Robert Lawy

Citizenship-as-Practice: The Educational Implications of an Inclusive and Relational Understanding of Citizenship.

ABSTRACT:  Over the last few years there has been a renewed interest in questions of citizenship and in particular its relation to young people. This has been allied to an educational discourse where the emphasis has been upon questions concerned with ‘outcome’ rather than with ‘process’– with the curriculum and methods of teaching rather than questions of understanding and learning. This paper seeks to describe and illuminate the linkages within and between these related discourses. It advocates an inclusive and relational view of citizenship-as-practice within a distinctive socio-economic and political, and cultural milieu. Drawing upon some empirical insights from our research we conclude that an appropriate educational programme would respect the claim to citizenship status of everyone in society, including children and young people. It would work together with young people rather than on young people, and recognise that the actual practices of citizenship, and the ways in which these practices transform over time are educationally significant.

From Teaching Citizenship to Learning Democracy: Overcoming Individualism in Research, Policy and Practice.

In this article we argue for a shift in educational research, policy and practice away from teaching citizenship to an understanding of the ways young people learn democracy. In the first part of the article we identify the ways in which the discussion about citizenship in Britain has developed since the Second World War and show how a comprehensive understanding of citizenship, which has underpinned much recent thinking about citizenship education, has been replaced by a more overtly individualistic approach. In the second part of the article we delineate the key problems of this individualistic approach and make a case for an approach to citizenship education that takes as its point of departure the actual learning that occurs in the real lives of young people. In the concluding section, we outline the implications of our view for research, policy and practice.

Understanding Young People's Citizenship Learning in Everyday Life: The Role of Contexts, Relationships and Dispositions

In this article we present insights from research which has sought to deepen understanding of the ways in which young people (aged 13—21) learn democratic citizenship through their participation in a range of different formal and informal practices and communities. Based on the research, we suggest that such understanding should focus on the interplay between contexts for action, relationships within and across contexts, and the dispositions that young people bring to such contexts and relationships. In the first part of the article we show how and why we have broadened the narrow parameters of the existing citizenship discourse with its focus on political socialization to encompass a more wide-ranging conception of citizenship learning that is not just focused on school or the curriculum. In the second part of the article we describe our research and present two exemplar case studies of young people who formed part of the project. In the third part we present our insights about the nature and character of citizenship learning that we have been able to draw from our research. In the concluding section we highlight those dimensions of citizenship learning that would have remained invisible had we focused exclusively on schools and the curriculum. In this way we demonstrate the potential of the approach to understanding citizenship learning that we have adopted.

The pursuit of 'excellence': mentoring in further education initial teacher training in England

Mentoring has become established as a central feature of initial teacher training programmes in English further education (FE) yet there remains a lack of clarity within the sector about what mentoring should mean. The direction of government reforms has been to make mentoring part of the formal assessment of trainee teachers against national standards, and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspection reports emphasise an approach to mentoring that is target‐driven and judgemental. Official rhetoric uses the language of ‘excellence’ or ‘best practice’. However, mentoring literature reveals a range of possible models, and research into mentoring practices within colleges suggests there is a diversity of ideas and approaches, many of which emphasise the developmental character of good mentoring. In this paper we analyse some of the tensions and uncertainty that surround mentoring and reflect on their significance for teachers and managers in the development of initial teacher training in the sector.

Risky Stories: Youth Identities, Learning and Everyday Risk

Over the last few years, risk has emerged as a defining feature of contemporary life. While considerable emphasis has been placed upon assessing the effects and consequences of risk in local and global contexts, there is a paucity of research concerned with individual and everyday risk understanding and construction, and with their links with learning and identity. Focusing upon the case studies of two young people as they moved into and through their post-16 careers, I challenge prevailing assumptions about the basis of risk as a rational product. First, I show that the young people interpreted risk relatively and made judgements, decisions and choices in day-to-day contexts pragmatically, rather than in a mechanistic and dehumanized fashion, against some pre-given, external and fixed criteria. Second, I show that risk, identity and learning are mutually constitutive and that there is an iterative relation between them. In the light of this, the challenge facing the two young people was to seam together risk, identity and learning within a coherent narrative, and to do so in the face of competing interests and structural limits in the knowledge that the balance between them might, at any moment, be changed.

Transformation of Person, Identity and Understanding: A case study

The notion of identity is commonly utilised by individuals as a shorthand, both to describe themselves and other individuals or groups of people. While I show that descriptive uses of identity are valuable for explanatory purposes, they are of limited use in elucidating the tranformational relation between social and structural change and individual personhood through which young people come to understand themselves and the world around them. Focusing upon a single case study, I show that identity is not simply a product or outcome of change, but is itself an input into the processes that produce change. The 2-year period between the ages of 15 and 17 was a critical period for Lesley, during which she challenged and questioned previously accepted ways of knowing and doing. Lesley did not ignore her experiences or her understanding of them. She utilised her new self-understandings and the meanings that she associated with them to construct and produce a sustainable and coherent self-narrative for her future use.

Listening to ‘the thick bunch’: (mis)understanding and (mis)representation of young people in jobs without training in the South West of England

Young people in jobs without training are ubiquitous but invisible, working in shops, cafes, and other low‐waged, low‐status occupations. Commonly elided with young people who are not in education, employment or training, they are positioned as the ‘thick bunch’ with empty and meaningless working lives. The main purpose of the research was to explore the experiences of this group of marginalised and socially disadvantaged young people through a deeper understanding of their interests and enthusiasms inside and outside work. These young people have been (mis)understood and (mis)represented. A more holistic and nuanced approach that is not uncritically founded upon a set of neo‐liberal stereotypes and assumptions, and instead recognises the complexity of their lives, would offer new opportunities for understanding and representation of their interests. Our findings challenge the conflation of identity with work and the notion that only certain forms of employment create meaning.

‘The art of democracy’: Young people's democratic learning in gallery contexts

In this article the authors report on research which aimed to explore the opportunities for democratic action and learning in a number of artist-led gallery education projects in the south-west of England. The research takes an approach to citizenship learning and democracy that is less focused on citizenship as a specific subject in the formal school curriculum and the achievement of specific citizenship outcomes that can follow from it. Rather, it is more focused upon understanding how democratic practices that are embedded in the day-to-day lives of young people contribute to their democratic learning and participation as citizens. Drawing upon conceptual categories and concepts that illuminate the process, the authors demonstrate the nature and character of young peoples democratic learning. An implication arising from this is the need for practice-orientated research in other contexts (e.g. work, leisure and home) to fully understand the nature of democratic learning.

Mentoring and individual learning plans: issues of practice in a period of transition

This article draws upon research undertaken with 28 teacher education mentors, managers and trainee teachers within the SW Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (CETT) in 2008, following the introduction of the new revised Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) standards. The first part of the article locates and contextualises the policy context in relation to the school and further education (FE) sectors. Two separate and distinctive models of mentoring practice are delineated, the first model as a source of formative support for trainee teachers, and the second model as a tool for the assessment of competence. The article concludes by suggesting that the danger and indeed unintended consequence of separating out these functions of mentoring is that an unnecessary dichotomy is created that dislocates coherent teacher practices from one another. It argues that what is needed is a sustained period of stability in the sector. This would leave a space for CETT professionals and others to promote those practices that will make a difference not only to the work of teacher educators but to the work of staff and students.

Beyond compliance: teacher education practice in a performative framework

In the last ten years teacher education in the further education (FE) sector has witnessed a substantial reform of teacher training with the introduction of qualifications designed to meet the professional needs of people in different teaching or training situations across the sector. The assumption of the new system is that workforce issues and problems can be resolved through the regulation and control of teacher performance using documented ‘standards’ and with subject‐specific mentoring. Using data from a research study, the authors argue against the performative nature of the reformed system and in favour of pedagogical mentoring to support professional formation and development throughout the sector. The aim of the paper is both to exemplify the performative shift in the FE sector as part of a broader move in the sector towards increased control, surveillance and accountability as well as to demonstrate opportunities within the reformed structure for a new and critical engagement in policy and practice.