in this process. The fact that a significant portion of Western education consists of teaching children how to generate arguments and counterarguments concerning any given position (Peng and Nisbett, 1999: 750) attests to the value that is still associated with the philosophical tradition that originated in the time of Socrates. Around the same time as ancient Greek philosophy flourished, an equally influential figure arose in a different cultural region of the world. For the East–Asian region, it is the legacy of Confucius (551 – 479 B.C.) that has left its traces on the way people in contemporary society think about the concept of learning. Confucianism is essentially a system of behavioral principles one has to adhere to in order to maintain harmonious social relationships. As a teacher, Confucius thought of learning as an effortful process, aimed at behavioral reform in order to improve oneself

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morally and socially (Tweed and Lehman, 2002: 92). This tradition emphasizes respectful learning. Before one was thought to be eligible to question the words of authority figures, a strong emphasis was placed on studying their works and writings first. For Confucius, learning was intrinsically related to the social domain. A pragmatic outcome was an important result that should come from learning. He thought that valuable knowledge is the knowledge that would benefit society. If the learning beliefs of current students are at least partially influenced by these cultural traditions, then one can expect to find differences along the mind–virtue dimension of learning beliefs between Western and East Asian students even today. Indeed, recent empirical evidence has been found which supports this notion (Kühnen, Van Egmond, Haber, Kuschel, Özelsel, and Rossi, 2009; Kühnen, Van Egmond, Haber, Kuschel, Özelsel, Rossi, and Spivak, 2012; Van Egmond, 2011). These quantitative empirical studies were based on previous qualitative work by Li, whose research revealed that a cultural difference exists in the concepts that Chinese and European American students hold about learning. The concepts of learning she derived describe the purposes (e.g. what people think the goal of learning is), processes (e.g. which strategy one applies), personal regard (e.g. whether or not and why learning is important), affects (e.g. whether one experiences joy or dread from learning), and social perceptions (e.g. the perception of successful learners vs. unsuccessful ones and perceptions of teachers). The beliefs people have about these elements of the learning process underlie the motivation, affect and preferences people exhibit for learning and learning–related behavior. Li concluded that, whereas equally elaborate, the content of the conceptions of learning differ due to fundamental differences in the meanings the two cultures attach to learning. This mind / virtue framework represents a new theory for the interpretation of cross– cultural variation and cultural differences in education. It reflects empirically constructed cultural beliefs about learning that exist in two different cultural groups today. For the European American students, Li found that learning was primarily defined as “the process by which individuals’ minds acquire the knowledge that is out there” (Li, 2003: 264). These students distinguished between a ‘neutrally existing body of knowledge’ that exists externally for the individual to acquire and the abilities of the individual to acquire it. These abilities include intelligence on the one hand and thinking, communicating and active engagement on the other. Learning was found to be an important part of the lives of the U.S. students, however it was not integrated into their emotional, spiritual or moral life domains. As can be

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concluded, the Western view of learning focuses on cognitive aspects and thus can be conceptualized as “mind oriented”. For Chinese students, Li found that knowledge is regarded as something that is indispensable to one’s personal life. Within this conceptualization, knowledge not only includes the externally existing knowledge, or the mental functions one needs to acquire it, but also other dimensions of life such as the personal, social and moral aspects. Moreover, learning is seen as a life–long process to achieve an ‘ideal’ moral state. By definition, this optimal moral state can never be obtained, but the aim towards it lies at the heart of the virtues of diligence, self– exertion, endurance of hardship, perseverance, and concentration to guide the learning process for East–Asian scholars. Li therefore termed the concept of learning for Chinese students “virtue oriented”. Although we have focused so far on the distinct aspects of mind and virtue orientation, it is important to realize that they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. Both the acquisition of knowledge and mental skills, as well as moral and social development are central learning goals for most scholars, regardless of geographic location or cultural background. Rather, it is the relative emphasis that is placed on either mind or virtue related aspects of learning that differs between cultures. Since both mind and virtue orientation are relevant components of learning beliefs everywhere, it makes sense to study the relative importance that students from other cultural regions (outside the usual East–West divide) place on either orientation. Additionally, it is crucial to keep in mind that these concepts are culture–level constructs. This implies that findings are found on the aggregated, cultural level and therefore can only be used to explain differences between cultural beliefs. For individuals however, culture is only one of the influences that one is exposed to. Cultural beliefs should therefore not be equated with the beliefs of individuals within both cultures. Finally, we use the categories of mind and virtue orientation in a rather pragmatic sense, assuming that the two concepts describe possible and distinct answers to questions around core aspects of learning that any learner or teacher explicitly or implicitly has to answer, irrespective of his or her cultural background (such as what is the goal of learning). When doing so, we aim at identifying existing differences in those learning beliefs of various cultural groups of students (and faculty). The questions of where exactly these differences may come from and what role intellectual historic traditions within these cultures actually play can obviously not be answered by this approach. Hence, the current project was concerned solely with assessing

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the relative importance of mind and virtue orientation for various cultural groups at an international university in Germany.

The Research Project International University Located in northern Germany, Jacobs University Bremen is a private, highly selective, international university with students from over a hundred different nations. Although Jacobs charges tuition fees, students are accepted on a need–blind basis where only merit and qualifications count, not the ability to pay. Jacobs is also a residential university, where students not only work together but also live together. Additionally, the primary language is English. These aspects make Jacobs University unique in Germany, where universities are typically public, state funded and non–residential. Since interculturality is such a central dimension of campus life at this institution, it formed an ideal environment to explore the endorsement of the concepts of mind and virtue orientation within the classroom with students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. One other characteristic of the Jacobs University setting is that the members of faculty that teach here are primarily from Western backgrounds, with a majority of German nationals. Furthermore, international faculty members have typically received at least portions of their own education in the West. We therefore also explored the beliefs about learning of those who set the standard for the learning environment, the faculty. Moreover, we asked whether a greater discrepancy would emerge between the faculty’s beliefs and the beliefs of Western vs. non–Western students.

Method This study applied a quantitative survey design to measure the mind and virtue concepts. The project was carried out as one area of focus within a larger university–wide online survey concerning intercultural needs. The main research questions were concerned with measuring the academic and social satisfaction of the various groups on campus (undergraduate students, graduate students, administration, faculty, alumni and host families), as well as other potentially predicting factors such as classroom culture, intercultural competence and acculturation stress (see also Ward et al, 2001; Bresler, 2002; Li, 2005). Although the larger research project included qualitative interviews as well, the results that will be presented here are from the quantitative questionnaire that was

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designed for the purpose of this study. For this measurement, the concepts of mind and virtue orientation were translated into items, based on the categories that emerged from Li’s research. Some items were devised to reflect the mind orientation and others to reflect the virtue orientation (see below).

Participants Over all, the participation rate was rather high: 70 percent of undergraduate students (n = 477) and 83 percent of faculty (n = 87) participated. Although still one of the largest cultural groups, German students at Jacobs University only make up around 25 percent of the total student body. However, several other nations are represented by only a few students on campus. Therefore, cultural clusters were created for the analysis in order to protect confidentiality. This was done in two steps: First, we adopted the classification from the World Value Survey (WVS; e.g., Inglehart and Welzel, 2005), a regularly conducted worldwide survey with representative samples from around the world. The WVS groups countries in the following clusters: Ex–British Overseas, Western European, Catholic Eastern European, Orthodox Eastern European, Islamic Zone, Sub–Saharan Africa, and India. Note, however, that the World Value Survey does not address mind or virtue orientation (or any other learning related values). Adopting the WVS clusters was simply used as a heuristic to deal with the problem that an analysis on the level of national groups was not possible. For our analyses, we further clustered students from countries that fall into the Ex–British Overseas, Western European, Catholic Eastern European, and Orthodox Eastern European clusters as sharing a Socratic cultural background and thus being likely to strongly endorse the mind orientation. Students from the remaining countries were classified as having a non–Socratic cultural background and thus endorsing the mind orientation to a lesser extent. Lastly, faculty at Jacobs University is predominantly Western. Even those who originate from other cultural regions have at least received important parts of their education, and thus their socialization concerning learning, in the West.

Results Learning beliefs Virtue orientation: Participants were asked to indicate their agreement (on a 7–point scale ranging from 1— “not at all true” to 7—“very true”) to

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6 items that expressed different aspects of virtue orientation (example items “A good student is one who has the virtues of diligence and endurance of hardship”; “The purpose of learning for students is to develop themselves morally and socially”). The answers to these 6 items were averaged for each individual. Over all cultural groups, a significant cultural difference was found for this mean score of virtue orientation (F(7,354) = 6. 58; p