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Paper short abstract

Can a participatory, stitching project, in a UK special school for pupils with social, emotional and mental health difficulties, enable engagement and progression from individually determined starting points towards improved wellbeing as pupils transition from primary to secondary education?

Paper long abstract

This small-scale case study, part of wider research in the UK, was run over six weeks at the end of the primary phase of education to support a group of boys with social, emotional and mental health difficulties in the transition to secondary schooling.

Classrooms are usually tightly structured environments where adults make the decisions and activities are not voluntary. The behaviour of pupils at the case-study school had already been deemed incompatible with mainstream settings, causing them to be assigned to the special school; a smaller establishment, better able to respond to variability between learners.

The participatory approach of this textile-based research study offered every pupil autonomy and choice; taking on the challenge of variability. Personal context, life experience, attitudes and emotional state significantly influence individual entry points to the process and each pupil's journey to their destination. Controlling their own creative contributions and social and emotional journeys from those subjective entry points brings agency, improved self esteem and pride in a social context.  

Outcomes are similarly individualised; one boy emerged as a leader, sharing his work, and problem-solving, another gradually became able to be, physically, in the shared space without disrupting others. Some progressive elements may seem insignificant but being able to be with others without fighting, to express in stitch the problems with familial relationships, to voice worries about world affairs whilst stitching, are noteworthy, brought about by recognising and validating pupil variability to enable all to achieve.    

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Paper short abstract

Formal education for Bakhtiari people who live a pastoral nomadic lifestyle has formed throughout the uprising of different governments in Iran. The current education system has adapted to fit their nomadic lifestyle. However, the functionality of that system is a question for this research.

Paper long abstract

This study aims to employ ethnographic techniques to paint a picture of the mindset of contemporary Bakhtiari on formal education within their pastoral nomadic lifestyle. The research bases its discussions on participatory field observations and structured and semi-structured interviews conducted within two years of non-continuous fieldwork amongst Bakhtiari, who live or have lived a pastoral nomadic lifestyle.

The main findings and discussions of the research are 1) The importance of literacy amongst Bakhtiari in the past and the existence of a state-independent education system organised by the Bakhtiari families who lived a pastoral nomadic lifestyle. These independent schools long existed before the formation of the modern nation-state of Iran with a formal education system, 2) The adaptations of the current government’s formal education system to meet the conditions of the mobile pastoralists who are living in remote areas and move in seasonal patterns to different regions, 3) The challenges and dilemmas some Bakhtari are living through in order to use and benefit from the formal education system.

I further attempt to discuss the extent to which the current education system acts as a direct or an indirect tool for sedentarising people with a pastoral nomadic lifestyle in the Zagros mountains of Iran. I hope the findings of this research will be used by policymakers and academics in social sciences engaged with pastoral nomadic communities in Iran and elsewhere.

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Paper short abstract

Transmigration adopted by the Gujjar- Bakerwal nomadic pastoral communities, posed challenges before their children in attending schools while the mobile schools in the process are termed to be coping mechanism helping to promote their educational aspirations in Jammu and Kashmir State in India

Paper long abstract

Formal education has assumed significance because it helps in attaining employment as well as it promotes skill enhancement suitable to livelihood systems adopted. However, to what extent the provisions governing the policies and programmes introduced improving educational status, is better understood when mitigated the same collecting the material evidence participating among such situations and among the effected social groups. Thus, how the nomadic pastoral groups, such as the Gujjar-Bakerwals, in the Indian State of Jammu Kashmir in Himalayan ranges, who migrate to the peaks of mountain ranges along with their families in search of green pastures suitable for grazing and return to home land in plains during winter, cope up the challenges posed in their way of attaining education, is the central theme of presentation of this paper.

The mobile schools introduced by the state in the interest of the children belonging to those communities, is evolved into a coping mechanism in the process is another dimension added in the presentation in this regard. The case studies collected presenting on achieved personalities belonging to those communities occupying attractive government positions in the state as well as the other parts, points to the role of the mobile schools in making them, turning out to be a strategy in continuing education for them. Given this the paper brings out an all round dimensions covering socio-cultural and economic, geographic and Climatic aspects of Gujjar – Bakarwals surrounding the theme of the presentation.