Deirdre Martin

Learning in and for Multi-Agency Working.

This study addresses the challenges faced by organisations and individual professionals, as new practices are developed and learned in multi‐agency work settings. The practices examined in the paper involve working responsively across professional boundaries with at‐risk young people. The paper draws on evidence from the Learning in and for Interagency Working Project, a four year ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme study of inter‐professional learning which has examined the challenges involved in what Victor and Boynton (1998) term co‐configuration work. In the context of professional collaboration for social inclusion, co‐configuration involves on‐going partnerships between professionals and service users to support young people’s pathways out of social exclusion. This work demands a capacity to recognise and access expertise distributed across local systems and to negotiate the boundaries of responsible professional action with other professionals and with clients. The paper outlines the activity theory derived theoretical platform adopted by the project and describes the intervention methodology that is being developed, as we study the learning challenges identified by children’s services practitioners in UK local authorities.

Professional Learning within Multi-Agency Children's Services: Researching into Practice.

Background This article is concerned with professional learning within multi-agency settings. Since the publication of the government document Every child matters in 2003, professionals involved in working with children and young people have been moving into newly organized services that are required to deliver improved services for vulnerable children and their families. Although new ways of professional working are described in the plethora of government guidance that has followed Every child matters, there has been little examination of how this is being achieved in different teams around the country. Purpose This paper describes a current national research project, ‘Learning in and for Inter-agency Working’, which is investigating new ways of learning that develop, while teams of professionals work together around children and young people who are at risk of social exclusion. Programme description The research project is theoretically based and draws upon sociocultural and activity theory research to understand the practices that develop within the different agencies involved. The paper describes the derivation of the theory and the particular aspects of activity theory that are central to the project. In particular, the use of developmental work research (DWR), as the method of intervention with a number of local education authorities, is described and explained. Sample Some of the early work undertaken within phases 3 and 4 of a five-stage project which began in 2004 and ends in 2007 is described. Five different inter-agency teams of professionals working as part of Childrens Services, from different geographical locations in England are the participants in the study. Design and methods The research uses activity theory to structure a series of DWR workshops with members of the multi-agency teams. Ethnographic data, including observations and interviews, are collected and form the subject-matter of the workshops. Results The data gathered are used to facilitate workshops where participants discuss their developing working practices and plan changes. The reporting phase of the project, where the findings across all sites will be analysed and summarized is not until mid-2007. However, early themes emerging from the research are included in the paper. These themes include: issues around co-location and co-working, evolving of professional identities, discussion of divisions of labour and professional expertise. These are described and illustrated using data from the research project. Conclusions As this is still ‘work in progress’ no firm conclusions can be drawn. However, it has become clear that new ways of thinking about professional working with children and families is necessary as old ways of working do not necessarily provide better outcomes for children.

Critical perspectives on activity theory

Taylor and Francis CEDR_A_384640.sgm 10.1080/0013191 902844689 Educational Review 0 13-1911 (pri t)/1465-3397 (online) it ri l 2 09 & Francis 61 0002 9 NickPeim n. .peim@bh m.ac.uk Activity theory is usually discussed in contexts of socio-cultural theory and cultural historical theory, giving rise to two different acronyms, SCAT (socio-cultural activity theory) and CHAT (cultural historical activity theory). They may seem to be used synonymously in some literature, although they have different origins and emphases. SCAT is informed by North American traditions of anthropology, interactionism and pragmaticism of the adaptable self, while CHAT is embedded in European traditions of thought in particular Russian cultural psychology, yet there continue to be boundary-crossings which enrich the development of activity theory (Edwards 2005, 2007). There is certainly no doubt that activity theory has significant influence in contemporary educational discourses and has become an influential tool for the analysis and transformation of practices. There are a number of internationally recognized centres for activity theory. The International Society for Cultural and Activity Research organizes a large international conference every three years. Educational Review has published one previous special issue of research dedicated to activity theory, “Sociocultural and activity theory in educational research”, edited by Harry Daniels and Anne Edwards (2004). Edwards and Daniels (2004, 108) point to two areas of philosophical uncertainty in SCAT:

Exploring Bilingual Children's Perceptions of Being Bilingual and Biliterate: implications for educational provision

Abstract Within the framework of constructing learning, this paper explores the feelings of bilingual children towards developing two languages, two literacies and belonging to two communities in the environment of the education system, which in England is insensitive towards bilingual learners in its implementation of a monolingual and monoliterate curriculum. This paper presents the approaches and procedures employed to investigate young bilingual childrens constructs of their own identity and about being bilingual and becoming biliterate. Importantly, these constructs are expbred through both the childrens languages which has not been done in previous studies. Our findings show that bilingual children express their constructs of bilingualism, literacy and identity differently in both languages. Throughout the paper, we indicate the educational implications of this study for the policy and practice of the monolingual and monoliterate curriculum in England for bilingual childrens identities languages ...

A New Paradigm to Inform Inter-Professional Learning for Integrating Speech and Language Provision into Secondary Schools: A Socio-Cultural Activity Theory Approach.

The paper presents a new way of understanding and investigating inter-professional learning across agencies for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) in schools in England. It considers specifically speech and language therapy staff and school staff learning to work together and working to learn together in secondary mainstream provision. Concepts and analysis of learning to work collaboratively are orientated by socio-cultural activity theory. In addition, evidence of learning for risk-taking and resilience are presented which are not readily analysed by the theory. The paper argues for considering collaborative working as organizational learning predicated on collective, rather than individual, engagement.

Towards a New Multilingual Language Policy in Education in South Africa: different approaches to meet different needs

This paper discusses some of the issues involved in developing a multilingual language policy in education in South Africa: the influence of the historical context, the language demography and patterns of language use in South Africa, the attitudes of learners, parents and teachers towards the multilingual language policy in education, the range of multilingual education models operating in other countries and the influence of resources in the debate. It draws on two research projects carried out in KwaZulu Natal and in North West Province. The paper argues that for a multilingual language policy in education developed at government level within a national framework, there needs to be the flexibility for each province and each school and classroom to implement the policy to meet the needs of their learners within their resources.

Developing Assessment Procedures for Phonological Awareness for use with Panjabi-English Bilingual Children

The links between phonological processing and literacy development have mainly been investigated in monolingual, English-speaking children and most tasks to assess phonological awareness have been devised in English. Increasing interest in phonological processing in children who speak languages other than English has helped lead to there cognition that phonological awareness is to a certain extent language-specific and dependent on the phonology of the language of assessment. Thus the development of tasks to measure phonological awareness must be sensitive to the phonology of the language concerned. This paper discusses the development of a battery of tasks which were used to assess phonological processing skills in Panjabi-English bilingual children in west Birmingham, U.K. The work is unusual among previous studies on phonological awareness in bilinguals in that we developed tasks to assess the children in both of their languages. Our results support the notion that at least some tasks of phonological awareness may be language-specific. Moreover we find that the results of phonological tasks for a particular language can be dependent on the task design and content, which in turn are constrained by the phonology of that language.

Investigating Literacy and Pre‐literacy Skills in Panjabi/English Schoolchildren

The acquisition of literacy in bilingual children is, as yet, a relatively under‐researched field, but one of crucial importance to all involved in education. In this paper we present interim results from a study which investigates the literacy and pre‐literacy skills, in particular phonological awareness skills, of a group of Panjabi/ English schoolchildren. We give an initial picture of the childrens phonological awareness skills in both languages and then make a preliminary attempt to identify links between ability in particular aspects of phonological awareness across both languages and English literacy. Our results indicate that assessment of pre‐literacy skills in bilingual children is useful only if carried out in both of the childrens languages.

Language change in young Panjabi/English children: implications for bilingual language assessment

This paper reports some of the more frequent language changes in Panjabi, the first language of bilingual Panjabi/English children in the West Midlands, UK. Spontaneous spoken data were collected in schools across both languages in three formatted elicitation procedures from 50 bilingual Panjabi/English-speaking children, aged 6–7 years old. Panjabi data from the children is analysed for lexical borrowings and code-switching with English. Several changes of vocabulary and word grammar patterns in Panjabi are identified, many due to interaction with English, and some due to developmental features of Panjabi. There is also evidence of pervasive changes of word order, suggesting a shift in Panjabi word order to that of English. Lexical choice is discussed in terms of language change rather than language deficit. The implications of a normative framework for comparison are explored. A psycholinguistic model interprets grammatical changes in Panjabi

Constructing Discursive Practices in School and Community: Bilingualism, Gender and Power

In England one of the key national determinates is English monolingualism which is reflected in an English-only educational system. Drawing on the framework of legitimate discursive practices and languages (Nic Craith, 2000) English is perceived as the language of government and power and awarded legitimacy, while languages spoken by minority groups have no official legitimacy and are not recognised as legitimate languages for learning or schooling. Thus, schools are potential sites of contestation for issues of structure and agency around language diversity where linguistic minority learners construct their languages in their social and discursive practices. This paper explores how bilingual children manage their cultural and linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1977) by colluding with, and contesting, the structures of language and power in school (Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). An important gender perspective emerges in the childrens discursive strategies in constructing languages in school.