For increasing numbers of young people transition into secondary school is unsuccessful, resulting in disaffection and academic failure. Yet, despite attempts by successive UK governments to engage some students with their learning in the last 20 years, there has been a substantial increase in formal and informal exclusions from secondary schools in England; particularly of underperforming students, most of whom come from low income families (DCSF 2009; DfE 2015; Education Datalab 2015). Actually, the number of students attending alternative provision more than doubled between 2000 and 2014 to 20,503 (DfE 2015). Furthermore, The Guardian newspaper reported 10,000 students were not entered for GCSEs in 2015, as they had been removed from school registers (The Guardian 2016). These figures represent a fraction of the (recorded) 339,360 fixed-term exclusions handed out to pupils from state-funded schools in England in 2015ā2016 though, of which 270,135 were from secondary schools (DfE 2017). Consequently there is growing concern about a persisting and growing gap in performance between disadvantaged pupils (measured by free school meals) and their peers, particularly in English and Maths (Ofsted 2015). Furthermore, disengagement with secondary education is linked to mental health issues (The Childrenās Society 2014; Paul and Moser 2009; BBC 2017), poor educational outcomes, and an increased likelihood of not being in employment, further education or training. There is an urgent need for interventions that help educationally disengaged students in secondary schools re-engage with their education.
Addressing this issue is problematic in England because policy (DfE 2016) states that schools must not just keep educationally disengaged students on the school registers but they must also provide much of the studentsā education themselves rather than funding alternative providers. Yet, schools must also provide a broad and balanced curriculum (DfE 2016, 102) for these students and maintain high attainment levels. This is a task often handed over to alternative education providers such as Pupil Referral Units (PRUs)1 and Childrenās and Youth Services2 who have, until recently in the case of PRUs, taken a more relational and informal approach to education delivered through a reduced or alternative curriculum. Here alternative provision3 is defined as
education arranged by local authorities for pupils who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not otherwise receive suitable education; education arranged by schools for pupils on a fixed period exclusion; and pupils being directed by schools to off-site provision to improve their behaviour. (DfE 2013, 3)
A pedagogic gap emerges, where mainstream schoolsā capacity to facilitate the learning of these students within their current pedagogic approaches are more suited to the formal structures of mainstream school classrooms, which may result in further resistance or permanent exclusion for the studentāan end counter to its intentions. However, policy does support mentoring based learning (DfE 2016, 99) and allows schools the autonomy to develop their own pedagogies, albeit as long as the ends justify the means (DfE 2016, 37). It is here in this policy gap that I propose an alternative, relational pedagogy, which re-engages educationally disengaged students. This relational pedagogy builds on synergies between the informal field of youth work and the formal field of teaching subsequently enabling a range of pedagogic principles, which accompany practice to be applied in the classroom and also beyond the school gates into more informal settings. It can also be applied across a range of subjects including English and maths.
Addressing the Issue of Student Disengagement
The pedagogy I propose in this book emerged from a small ethnographic study carried out as part of an alternative curriculum programme that I delivered as a youth worker in a school based youth centre. It has since been developed in a range of formal educational settings4 in my roles as a secondary school teacher and university lecturer. Central to this pedagogy is the re-contextualising of learning experiences into studentsā social worldsāmany of which extend beyond the school gates into their family and social relationships. This context facilitates both the on-going development and maintenance of studentsā future orientated self-narratives (Giddens 1991) and also makes their education meaningful to that end.
Freireās (1972, 2005) liberation education provides the underlying theoretical and philosophical foundations for this model where studentsā concrete experiences, located in a range of relationship building activities, are used as a starting point for knowledge acquisition whilst simultaneously enabling the co-construction of their self-narratives with the teacher and peers. In contrast to Richard Peters, Israel Scheffler and John Dewey, in which education either comes at the end of the educational process or begins with studentsā views of the world, for Freire āstudentsā views āconstituteā educationā Beckett (2013, 50). Yet, this constructivist model of learning, which leads to increased attainment and motivation by students discussed in this book, has become deeply unpopular with mainstream teachers. This is particularly seen in the recent side-lining and devaluing of alternative GCSE accreditation models such as ASDANās5 CoPE6 and Princes Trust awards in favour of developing cognitive knowledge domains through teacher directed instruction supported by behaviourist discipline models to enforce complianceāa model which has now extended to PRUs (Thomson and Pennacchia 2016, 623).
However, I assert that student identity and learning are part of the same processāa holistic individual project where dialogue between students and their peers and students and teachers enables collaborative, rather than individual, knowledge production suitable to meet this end. Knowledge about the self and oneās position in the world developed within studentsā social activities within and beyond the school gates is therefore as important to the students as knowledge developed in dialogue relating to subject content. I propose a more holistic social learning pedagogy, which re-engages some students at the margins of education with learning based on models of knowledge production located in social and relational activities and spacesāin particular the family context. This relational pedagogy is characterised by speaking with learners in a way that recognises the educative relationship between teacher and learner and their parents connected to dialogic teaching (English 2016) with a focus on problem-posing āin which teachers and students are critical co-investigatorsā (Beckett 2013, 51).
This relational pedagogy stands juxtaposed to dominant mainstream secondary school classroom mono-logic transmissive pedagogy where the teacher speaks to learners (Freire 2005)āthat is; giving information or asking questions with fixed right or wrong answers constituted primarily by teachersā views of the world (Beckett 2013, 50). This problem solving approach is underpinned by objective, neo-liberal notions of self-identity characterised by autonomy, individualisation and self-responsibility. These are attributes which separate knower/agent and assume knowledge is constructed primarily within the individual person. This can consequently create a barrier to re-engagement for some students who may prefer to develop knowledge collaboratively through a more dialogic, problem posing approach (Freire 1972, 2005).
The relational pedagogy that I propose is framed within the theoretical context of contemporary consumer culture (Bauman 2000; Bauman and Raud 2015). Here, oneās daily task is to consume meaningful activities and experiences within highly reflexive (Giddens 1991) relationships within which identity is managed. The relationships in which students consume meaning extend into the classroom. However, in these classroom spaces the psychological flow of time, regulated through dialogue with teachers and peers supporting the building and maintenance of the self-narrative, counts more than the space in which they occupy (Bauman 2000). For students as consumers this is problematic, as this hegemonic shift is not mirrored by teachers or current policy and is thus creating competing cultures within the classroom.
Critically, the pedagogy proposed in this book challenges teachers and policy makers to reconsider the way we teach and how students learn and to also re-examine the role of the teacher in this consumer, market led culture. I claim that we need to radically re-think the purpose and social position of the school teacher not just in relation to the students but also parents and local communitiesāsites in which schools aim to prepare students to live and work as adults (Badman 2009). I propose we radically reconsider traditional teaching pedagogy and subsequently the role of teachers and move towards a more informal pedagogy in which the role of the teacher is more akin to Giddenās7 (1991) significant otherānot just to the student but to the family. This does not diminish the teacherās knowledgeable status but the current relational distance maintained between student/teacher through the primary use of mono-logic transmission of knowledge is replaced by an emphasis on learning relationships and shared exploration within studentsā social worlds; the studentās knowledge or their reality and experiences are as important as the teacherās subject and experiential knowledge.
This shift in emphasis diminishes the power held by teachers over students currently maintained through social boundaries and relational distance with students and parents (Hinsdale 2016). It invites teachers to risk stepping into this relational spaceāa space of enunciation in which the co-creation of knowledge and meaning related to the self-narrative between teachers, students and their parents emerges. Thus making the knowledge produced within that relationship meaningful for the building and maintaining of relational ties with significant others i.e. family members and the teacher/mentor central to the studentsā construction of a self-narrative whilst simultaneously enabling students to access and gain GCSE qualifications. Here, students and teachers become co-investigators of knowledge.
Is Relational Learning New?
Relational pedagogies are not new as Hinsdale (2016) points out and are central to some alternative education provisions8 but which largely fall outside the remit of this book. However, in the informal education field of professional youth and community work, which forms the context of my professional practice and this study, there has long been a theoretical interest in relational and, in particular Freireās dialogic pedagogy, as a vehicle for supporting studentsā social development and community integration (Jeffs and Smith 1987, 2010). Freireās underlying theoretical ideas have subsequently provided the basis for many statutory and voluntary youth service interventions and alternative provisions. Although the introduction of Transforming Youth work...