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Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT) – a multi-relational perspective

LJUNGBLAD, Ann-Louise
2019

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This article presents a theoretical relational perspective of education, Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT), which supports the development of new knowledge about teachers’ relational proficiencies to create opportunities for students to participate in their education and to emerge as unique individuals and speak with their own voices. Within the field of inclusive education, it is a relational approach where teaching is to be understood relationally. The fundamental bases in this inclusive perspective on education are the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Salamanca Statement. The concept of relational teachership is elaborated on to emphasise the importance of teachers’ relational proficiencies in the classroom. The article also clarifies how PeRT includes a multi-dimensional model to illuminate relational processes and relationships on different levels within the educational system. PeRT is a relational approach for scholars and practitioners, which can be seen as a new beginning and an invitation to a relational pathway that explores participation, accessibility and equity.

Hard to teach: inclusive pedagogy in social science research methods education

NIND, Melanie
LEWTHWAITE, Sarah
2017

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Amidst major new initiatives in research that are beginning to address the pedagogic dimension of building capacity in social science research methods, this paper makes the first move to apply the lens of inclusive pedagogy to research methods pedagogy. The paper explores the ways in which learning social science research methods is hard and may be anxiety-provoking, which has sometimes led to a deficit discourse in which learners are positioned as ill-prepared and fearful. Learners can then be blamed for being hard to teach when an inclusive pedagogical lens would support a more asset-based discourse. Nonetheless, the authors argue that without traditional deficit-based solutions of the remedial class, special needs label or special teacher within the methods learning environment, methods teachers have developed their own responses. These pedagogic responses, elicited from the authors’ research using methods of expert interviews, focus groups and video-stimulated dialogue, address challenges associated with the learner, the learning material and the teacher’s context. The paper differentiates between practical solution-focused strategies and more holistic approaches. The authors illustrate how methods teachers reach out to diverse learners and they conclude that data and standpoints are used in inclusive teaching to make connections and to support learning.

Educational inclusion and critical neuroscience: friends or foes?

BILLINGTON, Tom
2017

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Momentum is continuing to grow in the circulation of neuroscientific discourse, informing aspects of how we live but affecting too how we think about education and learning. Neurologically informed intrusions into education frequently align with psychology which has until now largely adopted a ‘medical model’, supporting policies and practices which ultimately invoke psychopathology and arguably render individual young people more vulnerable to various forms of social and educational exclusion. This paper urges caution in respect of understandings of educational neuroscience that focus on individual deficits and diagnoses. Rather it holds in mind the broader historical context for neuroscience and its implications for our understandings of what it is to be human in the twenty first century and thereafter for education and learning. Theoretical resources from critical and affective neuroscience but also critical educational psychology are brought together specifically to support the principles of inclusionist policies and practices in education.

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