Paper short abstract:

Leveraging Vavrus’ (2021) concept of “schooling as uncertainty,”, this research examines Lebanese teachers' ability to respond to unfolding, intertwined, and ongoing local crises, highlighting the need to interrogate education as certainty while also attending to local precarities and conflicts.

Paper long abstract:

The title for this article comes from an interview with a school principal in Beirut on October 27, 2021. He spoke of the challenges his school, city, and country faced in the past few years. The extreme devaluation of the Lebanese lira (LL) in 2019, which had been pegged at 1,515 LL to 1 USD for 30 years, and has since lost 90% of its value. The Beirut port blast on 4th of August, 2020—one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in history that pulverized the port and damaged half of the city, killing 218 people, wounding 7,000, and displacing 300,000 residents from their homes. The lockdowns imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic shut down the poorest schools and separated the most vulnerable students from critical resources and integral educational opportunities. Basic necessities including food, clean water, life-saving medicines, electricity, and fuel are dwindling and increasingly out of reach, especially for those who cannot afford black-market prices. Lebanon is and continues to be in crisis, with no clear end in sight. Leveraging Vavrus’ (2021) concept of “schooling as uncertainty,” this research questions the ways that readily accepted assumptions of schooling as certitude and emancipation fail to consider the precarity that comes with banal ordinariness of crisis. This work seeks to understand the ways in which teachers respond to unfolding, intertwined, and ongoing local crises, highlighting the need to interrogate education as certainty or progress while also attending to the ways that teachers make sense of local precarities, histories, and conflicts.

Paper short abstract:

The present paper explores the contradictions of the reception system for unaccompanied migrant adolescents in Milan. It addresses the complex experience of being a young migrant in a community, the constraints and possibilities it entails, their agency skills, and the way educators relate to them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on the ethnography of a host community for unaccompanied migrant adolescents in Milan, Italy. This field stands on the fall line of the social and political Italian rupture. The migrant adolescents welcomed in the communities are seen as fragile and traumatized, but also as a danger. The community in which I worked as an educator and ethnographer, for my doctoral research, is placed in a peripheral area, in south-east Milan (Calvairate-Corvetto), which makes the marginalization of migrants very clear.

The policies of the government and the municipality of Milan- under whose employ the host communities work- are about the management of the phenomenon and social integration. The resources they dispense, though, are insufficient. In this context of oppression, pedagogic ambivalence, and double bind with the families of origin, educators and guests find themselves dealing with everyday life.

I will describe the difficult position of the kids, pulled from many sides. But, above all, I will show their agency practices: how they create one's own experience of freedom, through disobedience, bordering on deviance, listening to shared music and practices of islamic religion. On the other hand, I will describe the daily tactics educators use to circumvent the system, by trying to offer them a path of personal and relational growth. I will argue that the free time spent together and the positive shared experiences are the real resource in the hands of educators and of the young adolescents, to resist external pressures and build meaningful life paths.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how migration and difference were imagined and contested at a former special education centre for refugee and asylum children in Bolton, UK, with an emphasis on the tensions between the school’s disciplinary, compassionate, and aspirational possibilities.

Paper long abstract:

Education is a space in which ideas of future societies – local, national, global – are imagined and contested. Different forms of conflict and crisis shape educational possibilities and responses, generating both positive and negative imaginaries of individual and social futures. This paper takes a historical case study of a ‘unique’ school solution for refugee and asylum-seeking children in Bolton, UK. The town, a former textile and industrial centre outside of Manchester, was the site of a pilot refugee resettlement scheme bringing families from Sub-Saharan Africa as a ‘legal Gateway’ to juxtapose New Labour’s tightening asylum and immigration laws. The education project established to support these children responded to global, national, and local imaginaries of migration, difference and vulnerability during a period of conflict abroad and securitization at home. The school (Starting Point) reflected local and contextual responses to national and geopolitical landscapes, framed by local understandings of class and opportunity. Tracing the evolution of this project between its establishment in 2004, the rupture of educational failure and transformation in 2010 and eventual closing in 2020, the paper considers Starting Point as a site of contestation between different imagined futures – offered by the state, local structures, and individual actors, as well as transnational communities and children and families themselves. While the school itself no longer exists, the tensions between its disciplinary, compassionate and aspirational imaginaries help us understand how broader political and social conflicts are embedded and resisted in educational spaces.

Paper short abstract:

This study evaluates a U.S. public university anthropology course that aims to promote a culture of diversity. Drawing on experience teaching the course and archival research on its history, we report the tensions present among anthropological, university, and state actors.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how anthropological, university, and state politics are framed and reframed in a US public university course that is part of broader university curricula committed to teaching ideals of diversity to students who constitute an increasingly multicultural US environment. Approximately one thousand undergraduates now enroll each semester in the course in question, a course that fulfills the ethnic studies requirement (ESR), necessary for graduation. What tensions lie between ESR and fundamental anthropological commitments to effective pedagogy? How has the university mobilized this course as a method for responding to community, state, and national controversies regarding race and ethnicity? In what ways is this course useful and for whom? Drawing on personal experiences of teaching the course, archival research regarding the development of both the course and the ethnic studies requirement, and interviews with faculty members who have developed this course, we argue that this educational space is indicative of tensions between advocating for diversity within a nation-state context and fulfilling the anthropological objective of cross-cultural understanding while reaffirming the significance of anthropology as a field of inquiry. Following Marilyn Strathern in asking how audit culture affects pedagogy, this study examines the negotiations among diverse actors and educational framings that coalesce in a single course.

Paper short abstract:

Exploring what kind of university politically active students are currently experiencing, envisioning, and shaping, I argue that student activists are moving towards a university as a resonant space of possibility in which current crises are negotiated and which stimulates transformation.

Paper long abstract:

‘You can talk about it, it’s man-made, that’s why you can change it’, my conversation partner and student activist Pia summarises her stance towards (student) politics. Thus, Pia picks up on core findings of my ethnographic research on student activism: Politics is a relational act, it arises ‘between-the-humans’ (Arendt 2020, 11), and ‘every order results from the temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices’ (Mouffe 2014) – there are alternatives.

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Oxford and Cologne, a key focus of my work is on how students reflect on and understand their activism, and how the specific university context shapes their actions and visions. Positioning myself as an activist scholar, I work with students active in the fields of climate justice, demilitarisation and decolonisation.

My paper explores if student activism can be understood as exemplifying a resonant relationship to our world (Rosa 2019) and I argue that a university which refuses a dialogic construction of this world impedes resonance. I draw on Ahmed’s (2014) work on feminist attachment to understand the role of attachment and activism as a relationship to the present that is fueled with expectation which induces and relies on hope. I also explore how students engage in prefigurative political practices as conceptualised by Boggs (2010) to experience both resonance and hope in an institutional setting and a wider higher education landscape that is firmly embedded in intensifying acceleration and growing competition. I thus moreover argue for the necessity of a reflexive, politically engaged higher education research.

Paper short abstract:

This paper contributes to the discourse on inclusive education for Palestinian Americans amid global crises. It urges a critical examination of the impact of U.S./Israel relations on racism and power in higher education, exploring policy influence, suppression, and threats to academic freedom.

Paper long abstract:

This paper delves into the intricate web of structural and institutional racism shaping the educational experiences of Palestinian Americans amid intersecting economic, political, and geopolitical crises. US educational institutions emerge as crucial sites, revealing the social ruptures generated by these crises. Employing Critical Race Theory (CRT), the study explores nuanced challenges faced by Palestinian American students and allies, shedding light on intersections between racialization, geopolitical dynamics, and institutional discrimination.

Examining manifestations of structural racism, the paper dissects historical and ongoing U.S.-Israel relations, emphasizing the profound impact on Palestinian Americans. Geopolitical factors, U.S. support for Israel, and lobby group influence contribute to the marginalization and suppression of Palestinian voices, perpetuating unequal treatment through shaping policies.

Through a CRT lens, the study highlights systemic challenges in Palestinian American higher education, exploring how U.S. de facto support for Israel infiltrates university policies, influencing academic freedom and jeopardizing careers. Addressing the suppression of political activism on campuses, Palestinian American advocates face censorship and backlash, reflecting a broader discriminatory pattern.

The examination extends to the professional sphere, revealing instances of academic discrimination against Pro-Palestine academics. High-profile cases of denied tenure, job opportunities, and investigations underscore systemic challenges within academic institutions, hindering inclusive education.

This paper contributes to the anthropological discourse on inclusive education by evaluating the Palestinian American experience amid global education crises. It calls for a critical examination of systemic issues in U.S.-Israel relations, providing insights into the complex interplay of racism, power, and law within higher education.

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on examples from a critical ethnographic/educational project at an Irish University and brings educational and anthropological scholarship together. It inquires into the transformative potential of informality as part of a pedagogic responses to an overheating cultural climate.

Paper long abstract:

Staging an encounter between educational and anthropological theory and practice, this paper approaches pedagogy as a deep political cultural process that is integral to democracy. I will introduce examples from a collaborative ethographic reserach project, which was conducted together with an anthropology educator in an Irish university over six months in 2021/22. This professor experimented with introducing a new successful cross-departmental module (The "Anti-Racism"-module) to the university curriculum as part of a response to a heightened historic moment (shortly after Black Lives Matter protests, rise of right wing governmentality, and in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic) where academic freedom, publicness and public education are finding themselves amidst precarious planetary transformations (e.g. Flaherty 2020; Braidotti 2013). This paper explores her professional experience and learning as an educational anthropologist/educator who is also a reflexive practitioner, inspired by Rothberg's (2019) theory of implicated subjectivity. Drawing on vignettes from fieldnotes as well as on excerpts from reflexive conversations and interviews, this paper illustrates the "double-ness of education" (Todd 2018) by inquiring into the transformative pedagogic potential of cultivating informality within formal educational spaces shaped by neoliberal agendas and pressures (Biesta 2020). I hope to raise questions about possibilities for combining anthropological and critical educational practice with the aim of generating relationalities that support public anthropological, public pedagogical and democratic principles.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the response of the European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee to the January 2015 Paris attacks. The perceived transnational threat of terrorism opened a new angle for discussing how member states of the EU might educate more effectively for diversity and inclusion.

Paper long abstract:

The January 2015 massacre at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and subsequent days of terror represented for many the challenges of building a more diverse and inclusive European Union. The “event of Charlie Hebdo” (as it has been called) raised questions about radicalisation of migrant populations that EU countries had failed to make welcome in their societies.

A response from the European Parliament’s Culture and Education (CULT) Committee delved into questions of how intercultural dialogue could be promoted more robustly and integrated more effectively into different levels of schooling and sites of public education. What lessons does the work of CULT during that period offer for coaxing or cajoling member states on educating to combat xenophobia and racism? What benefits do such projects above the state level offer, and what are their limitations or costs? This paper outlines the intertextual policy field in which CULT conducted its work, the report that this committee generated, and the response from the European Commission. I argue that the impact of CULT’s report lies significantly in how it had to work with the deep and broad intertextual scalar project of European integration.

Paper short abstract:

Teachers in the rural, often agrarian, United States are experiencing a "moral panic" (Ullman, 2022) about how to teach their middle school and high school students about environmental issues, like global warming and the fracking industry.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I discuss an anthropological review of existing literature on the anxiety teachers feel around teaching about environmental issues in the United States. This paper will focus on rural America and use the lens of "moral panic" as defined by Ullman (2022). Specifically, this paper will examine how middle school and high school teachers in the rural areas of the United States are educating their students about issues like: fracking, global warming, fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses. In many areas of rural America, curricula on environmental change are funded by companies that are major producers of environmental pollution; like those run by so-called "Big Coal." I am from a rural part of California and the apathy towards environmental issues like global warming is shocking. I want to use an anthropological approach to synthesize existing research in a way that tells a coherent story about how teachers in rural areas are facing moral dilemmas and "moral panic" about how to teach about environmental issues and environmental change. Often, rural communities are the ones most reliant on "heavy polluter" industries. These rural communities are some of the geographic sites most impacted by environmental change. Using an anthropological approach, I will tell a story about what is happening in the rural parts of the United States to highlight research gaps.

References:

Ullman, J. (2022). Trans/Gender-Diverse Students’ Perceptions of Positive School Climate and Teacher Concern as Factors in School Belonging: Results From an Australian National Study.

Teachers College Record, 124(8), 145-167.

Paper short abstract:

The study examines how critical civic engagement can tackle social injustice in Thailand’s education. The National Core Curriculum and interviews with two social studies teachers were discourse analyzed. Findings show possibilities, but with sociopolitical, curriculum and implementation constraints.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary civic education aims to promote civic engagement among citizens, either through active participation or by demonstrating interest in public issues. Recently, social educators in Western education have emphasized the idea of critical civic engagement (CCE), which involves the reflective, informed participation of individuals to promote social, political, and economic change to address social injustice. This approach has great potential to address inequality, particularly the severe levels witnessed in Thailand. This research addresses two questions: how can CCE be integrated into Thai education to address social injustice and offer solutions, and what factors promote or hinder CCE in Thailand? Data was gathered from the 2008 National Basic Education Core Curriculum and semi-structured interviews with two Thai social studies teachers. The curriculum and interview content were analyzed using discourse analysis. The findings indicate that, while the curriculum's progressive ideology can potentially support the incorporation of CCE, there are numerous restrictions, including hidden values of the curriculum that reflect the nation’s expectations towards its citizens, a multitude of expected learning standards that influence its implementation in classrooms, and the sociopolitical climate of the country. Two teachers in the study expressed their strong desire to use their work as teachers to tackle social injustice and inequality issues in Thailand in different ways that related to their socio-economic and political backgrounds. In addition, the study suggests the potential role of various forms of teacher professional development in improving pedagogical quality and empowering teachers to believe in their ability to make significant societal changes.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on policy documents and interviews with high school leaders in Denmark, the paper explores the fear and concern reflected within and generated by educational dispersal policies related to racialized minoritized students in Danish high schools via the notion of racialized nationalist affect.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore the fear and anxiety reflected within and generated by educational dispersal and tipping point policies related to racialized minoritized students in Danish high schools via the notion of racialized nationalist affect. We have developed the notion of racialized nationalist affect to capture how ideas of education and integration are bound up with racialized notions of the nation (where Danishness most often is equal to a white majoritized position) whilst utilizing and reinforcing affective strategies of fear, anxiety and concern in response to a perceived threat of diversity that needs to be controlled through efforts of integration. Drawing on existing policy documents related to student dispersal plans and interviews with high school leaders in Denmark, we will critically analyse how the high school, the nation, and the ethnic minoritized students are affectively and discursively produced, perceived, and disciplined. The paper explores the question of how high schools are discursively produced as sites of integration through racialized nationalist affective policies and practices - most notably seen in discourses on student dispersal and the balancing of the ”tipping point”, and how they connect to discourses on nationalism and integration that seemingly position racialized minoritized students as ‘perpetually arriving’ and hence as a risk factor to the overall social cohesiveness of the Danish high school.

Paper short abstract:

How do teachers of history and social studies in different geopolitical contexts navigate teaching about the devastating war between Israel and Hamas? This paper considers how emotion, politics and historical memory shape educators’ experiences as they teach this particular conflict.

Paper long abstract:

Teaching about the ongoing, devastating war between Israel and Hamas is complex and challenging for many history/social studies teachers. The war raises emotional responses among both students and educators, often related to their religious and cultural connections to the different sides of the conflict. For those without a direct personal connection to the region, the conflict may connect to deeply held imaginaries of belonging, invoked for statebuilding in particular locales. The conflict evokes complex questions of colonialism, diaspora, antisemitism and Islamaphobia that vary across geopolitical context, and are amplified by the overwhelming losses and brutality of the war. In this paper we ask about how teachers of history and social studies in different countries navigate teaching about this conflict, and consider whether current approaches to teaching controversial issues are adequate guides for educators as they seek to promote the discourse and understanding necessary for the maintenance of democratic society.