Antonina Tereshchenko

Ukrainian youth and civic engagement: unconventional participation in local spaces

This article builds upon the literature examining the relationship of contemporary youth with politics and youth civic participation through a study exploring youth citizenship in post-socialist Ukraine. Specifically, drawing upon qualitative research undertaken during 2005–2006 with young people (aged 15–18) from two contrasting regions in East and West Ukraine, this paper uses three examples to highlight (and contrast across regions, where applicable) the potential of young Ukrainians to engage in various forms of democratic participation. In particular, this paper will use the following examples both to examine and illustrate youth participation: (1) youth and the political upheavals known as the Orange Revolution; (2) models of private/community-focused citizenship articulated by youth; and (3) school citizenship education practices. In relation to these examples, the article suggests that young peoples positions and practices are reminiscent of those citizenship perspectives which embrace the informal and contextual nature of civic participation focused on unconventional acts of citizenship. Connected to this, it argues that locality and schools may provide youth with an important space for civic engagement and for exercising democratic citizenship. Implications for educational practice are also explored with respect to the possibilities for place-based active citizenship education.

Factors deterring schools from mixed attainment teaching practice

Abstract Mixed-attainment teaching has strong support from research and yet English schools are far more likely to teach students in ‘ability’ groups. Although research has considered some of the specific benefits of mixed-attainment grouping, there has been little attention to the reasons schools avoid it. This article explores data from the pilot and recruitment phases of a large-scale study into grouping practices and seeks to identify reasons for the low rate of mixed attainment grouping in English secondary schools. We report on our struggle to recruit schools, and explore the different explanations provided by teachers as to why mixed attainment practice is seen as problematic. The difficulties are characterised as a vicious circle where schools are deterred by a paucity of exemplars and resources and the educational climate is characterised as fearful, risk-averse and time-poor. Suggestions are made as to strategies to support schools in taking up mixed attainment practices.

Stories of Belonging: Ukrainian Immigrant Children's Experiences of Portugal

This article is situated within the literature examining the experiences of inclusion and exclusion by immigrant pupils in relation to the educational and social environment in the receiving country. It draws on data from a small, exploratory qualitative research study conducted in a supplementary school context in Portugal to explore how Ukrainian immigrant children (aged 12–16) negotiate their sense of belonging in Portugal. Specifically, the ways in which the young immigrants relate to and construct the locations such as ‘home’, i.e. a country of origin, and a ‘host’ country, i.e. Portugal, are considered; which resources they draw on in the process of their identity construction, as well as which places become particularly significant in the process of their identity formation. There is a particular focus on how Ukrainian children experience in-/exclusion and relationships in the mainstream Portuguese school.

Immigration and supplementary ethnic schooling: Ukrainian students in Portugal

Immigration from Eastern European countries to Portugal is a recent phenomenon. Within the last decade, economic migrants from Ukraine, Russia, Romania and Moldova set up a number of supplementary schools across the country. No academic attention has been given to the phenomenon of supplementary ethnic schools in Portugal, whilst there is a growing interest in and beyond Europe in the ways they serve as cultural, social and political sources for identity negotiation, and structures for social capital formation in migrant communities. This study addresses this gap in knowledge. Drawing on a survey completed by 184 students between the ages of 12 and 20, attending eight Ukrainian supplementary schools, this paper contributes to wider international research through its mapping of the population of Ukrainian schools in Portugal and examining students’ reasons for attendance, highlighting both positive and negative aspects of their experiences. Recommendations are made for schools in light of the findings.

Nurturing Learning or Encouraging Dependency? Teacher Constructions of Students in Lower Attainment Groups in English Secondary Schools

Abstract ‘Ability’ or attainment grouping can introduce an additional label that influences teachers’ expectations of students in specific attainment groups. This paper is based on a survey of 597 teachers across 82 schools and 34 teacher interviews in 10 schools undertaken as part of a large-scale mixed-methods study in England. The paper focuses on English and mathematics teachers’ expectations of secondary school students in lower attainment groups, and explores how low-attaining students are constructed as learners who benefit from specific approaches to learning justified through discourses of nurturing and protection. The authors argue that the adoption of different pedagogical approaches for groups of low-attaining learners to nurture them may in some cases be fostering dependency on teachers and cap opportunities for more independent learning. Furthermore, more inclusive whole-school learning-culture approaches may better allow for students across the attainment range to become independent learners.

Learners’ attitudes to mixed-attainment grouping: Examining the views of students of high, middle and low attainment

Abstract There is a substantial international literature around the impact of different types of grouping by attainment on the academic and personal outcomes of students. This literature, however, is sparse in student voices, especially in relation to mixed-attainment practices. Research has indicated that students of different attainment levels might have different experiences and views of grouping structures. This paper represents a significant contribution to this literature. Drawing on the data collected as part of a large study on student grouping and teaching in England, we analyse the attitudes of students of different attainment levels to mixed-attainment practice, focusing on their explanations for their preferences or aversion to mixed-attainment classes. The data-set is drawn from group discussions and individual interviews with 89 students age 11/12 (Year 7) from eight secondary schools practicing mixed-attainment grouping in mathematics and English. Our analysis identifies some broad patterns in student attitudes, including a strong preference for mixed attainment among those at lower prior attainment. The analysis of the explanations students give for their opinions on mixed-attainment practice demonstrates how the learner identities of different groups of students are constituted in various ways by the discourses around ‘ability’, and constrained by the dominant ideology of ‘ability’ hierarchy.

Why is it Difficult for Schools to Establish Equitable Practices in Allocating Students to Attainment ‘Sets’?

ABSTRACT Research has consistently shown ‘ability’ grouping (tracking) to be prey to poor practice, and to perpetuate inequity. A feature of these problems is inequitable and inaccurate practice in allocation to groups or ‘tracks’. Yet little research has examined whether such practices might be improved. Here, we examine survey and interview findings from a large-scale intervention study of grouping practices in 126 English secondary schools. We find that when schools are encouraged to allocate students and move them between groups according to equitable principles by participation in a ‘best practice’ intervention, there is some increased equity of practice (i.e. a reduction in non-attainment factors used in allocation). However, the majority of schools continue to use subjective and potentially biased information to group students. Furthermore, some schools that claim to be using attainment setting appear to be using the inequitable practice of streaming. Our findings show that improvements in equity are constrained by operational and strategic factors, including timetabling, finance, and teachers’ values and beliefs relating to student ability and progression. We suggest strategies for encouraging schools to change their grouping practices, drawing on approaches for working with complex organisations.

Identity projects in complementary and mainstream schools: The views of Albanian and Bulgarian students in England

This paper contributes to the literature on complementary schools as sites of learning and social and cultural identification. We draw on a small-scale multi-method qualitative study conducted in Albanian and Bulgarian community schools in London to explore the agendas of ‘new’ Eastern European complementary schools with respect to learning and heritage and their impact on migrant students’ identities and experiences with education in the UK. Findings demonstrate that different models of complementary schooling and students’ experiences of mainstream education affected students’ views in different ways. The paper explores how the ‘hard’ and ‘boring’ culture of Bulgarian complementary school resulted in students’ expressions of greater liking for learning in mainstream school and valuing of its multiethnic context. It further examines how practices in another complementary school and students’ wider social experiences resulted in a stronger sense of Albanian heritage identity in students, but in more problematic views of UK cultural diversity. In elaborating these themes we seek to draw some implications for policy and practice.

Women in the driving seat: Eastern European immigrant women's citizenship, participation and educational inclusion in Portugal

This paper is a case study of Eastern European immigrant womens social inclusion in Portugal through civic participation. An analysis of interviews conducted with women leaders and members of two ethnic associations provides a unique insight into their migrant pathways as highly educated women and the ways in which these women are constructing their citizenship in new contexts in Northern Portugal. These womens accounts of their immigrant experience embrace both the public realm, in using their own education and their childrens as a means of integration but also spill over into ‘non-public’ familial relationships at home in contradictory ways. These include the sometimes traditional, gender-defined division of labour within the associations and at home and the new ways that they negotiate their relative autonomies to escape forms of violence and subordination that they face as women and immigrants.

Regional Diversity and Education for ‘National’ Citizenship in Ukraine: The construction of citizenship identities by borderland youth

The emergence of Ukraine from the break-up of the Soviet Union as a new nation state in 1991 has been referred to by scholars as a ‘historical novelty’, giving birth to an ‘unexpected’ or ‘nowhere nation’ on account of the fact that Ukraine as an independent political entity in modern history had never existed within its present borders (see von Hagen, 1995; Matlock, 2000; Wilson, 2000). Its geographic position has proved historically attractive to invaders; a history of repeated colonizations links Ukraine to its neighbouring countries in Central and Eastern Europe to the west, Russia to the east and the Black Sea region to the south. The various regions that make up modern Ukraine have moved in and out of Ukrainian history at different times as their territories have fallen within the boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the Crimean Tatar Khanate; the Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman empires; and the USSR, but they have never previously cohered as an independent state. Consequently, Ukraine continues to struggle with the formation of a common national identity for its citizens, this process being complicated by the regional polarization within the country usually ascribed to the existence of several distinct ethnolinguistic, cultural, political and economic profiles.