Urban Education: European Teacher Education Network (eten) conference

Urban Education: European Teacher Education Network (ETEN) CONFERENCE

Gothenburg, Sweden, April 20-22, 2017

Friday ⌘ 21.04.2017 8.30-9.00: presentation Swedisch Education 9.15-12.00: school visit
	Presentations after lunch 13.00-17.00 hours

13.00-14.00

Participants: who is who?

Talking about the school visit
14.00-14.30

Title: Public Education Project Participatory Democracy in Times of Privatization.From: M. Francyne Huckaby, Texas Christian University Center For Public Education, Texas, USA, [e-mail]
Public Education Project: Participatory Democracy in Times of Privatization (PEP) is a feminist digital ethnographic film project of the struggle for rights and access to public education. PEP invites viewer-readers into the counterstories and activism of marginalized communities as they struggle to claim their education at a time when receiving it is threatened. I use feminist theory (Haraway and Lorde) to study a complicated clashing of reproductive and productive processes of society (e.g. education and profit seeking) and to amplify the standpoints and counterstories of teachers, students, families, and communities as they engage politically. PEP integrates content—text, image, sound, graphics, film, and a map—in a digital format. The text offers context, substance, and theory. The short films embedded in text throughout the website are also available as a collection on one web-page. Studying this grassroots struggle transformed me from a writing scholar into a cyborg filmmaker with digital interactivity. By attending to irresolvable contradictions, the cyborg reveals the potential, particularly for women, for powerful alliances, coalitions, and couplings formed through affinity instead of identity through cyborg weaving. Failure to weave across boundaries and barriers are missed possibilities to create a stronger, more stable structure for action. Resisting such failure offers the possibility of not just rethinking relations as non-dominant and non-subordinate interconnectivity, but reconfiguring social structures without homogenization or annihilation. Such weaving asks us to answer Audre Lorde’s questions: "How do we deal across our differences of community, time, place and history? In other words, how do we learn to love each other while we are embattled on so many fronts?” The actions this project witnesses, I argue, make progress towards these possibilities.
14.30-15.00

Title: Intervention in international practicum in global south. From: Sissel Tove Olsen, Oslo and Akershus University College (Norway) and Gerd Wikan Hedmark University College (Norway), [e-mail]
In this presentation, we discuss how to improve the quality of international practicum programmes in the Global South. As most universities our main aim of sending student teachers on international practicum is to enhance their intercultural competence as defined by for instance “refers to the acquisition of generalizable intercultural competence: that is, competence that can be applied to dealing with cross-cultural contact in general, not just skills useful for dealing with a particular other culture” (Bennett, 2012). However, our findings are in accordance with those of many other studies: immersing students in another culture does not automatically mean that they become interculturally competent. Some of the students in our study have learned to appreciate the difference between cultures and have opened up their minds and increased their acceptance of differences. However, others have come back home more certain than ever of the superiority of their own culture. The results varies between our two HEIs with the one having a somewhat better outcome when it comes to reaching the main aim.

These findings have led us to reflect upon the selection of students, preparation, structure and implementation of international practicum. Based on the understanding that “students learn more effectively abroad when we intervene in their learning” (Vande Berg and Paige 2009, p. 433) the programme is designed to help the students to become more interculturally competent. Therefore, by presenting and analysing the international programmes at our institutions discuss which factors might be crucial in order to better achieve the aim of the programme. Along with Merryfield (2000) we also question whether today's teacher educators, who are mainly from white middle-class backgrounds, have the lived experiences and perspective consciousness needed to prepare the student teachers.

15.00-15.30: coffee break
15.30-16.00

Title: Living and learning within urban space. From: Samira Jamouchi,  ​Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science (Norway), [e-mail]
I have conducted an arts-based research project about Norwegian and Moroccan cities using a method I call visual dialogue. This is a qualitative approach to urban spaces through the voices and drawings made by the inhabitants.

My research design was inspired by qualitative research methods. I conducted interviews with Norwegian-born people living in Morocco. I asked them to describe the city with words and drawings. Beside that material I also have still and moving images from those cities. This visual dialogue about and with the city is now trans-formed into videos. Today I consider this approach from the emerging critical approach new materialism.

When we are talking, narrating, describing, explaining, and/or trying to understand the city, we also undertake an aesthetical journey that include self-awareness. The materiality of the city is perceived through its textures, sounds, colours, open and close spaces, luminosity, darkness and transparency, etc. Those formal aesthetic elements and features, that surround us, are shaping us and affecting us. An urban experience involves aesthesia, as well as it contributes to learning, understanding and self-awareness.

Such learning forms are the basis for personal development and growth, that students can benefit of, as human being and actives subjects in the society.

My aim by attending the ETEN conference is to share my experiences and ideas with other, get feedback, discuss and inspire each other. And hopefully to start a cooperation with other teacher from other lands. We could discuss how a visual dialog with students about the city, in different countries, could inform us about their everyday life experience, form their own point of views and their own interests.
16.00-16.30

Title: What can teachers in multicultural environments learn from Erich Fromm concept of "Love Relationship? From: Boaz Tsabar, David Yellin College of Education\Hebrew University (Israel), [e-mail]
My Paper will examine the unique, human and pedagogical nature of the encounter between educators and their students. It will discuss the potential for alienation inherent in the educator teaching encounter, especially in Urban and multi-cultural schools environments. The paper will go on to examine the possibility of constituting an alternative relationship based on pedagogy of mutual and non-alienated recognition rooted in an interpersonal and dialogical relationship. This conceptualization is performed through a consideration of Erich Fromm’s notion of the “love relationship". In my paper I will discuss the pedagogical importance and promises of this concept and will reflect upon its implication to the work of educators at inner city schools. Based on the above I will offer a pedagogical guild line for educational work in the classroom, which is based on four existential elements: “care, responsibility, respect and knowledge”.

16.30-17.00 Discussion

17.00-18.30 After TIG mingle

Saturday ⌘ 22.04.2017

Morning Presentations 9.30-12.00 hours

9.30-10.00 Title: Bridging The Achievement Gap and Managing Misbehavior in the Urban Classroom: Using Project Approach to Teach Urban Children. From: Dr. Nurun N. Begum Associate Professor of Education, East Stroudsburg University of PA, USA and Dr. Mahfuzul Khondaker Professor and Chair, Department of Criminal Justice Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, [e-mail] and [e-mail] Urban teaching is challenging (Sleeter, 2003; Epstein, 2000; Lewis, 2001). Urban clasroom has many different problems (Trussell, 2016; Manning, 2014 ). Research indicates that urban classroom lacks many resources necesary for learning (Halvorsen, Lee,& Andrade,2008; Epstein, 2000). Many qualified teachers do not want to teach in urban classroom since it is really difficult to manage and control the misbehavior of urban children (Shores, Gunter, Denny,  & Jack, 1993). When teachers have to spend most of the their time to control the misbehavior of the children in their class, they have less time to teach (Blank, & Schneider, 2011; Ayers, 2001). Also it is emotionally and congnitively distracted which prevents teachers to put their full attention towards teaching. The less teaching time leads to less learning and less creativitity in the class, which in turns leads to low performance and increased achievement gaps among urban and rural children. Project-Based Learning (PBL) serves as an instructional approach to teaching and learning (Bernadine, Lynn, & Kamiar, 2015). Project based learning is designed to engage students in the investigation of real-world problems to create meaningful and relevant educational experiences (Bernadine, Lynn, & Kamiar, 2015; Jarrett & Stenhouse, 2011). The researchers developed a two-week project based learning and behavior management plan which was implemented by some pre-pservice teachers to teach in an urban early childhood classrooms. In this presentation, the researchers will introduce the plan to teach urban children and the impact of this plan to mimimize the acheivement gap. The reaearchers will also address the impact of this plan in managing misbehavior in the urban classroom. The urban teachers and educators will be benifited from this presentation in multiple ways. After this presentation the urban early childhood teachers and educators will know how to plan and implement a project based learning and how to manage the unwanting behavior of the children in urban early childhood classroom. 10.00-10.30: coffee break 10.30-11.00 Title: How Preschool Teachers Handle Problem Situations: Discussing Some Indicators of Emotional. From: Derya Şahin Ası, Damla Güzeldere Aydın, Şakire Ocak Karabay, Faculty of Education, Ege University (Turkey), [e-mail] In this study, we aimed to explore how preschool teachers prefer to behave in the case of problem situations. More specifically we tried to realize if there would be any indicators pointing to emotional issues (a tendency towards maltreatment) based on their own reports. It was designed as a qualitative study with a group of preschool teachers working with children aged 3-6. Participants were 94 volunteer female preschool teachers from ten schools in urban areas of Izmir which is one of the biggest cities in Turkey situated in the west part of the country. In this study we prepared four semi structured questions to ask about typical problem situations they might encounter within their classes. These were hypothetical situations structured as story stems. We requested from teachers to answer questions via self-report what they would do in the case of situation described within the story stem. It was a paper work therefore they were asked to write down in detail how to handle those problem situations. One example for the story stem: “Two of your students at dramatic play area start to discuss loudly about who would play with the only vacuum cleaner. What would you prefer to do to handle this situation generally?” We kept anonymous any demographic information about teachers because of ethical considerations.Before we started to work on codings, we made a list for possible indicators of emotional maltreatment based on literature. Afterwards we put all the answers of teachers together for each question in order to make a whole script for making inferences considering whole data set. Besides coding list emerging from the literature, we added new codes to the list revealed from teachers’ answers when it is needed. In order to organize data we inferred main themes based on those codes and interpret the results. The main issues we categorized based on the reports of teachers were as follows: Removing materials/resources which make child feeling comfortable Lack of understanding child for the reasons, not being sensitive to the needs Ignoring Threatening about removing materials/resources from the physical environment 11.00- 11.45: discussion 11.45-12.00: evaluation ETEN 12:00-19.00: Closing Ceremony, Lunch, Afternoon Excursion, Dinner