🧵 a mini chapter summary
Beardon, L., Parker, B. and Etherington, A. (eds) Loffer, D. and Dwyer, E. (2022) “Supporting Anxiety and Well-being.” In J. Gainsborough (Ed.), Educational Psychology Perspectives Effective on Supporting Young Autistic People

Building on @SheffieldLuke & Billy’s work in the chapter, @annieetheri turns to the 'importance of sensitive adjustments to the learning environment'. Structure provides a predictable environment. x

Low arousal spaces developed in collaboration with pupils reduces distress and anxiety. Double empathy problems are respected through ‘dialogue which is informed and influenced by the autistic individual rather than the imposition of a particular ‘strategy’’.

Instead the self-reflection of young people can be supported through adapted CBT self-tracking. This may or may not use language as ‘often words may interfere with such communication’. Positive approaches create joy as an antidote to anxiety.

https://uk.jkp.com/products/educational-psychology-perspectives-on-supporting-young-autistic-people

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/adCLqHX

Supporting Anxiety and Well-being in Autistic Young People

A 🧵 on:
Hellawell, Smith & Wharton 2022 ‘What was required above all else was collaboration’: keeping the momentum for SEND partnership working in the wake of Covid19

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12413
@sharon_l_smith @JulieCWharton @SENPRF 

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system in England is awaiting a significant overhaul. This paper highlights the role local policy actors occupy within this system, as the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic moves SEND partnerships towards a ‘new normal’.

 There is heightened concern about missed opportunities for reform and renewal. Findings by the Special Educational Needs Policy Research Forum provided insight into how school staff had been supported in the teaching of pupils with SEND during periods of school closures.

 This article offers a thematic analysis of the narrative responses provided. The analysis generated 6 statements that can be understood as lessons learned for partnership working, drawing on the experiences of parents, school staff, and advising professionals working in LAs:

Covid has further highlighted and intensified the existing problems with inadequate SEND provision, funding and accountabilities at a systemic level.


Experiences were diverse, and provision was often inequitable within local authority areas and between neighboring schools.

Covid has made visible existing good partnerships, but also negative attitudes and inadequate local practices around inclusion.

Policy guidance was enacted by local policy actors through ‘reflexive creativity’, which accounts for some of the variability of experiences, but also points to opportunities to learn lessons and inform change and development.

Professionals who offered ‘presents’ instead of presence need to embrace their responsibilities and regain trust from colleagues and parents/carers.

Inclusion is supported when local policy actors embrace becoming experts by experience.  A shift in thinking may be required, to recognize that referral to advising professionals is not the first, but the final step in exhausting the graduated response.

Kudos Research Showcase:
https://www.growkudos.com/publications/10.1111%25252F1467-8578.12413/reader

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/PdHjYNq

What was required above all else was collaboration

🧵 a mini chapter summary:
Greaves, K., Bobb, V., & Perepa, P. (2022). Autism, ethnicity and culture: developing culturally responsive practice. In J. Gainsborough (Ed.), Educational Psychology Perspectives Effective on Supporting Young Autistic People

@PrithviPerepa introduces concepts of autism, culture and intersectional identity before these are reflected on in the experience of parent Venessa Bobb & professional expertise of Ed Psych Ken Greves.

Ed Psychs assessment of autism can be limited by school referrals that are based on cultural norms around eye contact, language and play. Diagnostic tools are not standardised on cultures... 

Parental reports on behaviour and skills differ between cultures. Professionals are not immune to unconscious bias. All these factors require consideration and challenge.

Emerging research on cross-cultural questions the universality of child development and autism, and of skills and learning goals expected by parents. Few evidence-led strategies have non-White evaluations.

When concerns have been dismissed, families may be wary of working with EPs. Perceptions of autism within a community may create sensitivity towards criticism of parenting or values. Stigma may lead to families hiding support needs.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/AbY07oS

🧵
Evidence, schmevidence: the abuse of the word “evidence” in policy discourse about education
@garyhowto examines the ways in which words such as “evidence” are used inappropriately to support policy that may be formulated for convenience, cost or political dogma.


Words and terms are bestowed with symbolic power to support and promote favoured policy. Prof Thomas examines how such power may be acquired and deployed by exploring the use of the word “evidence” and its derivatives in education discourse. 


Via corpora and discourse analysis of extracts from policymakers’ statements, speeches and assertions he examines how “evidence” is used habitually as a proxy for the specification of actual evidence, simply to add weight to an argument or to impart legitimacy for policy.


Prof Gary Thomas concludes that the idea of “evidence-based” persists only because of its value in enabling and promoting particular policy agendas.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2028735

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/fHMZazd

Evidence, schmevidence

a thread
@FraPeruzzo 
A call to rethink the Global North university: Mobilising disabled students’ experiences through the encounter of Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14407833211029381

Disabled people as a discriminated social group have a long history of struggles against the university establishment. In today's neoliberal university, ableism and Westernised notions of progress reproduce exclusions and neo-colonial inequities.

By merging approaches from post-structural Foucauldian Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South it explores how neoliberal/capitalistic practices exclude certain knowledges and modalities of being in the Global North and Global South universities.

Through disabled students’ experiences in an Italian university, the article advances epistemologies encompassing processes of decolonisation and de-ableism of the university.

Cross-fertilisation of practices and knowledge between Global South and North can democratically reconcile polyhedral subjective possibilities of being in the Global North university.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/UXt1jzr

A call to rethink the Global North university

@Vera_Kub in the @ConversationUK 'Disabled people are being left out of COVID recovery. Here are five ways to change that..' confronts the "kick in the teeth" that is the disabled experience of the removal of all COVID rules. (1/3)
https://theconversation.com/disabled-people-are-being-left-out-of-covid-recovery-here-are-five-ways-to-change-that-181362

Vera argues for Govt to:
1. Work with disabled people to ensure needs and concerns are considered without perpetuating ideas of the "tragic".
2. Address poverty and digital poverty
3. Ensure basic protection measures like masks and isolation when sick...

(3/3)
4. Access to testing for care home
5. Long COVID support and research funding, including the TUCs call for long COVID to be recognised as a disability in the Equalities Act

Pandemic recovery is an opportunity to change govt understanding of disability-specific need.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/waWtqBp

Disabled people are being left out of COVID recovery. Here are five ways to change that...

A thread:
On Wed 11th May Dr Mehmet DEMIR, International Research Fellow University of Birmingham will be giving a Research In Progress on A Taxonomy for Using Social Media as a Learning Tool: Updating Bloom's Taxonomy...

The use of social media in the classroom is a key opportunity to increase learners' engagement, motivation, and promote their learning by providing students with various learning pathways. 

This process requires creating a specific framework to demonstrate how social media can be used as a tool in the learning process according to educational objectives.

This study explores a standardised mechanism to familiarise educators with how to activate social media platforms as a learning tool; to help them to understand how the platforms can be employed in the subjects they teach, and how to integrate them with the learning environment. 

With a view to supporting these outcomes, a social media taxonomy was developed (Web 2.0) based on Bloom’s taxonomy (Web 1.0) to find an innovative and sustainable way to transform teaching and learning. 

The Web 2.0 taxonomy focuses on 3Cs named Consciousness, Cognition, and Creativity, and each dimension consists of its categories in the metacognitive domain: Consciousness [viewing], Cognition [posting, interacting, and analysing], Creativity [assessing, and displaying]. 

The categories symbolise instructional objectives hierarchically ranging from lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills.

Do register for this event at
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/education/events/2022/05/registration-mdemir-11may.aspx

All welcome at this seminar.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/tM5Na2R

A thread:
Walking and talking with girls in their urban environments: A methodological meandering.
Deirdre Horgan UCC, Eluska Fernández UCC & Karl Kitching UoB
@DHorgan1 @EluskaFDZ @karl_kitching 
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07916035221088408

Young people spend a lot of time in their neighbourhood, yet little is known about the relationship between wellbeing, belonging and place from their own perspective.

This article  reflects on the walking methodology used as part of a Participatory Photo Mapping (PPM) exercise with 11-year-old girls from a working-class school community who were participants in the PEACH Project. 

It was through walk-along interviews that students were able to relate where events that matter to them happen; what these experiences look like (via photos that they took while walking); and how these experiences unfold (via narratives that they shared along the way).

Horgan, Fernández & Kitching reflect on the use of walking methodologies as both an emplaced approach and dynamic exercise that allowed us to access and generate visual and verbal data that privileged these young girls’ community knowledge. 

The paper conclude that this method facilitated the discussion of sensitive and political issues, as well as the emergence of unexpected data on child cultures, family and community life, belonging, wellbeing and futures. 

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/ab6XUQD

Walking and talking with girls in their urban environments

A thread:
Gillborn, Rickett & Woolhouse 2022
A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis of mothers’ voiced accounts of the “duty to protect” children from fatness and fatphobia.
@sarahgillborn 
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09593535221074802

Research has highlighted damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers over children's health, at once held responsible for tackling “childhood obesity” while being cautious not to encourage children to become obsessive with their bodies. 

Utilising Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, this study analysed interviews with 12 mothers in England to explore their experiences of a nationally mandated BMI screening programme in schools and how discourses shape their voices and experiences. 

In negotiating complex and contradictory discourses of motherhood and fatness, participants expressed a “duty to protect” their children from both fatness and fatphobia. 

Negotiating responsibilities left mothers feeling guilt at their personal “failure” to protect their children from one or both harms. 

Mothers did not take up these discourses unproblematically; they resisted them, yet felt constrained by “expert knowledges” of fatness and motherhood that had clear consequences in responsibilising mothers for the “harm” of fatness. 

This analysis calls attention to how dominant discourses function personally and politically to responsibilise mothers for the harm caused by state-sanctioned fatphobia.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/Jl32KY0

A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis of mothers’ voiced accounts of the “duty to protect” children from fatness and fatphobia

A thread:
@karl_kitching - Contemporary, racialised conflicts over LGBT-inclusive education: more strategic secularisms than secular/religious oppositions? in Educational Review @EdReview

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2022.2054959

A paper which focuses in particular on conflicts where Muslims, who protest LGBT-inclusive policies in education, become racialised as other to secular national/Western values; through thematic analysis of 149 news articles covering Bham protests.


Dr @karl_kitching contends that neither contemporary arguments for, or against, LGBT-inclusive education are neatly non-religious in their public appearance.  Rather, multiple parties in these conflicts work with “strategic” secularisms.


Strategic secularisms are discourses which seek to privatise or make public, aspects of minority identities on narrow, problematic terms...

E.g., analysis of news coverage of protests against LGBT-inclusive education in Birmingham 2019 shows efforts to both to publicly surveil Muslim religiosity and assert private authority over it.


LGBT identities were also variously framed as “beliefs” to be kept private or an essential part of the public self which must be confessed to be “free”. From analysis it is argued that public discourse should do more than challenge queer/Muslim and secular/religious dichotomies.


Fundamentally, there is a need for educations that refuse strategic secularisms based in neo-colonial, racialised discourses of secular Christian civilisation, and engage the losses created by the privatising and deprivatising of minority religious and sexual identity.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/UoBEdResearch/D8MAkSD