Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to Make the Difference 9781474292993, 9781474293020, 9781474293006

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Place, Belonging and School Leadership

Also available from Bloomsbury Engaging with Educational Change, Alma Fleet, Catherine Patterson and Katey De Gioia Exploring School Leadership in England and the Caribbean, Paul Miller Leadership of Place, Kathryn Riley School Leadership and Education System Reform, edited by Peter Earley and Toby Greany Successful School Leadership, edited by Petros Pashiardis and Olof Johansson

Place, Belonging and School Leadership Researching to Make the Difference

Kathryn Riley

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Kathryn Riley, 2017 Kathryn Riley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Riley, Kathryn A., author. Title: Place, belonging and school leadership: researching to make the difference /Kathryn Riley. Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic,2017. | Includes bibliographicalreferences and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016052066| ISBN 9781474292993(hardback) | ISBN 9781474293006(ePDF) | ISBN 9781474293013 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Educational leadership. | Professionallearning communities. | Educationalchange. | Education–Research. | Belonging (Social psychology) |BISAC: EDUCATION / Leadership. | EDUCATION / Research. | EDUCATION /Administration / School Plant Management. Classification: LCC LB2806 .R565 2017 | DDC 371.2–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052066 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-9299-3 PB: 978-1-3500-9367-6 ePDF: 978-1-4742-9300-6 ePub: 978-1-4742-9301-3 Series: Classical Inter/Faces Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Boxes, Figures and Tables Foreword Karen Seashore Louis Prologue About the Author Acknowledgements Part I

ix xiv xvi xvii

Place and Belonging in our Volatile World

1

Putting Belonging into the Frame

2

A World in the Classroom

Part II

vii

3 11

Framing the Study: School – A Place Where I Belong?

3

Themes, Concepts and Agency

27

4

Designing the Study

47

Part III

Research in Action

5

How School Leaders See It

63

6

Teacher-Researchers

71

7

Student-Researchers

86

Part IV

Leading Research to Make a Difference

8

A Step-change in Thinking

113

9

A New Way of Belonging?

128

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Contents

Appendix I: Further Research Material Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers Appendix III: Videos Appendix IV: A Framework for an Intervention Strategy References Index

145 149 156 159 163 172

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables Boxes 2.1 2.2 3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 9.2

Das ist mein Platz – Anita Berlin The murder of Lee Rigby – Trisha Jaffe Henry Compton student-researchers Schools’ aspirations for the project Briefing note for student-researchers The lexicon of belonging: How school leaders see it A child who feels they belong in class and school A teacher-researcher’s story – Matthew Research in action – Jemelia Nusrat: Tower Hamlets – our place Fariha’s story The Corelli Legacy The benefits of being a student-researcher A student-researcher’s story – Zalep What have I learnt about research? A researcher’s reflection – Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic The power of research School – A place where I belong? Gains for teachers, young people and school leaders The place-maker’s journey

15 20 45 53 58 67 77 83 88 98 101 104 106 108 120 121 127 129 137

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

The school experience Teachers with attitude The ‘ice’ policy I hate guns shots and when the sun gets in my eyes The streets of London

28 33 35 39 39

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3.6 4.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables

Going home The school experience (an expanded view) How do you feel when you are in school? Fun in the playground I don’t like it when … Me in the playground I don’t like shouting Teachers with attitude in a global world Student voice: The continuum of involvement in research Seeing, thinking, doing Belonging as a dynamic concept A leader’s guide to researching for place and belonging Being and becoming a place-maker Place leaders: The Cycle of Connectivity

40 50 73 76 77 95 96 124 126 131 133 135 139 139

Tables 3.1 4.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 8.1 8.2 8.3

Survey findings: Henry Compton students The three strands: School – A place where I belong? Taking the temperature Rethinking learning Reshaping the notion of success Overview: Student-researchers Taking the temperature: Overview Rethinking learning: Overview Reshaping the notion of success: Overview

44 52 74 78 80 91 114 115 116

Foreword Place, Belonging and Agency: Meta-themes for School Improvement and Social Justice Karen Seashore Louis1 This brief but illuminating book represents the harvest of Kathryn Riley’s long career as a professor who has one foot firmly planted in scholarship while the other is equally rooted in the practice of school improvement. I have followed her work for several decades, from its genesis in her concerns about the unrecognized effects of school exclusion practices on children’s well-being to its current emphasis on bringing art and joy into the learning agenda. Because her work has consistently focused on children and schools located in low-income and often unsafe urban settings, her insistent (but non-strident) focus on social justice has inspired both my students and me. More importantly, it continues to stimulate teachers and school leaders to consider how to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships among staff and between staff and students that link formal learning goals with the development of student-citizens who feel good about themselves, their futures and their capacity to create a better world. The scholarly harvest that is visible in this book is of two kinds – methodological and theoretical; the school-improvement bounty lies in a well-developed model for school-wide interventions that can (potentially) be brought to a larger scale. On a methodological and theoretical level, Kathryn Riley has developed the principles of ‘design research’ to make them clearer and more practical. In education, design research emerged primarily as a strategy to examine and refine interventions in learning environments (Cobb 2001), where the emphasis has been on theory-based interventions. While there has been considerable flirtation with Cobb’s ideal model that has pushed it out of the relatively narrow confines of classrooms (Penuel et al. 2011), it has also been subject to consistent critiques about the capacity of scholars to both design, carry out and 1

Karen Seashore Louis is Regents Professor and Robert H. Beck chair of Ideas in Education, University of Minnesota.

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theorize change processes (Anderson and Shattuck 2012). In addition, there has been considerable confusion about how design research is different from action research. Finally, the promise of extending the idea of theory-based interventions that are not focused on classroom and content is under-realized – most of the published articles deal with instruction and most are in math and science (Anderson and Shattuck 2012). So, what is revealed in this book, which was not explicitly intended to convey a major methodological focus? First, we see that core principles of design research  – theory driven, iterative, collaborative (between educational practitioners and scholars) and pragmatic (focused on creating a measurable impact in a real setting) – are fulfilled. More important, however, is the expansion of the design research paradigm outside of a narrow focus on substantive and specific learning interventions to a whole-school change focus. Over the course of her work, Kathryn Riley has always maintained a rigorous core design element: interventions intended to ‘affect’ students must ‘include student voice’ in the collection and interpretation of data. In this regard, her work is unusual, and she has pushed across all of her sites to hone the ways in which student voice can become (as in this book) student agency. In the wholeschool interventions that are beautifully illustrated in this book, we see that ●

●

● ●

●

all members of the school community were involved: headteachers/ principals, teachers, students and stakeholders outside the school; the design strategy involved experimental variation within a single intervention: while she reports on five schools, the theory being tested – that student sense of belonging could be increased through concerted research efforts on the part of members – was adapted to the needs of each setting, and adjusted over a relatively long period of time; real impacts were documented for all engaged parties; the theory was refined based on the design and experimentation (see, in particular, Figure 9.2 on page 133); there was a consistent concern for building capacity that will persist beyond the design research work.

In other words, this book demonstrates that design research principles can be applied to whole organization interventions that change both the culture and structure of the school. But we must also look more deeply at the implications of Riley’s work as a model for developing more socially just schools, particularly in the UK context.

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Social justice scholars often position themselves as system outsiders/critics and, although many writers draw on work that is grounded in practice (such as Paulo Freire), there are fewer who have worked on models that allow the researcher to maintain an ‘outside–inside’ status as part of an intervention. Vianna and Stetsenko (2011) point out that even researchers who position themselves as collaborators tend to do so in the context of ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998), where those communities are firmly situated in the present rather than a transformed future. But asking educational practitioners to become public critics and activists based on the values of the intervening scholar is also a position that assumes a power disparity, with the outside critic knowing more than the inside actors. Most of the work on radically ‘transformative activism’ in educational settings tends to be carried out in higher education settings (Brown 2004; Vianna Stetsenko and Hougaard 2014) or other non-school settings. In the context of highly requested urban school serving marginalized communities, politically positioned radicalism may be unrealistic. Kathryn Riley’s work, however, demonstrates that transformative action may be engendered in researcher-school collaborations by asking questions that encourage participants to ‘think outside the box’. Rather than starting with the end (transformed schools/engaged students), she begins her collaborative work by asking participants – particularly school leaders – to reflect on their deepest values. The questions that leaders, newly qualified teachers and students begin to research are not grounded in the school’s current presenting problems, but in what the participants long for. The process of arriving at researchable questions is part of the design research process but it is also fundamental to ensuring a deep commitment of school professionals and students to the communities in which they are located. I would call this approach ‘soft transformative activism’ because participants arrive at a critical perspective, which includes an understanding of power and privilege and their own voice but starts with work of the heart. By respectfully situating conversations with all stakeholders in the reality of a particular setting, her model develops transformative action that is both local and generalizable (meaningful to other schools and community members). It has been a privilege to discuss this work on a regular basis with Professor Riley, and I am, of course, gratified to find an occasional point where I can see that our conversations are reflected in her thinking. More importantly, however, is the larger message of this book: School transformation requires that we become grounded in the reality of children’s lives, both in and out of school. It demands that we remember that although every school is superficially alike, each is also

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unique in its history, the particularities of the community in which it is situated, and the students and teachers who are currently there to carry out the work. By identifying a limited number of theoretically driven and verified themes that should be part of any transformative work while grounding the transformation in ‘real data’, Riley provides educational professionals and students alike with tools for self-renewal that are emotionally and intellectually invigorating. But the book is, above all, very practical. I suspect that most schools would benefit from a supportive outside coach as part of their research work. Riley’s presentation contains, however, sufficient details that a reasonably astute school leader could, under many circumstances, create an appropriate environment for transformative research around space, place and belonging that engages all members. School-improvement professionals should unquestionably incorporate many of her strategies as part of their toolkit. Even if a school is not ready for a full-on transformation project such as those described here, the work on student agency and voice could easily be incorporated into existing servicelearning programmes linked to communities (Billig 2000; Kielsmeier 2010). By reminding all of us that we need to understand the relationship between students’ experience in the space of schools and the places that they live in order to increase their sense of agency, Kathryn Riley has presented a guide for school improvement that is genuinely but realistically transformative.

References Anderson, T., and Shattuck, J. (2012). ‘Design-based research a decade of progress in education research?’ Educational Researcher, 41(1), 16–25. Billig, S. H. (2000). ‘Research on K-12 school-based service learning: The evidence builds.’ Phi Delta Kappan, 81(9), 658. Brown, K. M. (2004). ‘Leadership for social justice and equity: Weaving a transformative framework and pedagogy.’ Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1), 77–108. Cobb, P. (2001). ‘Supporting the improvement of learning and teaching in social and institutional context’ in S. Carver and D. Klahr (Eds), Cognition and Instruction: 25 Years of Progress (pp. 544–78). Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kielsmeier, J. C. (2010). ‘Build a bridge between service and learning: Service learning creates a bridge of interaction and shared purpose that improves student learning and creates better schools and stronger communities.’ Phi Delta Kappan, 91(5), 8.

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Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Cheng, B. H. and Sabelli, N. (2011). ‘Organizing research and development at the intersection of learning, implementation, and design.’ Educational Researcher, 40(7), 331–7. Vianna, E., and Stetsenko, A. (2015). ‘Research with a transformative activist agenda: Creating the future through education for social change’ in J. Vadeboncouer (Ed.), Learning in and across Contexts: Reimagining Education (pp. 555–602). New York: National Society for the Study of Education, Teachers College Press. Vianna, E., Stetsenko, A. and Hougaard, N. (2014). ‘The dialectics of collective and individual transformation: Transformative activist research in a collaborative learning community project’ in A. Blunden (Ed.), Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (pp. 59–88). London: Brill. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Prologue We live in a world where everyone and everything is on the move: a world of unprecedented change and uncertainty. It’s also a volatile world of boundless possibilities: a world in which young people need to feel rooted and to feel that they belong. ‘Belonging’ is that sense of being somewhere where you feel confident that you will fit in and safe in your identity. Schools are one of the few shared social institutions which can create that sense of belonging or exclusion. Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to Make the Difference presents the case for engaging in – and with – research about place and belonging: a process which can help reshape how we think about schools, how we talk about them and how we lead them. It’s an approach which unleashes the energy and creativity of staff and students alike. It gives teachers powerful insights into young people’s lives and encourages them to explore, reflect, act and change, and to become outstanding professionals. It provides young people with the opportunity to voice their experiences and develop their skills and sense of agency. Researching about place and belonging is an invaluable analytical tool. It encourages school leaders to see themselves as place leaders and place-makers who help make ‘belonging’ work for pupils from many different backgrounds. The core research for this book was conducted in London. However, the book’s messages are for school leaders and their teams in any city – be that Munich, Manila or Minnesota – where school-based inquiry can facilitate children’s sense of belonging and personal agency, and help create a legacy of social cohesion. When young people feel they are safe in school, when they feel they belong, when they feel rooted, school becomes a place for them. They become open to learning and they succeed in many spheres. When young people know that they can influence the school community of which they are a part, they recognize their own possibilities. They become less fearful and begin to appreciate how they can shape the world they inhabit. The world opens out in front of them. This is the Art of Possibilities. Read this book because you want to think more about how to make schools great places to be. Whether you are a leader, a practitioner, a student, a researcher or a policymaker – whatever your role in the school community,

Prologue

xv

and wherever you are in the world – I hope the book will help you contribute to the development of vibrant school communities: joyful and enquiring places in which young people can be and become their best possible selves. Kathryn Riley Professor of Urban Education, Institute of Education, University College London, UK

About the Author Kathryn Riley was born and bred in Manchester. Like many of us today, she has a rich and varied lineage with grandparents of Irish and Eastern European extraction. She now lives in Greenwich in London, close to the River Thames – a river which has brought so many people to Britain’s shores. Belonging for her is being able to be herself – wherever she is. Kathryn is Professor of Urban Education at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK. Her first job was as a volunteer teacher in Ethiopia. Returning to the UK, she taught in inner-city London schools before becoming a chief officer for Greenwich local authority and an elected politician for London, part of the Inner London Education Authority. As an international scholar, she has worked in many countries and her international expertise includes heading up the World Bank’s Effective Schools and Teachers Group and projects with UNICEF and the OECD. Her books include Managing Services for the Under Fives (with Helen Penn, 1992); Quality and Equality: Promoting opportunities in schools (1994); Education Indicators: UK and International Perspectives (with Desmond Nuttall, 1994); Whose School is it Anyway? (1998); Leadership for Change and School Reform (with Karen Seashore Louis, 2000); Working with Disaffected Students: Why children lose interest in schools and what we can do about it (with Elle RustiqueForester, 2002); and Leadership of Place: Stories from the US, UK and South Africa (Bloomsbury, 2013). She is currently completing Manchester Melodies which is about her family. Kathryn is co-founder of the Art of Possibilities which brings together the best of the worlds of education, culture and art, and works with schools and organizations to help make ‘belonging’ work. Her ideas bridge the worlds of policy and practice, and her research and development work aims to harness the creativity and energy of students, staff and school leaders.

Acknowledgements I want to thank a number of people whose creativity and ideas have contributed to this book, beginning with the UCL, IoE Research team (Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, Dr Max Coates and Rhoda Furniss) and the schools involved in School – A place where I belong? (Corelli College, Elizabeth Garret Anderson School, Mulberry School, St Paul’s Way Trust School, Upton Cross Primary School and the eight schools involved in the Newly Qualified Teachers’ Network led by Newport School). Working with them has been an immensely enjoyable and rewarding experience. Secondly, I want to express my warm appreciation to other people whose encouragement, partnerships, contributions and conversations have been invaluable: Roberto Molina (my creative partner in the Art of Possibilities), Jo Tilley-Riley (and other family members for their continual support); Professor Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota for her unfailing intellectual curiosity) and Ashley Walker (who led the Newport NQT project with such panache). Other individuals who have influenced this work include Dr Tanya Arroba (psychologist), Dr Anita Berlin (past doctoral student for her inspiring feedback), Prue Barnes (executive headteacher), Rosemary Campbell-Stephens (Leadership College, Jamaica), Sean Coughlan (journalist), Maureen Dwyer (ministry of education, Jamaica), Professor Toby Greany (UCL, IoE), Diane Hofkins (journalist), Bob Hope (geographer), Trisha Jaffe (ex-headteacher), Gus John (international educator), Michele Costa Lukis (teacher), Professor John MacBeath (Cambridge), Professors Carmen Montecinos and Luis Ahumada (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Chile) and David Porritt (headteacher). My thanks and appreciation also to Frank Hung, my co-video producer, for his endless patience; to the graphic designer, Ian Plater, for his skilful diagrams; to James Lawrie for his sterling work with young people involved in London Lives; to colleagues at the London Assembly – in particular Jennette Arnold, OBE and Len Duvall OBE – for hosting the end of project conference for School – A place where I belong? at the London Living Room, City Hall; to colleagues at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning who contributed to this; and to the

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wonderful children from St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School who performed at that event. Thirdly, I want to acknowledge five writers whose work has inspired my thinking about place and belonging in different ways. The first two come from Ireland: the late poet and writer John O’Donogue whose book Eternal Echoes (1998) acknowledges our basic human desire to belong, and the playwright Brian Freil (1990) whose plays – such as Dancing at Lughnasa – capture so vividly the importance of place in our psyche. The third is the French philosopher and writer Simone Weil (1952) who in the 1950s wrote about the need for the human soul to be rooted, a notion which has particular resonance today for children who have been displaced from their homes or alienated from the homelands. Simone Weil’s thinking connects to the fourth writer who has influenced my writing, Mamphela Ramphele (1993). Her evocative book on the lives of South African migrant labourers, A Bed Called Home, captures the daily realities of life for those struggling to make a living far away from their homes and families. The final writer I want to mention is the British poet Benjamin Zephaniah (2000), whose joyful and insightful repertoire of poems sings to the diversity in our changing society and signposts a world of possibilities. Finally, my thanks to Bloomsbury for publishing this book, and Camilla Erskine, in particular, for her support. It is not a conventional academic publication but a fusion of ideas – research methods, melded with change strategies, stories and vignettes – all designed to demonstrate how staff, students, communities and leaders can work together to reshape what happens in schools and create a world of possibilities.

Part One

Place and Belonging in our Volatile World sets the framework for engaging in research about place and belonging, and how it sits within the complex global realities we all live with, in ways that have such an impact on the lives of young people.

1

Putting Belonging into the Frame

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul … uprootedness is by far the most dangerous malady to which human societies are exposed. Simone Weil (1952, p. 54)

Introduction Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to make the difference raises contemporary issues about place and belonging. The book is about doing and using research to change young people’s experience of schools. It builds on findings from previous research – Leadership of Place (Riley 2013a) – which looked at schools in impoverished and challenging contexts in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa, revealing many stark and competing realities in the lives of young people, as well as the ways in which school leaders can set the framework for belonging or exclusion, influencing how young people view society and their place within it. This book adds to the discussion about place and belonging by drawing on findings from School – A place where I belong? (S-PWB?): a two-year collaborative research inquiry which involved teacherand student-researchers and school leaders. It offers their perspectives on how place and belonging are experienced and created in schools. Future work will extend this approach to include families and communities. The findings presented in the book illustrate the scope and potential which school leaders have to build on research to change assumptions, thinking and practice. In this complex world – where the challenges facing schools today are significant and growing, with many unknowns waiting beyond the horizon  – the benefits to schools from engaging in a process of reflective inquiry are significant. They include the possibilities of affirming a personal sense of self and identity for members of the school’s community; of building resilience and unleashing the creativity and talents of community members; and of developing

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strong and inclusive communities characterized by individual, professional and organizational growth. Over half a century ago, Simone Weil captured the importance of being rooted and connected. The French philosopher’s prescient message echoes down the decades, and in today’s volatile world there is an immediacy and an urgency to the issues she raised and to the inquiry which has motivated this book: What can be done to help create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels that they belong?

Leading for belonging Understanding realities Belonging is that sense of being somewhere where you can feel confident that you will fit in and feel safe in your identity. The notion of ‘not belonging’ – exclusion – is equally something which schools need to grapple with. It encompasses those children and young people at risk of exclusion – who struggle to understand ‘the rules’ of learning and don’t fit into the conventional norms and practices of school life – as well as those whose lives are chaotic because of social circumstances. There is a new ‘crisis in belonging’ which has been triggered or accentuated in recent years by global churn and a growing refugee crisis, and more recently in the UK, by those who have used the results of the vote of the 2016 Referendum (‘Brexit’) to leave the European Community as an opportunity to legitimize racist or xenophobic views (Equality and Human Rights Commission 2016). In a context in which the only certainty is uncertainty, the importance of school leaders finding new and insightful ways to take stock of school life is growing. That knowledge base can be used to develop a shared vision which prepares school communities for the unknown and which enables young people to see a world of possibilities – not just one of unease, uncertainty and fear. It is a critical facet of leadership. Research engagement gives an immediacy to the relationships between staff and students. It can assist school leaders in developing a more nuanced understanding of the contextual nature of the leadership challenges they face in their own schools, communities and national contexts (Riley 2013b). ‘Belonging’ has a different meaning for ●

The recently arrived (forced migrants as refugees or asylum seekers; or economic migrants, for example, from Eastern Europe) who have to learn a new language and cultural norms;

Putting Belonging into the Frame ●

●

●

5

Second- or third-generation-established ethnic minority or migrant groups; especially those who are visibly different, as people of colour, as religious minorities, or because of what they wear; Established local communities, particularly in areas where there has been a significant rise in recent arrivals, where the local or ‘indigenous population’ is socially and economically disadvantaged, seeing themselves as being left behind: ‘victims’ of economic austerity; Communities who have been displaced or relocated as a result of changes in housing or welfare policies.

Recognizing that the place called ‘school’ is created by many people and factors, and is an ongoing process, and raising the research question ‘Is this school a place where all children, young people and adults feel they belong? If not, what are we going to do about it?’, enables leaders to understand the distinctiveness of experiences and identities which characterize each school and to create a rich tapestry of belonging: a culture which is unique and distinctive to the school they lead.

Divided lives Many young people today are growing up in poverty or in marginalized and socially and economically deprived communities, their lives uprooted and divided (Riley 2013b). Robert Putnam (2015) has written of the growing social and economic gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in the United States, describing the ways in which an economic ‘sorting out’ takes place in neighbourhoods and how this leads to a social ‘sorting’ out in schools, what he describes as ‘an incipient class apartheid’ (Putnam 2015, p. 39). In Australia around one in six children live below the poverty line, and indigenous Australians face some of the worst social, educational and health outcomes, leading Professor Fiona Stanley, epidemiologist and children’s advocate, to comment: While that’s not a surprise, I think that it is – to me – an ongoing source of anguish.  … Take the Aboriginal population in Western Australia, where I’m from. There are 85,000 Aboriginal people – 30% of them are aged under 15 or so & 50% of them are aged under 20. That’s not a lot of people, is it? So how come we, as a very wealthy and competent nation, can’t effectively deliver services that are closing the gap here? (Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (2013, p. 15))

The Marmot Review criticized pervasive inequalities in the UK, concluding that ‘people in different social circumstances experience avoidable differences

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Place, Belonging and School Leadership

in health, well-being and length of life’ (Marmot 2010, p. 10). More recent research has drawn attention to the ongoing inequalities experienced by ethnic minority communities in many aspects of their lives, as well as the continuing disadvantages which poorer white communities face (Equality and Human Rights Commission 2016). ‘Multiple disadvantages’ the authors conclude, result in ‘social and economic exclusion for some groups and create tensions between communities – putting the “haves” and the “have nots” in conflict’ (ibid., p. 7). The impact of teachers and schools on the lives of young people cannot be underestimated. What happens to young people once they enter the school is likely to have a powerful influence on their lives. How adults meet and greet each child or young person as she or he crosses the threshold from home life to school life and enters the school gates is what they will remember in later years. Young people’s interactions with staff, and with other pupils, will influence their aspirations and expectations. When there is friction within a school, young people are more likely to develop a sense of unease, a feeling of exclusion. When staff, young people and leaders work together, they can transform school cultures. Schools need to be places of opportunity, environments where all young people can flourish. The ‘belonging’ challenge for schools is how to facilitate integration of all children and young people, and develop the openness of mind and understanding in school – and society – that reduces conflict. From a societal point of view, schools are investments in a just and peaceful future.

Core themes Three main themes underpin Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to make the difference: ●

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The first of the themes is about the significance of place and belonging for all of us today and the centrality of schools in the lives of children and young people: Each individual brings their own experiences into the life of a school and thus schools become ever-changing kaleidoscopes of people, ideas and attitudes which have the potential to coalesce around shared beliefs and understandings. Schools have a role to play in helping young people develop their sense of identity and their engagement with the world. Our personal sense of belonging is shaped by our own lives and histories as well as the daily encounters we face. The second theme is about research inquiry. The book aims to create a bridge between the worlds of academic research and teaching practice,

Putting Belonging into the Frame

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7

promoting the notion of research engagement as part of a process which can strengthen school cultures and help create a stronger sense of place and belonging. Knowing more about how school life is experienced, enables school leaders to understand how to make schools great places to be: places where young people can thrive and become their best possible selves, and where staff can become highly reflective and outstanding professionals. Involving teachers and students as researchers in collaborative research inquiry about place and belonging is a timely, enjoyable and rewarding way of doing this. Mathew, one of the newly qualified teachers (NQTs) you will meet in Chapter 6 (Box 6.2) reflected that ‘research allows you to ask children questions you certainly haven’t thought about … and throws so much light onto their feelings’. Jemelia, a student-researcher (Chapter 7: Box 7.1), demonstrates the sense of well-being and agency she has gained from involvement, commenting that ‘being a part of this research project has been really beneficial’ for her and adding ‘it wasn’t just completing the research, but presenting it to researchers from other school groups and university students. … The skills I have developed I will keep for life.’ The third theme is about leadership in the broadest terms: how young people can contribute to the leadership of the school; the fledgling leadership of NQTs; and the leadership of those with more formalized, designated positions whose role it is to take this process of transforming school cultures forward. School leaders set the framework for belonging or exclusion, influencing how young people view society and their place within it. How leaders think, decide, act and reflect – and draw on their knowledge to create a roadmap of possibilities – is critical to the well-being of children and adults, and to their sense of belonging. Leaders’ aspirations and practices shape young people’s beliefs about themselves and send messages to communities about how they are viewed. Their expectations set the professional agenda. The book takes the leadership agenda forward by exploring the notion of school leaders as place leaders and place-makers who have a sense of agency about their role in helping create healthy cultures which support belonging.

To support these core themes, the book explores and develops key concepts as research and conceptual tools for thinking about the nature of school cultures. Concepts, such as place and belonging, are explicit in the design of the research inquiry S-PWB? Others emerge from the research, most notably a more nuanced understanding of agency: for teachers, as a mindset of possibilities; for young

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people, as a belief that they can influence their school context and shape the world around them, and have the skills to do this; and for school leaders, as a recognition of their role as place leaders and place-makers who can help make belonging work for many different people.

How the book is organized The book is divided into four parts. Part 1: Place and Belonging in our Volatile World – sets the framework for engaging in research about place and belonging, locating this discussion within the context of the complex global agenda and its impact on the lives of young people. Chapter 1: Putting Belonging into the Frame provides the book’s rationale and outlines its framework. It makes the case for involving schools in researching about place and belonging, arguing that this process of engagement draws on the creativity of staff and students, thus enabling schools to take stock of existing realities in insightful ways and build strong school cultures in which children and adults can feel that they belong. Chapter 2: A World in the Classroom identifies some of the leadership challenges of attending to the global agenda and discusses how this reinforces the importance for schools of engaging in research inquiry. Two examples are used to illustrate this argument and highlight the contradictions and tensions of our global world: one draws on events in Nuremburg in the 1930s, and the other on a dramatic incident in Woolwich in 2013. Part II: Framing the Study – outlines the key concepts and themes which shaped S-PWB? It makes the case for engaging young people and teachers in the research inquiry and describes the project’s design and the involvement of schools. Chapter 3: Themes, Concepts and Agency steps back from the broader global landscape and draws on a range of sources to examine issues which are critical to our understanding of how a sense of place and belonging is experienced and generated. The chapter identifies the concepts which have influenced the design of the research and helped set the groundwork for the book’s underpinning

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question: What can be done to help create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels they belong? Chapter 4: Designing the Research introduces S-PWB?, explaining the project’s rationale and research design, with its strong emphasis on collaborative inquiry. The chapter outlines the key elements of the project, describing its three strands: Strand I which explored the views of school leaders; Strand II which involved teacher-researchers who were NQTs; and Strand III which focused on studentresearchers. Part III: Research in Action – presents views of school leaders on the role of schools in helping create a sense of place and belonging and the teacher- and student-researchers’ rich findings. Chapter 5: How School Leaders See It explains why the headteachers and principals involved in the research S-PWB? decided to support the study. It outlines their views about place and belonging, offering a ‘lexicon of belonging’: a positive leadership language of beliefs and aspirations about place and belonging. Chapter 6: Teacher-researchers reports on the research undertaken by the teacher-researchers involved in the study. It offers illustrations of how they developed their research, the reflective and analytical gains for them, and the ways in which research engagement has encouraged them to reshape their classroom environments and develop a stronger sense of place and belonging for their students. Chapter 7: Student-researchers provides findings from the research undertaken by the student-researchers. It highlights their insights and reflections – about safety, relationships and identity – and draws attention to the ways in which their distinctive research perspectives have not only contributed to a deeper understanding about place and belonging but also influenced their own sense of self and agency. Part IV: Leading Research to Make a Difference – highlights some of the practical, theoretical and conceptual gains of engaging in research about place and belonging for schools, and the particular value of this approach for school leaders. Chapter 8: A Step-change in Thinking details how the research undertaken by the teacher- and student-researchers has contributed to a deeper understanding

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about school and classroom practices, focusing on three areas – taking the temperature (understanding what is going on), rethinking learning and reshaping the notion of success – each of which has contributed to and created belonging in the school and classroom. The chapter outlines the benefits of a process of research engagement which can be applied to schools in a wider range of countries and contexts. Chapter 9: A New Way of Belonging? responds to the challenge posed at the beginning of the book: What can be done to help create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels that they belong? The chapter highlights the benefits of S-PWB?, and the implications for school leaders of promoting collaborative inquiry in their schools. The focus is on the notion of school leaders as place leaders and place-makers who have a sense of agency about their role in helping create healthy cultures which support belonging. Conceptual tools are offered to support research inquiry about place and belonging and a broader transformative perspective on leadership which incorporates research engagement that is grounded in the notion of place-making. The chapter concludes by signposting key elements of an intervention strategy designed to help generate a sense of place and belonging.

Next steps Schools are one of the rare places where young people can be themselves. It all starts with belonging. One of the school leaders involved in S-PWB? framed these issues in the following terms: Belonging is about feeling that you have a place, that you matter. If you matter to people, it gives you a sense of who you are. In a school, there only have to be one or two people who know you. It holds you. This is particularly so for dislocated children. They don’t know who they are. Some of the young people in our school have come from overseas and seen terrible sights. The key thing is to be rooted. Then you feel secure. Each child needs to find their own sense of place and we have to encourage them to do that together – work with each other, support each other.

Chapter 2 sets this challenge within a global context.

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A World in the Classroom

We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement, as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before. António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Guterres 2015)

Understanding the world we live in Our fluid world We live in a world of unparalleled opportunities and boundless possibilities. It is a joyful, but also conflicted and transient, world: a world on the move – holidaymakers and travellers; visitors from distant continents who seek to reconnect with friends and family after many years apart; social and economic migrants; young people seeking new opportunities and experiences. At the same time, the number of countries in which it is unsafe to travel – because of war, insurgency, famine or infection – is growing, generating in its turn displaced people from many parts of the globe. For the first time since the Second World War, the number of people forced to flee their homes now exceeds 60 million. Half the world's refugees are children and international agencies have raised concerns about the extent to which these vulnerable young people are prey to people traffickers (UNHCR 2015). In this worldwide context of unprecedented change and uncertainty – in which the threats from global terrorism and climate change are truly ‘awe-inspiring, global as never before in history’ (Albrow 2015, p. 4) – young people need to have a place where they can feel rooted and where they can feel that they belong. The future is unknown and unknowable. Yet there can be one place of certainty for all our youngsters: one place where they can feel safe, where they can be

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themselves – their school. This chapter identifies some of the challenges for schools of attending to external events and global realities. In today’s turbulent and transient world, schools have a critical role to play in helping create a sense of place and belonging. Schools are communities, ‘political entities’ in which young people learn how to become part of society (Alexander 2013, p. 3). They offer young people a lens or filter to make sense of the world, and how we – as adults – view the world will influence how we experience and respond to it. How we, as educators, present the world to young people will shape their sense of place – and belonging in it – and their views about themselves. How staff interact with the children in their care will set the parameters for what is possible.

Global realities and contradictions Young people today are growing up in a world filled with unparalleled possibilities and opportunities: to travel, to learn, to think, to communicate, to create and to explore new ideas – on this planet and on planets as yet unexplored. Their art, poems and stories have yet to be imagined; their scientific discoveries have yet to be envisaged. It is also a world of ongoing transformation, and our understanding of what our young people will inherit is limited. We know that our world is one of increasing political and social complexity and unpredictable ecological and technological change. We know that the ice caps are melting and the oceans rising (EpaGov 2015; Gartner 2015), but we don’t know how this will play out as the children in our schools grow to adulthood and middle age. This world of ours can appear threatening. Our fears can make us wary, and restrict our urge to inquire, cross new thresholds and view the horizons beyond. We can view the world solely as a dangerous place: a world of pernicious diseases and ongoing conflicts – and fail to recognize that it is also a world of hope in which, in response to the emergence of Ebola, medical workers volunteered to give their care to sufferers, and scientists collaborated across borders to create a new vaccine. We can despair at the emergence of extremism and ongoing antipathy between countries and fail to recognize reconciliation in South Africa or Northern Ireland, or attempts to bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. Today’s globalized world is not a given. Indeed our understanding of what is meant by global has changed over recent decades. Martin Albrow describes this profound shift in thinking in the following terms: After World War 2 ‘global’ described the promised peace and new world order. But at once it also acquired the connotations of nuclear threat and environmental

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risk. Later still it signified the relentless rise of transnational corporate capitalism. The global became globalization. (Albrow 2015, p. 3)

The global reaches out beyond the nation state. Young people see and experience it through a range of social and media filters, as well as through their lived daily realities at home, on the street and in the playground. New modes for the exchange of information and ideas have expanded beyond recognition, creating opportunities for ‘mis-communication’, as well as for increased understanding. Social media has become a vehicle for recruiting jihadists to the cause of ISIL, the self-designated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Carter, Maher and Neumann 2014). Yet these social spaces also provide opportunities to network, and organize around global issues, with people who have very different values and assumptions, and to cooperate with them to tackle common challenges (Albrow 2007). Grassroots movements, such as ‘Make Poverty History’, drawn together through social media, have made a significant difference to the lives of some of the world’s neediest people: the cancellation of $1billion a year of debt for some of the poorest and most indebted countries. Just as there are choices about how to use social media, equally there are choices to be made about how to live as a global citizen. Some of the ‘superrich’ elect to secrete their fortunes in undeclared bank accounts to avoid paying tax or to hide illicit activities (Guardian 2015). Others use their wealth to help change current realities (Bill and Melinda Gates through their Combating AIDS Programme in Africa and India), or draw on their superstar status to challenge political decisions and spearhead public campaigns (Bob Geldof and Bono). Young people can opt to become active citizens in many walks of life, ‘promoting the well-being of human beings on this planet’ (Albrow 2015, p. 3). Or they might drift into apathy, or take the pathway into crime, radicalism, disaffection or drugs. Schools are critical institutions for enabling young people to recognize the positive options they have before them: whatever the uncertainties of this global world. There are choices for all of us – and schools need to signpost these possibilities to our youngsters. The life and culture of the school is shaped by many factors. These include historical events that still cast their shadows and contemporary political agendas – both at home and abroad – and which play out locally in unexpected ways (Riley 2004). This chapter identifies the challenges for schools of attending to these externalities. How schools understand and connect to their communities and neighbourhoods – and view their cultures, practices and beliefs (Dillabough and Kennelly 2009) – will shape young people’s sense of self and identity. How

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schools respond to global matters and contemporary events will influence young people’s ability to grapple with competing truths and realities and differing interpretations of events. In the face of all of this, engaging in research inquiry – an approach promoted in this book – can enable schools to look afresh at the world within the classroom, and the world beyond the school gate. This strategy has the potential to equip both students and staff to become sense-makers who understand more about their own personal realities in and outside of school, as well as the world they live in. I have used two examples in this chapter to illustrate this. Both demonstrate how extreme contemporary and historical events can erupt at the school gate, enter into the fabric of the school and into the very heart of school life in the classroom. Both are linked to research inquiry and to the notion of place and belonging, and both highlight the profound impact extremist ideologies can have on the fabric of school life: yet also showcase the promise and humanity which schools can help unleash. The first example is based on the experience of a young Jewish boy growing up in 1930s Nuremburg. It demonstrates how political agendas, in this case of the most extreme sort – the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany – can reshape beliefs and practices in the classroom of an elite German school – Nuremburg’s Melanchthon Gymnasium – and how research inquiry can be used to reconnect the past to the present in positive and meaningful ways. The second example stems from the murder of an off-duty soldier, Lee Rigby, in London in 2013. I have used it to illustrate how violent acts of an extreme nature – which take place on the doorstep of a school – can put the values of that school to the test. The school concerned, Corelli College, is one of those involved in the research project discussed in this book, S-PWB?

Illustration I: A lesson in history The internal world of the school is shaped by a range of external political realities. The mindsets of politicians and demagogues can seep into the walls of the school, the classroom and the very desk that each child sits at. The political decisions of yesteryear can reach out and grab us decades later. The experiences of our school days never desert us and, for some, historic events will leave an indelible mark. This first illustration demonstrates the realities of school life from the perspective of one young Jewish boy, Ludwig Berlin, growing up in

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Germany in the 1930s, in an era of rising Aryan supremacy and monolithic state control. The story was gifted to me by one of my former students, Anita Berlin. It’s about the importance of place and belonging and is the story of the return of her Jewish father (Ludwig) to the school he had attended as a child in Nuremberg. It’s also a story about how researching the past can help young people understand their place in society today. A student at one of the most illustrious schools in Germany, the Melanchthon Gymnasium, Ludwig had found himself increasingly ostracized from the school he loved. It was a slow process of accretion which began with Ludwig and his Jewish classmate Hans being forced to sit at the back of the classroom and wear the yellow star. Over a period of time, the two boys were debarred from taking part in various school activities. In 1937, pushed to the final periphery of school life and unable to matriculate, Ludwig and Hans, along with the other ten Jewish boys in the Melanchthon Gymnasium, were ‘encouraged’ to leave. Seven decades later, aged nearly ninety, Ludwig accepted an invitation to revisit the school and tell his story. Students from the Gymnasium were researching the history of all twelve Jewish boys. What had happened to them? On returning to his old school, Ludwig was shown a school desk which had been designed for two students, a desk similar to the one he and Hans had sat at as boys. It had been cut in half by the students as part of an art project to symbolize the way the school had been forced to divide its students. Das ist mein Platz (Box 2.1) was written by Anita, who accompanied her father on his momentous trip back to the Melanchthon Gymnasium, Nuremburg.

Box 2.1: Das ist mein Platz – Anita Berlin My father loves to tell and re-tell stories of his schooldays: how in the summer, if the mercury in the playground thermometer crept above 28° by 10.00 am the caretaker would ring the bell and classes would cease for the rest of the day; how (like his son and grandson) he was always one minute late for the first class of the day until the school built a bike shed and his father bought him a bike; how he was the best in the class at history and his friend Hans was the best mathematician. Fairly ordinary stories that his (Continued )

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Box 2.1 (Continued) children and now his grandchildren know off by heart. But these were not ordinary schooldays – not an ordinary school, not an ordinary place, and not an ordinary time. My father, Ludwig, is an old boy (a very old boy – he is now 95) of the Melanchthon Gymnasium in Nuremberg. When he joined the school in 1931, his father told him this was not just the best school in the city but the best in Germany. Founded by a humanist philosopher in the sixteenth century, later in the nineteenth century the philosopher Hegel was the headmaster for 8 years, while developing his ideas on free will. My father also tells the story of how everything changed at school in 1933: how he and Hans – the only other Jewish boy in the class were moved, with their double desks, from the front row near the window to the back row right next to the wall; how from that day no other boy in the class ever spoke to them – they were never insulted or attacked just completely ignored: how gradually every teacher began each class with a Heil Hitler; how he had to write an essay describing a school trip to the Nuremberg Nazi Rally Grounds; and finally how in 1937 he and the 11 other Jewish boys scattered through the school were told they were no longer allowed to take exams and would not be permitted to matriculate – perhaps their parents would like to find alternative education? Just before his ninetieth birthday Ludwig was contacted by two sixth formers from the Melanchthon Gymnasium who were undertaking a history project and wanted to base it on the experiences of a Jewish pupil in their school in the 1930s – as far as they knew he was the only one still alive. While visiting London on a school trip they asked to interview him. Ludwig did not hesitate – and spent a long morning being interviewed. When the students arrived he greeted them warmly ‘you do know you go to the best school in the whole of Germany don’t you? And now co-educational I see!’ Six months later came the invitation: would Ludwig lead a history seminar at the Gymnasium? Ludwig had always wanted to be a history teacher – in fact, he won a place to study history at Oxford after the war – but his father wouldn’t let him take it up – they were poor refugees and he had to go out and earn his keep. He had often wondered what it would be like to teach about his childhood experiences to a new generation of students at his old school. On the day of the seminar I accompanied my father to breakfast in the headmaster’s office where Ludwig was presented with a biography of Hegel. ‘Have you ever been in this office before?’ asked the headmaster. ‘Oh certainly’ said Ludwig ‘to be told off for being late. Do you still have the bicycle shed at the back of the playground?’

A World in the Classroom The seminar went well. The staff had prepared a poster incorporating all Ludwig’s reports (1931–7) assiduously kept by the school in eminently German style. The last report states ‘He leaves the school of his own free will.’ Ludwig told his school day anecdotes but also explained with a historian’s sense of balance the impact of the First World War on the German people (his father had been a decorated officer), a global economic crisis and the propaganda work of the Nuremberger Julius Streicher, amongst other factors, on the rise of Nazism. He had prepared statistics on the demographics and position of Jews in German society. And he carefully explained that even a humanist grammar school, contrary to what some students had been led to believe, was not immune from Nazi pressure, popularity and laws. Teachers were generally fair in marking essays and exams but the school was no haven for Jewish boys. He also – to a round of applause – listed the full squad of the Nuremberg FC team that won the league cup 1931, from memory. As we left the school, we were taken to an old double desk carefully positioned inside the front entrance. ‘Just like the desk Hans and I sat at in the 1930s’ observed Ludwig. This desk had been found by the caretaker in the basement and had been changed into a work of art by an earlier group of sixth formers – who had sawn it in half. On one side of the desk, graffiti style text cut into the wood read Das ist mein platz and on the other side were etched the names of the 12 boys who had been forced to leave in 1937. Right in the middle were: Ludwig Berlin and Hans Oettinger. Later sitting on a sunny terrace overlooking Nuremberg’s main square gazing towards the city wall and Castle above Ludwig turned to my son and said, ‘Isn’t it lovely, such a handsome city – how much it has hurt all these years to know that Nuremberg is associated throughout the world with the Nazi regime.’ He had ended his seminar thus: ‘Since those unhappy years several generations have descended into the grave and previous crimes and deeds have become history. Maybe sometime I'll be able to say again: Does not my dear Nuremberg lie in the middle of Germany?’1

1

A quote from ‘Die Meistersingervon Nürnberg’ by Richard Wagner libretto (English) How peacefully with its customs, contented in deed and work, lies, in the middle of Germany, my dear Nuremberg!

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In the 1930s, teachers at the Melanchthon Gymnasium had bowed to the control of an oppressive totalitarian regime. In 2015, the teachers from the same Gymnasium worked to encourage a spirit of research and critical enquiry in their students, and to reconcile the past with the present. This in its turn finally led to Ludwig Berlin being able to deliver his history seminar. By acknowledging the past, by making these connections, by encouraging the students to research, reflect and engage with the school’s painful history, by making the invisible – the twelve Jewish ex-students – visible, the school showed a world of possibilities to its young students: for hope, for reconciliation and for justice.

The world beyond the school gate Global churn and London realities Our global world is on the move in unprecedented ways that touch the lives of so many young people. How we welcome young people into our schools – who themselves are part of these evolving global stories – will have an impact on their sense of belonging. How we acknowledge their lives and histories and those of their families who have come from abroad, as well as the lives and histories of long-established local communities – some of whom have become displaced by other social or economic factors, such as urban regeneration – will shape how they respond to the global movements of population and to new arrivals in their neighbourhoods and in their schools. If, as educators, we recognize that the drive to find a new place (to improve your lot or to avoid war or famine) is a human one, and that when we feel welcomed we are more likely to make a contribution than when we feel resented, then we will enable the young people in our schools to feel welcomed. They will grow to feel that they belong – and will learn to welcome others: as the students from Melanchthon Gymnasium welcomed Ludwig Berlin back to his old school. Global churn – which is as much about political and ecological events as changing communities – is particularly intense in our cities. The impact of global movements of population can be witnessed every day in our cities, no more so than in London: an ethnically, linguistically, racially and religiously diverse global city where the research for S-PWB? was undertaken. London has always been a city where populations have moved in and out: displaced agricultural workers from the English countryside; displaced communities from across the globe – the Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews of Eastern Europe – and more recently

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refugees from Syria and Iraq, as well as economic migrants from near and distant lands (Riley 2010; Riley and Stoll 2005). London’s docks have now declined but England’s capital remains a city on the move. And while the cargo boats destined for distant shores are long since gone, the Thames now hosts commuter boats, tourist launches and sailing barges offering sunset cruises on the Thames for eager visitors. On the streets of London, the global becomes local, ever present in the constant whirl of people, ideas, food and aspirations which characterize the city. In this cycle of fluidity, where new ideas can as easily be built on quicksand as on solid foundations, schools are important conduits of information. They become the places where values can be explored. When beliefs and assumptions are at variance, schools remain one of the few shared social institutions which can hold the ring with any degree of legitimacy. As Manuel Castells (2010) has argued, maintaining this legitimacy is dependent on fostering and sustaining trust, as trust requires understanding. It has to be built in the quiet moments – a task not to be underestimated – and is particularly needed when extreme events put schools to their ultimate test, as is demonstrated by this illustration from Corelli College.

Illustration II: The murder of Lee Rigby In May 2013, Lee Rigby, an off-duty solider, was murdered near Woolwich Barracks in South East London. In past times, Woolwich was a military ship and ammunitions base: an area heavily bombed in the Second World War. Today it has a diverse population from many parts of the world. It’s an area of high poverty and social need, as well as one of transformation. Its proximity to the River Thames has led to the first flush of gentrification. Corelli College is a large secondary school whose diverse and mobile student population reflects the many changes in the wider locality. The murder – which occurred close to the school – was carried out with knives and a cleaver and captured on a mobile phone by an observer. The video went viral, and the horrific nature of the killing triggered a vast social media response. Lee Rigby’s two British-born assailants, who were later found guilty of the murder, claimed that they had carried out the attack to avenge the alleged killings of Muslims by British troops. A very public, violent event so close to the school gates is bound to have a profound effect. How did this murder speak to the young people in the school? What did it say to them about the world they live in? Life is full of

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contradictions – no more so than for staff and students at Corelli. One of the male assailants turned out to be a former student, and so was one of the women who comforted the dying soldier. Here were two sets of actions from opposing ends of the spectrum of hate and compassion. Students were on their spring break when the horrific incident took place, and staff discussed how best to respond on their return. What should they say to the young people? What space would their students need to talk? How could they make them feel that they were safe in the school and that they belonged? How could they help students recognize that they have choices in life: to be compassionate or to act in hate and fear? In Box 2.2, headteacher of the day Trisha Jaffe writes about the impact of the murder on the school. She describes her reactions to the event and how it forced her to fall back on the school’s values – equality, equity, solidarity, democracy, self-help and selfresponsibility – and how it also led to her decision to involve the school in the research S-PWB?

Box 2.2: The murder of Lee Rigby – Trisha Jaffe The thing that all headteachers dread is a crisis that is in the public domain. Corelli College was faced with such a crisis on 22 May 2013. As a school near Woolwich, the Lee Rigby murder was always going to be a difficult one to deal with but turned out to be much harder than at first thought. Some staff knew one of the murderers, having been in the same year at school as him; other students knew Lee Rigby, who had worked with the Cadet Corps that many students attended; others had a sibling who knew one or other and at least one parent witnessed the murder from their office window. The incident was not just one of mindless violence. It was a calculated attempt to create social unrest and it had the potential to do just that. Much of the press turned it into a vilification of Islam, tarring all Muslims as potentially the same as the murderers. Corelli College as a community includes 35 per cent Muslim, 30 per cent Christian and 10 per cent Buddhist students. The one thing that would not be acceptable would be to say that this was nothing to do with us because it happened outside our school community. Interpreting the incident in a way that made sense was going to be vital. Clearly, the first call was to ensure that staff did not communicate with the press. Some had been approached by people they knew. The next was going to be even harder, communicating with the students. A whole College

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assembly would be the main vehicle, as it allowed everyone to hear the same message. This was where the ethos and values of the College came into their own. When it was established, the College was founded on a clear, universally recognised set of values. These include equality, equity, solidarity, democracy, self-help and self-responsibility. Social responsibility, caring for others, openness and honesty are also fundamental. These values are in the blood stream of staff and students and have been researched and rehearsed. It’s the view of the staff and governors that these values are the bedrock of how we think about ‘British’ values. They significantly support community cohesion. Our values clearly had to be the framework for making some sense of a senseless act for our young people. The starting point had to be reflecting on those who had lost someone, Lee Rigby’s family, friends and colleagues. This fitted well with solidarity. The next step was to remind everyone that this was the act of two individuals and that they had self-responsibility. The act had been carried out by them. It was not the responsibility of a religion, it did not reflect the values and beliefs of that religion and you could not view those who shared that religion as responsible. Linking their response to issues around equality, equity and most importantly democracy, allowed a discussion about how to disagree with the views of others and also how to act positively for the values you believe in. The final thought was on the fact that no one has the right to impose their views on others and certainly not the right to coerce. Thankfully, the College values were so well embedded that what could have been a potentially extremely damaging incident turned into another reason for students to stand together in the face of outside attempts to denigrate one section of the community. Their maturity in the face of such a craven act and such an assault from the media was a tribute to them.

Events such as this put leadership to its ultimate test. They challenge schools’ values and beliefs, practices and motivation. Corelli as a school acknowledged the horrific reality of the Woolwich murder. The event reinforced for them the importance of place and belonging, and the need to have safe spaces within the school to discuss what had happened. In responding to the murder, staff wanted to show the students in their charge a world of positive choices and possibilities. They focused on the legacy of the young people themselves – their individual gifts, talents, skills and experiences. They encouraged their students to recognize how they could pass on their legacy to other young people and adults within the school and in the local community.

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Ways of seeing When extreme acts take place today – such as a revenge killing that might provoke some people into vilifying the religion of Islam and all its followers – all too often schools bury their heads in the proverbial sand. The world around them is too testing, too frightening to deal with. Yet, if we as educators do not acknowledge these issues, if we hide our own fears and uncertainties, how can we help our young people to see alternative realities – a different way of being? If young peoples’ fears are not named, not explored, not confronted, how will they be able to make sense of the world around them? The murder of Lee Rigby is an extreme case. Nevertheless, conflicts and events of global significance can suddenly explode at any time – for example, the ‘disappearance’ of British schoolgirls in 2015 to become ‘brides of Isis’ (Barnett 2015). Although such occurrences are unusual, they are sadly growing and, through social media, have a global reach scarcely envisaged a decade ago, creating challenges for schools about how to prepare young people to understand the realities of our world and yet, at the same time, remain open to people and ideas which are different or untried. How we as educators view and respond to the world has an effect which can reach down the years. Schools are one of the few places where young people can find a safe environment to discuss a world that might seem chaotic, contradictory and threatening. Staff from the Melanchthon Gymnasium, Nuremburg, and from Corelli, South London, both stepped into the contested space. The Melanchthon Gymnasium initiated their research inquiry about the ‘missing’ boys. Corelli signed up for the research project S-PWB? focusing on inclusion and belonging by encouraging young people who were recent arrivals to the UK to be members of the project’s student-researchers’ team. Those student-researchers went on to devise their own research question around the theme of place and belonging: ●

How successful is our school in welcoming newcomers and helping them feel that they belong?

As educators, we have choices about how to represent our complex world to children and young people: its past and its present. We can show them different interpretations of the world they live in now, encouraging them to think about how they can shape and influence it through their own actions and beliefs. Or we can leave them in passivity, or caught in prejudices learnt in their own communities or through the media. We can show them history, pathways and

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connections. We can teach them to harness the internet and social media for the common good, or be hesitant and fearful of its powers. We can encourage them to respond to global dilemmas such as climate change with caution, or with openness and criticality. We can ask them: ‘What kind of global citizen do you want to be?’ If our aspiration is to help our young people fulfil their hopes and dreams, then we have to show them what might be. Engaging in research inquiry is one step schools can take to help both staff and young people make sense of the world and to think more deeply about how to respond to it. This approach also enables schools to understand more about young people’s lives and experiences and develop the criticality of staff and students alike. It has the potential to help the whole school community make sense of differences in perceptions, views and experiences, and offers a way of building on that knowledge to create school cultures based on shared understandings and a spirit of reciprocity. We do not know what the future holds for our young people. Schools need to prepare them to face the unknown, to understand the complexities of the past and the present. Research inquiry is a powerful tool in helping young people do just that – and for helping to change their schools along the way.

Part Two

Framing the Study: School – A Place Where I Belong? outlines the key concepts and themes which shaped School – A place where I belong? It makes the case for engaging young people and teachers in research and describes the project’s design and the involvement of schools.

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Themes, Concepts and Agency

If belonging makes you feel more confident, and confidence makes you a better learner, it is clear that students need to feel like they belong in school in order to learn most effectively. Nusrat, Student-researcher Chapter 2 set the global context for this book: the political uncertainties, the ecological unknowns, identifying some of the ramifications for young people. The stories continue to unfold – acts of terror on our streets, on our doorsteps, at the gates of our schools, in our churches (Sunday Observer 2016). Combined together, they reinforce the importance of belonging, roots and connections and the need to understand more about schools as places of belonging. This chapter steps back from the broader global landscape and begins with a review of a range of conceptual issues which are critical to our understanding of how a sense of place and belonging is experienced and generated in schools. In an international climate of growing teacher disaffection with the profession, the chapter moves on to examine the challenges of teacher engagement and professionalism and to explore children’s well-being, drawing on data on pupil disengagement and disaffection from school. These themes reinforce the importance of giving staff and students a voice, and the opportunity to exercise their agency, through harnessing their creativity and enthusiasm in a process of engaged research inquiry focused on generating a sense of place and belonging.

Conceptual issues Place, space and belonging Our sense of belonging in any organization or institution is shaped by what we bring to it – our personal histories and the influence of external events – as

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Place, Belonging and School Leadership Space

The School Experience Histories and external influences Relationships and Encounters Expectations and Leadership Pedagogical experiences Environment for learning Belonging

Agency

Figure 3.1 The school experience

well as the actualities of school life: the relationships and the encounters, the expectations and the leadership, the pedagogical experiences, the environment for learning. The physical and emotional spaces within the school influence the nature of belonging, as does the perceived and actual agency of staff, young people and school leaders. These elements are drawn together and illustrated in Figure 3.1. Belonging matters to all of us. A sense of belonging and a sense of place are universal and fundamental concepts (Basso 1996), part of our basic needs. Belonging is a dynamic concept, an evolving experience and an issue discussed more fully in Chapter 9. Belonging is being comfortable in yourself, who you are, and where you are. Previous research undertaken in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa highlights the contextual nature of place and belonging – the localized contradictions, tensions and opportunities – as well as the significance of schools as places for children and young people, and the role and agency of teachers and leaders in creating the school environment. In school: ● ●

You could meet your friends, or you could be bullied. The physical environment could be conducive to your learning, or taxing on you as a learner.

Themes, Concepts and Agency ●

●

29

The ecology of relationships could be healthy and caring, or depressing and sapping of your energy. The narrative of everyday school life could contribute to the development of your emotional map, or rattle your self-confidence (Riley 2013a).

Space and place are closely connected. Inhabited space shapes expectations and aspirations, and views about place – not only in school but also in society. French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose work has helped build the foundations for thinking about these issues, distinguished between physical space, social space and ‘habitus’: the norms that guide behaviour and thinking (Bourdieu 1999). Habitus is neither fixed nor permanent (Navarro 2006) and is shaped by practices, structures and beliefs (Bourdieu 1984). The struggle for place frequently begins with a struggle for space (Dillabough and Kennelly 2009). Mamphela Ramphele captured this powerfully in her book A Bed Called Home, on the lives of the migrant workers in Cape Town, in which she described what it meant to be a hostel dweller in South Africa where the place you sleep is your only ‘home’. She concluded that the spaces individuals inhabit have a profound impact on their sense of self (Ramphele 1993). Issues about space and place assume a particular intensity in diverse multicultural, multilingual, multifaith and highly disadvantaged urban communities, where language, culture, mobility and experience can create uncertainties, as well as differing expectations about location and identity (Putnam 2007). So often this is about the need for belonging which in urban contexts has been associated with ‘placelessness’ – that sense of loss of identify and cultural security that can exist in our cities (Eade 2000) – and has led to a recognition of the importance of the need to take these issues into account while designing urban localities and neighbourhoods (Hague and Jenkins 2005). This struggle for space and place shapes the nature of belonging. Frequently, it is the struggle not to be an outsider: as is so often the case for young people who are on the margins of school life. For the immigrant or refugee – who is the outsider by definition of his or her status – knowing the language, the clues, the codes, of the dominant ‘tribe’ can often be an elusive goal and an alienating experience.

Leaders and agency The focus on leaders – and the notion of leadership of place which is integral to this book – is a recognition of the power of leaders to shape the spaces

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within their organizations, and by so doing, help create organizations which are places of inclusion or exclusion. Leaders can influence the views of others about how the world is organized (Goff man 1974). Leaders’ mediating influence not only shapes and channels the views and perceptions of staff and students but also affects the norms of the school and the beliefs and expectations of members of the school community. Our own experiences of school can tell us that. If we look back at our school days, we can usually remember the teachers who inspired us (‘I learned to love reading because Ms “X” …’); or traumatized us (‘I came to think that I would never be able to add up because Mr “Y” …’); or the classmates whose company we sought or avoided. We are also likely to remember the overt or hidden messages which the headteachers of our schools gave us about what school was for; what counted as knowledge (‘I was always puzzled about Britain’s colonial past. I’m Irish and I kept thinking, we were on the other side.’); or what amounted to success (‘she used to say, “All our top pupils go to the most prestigious Universities.” But I thought – what happened to the bottom group?’). Headteachers’ views could make a difference to how we felt about school life. If we were on the winning side, the insider-track, we are likely to remember the headteacher’s or school principal’s message more benignly. If we were on the losers’ track, we may still hold on to that sense of unease or desolation which had led us to conclude that we were one of the outsiders who didn’t quite fit in, who weren’t meant to be there. Whichever side we were on, we are likely to have experienced something of the agency of the headteacher – positively or negatively. The notion of agency is well developed in the literature, influenced significantly by the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens (1984). Giddens defined agency as an ability to ‘intervene in the world’, to ‘make a difference’ (Giddens 1984, p. 14). Agency, he argued, implied intention and was shaped by the agent’s degree of ‘knowledgeability’ (ibid.), suggesting that one feature of human agency was the power to organize and take actions within social structures. Agency, for Giddens, was about purpose, knowledge and competence. The literature on school leaders’ sense of agency is rich. Susan Lovett and colleagues, drawing on the work of Simon Clarke and Helen Wildy (2011), have suggested that a key aspect of school leaders’ personal agency is connected to their views of themselves as learners (Lovett et al. 2015). Clark and Wildy’s premise was that if school leaders were to be able to motivate others – and develop their own sense of personal agency – they first needed to focus on their

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own professional learning and on professional development which centred on people, systems, self and place (Clarke and Helen Wildy 2011). The concept of teacher agency is also well explored in the literature. Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson (2015) have pointed to education policy trends which ‘reinvent’ the notion of teachers as change agents and argue that teacher agency needs to be understood in terms of individual capacity, as well as school cultures and structures. Natasa Pantic (2015) has linked discussions about teachers as change agents to issues of social justice, drawing on a wide range of literature (such as Ainscow 2005; Frost 2012; Munn and Lloyd 2005; and Sachs 2003) to suggest that teachers who think of themselves as agents of change are more likely to take part in networks and collaborations aimed at tackling exclusion and disadvantage than other teachers: a conclusion which reinforces findings from US research (carried out by Karen Seashore Louis and colleagues) that by building collaborative relationships, teachers can become more effective in their efforts to improve the learning of underachieving students (Louis, Marks and Kruse 1996). Pantic went on to argue that, if teachers are to become agents of educational change, attention needs to focus on how to develop their skills, capacities and motivation to do this. Developing teachers as change agents for social justice is likely to involve cultivation of purpose and commitment to social justice; expanding the scope of teachers’ competence by bringing their practical, relational, tacit knowledge to the level of explicit professional capital; helping teachers understand the full transformative potential of their actions and interactions within the given autonomy and considering the constraints of the structural and cultural environments; and promoting broader understanding, critical reflection and engagement with education policies. (Pantic 2015, p. 16)

The case for involving school students and young people in decision making that affects their education and welfare – and developing their sense of agency – is equally powerful and has been made on moral, physiological, social, educational, pragmatic and democratic grounds (MacBeath et al. 2001; Levin 2000; Pollard et al. 2000). It has also been linked to issues about children’s rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Osler 2010). This notion of agency is as critical to teachers and young people as it is to leaders. How to motivate and engage teachers in their classroom practices in ways which will develop their sense of agency is a critical contextual factor for this book and is discussed in the next section of the chapter.

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Unlocking teachers’ sense of agency In 2002, I was invited by the General Teaching Council (GTC)1 to explore the question: ‘What makes a good teacher in the 21st century?’ (Riley 2003). The GTC study involved some 150 participants – teachers, students, school governors and school leaders. In a context of growing expectations and demands, teachers were facing conflicting demands which Taylor and Runte characterized in the following terms: The irony is that we in education are expected to develop in our young people the attributes, skills and capacities that will enable them to prosper and succeed in the knowledge society and, at the same time, we are expected to counteract and mitigate, to an extent, the problems emerging from an increasingly globalised economy. (Taylor and Runte 1995, p. 5)

Teachers interviewed for the GTC study reported that the challenges they faced sprang from competing policy agendas and growing workload pressures. While many experienced a shrinking sense of professional autonomy and a growing disenchantment with their profession, deep down they remained ‘closet’ skylarks: full of ambition and a sense of possibilities for children. I drew on this finding to develop the notion of ‘teachers with attitude’ (Figure 3.2) an ambitious model which represented a notion of teacher professionalism well suited to the needs of the twenty-first century. Teachers with ‘attitude’ sought to build relationships with their peers, students and communities based on mutual respect and trust. Guided by strong ethical and moral imperatives, they faced the world with openness and criticality. Their ‘approach’ was creative, resilient and resourceful. Open to new ideas and willing to teach ‘beyond the script’, they saw themselves as learners who took responsibility for their own professional learning. They had a clear ‘focus’, seeing children and young people for who they were. They could make a difference, particularly for youngsters on the margins of school life who were susceptible to its highs and lows. Nevertheless, I concluded at the time that teachers were being held back. The skylarks needed to be encouraged to step out into the light and fly. The days of clipping their wings had to come to an end. Since completing that study, some decade and a half ago, the challenges and pressures on teachers have continued to grow. Mounting international 1

The General Teaching Council England was the professional body for teaching in England between 2000 and 2012. It was disbanded by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government at the recommendation of the secretary of state for education, Michael Gove.

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Figure 3.2 Teachers with attitude

evidence from a range of countries – such as the Netherlands, the United States and Australia – points to a drift away from the teaching profession (MacBeath 2012). Attrition rates are particularly high during teachers’ first few years in the profession. In Australia, for example, one in four teachers leave the profession in their first five years of teaching (Manuel 2003). Excessive workload, under-resourcing and lack of trust have been identified by the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (2001) as deterrents to recruitment and retention. The OECD (2001) has warned of ‘meltdown scenarios’, in terms of loss of teachers from the workforce. These contextual factors reinforce the importance of engaging teachers: harnessing their enthusiasm and creativity by mobilizing their professional knowledge (Wrigley, Thomson and Lingard 2015). Professionals connect to a body of academic knowledge which links theory to practice and to decision making (Shulman 1986). They have a sense of social purpose and obligation, underpinned by a strong ethical foundation and a sense of agency. When teachers feel a sense of professional autonomy, they become more motivated about their work and also feel more competent (Bogler and Somech 2002; OECD 2002; Weiss 1999). If young people are to make sense of the world around them – and to think, question and challenge – then their teachers need to be able to approach an increasingly complex, fluid and technological world with criticality. Investing in

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teachers and developing their professionalism is a pressing matter (OECD 2010; Stigler and Hierbert 1999; Wegerif et al. 2015): an investment in their future and in the future of young people. Involving teachers in research inquiry is one way of doing this. In 2011, the OECD published a report on teachers’ views about the activities which most helped them improve their practice. Six strategies were rated particularly highly and are presented below in order of their importance for teachers. ● ● ● ● ● ●

Individual and collaborative research; Qualification programmes; Reading professional literature; Courses and workshops; Professional development networks; Mentoring and peer observation.

In a climate of international comparisons and competition, in which schools are subjected to more and more inspection and regulation, this finding about research may seem surprising. John Macbeth, a leading expert on school improvement concluded that the attraction of research inquiry stems from the potential it offers ‘for development and change’, an approach which was very different from more conventional strategies focusing ‘on problems and dysfunctions’ (MacBeath 2012, p. 97).

Young people’s lives When you feel good you learn well Before undertaking the GTC study, I had explored the factors which generated disengagement for young people (Riley and Rustique-Forrester 2002).2 This research, based in Lancashire, focused on the troubled or troublesome: those youngsters whose names teachers mention in the staff room with a sigh of resignation, and who consume the time and energy of senior staff. We had wanted to know what would keep them in school: What would make the difference? 2

As part of the study, interviews were conducted with 140 individuals (young people, staff, parents and school leaders). In addition, more informal interactions took place with a further 240 individuals. The book based on this study was entitled: Why Children Lose Interest in School and What We Can Do About It (Riley and Rustique-Forrester 2002).

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The young people were on the periphery of school life, their learning experience often fragmented, inconsistent and interrupted. Unable to conform in institutions which were alien to them, their behaviour could become inappropriate, challenging or even threatening. Relationships with their teachers were deeply important, yet frequently negative, and encounters with the school as a physical environment shaped their perceptions of how their school viewed them. If the toilets were messy and the food slapdash, they concluded that the school had little regard or respect for them and, they in turn, decided that the school was not worthy of their respect. While school life offered them the possibilities of social networks which could be sources of friendship and fun, the experience was more likely to be one of sadness, rejection and loneliness. The youngsters held on to school life by a perilously thin thread. There was the noise to contend with, teachers and classmates shouting; an atmosphere of disruption in which they played their part. There were their anxieties: exams, detention, parents’ evening. There were their day-to-day feelings of being bored, tired. And there were their hopes and aspirations: of achieving good marks, of meeting their targets, of having a fresh start. The Lancashire research included an activity in which young people were asked to draw their experiences. One school had dealt with the poor behaviour of its students through their ‘ice’ (isolation) policy. Pupils who were put on ‘ice’ were separated from the other pupils throughout the day, an experience represented in Figure 3.3 by one of the boys we interviewed.

Figure 3.3 The ‘ice’ policy

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Place, Belonging and School Leadership

A mother whose son had been put on ‘ice’ told me of her reaction to this policy – what it had meant for her and her son: I went up to school and he was in a tiny room on his own. I said to them, ‘You can’t put him in here, it’s like a prison. You have got to punish him but not like that.’ They never had anything good to say about him, no matter how small. Parents’ evenings were terrible. Them and us! (Riley and Rustique-Forrester 2002, p. 44)

This ‘them and us’ perception of school life characterized some of the tensions we encountered between staff and young people, and staff and families. A lack of trust lay at the root of these divisions. Two alien tribes inhabited the divided world of the school, each speaking its own language. Interactions were based on deeply entrenched misunderstandings about the motivation and behaviour of the other. The schools did not know how to listen to the voices of the young people and their families while the youngsters and their families felt that they were invisible, and viewed staff as aliens from another planet. Yet this attitude of hostility was not what either tribe wanted. Teachers told us that their encounters with disaffected young people were far removed from the hopes and aspirations about student–staff relationships which had first brought them into teaching. Sending a child out of the classroom only served, as one teacher told me, ‘to reinforce their belief that they are thick and unwanted’, adding, ‘I feel I have to do it because I have others to teach’ (Riley and Rustique-Forrester 2002, p. 49). The study demonstrated the degree to which those reluctant learners, these difficult and troubled youngsters, saw themselves as outsiders: and some schools excelled at making them feel they didn’t belong. In 2005–6 through a London Challenge development project, I had the opportunity to apply some of the lessons from the Lancashire study. The project was an intervention strategy involving 40+ young people aged 14–16, all vulnerable to the possibilities of formal exclusion from their schools. It brought staff and students together in a different learning environment. They found new ways of working together. None of the young people were excluded from their schools and all went on to further education or training at 16. The project generated a sense of well-being and agency for young people and for staff (Riley et al. 2006). The young people chose the title of the booklet we wrote to describe the project and which heads up this section of the chapter: ‘When you feel good you learn well.’ Nevertheless, the reality today is that school can be a very negative experience for many young people.

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Pupil well-being – or the lack of it In 2015, an international study of the ‘subjective well-being’ of 53,000 children across fifteen diverse countries found that one in five young people did not enjoy school (Rees and Main 2015).3 They did not feel good – to paraphrase the title of the London Challenge booklet – and this affected their experience of learning. Country context made a difference, with children growing up in poorer countries, particularly in Africa, appearing to enjoy school more than children from more economically advantaged countries. Highly competitive school systems – such as Estonia – seemed to work against children’s sense of well-being. The story in the UK was bleak, particularly for children and young people not living with their own families (Rees and Main 2015). School life was experienced as a downward trajectory. In Year 6, one in three children agreed with the statement that they liked going to school; by Year 8, this figure had dropped to one in five (The Good Childhood Report 2015). The young people’s sense of well-being declined as they reached adolescence, with girls being unhappier than boys. Many young girls reported concerns about their body image and seemed to lack a general sense of self-confidence. Evidence from the research pointed to high levels of bullying in schools, with more than one in three children aged between ten and twelve reporting that they had been physically bullied in the past month, and one in two stating that they had felt excluded at school. Findings from other research indicate that children can be victims of bullying because of their race, ethnicity or religion (Ditch the Label 2015). A particularly stark finding from the Well-being Study was that more children from British schools – compared to all of the other countries taking part in the survey – reported relationships with teachers to be poor and felt that they were unfairly treated by the teachers. Launching the research in 2015, chief executive of the Children’s Society Matthew Reed commented: It is deeply worrying that children in this country are so unhappy at school compared to other countries and it is truly shocking that thousands of children are being physically and emotionally bullied, damaging their happiness. School should be a safe haven, not a battleground. (Espinoza 2015)

3

This figure is a conflation of two response categories: not at all (10 per cent) and a little (9 per cent) (Rees and Main 2015). The UK study was a collaboration between the Children’s Society and the University of York. The data was collected through the Children’s Worlds Survey. International comparisons were made between Columbia, England, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, Israel, Nepal, Norway, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey (Rees and Main 2015).

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When the results of a follow-up study were published in 2016, the pattern broadly remained the same. Commenting on the 2016 findings, Jonathon Bradshaw, professor of social policy at the University of York, reflected: There is something going on in the UK and it seems to be focused on self-esteem and confidence. … I think schools in Britain need to be friendlier places, more concerned with social relationships and less focused on attainment. (Gayle 2016)

Throughout our lives we make choices about how we live. In our search for belonging, we may choose to be part of one group but not of another. We may opt for the life of a hermit or decide to live in relative social isolation as positive options provide us with the space to reflect, pray, be creative or observe the world in different ways. However, being forced as a child or young person to conform to a school ethos which denies who you are in an enforced process of ‘belonging’, or in which you are ostracized by staff or students, or bullied, is to deny young people their identity and start an unfolding chain of exclusion. These matters add weight to the importance of understanding the totality of children’s lives: within school and beyond the school gates.

Young people’s lives: Beyond the school gates The opportunity to use children’s drawings as a research instrument to understand more about young people’s lives in school and outside arose for me in the research and development project ‘Leadership on the Front-line’ (2004–8).4 The drawings which emerged from that study revealed the contrasts and complexities of life in the city, and the degree to which young people living in challenging socio-economic circumstances could be witness to violent encounters, as shown in Figure 3.4, drawn by a child from my home city of Manchester. I continued to use children’s drawings as a research instrument in Leadership of Place (Riley 2013a), asking the hundred or so young people who contributed to that research inquiry to respond through drawings to two key questions: ‘What’s it like living round here?’ and ‘What’s it like being in this school?’ Those illustrations showed many stark and competing realities: areas which were safe

4

The research and development project ‘Leadership on the Front-line’ explored the leadership of seventy schools in some of the most challenging city contexts across the UK and Northern Ireland (Belfast, Birmingham, London, Londonderry, Liverpool, Manchester and Salford and Dublin) and France (Paris) (Riley and Emery 2007; Riley 2008a,b). The project ran for four years, involving different cohorts of headteachers and school leaders. The drawing exercise was used with nearly 500 children, aged 3–17, in 49 of the 70 schools involved in the project.

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Figure 3.4 I hate guns shots and when the sun gets in my eyes

Figure 3.5 The streets of London

and welcoming and others which were ‘no go’ areas. Figure 3.5, life on the streets in London, vividly shows this contrasting experience. Findings indicated that young people’s experience of place was often marked by living in divided communities (Riley 2013a). Those divisions could be physical, socio-economic, created by local gangs or imported by new arrivals to a country from their countries of origin. Divisions created insiders and outsiders: those who felt safe and those who didn’t. There were distinctive contextual differences, such as the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa; the contrasts of wealth and

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poverty between communities in London; the extremities of life for some young New Yorkers from the most impoverished and disaffected communities. Across the three localities in the study, life could be tough. Families and communities could be bedrocks of love and support or the source of pain and alienation. Research carried out in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2015, following the same research design, revealed a similar picture. Gangs and violence were daily realities for many young people. Walking to and from school could be a stressful and hazardous experience. Children felt vulnerable, fearful when someone ‘redeyed’ them as they walked along the street – a local expression which meant they were jealous, ‘Hey boy, come yuh’, an older lad perched on the wall shouts to a school boy who clutches his satchel and runs. Going home you could see children fighting, or witness a murder. Life on the streets was very different to life in school: see Figure 3.6. A similar pattern emerged in research undertaken by colleagues in Chile in 2015, reinforcing the country-specific nature of the challenges young people living in impoverished social contexts faced and the intensity of those pressures (Riley, Montecinos and Ahumada 2016). Chile has a highly segregated

Figure 3.6 Going home

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educational system characterized by large numbers of young people living in poverty (Treviño, Salazar and Donoso 2011). One young woman depicted the drug dealer who was outside her house. She was at home, alone, ‘solo’ waiting for her parents to return from long and unpredictable working hours. She had locked herself in her ‘casa’ because she was afraid of what was ‘going down’ on the street. ‘I don’t like it when the bad people are outside and I’m not safe,’ she told us. These children’s drawings illustrate the daily hardships of poverty, inequality and marginalization which many young people encounter, the difficulties they face on the streets. Understanding more about what children and young people think and experience in their daily lives; finding out which youngsters see themselves as being on the ‘insider’ track in school (someone who belongs) or the ‘outsider’ track (someone who doesn’t) is about attending to these realities – not as an excuse for school failure but as a way of unlocking the talents of young people. What happens in school is critical to the well-being of all children but matters even more to those whose lives outside school are challenging. International educator Gus John reminds us that whether you are a teacher, head teacher or student, we bring what and who we are into the schooling situation. So if my life is chaotic the chances are I will bring a chaotic life into the schooling situation. (Gus John 2014)5

Behind that chaotic home life is a child with ideas, hopes and dreams.

Enhancing the agency of children: The power and potential of student voice There is a strong body of evidence which suggests that young people have an insightful and informative perspective on their school life. My own doctoral studies focused on young women of Afro-Caribbean origin in South London (Riley 1985). What did they think about school? What were their plans for the future? At the time, I was both a researcher and a teacher in a neighbouring school. As a researcher, I came to appreciate the open and candid views of my young interviewees about their home and school lives and how sympathetic they were to the pressures and challenges facing their teachers. As a teacher, I grew to realize how

5

Video: The Art of Possibilities: Place, belonging and schools in our global world: See Appendix III for information about the video and John (2011) for more information about his work on education and social justice.

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little time I spent listening to what the young people I taught had to say that was not part of the classroom script. I missed out on their hopes and dreams. Over recent years, the concept of student voice has entered the educational arena. However, the nature of the involvement of young people in decisions that affect their school lives plays out differently in national contexts. In England, schools have been invited to listen to young people’s views and involve them in decision making (DfE 2014).6 In Northern Ireland, with its history of divisions and conflict based on differences in religious beliefs and cultures, efforts have been made to consult with young people about their experiences of sectarianism (Ewart et al. 2014). What is meant by student ‘voice’ has been open to interpretation. For some writers, this represents a shift away from seeing young people as objects in research, to acknowledging them as participants (James 2007). This in turn raises questions about the purposes of the research. Jean Rudduck and Julia Flutter ask: ‘Are we “using” pupils to serve the narrow ends of a grades-obsessed society rather than “empowering” them by offering them greater agency in their schools?’ (Rudduck and Flutter 2000, p. 82). Joseph Murphy and Daniela Torre (2015) chart the changes in the social and political landscape which are leading to a recognition of the importance and relevance of listening to what young people have to say, suggesting that these include a stronger emphasis on democracy and citizenship and a growing focus on the rights of children and young people (Flutter and Rudduck 2004); as well as changes in our understanding about children and childhood: ‘Children and young people, rather than being passive subjects of social structures, are coming to be recognized as being active in shaping their social identities and as competent members of society’ (Burke and Grosvenor 2003, p. 3: quoted in Murphy and Torre 2015). They went on to highlight contradictions between the concepts underpinning the notion of student voice and current policy approaches to educational reform, pointing out that student voice ‘runs counter to … reform efforts which have been based on adults' ideas about the conceptualization and practice of education’ (CookSather 2002, p. 3: Quoted in Murphy and Torre 2015, p. 8). 6

Statutory Guidance Note to headteachers, school leaders and local authorities from the Department for Education and the Home Office on listening to what young people have to say was developed as part of the UK Government’s support for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (DfE 2014). The Guidance Note observes that listening to young people contributes to ‘confidence, self-respect, competence … increased motivation and engagement with learning’ (ibid., p. 2). There is also a recognition in the Note that such an approach contributes to young people’s ‘achievement and attainment’ and increases the likelihood that they will become ‘active participants in a democratic society’. Involving young people in other decision making is also acknowledged as a feature of effective leadership (DfE 2014, p. 2).

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As part of this upsurge of interest in student voice, pioneers such as Mary Kellet (2010) have introduced innovative ways of developing young people as researchers. Other researchers have drawn attention to how deeply knowledgeable young people are about what goes on in school (Maehr and Midgley 1996), their perceptions frequently highlighting the mismatch between adult intentions and student realities (Zamel 1990; Orellana 1999). This accords with the growing body of evidence that indicates that young people understand what helps them learn and what gets in the way (Dahl 1995: Riley and Docking 2004; Riley 2010); and, as Jean Ruddock commented succinctly, ‘Students have a lot to tell us that could make schools better’ (Ruddock 2007, p. 591). As the involvement of students in school matters has grown, young people have become their own advocates about the nature of that voice. As one young student commented candidly to researcher Audrey Osler: Give us a voice not just some poxy little council which discusses how much the price of chips are. (Osler 2010, p. 10)

My own interest in involving young people stemmed from a desire to know far more from them than their views about the price of chips. The first project I developed which included students as researchers was called ‘London Lives’. It was the contribution of one school in particular, Henry Compton, which gave me an insight into the power of student voice and the link to agency.

London Lives ‘London Lives’ focused on young Londoners. Almost half of inner London’s children live in poverty (Poverty Profile 2009). One in two Londoners has a first language other than English. The majority of England’s young black and black British population, and almost a third of its young Asian and Asian British population live in London (Riley 2010). London’s diversity is appreciated by young people, with research indicating that young Londoners think that one of the three best things about living in London is ‘the mixture of people who live here’ (ibid.). The more diverse the school they attend or the neighbourhood they live in, the more positive young Londoners are about its diversity. Three large secondary schools took part in ‘London Lives’: Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets (also involved in the research S-PWB?); Kidbrooke School in Greenwich (a mixed secondary school which later became Corelli College, also part of the research reported here); and Henry Compton School

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Table 3.1 Survey findings: Henry Compton student – views about life in the Borough, 2010 (Based on a survey of 221 boys with a return rate of 85%:185) Do you feel you have been treated unfairly 41% students answered yes. by any of the following people? (Police, local people, e.g. in shops) Have you ever been stopped and searched? 73% students answered yes (on buses, in shops, on the street, etc.). Is transportation effective in your borough? 43% students felt it was effective only sometimes. How do you feel the police treat you? 25% felt bullied by the police. What activities are offered to young people 75% were satisfied (youth clubs, gyms, in your borough? sports centres). Have you ever been bullied in your area? 26% said they had been bullied. Which area of your borough do you feel 37% felt unsafe in Hammersmith. most unsafe? Have you ever witnessed or been a victim 19% had witnessed knife crime. This of knife crime? has changed since the survey has been completed. Have you been a victim or witnessed any 26% Theft; 19% Assault. other crime?

for Boys in Hammersmith and Fulham (which was later to be amalgamated with another school). I wanted to know how these young Londoners saw themselves. What did they see as changing for them? How did they experience life on the streets and in their communities? Why did some groups seem to be more alienated from London than others? What did they bring to their schools? We began by developing the research skills of the student-researchers and encouraging each school group to choose two research questions: one relating to the internal world of the school and the other to external world of the local community. The Henry Compton student-researchers had wanted to know what their classmates thought about living in the borough: how they were treated, their views on facilities and how safe they felt. They developed the research question: ‘What is life like in our borough?’(Hammersmith and Fulham). Table 3.1 provides a summary of findings from their research survey. The Henry Compton researchers presented their findings to a student research conference at the Institute of Education (IoE) in 2011. Their survey had indicated that 131 boys (73 per cent of their respondents) claimed to have been stopped and searched on buses, in shops and on the streets, and 47 (25 per cent)

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that they had been bullied by the police. Towards the end of their presentation, the student-researchers showed the following slide about the direct impact of knife crime to a stunned audience: Box 3.1.

Box 3.1: Henry Compton student-researchers During this research project, one of Henry Compton’s pupils was a victim of knife crime. We experienced the reality of knife crime and so it was not just a project anymore. Had we started the project later we feel responses to our surveys and interview question would have been different, significantly altering the results of this research project. This tragedy made us think even more seriously about the role of The Police. We feel that they are often patrolling areas in large numbers e.g. Hammersmith Broadway Station. As a result, gangs are moving to areas where there are less patrols. We feel this is why one of our peers was a victim to knife crime.

When a tragedy such as this occurs, we realize fully the importance of researching and exploring young peoples’ views.

Soon after this conference, they also reported on their research findings to the local police in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Taking stock For many young people, schools are far from being safe havens or gateways to the future. In a global context in which social divisions are widening (Putnam 2015), schools need to become, as Jonathon Bradshaw reminds us (p. 38), friendlier places in which relationships matter, and also living organisms which are connected to the outside world. While schools cannot change the socioeconomic realities of young people’s lives, but if they are to become places of belonging and opportunity, schools need to know and understand what happens to young people beyond the school gates – and what young people bring with them – and what happens to them within the school gates. ‘London Lives’ reaffirmed the consensus in thinking in the literature on student voice that young people are willing and able to shed light on deeply

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complex social issues. The project illustrated the importance of linking the worlds beyond and within the school gates. For the Henry Compton studentresearchers, engagement in ‘London Lives’ helped them realize that – if their concerns about local policing were to be taken seriously – they needed evidence. Their research findings provided them with that. Their final assertion at the IoE student research conference is a salutary reminder not only of the realities of life facing many young people in our cities today but also of the power and potential of research to bring these matters to light. Involving young people as researchers, not just as the ‘researched’, develops their sense of agency – a belief in the power of their actions to influence social structures. This sense of agency is as critical to young people’s sense of well-being as it is to that of their teachers. For student ‘voice’ to be successful as part of a research project, the young people need to believe that the research process is ‘authentic’ (Mitra and Gross 2009; Ruddock et al. 1996), and that through engagement in research they have some power and influence (Cook-Sather 2002; Fielding 2004a,b). Similarly, the literature on teacher professionalism, reviewed earlier in the chapter, reinforces the importance of positive agency: teachers believing that they have the professional autonomy to shape the classroom experiences of young people. Engaging teachers in research inquiry is one way of developing this sense of professionalism. If teachers are to feel that research is a tool that they can use to positive effect, then the process of research engagement needs to be closely aligned to their classroom practices and concerns. This chapter has explored some of the conceptual issues related to place and belonging. It has highlighted the importance of drawing staff and young people into the shaping of the school experience as participants in an education process, rather than recipients who need to acquiesce to what has been decided by others. The next chapter outlines some of the design challenges of S-PWB?

4

Designing the Study

How can you learn, think, and engage if you don’t feel comfortable and secure and safe? You can’t. Belonging is just at the centre of everything that happens in the school. Deputy headteacher S-PWB? was a research and development partnership which brought together London schools and the UCL IoE. It involved thirteen schools: studentresearchers and headteachers from five schools and teacher-researchers – all NQTs – from a further eight schools. It focused on the world of the school – its culture, its beliefs, its expectations – and set out to build understanding about the importance of place, belonging and agency in young people’s lives from the perspectives of students, teachers and school leaders. The aim was to create a bridge between the worlds of research and practice. The core research question became: Is this school a place where everyone feels they belong? This chapter describes how S-PWB? was set up and how the teacher- and student-researchers came on board.

Design Approach The literature on student and teacher engagement reported in Chapter 3 had indicated the potential for using research inquiry as part of a change process. Researching for, and about, place and belonging seemed to offer schools the opportunity to take stock of the prevailing school culture, and to develop an informed knowledge base which could take the school forward in new ways. In designing the process of collaborative research inquiry which underpinned S-PWB?, involving young people and teachers as researchers became a central

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feature of the investigation. The design challenges were threefold: how to get schools on board; how to create a research process which could contribute to the reshaping of thinking and practice in participating schools; and how to capture the learning from this in ways that would help other schools become places of belonging, inspiration and possibility for students and staff. We drew on the traditions of action research: a process which encourages educators to collaborate in evaluating their practice in ways understood by other practitioners; to record their work; and try out new strategies (Elliot 1991; Stringer 2007). Advocates of action research have argued that educators work best on problems they have identified for themselves, and that both teachers and leaders become more effective when they are given the opportunity to examine and reflect on their own practice and develop different ways of working. By trying to make changes, practitioners begin to understand their organizations (Schein 2001). By engaging in action research, they step into a reflective space that can help them develop their thinking and improve their practice (Hendricks 2016). We expanded the approach by incorporating what could be learnt from two related methodologies, ‘appreciative inquiry’ (Cooperrider and Srivastva 1987) and ‘collaborative inquiry’ (Timperley and Earle 2011). Appreciative inquiry is a way of focusing on organizational change that starts from the recognition that every person in an organization has something to contribute: a strategy which values what is, as well as seeking to envision what might be (Cooperrider et al. 2003). Collaborative inquiry aims to help develop professional learning communities (Stoll and Louis 2007) and contribute to a process of shared reflective inquiry which can enrich school cultures (Timperley and Earle 2011). In the English context of growing fragmentation throughout the school system, collaborative inquiry has been adopted as an improvement strategy aimed at ‘fostering greater equity within schools’ (Ainscow et al. 2016, p. 7). Helen Timperley and Lorna Earl have described collaborative inquiry as a systematic process which brings groups together to reflect on what they have learnt and to decide on the actions they might take based on their learning. They suggest that when teachers are involved in a process of collaborative inquiry they have the opportunity to work together searching for and considering various sources of knowledge (both explicit and tacit) in order to investigate practices and ideas through a number of lenses, to put forward hypotheses, to challenge beliefs, and to pose more questions. It is the foundation of conceptual change. (Timperley and Earle 2011, p. 23)

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The framing of the research inquiry within the traditions of collaborative inquiry proved to be a helpful decision.

Questions and conceptual realignments The central research question and the supporting questions for S-PWB? were informed by a number of factors, including (i) issues which had emerged from Leadership of Place (Riley 2013a) about staff, students and school leaders and (ii) the exploration of conceptual matters about belonging, place and agency discussed in Chapter 3.

(i) Questions which emerged from Leadership of Place (Riley 2013a): Staff: ●

●

●

How can schools engage staff, particularly NQTs, in research inquiry about place and belonging? To what extent does involvement in research change their perceptions of themselves as teachers? How does it influence their classroom practices and reshape the school environment?

Students: ●

●

●

What are the benefits of involving young people in researching about place and belonging? What insights and reflections do they provide us from this distinctive research perspective? To what extent does involvement in research change their own sense of belonging and agency?

School leaders: ●

● ●

What are the ‘leaderly’ actions that school leaders take, both within the school and the wider community, to promote leadership of place and belonging? To what extent are these actions context-specific? How can school leaders maximize the physical environment of the school; the richness of relationships and the school’s positive narrative?

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(ii) Questions and issues which had emerged from the literature and conceptual review The review reported in Chapter 3 had led to a recognition that various key concepts needed to be more tightly coupled: ●

●

●

Space with place: the spaces individuals inhabit have a profound impact on their sense of self and on their sense of place; Well-being with belonging: a sense of safety and well-being are prerequisites of belonging; and Agency with voice: agency is your ability to intervene in the world and to have your voice heard so that you can make a difference.

The linkages between these concepts are shown in Figure 4.1.

Space with place

The School Experience Histories and external influences Relationships and Encounters Expectations and Leadership Pedagogical experiences Environment for learning Well‐being with Belonging Figure 4.1 The school experience (an expanded view)

Agency with Voice

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This analysis of the linkages in its turn generated additional questions: ●

●

●

Space and place: What spaces within school are particularly significant for young people: positively and negatively? Well-being and belonging: How do young people and school leaders see the relationship between safety and belonging? Agency and voice: Does the process of research engagement shape teachers’ and young people’s sense of agency?

Final research questions The process of reflection described in the previous section led to the development of an overarching research question: ●

Is this school a place where everybody feels they belong?

and to three related questions: ● ●

●

What contributes to a sense of place and belonging in school? What are the benefits for teachers and young people of engaging in research inquiry about place and belonging? What leadership strategies contribute to a sense of place and belonging?

Getting schools on board The study was divided into three strands: Strand I focused on the views and perceptions of headteachers and school principals; Strand II involved groups of NQTs as teacher-researchers; and Strand III, children and young people as student-researchers. We contacted schools who were potential participants in S-PWB?, spelling out the assumptions behind the study in a letter of invitation which included the following text: In a context of rapid global transformation, the importance of school policies and practices that create equity, widen access and develop opportunities for all young people cannot be underestimated. Ensuring our young learners feel that school is ‘a place where I belong’ is not an easy task. However, whether students feel they belong will influence the ways in which they engage with school, with education and with life. Strengthening young people’s sense of self and identity will help unleash their personal determination to succeed and their belief that they can shape the world around them.

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Five schools agreed to participate in Strands I and III. Strand II, which has teacher-researchers, was supported by Waltham Forest local authority as part of a school-improvement initiative which involved eight schools and was led by Newport School. All thirteen participating schools serve socially disadvantaged communities and represented something of London’s diversity. Table 4.1 details the schools involved in the different strands.

Table 4.1 The three strands: School – A place where I belong? Strand

Researchers

I: Headteachers and The headteachers of school principals five schools, as interviewees

II: Teacherresearchers

III: Studentresearchers

Schools

Duration

• Corelli College

A two-year research • Elizabeth Garret partnership Anderson School • Mulberry School • St Paul’s Way Trust School • Upton Cross Primary School Year I: A one-year research • Newport programme • Thorpe Hall for 35 NQTs • Oakhill

NQTs, as teacherresearchers, from eight schools, led by Newport • Riverley Two cohorts of School and participants supported by Year 2: Waltham Forest • Newport (18 in Year 1 local authority, • Dawlish and 17 in as part of a • Kingsbury Year 2) wider schoolGreen, Newbury improvement • Oakhill initiative • Thorpe Hall • Willow Brook Thirty-six students • Corelli College A two-year from four • Elizabeth Garret research secondary and Anderson School partnership one primary • Mulberry School school as • St Paul’s Way studentTrust School researchers • Upton Cross Primary School

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Establishing the project We set up a project partnership group which involved the five schools in Strands I and III and Newport School – as the lead school in Strand II – to discuss the expectations and aspirations and to agree to the objectives and outcomes. Each of the partner schools involved in Strand III nominated a senior member of staff to lead on the project and a principal teacher to work with the IoE team and the students. For the schools the research challenges were twofold: how to understand more about place and belonging; and how to enable children and adults to feel that they belonged in school. At one of the early partnership meetings, staff from the project schools reflected on what made them, as teachers, feel that they belonged in their own school. Their comments included the following: ● ●

● ● ●

Giving children confidence in themselves; Giving children and young people a voice and letting them see that their ideas are being acted upon; Giving them confidence in their abilities; Fully welcoming children and young people into the school; Having the information to act and being trusted to act.

Box 4.1: Schools’ aspirations for the project ●

●

● ● ●

●

●

●

●

By understanding more about ‘place’ and the importance of school as a place, our students will achieve even more and be happy on that journey. Through understanding more about the school as a place, we can create the best possible learning environment: every part of the school’s place is important. Parents will be even more connected to their children’s education. By developing our young people as researchers, they will grow in confidence. It will end the ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide in the school and help us understand more about the students’ legacy for leading – what they contribute to the school’s development. It will help us understand more about the complexities of identity and culture. It will enable our students to think about how they can become leaders of place in their locality.

Through working with our students as co-researchers, we will learn much more about what it means to pass through this school as a place. That by engaging in research, NQTs become reflective practitioners.

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Developing S-PWB? was an ongoing process of thinking, testing, reviewing and reflecting. We worked to build on schools’ aspirations for the project, as summarized in Box 4.1. Implicit in the design of the study was the recognition that the person who asks the questions – in this instance the teacher-researcher or the pupil-researcher – not only helps set the direction of the research but also has the potential to be a change agent. Each school team identified the particular aspect of belonging they wanted to research and decided how to carry out their inquiries. We introduced a range of possible methodologies, including surveys, interviews and children’s drawings. Given the importance of space and place and their interconnectedness, we also included the possibility of a mapping exercise which teachers, school leaders and young people could use to identify those parts of the school where they felt comfortable – and felt they belonged – and those where they felt uncomfortable, an outsider. Appendix II provides examples of materials for student-researchers. We agreed on four specific objectives which were that the project would ●

●

●

●

enhance the leadership knowledge and skills of staff at many levels and layers in the participating schools by carrying out action research which explores the practice of leadership of place; contribute to the understanding of the nature and impact of place and how it is experienced both positively and negatively; develop the research and inquiry skills of a group of young people from each participating school and extend their writing skills (through writing about their research) and develop their higher level thinking skills; maximize its impact by creating connections and shared understandings between participating schools, and develop ways of sharing the knowledge and understanding gained in the project across London schools, nationally and internationally.

Research strands Strand I: School leaders The extent to which young people and teachers are listened to within a school is linked to the leadership. A key finding from the research reported in Leadership of Place (2013a) was the importance of leaders understanding their role in

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creating a sense of place. The book identified a cohort of school leaders who – in the context of challenging social and economic and community conditions in Brooklyn, London’s East End, the Eastern Cape – were motivated by a sense of social justice and a belief that schools could be springboards of opportunity to the wider world for young people. These were leaders who had well-articulated theories of action and worked to make connections across the wider archipelago: between the schools and the disparate islands which represented different aspects of young people’s lives. For them, leadership was of place and was about positive agency. As one aim of S-PWB? was to understand these issues in greater depth, Strand 1 focused on the views and perceptions of the headteachers in the schools attended by the student-researchers not only through informal dialogue but also through extensive interviews with the headteachers and school principals about the nature of place and belonging, and its importance in the lives of children and young people in their schools. The interviews also included a focused activity on the language used to talk about place and belonging and a mapping exercise within their own schools on place and belonging to identify those areas of the school where staff and young people felt most comfortable and those where they felt less comfortable or had a sense that they did not belong.

Strand II: Teacher-researchers (Newly qualified teachers) The decision to focus on NQTs – rather than on more established teachers – was made to explore the potential of research engagement as an early intervention strategy. Could the approach contribute to a broader understanding of how to build teacher professional engagement and develop professional autonomy? Could the involvement of fledgling teachers as teacher-researchers capture their imagination and build on the energy and commitment which had brought them into teaching in the first place? In developing this strand of the research, we worked in partnership with colleagues at Newport School, Waltham Forest, who took the lead in working with the NQTs in a comprehensive programme designed to improve the experience of their first year in teaching and develop the NQTs’ professional capacities, individually and as part of a professional community. The collaborative inquiry research element, led by the UCL IoE team, aimed to facilitate a process of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, as part of a learning journey of research engagement, with clear goals and tools designed to enable the teacher-

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researchers to understand what they could do in their day-to-day practices as leaders of learning to maximize the potential of all children.1 Our working assumption was that this process of research engagement would enhance teachers’ sense of well-being and belonging, and in turn that of children and young people. We wanted to test this assumption and capture the impact of the research engagement process on them.

Starting points We began by encouraging the teacher-researchers to think about the process of research inquiry as a way of honing their professional practice to meet the needs of the children and young people they worked with. This approach was structured to appeal to their emotional and cognitive domains – both are key aspects of teaching and learning – and widen and deepen their appreciation of the realities and possibilities in their own classrooms, in the playground and in school life. Understanding ourselves and what motivates our own learning is helpful for all of us. For new teachers, it is a particularly powerful reflective tool which can encourage them to look at the children and young people in their classrooms in new ways. Our appeal to the teacher-researchers’ emotional domains was made through discussing what place and belonging meant to them personally, as well as professionally, asking them, for example, about their own school days. Had they been an insider or an outsider? These discussions led to some deep reflections about how comfortable it is to be an ‘insider’ and what ‘insiders’ could do to bring ‘outsiders’ into the world of belonging.2 The sharing of these stories enabled the teacher-researchers to reflect on the ways in which their own personal histories influenced their views as teachers and their expectations about their own pupils. The ‘outsiders’ had painful and vivid stories to tell about what this had felt like for them.

1

2

The NQTs were brought together for half a day per week for a range of activities. The research inquiry element of the programme was one week in four: ten core sessions over the year. In Year 1 of the programme 18 NQTs participated and 17 in Year 2. NQTs from eight schools took part in the programme over a two-year period. A similar approach was adopted for both cohorts. In the first cohort of 18 NQTs, 12 had been insiders who had enjoyed their school life and had felt that they belonged in their school. Three were in the ‘in-between’ group: they had enjoyed some aspects of their schools life but had found themselves different in some ways, although not necessarily ostracized for their differentness. The other three NQTs had been outsiders who didn’t fit, didn’t feel they belonged because of language, culture or beliefs. The pattern for the second cohort was broadly similar.

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57

We encouraged the teacher-researchers, and later the student-researchers, to frame their research inquiries through the lens or filter of place and belonging. Using the first video in the Art of Possibilities series: Place, belonging and schools in our global world (see Appendix III) we introduced the notion of the prism of place and belonging as a conceptual tool: a way of understanding the world our young people inhabit, both within and outside the school. When we look through a prism, the light splits into component parts. When we look at schools through the prism of place and belonging, we also begin to see new aspects of school life and begin to do things differently. We asked the NQTs to respond to the commentary in the film, in particular to children’s observations about what belonging meant for them, and to identify the places and situations which they thought helped children to feel they belonged. Student comments in the video had included the following: Belonging means to feel comfortable where you are and just to feel you can be yourself and not have the worry that people might discriminate or not like the way you are. Belonging means you are part of something and you are not just sitting around on the other side … not just left out or lonely.

‘Belonging’, our teacher-researchers reflected, needed to be a positive experience within the school and not the result of forced compliance. We focused on the teacher-researchers’ cognitive domains by introducing systematic tools for research inquiry. Following a research audit about their previous involvement in research, we encouraged them to think about the perceptions and experiences of the children and young people in their own classrooms. How did children respond to and use different spaces? Where and when were they confident and happy? Which groups or individuals were the insiders or the outsiders? What did children experience on a daily basis in the classroom and in the playground?

Strand III: Student-researchers We met with the student-researcher teams in each of the five schools, introducing ourselves and explaining the project’s core objectives. We outlined the potential gains for their schools and for themselves personally and invited them to participate in the study. We also devised a briefing note for student-researchers which described the project’s broad objectives and potential benefits (Box 4.2).

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Box 4.2: Briefing note for student-researchers Place and Belonging in YOUR school We don’t know where this project will take us. It’s like making footprints in the snow. 1. What’s our project about? Our world is changing fast. There’s lots that’s unsafe and uncertain. But it’s an exciting world and one you can shape and change, starting with your school. The project’s about: ● ●

●

Making your school a great place for learning and belonging; Making sure that everyone feels safe and confident in who they are and has a chance to be creative; Sharing our learning with other schools across the globe.

2. Who’s involved? Corelli Cooperative College, Greenwich; Elizabeth Garret Anderson School, Islington; Institute of Education, University of London; Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets; St Paul’s Way Trust School, Tower Hamlets; Upton Cross School, Newham; and Waltham Forest Partnership for NQTs led by Newport School. 3. What are we doing? We’re exploring a shared research question: ● Is this school a place that all children, young people and adults feel they belong? And if not, what are we going to do about it? 4. Why are we doing this? By understanding more about place and belonging, we’ll be able to create the best possible learning environment and opportunities for you and other young people. (When you feel you belong, you feel good. When you feel good you learn well and work out how to make your mark on the world.) ● It will help you think about how to become a leader of place; ● By involving you as a student and a researcher, we’ll help develop your research skills and we (the team and your teachers) will learn much more about what it means to pass through your school as a place. A starter question for you: What helps you feel you belong in your school?

Working with the lead teachers, we ran research sessions for the studentresearchers3 and brought them together at the IoE for two research conferences, discussed in Chapter 7, and for a final presentation at the London Assembly – London’s seat of Government. The energy and commitment of the lead teachers 3

For an example of research materials suitable for primary school-aged children, see Appendix II.

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has been central to the project’s success. They were a vital and invigorating part of the research process, helping generate a sense of involvement in the project for the student-researchers, developing understanding about what research might mean for them, and nurturing the research by helping the student-researchers analyse their findings and develop their own conclusions.

Footsteps in the snow In developing S-PWB? with our teacher- and student-researchers we had expected that this would give us fresh insights into our understanding of place and belonging, both within school and in the wider archipelago of the local community. We had also assumed that involving NQTs and young people in doing and using research would develop their skills and capacities in a range of ways. We had also expected that the research engagement with school leaders would extend our understanding of the contextual nature of belonging. However, we had not anticipated the degree to which the NQTs would transform their practices at such an early stage in their professional careers, or how much the young researchers would have to teach us about how to research, or that the work with school leaders would contribute to a re-conceptualization of leaders as leaders of place who strive to be place-makers. This will become evident in Chapters 6 and 7 as the research stories of the NQTs and young people and the reflections of the school leaders unfold. Chapter 5 sets the framework for the research inquiry by exploring the views of school leaders about place and belonging. We were aware that in carrying out research on such a complex topic as place and belonging we were moving into unknown territory. In the early stages of the project’s development one of the lead teachers had commented that involvement was like ‘taking footsteps in the snow. You didn’t know where this was going to lead you but it was definitely to an interesting place.’ This undoubtedly has been the case.

Part Three

Research in Action presents the views of school leaders about the role of schools in helping create a sense of place and belonging and the teacher- and studentresearchers’ rich findings.

5

How School Leaders See It

Belonging is about people accepting you for who you are. It’s about self-esteem. It’s about where your stability comes from. It’s the roots that help you grow. It’s where you decide where your roots are. This is what helps you feel valued … . To be rooted is to be known and comfortable. Headteacher Schools remain one of the few places of stability and belonging for many children, and no more so than for those whose lives are uncertain and fluid. How school leaders think about their leadership – and the language they use to express their ideas – will influence the climate of place and belonging within schools. Today’s volatile world, including the movements of population unprecedented since the Second World War, puts school leaders’ beliefs and values to the test. There are issues about ethics (Sergiovanni 1992); values and trust (Bryk and Schneider 2002; Louis 2007); and about the nature of moral leadership – the principles upon which leaders walk their leadership (West-Burnham 2015). High levels of self-awareness and emotional intelligence are needed (Coates 2008). The many claims on the time and energy of school leaders spring from competing demands and expectations, the requirements heaped upon them by governments and administrations, the needs of diverse student bodies and their families, the pressures of staff shortages and diminishing resources. Caught in this maelstrom, it can be all too easy for school leaders to lose sight of how to harness the energy and creativity of staff and students. This chapter draws on the views of the five school leaders – three female and two male – whose young people participated in S-PWB?: What had motivated them to take part in the research, their views about the importance of place and belonging in young people’s lives, and the language they used to reflect their own leadership direction.1 1

The individual headteacher or school principal is not identified by name in this chapter and the generic label school leader is used.

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Context Leadership is bound in culture and context, the challenges and tensions finely nuanced, nationally and locally (Elmeski 2013; Riley 2009a,b). For example, school leaders in the UK are required to exercise their statutory duty to prevent terrorism at a time in which building trust with communities is of critical importance (Riley 2017). The tension between these two imperatives can be particularly intense for those who lead schools in diverse urban communities, such as in London, where the contest for space and place throws a contemporary spotlight on the nature of belonging where the politics of division can lie on the doorstep of schools. Uncertainty is all too often in the air. Between them London’s seven million people speak more than 300 languages. London’s classrooms typically reflect a diversity of languages, cultures and beliefs. One in two young people in Inner London has a first language other than English, an invaluable asset to London as a global city (Mehmedbegovic 2007). As an economic force, London is a centre of innovation and international finance. As a city of culture, it embraces the lifestyles and beliefs of citizens from across the globe (Block 2006; Cohen 1997; Hannerz 1996; Sassen 2001). It’s a city of contradictions in which the most affluent conduct their lives in close proximity to some of the most needy, a picture that has changed little over several centuries (Grace 1978 and 2006). The communities in which the London schools involved in the research study are located – Islington, the East End of London, Newham and Woolwich – are fluid, with changing populations and challenging social and economic circumstances. London’s East End, home to two of the schools (Mulberry and St Paul’s Way), exemplifies London’s contradictions and changing landscape, as the studentresearchers from Mulberry School explain in Chapter 7. Throughout its history, the East End’s places and spaces have been hotly contested, not unlike New York’s Lower East Side (Creswell 2004). At the turn of the twentieth century, indigenous East Enders clashed with Irish and Jewish immigrants, as they competed for jobs in the docks. In1936, Oswald Mosley’s ‘Blackshirts’ fought with anti-fascist groups in the ‘Battle of Cable Street’, and in 1994, residents elected a local councillor who represented the anti-immigration British National Party (Riley 2013a). London’s East End today is home to many second- and third-generation Bengali families as well as to long-established white working-class communities (Riley and Stoll 2005). It remains a magnet for new arrivals and is the commercial home to City traders and Canary Wharf financiers. London’s new professionals

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are attracted to the neighbourhood by the East End buzz. Trendy art galleries and cafes stand alongside cut-price shops and Indian ‘take-away’ restaurants. Its spaces and places have become contested. In 2015 clashes took place outside the niche market ‘Cereal Killer Café’ in Shoreditch, as anti-gentrification protestors picketed the café which had come to symbolize growing inequity and spiralling prices in the East End (Khomami and Halliday 2015). Given the complexity of London as a global city, the lessons learnt from the schools involved in S-PWB? have a significance which stems not only from the diversity of London’s schools but also from the ways in which global events can touch all of us – wherever we live, travel or work – in ways scarcely envisaged a decade ago.

Place and belonging The importance of belonging For the school leaders involved in S-PWB?, agreement to participate stemmed from a recognition of the socio-economic factors that shape the day-to-day lives of young people, as well as the global events and challenges which can cast children and young people adrift: factors which reinforced for them the importance of schools as places of belonging and safety. As one school leader commented: In a context of alienation and disengagement, and the possibilities of radicalisation, belonging is about providing a safe and secure context for young people. … (They) need to be able to find their voice

According to these leaders, schools need to recognize the range of experiences encountered by young people. Many had lives that had been, or were, dislocated. Children want to be seen for who they are and not be fearful about ‘Who will know me?’ They need to be able to grow their roots and schools could help them do this. To be rooted is to be known and comfortable and to have a sense of control. When you are comfortable you are able to be yourself and to try things. ‘We have a boy from the Congo,’ one school leader reflected, ‘I can’t imagine what he’s seen. How does someone so dislocated feel that they matter? How do they find themselves? Find out who they are?’ In a national context in which values and beliefs are contested, researching for place and belonging for these leaders was a way of enabling children and young people to find their sense of place. If young people are to be able to develop their

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own sense of identity and realize their aspirations, schools needed to be places of belonging. The notion of place and belonging is incredibly important; and even more so in this time when we are all getting a bit exercised about British values, and what it means to be part of the community, and how we contribute to a community. So for our girls, that sense of identity; of who they are, where they come from, and how they relate to different communities and have different identities to a certain degree; it is really incredibly important to help them find their way through that. They have to find their way through being a Muslim, being a Muslim woman, being a member of the (school) community, being a member of the community living in and around (our borough). And working your way through that is quite a complex process.

The school as a place The five leaders were asked to map the areas within their schools where they thought children felt safe, could be heard, and were able to be creative, and those where staff could share their daily concerns and professional queries: spaces where they could interact with children and young people in a positive way. They also mapped those areas which were uncomfortable, unsafe or uncreative for staff and students. This mapping exercise highlighted the ways in which they could exercise their leadership to influence the physical spaces as well as the emotional and learning spaces which shape the school’s ethos. For example, one school leader marked as ‘warm’ spots for students (i.e. particular places of belonging) the canteen – a relaxed place of safety – which had flowers on the table and where staff came to eat too. ‘Warm’ spots for staff included offices that provided a shared subject or knowledge base, offering collegiality and encouraging creativity. The school had recently been remodelled and staff and students had played their part in shaping the new design. The school environment, she told me, shaped relationships and the wider context for learning. Outside areas which had previously been places of uncertainty, lack of safety, or conflict had been restructured: the areas planted with trees and populated by comfortable benches. She explained this strategy in the following terms: Every inch of our school has to be a learning environment. We asked the children to name all of the spaces. … This is about permeating positive energy throughout the life of the school and creating a ripple effect throughout the school, creating spaces within the wider place where children feel secure.

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The lexicon of belonging The school leaders were asked to provide key words that represented belonging for them. Their comments are brought together in Box 5.1. The size of the words reflects the weight the headteachers attached to them. Safety was a non-negotiable starting point for belonging for these school leaders. If children and young people did not feel safe, accepted and valued, or if they thought they were invisible and not recognized for who they are, they were unlikely to feel they belonged. In Chapter 7, student-researchers present their ‘wordcloud’ exercise on place and belonging (Jemlia, Box 7.1). There is a strong synergy between the language used by the young people and that of their school leaders. Both groups agree that in a volatile world schools need to be places of safety, connectivity, respect and trust. Relationships, these leaders argued, were ‘the corner stone of belonging’. When relationships were good within a school, young people felt they belonged and that they could inquire, explore and be themselves. What mattered for young people was ‘being valued and welcomed in a climate of mutual respect’. The public manifestation of belonging was affirmed by the day-to-day encounters and practices: these were the school’s avowed policies in action. As one school leader commented, ‘It’s the small things that make the difference – knowing the

Box 5.1: The lexicon of belonging: How school leaders see it Fairness Warmth & caring

Being known Sharing

Voice

Collaboration

Stake

RELATIONSHIPS

Safe & Secure

Accepted

Valued

Mutual respect Enjoyment Stimulation Peacefulness Home & community

Visibility

Connectedness

Space

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names of the children and what is going on for them – that can create a sense of belonging or exclusion.’

Schools and communities: Connecting to the wider archipelago2 These ‘small things’ were equally as important in terms of schools’ relationships with their local communities. ‘This school is here for the families who live in this area,’ one school leader commented. ‘We’re part of building a strong society and an education system that is fit for purpose.’ Schools needed to make connections with health, housing, education, he reflected. For too long we have had too many silos. In a just society people should have all of their basic needs met, a decent place to sleep, good health care. Everyone valued. This is part of the settlement. There has to be coherence in all of it. What happens in the doctor’s surgery and how people are treated is part of the same settlement. How you are treated affects how you feel about society. If you feel you are connected you feel you are a part society.

Schools had a critical role to play in creating and recreating community. Taking steps to reduce any impenetrable barriers which separated communities, by ensuring that any ‘historical antipathies die away’, such as those between some white and Asian communities in the East End of London, was as important a part of leadership as recognizing and accepting young people. Bringing families and communities together, not only to tackle antisocial behaviour but also to make neighbourhoods places of safety and opportunity was vital. All of the schools involved in the study experienced levels of high student mobility. Schools needed to know and understand their school communities. ‘Eighty percent of our Somalian community are single mothers,’ one school leader reflected: They work long, antisocial hours and hard, and the children are left on their own. Parents are sleeping when their children go to school, or come home. A number of our youngsters have responsibility for their siblings. For many of our parents, not just those from Somalia, life is tough. Many of them are vulnerable and don’t know where they belong which is why we have to work so hard to create belonging for their children.

An important role for the school, she argued, was to teach young people that ‘they are part of a wider community … part of an archipelago … and can contribute to the wider stage’. The children in her school had just won the School 2

A concept developed in Leadership of Place (Riley 2013a).

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Council debating award and were off to lunch with the Speaker of the House of Commons. In the following extract, another leader outlines the reasoning behind her decision to involve the school in the project. This stemmed from a recognition of the importance of identity for the young women in the school and the need to reinforce the interconnections between the school and the local community and to make the connections. As a leader, her aim was to encourage the young women in her school to become agents of change in all aspects of their lives. So when this project was first discussed, it just seemed like it met exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to help our girls find their own identity, we’re trying to find ways in which we can relate on a much more meaningful level with communities, and so that we can be mutually supportive; so the school becomes an agent in change in the community, and the community itself becomes an agent of change within the school. The girls are representative of that community, so they are in this research and participating. It’s not only benefitting themselves, they’re actually benefitting the school.

Creating schools as places of belonging In their distinctive ways, each of these school leaders saw themselves as place leaders and place-makers. Place-making was about setting the direction, getting the story started but it was a shared activity: People like to feel that they can help shape a place. I feel I can help most when I can shape the creative process with others that helps them define and redefine. A place should never feel that it is a finished article but instead is always changing. People can see how they can make their contribution.

If schools are to become places where staff, students and communities are valued, welcomed and respected, they need to be built on solid foundations which connect the external world and the local community, to the internal world of the school. Consistency, visibility and resilience are critical to the success of this endeavour. ‘Consistency was non-negotiable in an organisation,’ part of an ethical framework which is as important for staff as students. ‘People need to be able to anticipate reactions to be safe.’ Learning students’ names and greeting them made it clear that they ‘were known, they’ve been noticed, they mattered’. When children are acknowledged, they are no longer invisible. Children worry about ‘Who will know me?’ Being known is part of being safe: both are prerequisites for belonging. Children have to be safe at school – to be

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part of school as a place – not only to learn but also to be prepared for a volatile world. Only when children feel safe, could they be taken out of their comfort zone to build the resilience needed for the future. A critical leadership challenge which these school leaders shared was to find ways of countering some of the negativity which many children and young people in their schools experienced in their daily lives such as Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, fear of white people. In the highly charged political contexts which are a common feature of the lives of many of the young people in their schools, these school leaders concluded that security, belonging and mutual trust were critical. Where these elements were present within a school, young people could navigate their way through opposing views and beliefs in the external environment and find their own voice. Trust was an imperative, not an optional extra, for building and sustaining belonging. Children’s lives could be complex and part of their role was to unravel some of those complexities. By enabling young people to become part of S-PWB? put them at the heart of the education enterprise and gave them a powerful voice. Chapter 1 led with a quotation from Simone Weil about the dangers of being uprooted, a ‘malady’ which touches the soul; a view which all of the five school leaders interviewed endorsed. One of the participating schools had named a room in the school after Simone Weil. Belonging is the strong roots which ground us. When young people feel they belong in school, it gives them a sense of control which enables them to explore, to try things, to participate. This chapter began with a quotation from one of the school leaders about the importance of belonging: the need for acceptance; the importance of having space and opportunities to grow your roots and feel secure. As another school leader concluded, in terms broadly endorsed by all five: It all begins with the great umbrella of belonging and those who globalisation affects the most are the most qualified to determine what it is that makes them feel like they belong.

It is the young teachers and young teachers in schools who will be most affected by globalization. This reinforces the importance of involving them in doing and using research about place and belonging, as discussed in the next two chapters.

6

Teacher-Researchers

Research … allows you to ask children some questions that … you certainly haven’t thought about. That throws so much light onto their feelings. That’s the great thing about research and about making it very objective. You really just want to find something out about the class. Mathew: Newly qualified teacher and teacher-researcher This chapter reports on the research undertaken by the teacher-researchers involved in S-PWB? describing how they went about their research, what they learnt and how they applied their learning. It offers illustrations of how, by becoming a teacher-researcher, new teachers develop an approach – and a tool kit of reflective inquiry – which enables them to understand the children in their classrooms in new ways, and to draw on that knowledge to reshape their practices. The evidence presented in the chapter indicates that the benefits of this form of collaborative inquiry go far beyond the immediacies of the research project itself and support the conclusion of Helen Timperley and Lorna Earl that when teachers engage in this kind of progressive inquiry, they move far beyond story swapping to constructing new knowledge through solving problems of understanding. (Timperley and Earl 2011, p. 23)

Teacher-researchers in action When we first met with the teacher-researchers, they were hesitant and somewhat puzzled, overwhelmed by the immediacy of the demands on them as

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new teachers. They had to organize, assess, deliver. The pace was relentless. We began with a research audit which looked at their ●

●

● ●

past experience: Have you had any previous or involvement engagement with research activities? Have you read about any research that you found interesting? current research interests: Within your role and outside, what type of research do you find useful or engaging? Are you currently involved in any research? personal goals: What skills would you like to develop doing your own research? impact: What impact would you like to see on your practice and on your learning from involvement in research inquiry?

As discussed in Chapter 4, the appeal to their emotional and cognitive domains ignited the teacher-researchers’ engagement in the research process. Reflecting on their own relatively recent experiences as school students helped them to recognize the importance of place and belonging for the children and young people they were teaching. The teacher-researchers came to the IoE to make some initial presentations to the IoE team at a session which also involved experienced teachers from schools involved in supporting the student-researchers. This process of engagement gave them confidence in their own research, and appreciation of the benefits of collaboration and networking with other schools. The knowledge-sharing event was equally rewarding for the more experienced teachers, encouraging discussion and reflection. As the year progressed, the teacher-researchers undertook their own research and began to share their learning. At the end of their research inquiries, each of the two cohorts of teacher-researchers presented their findings to an audience which included members of the senior leadership teams from their own schools and the IoE team. Less than one year into their teaching careers, these NQTs were able to demonstrate their understanding of the research process and the complexities of data collection and analysis. A synthesis of the research undertaken by nine of the teacher-researchers follows: the focus of their inquiries, their methodologies; the knowledge gains and the application of their research to their own classroom practices. Their research findings are organized around three themes, each of which contributes to creating a sense of belonging in the school and classroom. ● ● ●

Taking the temperature (Table 6.1); Rethinking learning (Table 6.2); Reshaping the notion of success (Table 6.3).

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The notion of ‘taking the classroom temperature’ was a starting point for a number of teacher-researchers: a way of identifying the insiders and outsiders in school life, understanding their experiences and developing appropriate strategies based on that knowledge. Matthew, Kay and Tricia each went about this in a different way, tailoring their question about belonging to the children in their own classrooms. Matthew’s story – in which he reflects on his research journey – is included at the end of the chapter (Box 6.2). Trisha carried out her research with the twenty-seven children in her Year 4 class. She contextualized her exploration in terms of national research on the impact of well-being on pupil behaviour, setting herself the research question: ‘Does a child’s sense of belonging within the classroom affect his or her ability to learn and thrive?’ She made use of children’s drawings as a research tool to explore how the children felt about their school life – both in the classroom and the playground – and used different faces such as happy, bored or excited to depict their emotions (Figure 6.1). Tricia found that most of the children enjoyed themselves in school and in the playground (Figure 6.2). However, her research also revealed that five children were unhappy at school, drawing themselves as being alone, particularly at playtime. In Figure 6.3 (‘I don’t like it when …’) one child expresses her sense of sadness about her isolation and how difficult she found the noise in the dining room and the shouting in the classroom.

Figure 6.1 How do you feel when you are in school?

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Table 6.1 Taking the temperature

Focus and key findings

Methodology

1. Who are the insiders and outsiders? And how do you get the outsiders to feel they belong?

Matthew set out to discover why Matthew began with some children felt they were interviews, identifying outsiders. He found a group children from different predominantly of boys and those backgrounds and parts of whose first language was not the world who didn’t have English who were disheartened a very strong grasp of the about reading time. English language, or who were displaying traits of Matthew introduced graphic novels dyslexia. with reduced text to allow children to engage in more difficult or complex storylines.

Kay drew on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1978) to investigate how her pupils felt about their school environment: the physical surroundings and their relationships with fellow pupils.

Children were encouraged to work in mixed ability groups, an approach which helped develop their reading comprehension, confidence and sense of belonging.

Matthew later worked with his students to investigate books and literature that went beyond traditional context (e.g. Japanese novels) and found that this created a buzz and reinforced a sense of belonging.

Matthew: Y2

(Box 6.2) 2. How do pupils feel about their environment, especially their classroom? Is there a sense of belonging?

Changes in practice following their research inquiries

Kay began with a focus group approach during morning ‘Circle Time’ to explore how the children experienced their environment.

Kay drew on the findings from her research inquiry to develop new approaches to behaviour management in her classroom.

Place, Belonging and School Leadership

Question

Kay: Y5

Teacher-Researchers

She found a small group of children To triangulate her findings, She engaged in discussions with colleagues who felt unnoticed and diffident. she developed a ‘mini’ across the school about how to find questionnaire and a new avenues for children to have mapping exercise, using their voices heard and be involved in colours to identify areas decisions which affect them. which felt un/safe; un/ comfortable for children. 3. Does a child’s sense of The study focused on the impact of Trisha used children’s The recognition of the need to drawings to find out how well-being on pupil behaviour. belonging within the understand the totality of children’s they felt in the classroom, classroom affect his experience throughout the school day or her ability to learn Trisha tracked the progress of the playground and the led Tricia to find new ways of enabling children who appeared unhappy dining room and what and thrive? children to talk to her about what was and concluded there was a would support their happening to them, and to develop a link between how children Trisha: Y4 learning. range of responses in relation to their felt and how they performed needs and well-being. (See Appendix I) academically.

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Figure 6.2 Fun in the playground

Trisha tracked the progress of these five children and found that four of them had not moved forward academically, as might have been expected. On the basis of her research inquiry, she concluded there was a link between how children felt and how they performed academically. If a child felt isolated and unhappy in the playground, he or she was unlikely to be ready and open to learning in the classroom. As a teacher, she decided that she needed to do more to identify which children felt alone, as outsiders, and why, and develop playground and classroom strategies that would reduce their sense of isolation, such as the introduction of playground buddies and peer coaches, and team activities in the classroom which allocated each child a specific role. Hannah, Fojia and Helen (Table 6.2) focused their specific research inquiries on learning: How does teamwork contribute to learning? What can be done in the classroom environment to foster independent learning? What arrangements best support belonging in the classroom?

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Figure 6.3 I don’t like it when …

Helen drew on her findings to build a profile of the elements that contributed to a child feeling that he or she belonged in the classroom or school. This is summarized in Box 6.1. In exploring issues about the notion of success, Olivia, Rob and Dipesh (Table 6.3) each drew on their own areas of interest and expertise to develop

Box 6.1: A child who feels they belong in class and school … ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Has good relationships with a variety of peers; Has good relationships with adults, not only their class teacher; Feels they are learning well and receiving a good education; Has their work displayed or has opportunities to share their learning; Considers their behaviour to be good; Has their own ‘territory’ in the classroom, for example, trays, pegs, seats; Is made to feel special; Has opportunities to take part in sport.

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Table 6.2 Rethinking learning

Question

Focus and key findings

Methodology

Changes in practice following their research inquiries

Does a classroom environment and independent learning increase a sense of belonging and faster progress? Fojia: Y5

be a powerful tool and one that increased children’s sense of belonging. An exploration of the concept of ‘learnt helplessness’: the ways in which, according to Peterson (1993), children who are instructed how to do a task and shown every step along the way, fail to develop the ability to use their own thinking skills and initiative. Fojia’s hypothesis, which her research findings supported, was that the lower performing children in her own classroom were being over-instructed.

Fojia used observations of Fojia regrouped the class. She found that, children’s interactions with when encouraged to be independent their peers and analysis of learners who identified their own children’s written work to weaknesses and worked with others identify a group of children to solve their learning difficulties, on the margins of the children performing at the lower classroom. ends of the ability range made faster progress and felt that they belonged in On the basis of this initial the classroom. data, she focused on four children (one boy and three girls).

Place, Belonging and School Leadership

Does effective teamwork An exploration of collaborative Hannah used questionnaires, Hannah created working groups of three enhance the sense of learning to examine the ways in children’s drawings and to four children to enable them to make place and belonging in which it can be used to maximize focus group sessions the most of their learning experiences. the classroom? children’s own learning and that (where she drew on that She allocated specific roles to her students of their peers. data) to try and understand Hannah: Y1 to maximize group engagement. what helps children learn. Collaborative learning proved to

What gives children a An exploration of children’s sense of belonging in sense of place and belonging their class and school? in the school, examining the importance of peer group and Helen: Y3 adult relationships. Helen identified the features of a positive feeling of belonging.

define a sense of belonging Suggested strategies to do this included and to explain what this teachers swapping classes for short meant in their friendship periods of time; introducing a range of groups. She used ‘making friends’ activities; displaying questionnaires and smiley children’s work across the school; and sad faces as prompts using behaviour management to show for discussion. how and when pupils are valued; and making children feel that they are truly known.

Teacher-Researchers

These included a sense of ‘territory’ in the classroom and of visibility: the children were seen for who they are. Their sense of belonging was reinforced when they saw their work on display.

Helen introduced the notion Helen concluded that children’s sense of place and belonging in a of belonging could be improved by Personal and Social Health providing them with opportunities to (PHSE) lesson. get to know more adults and children in the school. She asked the children to

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Table 6.3: Reshaping the notion of success

Focus and key findings

How can performance in poetry affect a child’s sense of belonging in the classroom?

Olivia used recorded observations An exploration of whether the of the children performing performance aspect of poetry can have poetry, as well as children’s an effect on children’s confidence and questionnaires, their pictorial self-esteem through promoting their representations of their self and sense of belonging in the classroom. conversations with parents to Olivia found a strong correlation explore belonging. between pupils’ confidence in poetry

Olivia: Y3

Methodology

performance and their willingness and ability to contribute to group decision making in the classroom.

Changes in practice following their research inquiries With a growing emphasis in the national curriculum on learning, reciting and performing poems, Olivia and her colleagues have used the findings from this inquiry to promote enjoyment and success in poetry performance as a way of reinforcing a sense of belonging, growth and development.

She concluded that the general improvements in confidence led to a greater sense of pupil well-being and belonging. Building children’s confine The study focused on how to change through ‘Philosophy classroom practice. It drew on an for Children’ intervention strategy – philosophical inquiry in their classroom (Lipman Rob: Y5 et al.1980) – which explores children’s own powers of reasoning and questioning to create a positive classroom climate and enable pupils to have their voice. Research data supported the effectiveness of the intervention.

Having experimented with the intervention Rob introduced the notion of strategy, assessed children’s responses philosophical inquiry for before and after the intervention, Rob children in class ‘Circle Time’, found significant benefits in terms using questionnaires before and of children’s social and emotional after the intervention to measure development and thinking skills, its impact. concluding that the intervention raised He concluded that non-curriculum children’s sense of belonging and wellbased time could provide a ‘safe, being and their openness to learning. He fun and engaging arena’ in which intends to maintain the intervention. children can share opinions, discuss ideas and ask questions.

Place, Belonging and School Leadership

Question

A small-scale study of the sense of belonging of low attaining children within the classroom Dipesh: Y6

Within the context of national testing, Dipesh explored the impact of labelling children by ‘ability’ within the classroom.

The results from his research inquiry led Dipesh to reflect on the impact of national assessment policies on the children in his classroom. As a practitioner, the inquiry also reinforced for him the importance of creating place and belonging in the classrooms (Goodenow 1993). Drawing on his findings, Dipesh has worked to develop classroom strategies that focus on teamwork, collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

Teacher-Researchers

He discovered that labelling effected children’s sense of efficacy and selfworth, describing how one boy broke down in tears when he discovered that his mock (trial) examination results for the national tests (SATs) were still low and that he would not be sitting tests until he went to secondary school. ‘I try so hard but I never get higher results like everybody else,’ he told Dipesh, adding, ‘What is wrong with me?’

Dipesh used interviews to explore how children saw themselves in the classroom and the school.

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their research inquires. For Olivia, this was about poetry performance; Rob, philosophical inquiry; and Dipesh, testing. The nine examples presented here illustrate the many and varied ways in which the teacher-researchers responded to the core tasks of the inquiry, relating their research to a topic or theme of particular relevance to them and the children in their classrooms such as philosophy for children or poetry performance. The process of research inquiry enabled the teacher-researchers to use that knowledge to identify changes and strategies that could make a positive difference to their young learners. The wide range of strategies they adopted in response to their findings included ● ●

●

Changes in how children are grouped; The development of more collaborative ways for children to work with their peers; More opportunities and encouragement for children to take greater responsibility for their own learning.

Research evidence indicates that teachers tend to assess the climate of their classrooms more positively than their students (Fisher and Fraser 1983). Engaging in research inquiry changes this. As their research developed, the extent and the refreshing ways in which involvement in research inquiry was opening the pathway to professionalism for the teacher-researchers became apparent. The process of engaged inquiry sharpened their thinking and strengthened their understanding of the children in their classrooms. Their heightened professional knowledge provided them with the confidence to develop changes in their own practices which are likely to increase children’s sense of belonging. As the year progressed, the teacher-researchers grew as professionals. Once they had overcome their initial feelings of panic, they became ardent enthusiasts about research and their inquiries helped them through the tough and exhausting challenges of their first year in the profession. The benefits of research engagement are illustrated powerfully in Matthew’s account of his research story. He explains how he went about his research and how the process of research inquiry has given him a new understanding of the children in his classroom. His insights about ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ led him to look afresh at what was happening in his classroom and to make significant changes which included the introduction of graphic novels, a strategy which enabled him to ‘have mixed ability reading groups’ in which children explained difficult concepts to each other and learnt from each other.

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Box 6.2: A teacher-researcher’s story – Matthew As a trainee teacher, in fact at any point in your teaching career, there are so many things for you to think about that take your energy, time and your focus. You get so bogged down, and so involved in the marking which is important, planning for lessons, thinking about displays. But one thing you should never forget, one of the most important things as a teacher is to think, ‘What are the needs of every single child in my classroom?’ It’s easy to overlook the fact that you’ve got 30 very different children in your class. It’s really important to research and find out what’s really going on with them, what are their needs, and not just to assume that you know. I was part of the NQT group which included teachers from other schools. We were encouraged to think about whether the children in our class felt they belonged and to use research to find out who were the insiders and outsiders. We all researched different things. I started with interviews with the children in my class. I had a lot of children from different backgrounds, from different parts of the world, who didn’t have a very strong grasp of the English language, and a lot of children who were displaying traits of dyslexia. I found from the interviews that some of the children were disheartened about our reading time. For example, I had a child from Lithuania, who could read very well in her own language and had a very strong reading comprehension ability; but because she couldn’t speak very much English, we couldn’t give her literature that was appropriate to her level. So I began to think, what can I do here? What can I do to meet these children’s needs, in terms of their comprehension, not just their ability to decode words? I tried a few different things with the children, and eventually, stumbled across graphic novels. I found that the reduced text in the graphic novels allowed children to approach a much more difficult or complex story line than what was originally afforded to them. There was so much less text; and also the pictures managed to fill in the gaps. If they couldn’t read every single word, they could look at the pictures, and that would help them follow the storyline. And in that respect, I was able to help develop their reading comprehension skills, while I wouldn’t have been able to, if I had just been giving them books that were around their phonetic abilities. Using the graphic novels allowed me to have mixed ability reading groups, in the same way you would have a mixed ability literature group with children learning from each other and explaining difficult concepts to each other. We couldn’t have that in reading before. What the graphic novels allowed us to do was to take a book with a very strong, rich storyline, and each child would pick (Continued )

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Box 6.2 (Continued) up different things from the storyline they could feed that back to the other children. They could learn from each other and explain things to each other. I introduced some Japanese novels; and these read from left to right. It gave them a brand new cultural experience as well. And then they became interested in other types of literature from different parts of the world. It had this fantastic effect for the children. They began to investigate books and literature that weren’t just within the traditional context that they understood. It really created a sense of belonging for them, a real buzz that they got to read these books. I interviewed the children again. They absolutely loved it all, it had a great effect. As a teacher and adult, you can’t look through the eyes of a child. You can try to empathize with them, but you’re never going to be able to understand exactly what is going on with them, and the way they’re thinking. With research, it allows you to ask children some questions that they probably haven’t thought about, and that you certainly haven’t thought about. That throws so much light onto their feelings. That’s the great thing about research and about making it very objective. You really just want to find something out about the class. It throws light into different areas that you’d never even realized.

Taking stock Throughout the course of their NQT year, the two cohorts of teacher-researchers were offered what Fives et al. (2007) have described as ‘high guidance’: that is sustained professional guidance through the programme of activities led by Newport School of which their research inquiry was a key part. Support and encouragement are particularly important for teachers in their first days of teaching (Crosswell and Elliott 2004) and undoubtedly reduce burnout, helping new teachers step into their professional role by becoming active learners and creative thinkers (Alexander 2011). The illustrations of the work undertaken by the teacher-researchers presented in this chapter demonstrate the many and varied ways in which they drew on their learning from their own research inquiries to reshape the classroom environment, and to help create a greater sense of place and belonging in the classroom. They also reveal important insights into the many and complex ways that classrooms and schools can work against place and belonging. If your first language is not English; if you are a recent arrival to the UK; if you

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lack confidence, then the classroom or playground may feel alien or excluding. Choosing the theme of ‘belonging’ for a class assembly and encouraging children to discuss this; working with children to create dramatized versions of what belonging means in practice are all steps that the teacher-researchers have taken to help create belonging and mitigate exclusion. By the end of their one year of research inquiry, both cohorts of teacher-researchers had developed their reflective and analytical skills. Through sharing their learning with colleagues, they also contributed to developments within their own schools, such as making significant changes in how playground spaces are used and organized, and how children are given a meaningful voice. Mathew’s experience is a rich example of what NQTs are capable of doing: and how the research process can unleash the reflective and creative veins of teacher-researchers. His story reinforces the importance of incorporating research into teacher education programmes as essential tools of the teaching profession: a practice commonplace in the training of medical students. The skills of doing and using research are powerful and need to be appreciated and grown for their immediacy in the classroom as well as their long-term impact. The wider benefits of research engagement are evident in Mathew’s enjoyment of the research process. The experience has taken him forward in his practice. Researching the meaning of place and belonging has been a tough, fascinating and revealing journey for the NQTs. As teacher-researchers, their understanding of the importance of place and belonging has challenged assumptions about the children in their classrooms and helped them rethink and reshape their own classroom practices. The process of collaborative research inquiry (and the notion of the prism of place and belonging within which this was framed in S-PWB?) has served to open their eyes and helped them realize that creating safety and belonging in the classroom, playground and school is the key to unlocking young people’s potential. The impact of feeling like an outsider is demonstrated in some of the children’s drawings and is particularly poignant in the response of the boy who wept when he learnt that his test score results were still very low and that he would not be sitting his national tests until he went to secondary school. Too many of the day-to-day processes and practices in our schools can be alienating for staff and for young people. Yet as we will see in the next chapter, researching for place and belonging can be about creating schools that are places of possibilities.

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This project has brought us closer together as students. Joining this team has been an eye opener for me because I have listened to many people’s stories which really amazed me. I am currently in year 10 and moving on to year 11 very soon, and I feel responsible to pass on our research findings to other schools so that they can discover what belonging means to them too. But also, so that students can have the opportunity to conduct research and grow and develop as individuals. This has been a fantastic experience for me and I hope that many more young people have the same opportunity. Student-researcher There are many factors which influence children’s well-being and sense of belonging in school and limit their capacity to learn. This chapter focuses on the student-researchers. It offers findings from their research; reports on their views about the benefits of involvement in research inquiry about place and belonging; and draws attention to what they have learnt about themselves, from their involvement in research inquiry.

Why be a Student-researcher? The student-researchers were enthusiasts from the beginning. They understood the importance of place and belonging for themselves and their classmates and recognized what they could contribute to the study as well as what they could gain. We outlined the project and discussed our shared goal of making schools great places for learning and belonging. The student-researcher teams carried out their own research within the framework of the overarching research question – ‘Is this school a place where all children, young people and adults feel they belong?’ – choosing their own specific research focus within this. We ran

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school-based research sessions for them and brought them together for three research conferences.1 Our first conference at the UCL IoE was attended by more than thirty student-researchers aged 10–15,2 with an audience of masters and doctoral students. We asked the student-researchers why they thought it was important to be a researcher. Given below are their responses: ●

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Research inquiry helps you dig deeper into important issues, discover new things and learn how to collect knowledge and information from different sources. It’s good for our future. We learn to understand the world differently. Being a researcher builds confidence and skills. People tend to think that students can’t do research but we can and sometimes we can find out more from other young people than adults. Being a researcher helps us to understand people in different ways, particularly their feelings and emotions. We learn about what makes people feel comfortable and uncomfortable and how to encourage them to talk to us. Young people are the next generation and what goes on now in schools has a big impact on our future.

Their reflections on the skills needed to be a good researcher were equally impressive: teamwork and communication, social and analytical skills, a positive attitude which is creative and scholarly and characterized by perseverance and commitment. The student-researchers also recognized the ethical issues of research, including the importance of confidentiality. The secondary school student-researchers reported their interim research findings to the conference A Place to Be: Transformation through student-led research – The Art of Possibilities.3 We began by showing the first video from the project, Place, Belonging and Schools in our Global World which featured students from St Paul’s Way Trust School and Upton Park (Appendix III), and asked the student-researchers what they thought about it. They loved the ideas. Students from St Paul’s Way spoke about how the connections between the outside community and the school’s community reinforced their sense of belonging. Corelli and Elizabeth Garret Anderson students identified with the 1

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An example of research materials suitable for primary school-aged children is included in Appendix II. The primary school student-researchers were in Year 6 (the last year in primary school) and were aged 10–11. The secondary school student-researchers began their research inquiries in Year 9 (aged 14–15) and completed them in Year 10, aged 15–16. The primary school student-researchers had been unable to attend and presented their work on a later date to the UCL IoE research team.

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prism of place and belonging which represented ‘every single one of us’ and the very different communities that they all came from. Mulberry students commented on what it felt like to belong and to be heard: [What] was really interesting about the video was that … nearly everyone thought that to belong you must feel comfortable where you are and safe. … Everyone in the video was either a student or a teacher, and it just showed how everyone has a choice and has a voice, and you feel really valued when you have a choice and a voice.

The Research Journey Overview For the student-researchers, researching for and about place and belonging has been a journey of engagement. Each school has its own story to tell, related to its own context. The student-researchers from Elizabeth Garret Anderson had been keen to explore research methods which would appeal to their peers and came up with the idea of using Wordle (a word cloud website) as a research tool. Jemelia (Box 7.1) explains why she had become involved in the project and how the student-researchers had carried out the Wordle exercise.4

Box 7.1: Research in action – Jemelia My name is Jemelia and I LOVE being a student-researcher. The reason I chose to get involved with the leadership of place project is because I enjoy being a part of my school community and felt it would be interesting to research young people like myself, and see how they felt they belonged to our school. We conducted research by speaking to all of the students in Year 8 and asking them what they thought of when thinking about belonging to our school. Students could write as many one-word responses as they could think of in the 1 to 2 minutes provided. After collecting their answers, we typed them all into a document and created a Wordle, which analyses the frequency of words and displays them larger if they are more frequent. We felt that this was a clear way of displaying our findings.

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Appendix I includes a further interview with student-researcher Dea from Elizabeth Garret Anderson about her involvement in the research.

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Box 7.1 (Continued)

We found that the most frequent response was ‘friends’; this is what students think of when thinking about belonging at EGA. I was not surprised by this because I also feel friendship creates the atmosphere in school and it also make me feel like I belong to the school. What I have learnt about place and belonging is that people have their own views of how they feel they belonged to our school because we are all individuals and have our own minds. However, it was also clear that there are themes of belonging within the school, like safely, being wanted and identity. Moving forward, I think that this research was useful because it can help the school know what to do to help students feel like they belong at the school. This will be useful for people who start part way through the year. For this reason, I really feel strongly that other schools should have student-researchers and research belonging in their school to help them understand the students better. This will benefit the school as a whole, as well as the wider community.

Student-researchers from St Paul’s Way Trust School – which has a mobile and diverse staff and student body – began their research inquiry with a whole-school survey about safety and belonging which staff and students designed together. We conducted one-to-one interviews with students who were new to the school arriving from range of countries such as Bangladesh and Somalia, or from European countries but who have familial origins in other parts of the world. For example, we have a number of students who have come from Northern Italy, but were born or their parents were born in Bangladesh. This is called chain migration. These students were of particular interest as they could compare the experience of being an immigrant in two countries. As researchers, we found out that Bengali students in Bangladesh had high expectations.

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Their research inquiries led them to conclude that it was important to build selfconfidence and enable new arrivals not only to learn English but also to understand ‘how things work in England’. Creating a welcoming climate of friendship and belonging, as one of their own interviewees had told them, was critical. Having friends was the most useful tool for me to improve my English. Because I was close to my friends, I was not offended when they corrected my English. Sometimes we would even all laugh if I made a mistake, because they’d all explain to me why it was wrong. It’s much easier to learn from your mistakes when you can laugh about them.5

Table 7.1 provides a synopsis of the research undertaken by the five studentresearcher teams: their starting points, methodologies, key questions and findings. In the following pages the research journeys and findings of students from Upton Cross, a primary school; Mulberry, a secondary school for girls; and Corelli Cooperative College, Woolwich, a mixed secondary school are presented.6 ●

Their journey

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Their legacy

The student-researchers’ initial ideas about what they wanted to research and why; Their conclusions about what they had learnt about place and belonging and how – as researchers to their own schools, and the wider education community.

Illustrations of the research journey Illustration I: Upton Cross Primary School (i) The journey: If children don’t belong in schools, they don’t belong anywhere. The Upton Cross researchers framed their research inquiries within the school’s context as a large primary school. Our school is on two sites and it is important that everyone feels they belong whichever site they are on. Our plan is to ask children how they feel about belonging. One of the methods we are using is drawing. This is a good way of showing what it important to a child. 5

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Reflections from staff at St Paul’s Way about the benefits of research engagement for the students are included in Appendix I. The accounts from the students from Upton Cross were based on recorded transcripts. Th e written accounts from the secondary school students were those of the students themselves. Working with lead staff from their schools, minor textual edits were made.

Table 7.1 Overview: Student-researchers Inquiry and methodology

Question

Elizabeth Garett Anderson School

Our aim is to understand what ‘belonging’ means in the school and to see how the different groups in the school (adults and young people) experience belonging and how a shared community can be built.

What does belonging • Belonging was about safety, being wanted and having a sense of mean for Year 8 identity. students at EGA? • Students interviewed about these issues were keen to participate in the research. • Friendship was one of the most important factors in generating a sense of belonging. • The student-researchers concluded that researching for place and belonging changes perspectives about themselves and strengthens connections and relationships with other students. • They recommended that other students in the school have the opportunity to be student-researchers.

We want to create a community where everyone feels they belong: staff, students and parents.

Methodology: Wordle exercise, survey and interviews

St Paul’s Way Trust Much of what we’re doing as a What helps students School school works well but we want feel welcomed at St to understand more about what Paul’s? This school is very people bring with them to the multicultural school community. For example, (that is staff and many children are bilingual but students) and we we don’t celebrate that enough. want to build on that to create a Methodology: Whole-school survey great place for on roots and belonging everyone. Interviews with 20 students (new arrivals to the school and the UK)

Findings and outcomes

• Research data on students’ backgrounds has shed light on the complexities of migration, for instance in chain migration where children born in Italy whose parents came from Bangladesh are now growing up in London. • Having friends in school was one of the most useful tools to creating a sense of belonging. • Distance from the school could affect a student’s sense of belonging, if they encountered problems on their way to school. • Although reported levels of bullying were low, students did not necessarily report incidents to their teachers. • Drawing on their research findings, staff and students have developed proposals for changes in policy and practice.

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Table 7.1 continued Starting point

Inquiry and methodology

Upton Cross

Question

Methodology: They worked with thirty Year 2 and 3 students using drawing and a school mapping exercise

Mulberry

Our work is at an early stage. The intention is to use the idea of We think that belonging to understand more leaders can make about what it means to be a all the difference leader. and we want to know how to Methodology: Historical sources, be good student survey, interviews leaders.

• Most children (27) felt safe in their classrooms but some (7) felt unsafe or unhappy in the playground because other children shouted at them, or picked on them in some way. • Children who were new to the school and who didn’t speak English were likely to have the most problems. • Most children felt safe because ‘the headteacher makes sure we are really safe and the teachers support us a lot’. • The student-researchers put forward a range of strategies to help create a sense of belonging in the school. These included lessons to ensure that children ‘understand not to bully and not to hurt their little children’s feelings’; lessons about place and belonging; and posters put up around the school about their research findings and about bullying. Where do we • Researching the history of immigration in Tower Hamlets belong in our contributed to an understanding of the contextual nature of neighbourhood? belonging. Understanding how you and your family came to be part of the Tower Hamlets’ community and part of London What makes us feel contributed to a sense of belonging in school. we belong in our • Belonging was about being with people who shared your school? interests and made you feel confident. • Friendship groups were significant in helping shape a sense of Does that feeling of belonging and schools needed to explore this further. belonging increase • Researching about these issues built confidence and, in the view our confidence? of the student-researchers, should be expanded throughout the school.

Place, Belonging and School Leadership

Our school is on two sites and it Where do you feel is important that everyone feel safe and secure at If children don’t that they belong to whichever Upton Cross? belong in schools, site they are on. Our plan is to they don’t belong ask children how they feel about anywhere belonging.

Findings and outcomes

Corelli

Methodology: Survey, interviews

• Students at Corelli speak 65 languages. Around 50% are bilingual. • The student-researchers concluded that belonging was a complex issue, particularly for those who had arrived from overseas and spoke languages other than English. They could feel isolated in a large school, being outsiders. • Researching built confidence and developed skills. • While the school had policies in place to welcome newcomers, it needed to go further. The student-researchers suggested a comprehensive approach which included a buddy scheme and targeted material, in particular a ‘Welcome Book’ in different languages which the student-researchers wrote and translated.

Student-Researchers

Our school has young people How successful from all over the world. We is our school When you come want to know whether these in welcoming from somewhere ‘new arrivals’ to the UK feel newcomers and very different, it’s supported in the school? helping them feel important to feel Do they feel they belong? that they belong? welcomed. Our research challenge is to understand what it is that makes them feel that they belong and feel welcome.

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Following their training in research methods, they decided to adopt two basic methodologies: children’s drawings – about how they felt in the classroom and playground – and a mapping exercise in which children indicated where they felt safe and unsafe within the school. The student-researchers worked with some 30 other children in the school (aged 5–6); recorded their research findings in their own individual research journals; discussed these as a group; and made recommendations based on their research to their school. Five representatives from the team – three girls and two boys – reported their findings. The student-researchers had asked the younger children to draw pictures about the classroom and the playground: where they felt good and safe and where they didn’t. Aman described their methodology for the exercise. We weren’t telling them anything, but when we asked them what that picture meant, we wrote it in our journals. This helped us identify what places they feel safe and where they belonged, and what places they don’t feel safe. Most people, they feel safe and they belong in their classrooms, and not as much as in the playground, and they don’t belong in places, in classes that are bigger and have older children because they think something might happen to them.

Zanali described one particular drawing: a girl who portrayed herself as playing happily with a friend. She was then approached by a boy who yelled at her ‘you’re ugly’ which reduced her to tears: see Figure 7.1. Zanali went on to reflect on the implications of the drawing and how difficult it would be for a child who was so unhappy in the playground to be successful in the classroom. This girl, she’s in the playground, and this other girl comes up to her and she’s bigger than her, and she shouts at her and says, ‘You can’t do this’, ‘You’re too small to do this’, ‘You can’t play with us’, ‘You can’t sit here’ or ‘My friend is going to sit there. You can’t do this.’ So, this bit is where she’s been picked on and that’s where her friends are being rude to her, not her friends, the children outside that’s saying, ‘You can’t do this’, ‘You can’t do that’, ‘And if you do this, I’ll do this to you or I’ll make fun of you’. I was thinking that if this little one came in from play time … and people have been shouting at her, so she comes in to the class, how would she feel? … She might feel upset, and then, she might feel angry at them as well saying, ‘Why did you do this to me?’ Some children, they might feel that they’re going to cry. And she wouldn’t be focusing on her learning, she’ll focus on how about if they come and do it to me again, and I don’t want to go to school anymore, like that.

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Figure 7.1 Me in the playground

The student-researchers had interviewed a range of children in the school, including a number who had been recent arrivals to the UK and were struggling with a new country, a new language and with their learning. We researched about different kinds of people, and some people who are new to this school and they couldn’t really speak English, they have more problems than others, and they felt like they could be open to us because they haven’t really told anyone about their situations. … Research … is like a jigsaw puzzle, and [you bring] everything all together.

The student-researchers concluded that it must be every upsetting for a child if someone shouts at them (Figure 7.2).

(ii) The legacy: As Year 6 pupils, the student-researchers would soon be leaving their primary school for a secondary school and had many ideas about how Upton Cross could build on their research. Zanali, for example, discussed the students’ legacy to the school and their peers in the following terms: We’re actually asking people whether they feel like they belong. By asking them and getting all this information, it makes us feel like we belong in this school. And it’s quite good to do at Year 6 because we’re going to be leaving in one a half weeks, so it’s quite good to make sure that we belong in this school, and we know that when we leave.

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Figure 7.2 I don’t like shouting

They had thoroughly enjoyed their research, relishing the opportunity to communicate with children younger than themselves and to learn how they felt about school. Children felt safe in the school, they concluded, because the ‘headteacher makes sure we really feel safe and the teachers support us a lot’. ‘This school is somewhere I feel safe because I know it’s a learning environment, and even if people will be nasty, there will always be a way to resolve the issue,’ another student-researcher added. Nevertheless, the school needed to ensure that children ‘understand not to bully and not to hurt their little children’s feelings’. They wanted to leave their legacy: lessons about place and belonging, posters up around the school about their research findings and about bullying. We have a School Council. Instead of School Council, we could have something like the Young Researcher Council … to try to help people to belong and help the school change and get better. … In the School Council, you’re doing quite a lot of things and communicating with other people, but as young researchers, you’re actually developing your skills and you’re also doing a bit more because you’re helping the school, as well as getting children to overcome their fears and make sure that they belong in the school.

The notion of legacy was powerful, as the following comments indicate: I would like to change things because when you leave school, you feel you’re going somewhere new, but you want to also feel proud of where you’ve been as well.

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They wanted their school to make research inquiry an ongoing process because: When you research you find out how people feel and you do something about it. And then, when you leave (the school) you will have good memories.

and reflected that other schools didn’t do research and they were lucky to have had the opportunity: I’m in Year 6 and we’re going to leave this year, we’ll feel proud of what we’ve done.

Illustration II: Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets (i) The journey: We think that leaders can make all the difference and we want to know how to be good student leaders. The Mulberry team – who began as a group of uncertain learners who lacked confidence in themselves – first linked the notion of developing a sense of belonging to the school’s aspiration to develop the leadership of its students. They started their journey of inquiry in their own locality – Tower Hamlets – beginning their presentation at the first research conference by showing a photograph of a building in East London’s Brick Lane and asking the other student-researchers whether they could identify it. They went on to explain that while the building was currently a mosque (in Arabic, masjid), it had been a place of worship for many different faith communities for nearly three centuries. Built in 1743 as a Protestant Chapel, by the late nineteenth century it had become a synagogue for Jewish immigrants from Russia and Central Europe. In the 1960s and 1970s, it opened as a mosque for the East End’s predominantly Bengali Muslim community. For these young women, the building signified the complexities of belonging in Tower Hamlets, reflecting a story of immigration of which the families of these student-researchers were a part: The history of this building shows the huge varieties of faiths and cultures which live in Tower Hamlets. We live and go to school in Tower Hamlets, East London. This is the place where we feel like we belong. When we began to do our research on leadership of place and belonging, we became very interested in exploring the history of our local area. … Learning about the different communities that have made the East London their home made us think about what makes people feel like they belong. We also wanted to explore whether people feel like they belong in school and how that affects their confidence.

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The research team interviewed members of their school community, including Year 7s (aged 11–12) who had recently arrived from abroad, sixth form students (aged 17–18), members of the school’s senior leadership team and staff, concluding that, for Mulberry’s students, belonging was about being with people who shared your interests and made you feel confident. While the students they had interviewed generally felt they belonged at school, they were worried about being able to get all their work done and making friends in school. Their anxieties outside school were about getting lost and not being familiar with everybody in their neighbourhood. The Mulberry team had discussed the degree to which friendship groups were an important source of support for students and helped them feel they belonged, commenting that when the school organized events, such as their winter gathering arts performance, students worked together creatively with their friends and this deepened their sense of belonging in school. They reflected on the strengths and drawbacks of working together in friendship groups in the classroom: this could help students ‘feel like confident leaders’, or it could be a distraction. They developed a theory to test further: Our theory is that building friendly relationships between students is very important for making students feel like they belong together and making them feel more confident. We are going to complete a survey to see if other students and teachers agree.

Nusrat from Mulberry (Box 7.2) describes her own journey of personal awareness and intellectual growth. She details the team’s research inquiries and points to the significance of the relationship between belonging and confidence.

Box 7.2: Nusrat – Tower Hamlets, our place The dictionary definitions of place and belonging are as follows: ‘Place is a particular position, point, or area in space; a location; or a person's home.’ 'Belonging means being a member of a group or having the right qualities to fit in somewhere.’ This suggests that ‘place’ is about location – the space where you are – while belonging is about the way you feel in that location. Place and belonging are connected: if you feel that you ‘fit in’ or belong in a certain place, that place becomes your own. You feel that it is your home, as the dictionary definition suggests.

Student-Researchers During this project, I researched ideas of place and belonging in my local community and in my school. I began with my local community because my research team felt that this was the place where we belonged: Tower Hamlets and the East End is our ‘place’. Through researching the history of my community, I learnt about how diverse it has been throughout the years – the Jamme Masjid mosque on Brick Lane, which was formerly the Machzike Hadath Synagogue for the Brick Lane Jewish community, is proof of this great cultural diversity. As a place, the East End is always changing. New communities have arrived many times. For them, our community must have been an unfamiliar place at first, but they have brought their customs and traditions to the area and made them part of London’s culture through the years. The presence of those cultures and traditions made it easier for later groups of immigrants to settle in the area and to achieve a sense of belonging. We can see this in our own close-knit Bengali community. International cultures now exist side by side with traditional white British culture, making the East End one of the most multicultural and diverse places in the country. Although tensions between different cultures sometimes springs up, there is a real sense of community in Tower Hamlets, and we are proud of this. We also looked at place and belonging in our school. School is the location where we spend the majority of our time, and we thought carefully about whether it is important to feel like you belong in school, and whether Mulberry students feel like we belong. We decided that it was crucial to feel at home in your school. We found a significant link between belonging and confidence – if you feel like you belong in a place, you feel at ease, and are more confident there. We think that confidence is crucial to good learning: our survey found that the majority of Mulberry students (68.69 per cent) think feeling confident in the classroom makes them better learners. The survey enabled us to discover that friendship groups largely affect whether a student feels like they belong. The students who were in a friendship group felt more confident and were more comfortable in the classroom environment. However, 4 per cent of students said they did not have a friendship group, and a small minority of students said that their friends do not make them feel more confident – it is important to bear these students in mind, and to recognize that building student confidence is something which requires different strategies and types of support. Mulberry students seem generally to have this feeling of belonging. It can be increased by promoting opportunities to work with friends, to make new friends and relationships, and to build individual confidence through things like voice training.

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Nusrat’s final reflection on belonging was used to introduce Chapter 3: ‘If belonging makes you feel more confident, and confidence makes you a better learner, it is clear that students need to feel like they belong in school in order to learn most effectively.’ She went on to add: Overall, I believe leadership of place is when someone feels like they belong to a place because they are confident, comfortable and safe within their environment.

The Mulberry team wrote a summary of their research journey.

The Mulberry Journey 1. We decided on our research questions: Where do we belong? What does belonging and leadership mean here? What makes us feel like we belong in school? Does that feeling of belonging increase our confidence? Does the rest of the school community agree with us? What makes other people feel like they belong? What does school already do to increase feelings of belonging for all students? What does school already do to increase confidence for all students? What else could school do? ● ●

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2. We decided how we wanted to carry out each piece of research: We chose a timeline and photography exhibition to explore belonging and leadership in our local area, because we felt this is where we belong; We decided our friends make us feel like we belong and build our confidence, so we used anecdotes and examples from our experience to talk about this; We made predictions about how friendship groups would make students feel like they belonged in the classroom and would make them more confident; We decided to do interviews and a whole-school survey to find out if our predictions were correct; We signed up for some voice training sessions with our school’s voice coach to explore the different ways in which school builds our confidence; and We designed interactive activities for members of our school community to take part in so that we could find out what makes them feel like they belong at home and at school, what makes them feel confident, and what else school could do. ●

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3. We decided how to present our research: through an exhibition in the Mulberry and Bigland Green Centre Community Hall on our school site. 4. We wrote a timetable to make sure we knew when to get things done. 5. We worked together to book school trips through our Women’s Education Officer so we could get the materials and research we needed. 6. We divided into small groups and took charge of different pieces of research. Our biggest piece of research, the school survey, was undertaken as a whole group. For the photography exhibition, we went to the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive and took copies of old photos, which we showed side by side with photos we had taken ourselves. We used the Internet and books to research the timeline. We wrote the interview questions together, practised interview technique on each other and then did the interviews with Sixth Form students, Year 7 students and senior leaders, using audio recorders to record them. We used an online survey website to design a survey, and advertised it to the school. 7. We carried out our research over a period of weeks, and met up every Wednesday to feedback on our progress. A few weeks before the exhibition, we met to talk about what we had found out and to analyse the data we had collected. 8. We used some of the documents we had written up, such as transcripts of our interviews, to make a Wordle which we projected on to the wall during our exhibition. 9. We helped make the displays for our exhibition. 10. We attended the exhibition, gave a speech to open it, and stayed throughout to answer questions from our guests. (ii) The legacy: As student-researchers, the Mulberry team was confident that participating in the research inquiry had been an enriching process. Fariha (Box 7.3) tells her story about the impact of the project on her, explaining how it had built her self-confidence.

Box 7.3: Fariha’s story I became involved in this project initially because my friends and I were invited to be part of the research group. I think we were all invited because we are a very close friendship group who generally work well together. We all wanted an opportunity to develop our confidence, and our school responded to that. (Continued)

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Box 7.3 (Continued) When I was invited to be part of this project, I felt generally excited: I was pleased to have been chosen to be part of something so interesting, and I was keen to know more about the project. However, I felt nervous initially: I lacked confidence in speaking out, and I was worried about having to contribute my ideas regularly, and work with people I did not know – not just members of my own school community, but student-researchers from other schools. However, as I got more involved, my confidence developed. Having my friends around me to support me helped considerably – but I also benefitted from taking part in research trips to areas of my local community, such as the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive, and through meeting other student teams at the IoE research conferences that took place throughout the project. Through research trips, I developed my analytical skills and my time management and project planning skills; through meeting other students, I developed good networking skills and learnt how to face and overcome my fear of talking to people I do not know. My public speaking skills developed rapidly as I became used to presenting on my work, and I began to really enjoy sharing my work with others. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience – I found the topic very interesting, and the process of research built my self-esteem. During the conferences, I  heard the thought-provoking conclusions that other student teams had drawn from their research: my thinking on the importance of confidence in the classroom for all students developed rapidly, just as my own confidence was growing. I am glad I chose to take part in this project – it is an experience I would recommend to anybody.

Illustration III: Corelli Cooperative College, Woolwich (i) The journey: When you come from somewhere very different, it’s important to feel welcomed. The Corelli school team was composed of student-researchers who had all been recent arrivals to the UK. The starting point for their research inquiry stemmed from the fluid nature of the school population: Our school has young people from all over the world. We want to know whether these new arrivals to the UK feel supported in the school. Do they feel they belong? Our research challenge is to understand what it is that makes them feel they belong and feel welcome. We’re experimenting with various research tools.

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At the first student research conference, the Corelli team introduced themselves in their own first languages, beginning their presentation as follows: Welcome to Corelli College student-researchers team. Students in our school speak 68 different languages. For example, Roona speaks German, Rebecca speaks Italian, Bazul speaks Bulgarian, Abraham speaks Yoruba and Nora speaks Lithuanian. 50% of our college students are bilingual. For example, I speak four different languages, which are Tamil, French, English and Sinhala. Every year, there are about 100 new arrivals, and I was one of them two years ago.

As relatively new arrivals to the UK, the student-researchers were highly motivated to be part of the project, wanting to compare their own experiences with those of other arrivals and to improve that transition experience for them. The reason why we have been carrying out this research is because we wanted to find out how it feels to be a new student among other students. We would also like to ask new teachers how it feels to be new when other teachers have been in the same school for a very long time. We also realized that we needed our creative ideas to make sure that students felt more welcomed in school. We wanted to find out how to help students who needed more help than others.

Their research inquiries had given them an understanding of the experiences of other new arrivals to the school. We found out that some students felt a bit lonely because there was no one to talk to because they were new, spoke different languages and no one really understood them. They were embarrassed about the way they sounded like and how they looked. Some felt welcomed because the school is very welcoming and some felt lost because we have a big school and there’re many halls and corridors, and no one really told them where to go. Some didn’t know where to find help.

(ii) The legacy: The Corelli team wanted to leave their legacy: shape policies and practices that would benefit other pupils when they had left the school. Drawing on the knowledge gained from their research, the team came up with ideas about what the school could and should do for its new arrivals. In the following extended

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account (Box 7.4), the Corelli student-researchers reflect on the process of research engagement and the impact of the project on the school and on them personally. It details their research journey and how their sense of agency grew as they carried out their research, presented it to a range of audiences and came up with a detailed plan – which they negotiated with staff and their headteacher – of how to welcome newcomers to the school.

Box 7.4: The Corelli legacy The Project was our chance to help new students and make our ideas heard. That’s why we took this opportunity to actually make our different languages useful. The first thing we did was talk about belonging and what it means to us because we thought it was one of the most important topics to begin this project with. That’s why we started by creating a questionnaire for new arrivals from different countries, to give us an idea of what we will be looking forward to. However, the majority of the students we interviewed weren’t able to give us the answers we wanted due to language barriers. We did find out that our buddy system had ups and downs. This made us decide that, to improve our buddy system and make more new arrivals feel welcome, we needed to get students who actually want to be buddies to do it, so fewer students feel forced to do it, and prevent poor outcomes. So, the next thing we did was think of what we can do to make more arrivals feel welcome, therefore we decided on a booklet. The booklet contains many different things that can help a new arrival such as clubs, names of teachers, important door numbers, and other important people like peer tutors and people who they can go to if help is needed. The booklet will be translated into more languages to make each and every one of the newcomers feel like this is a place where they can belong and feel safe. The booklet will be translated into: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Nepali, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Yoruba. We had the opportunity to actually share our ideas with many different people from different countries. We created a PowerPoint that sums up our work and our vision. It included information about each of us where we introduced ourselves in our own language, while the PowerPoint slide behind us showed the English version. This showed how far we had come, from the moment we started at Corelli, as some of weren’t able to speak English at all. To have learnt a new language so well, and still be able to speak our mother tongue, is an incredible experience and something we are proud of. The presentation went amazingly well and the feedback we got from the audience really increased our confidence to continue with this project.

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What happened afterwards was we went back to school and we called a meeting. In that meeting we discussed how we can improve and what our next steps would be to get this booklet out. To make this booklet special, we are designing a 3-D map to make sure the new arrivals always know where to go, quotes from new arrivals, photos and contact information. This makes the new students have an insider’s view of what is actually going on in school and get an idea of other students’ feelings towards the school and what it’s all about. We will make a photographic project of our community and what it means to us. Also, we will share our booklet with other schools, particularly those in our research network to give other schools the same opportunity to improve their school system and make more new arrivals feel as welcome as possible. We were then invited to another conference with other schools where we were able to share our knowledge of what we wanted to achieve and got to hear other schools’ ideas of a better school system. We had to create a tweet which said ‘We belong to the @Corellicollege family which makes us feel secure, happy and comfortable. We are a strong community. #Corellifamily.’ All the other schools’ projects impressed us, some more than others, and one school in particular even asked if they could work with us to create a better booklet and a wider opportunity for students. This really was a great opportunity for us. When we were back at school, we designed the booklet and added all kinds of information, such as the section about talents, as we learnt from the questionnaire that many students have talents and we want to encourage them to do well in their talents, so we added all the information of where and when and who. After this, we managed to arrange some of the translations, which was very impressive as all these students were really willing to help so they deserve some credit too. Once we were confident enough with the booklet, we arranged a meeting with the headteacher of our school and created a PowerPoint to present this project to her. The meeting was very successful. Our headteacher was very impressed and was willing to help and we even got feedback from our small audience which we will be including in our booklet. The last part of our booklet is about our vision for the future. We want: ●

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All of our new arrivals to really live the Corelli motto: ‘Learning Together, Enjoying Success’ All new arrivals to feel included To have a good time and to remember their experience positively Everyone to be able to take exams in the languages they speak. (Continued)

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Box 7.4 (Continued) Overall, every single one of us enjoyed working on this project as it helped us develop new skills such as teamwork, organizing, listening, understanding which prepared us for the future. We got to work with different people which was fun as we got to learn about their methods and their school lives which was an experience you don’t get that often, in my opinion. Working on a project this big, makes us feel amazing, especially as EAL students, because we get to help students who were just like us. It’s up to us that they feel welcome, and having this responsibility is just great because we know we made a change and we all are proud of that.

The Corelli team went on to present their research findings at a multilingual conference at the London School of Economics (Box 8.2, Chapter 8). The audience was stunned by the confidence and prescience of these young researchers.

Telling their story The process of research engagement undoubtedly developed the reflective and analytical skills of both the primary and secondary student-researchers. They had become questioning learners. We asked the student-researchers what they had learnt from being a researcher: What were the skill and benefits? They were bursting with enthusiasm to extol the benefits which are outlined in Box 7.5.

Box 7.5: The benefits of being a student-researcher How primary students see it ●

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Some people like me are quite quiet and we don’t like to talk to lots of people, but now, we get to feel and we get to know how other people feel as well. So if I was lonely and if I got bullied, and someone else did, we’ll have lots in common, and we could talk about it as well to make each other feel better. We’re learning about other people’s feelings and how we should make the school a better place. Not everyone has the same way of learning and not everyone feels the same as we do. They have their opinions, and they are treated differently as well. (Continued)

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And some people don’t really open up to other people like they do their friends, and they have to be able to trust us when they’re opening up to us, and we have to try our best to understand what they mean and what they think. I learnt about other people’s feelings and how they belong in this school, and how we can make this school a better school. I feel proud because with others, we’re making this school a better place. Something that I love most about being a researcher is learning new things and being able to communicate with people, and being able to work as a team and improving your different skills.

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Being a part of this research project has been really beneficial for me. It wasn’t just completing the research, but presenting it to researchers from other school groups and university students was a scary experience. But the skills I have developed, and will keep for life, are learning how to conduct research and present it to an audience. Working with a range of students younger and older than me really helped create a comfortable environment to conduct my research because there was no awkwardness when interviewing students of different ages, as there was always someone there that they could relate to. Going out and conducting our research was enjoyable because our team worked well together, collected some really interesting information, but also had loads of fun. I learnt things about my peers I would have never thought and this project has brought us closer together as students. Joining this team has been an eye opener for me because I have listened to many people’s stories which really amazed me and made me consider how lucky I am to be at EGA. EGA is a very warm and welcoming school which helps us achieve our best; it’s not just the teachers, but also the students who make us feel like we belong. It’s like a big family which you can depend on. I am currently in Year 10 and moving on to Year 11 very soon and I feel responsible to pass on our research findings to other schools so that they can discover what belonging means to them too. But also, so that students can have the opportunity to conduct research and grow and develop as individuals. This has been a fantastic experience for me and I hope that many more young people have the same opportunity.

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When we first began S-PWB? we recognized that the project was stepping into new territory. Dr Max Coates, one of our team members, had his doubts but as the research progressed these doubts were quickly resolved. I have to admit to feeling a little bit dubious, even anxious, involving young people, particularly 8/9-year-olds in research. I’ve just been absolutely staggered by the way they’ve taken to this and the intuitive approach they have to conducting research, and it’s just an absolute delight. The reason it’s worked so well is because human beings learn by asking questions and education often works by suppressing questions and giving information. So, what we’re doing is providing a space for young people to ask questions and find answers. I’ve never seen anything as powerful as this, in terms of the development of student leadership, which moves into the influence of culture and structure and away from, ‘Shall we have this type of vending machine or change the quality of toilet paper in the toilet.’ It’s much more powerful. It demonstrates that we actually are committed to the organization … to make changes.

In the extract which concludes this chapter (Box 7.6), Zalep from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson gives an extended account of what it has meant to her to be part of the research project. She has much to say about the importance of building trust; about the ways in which teachers can help create belonging and about how the research findings should be used in the future. So much of the learning from the process of researching for and about place and belonging is encapsulated in these comments: the strengthening of identity, the recognition of a sense of agency.

Box 7.6: A student-researcher’s story – Zalep I am in Year 10. I went off and did my own research by myself, with another girl. I wanted to try the research methods that I was doing in class with my sociology teacher. And I even used one of the research projects as a piece of homework, and a piece of coursework. So what I did was interview people from my year specifically. … I chose the girls that are really quiet and I didn’t really know about. They are really focused on their studies, and they seemed to have a story behind them. So I interviewed a few girls. I made them understand that whatever they were going to tell me, they could trust me. Trust is a big aspect in research, especially if it’s a participant observation. While I was interviewing them, they really opened up to me, and said things to me that I didn’t really expect. It really got me thinking how while you’re researching, you can find out loads of things. You

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can know a book from the back to the front, but you can’t know the depth; that’s how I felt while I was researching. One challenge was getting them to trust me, because they don’t really talk to many people. And I feel like I’m a very loud girl; I’m out there, I do stuff, I’m a senior, I’m student-council, I volunteer in Year 7, I am a tutor for Year 4. I don’t think they thought they could trust me, but I made it clear to them that confidentiality is a big aspect as well, and that I will keep their stuff private. So after that challenge, it flowed really easily, and went really nicely. It was a nice experience, because getting to know people in your year that you’re going to be with for five years is a really important thing. I don’t want to leave EGA not knowing every single girl that I shared homework with, or she had to listen to me, or I sat next to her. I want to know them, and know their stories so I can even use that in future references. The research is revealing how we belong; but there are some people that don’t feel like they belong, and that’s a big thing in the research project. For the future, I want to see people in assemblies talking about it, different assemblies for younger years and older years maybe. I want to see teachers knowing about it as well, because teachers are the prime researchers in this. They understand students the best, even if we don’t get along; they still understand the best. I feel like if teachers understand, then they can help to make students feel like they belong. In our school, bullying is not an issue at all. I feel like being rude to teachers is one issue that really gets to the teachers, and if students understood that and if teachers knew how to prevent that, then there would be no need for you know, the backchat and stuff. I found today (the second conference) absolutely amazing. I’ve loved being part of this project and finding out new things about people. I can now walk through the corridor and I can now think, ‘Oh, she’s not really who she looks like. There’s a mystery, there’s a story behind each person.’ This project has changed my perspective of the way I see things and I’m really appreciative and grateful to have been part of this project and I’d love to carry on.

The perceptions, the humour, the creativity, the energy of our students are rich resources which can be harnessed. Coupled with the insights of their teachers and the aspirations of the leaders, schools have an invincible force. Chapter 8 goes on to highlight some of the gains from the research inquiry S-PWB? Chapter 9 makes the case for drawing on research inquiry to help reconfigure the nature of leadership, and help navigate and negotiate a new way of belonging.

Part Four

Leading Research to Make a Difference highlights some of the practical, theoretical and conceptual gains for schools of engaging in research about place and belonging and the particular value of this approach for school leaders.

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It all begins with the great umbrella of belonging and those who globalisation affects the most are the most qualified to determine what it is that makes them feel like they belong. What incredibly worthwhile ownership the development of the students’ research skills (this project) has brought about.  Headteacher Teachers and young people flourish in schools which foster their creativity, resilience and sense of agency when schools become places in which what you think, what you say and what you do makes a difference. When young people are seen and have a voice, their skills and confidence grow and they flourish. The same is true for teachers – particularly those new to the profession. This penultimate chapter highlights some of the practical, theoretical and conceptual gains from engaging teachers and young people in a process of a collaborative research inquiry focused on place and belonging. It explores: (i) The knowledge gains:

(ii) The impact of the research process on the researchers: (iii) The wider implications of the research:

• What can we learn about what it means to ‘belong’ in classrooms and schools from the research undertaken by the teacher- and student-researchers? • What have been the benefits for both groups, from participating in research about place and belonging? • What are some of the wider implications of this study for teachers and schools and for our understanding of student voice?

Knowledge gains Learning is a creative and complex process. The teacher- and student-researchers involved in S-PWB? identified the many and varied ways in which young people

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can learn, develop and grow, when given the opportunities. Based on their research findings, they also developed proposals and strategies for change. A synthesis of the findings of the two groups is presented here, organized around the three themes used to summarize the findings of the teacher-researchers in Chapter 6. ● ● ●

Taking the temperature: Overview (Table 8.1) Rethinking learning: Overview (Table 8.2) Reshaping the notion of success: Overview (Table 8.3).

The similarities between the research findings of the two groups are striking.

Taking the temperature There are many ways of creating a sense of place and belonging in the classroom and the school. These include tangible actions designed to create safe physical spaces and defined territories, as well as explicit strategies which build relationships and ensure that children feel they are known and seen and befriended. The starting point is to be attuned to the classroom and school experience: to take the temperature. Young people flourish when they are encouraged to think, question and challenge. When their research is acknowledged, when they are recognized for the part they can play in the life of the school, they develop a sense of belonging.

Table 8.1 Taking the temperature: Overview What teacher-researchers found

What student-researchers found

Providing children with their own Reflecting on their research findings, ‘territory’ in the classroom (trays, student-researchers pointed out pegs, seats) and ensuring their work is that when children felt isolated in displayed across the school as well as the classroom, dining room and in the classroom makes children feel playground, the sense of isolation they are known for who they are. impeded their learning. They concluded that schools needed to Opportunities for children to get to develop strategies to enable children to know more adults and other children feel ‘befriended’ and known. in the school strengthens this sense of self and helps them feel visible.

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Behaviour management strategies can be used to show all pupils that they are valued and known.

Enabling student-researchers to have a meaningful voice in shaping what is happening in their schools changes their views about themselves. As a Listening to what children have to say, student from Upton Cross (who was developing strategies across the about to leave her primary school) school to inform children about what put it: ‘You want to be proud of where is happening, and involving them in you’ve come from.’ decision making enhances their wellbeing and sense of belonging.

Rethinking learning Learning is a creative and complex process. However, in a context of high stakes external examinations, some of the ingredients for successful learning can be overlooked, such as how important the process of inquiry and reflection is for young learners. Listening in meaningful ways to what young people have to say can transform learning. Enabling young people to have their voice reshapes not only the learning context but also the way school life is experienced. The research findings of both staff and student-researchers point to the merits of collaborative learning. The student-researchers relished collaborative inquiry and the skills they developed from doing this are rich resources to take into adult life. While schools often organize children into working groups, less attention is given to how children work together. In the view of the student-researchers from Mulberry, friendship groups could support learning, although teachers also need to ensure that children were not left out.

Table 8.2 Rethinking learning: Overview What teacher-researchers found A focus on collaborative inquiry, and the creation of structured working groups with specific roles allocated to students helps maximize their learning experiences.

What student-researchers found Friendship groups are an important way of supporting and sustaining learning. However, strategies are also needed to recognize which pupils feel excluded from the friendship groups and to develop ways to generate a sense of inclusion. (Continued)

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Table 8.2 Continued What teacher-researchers found Shared learning creates an enthusiasm for reading. The use of graphic novels for mixed ability reading groups generates enthusiasm and helps develop concepts and understanding of story lines.

Children performing at the lower ends of the achievement range make faster progress and feel that they belong in the classroom when they are encouraged to work independently.

What student-researchers found Finding and accessing a range of media to express ideas, and thinking about proposals for change in schools generates enthusiasm and selfconfidence. Working together to learn how to research is both rewarding and energizing. By their own accounts, some studentresearchers began the research process with a limited confidence in their own abilities to learn. However, by working both independently and collaboratively on their research, they increased their self-confidence and made great strides.

Reshaping the notion of success Good examination results are just one of the benefits derived from enabling children and young people to succeed in schools. The ‘outcomes’ which will last young people throughout their lives are pride, self-confidence and a recognition of what can be achieved working in collaboration with others. Young people thrive when they are involved in decision making and are encouraged to share their learning in meaningful ways.

Table 8.3 Reshaping the notion of success: Overview What teacher-researchers found

What student-researchers found

Children flourish when the responses Participation in the research project has of staff in the classroom focus on generated a sense of pride and selfpride, togetherness, confidence and confidence at the individual level collaborative learning; when their for the student-researchers. It has voices are listened to; and when they are also contributed to the development encouraged to discuss their experience of a strong sense of collective of school life. achievement.

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The use of creative arts and poetry performance to help develop a sense of belonging builds skills and self-esteem, and encourages children to take part in group decision making.

Making presentations to a range of audiences about the research on place and belonging builds confidence and competence and also leads to a growing recognition that young people have much to contribute to society.

Using children’s own powers of reasoning and questioning (through Philosophy for Children) helps create a positive classroom climate and a sense of belonging.

Developing the skills and confidence of young people to ask the right questions, and to be able to analyse the implications of their research data, is a powerful learning strategy.

As well as the knowledge gains highlighted here, there have been significant benefits for the teacher- and student-researchers.

The impact of the research process on the researchers Teacher-researchers Hoy and Murphy (2001) have suggested that new teachers are ‘insiders’, their views of what is possible in the classroom are shaped by their own relatively recent experiences as school students. Involving NQTs in researching about place and belonging enables them to gain an invaluable perspective. Harnessing the commitment and energy of all teachers to inquire, reflect and work together collaboratively can contribute to the growth of a robust teaching profession. The findings from S-PWB? indicate that teacher engagement in research generates more reflective practice and promotes an invigorating and ongoing process of thinking and exploration. Collaborative inquiry has proved to be a powerful strategy for encouraging these new teachers to be active participants in the education process and to see themselves as learners who reflect and build on their own learning. Commenting on the impact of the process of research engagement on NQTs, the deputy-headteacher of one of the participating schools told us: I’ve never seen NQTs contribute in such a significant way to the whole of our school and our practices.

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At the final project conference at City Hall, London, Ashley Walker, who led the NQT initiative at Newport School, echoed this observation, emphasizing the importance of creating a sense of place and belonging for new teachers, a strategy which equips them not only to become more effective practitioners but also to set the foundations for their future leadership of the profession. Belonging, identity and place are absolutely crucial themes in the schools which we serve. Addressing key issues which underpin the sense of belonging is vital if we are to ensure high standards across all aspects of school life. Newport is in the top 1 per cent of schools nationally. And to get to this place, we have to address its key issues, as underpinned today. But the question I looked at was: How do the NQTs feel? Place, belonging, community is not only for the children who we serve but for the staff who we serve also. During the induction programme, this is at the heart of everything we do, ensuring they feel they belong, and are keen to take part in key decision-making that is part of the process. And as a result, the [NQTs] become highly skilled, highly reflective and highly efficient and effective practitioners who will one day be leaders of the schools we serve in London.

The benefits of engaging NQTs in a comprehensive and inclusive way are significant. By first locating the research inquiry in teachers’ emotional domains, the teacher-researchers were encouraged to reflect on their own assumptions about the children in their classrooms: what they thought they knew about them, and what they intended to find out through their research inquiries. Persuading them to go back in time to their own school experiences – and to draw on their own histories – developed their confidence to recognize what they, as new teachers, brought with them into teaching. Providing them with systematic tools for research inquiry gave them a skill set to draw on – to explore their own classrooms and enquire about the children in their charge – and a knowledge base to reframe their professional practices. Collaboration and learning go hand in hand. These findings reinforce evidence from elsewhere that teachers who collaborate with one another have more confidence and less uncertainty about their classroom practices than their peers (Hargreaves 1995; Rosenholtz 1991) and that young people who collaborate to reshape their learning experience gain a genuine appreciation of each other and develop a sense of agency (Riley et al. 2006). For these fledgling teachers, engagement in the research process has led to a recognition that they are part of a school – part of a place – and that through

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their own personal and professional actions, as well as their relationships with young people and colleagues, they can shape the nature of what that place means to others: a new form of agency has emerged for them. The growth and development of the teacher-researchers involved in this study has undoubtedly strengthened their professionalism (Shulman 1986; MacBeath 2012). Developing teachers’ professionalism through research engagement encourages them to appreciate the joys and possibilities in teaching, equips them to listen to young people in new ways, and helps prepare them for the tough challenges ahead. S-PWB? highlights the value of investing in new teachers in a process of collaborative inquiry. The spinoffs are many and include changes in expectations, of themselves, of their colleagues and of young people and their families. The implications are farreaching. ●

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First, there is the impact and influence of the process of engagement on the thinking, attitudes, expectations and practices of the teacher-researchers involved in this study and on their schools. Secondly, there is the contribution that their research has made to a broader understanding about place and belonging in schools, and to the identification of strategies that will help create a greater sense of belonging. Finally, there are the policy and practice implications of this research approach which point to the value of adopting research inquiry as a core element of the training and development of NQTs.

Investing in young people through a process of research engagement has equally important benefits.

Student-researchers In 2014, a British Chamber of Commerce Survey of some 3,000 companies reported employers’ concerns about the shortage of particular skills, such as teamwork, analytical skills and communication, in the labour force (British Chamber of Commerce 2014). In Box 8.1 a student from Mulberry School looks back on her research journey and reflects on her learning, displaying all the skills, self-awareness and competence which any future employer could hope for.

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Box 8.1: What have I learnt about research? Through the Project, I have developed strong independent research skills. I did have some prior experience of research from work I have done in school. However, I think the project introduced me to a much broader range of research techniques, and gave me a good understanding of what makes for ‘good’ research. Initially, I thought that the main method of carrying out research was searching the Internet or books. When it came to presenting my research findings, I had not explored much further than PowerPoint presentations. The project introduced me to the concept of primary and secondary research: primary research is drawn from first-hand sources, such as the interviews and audio recordings that we carried out, and the photographs we took on research trips around our community; secondary research is drawn from sources which are removed from the events they describe, such as the books or articles written about local history which we explored for our timeline. We accessed a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and presented them in engaging ways, such as our photography timeline and a ‘listening station’ for audio recordings at our exhibition. Primary sources are interesting because they provide a first-hand account of history, but they can sometimes be biased or misleading. We thought carefully about bias when looking at old photographs and newspaper clippings about our area, and we used our knowledge to avoid asking biased or leading questions when we created our own primary sources through interviewing students. Thinking about bias also helped us to plan our survey: we had used our knowledge of school to make predictions about what we would find out, but we knew we needed to avoid asking questions that might pressure people into giving answers that would prove our predictions correct. We thought carefully about how to write questions that were open and neutral. I think any young person beginning a big research project should begin by brainstorming what their research is based on and what questions they would like to explore, then build up to what research techniques they will use and how they will present their findings. Good research skills are important for everybody – we use them time and again throughout our lives.

The young women from Mulberry School had begun their research about place and belonging by first looking at the patterns of immigration into Tower Hamlets. They wanted to know more about why, when and how their families had come to be part of the East End community. That process of historical inquiry, of seeing the wider picture, helped them think about themselves – their identity, their

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sense of self and as young British Muslim women living in London. As one of the school’s young researchers commented about her involvement in the project: It’s helped me be myself. I really feel I belong here.

For this student-researcher, belonging meant feeling a part of her neighbourhood (Tower Hamlets), her school (Mulberry) and her city (London). This sense of belonging will carry her forward in her future life. At Corelli College, the young people who made up the student-researchers’ team had all been recent arrivals to the UK. Involvement in the research process has led to personal and team gains and has had an impact on how the school now welcomes new arrivals. Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, a member of the IoE project who led on research methods, highlights this in an extract in Box 8.2 in which she describes the impact of the process of research engagement on the student-researchers, highlighting the skills they have developed along the way. Her analysis points to the power and potential of research engagement to grow the leadership of young people.

Box 8.2: A researcher’s reflection: Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic My brief was to work with young people and teachers on developing their research skills: introducing them to research methodology, thinking about what research is, how to design a research project, how to select appropriate research methods, what to do in terms of data analysis; and then help them put together their presentations and facilitate special events where they can present. We’ve been encouraging schools to do this project in a way that suits their community, their aims. All the schools have developed it in a different way and they’ve shown in our conferences their own creativity, their individuality, so we’ve got different processes in different schools, different findings and different visions. It’s been really exciting working with young people who, at the beginning of this process, were wondering what everything was about and how to do research and what it meant to them to be young researchers, and then to see them talk confidently about what they did in the interviews, their findings and the vision they’ve got for the school. The reach of the projects is significant. Two schools, Corelli College and St. Paul’s Way, were invited to present at a conference that was held at the London School of Economics. They presented in front of some 200 (Continued)

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Box 8.2 (Continued) academics and researchers from 17 countries. Teachers said that when they went back to school, that event has been like somebody had switched on the lights for them. Students became much more engaged and interested, they were initiating further work, translating the booklets they had produced into different languages. They were asking the teacher to organize further meetings. And suddenly, you could see that they were able to understand clearly how much impact they can make with their own research. It’s really important if we get children to do research projects to make sure they’ve got ways of communicating their research findings and their vision not only to the leadership in their school but also to the wider community. All the schools are asking now, ‘You know, what next?’ We’re coming to the end of the cycle of funding and the schools would like to see this work continue in some way. One school was saying they would like to have a team of children called ‘Leadership of Place’. You know, young leaders who would be in charge of welcoming new students. There are lots of ideas, like children having badges, saying ‘We’re here to help’ and also giving information about what languages they speak. So, really thinking about children who are new to English, new to London, new to that school, how we can make sure that every point in their daily lives, they can spot people that are interested in helping and supporting them.

Each of the research conferences had an invited audience of master’s and doctoral students who were astounded at the reflective skills of our young researchers. Daniela Figueroa Moya, a PhD student from Chile, fed back her comments to the student-researchers: I’m really impressed with your work. I think it’s remarkable. … It’s very important because you are doing research for a really good purpose. It’s for yourselves as students, as communities, as schools. This is quite important because when you are getting into these academic settings, you can see that, ‘Oh yes, we are doing important things for the world. We are learning not just to research but to create new knowledge.’ But, you guys are doing this in the real community, in the real setting and that is really, really important because you can learn from yourselves to prove and to transform the things you find that need to be transformed.

Andy, a master’s student and a senior teacher in a school with many challenges in the south of England added: It’s just been absolutely fantastic to hear everyone’s stories today. Really brilliant. I’m currently studying an MA in leadership with Max and Kathryn, and

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something that I’m really interested in is the ethos, the culture and the climate that develops within schools. I think that’s really down to the sort of individuals who are within that school. One thing that’s really come through to me today is just how important the student body and the student voice is in that process. It’s really made me reflect on my practice as a teacher and also my school as a whole. I’ve made lots of notes today and ideas to take back to my head-teacher because I believe we do give our students a voice but after today, I don’t think we give them enough of a voice. I think there’s an assumption made that students belong at a school, and actually it’s not until you give them a voice can you truly appreciate if they do belong. Are we doing enough to make them feel part of our school community? So, thank you very much for making me reflect on my own practice today.

Andy recognized that giving young people a voice could be a powerful intervention strategy.

The wider implications of the research In the process of research inquiry described in this book, staff and students have been involved in the doing and the thinking and the reflecting. As agents of change, they have helped discover what needs to be and have gained more confidence to engage with the wider world. The opinions of staff and students are trusted and valued. Involving young people in research increases their skills and self-awareness and gives them a new sense of agency. They recognize that what they do, what they say, can make a difference. Everyone in the school gains. And when young people feel that they belong in their school; when the school grows their sense of self and agency and helps them understand that they have choices and options, they will go out into our troubled world with a sense of purpose. Through developing staff and harnessing young people’s creative potential, the process of research inquiry modelled in this project can be used to help build strong school cultures which foster a sense of well-being and belonging.

Teachers with ‘Attitude’ in a global world In the wake of the Second World War, British scholar Arnold McNair was asked by the wartime government to look at the recruitment and training of teachers. His brief was to look ahead. How should future generations of young people be taught? Who should teach them and how? McNair came to the view that, if

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Britain was to create a ‘wise’ democracy, people of the highest calibre needed to be recruited into teaching, a profession of huge social significance. Teachers could open the minds of young people and create a bedrock of criticality that would help sustain democracy. Recruits to the teaching profession, McNair concluded, would need to be able to interpret the meaning of complex changes, and help young people learn to discriminate and not become ‘easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals’ (McNair 1946, p. 233). For the fledgling teachers, engagement in the research process has generated creativity and energy and an appreciation of what they can do in their classrooms to help nurture belonging. They have come to recognize that they are part of a school – part of a place – and that through their own personal and professional actions, as well as their relationships with young people and colleagues, they can shape the nature of what that place means to others: a new form of agency has emerged for them as NQTs. If today’s teachers are to contribute to the development of a ‘wise democracy’, and open the minds of young people to the world around them, then they need to be critical and reflective learners. Chapter 3 included the notion of ‘Teachers with Attitude’ (Figure 3.2), arguing that this model of teacher professionalism was well-suited to the needs of the twenty-first century. Building on the learning from S-PWB?, this model has been expanded to put place and belonging at the centre, in recognition of their importance in our complex, liquid and global world. This reframed model (Figure 8.1) reinforces the notion of teachers’ intellectual curiosity and an inquiring attitude – both of which are encouraged by research engagement – and is based on an approach to learning

Figure 8.1 Teachers with attitude in a global world

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for young people which goes beyond test scores. It recognizes the complexities of the global agenda – aspects of which are outlined in Chapter 2 – and the importance of teachers understanding the contemporary ‘crisis’ in belonging (Chapter 1) and its implications for children and young people.

Investing in young people’s futures The creativity, the energy and the well-being of our children and young people in all our schools are precious commodities. They constitute the foundations for the future of society. How young people experience school today will shape not only their future but also the future of the planet. The approach to research inquiry advocated in this book is one which engages young people and encourages them to develop and use evidence from that research to bring about changes in their schools, their neighbourhoods and their communities. Their growing understanding of the world beyond their own schools generates an impetus for change and a sense of agency: a recognition that what they do and say can make a difference. Researching about place and belonging develops the talents and selfawareness of young people and contributes to their intellectual growth. The student-researchers involved in the project have found their voice. Engagement in research has released their creative potential to explore, reflect, act and change – themselves and their schools. Rather than being passive recipients of what school has to offer, the young people become active agents of change. In a comprehensive review of student voice across many countries, Joseph Murphy and Daniela Torre (2015) conceptualized approaches to student voice as having four distinctive sets of features: ●

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1

Elicitation of student perspectives: taking systematic steps to find out what they think (e.g. Cook-Sather and Schultz 2001; Thomson and Gunter 2007); Listening to young people’s voices and watching the visuals they provide: enabling young people to use a range of methods to illustrate their experiences and perceptions (e.g. Lincoln 1995); Hearing and seeing students' perspectives: demonstrating understanding of what young people have said and felt (e.g. Quaglia and Corso 2014, p. 3; Larkin 1979 p. 129); Adult responsiveness: informing young people about ‘what happens next’ in relation to the issues raised (e.g. Quaglia and Corso, 2014, p. 3; Rudduck and Flutter 2004).1 All citations from Murphy and Torre (2015).

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Figure 8.2 Student voice – The continuum of involvement in research

S-PWB? incorporates many of these features and adds a fresh dimension to the debate about student voice by focusing on the notion of school as a potential place for belonging and highlighting the ways in which research engagement can contribute to the creation of school as places of belonging. The notion of student engagement which emerged from S-PWB? can be seen as a continuum of involvement (Figure 8.2). On the left-hand side of the continuum is an approach which sees students as data sources: conduits of consumer information about their experience of aspects of schooling. Next is the notion of young people as active respondents: identifying issues about their own learning, or about matters they are unhappy about. Moving right along the continuum is the idea of young people as researchers: deciding the questions and collecting the evidence. Finally, at the right-hand side of the continuum is the concept of young people as change agents: active researchers who build on the research knowledge they have helped generate to bring about transformation in their schools – a process which in its turn increases their sense of self and agency, and contributes to our understanding of the organic nature of belonging and how the people within the school create the ‘place’ called school. The student-researchers participating in S-PWB? have not only moved towards the right-hand side of the continuum but have also become strong advocates of research as social inquiry. Upton Cross student-researchers, for example, saw a strong relationship between belonging and equity. They wanted a just society in which everyone had the opportunity to succeed. You want to feel like you belong (but) there’s no point if you just feel like you belong and then other children or other people, they don’t feel like they belong as well. It should all be equal and the same. … In our society, we don’t really tolerate people who make other people’s lives not nice. Everyone should have the opportunity to have like a nice childhood and have a nice place in their school, and just be happy in their school.

They wanted politicians to appreciate what was happening in schools, by looking at matters from a child’s perspective and thinking about ‘how they felt when they were children’. These young student-researchers also had their views about the power of research to shape the education agenda as is shown in Box 8.3.

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Box 8.3: The power of research ●

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We need to make sure we do lots of research and stuff to find out which children feel like they belong. We need to make the research go one step further, so that children feel safe inside school, as well as outside somewhere on the street, or near their house and where they have friends there as well. They (the politicians) should talk to researchers and they should talk to teachers as well, and also to other children, so then they get a whole view, so they can put all their information together. The politicians should make sure they talk to the researchers because they’ve been doing lots of research, and talk to the teachers as well because it will improve their teaching, and talk to the other children because of all the information they have and then they will be able to resolve the issues.

Endnote Successful reform initiatives affirm the importance of the teaching profession and the need to draw in talented people (Elwick and McAleavy 2015). Newly qualified teachers, such as Mathew (Box 6.2), are the teacher-leaders who will be alert to tomorrow’s new developments, open and inquiring innovators, responding to changing needs. They are the future of our schools: the future leaders. As Mathew argued so persuasively, research engagement provides teachers with a unique window into the lives of young people. Researching for, and about, place and belonging has an intellectual and an emotional appeal for teachers and for young people. As student-researcher Zalep (Box 7.5) concluded, research engagement is exhilarating because it gives you a depth and breadth of understanding. One of the policy recommendations of the Marmot Review (2010) which reviewed the impact of social inequality on health in Britain (Chapter 3) was that strategies needed to be put in place to build the resilience and well-being of young children. For the student-researchers who have contributed to S-PWB?, involvement in research inquiry has not only developed their skills but also grown their confidence and strengthened their sense of belonging, both individually and as members of their research teams. The final chapter focuses on the role of school leaders in unleashing that potential and tapping that resilience. It also signals the potential of an innovative and enjoyable intervention strategy which can support the development of a sense of place and belonging in schools.

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A New Way of Belonging?

For many of our children home and community are not fixed. Their families might have had status in their home community but are at the bottom of the rung in the UK, or appealing against deportations. This raises identity issues because belonging is about the meaning we attach to a place, and our relationship to a place, and the way that this changes. School is about negotiating a new way of belonging. Headteacher Chapter 8 consolidated findings from the research undertaken by the teacherand student-researchers and highlighted the impact of research engagement on them. This final chapter presents a response to the challenge presented at the beginning of the book: What can be done to help create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels that they belong? The chapter offers a number of conceptual tools to support research inquiry about place, as well as ideas about how schools can take on board the approaches outlined in the book, as part of a widely applicable intervention strategy. The chapter’s primary focus is on the leaders, and the notion of leaders as place leaders and place-makers: a transformative perspective which incorporates research engagement in a broader leadership approach. By exerting their leadership influence with positive intent, place leaders can help create a sea change in thinking and give new meaning to the place called school. They can negotiate, as the headteacher quoted at the beginning of this chapter reflected, that ‘new way of belonging’ which is so critical for young people, particularly those for whom ‘home and community are not fixed’. This is the Art of Possibilities.

Taking stock Today’s school leaders manage the interface between the external demands on the school, the realities of young people’s lives and experiences, and the internal

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world of the school. One of their biggest challenges is how to create schools which are characterized by a sense of meaningful engagement. If young people are to shape and influence the world around them, schools need to become places of belonging. If young people do not feel that school is a place for them, or if they feel excluded and that they do not belong, then it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for them to connect to the wider society and to see possibilities and choices. Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to make the difference set out to demonstrate the possibilities which unfold when schools embark on a process of active and positive research engagement, and when school leaders begin to see themselves as place leaders. Some of the gains for teachers, young people and school leaders from S-PWB? are shown in Box 9.1.

Box 9.1: School – A place where I belong? Gains for teachers, young people and school leaders ●

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Teachers: Engaging in research has provided the teachers involved (NQTs) with a unique window into the lives of young people. Children in their classroom have becomes visible to them for who they are. Through their research engagement, the teacher-researchers have come to recognize that creating safety and belonging in the classroom, the playground and the school is the key to unlocking the potential of young people. By becoming engaged in a stimulating process of reflective inquiry, they are on track to becoming the outstanding professionals they would wish to be. Young people: The student-researchers have found their voice. Engagement in research has released their creative potential to explore, reflect, act and change – themselves and their schools. It has developed their talents and self-awareness in ways that undoubtedly promote their personal growth and feelings of well-being. Involving young people in research encourages them to become inquiring learners, it harnesses their creativity, enriching their lives in ways that have the potential to contribute to the creation of ‘wise’ democracies (McNair 1944), in which young people – our citizens of the future – feel they have a role to play, and are equipped to play that role. School leaders: The headteachers and principals involved in this project have had the opportunity to reflect on their own practice. This has encouraged them to be more explicit about their own lexicon of leadership: the language which mirrors their values and aspirations and which – for the school leaders interviewed for this study – reflects a belief in the capacities and skills of the children and young people in their schools. This attitude mirrors OECD findings that children from highly disadvantaged social contexts can succeed in school (Schleicher 2015).

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The process of collaborative inquiry adopted in the study harnesses the creativity and energy of staff and students alike. They are involved in the thinking, the reflecting and the doing. They move from being passive recipients of ‘wisdom’ – passed down by policymakers or school leaders who believe that they have all the answers and that the problem is the teacher, or the student who won’t do what they are told, or the families who refuse to conform – to becoming change agents. They help discover what needs to be done and contribute to making it happen. They are visible. They are seen for who they are. As agents of change, they step into the broader leadership of the school in a process orchestrated by school leaders. There are steps which school leaders can take to make this happen. Seeing themselves as place leaders and place-makers is an important starting point.

Seeing, thinking and doing Schools that offer a world of possibilities to young people do not ignore global events, extreme local or national issues or the day-to-day realities of young people’s lives – what they see and experience in the streets and in their communities, as well as in the classroom. Their leaders understand the significance of school as a place in the lives of young people. The notion of leaders as place leaders and place-makers emerges from a recognition of the importance of place and belonging today in our volatile world. Place leaders focus on the well-being of staff and students. They understand the significance of relationships within a school and the degree to which – as research from the United States indicates – ‘caring principal leadership’ can have a direct impact on schools in ways that lead to increased social integration or denser social capital, improved psychological states for members, increased capacity for caring on the part of the members who experience caring, increased engagement with the school and its goals, and more learning on the part of students and teachers. (Louis, Murphy and Smylie 2016, p. 28)

Place leaders recognize that they hold the key to unlocking the potential of staff and young people and that the process of research engagement outlined in this book can be used to help create, what Bourdieu (1999) has described as, the kinds of social spaces in which members of the school community feel

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they are insiders, rather than outsiders. They have a theory of action; that is specific leadership plans and activities designed to realize their intent, and to signal to others how they might play their part in bringing these plans into actuality. Place-making begins as a way of seeing things differently, moves into talking about things differently and then leads to doing things differently (Figure 9.1). Place-makers see things afresh, think about things in new ways and do things differently. Their journey as a place-maker can be an invigorating one, with its share of thrills and spills.

Do things differently

See things afresh

Think about things in new ways

Figure 9.1 Seeing, thinking, doing

What do placemakers think?

A place should never feel that it is a finished article but instead is always changing. People need to see how they can make their contribution.

What do they say?

It all begins with the great umbrella of belonging and those most affected by our churning world (young people) are the most qualified to determine what it is that makes them feel like they belong.

What do they do?

Ask the children to name the rooms and areas in the school to generate positive energy and create a ripple effect.

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Place and belonging: Understanding the dynamics and interconnections S-PWB? has demonstrated the ways in which engaging in research about place and belonging can encourage leaders to think of themselves as place leaders and potential place-makers. Engaging in research inquiry can build a vital bridge of understanding between staff and students which can enrich schools cultures and widen and deepen leadership, by bringing staff and young people into the frame. Four specific tools are offered in the following pages to generate further insights into the nature of place and belonging in school to support research inquiry and deepen understanding of how to be a place leader and become a place-maker.

Theme (i) Understanding the world of the school

(ii) Research inquiry: Taking the plunge

(iii) Reconfiguring leadership: The place-maker’s journey

(iv) A connected approach

Tool

Aim

Belonging as a Dynamic Helps schools understand Concept (Figure 9.2) the factors which shape belonging in school and to recognize that belonging is a dynamic concept A Leader’s Guide to Provides a guide for researching about place Researching for Place and Belonging and belonging and points to the role of leaders in (Figure 9.3) initiating the research process and bringing others on board. Being and Becoming Suggests a framework for a Place-maker making sense of the (Figure 9.4) leadership context and draws on this knowledge to develop a more nuanced understanding of the leader’s own journey. Place Leaders: The Offers a connected approach Cycle of Connectivity which brings all of the (Figure 9.5) elements together in an integrated leadership strategy which incorporates research engagement as a ‘placemaking’ tool.

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(i) Understanding the world of the school Our sense of belonging in any organization or institution is shaped by what we bring to it – our personal histories and the influence of external events – as well as the actualities of school life. A range of factors impinge on a young person’s experience of belonging in schools. Understanding more about the dynamics of belonging enables school leaders to take stock of the factors which combine to shape belonging in their school. Figure 9.2 relates to the nature of belonging. It builds on the elements of the school experience presented earlier in Figures 3.1 and 4.1 and aims to deepen understanding about those factors which contribute to a sense of belonging in schools. Young people’s sense of belonging is shaped by what they bring with them to their experience of school: their personal histories and realities. External

B1 Shaped by personal histories. identities & experiences B5 Grown or stifled by the mediating force of leadership

B2 Influenced by external events, expectations & beliefs BELONGING AS A DYNAMIC CONCEPT WITHIN SCHOOL

B4 Nurtured by the lexicon of belonging & culture of exclusion or inclusion Figure 9.2 Belonging as a dynamic concept

B3 Affected by relationships with staff & peers

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events, expectations and beliefs also permeate through the walls of the school, shaping the nature of belonging (B1). These external factors can include acts of extreme violence, as illustrated in Chapter 2, day-to-day social, economic and environmental realities, as well as policy expectations about how or what schools should teach, or what counts as success. Relationships – and their built-in expectations and assumptions – are a third important factor in shaping a child’s sense of belonging in school (B2). From a young person’s point of view, relationships are significant not only in the classroom, with teachers, other staff and peers, but also in the dining room, the corridors and the playground: a point which the young researchers from Upton Cross School discussed so eloquently in Chapter 7 (B3). Schools reveal their attitudes to young people’s families – and to their communities –expressing their views in subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle ways: judgemental or accepting of difference. These views are also transmitted through relationships and the language used by staff: the lexicon of belonging our exclusion (B4), as is discussed in Chapter 5. The mediating force which holds all of this together, which has the power, the  influence, the opportunity to shape the culture of the school is the leadership (B5). ●

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The ways in which leaders think, decide, act and reflect, and draw on their knowledge to create a roadmap of possibilities is critical to the well-being of the children and adults in their schools. The degree to which school leaders are sense-makers, fusing the internal worlds of the school with external realities will shape not only the understanding about events of the day but also a sense of possibilities for the future. The extent to which school leaders conceive a key aspect of their role as being that of place-making – for staff and young people – will influence whether schools are dynamic places of belonging, or places of sadness and exclusion.

When young people feel that they belong; when the school grows their sense of self and agency, and helps them understand that they have choices and options, then they will go out into our troubled world with a sense of purpose. When teachers engage in critical inquiry, they become better equipped to develop that criticality in young people. It encourages them, as Brazilian educator Paulo Friere describes it, to recognize that they have a critical role to play not only in

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teaching young people to read the word but also to ‘read the world’ (Friere 1993, p. 59; also see Grace 2010), and they develop the skills and confidence to do this.

(ii) Research inquiry: Taking the plunge Findings from S-PWB? indicate that research engagement helps develop and motivate staff and harness young people’s creative potential, promoting the development of professional learning communities (Stoll and Louis 2007) in ways that can enrich school cultures. Figure 9.3 is a conceptual map: an illustration of how to go about the enjoyable and creative process of collaborative inquiry and

Figure 9.3 A leader’s guide to researching for place and belonging

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research engagement about place and belonging. It provides school leaders with a guide through the messy process of research engagement. Step 1. This is where place leaders ask the key questions about place and belonging: Is ‘our’ school a place where all children, young people and adults feel they belong? If not, what are ‘we’ going to do about it? Steps 2 and 3 are about getting the key stakeholders on board (staff and student-researchers in this example but community members too) and equipping them to ask the questions using a range of research approaches. Steps 4 and 6 are about taking the time and opportunity to experiment and to enjoy the journey along the way. Why not have a metaphorical, or even a real, picnic to enjoy the shared collegiality? Step 5 is taking the school’s pulse: How do people think and feel and act? Step 7 Reading the ‘runes’ moves the learning forward and acknowledges the agency of staff, students and their families, as well as the place leaders, in creating schools that are places of belonging.

(iii) Reconfiguring leadership: The place-maker’s journey Understanding the degree to which belonging is a dynamic concept and leading the process of research engagement are all-important steps for school leaders which take them into the place-making arena. As suggested earlier, the school leaders interviewed for S-PWB? saw themselves as place leaders and were developing the art of place-making: recognizing that schools shift and change and that staff, students and their families contribute to the process of placemaking. This place-making process is an evolving and dynamic approach to leadership, with many aspects to it. At the heart of the place-making journey is the ambition to create schools where children and adults can be seen for who they are – and can belong. Place-makers recognize that each person stands on common, yet different, ground (O’ Donoghue 1998). They create the spaces for children and staff to flourish, finding ways of enabling young people to speak out and say what they think. They strike the balance between responding to the many external demands on them and working to create a sense of safety, belonging and agency. Leading the research inquiry process about place and belonging outlined in Figure 9.3 provides a rich and fertile ground for place leaders to gain an appreciation of how the culture of a school is experienced by staff, students and their families (Kruse and Louis 2008; Gruenert and Whitaker 2015) and to take their schools forward. As a process, it demonstrates the power and potential

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of school leaders to shape what happens in schools and lay the foundations on which strong and vibrant school cultures are built. Stepping into the leadership space as a place leader also requires leaders to make sense of a complex range of realities. These include what young people and staff bring with them from outside school, and what they encounter and experience every day within school. There are three aspects of this process: making sense of the context; looking through the prism of place and belonging; and being and becoming a place-maker. These are incorporated into Box 9.2: the place-maker’s journey.

Box 9.2: The place-maker’s journey ●

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Making sense of the context means that leaders learn to ‘read’ the locality and its challenges in a more nuanced way. Some communities may be poor but monocultural; others may have refugees who bring their own painful stories; others still may be made up of diverse cultures with different beliefs. Contextual sense-making is about asking: Which communities are engaged with school and why? Which are disengaged? Understanding the local setting and the contextual realities of schools is particularly important in challenging and economically deprived communities (Riley 2013b). School leaders need to know and understand more about young people’s lives: what they see and experience on a daily basis; the hopes and dreams of young people and their communities, as well as their fears and challenges. This contextual sense-making process enables those school leaders, weighed down with the daily pressures of leadership, to come up for air and to recognize the distinctiveness of the challenges within their own localities, as well as those shared with other schools. Looking through the prism of place and belonging enables leaders to understand the importance of place (the yearning to understand our roots) and belonging (the need we feel to be part of something and to be who we are). It draws on what leaders know implicitly – from their own personal experiences – and Chapter 7 that links this to a more empathic understanding of young people’s lives. The notion of leadership of place – developed in earlier research (Riley 2013a) – is an acknowledgement of the mobility and fluidity in the lives of many young people and their need for belonging. It emphasizes the importance of reaching beyond the school gates and making connections to the outside world and the wider archipelago of young people’s lives. (Continued)

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Box 9.2 (Continued) ●

Being and becoming a place-maker builds on this understanding of context and place, adding to it the notion of agency: active and purposeful engagement. The concept of leaders as place-makers who strive to make ‘belonging’ work for pupils from many different backgrounds is an approach which is dependent on building trust; developing the knowledge and capacities of staff; and harnessing the creative potential of young people. It derives from the imperative which is at the heart of this book: to create schools which are places of belonging and inclusion.

These interconnected steps are also summarized in Figure 9.4. Start at the bottom of the diagram stage 1 and move through leadership of place to become a place-maker: stage 3.

(iv) A connected approach Research inquiry can be introduced into a school as an isolated activity or as an integrated strategy. However, the process of leadership for research inquiry and engagement outlined in the previous pages implies a more strategic approach: a recalibration in thinking about what it is to lead, and a set of connected actions linked to it. This final thread brings the dynamics and interconnections together in Figure 9.5. The model signifies an ambitious approach to leadership. The five dimensions of the model incorporate research inquiry into a notion of leadership which is grounded in the realities of place and belonging. This approach recognizes the leverage school leaders have through embracing the notion of place-making to influence and shape the school climate, and set a leadership framework which draws on the talents and experiences of young people and staff. ●

Dimension one is the recognition of the power of belonging – for leaders themselves, for their staff and young people and their families. Belonging is about feeling safe, emotionally and physically, and being comfortable in who you are. ‘I’m different’, one of the young researchers told us, ‘and it’s ok to be different in this school.’ A key step in generating belonging is to give staff and students the tools to look at the life of the school. This gives them the power of data: the chance to voice what they think, based on wellresearched evidence. As a process of active engagement, it represents a shift

A New Way of Belonging?

Figure 9.4 Being and becoming a place-maker

Figure 9.5 Place leaders – The Cycle of Connectivity

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away from more traditional forms of deciding how schools should be run and opens up new possibilities. Dimension two is about seeing beneath and beyond the immediacy of the day to day, being open to new thinking and avenues of inquiry, and taking the time and space for personal reflection. I have suggested elsewhere that leaders need to recognize the four realities of their leadership: not just the physical but also the social and political, the emotional, and the spiritual or ethical realities (Riley 2013a; Elemski 2015). These leadership realities can be seen as the legs of a stool. If one leg is wobbly, then it’s an uncomfortable stool to sit on – and you might even fall off. Supporting and encouraging research inquiry enables leaders to make sense of what’s going on in the lives of young people (the physical reality); and what is happening in the world around them (the social and political reality). It encourages them to think about how they, as leaders, respond to all of this (the emotional reality), and to search deep within themselves for what drives and motivates them to lead (the spiritual or ethical reality). Dimension three is about being an authentic leader. It forms the roots of leadership and connects the first two dimensions together. Authentic leaders match what they say with what they do. They understand their own past and the importance of the heritages and experiences of others (Goffee and Jones 2006; Campbell-Stephens 2015). Understanding the roots and stories of others requires a process of purposeful engagement and open enquiry, as well as a passion and a commitment to create spaces where people can feel comfortable to be themselves. This leads to dimension four, drawing on the privileges of leadership to leverage the ideas and creativity of others in a collaborative enterprise for transformation which grows the leadership of others. When young researchers and new teachers ask the questions, and school leaders listen, guide, learn and response; the energy and commitment generated create a cycle of transformation in classrooms and schools, and strengthen community connections. Leveraging the privileges of leadership is distributed leadership in action and knowledge sharing consolidated through an ongoing process of learning (Sebba et al. 2012). Staff and young people step into the leadership space with energy and competence. In dimension five of Place Leaders: The Cycle of Connectivity, place leaders come to terms with their own attributes and frailties and engage in professional development for self-reflection and to improve their

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knowledge and skills (Clark and Wildy 2011). When leaders feel sufficiently comfortable in who they are, they are more able to draw on their own humanity and their own reserves of commitment and energy, and develop their leaderly intent to create an inclusive climate. They affirm the role of the school in the life of a child through a process of engagement which signposts a world of possibilities and fosters and releases the agency of others.

Stepping into the future Teachers and young people flourish in school cultures which foster their creativity, resilience and their sense of agency: what they think, what they say and what they do makes a difference. The process of research inquiry described in this book enriches young people’s lives and contributes to the development of societies in which young people – our citizens of the future – are equipped to play their role. Their sense of well-being and agency will take them forward. Their skills, confidence and criticality will enable them to make sense of competing truths and realities and to make positive choices in life. Place Leaders: The Cycle of Connectivity offers a conceptual framework for thinking about the essential elements of leadership as a place-making activity, and research engagement as a place-making tool. It is an approach which takes into account the distinctiveness of localities, communities and individual schools. Through S-PWB? this approach has been road-tested in schools in challenging contexts and environments – an arena of international policy concern (Naicker, Chikoko and Mthiyane 2014; Ainscow and West 2006; Vanni and Bravo 2010) – and can be applied to schools in many different countries and contexts. Welcoming young people into school, acknowledging and valuing them is what enables youngsters to grow roots. Opening their hearts and minds to life’s possibilities feeds those roots and encourages them to be inquiring learners who understand the world they live in and how they can shape and influence it. Schools have an important role to play in imparting basic skills, knowledge and understanding. However, one of the most precious gifts they can give to the young people in their care is to see them for who they are. Ongoing work is taking these ideas approach forward through an intervention strategy which brings together the leadership components described in this book; the research engagement of staff and young people, and added to that, the research involvement of parents within a project framework which incorporates

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‘educating with art’: poetry and music to help create a sense of place and belonging for young people and staff. This approach is outlined in Appendix IV. Appendix III provides information about the five videos in the Art of Possibilities series which support these ideas. An essential element in this approach and perspective is the intent and belief: the Art of Possibilities, a recognition that school can be joyful and inquiring places of belonging. Towards the end of S-PWB?, we held a conference at London’s City Hall to share our findings with an audience of London’s politicians, policymakers, educational leaders and practitioners. Children from St Anthony’s Primary School, in Bromley, London, launched the event, performing two poems by the British-born poet Benjamin Zephaniah whose work includes themes about place and belonging and the importance of valuing and enjoying the diversity of languages, cultures and beliefs. The two poems were ‘Everybody is Doing it’, a wonderful global affirmation of diversity, and ‘Confessions of a Runner’ which is about the exploits of twins in their first week of school (Zephaniah 2000). They decide to escape. ‘Why do you think they did this? Why did the twins dislike school so much?’ I later asked children from the British School in the Netherlands. ‘No one listened to them,’ they told me. ‘No one was their friend. They didn’t feel they belonged.’ Reflecting on findings from S-PWB?, one of the IoE team members Rhoda Furniss commented: I was thinking about all the people that are actually involved in a school – the pupils, the teachers, the teaching assistants, all of these people. If they all thought about their school in a different way… .

– a place where I go, – a place where I feel like I belong, – where I feel like I can contribute, – where I feel like what I say is heard … what a dynamic, wonderful place that would be.

Schools could and should be dynamic and wonderful places to be. Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to make the difference offers a rich tapestry of messages from young people, teachers and school leaders and shows the appeal of researching about place and belonging. It is an approach which gives teachers powerful insights into children’s experiences in the classroom and playground, encouraging them in their professional practices. It also provides

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young people with a vehicle to voice their experiences, grow their skills and talents and develop their sense of agency. The book’s significance goes far beyond the story it has to tell about the research undertaken by teachers and students. It offers a research process that schools in many countries and contexts can adapt to meet their own needs. The power of the approach is in the sense of leadership and agency it gives to staff and students, and the ways that it can be used to help build strong school cultures in which children and adults feel they belong. When place leaders take the step of encouraging research for place and belonging, they unleash the Art of Possibilities: a belief in what children and young people are capable of doing, and being and achieving. The book presents a framework for an intervention strategy in which groups work together to create an edifice which puts belonging at the centre of school life. It signals an ambitious approach to reform: a vision of what can be achieved by harnessing the creative potential of young people and teachers to explore, reflect, act and change – themselves and their schools. The school’s foundations are solid; the design co-constructed and based on common understandings and shared views about what is important. The building which emerges has a fresh feel about it. It is open and inclusive and also takes into account contemporary realities. The young Muslim women of Bengali descent from Mulberry School discovered their roots in London. The new arrivals to the UK from Corelli College blossomed when they realized how they could contribute to the creation of a positive and welcoming environment for other newcomers. The student-researchers became visible and rooted: they felt that they belonged. The teacher-researchers grew in confidence and competence. The approach advocated in this book is not about mandating what should happen but about creating engagement in the classroom – and participation in the life of the school. It recognizes the potential and creativity of leaders, teachers and children: what they are capable of doing and being and achieving when they work together. What is so special about leading research for place and belonging is that it can help create schools that are great places to be. What is so special about a place-maker is that he or she sees people for who they are. Seeing a student, a staff colleague, or a family member for who they are, and giving them the space to be that person and to live in their own shoes, is one of the greatest challenges of leadership – and also one of its greatest rewards.

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And what is so special about the young people who have contributed to this book is that they have been noticed, appreciated, valued. It is this sense of agency, a recognition that what they think and do and say can make a difference which will equip them for the challenges of contemporary life in our diverse and complex societies. They have become highly visible, and they plan to remain so. By becoming agents of change in their own schools, young people find a new way of belonging.

Appendix I: Further Research Material This Appendix incorporates additional reflective materials from teacher- and studentresearchers and examples of some of the research tools used. It demonstrates, once again, the richness and the depth of responses from the researchers and the benefits to schools of engaging in collaborative inquiry. The specific examples included are: ●

Kay: Teacher-researcher 4, Chapter 6

●

Staff from St Paul’s Way Trust School, Chapter 7

●

Dea: Student-Researcher, Elizabeth Garret Anderson, Chapter 7

1 Kay: Teacher-researcher 5, Chapter 5 Kay investigated how the 28 pupils in her Year 5 class felt about their school environment: the physical surroundings and their relationships with fellow pupils. She used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1978) to explore the notion of place and belonging and to develop the following research question: How do pupils feel about their environment, especially their classroom? Is there a sense of belonging? She used a focus group approach with her class during morning ‘Circle Time’ to explore how the children experienced their surrounding environment. To triangulate her research findings, she developed an age-appropriate ‘mini’ questionnaire and a mapping exercise which used colours (a traffic light system) to enable the children to show the areas within the school where they felt either happiest/safest or unhappiest/unsafe. She concluded her research inquiry with a question to her pupils about what they would change to help create a sense of belonging. Kay found that the children loved the brightly coloured and interesting posters on the walls of the classroom but sometimes found these distracting. They appreciated having the fish tank in the classroom and were pleased that they had been given that as a reward. They also loved the ‘Star’ of the Week and the weekly raffle and felt proud to see their own

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work on the walls, believing it promoted a good feeling among all pupils. The mapping exercise proved to be particularly useful in highlighting those parts of the school where the children felt most unhappy. Ten out of the 29 children in Kay’s class sometimes felt unhappy in their classroom. This was largely due to the disruptive behaviour of other students. The children expressed this experience in the following terms: There is one pupil who always shouts out and disturbs us when we are working and then we can’t think. My map was marked in red where ‘name’ sits in class and in ICT. I don’t like it in here, not while she’s in here. I want to be in another class. The children could not relax when these other children were misbehaving. It made them feel angry and sad. The mapping exercise also revealed that the playground was a particular problem area for nearly half of the children. At the time the research was undertaken, children’s play was restricted because of the school’s building works. Kay used the focus group session to discuss the results of the mapping exercise with the children and found a strong swell of frustration. The children’s complaint was that they were never given reasons for decisions, such as not being allowed out for a long play or for football. The children felt that they did not have a ‘voice’ in the school: no one listened to them. They valued the opportunity to air their feelings to members of staff and to be listened to, particularly by the ‘dinner ladies’. This helped them feel they belonged. Kay drew on the findings from her research to develop new approaches to behaviour management in her classroom based on discussions with children who their classmates felt were disruptive: What would help them feel good in the classroom? She also engaged in discussions with colleagues across the school about how to find new avenues for children to have their voices heard and be involved in decisions which affect them.

2 Staff from St Paul’s Way Trust School, Chapter 7 At the beginning of the research process, the student-researchers came up with a number of problems they anticipated that their peers who were new to the school and/or who had English as an additional language might face. The most prevalent of these would be isolation and bullying. The student-researchers also discussed how to gauge a sense of whether our target students felt they belonged in the community and unanimously agreed that one-to-one interviews would be the best way to do that.

Appendix I: Further Research Material

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These interviews were conducted on a one-to-one basis by student members of the research team who had been given invaluable training by the IoE team in interview techniques, including guidance on confidentiality, accurate record keeping, encouraging trust and the merits and drawbacks of open and closed questioning, respectively. The student-researchers devised a list of questions to ask and chose to open with factual data: name (though this was not recorded if the student requested), country of birth, arrival date, first language, level of English on arrival (on a simple scale: none, some, a lot), other languages. Most of our students who were new arrivals to the UK had come from Bangladesh, but of this group most had arrived before age eleven. Of those new to St Paul’s Way, that is, those who had arrived aged eleven or older, there was a much greater mix of nationalities, including Somalian and Turkish. The student-researchers asked questions about how they were made to feel welcome. Could they recall specific tactics or gestures that teachers made which made them feel like they belonged? The majority of our students are of Bengali origin and feel they belong in the school community and their local community because there are other Bengali students. Most responses indicated that teachers had helped them in the classroom and understood that they had problems with English. This was one of the most pleasing findings of our study. However, it also highlighted an important possible area for improvement in our practice: very few interviewees mentioned that they had told teachers when they had been bullied. As a result of this finding, we want to ensure that students know that they can and should follow up any instances of bullying with a member of staff so that we can educate the perpetrator on why it is not acceptable. While the majority felt that they belonged in the community, students who live further from the school have a more negative experience: one stated that as he lived quite far from the school it was a struggle to ‘constantly get two buses back and forth everyday’. This particular student lives in Whitechapel, which is less than two miles away. To those not familiar with the area, it may seem that the student should not feel isolated for this reason nor should they have to take the bus as it is within walking distance. However, we need to factor in the urban environment. In terms of a sense of belonging, Tower Hamlets is quite densely populated, especially in the two miles between Whitechapel and the school. Students may find themselves in an area where there are very few students from their own school and a majority from other schools. This may make them feel isolated. Many students reported similar reasons for not feeling safe in their neighbourhoods: the aesthetic and environmental effects of antisocial behaviour such as graffiti and litter were commonly cited.

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3 A peer interview with student-researcher Dea, Elizabeth Garret Anderson, Chapter 7 Why did you get involved in the project? I decided I wanted to be part of the research project because I wanted to understand the meaning of belonging in the EGA community from different people’s prospective.

How did you go about doing your research? In the beginning, my research group started by conducting one-to-one, semi-structured interviews with students, talking about their experiences of belonging at EGA School. After several trials, we found that this was too time-consuming and recognized that we would not be able to interview enough students to get reliable data, which is why we chose to ask students for one-word answers about how they felt with regard to belonging at EGA.

What have you learnt about place and belonging? I have learnt that belonging to the EGA community does not have just one meaning; it means many different things according to different people, but there is a shared sense that friendship is very important to us.

What have you learnt about research? During the project I developed my research skills and learnt a lot about how to conduct research. I have learnt that there are many different ways to research and even more ways to present the findings. It is really important to choose the right method that meets the time constraints in place and that accesses a good sample of people.

Why you think that other schools should research this topic? It is important for schools to research belonging so that they can develop belonging further within the school, particularly with new students.

What skills have you developed from being involved in the project? By being part of the project I have developed my research skills, such as interviewing other students, taking notes and coming up with ideas for research methods. I have also become more confident as I have had many occasions where I have had to speak in front of other people and present what we are doing.

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers Our Knowledge Quest

Our World: Our world is changing fast. There’s lots that’s unsafe and uncertain. But it’s an exciting world and one you can help shape and change, starting with your school. In our world a lot of people are on the move. Many of them are refugees. Our School: We want to make sure that everyone feels safe and confident in their school – and can be their best possible creative self. Our Goal: To make everybody feel welcome in our school community and that they belong.

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1 Our Three Knowledge Quest Teams Amber (Golden brown/yellow) It opens up the heart: You see things differently Lapis Lazuli (Clear and vivid blue) It helps you see the truth Jade: (Green) It supports friendship and stimulates ideas

Is this school a place where everybody feels that they belong?

2 Belonging: Why does it matter? One student told me: ‘Belonging means you are part of something and you are not just sitting around on the other side … not just left out or lonely.’ ●

Write down some words which you associate with belonging.

What do you think ................. What does belonging mean to you? ......

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

Our question

●

Tell me something that happened to you in school last week that made you feel that you belong.

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How would you find out about whether other children in your school felt safe and that they belonged?

3 Being and becoming a student-researcher What does your

you think? team think? What?

1. What is research?

Why?

2. Why do people get involved in research?

How?

3. How do people carry out research?

Skills?

4. What skills are needed to be a good researcher?

The benefits?

5. What skills do you bring? 6. What are the benefits of being

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

What do

involved in research about place and belonging? 7. What are the benefits to you as a researcher?

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4 Drawing Exercise – A tool to research about place and belonging You will need Blank A4 sheets of paper

●

Coloured pens (e.g. felt-tipped)

Introduction Begin by explaining to the research participants (children and young people) why you are doing this exercise (e.g. to make schools great places for children and to encourage young people to be themselves and to develop to their potential). Ask participants to help you do that. Make it clear exactly how you plan to use the information. Ask them only to write their first names on the drawings. Decide on your specific research question around the theme of place and belonging, for example: ●

What’s it like for you being in this school?

(What you like and what you don’t like) ●

Where do you feel you belong in your school?

(Where do you feel safe and that you belong and where do you feel sad or uncomfortable?) Ask the children and young people to respond to your question as a drawing, or as a set of images. Ask each child individually what the drawings and/or images mean for them and write their responses down.

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

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5 My life in school

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

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6 Places and Spaces (You can do this exercise with young people, staff and families)

Draw a Map of the School (Safe, creative, comfortable?) Are there some which are not so great? (Uncomfortable?, Unsafe?, Uncreative?)

Here is a suggested colour code to mark the spaces Orange – warm, positive Green – fine, ok, comfortable Blue – not so comfortable or welcoming

7 Next steps as student-researchers in your Knowledge Quest Teams Teams: Amber, Lapis Lazuli and Jade ●

Decide on the particular issue about place and belonging that you want to explore.

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Design your research project: What are you going to do, when, where and how?

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Think about how you are going to gather your data.

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

What are the spaces which are good for you?

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Be clear about the ‘ethical’ issues.

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Make a plan for how you will record your findings; for example, using a research journal.

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Agree on how you are going to analyse your findings.

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Develop actions based on your research findings.

For you to think about

Asking questions

1. Using a questionnaire (written questions) 2. Interviewing (asking questions face to face)

You have to make the questions clear and interesting. Think carefully about your questions and how to make other children comfortable when they talk to you.

Observing

3. Observation

You need to decide on what you might look at; for example, who is on their own in the playground?

Mapping

4. See example 2, page 7

This is particularly useful with small children and older children new to speaking English.

Drawing

5. See example 1, pages 5 and 6

This is also particularly useful with small children and older children new to speaking English. Make sure that you write what they have to say about their drawings.

Finding out which words are important

6. You can use ‘Wordle’ which is an online programme. There are a places on the Web that have a wordle-maker where you can create your very own word cloud.

Ask children to write key words about belonging on a post-it. Use the programme to see which words are most important.

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Methods

Appendix II: Materials for Student-researchers

8 Research Methods: Some ways of finding out about place and belonging

Appendix III: Videos Creating Place and Belonging in our Schools The Art of Possibilities Series: Five Videos to promote thinking, discussion and change Our world is an uncertain world – a world on the move. Yet it is an exciting world – of boundless opportunities and possibilities. How can we create schools which are joyful and enquiring places – in which young people and adults feel they belong – and can be and become their best possible selves?

www.theartofpossiblities.org.uk

This Appendix offers information about the five videos in The Art of Possibilities series which are linked to the book and can be accessed through the Bloomsbury and the UCL IoE websites. The videos illustrate key themes in the book and can be used to shape linked professional development activities and inform discussion.

1. Place,

Encourages the viewer to look through the prism of place and

Belonging and

belonging to understand what needs to be done to help young

Schools in our

people feel they belong.

Global World

●

Belonging means you are part of something and you are not just sitting around on the other side … not just left out or lonely.

2. A Place to

Introduces S-PWB? – the project at the heart of the videos – which

Be: Student-

involved students and teachers in researching for, and about, place

Researchers

and belonging. It spotlights the student-researchers and shows the

Show the Way

power of agency. ●

The notion of place and belonging is incredibly important for [our students] and even more so … when we are all getting a bit exercised about British values and what it means to be part of a community.

Appendix III: Videos

3. Rethinking

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Focuses on the teacher-researchers (all newly qualified teachers);

Classrooms:

how they used research to investigate the classroom and playground

Teacher-

experiences of children; and the major gains for them, their pupils

Researchers

and their schools.

Learn from

●

And by the end of the project, those children [the outsiders] were seeing themselves very differently … it was really very

their Students

exciting. 4. Using Poetry

Demonstrates how poetry and music can be used to develop the

Performance

talents and skills of young people and help create place a sense of

to Create Place place and belonging in the classroom. and Belonging

●

Belonging is my identity, belonging is myself. And belonging is to be confident with yourself. It's like something very deep in your soul and in the heart.

5. Making

Highlights the importance of taking into account global factors

Belonging

and – drawing on the project’s final event at City Hall – provides an

Work in a

overview of the lesson learned, introducing the notion of leaders

Volatile World

as place-makers and reinforcing the message about the Art of Possibilities. ●

If all the people who are actually involved in a school (the pupils, the teachers, the teaching assistants) thought about their school in a different way – a place where I go, I feel like I belong, I feel like I can contribute, I feel like what I say is heard. …What a dynamic, wonderful place that would be.

Project team: Professor Kathryn Riley (Team leader), Dr Max Coates, Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, Rhoda Furniss, Roberto Molina (The Art of Possibilities) and Frank Hung (DIDA Media). Participating Schools: Corelli College, Elizabeth Garret Anderson School, Mulberry School, St Paul’s Way Trust School, Upton Cross Primary School, Waltham Forest Newly Qualified Teachers’ Network (led by Newport School) and St Anthony’s RC School, Bromley. For further Information contact: Kathryn Riley, Professor of Urban Education, UCL, Institute of Education [email protected]

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Appendix III: Videos

Further ideas and research data sources: K. A. Riley (2013) Leadership of Place: Stories from the US, UK & South Africa (Bloomsbury) K. A. Riley (2017) Place, Belonging and School Leadership: Researching to make the difference (Bloomsbury)

Appendix IV: A Framework for an Intervention Strategy Professor Kathryn Riley and DancePoet TioMolina, Creating Place and Belonging in our Schools

Our World and ourselves Our Town and our communities Our young people and our schools

Our world is an uncertain world – a world on the move. Half the world’s refugees are children. Social divisions are widening. Yet it’s also an exciting world – of boundless opportunities and possibilities – in which we all want to feel that we are safe and that we belong. ‘Belonging’ is that sense of being somewhere where you can be confident that you will fit in, and where you feel safe in your identity. Schools are one of the few shared social institutions which can create that sense of belonging or exclusion. The Art of Possibilities: Recognizes the power and potential and creativity of young people, staff, leaders and communities to help create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels that they belong. If belonging makes you feel more confident, and confidence makes you a better learner, it is clear that students need to feel like they belong in school in order to learn most effectively. (Student-researcher)

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This project is an intervention strategy based on a partnership for change and possibilities. Working together, we can help make a difference to the lives of young people, the professionalism of staff and the leadership of schools. This is about making schools great places to be, and helping create a sense of ‘belonging’ for young people which will grow their leadership. Professor Kathryn Riley and DancePoet TioMolina bring the best of the worlds of education, culture and art to the partnership. ●

We invite you to work with us in ways that go far beyond the narrow focus on student and system performance.

●

Our approach is about developing the skills and talents of young people and staff, and harnessing their creativity and energy; finding new ways of working with communities, and developing forms of leadership which create the kinds of social spaces in our schools where everybody feels that they belong.

●

When we do this, young people blossom: academically, socially and emotionally.

1 A Step-Change in Thinking We invite you to see things differently, think about things differently and do things – act – differently. Seeing: When you look through a prism, the light changes, you see things afresh. When you look at schools through the prism of place and belonging you begin to understand how school life is experienced – who feels included; who feels an outsider – and what can be done to increase engagement and reduce disaffection.

Do things differently

See things afresh

Think about things in new ways

Thinking: The shift in how we think enables us to recognize the importance of beliefs, values and possibilities. It enables us to make explicit what is important to us and to talk about what matters in our schools: the relationships, our aspirations for young people and their aspirations for themselves, their schools and for the future. Doing: Is about agency. This is a belief that if you act, what you do – on your own and with others – makes a difference. Agency is more than belief. It’s also having the tools to act through developing your skills, talents and capacities to make that difference.

Appendix IV: A Framework for an Intervention Strategy

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2 Aims and Outcomes The project’s broad aim is to support schools in working to create schools that are great places to be: in which young people have a sense of belonging and agency and can be and become their best possible selves. The project’s five specific objectives are: 1. Framework: To establish a framework of understanding about the importance of place and belonging and what this means for schools. 2. Place Leaders: To set up and support a cohort of ‘Place Leaders’ from participating schools who understand the relevance of these issues for their own and other schools – and the strategies and approaches which can contribute to creating a sense of belonging in schools – and will take the ideas forward within their own schools and across the locality. 3. Educating with Art: To develop the capacities of schools to work with young people in using poetry with music to help develop the talents of children and young people; reinforce their sense of self and belonging and develop their insights into the lives of others. 4. Researching for and about place and belonging: To develop schools’ capacity to explore these research issues, and apply the knowledge gains to their schools through working with student-researchers, teacher-researchers and parentresearchers. 5. Learning and knowledge sharing: To develop understanding about what works in the context of the locality; support activities that will share knowledge about the importance of place and belonging; and embed the learning in future practice.

3 Getting Started The challenges facing schools today are significant and growing, with many unknowns on the horizon. Our role is to work with you on the broad aim which is to help develop: Vibrant school communities – joyful and enquiring places in which young people can be and become their best possible selves. When young people feel that they are part of a place, part of a community and have a sense of agency, they will make their own contributions to the world around them. There are three strands in Creating Place and Belonging in our Schools: Strand I: Researching for, and about, place and belonging: Collaboration and learning go hand in hand: for teachers and for young people. This Strand is about giving teachers, young people and staff the tools to research about their own schools, to find out, for

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Appendix IV: A Framework for an Intervention Strategy

example: How good is my school at welcoming newcomers? What we’ve learnt from elsewhere is that when staff and students are involved in researching in this way, not only does it help develop their skills and capacities but it also helps in supporting the process of discovering what is – and what needs to be done – and contributes to the likelihood that it will happen. Teacher-researchers and student-researchers become change agents. We’re expanding this approach to involve parents and communities. Strand II: Educating with Art: It is about using poetry with music to help develop the talents of young people and enable adults to see things differently. Through understanding more about the lives and experiences of young people, schools and their leaders can help young people find their place in the world. Through the performing arts, young people can learn to embrace different languages, cultures and beliefs and see themselves as global citizens. This approach ●

generates a sense of emotional well-being in young people and releases their talents and creativity;

●

strengthens roots and connections and helps create a sense of belonging and insights into the lives of others;

●

encourages communication and collaborative ways of working;

●

stimulates new ideas and ways of working;

●

deepens learning and provides fresh insights and experiences.

Strand III: Leadership for Place and Belonging: How leaders think, decide, act and reflect, and draw on their knowledge to create a roadmap of possibilities is critical to the well-being of children and adults, and to their sense of agency. We offer a fresh perspective on leadership, encouraging leaders to be place leaders: ‘place-makers’ who make ‘belonging’ work. Place-makers have a theory of action which recognizes the power of belonging. They appreciate that each person stands on common, yet different, ground. And they choose to leverage the privileges of leadership to build ‘trustful’ schools: places of belonging for children, young people and communities. With thanks and acknowledgements to the UCL, IoE Research team (Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, Dr Max Coates and Rhoda Furniss) and the schools involved in School – A place where I belong? (Corelli College, Elizabeth Garret Anderson School, Mulberry School, St Paul’s Way Trust School and Upton Cross Primary School and the eight schools involved in the Newly Qualified Teachers’ Network led by Newport School).

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Index action research 48 agency belonging 28–31 and leaders 29–31 overview 28–9 of children 41–5 teachers 31–4 Albrow, Martin 12 appreciative inquiry 48 The Art of Possibilities 57, 87, 142–3, 156–62 ‘Battle of Cable Street’ 64 A Bed Called Home (Ramphele) 29 belonging. See also place agency 28–31 and leaders 29–31 overview 28–9 creating schools as places of 69–70 description 4–5 drawing exercise 152–4 dynamics and interconnections 132–44 being and becoming placemaker 138–41 reconfiguring leadership 136–8 research engagement 135–6 understanding schools 132–5 importance of 65–6, 150–1 lexicon of 67–8 and Mulberry School 97–102 and place leaders/place-makers 130–1 and poverty 5–6, 13, 19, 40–1, 43 prism of 57 and school experience 27–8 themes of 6–8 ways of finding out 154–5 Bengali Muslim community 97, 143 Berlin, Anita 15–17 Berlin, Ludwig 14–18 Biesta, Gert 31 ‘Blackshirts’ 64 Bourdieu, Pierre 29, 130 Bradshaw, Jonathon 38, 45

British Chamber of Commerce Survey 119 British Muslim women 121 British National Party 64 bullying 37, 44–5, 94–6 caring principal leadership 130 Castells, Manuel 19 ‘Cereal Killer Café ’ 65 children’s drawings 94, 152–4 Children’s Society 37 children’s well-being 6, 7, 13, 27, 36, 37, 41, 46, 50, 51, 56, 73, 86, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 134, 141, 162 ‘Circle Time’ 145 Clarke, Simon 30 Coates, Max 108 collaborative inquiry 48–9, 55, 117, 130 collaborative learning 115–16 collaborative relationships 31, 35, 134 communities, and schools 39–40, 68–9 Compton, Henry 43 ‘Confessions of a Runner’ (poem) 142 contextual sense-making 137 Corelli College 14, 19–22, 87, 102–6, 121, 143 creativity and energy 3, 8, 27, 33, 63, 66, 109, 113, 121, 124–5, 129–30, 140–1, 143, 159, 160, 162 Das ist mein Platz 17 Earl, Lorna 48, 71 Ebola 12 Elizabeth Garret Anderson School 87, 88, 107–9, 148 European Community 4 ‘Everybody is Doing it’ (poem) 142 fascism 14 First World War 17 fledgling teachers 7, 55, 118, 124 Flutter, Julia 42

Index Friere, Paulo 134 Furniss, Rhoda 142 General Teaching Council (GTC) 32, 34 Giddens, Anthony 30 grassroots movements 13 GTC. See General Teaching Council (GTC) habitus 29 Henry Compton School 43–6 Hierarchy of Needs 74–5, 145 Hitler, Heil 16 Hoy , A. 117 ‘ice’ (isolation) policy 35–6 Institute of Education (IoE) 44, 46, 47, 53, 55, 58, 72, 87, 102, 121, 142, 147, 156 IoE. See Institute of Education (IoE) Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 13 Jaffe, Trisha 20 John, Gus 41 Kellet, Mary 43 Kidbrooke School 43 knowledge gains, of teachers 114–17 notion of success 116–17 rethinking learning 115–16 taking the temperature 114–15 knowledge quest teams 149–50, 155 Lancashire research 35 Leadership of Place (Riley) 3, 38, 49, 54, 122 ‘Leadership on the Front-line’ 38 leaders/leadership 63–70 and belonging agency 29–31 gains for 129 place leaders/place-makers 130–1 being and becoming 138–41 reconfiguring 136–8 and S-PWB? 54–5 learning, collaborative 115–16 lexicon, of belonging 67–8 London Assembly 58 London Challenge development project 36–7 London Lives 43–6 London School of Economics 106, 121 Lovett, Susan 30

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Macbeth, John 34 ‘Make Poverty History’ 13 mapping exercise 54, 55, 66, 94, 146 The Marmot Review 5, 127 McNair, Arnold 123–4 Mehmedbegovic, Dina 121 Melanchthon Gymnasium 15–18, 22 Molina, R. xvii, 157, 159 Mosley, Oswald 64 Moya, Daniela Figueroa 122 Mulberry School 43, 58, 64, 88, 90, 97–102, 115, 119–21, 143 Murphy, Joseph 42, 125 Murphy, P. 117 Nazi Germany/Nazism 14, 17 newly qualified teachers (NQTs) 7, 9, 47, 49, 51, 55–9, 72, 83–5, 117–19, 124, 129 Newport School 52, 55, 118 NQTs. See newly qualified teachers (NQTs) Nuremberger Julius Streicher 17 Nuremberg FC team 17 Nuremberg Nazi Rally Grounds 16 Oettinger, Hans 15–17 Osler, Audrey 43 Pantic, Natasa 31 place. See also belonging creating schools as places of belonging 69–70 drawing exercise 152–4 dynamics and interconnections 132–44 being and becoming leader 138–41 being and becoming place-maker 138–41 reconfiguring leadership 136–8 research engagement 135–6 understanding schools 132–5 and Mulberry School 97–102 and place leaders/place-makers 130–1 prism of 57 and school experience 27–8 schools as 66 themes of 6–8 ways of finding out 155 place leaders/place-makers/placemaking 69, 130–1 being and becoming 138–41

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Place, Belonging and School Leadership

dynamics and interconnections 132–44 playground and classroom strategies 74–6 poetry and music 142 poverty, and belonging 5–6, 13, 19, 40–1, 43 PowerPoint presentations 104, 120 PricewaterhouseCoopers 33 Priestley, Mark 31 Primary sources 120 professionalism, teachers 32–4, 46 Putnam, Robert 5 Ramphele, Mamphela 29 reconfiguration, of leadership 136–8 Reed, Matthew 37 research engagement 4, 7, 10, 46, 51, 55–6, 59, 82, 85, 104, 106, 117, 119, 121, 124, 126–30, 135–6, 141 research inquiry. See School - A place where I belong ? (S-PWB?) research strands 54–9 school leaders 54–5 student-researchers 57–9 teacher-researchers/NQT 55–7 Rigby, Lee 14, 19–21 Robinson, Sarah 31 Rudduck, Jean 42, 43 Runte, R. 32 safety, of children 39, 67, 69 St Anthony’s Primary School 142 St Paul’s Way Trust School 87, 89, 121, 146–7 School – A place where I belong ? (S-PWB?) 3, 7, 10, 14, 18, 20, 22, 46 designing 47–51 approach 47–9 final research questions 51 questions and conceptual realignments 49–51 establishing 53–4 overview 47 research strands 54–9 school leaders 54–5 student-researchers 57–9 teacher-researchers/NQT 55–7 School Council 69 schools. See also individual schools and communities 39–40, 68–9

Corelli College 87, 102–6 creating, as places of belonging 69–70 dynamics and interconnections 132–44 being and becoming placemaker 138–41 reconfiguring leadership 136–8 research engagement 135–6 understanding 132–5 gangs and violence 19–22, 40 global churn and London realities 18–21 global realities and contradictions 12–14 historical events 14–18 and knowledge quest teams 149–50 leaders/leadership (See leaders/ leadership) Mulberry School 97–102 as place 66 and place leaders/place-makers 130–1 Upton Cross School 90–7 and young people 34–41 secondary sources 120 Second World War 11, 12, 19, 63, 123 space 27–30, 153–4. See also place S-PWB?. See School – A place where I belong ? (S-PWB?) Stanley, Fiona 5 student-researchers being and becoming 150–3 gains for 129 illustrations of 90–106 Corelli College 102–6 Mulberry School 97–102 Upton Cross School 90–197 impact of research process 119–23 importance of 86–8 and knowledge quest teams 149–50, 155 overview 88–90 as research strands 57–9 skill and benefits 106–9 student voice 41–6, 125–7 Taylor, G. 32 teachers agency 31–4 with attitude in global world 123–5 fledgling 7, 55, 118, 124 gains for 129

32–4,

Index implications for 123–7 knowledge gains of 114–17 notion of success 116–17 rethinking learning 115–16 sense of place and belonging 114–15 professionalism 32–4, 46 -researchers 71–85, 145–6 (See also newly qualified teachers (NQTs)) impact of research process 117–19 as research strands 55–7 and young people 34–41 and young people’s futures 125–7 Timperley, Helen 48, 71 Torre, Daniela 42, 125 Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive 101, 102 trust 70, 108–9

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UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 31 University of York 38 Upton Cross School 87, 90–7, 126, 134 Walker, Ashley 118 Weil, Simone 4, 70 well-being 6, 7, 13, 27, 36, 37, 41, 46, 50, 51, 56, 73, 86, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 134, 141, 162 Well-being Study 37 Wildy, Helen 30 ‘wordcloud’ exercise 67 Wordle 88 young people. See student-researchers Zephaniah, Benjamin

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