Maria Bouverne-De Bie

Children's Agency and Educational Norms: A Tensed Negotiation.

‘Children as social actors’ and ‘children’s participation’ are key concepts in present-day discourse and form a significant paradigm shift for the educational sciences, inspired by sociology of childhood. Some critical comments can however be made on how these concepts are transcribed into practice. A historical perspective, connecting the micro and the macro level, investigates how the new paradigm may be linked to discursive fields related to neoliberalism and its specific shifts in governmentality. These critical comments are inspired by a historical research into 150 years of governing children and families in Belgium. The discussion is necessary in order to evaluate whether and how the inclusive discourse on children can in turn exclude specific groups of children and adults in late modernity.

Lifelong learning and the counter/professionalisation of childcare: A case study of local hybridizations of global European discourses

We provide a historical (genealogical) study of the changes in discourses on adult education since the famous UNESCO conference in Montreal, to present day texts of the European Union on lifelong learning. We also analyse how these changing global discourses on lifelong learning have travelled – through the hegemony of English language – to local situations, such as in Flanders. In the case of Flanders, they have paradoxically contributed to a significant counter-professionalisation of the early years workforce. This genealogical case study also shows how research, policy and practice are closely intertwined in their contribution to this paradox. The study shows that genealogical approaches are useful to show both how international influences need to be considered in a globalised world, but also how specific local ‘hybridisations’ of these discourses are constructed.

Researching child poverty: Towards a lifeworld orientation

Childhood research with children in poverty involves a diversity of dilemmas and complexities. In the context of a recent research project in Belgium, the authors attempt to embrace child poverty as a normative issue created a crisis of representation. In order to untangle this, they situate different methodological approaches in relation to the constructed epistemological windows on child poverty. The authors differentiate between research in which the authentic voice of children in poverty is represented, and research in which their lifeworld is interpreted through a lifeworld orientation perspective that pursues human dignity and social justice in our societies.

Acknowledging ambivalence in a multicultural neighbourhood: in search of an educational space in narrative practices

In this article, we focus on narrative practices in adult education in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), and reflect on a current project in a multicultural neighbourhood that is socially and economically marked by poverty and where turbulence and conflict are rife amongst local inhabitants. While adult education aims to energize the process of learning to live together in this urban context by making sense of individual narratives of local inhabitants, there is a lack of insight into the actual dynamics that are stimulated. We explore how narrative practices can open up and shape an educational space in which citizens can express their ambivalence about living together in diversity and plurality. Inspired by Paulo Freire, we argue that these narrative practices can create possibilities for the reinvention and re-imagination of a democratic society.

Urban public space and the construction of social life: a social-pedagogical perspective

This paper addresses the question of what meaning urban public space has in relation to the process of children’s socialisation. It builds on data from qualitative research into the social-pedagogical meaning of three contrasting neighbourhoods in the city of Ghent. In this research, the neighbourhood was studied as a social and spatial context in which particular socialising practices are constantly constructed and reconstructed through the everyday social actions and practices of people, including children, and hence influence the socialisation processes of children. The research shows that different patterns influence the strategies through which children learn to deal with issues like diversity, otherness and unpredictability in different ways, ranging from excluding this diversity from the everyday lifeworld, through enclosing oneself within one’s own social group, to learning through the everyday confrontation with diversity.

Social Exclusion and Youth Work--From the Surface to the Depths of an Educational Practice.

The current dominant discourse on social exclusion and youth work depicts inclusion in youth work as an instrument for inclusion in other more pivotal institutions of society. Recent studies have shown, however, that the participation of socially vulnerable young people does not necessarily yield the anticipated inclusions. Suggestions are subsequently been put forward to bring more structure into youth work initiatives. In this article, we assert that this technical reasoning fails to acknowledge the complexity of social reality. By means of a social pedagogical case study of the coming into being of a Flemish youth work field, we show how youth work actors in Flanders have come to reinforce the social exclusions they were so eager to solve. Our findings raise questions about individualistic fallacies and cultural biases in youth work practices and policies that have relevance well beyond the Flemish context.

On the frontline or on the side-line? Homelessness care and care avoiders

Homelessness is a social problem that is subject to many definitional issues and problems. These problems can be discerned on both the conceptual and the practical level. Based on research carried out in Ghent, Belgium, this article deals with ways in which social workers involved in homelessness care construe the problem of ‘care avoiders’, who seem to be perceived as a separate category within the homeless population. We show that: (1) different categories of homelessness are created on an organisational and on an individual level (2) specific services have been developed for those who do not enter regular facilities and (3) a residual group has been created, which social work does not really know how to deal with.

Learning Democracy in Social Work

At present, an increased feeling of a democratic decline results in a renewed appeal for social work to investigate socialisation for democracy and citizenship. Citizenship as a political concept refers to the citizen as subject with civil, political and social rights. A social conception of citizenship reduces citizenship to civic virtue, defined as the engagement to participate actively in the further development of a model of democracy. Social work has a fundamentally different position in both conceptions of citizenship. It is suggested that in a political conception, social work supports citizens in taking part in the process of democracy, whereas in a social conception, social work becomes a policy instrument focusing on the citizen’s duty to smoothly integrate in the prevailing democratic project and, in doing so, to contribute to social cohesion. In this chapter, we challenge this suggestion. We argue that only in the tension between a political and social conception of citizenship, the educational dimension of social work becomes clear, and it is through this dimension that social work can become a democratic practice. The educational dimension in social work is crucial to conceptualise democracy as an open and ongoing process and not as a predefined project. This argument results from a pedagogical perspective on social work. This perspective enables us to connect rather than oppose social and political conceptions of citizenship. It is in this dialectic tension that we find a meaningful answer to the question of how to relate social work to learning democracy.

Parent-worker relationships in child welfare social work: a Belgian case study

The involvement of parents within child and family social work has become an important research topic during the past few decades. Within this research, a lot of attention is paid to partnership, which is recognised as a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–worker relationship in present-day practice. The debate on parent–worker relationships, however, seems to be mainly focussed on the individual relationship between the parent and the social worker. Based on a historical analysis of policy documents on a Belgian child and family welfare service, this article offers a historical and sociopolitical contextualisation of the current debate on the parent–worker relationship. The analysis reveals that sociopolitical ideas about the responsibilities of the state, the community and the private family have induced a continuous reflection on which children and parents should be seen as the most appropriate clients for a particular service, as well as an ongoing development of diagnostic instruments to legitimise inclusion and exclusion of families within child and family social work. Consequences for parent–worker relationships in child and family social work are discussed, as well as some implications for future research on child and family social work practices.

'A singer is a group': creating a ‘researcher template’ to uncover complexities in the participatory arts project rocsa singers

Abstract In this article, we seek to merge an insider with an outsider perspective on participatory arts projects, by engaging with the ethnographic turn in arts and promoting the idea of a ‘researcher template’ (Goodley 1999) as a way of enabling reflexivity in practice-led inquiries. Situated at the intersection between artistic, educational and academic work, this template allows us to address and reflect upon the complexities and vicissitudes emerging from an interpretative study of the Ghent-based participatory arts project, rocsa singers. While revealing the roles of the diverse protagonists within this practice, we highlight three main challenges and tensions: (1) nurturing and supporting diversity; (2) the thin line between directing and going along; and (3) the need to go public. We argue that participatory arts practices form a tempting field to move beyond dominant interpretations and well-known (art) strategies and forms. ‘Having one foot in and one foot out’ invites us to become aware of this potential, to grasp the continuous and subtle interplay between contextualisation, diversity and responsibility, and to forge new connections between life-worlds and system pressures and priorities.