School Space Research Articles

Преодоление инаковости в переводе: интернациональный презентационный дискурс высшей школы

This study examines the approaches to defining the notion of strangeness from the standpoints of philosophy, intercultural communication, and translation studies. Depending on intensity of axiological characteristics by such criteria as space, affiliation, trust, and compliance with linguistic norms, strangeness is verbalized by expanding the "own : : other – foreign" opposition. On the textual level, "otherness" and "foreignness" are characterized by borderline, subjective perception of the recipient; meanwhile, it is noted that the translation decision on overcoming strangeness is made directly by the translator as the initial recipient. Interactions with representatives of other countries and cultures are an active part of the academic discourse, defined by the authors as communication in the high school space and its educational, research, and sociocultural areas. This paper focuses on the international presentational discourse of high school, which implements its phatic tasks in the informative texts posted on an educational institutions website in the original and translated versions. As participants of the presentational discourse are inclined to have a dialog, strangeness tends to be perceived as a form of otherness. Its explication in translated texts is performed by full and functionally adequate translation of the units, such as realia, forms of address, neologisms, proper nouns, which communicate unique information and reflect linguacultural peculiarities.

The impact of school space on primary education art teachers’ pedagogical practices: a Bernsteinian approach

This article, based on Basil Bernstein’s theoretical framework, aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of the impact of space on the formation of the pedagogical practices of the teachers who teach Arts in Primary education. Data were collected using the research methods of observation and interview on a sample of 20 Art teachers in primary education. The most significant findings of this research revealed that school space impacts and affects the pedagogical practices that they implement. When the Arts are taught in traditional classrooms due to lack of an art room in primary school buildings, the teachers’ pedagogical practices are visible and characterized by strong classification and framing. When the Arts are taught in the art rooms and in outdoor spaces the teachers’ pedagogical practices are characterized by ‘weak’ classification and framing and they seem to tend towards the rules of an invisible pedagogical practice.

The Interplay of Ethnocultural Identity and Language: Perceptions and Experiences of Turkish Immigrant Mothers in Home–School–Society Relational Spaces

ABSTRACT Immigrants’ linguistic resources and proficiency have received attention in politics and academia; however, families’ views about using the host country’s language alongside their heritage language requires further research. By applying a socio-spatial approach connected to Critical Race Theory, this paper examines how mothers of Turkish origin in Germany perceive and experience their language use in home-school-society relational spaces and how this interacts with their ethnocultural identities. Qualitative interviews conducted with 22 mothers were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings illustrate that respondents’ linguistic competencies and attitudes towards their heritage language and the German language are linked to their ethnocultural identities and influence their parenting in home, school, and societal spaces. However, the standing of their heritage language in schools and society influences how mothers position themselves within society, which in turn affects their home and school spaces. The findings can inform policies addressing education and social inclusion.

Identity construction of multilingual parents in the context of parental engagement

Abstract Parental engagement is a multidimensional construct closely linked to pupils’ success at school. Despite this relevance, multilingual families often face challenges in the process of engaging with their children’s learning, since they might deal with barriers and constraints in the school space due to prevailing structures and dominant ideologies. In order to support their children in their learning process, however, multilingual parents seek to invest in practices and negotiate identities to gain membership in the school community. Considering this context, this ongoing research aims to analyze how multilingual migrant adults with kindergarten and school-aged children construct their identity while engaging with their children’s education. To achieve this goal, case studies have been conducted with multilingual parents in Austria, collecting data from diary entries, narrative interviews and observations of parent-school meetings. This triangulation of methods intends to provide an emic and etic overview of the data, which will be analyzed according to steps proposed by the Discourse Historical Approach and the ethnographic framework. Within this scope, this study aims to contribute to enhance parental engagement by multilingual families in the context of migration, by suggesting a shift from a dominant point of view to a more comprehensive understanding of parental engagement. Besides that, this research also contributes to broaden discussions in the research areas of Educational Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, as well as Teacher Education. This paper is part of the AILA Europe Special Issue in the modality short paper for Junior Researchers, which intends to give a slight overview of an ongoing research.

Latina M(other)work against racism: living with legal precarity in suburban Atlanta

ABSTRACT This piece explores the resistance strategies of Latina mothers grappling with racism and legal precarity in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, a “hostile” new destination with restrictive anti-immigrant measures. It draws on 18 months of ethnographic research to show how women derived a sense of empowerment from becoming involved in their children's schooling. They also turned schools into “counter-spaces” of sanctuary and support for fellow Latinx parents. The author sees this educational activism spanning both domestic and public school spaces as an expression of m(other)work. M(other)work is the gendered labor of care that supports Latinx children and communities as they fight against intersecting forms of exclusion. This labor, stemming from traumatic experiences of border crossing, is at the heart of emerging forms of immigrant activism in new destinations. In conclusion, the author urges educators to abandon traditional deficit framings of immigrant groups in favor of initiatives that support Latina mothers’ educational activism.

A critical reconceptualization of the International Baccalaureate as a potential force for democratisation in global-heritage schools

ABSTRACT This paper aims to make a conceptual contribution to the role of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) in regard to global education within state global heritage (multicultural) schools – using England as a representative example – in an age characterised by epistemological, historical and cultural securitisation. This paper recruits ideas and concepts taken from Lefebvre and Bourdieu in a discussion focussed on the IBO’s potential role in resistance to the dominant neoliberal imaginary and cultural securitisation. However, in order to be a force for democratisation, the IBO must itself democratise through a reconceptualisation of the school spaces it operates in/produces. It will also involve a process of reassessing its notion/positioning of what constitutes symbolic (and therefore valuable) cultural capital. This will mean untethering global education from the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. This paper highlights the possibility of a new space for global education, operationalised by moving beyond the ‘IB school’ to the potential of the more informal IB supported school. It is argued here that the IBO has the potential to galvanise a new wave of inclusive global education.

Teaching English as a foreign language in multilingual milieus in Catalonia: perspectives and practices of educators in three state schools

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore how the teaching of English as a foreign language is planned in three plurilingual state schools in Catalonia. We carried out classroom observations (first and second grade of primary education) and interviewed the English teachers who teach these lessons and the headmasters of the three schools. The use of these qualitative methods to generate data allowed us to see what teachers say they do in the classroom, and what they really do. The results showed that although the three schools analysed work to make learners aware of their linguistic repertoires and foster their plurilingual competence, the English classroom is still seen as a monolingual space where students’ languages and the use of plurilingual strategies are not present. Similarly, we can state that the participating teachers do not prioritise plurilingual and intercultural education in the English classroom, as this is promoted in other school spaces. The findings have strong implications; namely, there is the need for foreign language teachers to encourage the use of students’ first languages in the classroom if we want to advance towards a plurilingual and intercultural education.

Making Space: Exploring the “Thirdspace” of Breaktime in Middle School

Although scholars are attuned to the particular transitional dilemmas faced by middle school students, inquiry into middle school breaktimes is largely limited to research on bullying and peer victimization. This study interrogates the geography of middle school breaktime to expand understanding of student safety and recognize the ways that the state’s intervention in school spaces creates particular challenges for young learners. By investigating breaktimes at three middle schools and employing a critical geography lens in data coding and analysis, we demonstrate how the organization of space shapes student experiences. Findings suggest that scholars should consider breaktime as a “thirdspace” within the middle school day—one that offers vast potential for positive student development, but is marginalized due to its status as “non-academic” time. Findings reveal that school leaders and staff may better support students by addressing the ways that breaktimes are differently navigated by students along ethnic, socioeconomic, age, and gender lines.

An exploration of children’s experiences of the use of digital technology in forest schools

ABSTRACT Forest schools are distinctive outdoor spaces that are often regarded as an alternative to mainstream education. Their increasing popularity in the United Kingdom is often attributed to a perceived decrease in children’s outdoor play, due to a concomitant increase in children’s use of digital technologies in the home; further compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study explores how iPads can enhance outdoor learning activities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 Key Stage 2 children selected from two UK primary schools. The interviews explored the experiences and opinions of the children about the role of iPads in the forest school space using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings suggest that Forest School spaces can accommodate new technologies through accommodation of the outdoor environment and technology. Suggestions for future research include the meaningful integration of iPads into Forest School practice while considering the relative influences of space and place.

Students Opinion on the Values of Intercultural Education as Education for Future in Primary School

Intercultural education is an education of interpersonal relationships, which involves members of different cultures, whose fundamental objective is to increase the effectiveness of intercultural relations, to increase the degree of openness, tolerance, acceptance of others. The integration of intercultural education in the school space is a complex and not at all easy process, which requires specific skills and approaches from teachers. Pupils, from the earliest ages, namely, primary schools, should be able to appreciate the richness of a diverse range of cultures and be helped in practical ways to recognize and challenge stereotypes. Wherever prejudice and discrimination exist, they must be addressed. The following article, presents brief research on the opinions and experience of Preschool and primary school students from Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, regarding the values of intercultural education teaching and practice within primary schools, in the Romanian school curriculum, in order to integrate the pupil in the society of the future. They have shared their thoughts regarding the preparation level that they get in the study years at the above-mentioned specialty, through data collected within several sessions of focus groups.

Межкультурная коммуникации в образовательной среде вуза: этнопсихологические особенности туркменских студентов

Ethno-psychological features of Turkmen mentality are seen as a factor, determining efficient communication between students of different nationalities in the multicultural educational space. The aim of the article is to single out the characteristic features of the world perception and behavioral patterns, that are to be considered while establishing collaboration with Turkmen students. The method of the research is analysis of theoretical works in the sphere of intercultural communication as well as situations in which manifestation of typical features of the people in all academic contexts. The research is resulted in making what might be called an ethno-psychological profile of the Turkmen student, which will help to choose the right strategy of communication with the people of this nationality in the multicultural educational space of Russian High School.

In Search of Scholarly Impact

In Search of Scholarly Impact

Schools Often Fail to Expect Trans and Nonbinary Elementary Children: What Gender Independent, Nonbinary, and Trans Children Desire

Background/Context: This article is drawn from a doctoral research study that involved co-research between as adult trans academic and their child, a nonbinary 11-year-old. It mounts an epistemic challenge to education that assumes children to be cis, and either boys or girls. GIaNT children (Gender Independent, and Nonbinary, Trans) are often talked about but seldom directly engaged about their wants and desires in education, but my study addresses this problem and centers their agency. Purpose/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of the study was to generate knowledge and insight into how 2SLGBTQ children, and children from 2SLGBTQ families, envision education spaces and programs that meet their needs. It also investigates the potentiality and significance of a parent-and-child researcher team to engage caregivers and children in co-imagining liberatory education spaces as 2SLGBTQ cultural spaces. Participants: Participants were 17 children (ages 4–12 years) and 12 adults from 11 households; the focus in this article is on the 12 children who identified their gender as other than cis. Research Design: A qualitative, arts-based participatory research methodology was employed. While the parent-child research team of a trans adult and a nonbinary 11-year-old conducted semi-structured interviews with both children and parents, the focus in this article is on the former. Participants were also invited to draw their ideal learning space. Interviews were video recorded, transcribed, and coded. Findings/Results: GIaNT children in this study desired learning spaces that are ready for them, that affirm their self-assigned genders, and that understand that people define their own genders. They wanted to be believed as who they said they were. They wanted safe access to bathrooms and schools to be communities, not just places of learning, and they recognized that learning happens outside of school. They desired an end to gender policing in schools, and in online learning, participants wanted schools that were safe and celebratory of all their identities and of all their peers. They wanted schools that are antiracist and decolonizing, that practice universal access, that teach queer and trans history and culture, and that provide meals and transportation. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study highlighted the creative potentialities of GIaNT children to provide generative insights into gender-affirming school spaces. It advocates for children to be engaged in processes of creating their own learning experiences. GIaNT children called for schools to be more equitable, antiracist, and decolonizing, committed to practicing universal access, teaching queer and trans history and culture, and providing meals and transportation.

Power, Emotion, and Privilege: “Discomfort” as Resistance to Transgender Student Affirmation

Context: This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship on affirming and accommodating transgender and gender-diverse students in elementary school spaces by exploring how institutional resistance to gender-inclusive practices manifested in a single rural school district. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The study was shaped by the following questions: (1) How is “successful” support of a transgender child defined by the educators who worked with a child as her gender identity and expression changed? (2) What were the educators’ strategies for facilitating the student’s in-school transition? (3) What (if any) actions were taken to recognize or affirm gender diversity? This article focuses on one educator advocate’s experiences navigating a district administrator’s expressions of discomfort with transgender inclusion, which he deployed in situations in which he believed proposals for gender-inclusive policies and practices were “running wild” and too far from the institutional status quo. Participants: Interview participants were school personnel, including administrators, teachers, and counselors, who worked in the school while the child was in kindergarten through third grade, and the student’s mother. Research Design: Eleven interviews were conducted. Limited observation included a school assembly focused on learning to accept differences and observation of gendered images throughout the school building. A semi-structured interview protocol was used that included questions about (1) first learning of the presence of a transgender child; (2) the process for learning about transgender identity; (3) implementing procedures for including and accommodating the transgender student; (4) integrating gender differences into the curriculum; (5) discussing gender differences with students; and (6) perceptions of the school district’s success in working with the transgender student and her family. Interview questions were designed to encourage descriptive accounts in which participants describe what happened, their interpretation of the events, and their understanding of their own positions within the events. Conclusions: This study addresses how discomfort serves as a socially acceptable narrative for school personnel to prioritize the (actual or perceived) feelings of cisgender adults and children over the needs of transgender students.

The Role of the League of Education in the Formation of the pedological Movement.

The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the interaction of the League of Education with the pedological community, which will reveal its role in the formation of pedological experience, subsequently applied in the 20-30s of the XX century in the USSR. The subject of the study is a community created by the League of Education and implementing pedological experiments in the educational space of the beginning of the century. The author pays special attention to the results of the League of Education on the example of Petrograd. The connection between the scientific heritage of the members of the Society and the use of these materials in the later period of the existence of the pedological movement, after 1917, is revealed. The paper analyzes the projects of the League of Education on the radical transformation of the school space, taking into account social and historical aspects. The period of existence of the pedological current before 1917 has been little studied in a historical way. The same should be noted regarding the study and analysis of the activities of the League of Education. This organization is described in most sources in several general paragraphs. The novelty of the research lies in the development and analysis of archival materials related to the organization and activities of the League of Education (the study was conducted on the basis of documents of the Central State Administration of St. Petersburg, TsGIA St. Petersburg, TSGAIPD St. Petersburg). The League of Education played a significant role not only in the analytical study of the educational space, the accumulation of pedological experience, the search for leading pedagogical developments, but also in the replication of these materials. The activities of the organization and its societies were widely covered in publications. Despite the successful and productive activities, the government refused the League of Education. And this is primarily due to the political context, from which, initially, according to the Charter of the organization, members of the society had to be abstracted. The specialists in question in the study continued their work in other institutions and created the foundation of Soviet pedology.

Racialized Organizations in Racialized Space: How Socio-spatial Divisions Activate Symbolic Boundaries in a Charter School and a Public School

Much research documents the systems of racism that undergird the rise of school choice policies and charter schools, racialized organizations that reproduce racial logics. While school choice policy gets enacted at the structural level to enable the formation of charter schools, policy also interacts with a localized neighborhood context where space must be allocated to the charter school. As race scholars show, space is itself racialized. How does this localized allocation of racial space shape intra-group dynamics in a predominantly Latinx neighborhood? Evidence for this study comes from two years of ethnographic participant-observation and informal conversations with parents in a traditional public school and a charter school in a large Northeastern city. Findings show how threats to the material boundaries of school space activate symbolic boundaries between parents from each school, drawing from racialized organizational identities of traditional public schools as representing neighborhood loyalty and anti-gentrification resistance positioned against charter schools as representing dominant whiteness, superiority, and social mobility. I conclude with a discussion of implications for broader studies of racialized space and organizations, culture, and collective action.

Circles de Confianza: Promoting the Well-being of Latine Youth via Multimodal Testimonio

ABSTRACT In the Spring of 2021, five Latine high school students gathered over Zoom to discuss experiences of confianza (trust) and desconfianza (distrust) with a team of researchers. Via multimodal testimonios, students built a community of confianza and convivencia (togetherness). Students identified this process as healing and offered suggestions on how to address desconfianza in school spaces and how to leverage confianza, creating a process by which to imagine schools de confianza. This research illustrates the potential of community building characterized by trust and belonging and oriented toward activism. This opportunity can support students to recontextualize their past experiences, feel validated in their experiences, and feel a sense of belonging.

RELATIONAL STRATEGIES IN THE SCHOOL SETTING – SPECIFIC FEATURES IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

School and family are considered to be basic pillars of education, the child moves, as the object and subject of education between them and the community. If these educational environments complement and support each other, then they will influence the efficient integration of the child in school activities and later in social life. The education system is a space of social interaction, a space in which teachers interact on the one hand with students, and on the other hand establish cooperative relationships with students’ families and other stakeholders in the society. Through every relational contact with students or parents, teachers carry out activities of growth and development, leadership and direction. On class level, the communication relations, the management of the class activity, the socio-affective relations that are established between teachers and students determine the establishment of a psycho-social climate that can favor or disfavor the optimization of the teaching process. The family-school relationship is important for the student’s school success. Lately, there has been a more consistent involvement of parents in the children’s school activity and a multiplication of personal interactions between school representatives and family members. This article explores the importance of the relationships between teachers and students, as well as the relationships between school and students’ families due to their role in streamlining learning and developing students’ personalities. The study conducted in a primary school outlines the importance of relational strategies in the school space.

Нарративный подход в исследовании миграции учителей

The article is devoted to the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of teacher migration. It is worth noting that in Russia, the migration of teachers has not become a separate topic for research. Based on the analysis of modern approaches to migration and mobility, the strengths and weaknesses of the research strategies of “mobile turn” and “attachment to place” are revealed, the heuristic possibilities of quantitative and qualitative methodology in the study of teacher migration are revealed. The purpose of the article is to provide a rationale and a conceptual basis for research on the migration of teachers and graduates of pedagogical universities. The article identifies the causes, forms and consequences of teacher migration, as well as key trends characteristic of modern labor migration processes in the educational space of the Russian school, using a specially developed narrative interview technique. The article talks about the need to apply a narrative approach to the analysis of the communicative form of narration. The method of narrative interview was used in the mobile methodology as a “strategy of mixing methods” Go along and Recovery of memories, to study the social experience of the teacher and collect information about the place, time and situational circumstances of his migration. Today, a number of studies are presented in which there are changes in the interpretations of the study of migration, and which form the basis for new theoretical approaches to the study of migration processes.

Erfahrungsräume im Grundschulalter

“Middle childhood” takes place primarily in the experiential spaces of family, elementary school and peer group, each of which is influenced by social media applications in the digital age. The implementation of children’s statutory rights, such as the right to participation or the right to protection from violence, is critically examined for the spaces of experience outlined and conditions for success are formulated.