Dympna Devine

Children's Citizenship and the Structuring of Adult-Child Relations in the Primary School.

This article analyses the experience of school in terms of childrens citizenship, exploring the level of participation experienced by a sample of Irish primary school children over decisions related to the control of their time, space and interaction in school. Locating such experience within the context of the structuration of adult-child relations, education for and into citizenship, it is argued, must take account of the dynamics of power and control between adults and children, teachers and pupils and the impact on childrens construction of themselves as citizens with a voice to be both heard and expressed in school.

welcome to the celtic tiger? teacher responses to immigration and increasing ethnic diversity in Irish schools

Abstract Much of the research in the area of ethnicity and schooling is conducted in countries with a long tradition of immigration. The rapidity of social change in Ireland at a time of unprecedented economic growth is such that many schools, while still ‘mainly white’, are grappling with the particular challenges that are posed by new patterns of immigration. How these schools, and indeed the state, adapts to this changed social context has important implications for the transition of Irish society to a more multicultural state, which values and respects cultural and ethnic diversity in all its forms. This article considers these issues by exploring the responses of a sample of teachers to immigrant students in their schools. Central to the analysis is the role of the state through its action or inaction, in framing teacher discourses in inclusionary or exclusionary terms. State policies, it is argued, are underpinned by a particular conceptualisation of Irish and national identity which positions minority ethnic groups as ‘other’, with direct implications for both teacher perception and practice with immigrant students in schools.

The care-less manager: gender, care and new managerialism in higher education

While there has always been a profound indifference to the affective domain in formal education, given its Cartesian allegiance to the development of the rational autonomous subject, this indifference to the emotional subject is intensifying with the glorification of performativity. As higher education is especially subject to performance measurement and rankings, this study of top‐level management in Irish higher education shows that those who hold senior management posts are subjected increasingly to disciplinary rationalities that largely preclude being a primary carer. The definition of senior managerial posts as care‐less positions, in terms of primary care responsibilities, advantages those who are care‐free and these are disproportionately men in societies where the moral imperative to do primary care work applies mainly to women. The data suggest that understanding how the care ceiling operates is crucial for understanding why women do not occupy senior managerial positions within new managerial regimes in higher education.

Mobilising capitals? Migrant children's negotiation of their everyday lives in school

This paper considers how first‐generation immigrant children contribute to processes of capital accumulation through their negotiation and positioning in Irish schools. Drawing on the concepts of social and cultural capital, as well as inter‐generational analyses of childrens role in the structuring of everyday life, the paper highlights migrant childrens strategic orientation to their primary schooling, positioning themselves in order to maximise the exchange value from their education. Social class, gender and ethnic/migrant status were identified as significant to the strategies adopted, and how children coped with their positioning as ethnic ‘other’ in school.

Naming the 'other': children's construction and experience of racisms in Irish primary schools

This paper considers the construction and experience of racisms among a sample of primary school children in Ireland during a period of intensive immigration. Placing children’s voices at the centre of the analysis, it explores how children’s constructions draw upon discourses of ‘norm’ and ‘other’ in relation to national identity and cultural belonging. Constructions of minority ethnic groups are located within a context that defines what it is to be Irish, such constructions carrying with them assumptions related not only to skin colour but also to lifestyle, language, and religious belief. Drawing on key concepts related to power, social identities and child cultures, the findings highlight the significance of ethnic identity to children’s negotiations around inclusion and exclusion in their peer groups. Name‐calling in general, and racist name‐calling in particular, was shown to be an important tool used by some children in the assertion of their status with one another. The sensitivity displayed by the majority ethnic children to skin colour only, in their discussions around racism, highlights the salience of colour to many of these children’s typification of themselves as white Irish, and of many black migrant children especially as ‘other’. It also indicates, however, the limited understanding these majority ethnic children had of racism in contrast to their minority ethnic peers (including Irish Traveller children), all of whom were able to recount their own experiences of being racially abused for colour and/or culturally‐based differences. The need for teachers to be sensitive to the dynamics of children’s social world is stressed, as is the importance of developing clear procedures for the monitoring and tackling of racist incidents in schools.

Practising leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools: tensions in the field?

This paper explores the leadership practices of three principals following a period of intensive immigration in Ireland. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, it conceptualises schools as structured social spaces and of their leadership work as a form of practising. This practising is an outcome of the intersection between deeply embedded subjectivities operating in diverse fields of action that shape, constrain and transform each principal’s practices. Presenting an analytical model that highlights the circular and capillary-like dimension to such practising, the paper explores how principals’ recognition of immigrant children (their recognitive practices) as well as investment in supporting their learning (distributive practices) are shaped by the logics of practice across different fields, as well as by their own evolving habitus and struggle to be authentic in a period of rapid social change. Practising effective leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools must be conceived as layered and multiple but must be underpinned by an ethic of justice, if the minoritised status of ‘ethnic’ others is to be challenged and overcome.

The Impact of Workplace Bullying on Primary School Teachers and Principals

While previous research has consistently cited education as a high risk profession for negative workplace relationships, there has been little consideration of the impact of workplace bullying for those involved. This paper seeks to address this lacuna through the analysis of 24, in-depth interviews with self-identified victims of workplace bullying who work, or have worked, in primary schools. The study reveals the profound physical, psychological, social, and economic effects of these toxic behaviors upon the interviewees, along with the resistance strategies they employed to help them cope with their experiences. Through a lens of Foucauldian conceptualisation of power, this study explores the broader implications for school organizational culture, as well as for individual teachers and the pupils they teach.

The care worlds of migrant children - Exploring inter-generational dynamics of love, care and solidarity across home and school

There is increasing interest in migrant children’s contribution to family processes of integration. Less explored are the role of affective bonds and the significance of children’s care worlds in managing the transition of the migrant family, especially between home and school. Drawing on a deep ethnographic study of 10 diverse migrant families (parent and child), this article highlights how inter-generational practices of love, care and solidarity – the creation of a ‘family feeling’ (Bourdieu, 1998) – are central to the negotiation of belonging in the settlement country. However, affective practices, it is argued, are interconnected with access to economic, social and cultural resources giving rise to substantive differences in how migrant children negotiate the transition between home and school.

Securing Migrant Children’s Educational Well-Being

Internationally increasing attention is being given to children’s well-being as nation states recognise the value of investment in children for long term sustainability and economic development (Unicef, 2009). The renewed focus on children’s well-being is also underpinned by a recognition of children’s rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), not only to a safe, healthy and fulfilling childhood, but also one in which their views and perspectives on matters which directly affect them are taken into account. Education continually emerges as a key factor influencing children’s well-being and comparative research across countries globally (e.g. PISA studies OECD, 2006) highlights substantial differences in children’s education outcomes. Migrant children emerge consistently as one group around which there is cause for concern, yet basic accounts of ‘outcomes’ on a narrow range of indicators (typically maths, science and literacy) fail to capture the complexity of children’s responses to their learning, nor to the factors and processes which give rise to different experiences of educational well-being, broadly defined. Furthermore, in spite of the increasing recognition being given to children to be involved in decisions about their lives, education systems appear slow to embrace the idea of real and meaningful engagement with children about their educational experiences (Devine, 2003). This is then another key element of their educational ‘well-being’ and has very explicit consequences for children, such as those from an immigrant background, who may differ from the cultural and social norms which predominate in schools.

White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling.

This book focuses on the perspectives of white middle-class parents who make ‘against’-the-grain school choices for their children in urban England. It provides key insights into the dynamics of class practising that are played out in these choices and the multiple narratives and contexts that influence them. Drawing on a rich blend of social theories, the authors explore whether these ‘atypical’ parents have found new strategies to reproduce their classed and cultural locations or whether they are genuinely engaging with a more equitable cosmopolitanism that requires a restructuring of their children’s white middle-class identities. Their in-depth analysis ‘troubles’ both the practices and positioning of these parents, exploring the contradictions and psychic dilemmas that arise in trying to combine ethics and principles around social justice and egalitarianism with the ‘best interests’ of their children. Of course ‘best’ interest, like school choices itself, is not a neutral phenomenon – but is deeply embedded in perspectives and perceptions of ‘what counts’ and what is valued in the education and well-being of children and of society (Devine and Luttrell forthcoming). It becomes especially anxiety laden with the attendant riskiness, uncertainty, change and flexibility that is part of an increasingly individualized and competitive social order. Class strategies and the preservation of middle-class identities ‘under siege’ are then an important backdrop to the analysis of the motivations, contradictions and aspirations of the parents in this study. Situated within the broader framework of globalization, neoliberalism and increasing class polarization, the authors signal their intention to move the analysis of inequality from the margins to the centre, to the ‘normative’ white middle classes as they struggle to maintain familial advantage within an overarching ethical framework that is pro-welfare and left leaning. While they note their sample is not large enough to provide a comprehensive theory of ‘class’, they specifically focus on ‘urban seeking’ middle classes – who chose to send their kids to schools that ‘encapsulate the rich diversity of the cities they live in’ (6). In so doing, their choices appear to signal the generation British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 33, No. 2, March 2012, 303–314