Infocommunications and Radio Technologies

This paper seeks to extend the debate around the contested concept of the ‘reflective practitioner.’ This concept has influenced practice-based learning across a range of disciplines, including social work, nursing and teaching and although assumptions are commonly made about its value to the developing practitioner, it has also been subject to critique. From the perspective of Scottish teacher-education, we propose moving beyond commonly accepted reflective practices to arrive at a reframing of it as a ‘more than human’ (Strom and Viesca, 2021) endeavour, in a way that decentres the practitioner from the process of reflection. We firstly consider some benefits and limitations of commonly used, human-centric models of reflection in teacher education; both in practice and in regulation. We then use two familiar classroom scenarios to demonstrate how these models of reflection can constrain the reflective process, and student-teachers’ agentic possibilities. We explore how a theoretical reframing of the problem through connectivism (Downes, 2007; Siemens, 2005), offers a fresh perspective that challenges the practitioner to reflect in multiple dimensions; on their means of connecting with others and the ‘matter’ of their practices – the material, physical and conceptual objects that are drawn into the orbit of the day-to-day work of teaching and learning. The proposed approach invites student-teachers to decentre themselves from their reality and consider a range of realities, allowing their reflections to more genuinely, critically and authentically reflect the realities of their experiences in the classroom. Although situated in the context of Scottish teacher education, this provocation offers fresh consideration of a problem that is currently of relevance to student-teachers and those involved in teacher education in both a UK-wide and international context.

Critical pedagogy is one of the major influences on the development of punk pedagogy. Despite the challenges with defining punk pedagogy, we offer a set of guiding principles that informed the current study. The principles are as follows: (a) do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos, (b) anti-hierarchical structure, (c) co-creation of knowledge, (d) inclusive and accessible, and (e) diverse representation. The purpose of this study is to understand students’ experiences with punk pedagogy principles implemented in a course about punk, titled “Punk 101: An exploration of punk rock through zine and do-it-yourself culture.” There were two research questions that guided the current study: (1) What were students’ overall course experiences in Punk 101? And (2) What were students’ experiences with punk pedagogy principles in Punk 101? We used a phenomenological approach involving students’ critical reflection of their experiences in a university-level course. Seven students participated in semi-structured interviews following the course. In this course, students listened to a playlist of 14 songs per week, read and discussed zines, and recorded a sound file from a DIY circuit board or created a zine about a topic of their choosing for their final project. The instructor implemented punk pedagogy principles in a variety of ways throughout the course. Students had positive experiences with the Punk 101 course; they gained knowledge and appreciation about punk music and culture, personal growth through DIY, and community building inside and outside of the classroom. Punk pedagogy is a viable approach in higher education. Further research is warranted to understand effective ways to use punk pedagogy strategies in the university classroom, and beyond.

Despite numerous attempts over the past 60 years, futures studies have so far failed to become a mainstream part of school education. In light of recent renewed interest in education futures amongst policymakers and academics, this paper reappraises the opportunities and impediments to establishing school-based futures education in the mid 2020s. Drawing on interviews with 61 Australian secondary school students who had participated in a futures education program, the paper explores student perceptions of establishing school-based futures education on a wider basis. Despite pockets of enthusiasm, most students remain doubtful of futures education fitting into their schooling – perceiving futures studies as too uncertain, unknowable, abstract and/or unsettling to be taken up as a regular part of schooling. The paper considers the forms of futures studies that might be seen as acceptable, and whether the most productive way of engaging young people in futures learning is to look toward non-formal and informal education.

In this paper, we analyse experiences of democratic practices in two research interventions within school contexts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Both projects took place in public (Government-owned and managed) schools and were inspired by participatory and critical approaches, particularly Paulo Freire’s popular education and bell hooks’ feminist pedagogies. We analyse two case studies in which group interventions raise issues about democracy within schools and broader society, stressing the differences between the two contexts. The first case study discusses an educational programme for teachers and school staff on gender and sexual diversity, funded by a pro-diversity centre-left Federal government from 2007 to 2014. We analyse the group as a space to build multiple perspectives and democratic practices on gender and sexuality. Second, we analyse material from a project that conducted workshops with pupils (7 to 11 years old) to discuss interpersonal relations and the bonds they had with their schools during lockdowns (2021). Researchers developed participatory methods for remote learning and conducted online fieldwork with students—who had their parents’ and carers’ silent presence at home—analysing the construction of bonds with school, classmates and their autonomy. This project was conducted during a much more hostile moment than the previous one, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and in an ultraconservative political context in Brazil. While even during a social-democratic administration, we found limits in discussing gender and sexuality in schools (case study 1), the later authoritarian government and context severely worsened the situation (case study 2). Nevertheless, we were able to use critical approaches to promote and discuss democratic practices, especially considering gender, sexuality, race, and class inequalities. Through our practices as school psychologists and researchers, we make collective stands against authoritarianism.

This article reflects on debates about research-teaching synergy. There has long been a debate regarding the synergy between research and teaching, but there is no consensus on how this enhances teaching and research at higher education institutions. The article aims to conceptualise the term research-teaching synergy and highlight challenges, arguments, and disputes that dominate the debate. It accomplishes this by reviewing a substantial body of literature covering more than three decades of intellectual debates and studies related to the research-teaching nexus. It also discusses the application and integration of research into teaching in higher education, particularly in university settings, and its impact on improving the learning environment. One of the arguments for the significance of integrating research and teaching/learning focuses on the potential benefits for undergraduate students, instilling hope for the future of higher education. This approach, known as the ‘student-focused strategy,’ can improve the quality and outcomes of students’ learning experiences. The article argues that despite the contentious issues related to the research-teaching nexus, the literature reveals that most academics consider a strong link between research and teaching as a necessary component of their job satisfaction, and there are many reasons to promote this nexus at the institutional and faculty levels.

The past decades have seen a plethora of TV reality talent shows emerge. The viewing population likes nothing more than seeing a ‘class’ of bakers, sewers, potters or dancers develop their skills and face the scrutiny of judges before being whittled down to a winner. The popularity of these shows says something about the national psyche but, aside from the entertainment value, may also carry conceptions of teaching, learning, assessment and feedback. By applying a metalinguistic thematic analysis to judges’ feedback, this paper seeks to examine how one UK show in particular, ‘ Strictly Come Dancing,’ presents feedback and, using a feedback framework, how this is understood. This feedback framework is notable for the links made to self-regulation, an area that continues to influence UK education policy. This paper will argue that when popular TV shows such as  Strictly Come Dancing are viewed through a pedagogical lens, they reveal models of feedback which are not necessarily valued. Furthermore, analysis reveals the spectacle of normalised and broader educational neoliberalism policy reflected back at us.

This article presents the Collaborative Climate Laboratories (CiCli-Labs), a participatory research methodology that bridges citizenship, science and politics. This methodology is grounded on young people’s knowledge and experience about their communities and seeks to develop a strategy for co-designing climate solutions with local stakeholders. Carried out in schools, the CiCli-Labs engage scientists, activists, business owners, and politicians in discussing climate problems identified by young people. By bringing together different positionalities that emerge from people’s diverse social roles, the CiCli-Labs aim to foster conditions for democratic citizenship and climate justice, embracing the necessarily conflicting yet binding dimensions of politics that can produce transformative and reciprocal learning. Additionally, it responds to the growing demand within educational research for community-based approaches capable of tackling the shortcomings in promoting youth agentic power in participatory designs, often marked by one-off events and youth-washing practices. The CiCli-Labs’ methodology builds on community profiling, through which students identify climate-related issues that work as catalysts for broader dialogues with local actors, challenging traditional adult-centric power dynamics. The methodology evolves through a sequential design based on the adaptation of participatory tools and methods: i) Climate Problem Tree; ii) Climate Social Cartography; iii) Pros-and-Cons Circuit; iv) Solutions Funnel; v) Climate Speed Dating; vi) Hands on Earth and Eyes on Clouds. The methodology was implemented in eight schools in northern Portugal, involving more than 300 students (grades 8 to 12). We discuss the rationale and practicality of the CiCli-Labs while mobilising empirical illustrations of the methodological process and participants’ perceptions about it, thereby contributing to furthering the problematisation of democratic research practices with young people.

2024 marked the centenary of the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child. The adoption of this declaration by the League of Nations provided the launching pad for the establishment of a global children’s rights movement which resulted in foregrounding children’s wellbeing at key global fora during the 20th century. While the concept of children’s rights has expanded in the 100 years since the adoption of the declaration, some of the key tenets of the conceptualisation of children’s rights within this declaration remain evident in dominant children’s rights discourses today. Specifically, there remains a clear distinction between children and adults which situates the state of adulthood as being everything that those within the childhood phase of life lack – autonomy, maturity, competence, and knowledge of the world. These systems are not only evident in educational settings and the approaches adopted by governmental and non-governmental agencies (national and international); they are also identifiable within the higher education sector, most notably in Western Europe and North America, through, for instance, ethics governance procedures or procedural ethics frameworks which are best characterised by research ethics committees/IRBs. The inclusion of such a vision of childhood in university ethics regimes which, then, informs ethical standards that need to be met by researchers seeking to undertake research with children is problematic because not all cultures, including some within Western European and North American contexts, make the same distinctions between the state of adulthood and the state of childhood and consequently, they do not automatically associate incompetence, immaturity and dependency with childhood. This raises more, not less, issues. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore the linkage between dominant children’s rights discourses and procedural ethics frameworks and problematise their understanding of childhood, especially concerning the concept of competence, in contexts where other conceptualisations of childhood exist.

As young people near the end of compulsory schooling they are faced with decisions about what future education, training and employment they will pursue. This paper argues that imagined future education, training and career prospects can have largely under-recognised socio-spatial dimensions. This claim disrupts received notions around careers decision-making as distinctly rational, based on academic strengths, skills, or talents. This spatial argument follows from a theoretically-informed analysis of interviews conducted with 15 young people living in England. Sampling was opportunitistic and the design flexible to enable me to explore the use of different methods which could foreground reflections on space and place. Interviews employed visual methods (including photo voice) to prompt young people to talk about their conceptualisations of places and spaces as well as future education, training and career considerations. Focusing in particular on three participants’ reflections, I suggest that through a process of emplacement young people are constructing thirdspaces, a concept proposed by Soja. This process both supports aspiration formation and disrupts imposed structures or labels that might otherwise be deterministic of particular post-16 pathways and subjectivities. For three participants, I consider the ways their conceptions of spaces are implicit responses to cultural expectations, limitations and structures. These three participants are presented as developing what Yosso has called spatially-informed navigational and resistant capitals. Claims are made in the context of an analysis framed by an interpretation of agency in terms of the identity and implied subjectivities. The process by which a young person emplaces themselves in a possible future and the construction of imagined thirdspaces could be untapped cultural resources informing young people’s post-16 decisions and planning which could lead them to build future pathways they themselves value.

In this editorial, we outline origins and evolutions of (studying) intermediaries in the field of education. While intermediaries have played a significant role since the establishment of mass education in the 19th century, it was not until the broader transformation from government to governance from the 1970s onwards that intermediaries became visible – and investigated – as a distinct field of powerful actors. The more recent digital transformation of education can, on the one hand, be situated within these broader evolutions. On the other hand, the rise of digital technologies, data infrastructures and platform has also significantly impacted, and further empowered, the field of intermediaries. With this Special Issue, which consists of five contributions, we aim at a closer disentanglement of these recent transformations. In this editorial, each contribution is briefly discussed individually, before outlining some overall findings of the issue.

This theoretical paper proposes to expand our understanding of ‘confessions of racism’ in the context of anti-racist education through the lens of ‘affective governmentality’. Confessions of racism are admissions of racism or declarations of privilege that foreground self-criticism and self-purification. The notion of affective governmentality turns attention to how confessions of racism function to normalize psychologized, individualized and depoliticized understandings of racism. Rather than outrightly dismissing confessions of racism though, given their probable persistence in popular and education discourses, an attempt is made here to re-frame them in order to highlight structural racism and inspire transformative action. It is argued that this re-framing could provide students and educators engaged in anti-racist education with a more effective path ahead. The paper concludes by suggesting that confessions of racism are used pedagogically in the classroom to revitalize attention to structural racism and transformative action rather than to foreground self-criticism and self-purification.

The digitalisation and datafication of education has raised profound questions about the changing role of teachers’ educational expertise and agency, as automated processes, data-driven analytics and accountability regimes produce new forms of knowledge and governance. Increasingly, research is paying greater attention to the significant role of digital intermediaries, ‘in-between’ edtech or State authorities and the classroom itself, in educational transformations. School data infrastructures, understood as comprising diverse sociomaterial elements including teachers, data, software, standards and pedagogical practices, is one such intermediary through which teacher expertise and agency is reconfigured. In this paper, I focus on teachers’ involvement in processes of data infrastructuring in which people, platforms, systems and tools come together to create, enable and maintain data flows. Drawing on a sociomaterial ethnography of a secondary school in England, I analyse the work of a school data office in the behind-the-scenes work of data infrastructuring. The findings detail the significant labour and expertise involved in data infrastructuring, the dynamic, expanding and bespoke nature of the school data infrastructures that emerged, and processes of decontextualising and recontextualising numbers. The paper argues that the work of data infrastructuring undertaken by and through the school data office was an intermediary process which worked to both de-professionalise and re-professionalise teachers in new ways. In the process, this created new kinds of educational data experts and expertise, who gained significant influence and power within and beyond the school, both challenging and reinforcing existing organisational and governing power flows.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual observations were utilised in teacher education programmes internationally (Murtagh, 2022; Mynott et al., 2022; Ó Grádaigh et al., 2021). In Scotland, virtual observations have been continued as part of teacher education programmes and this article explores student perspectives on their continued use. A situative analysis (Clarke et al., 2018) was used to explore questionnaire and interview data from student teachers. The analytical process examined the data and utilised memoing to consider emergent themes against the situation of virtual observations in teacher education. There is a duality to the findings. On the one hand, students express preference for in-person observation when they consider the process to be assessment-focused. Conversely, when not considering virtual observations as assessment, the ability to reflect more deeply on their practice, increase their control and agency over the observation and reduce the stress surrounding observations are all themes that emerged from the data. Therefore, the data suggests that further innovation moving from summative to formative observations might increase the benefits of virtual observations. Limited research exists on virtual observations. The literature that is available often focuses on university staff. This article considers virtual observations from the student perspective and provides clear feedback on how a pandemic response has been developed for post-pandemic purposes. The findings of this article can be further explored and built upon, and this will enhance the use of virtual observations within teacher education.

In this article, we explore the power and potential of democratic research methodologies in and beyond Critical Disability Studies research contexts. We centre two funded co-produced, participatory and arts-informed projects that have been co-designed and co-led with disabled young people and people living with chronic (respiratory) illness. We critically explore some key processes, which we suggest can mitigate forms of disablism and ableism inherent to research processes which traditionally make them undemocratic spaces of inequity. Our paper offers original analyses into the very notion of democratic research which have significant applications; driven as they are by the presence of disability. These include (i) Crip time - the recognition of (disabled) people’s need for flexible forms of time; (ii) virtual methods and intimacies as routes to equity in research leadership; and (iii) flexible and slow/er research approaches. We also draw upon the ways in which the Covid-19 global pandemic has reshaped methodologies and approaches to inquiry. We advocate that, as research communities, we must come together to keep hold of these new inclusive and hybridised ways of relating and engaging in what are problematically framed as “post-Covid” times. We conclude by emphasising the importance of always committing to disrupting power dynamics through centring flexibility, accessibility and inclusivity across our inquiry with marginalised others.