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CIE Autumn Term Research Cafés 

Crisis for whom? Global border regimes and childhood (im)mobility

With Rachel Rosen (UCL) and Valentina Glockner (NPI, Mexico City)

Location: Jubilee G36 / Zoom

Date/Time: 25 Oct, 3:30-5pm

Narratives of ‘crisis’ – whether ‘migration crisis’ or ‘childhoods in crisis’ – have become rhetorical tropes which shape and are reproduced by value-ladened political responses to children on the move. These typically reflect a sedentary bias which, as they intersect with generational time, draw on normative ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ childhoods and rigid assumptions about children and care. Consequently, children on the move globally, whether with family or separately, and those who remain in place when parents migrate, do so in contexts where migration is typically framed as a political and existential crisis for rich countries and associated with trauma and pathologisation for children. Equally, some children's movements, particularly those involved in South-South mobility, are rendered invisible, as protracted displacement and ongoing historical crises are normalised. Indeed, these silent stories raise questions about when and why children's (im)mobility is or is not constituted as a 'crisis', by and for whom, and with what effect for infrastructures and practices of care. 

In this presentation, Rachel Rosen and Valentina Glockner will draw on their just-released edited volume Crisis for whom? Critical global perspectives on childhood, care, and migration* to complicate these silences and challenge hegemonic interpretations by considering the diverse and diffuse effects of border technologies and crisis narratives on childhood (im)mobility.

Rachel Rosen is a Professor of Sociology at the UCL Social Research Institute. Her research, teaching and public engagement focuses on marginalised children and families, especially those with precarious immigration status; the intersection of welfare and border policies which shape their lives; and their practices of sustenance, care, and solidarity.

Valentina Glockner is a Mexican anthropologist affiliated with the Educational Research Department of The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico City. Her work in Mexico and India explores engaged research and reflective and participatory methodologies around the anthropology of childhood, migration and the state.

*Freely available to download in English and Spanish: Rosen, Rachel, E. Chase, S. Crafter, V. Glockner, and S. Mitra (Eds). (2023) Crisis for Whom? Critical global perspectives on childhood, care, and migration. London: UCL Press.

 

Planning for TPD at Scale in the Global South 

with Dr Bindu Thirumalai and Dr Vikas Maniar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India) 

Location: Jubilee G36 / Zoom

Date/Time: Wed 22 Nov, 3:30-5pm

This talk introduces the approach to teacher professional development (TPD) at scale in the Global South developed at the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India. The key strategies of this approach to TPD include deploying contextualised practice-based TPD pedagogies delivered in online/ hybrid modes that focus on active learning pedagogies. Teachers are continually recognized and supported during this engagement. The Connected Learning for STEM (CL4STEM) project is then presented as a case study of this approach to TPD. Finally, the key lessons from the CL4STEM pilot project to foster future scalability and sustainability of TPD approaches in the Global South are discussed. 

Established as CEIAR in 2015, the Centre for Excellence in Teacher Education (CETE) has been engaging with, and promoting innovation in the school curriculum, teacher education, and higher education curriculum and pedagogy. The Centre works towards revitalising the education sector through research, academic programmes, teaching, field action, policy advocacy, partnerships, and collaborations.

The Connected Learning for STEM (CL4STEM) project aims to build the capacities of secondary school teachers in Science and Maths to foster higher-order thinking with inclusion and equity in their classrooms and research its effectiveness and potential scaling. It is a South-South collaboration among higher education institutions in Bhutan, Nigeria, and Tanzania.  The Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India is the technical consultant for the project.  This study is funded by IDRC under the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange.

Bindu Thirumalai is faculty at the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education(CETE), TISS, Mumbai. Her PhD is an action research study on Teachers’ Communities of Practice. Over 400 mathematics teachers teaching in government high schools in Telangana State participated in the online community of practice that she managed for over two years. Bindu has fifteen years of field experience facilitating in-service teacher programmes operating at scale in government high school contexts. She co-conceptualised and coordinated the short-term certificate programme ‘Reflective Teaching with ICT’ (RTICT)' offered in an online or blended mode for teacher’s professional development from its inception in 2017 to 2020. She has designed and developed MOOC-based courses on ICT and Education, Mentoring for Teacher Professional Development and Action Research as a part of the RTICT programme.

Dr Vikas Maniar is a faculty at the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, TISS, Mumbai. He is the lead for innovation diffusion research for the Connected Learning for STEM (CL4STEM) project. CL4STEM pilots technology-enabled teacher professional development at scale in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Bhutan. He also volunteers with a rural high school for Adivasi (indigenous) children in Gujarat, India, and mentors grassroots social entrepreneurs focusing on school education in India. His research interests include the education of marginalised communities, the political economy of education, and the use of ICT in education.

 

Researching Lebanese early childhood education in a perfect storm

With Eva Lloyd (University of East London) 

Location: Jubilee G36 / Zoom

Date/Time: Wed 29 Nov, 3:30-5pm

The 2019 – 2022 Early Childhood Education in Lebanon study was funded by the British Academy Early Childhood Education Programme and supported under the Global Challenges Research Fund. Undertaken in partnership with colleagues at Rafik Hariri University in Lebanon, the project was inspired by Lebanon’s 2014 decision, further developed in 2016, to open its public education system to all children and young people aged 3 to 18, including Syrian child refugees, the RACE I and II plans. At the time, Lebanon hosted approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees, half of them children. The 2020 pandemic and major socio-economic and political unrest from autumn 2019 onwards, resulting in widespread poverty among the population, provided a challenging research environment. Nevertheless, this study captured views of low-income Lebanese and Syrian parents, policymakers, NGOs, teachers and headteachers on the provision of early childhood education and its impact. In this seminar I share study findings and some of the practical, emotional, and ethical dilemmas the project raised.

Eva Lloyd OBE is Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood in the School of Education and Communities at the University of East London and Co-Founder and former Director of its International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Economy of Childcare. She is also attached as Visiting Professor to University College London’s Thomas Coram Research Unit. Her research focuses on early childhood policies and systems, particularly marketised systems, and their impact on children growing up with disadvantage. She has provided extensive advice to national and international early childhood policymakers. Most recently as a member of an Expert Group developing recommendations on a new funding model for the Irish Republic’s early learning and care system. And currently as a member of the Programme Board to oversee planning for a dedicated state agency for early learning and care and school-age childcare in Ireland.

 

**CANCELLED - to be postponed until next semester** Interrupted Learning and Fragile Attendance among Adivasi children in Rajasthan, India: what can we learn from attendance registering?

With Caroline Dyer (Leeds), Archana Choksi (Leeds) and Suraj Jacob (Vidya Bhawan, India) 

Location: Jubilee G36 

Date/Time: Wed 6 Dec, 3:30-5pm

Although India reports almost full enrolment in elementary education, many children who are enrolled do not attend regularly and reported learning levels remain consistently low. This paper reports on qualitative research that addresses the misleading in- or out-of-school binary of national accounting to investigate interrupted learning and fragile attendance. We are adopting a process tracing approach that is anchored around attendance monitoring, asking: who does what with the results of this monitoring and how do interpretations and actions affect children’s learning? The field location is in Adivasi (tribal) belt of Southern Rajasthan, in a sample of three government elementary schools (Grades 1-8). To connect with learners, the team has generated profiles of children and their families to understand lives and livelihoods outside school, and how these shape patterns of attendance. In schools, we are investigating how attendance is monitored and explained by teachers, and what they do with the trends they see; then we are tracing the figures submitted from schools through the tiers of the educational bureaucracy to identify how these messages about attendance are interpreted, and how they link to children’s learning and concerns for education system improvement that drive policy and programming – notably, the national Shala Darpan programme. The research aims to make a contribution to understanding accountability in education systems and to methodological work on process tracing as an approach to learning for policy.

 

 

CIE Annual Report 20223/23 

image of CIE's annual report front cover - features a woman teaching a toddler how to write     Check out our latest annual report: CIE Annual Report: 2022/23 [PDF 2.90MB] 

 

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