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Title
Education and the Struggle for Change: the necessity of a critical politics of hope.
Speaker
Professor Len Barton.
Institute of Education.
University of London.
(Not to be quoted without permission of the Author)
Abstract
In this paper the importance and challenge of the development of more inclusive thinking, values and relations in educational policy and practice, will be briefly explored. The analysis will be located within a global, social-economic framework in which the barriers to change will be identified and critiqued. The question of struggle and the critical politics of hope will be highlighted and issues and strategies for engagement will be suggested. Finally, the importance of debate and dialogue will be raised and the identification of significant questions outlined.
Biographical details
Len Barton is Professor of Inclusive Education at the Institute of education at the University of London. He is the founding editor of the prestigious journals Disability and Society, and British Journal of Sociology of Education. He has published extensively on disability and inclusive education issues and is the Editor and Co Editor of two Book Series dealing with these topics. He has a particular research interest in Cross-Cultural issues and the implications for policy and practice. These concerns have also been translated into innovatory postgraduate teaching programmes.
Title
Progress in Research and Development in School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Past and Future Views in a Changing World
Speakers
Don Davies
Professor Emeritus
Boston University
Joyce Epstein
Principal Research Scientist and
Research Professor of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
(Not to be quoted without permission of the Author)
Abstract
In this session, we will look back and look ahead to place in context the history and new directions of the vibrant field of research and development on school, family, and community partnerships. Don Davies will present an overview of important historical developments in the relationships of schools, parents, and communities in the U. S. over the past 50 years. He will summarize advances in the interactions and collaborations of educators, family members, and community groups that occurred as a result of distinct political and social forces at different points in time, and how these changes affected his interests, work, and the development of this field of study. Joyce Epstein will highlight the progress that has resulted from more rigorous research methods in studying the connections of home, school, and community. She will discuss how methods of research have changed and improved, and how research results have been implemented more effectively in practice in large numbers of districts and schools. It is important, for example, that with the “scaling up” of partnership programs in practice, researchers can use new methods of analyses to study simultaneous and longitudinal effects of district and school leaders on the quality of school-based partnership programs from one year to the next. Both panelists will look to the future to discuss needed next steps in improving research, policy, and practice.
Biographical Details
Don Davies, founder of the Institute For Responsive Education, was professor of education at Boston University from 1974 to 1996 and a Visiting Professor at Northeastern University from 1996 to 2004. He received his BA in Journalism and Political Science from Stanford University in 1948 and a Master of Arts Degree in Education from Stanford in 1949. His Ed.D. Degree is from Teachers College, Columbia University, where in specialized in Teacher Education.
He had a brief career as a journalist and was a high school teacher of Journalism and English in Beverly Hills, California. He taught at San Francisco State College and the University of Minnesota. From 1961 through 1967 he was Executive Secretary of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards of the National Education Association.
Davies served as Associate and then as Deputy Commissioner in the American national education agency, then known as the U.S. Office of Education, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His interests and responsibilities included improving the preparation of educational personnel, reforming the urban and rural schools serving low-income students, supporting experimentation and research, and expanding opportunities for parents and community residents to influence educational policies and practices.
In 1973, he founded the Institute For Responsive Education, a nonprofit public interest organization working to encourage family-community-school partnerships. As an outgrowth of his work with IRE, Davies established the League of Schools Reaching Out, a 90 member international association of schools working toward education reform through parental and community involvement.
Davies was Co-Director with Joyce Epstein of the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning, a national research and development center, from 1990 to 1996. He was the facilitator of the first multi-national action research study of parent involvement in school reform, examining the issue in the US, Australia, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Portugal and Spain.
Davies is the author and co-author of many policy reports and several books, including Beyond the Bake Sale published in 2007 and Portrait of Schools Reaching Out, Communities and Their Schools, and Schools Where Parents Make a Difference. He has written numerous articles and made many presentations in a variety of public forums in the United States and several other countries, including Albania, Australia, Argentina, Canada, China, Egypt, Portugal, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. In 1990, with Joyce Epstein, he initiated the International Network of Scholars on School-Family Partnerships and the biennial International Roundtables.
Recent speaking engagements have been for the European Research Network on Parent Involvement Conferences in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, and Gdansk; the George Soros Foundation and Catholic Relief Services in Tirana, Albania; and the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
He was awarded the First International Achievement Award by the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, in 1996. He has been married to Joyce Davies since 1949 and is the father of two daughters and four grandchildren.
Dr. Joyce L. Epstein is Director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), Principal Research Scientist, and Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She has over one hundred publications on school organization and effects, with many on school, family, and community connections. Recent books include: School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, Second Edition (Corwin Press, 2002) and School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools (Westview Press, 2001). She is known, internationally, for research and development on family and community involvement and serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory panels. She is a recipient of the 2005 American Orthopsychiatric Association’s Blanche F. Ittleson Award for scholarship and service to strengthen school and family connections. In all of her work, she is interested in the connections of research, policy, and practice.
Title
Parental involvement: beyond demographics
Speaker
Stelios N. Georgiou
Department of Psychology
University of Cyprus
(Not to be quoted without permission of the Author)
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the definition and the parameters of parental involvement. It looks at the psychological aspect of the term (i.e. from the point of view of the individual parent) while it recognizes the importance of the sociological factors that contribute to its development (the teachers’ resistance, the school climate, the societal demands and expectations). The paper tries to answer questions such as: what is involvement, who gets involved and why, how can involvement be encouraged? The main argument of this paper, based on empirical evidence, is that demographic characteristics (gender, educational level, socio-economic status) could facilitate or hinder involvement, but they are not the only ones. Beliefs and attitudes could also play either role. This is hopeful because, unlike demographics, beliefs are changeable. Intervention programs that aim at the strengthening of parental involvement could take advantage of existing knowledge on attitude change.
Biographical details
Stelios N. Georgiou is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Cyprus since 1992. He has received his Doctoral degree from Boston University in 1990. His research interests include applications of the systems theory in psychology and education, child development in context, parental involvement and home-school relations, attributions by parents and teachers, attachment and parental styles, bullying at school.
Title
Learning Communities: Schools, Parents and Challenges for wider Community involvement in Schools
Speaker
Peter Mayo
Associate Professor
Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education,
University of Malta
(Not to be quoted without permission of the Author)
Abstract
This presentation will focus, for the most part, on a project of parental involvement in a state primary school located in a predominantly working-class area in a Mediterranean postcolonial context. It will draw on qualitative empirical work carried out with a colleague (Dr Carmel Borg). The presentation gives an account of the socio-economic context of the school, and foregrounds, through empirical data culled from transcribed semi-structured interviews, the voices of parents, administrators, school-council members and teachers. It will be argued that, if this project is to develop into a genuine exercise in democratic participation, parents must begin to be conceived of not as 'adjuncts', but 'subjects'. The parents interviewed in this empirical work see themselves as such, and derive confidence from the fact that, at the time of the interview, their claims and recommendations were translating into concrete developments. The second part of the presentation will discuss the issue of parental involvement in schools within the context of a wider discussion on ‘changing the face of the school’ by helping it develop into a community learning centre. Insights from the work of Paulo Freire and his Education Secretariat, when he served as Education Secretary in the Municipal Government of São Paulo, Brazil, and from SMED in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be drawn upon.
Biographical details
Peter Mayo is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Malta. His most recent books are Learning and Social Difference. Challenges for Public Education and Critical Pedagogy (Paradigm, 2006 - co-authored with Carmel Borg) and Education, Society and Leadership (Progress Press, 2006, co-edited with Mary Darmanin). His previous books include Liberating Praxis. Paulo Freire’s Legacy for Radical Education and Politics (Praeger, 2004) – winner of a 2005 AESA Critics’ Choice Award, Gramsci and Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 – co-edited with Carmel Borg and Joseph Buttigieg), Beyond Schooling. Adult Education in Malta (Mireva, 1997 – co-edited with Godfrey Baldacchino) and Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education (Zed Books, 1999 – reproduced in Catalan, Portuguese[Brazil], German and Italian translations). He is about to publish Public Intellectuals, Radical Democracy and Social Change – a book of interviews (Peter Lang, 2007 – with Carmel Borg).
Title
Experiences of disabled children’s families concerning school - family collaboration.
Speakers
Athina Zoniou-Sideri* and Eudoxia Nteropoulou-Nterou**
* Department of Early Childhood Education, National and Capodistrian University of
Athens
** Centre for Research and Practice in Inclusive Educational Programmes, University of Athens
(Not to be quoted without permission of the Authors)
Abstract
The role of families in the education of disabled children is one of the prominent factors influencing their educational course. Parents’ aspirations for their children, their expectations, and their experiences are determinant factors in the education of their disabled children. In the Greek context the role of the familial environment appears reinforced since historically education has been considered by the majority of society as an individual responsibility of families. The scope of this study is the exploration of the experiences of a group of disabled children’s parents concerning school-family collaboration in relation to the functioning of the special educational structures following discourse analysis approach. The exploration of the experiences of disabled children’s families took place using semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the parents’ experiences follows the social model of disability which is contrasted with the clinical model and the theory of personal tragedy.
Biographical details
Dr Athina Zoniou-Sideri is associate professor at the Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, Greece. She is director of the Centre for Research and Practice in Inclusive Educational Programmes. She has written extensively on the topic of inclusion and disability and she has been involved in a number of national and international research projects. Her research interests include professional careers and development of disabled people and social inclusion. She also has been involved in teachers’ and parents’ training courses since 1985 in areas including inclusive education, evaluation of pre-school inclusive projects. Dr Athina Zoniou-Sideri has a number of publications and presentations on the local and international level.
Dr Evdoxia Nteropoulou-Nterou is a member of the Centre for Research and Practice in Inclusive Educational Programmes at the Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, Greece. She has been involved in a number of research projects in the area of inclusive education. Her research interests include special education and inclusive policies and practices. Her current research work focuses on the reading skills of deaf and hard of hearing children and professional careers of disabled people. She also has been involved in teachers’ and parents’ training courses in areas including inclusive education and evaluation of preschool inclusive projects.
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