Combatting Marginalisation by Co-creating Education

This chapter explains how a socio-cultural learning model was used in the Marginalisation and Co-created Education project for students to challenge prevailing deficit models of social disadvantage. This chapter draws on accounts of participant engagement in the project to reveal how a supportive socio-cultural model can develop knowledge about the subject of marginalisation and about wider higher education elements whilst also developing self-belief and raising aspirations of participants.

This chapter explores the discourse and phenomenon of ‘early school leavers’ (ESL) through a policy lens from the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark and from an international critical theoretical perspective. We look at political documents to find out how ESL and the young people involved are perceived. This chapter will equip the reader with an overview of a range of frames on ESL and the impact those have on societal attitudes, educational practices and, ultimately, young people.

The Marginalisation and Co-created Education project has established and utilises a conceptual framework called ‘Equalities Literacy’ (Stuart et al., 2020) that evolved from the first yearlong action research cycle of the project. The framework was initially informed by the practice experience and theoretical knowledge of the international and interdisciplinary team and later substantiated and adapted in the light of the 100 international youth narratives collected in the second yearlong action research cycle. In this chapter we propose the Equality Literacy Framework is a potent tool for direct work with young people and adults, as an indirect tool to understand young people and adults, as a practice framework and as a research framework.

From a both theoretical and practical outset, this chapter discusses how the research methodology behind MaCE, The Indirect Approach is realised and applied. This chapter also touches upon some of the ethical implications of applying the approach in research. The aim of this chapter is to add some empirical experiences to the initial framework of the approach, by exploring the practical craftsmanship behind the idea of getting answers to questions that you in fact do not ask.

Young people leaving school before graduation is a challenge for most countries in the western world. Qualitative research points to the teacher–student relationship as being one of the most important factors influencing the student's completion. In this chapter, we will explore how young people in vulnerable positions describe their relationship to teachers, and the relationships' impact on their education. This is described through the narratives of three young people struggling with school and their relationships with teachers. The main findings confirm the teacher–student relationship is one of the most important factors in young people's education, pointing at verbal expressions, body language and acknowledgment of students' learning difficulties. The students describe teachers who label them as misfits and who make them do tasks in set ways, impossible for them, despite knowing they have learning difficulties. Experiences like this are described as struggles. As a consequence of a troublesome student–teacher relationship, some students change their educational programme.

This chapter focuses on the educational potential of the arts for at-risk students in educational contexts. The aim is to understand how arts are experienced by students who are struggling for various reasons, and to highlight the arts' role in education. The idea is based on international studies from the last decades, where arts are promoted as sources to strengthen motivation, academic achievement and engagement among students who are at risk for school failure. Here, three boys who have struggled throughout their educational journey are examined due to their general interest in different art forms such as music and art (paintings, drawings, crafts, etc.). Through a qualitative, indirect interview technique, the boys have been approached with the aim of gathering life stories and understanding the contexts that surround them. The boys' stories convey that learning through music and art differs from other experiences at school and promotes positive emotions. Furthermore, the discussion focuses on the emotional and perceptual aspects of learning through arts, and suggests that curriculums emphasizing arts might strengthen at-risk students' chances for educational completion.

This chapter will strive to broaden the debate about school dropouts with a holistic analysis of two interviews applying the ‘Equalities Literacy Theory (EQL)’ as an analytical framework. We also use other theories and concepts such as Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields and capitals, Etienne Wenger's concept of practice communities and McDermott's terms of contexts. In the chapter, we will meet Stine and Marlene, two young Danish women, both from close-knit families. ¹ Bullying and social exclusion became the topics for both interviews as each of the informants narrate how it impacted them back then and how it has influenced their lives. We will use these two narratives to emphasise the importance of seeing vulnerability, dropout and marginalisation as situated in a context-based perspective.

This chapter focusses on three young, female students from Denmark and their quiet voices in a world full of loud expectations – in this case the expectations of education. The chapter is based on a research project named Marginalization and Co-created Education (MaCE), which is constructed through indirect conversations with young students. These students were either attending an Adult Education Centre (In Danish: VUC) or a Production School (an institution for people who for a short period have to consider what to do in relation to the system of education). The aim of the study was to obtain an understanding of being a young person on an educational journey and to let the young students express their experiences through their own voices and views. The findings of this research present an overwhelmingly negative view of the school experiences by the young students, who all at some point felt neglected and not acknowledged through their school time by both teachers and classmates. These findings are illustrated through German sociologist Norbert Elias and his work on The Civilizing Process, and focusses on the unavoidable connection between civilising and distinction processes.

This chapter seeks to understand inclusive education, seen from the perspective of young people who had trouble learning at school. With the indirect approach, an explorative interviewing technique, we seek to find out what they, when looking back, think would have been important in order to learn. In this chapter, we meet three young people from Norway with the experience that their school was not sufficiently inclusive. All three point out that there should have been more room for being different and a greater focus on practical approaches to teaching.

This chapter outlines the contextual factors that define an impoverished northern town in the UK called Blackpool, and the implications of this are drawn out through social reproduction theory. Following this, the equalities literacy framework is used to abductively analyse the narratives of six young people. This provides the reality of the young people's lives situated within this context and draws out recommendations for how young people's lives in Blackpool and beyond might be improved by frontline staff, organisations, policy makers and governments.

In this chapter, we will look at how the indirect approach can enable us to find a way to learn about young people's lives. The setting for this chapter is informal youth work, reminding us of the value of a wide range of practices with young people, and the findings are equally relevant to formal and informal education as guiding principles for good practice. We will look at the skillful interactions practitioners establish with young people and how they can be developed and promoted. Reflective practice for practitioners is identified as beneficial in adding the value of young people's voice, whilst building relationships. The nature of young people's participation and power is argued to benefit from a co-constructed and socio-cultural understanding; majoring on the importance of context, indirect method and equality literacy framework. We will suggest how the indirect approach can improve young people's lives in schools and/or youth provision.

This chapter focusses on the importance of young people's families and relations outside school. In interviews, a significant number of the young informants from the Danish part of the MaCE project speak of their relationship with parents, siblings, other family members or friends outside school, when they express the crucial role such support or lack thereof have played in relation to their educational experiences. In the final section of the chapter, we argue that when working with children and young people in education, remembering a holistic perspective is of utter importance. Daring to talk with students about their whole personality and extensive experiences, and not just their school identity, seems self-evident, but perhaps too often forgotten.

This chapter presents a co-participatory analysis that brings in empirical interview data from all three nations involved in the MaCE project. More than that, the chapter also focusses on the co-researcher student's ideas for change in schools, youth services and higher education. By presenting these ideas in a raw and unedited manner, the chapter invites the reader into the very engine room of the MaCE project, the reflections, discussions and rough ideas that we try to convert into practical solutions for children and young people. Ultimately, the chapter presents the framework for well-being, education, learning and development developed throughout this project as a bridge to change.

In the light of the core pedagogical ideas, theoretical framework and methodology of the MaCE project, this chapter will discuss implications and options for working with young people in higher education. A core finding in MaCE points to the fact that the participatory approach is very fruitful for working with young people, in order to enhance their feeling of belonging and commitment in the educational system. From educational research, we know that the dropout rate is high in the students' first year of higher education. Therefore, we consider it important to build a solid foundation of trust and well-defined expectations among students and teachers, starting the very day they pass the doorstep of higher education. When applying such inclusive strategies, it becomes possible to collaborate with students as co-researchers in a socio-cultural learning environment. From the MaCE research, we learned that students thrive when academic hierarchies are toned down, making mutual reflections and partaking in discussion accessible for all students. A participatory pedagogy that involves students and builds relations empowers students' sense of meaning and belonging, making them more engaged and thus help decrease dropout rates in higher education. This points to the importance of strong relations and sufficient time for counselling and tutoring.