ROUNDTABLE 2 (19-20 mei 2011)
RESEARCHING CIVIC LEARNING: METHODS, METHODOLOGIES AND DESIGNS
Day 1: 19 May 2011 UGent – H. Dunantlaan 2, room 2B
This roundtable focuses on the question how research can contribute to our understanding of the processes and practice of civic learning and what the most appropriate designs, methodologies and methods for such research are.
GERT BIESTA will provide an introduction to this day by providing an overview of the methods, methodologies and designs that have informed his own research on civic learning. He will not only present these, but will also engage with questions about the justification for and the strengths and weaknesses of different designs for the research on civic learning.
Each of the presenters in this roundtable will be asked to pay particular attention to the ways in which their designs, methods and/or methodologies can contribute to understanding processes and practices of civic learning.
The discussion will focus on identifying methodological challenges for research on civic learning and the different ways in which such challenges can be met and have been met in the projects presented.
GERT BIESTA will provide concluding statement.
10.00-10.45
Introduction: What does it mean to research civic learning?
Gert Biesta
10.45-11.30
Urban public space as co-educator
Sven De Visscher
As part of a PhD, we studied the social pedagogical meaning of urban public space. A social pedagogical perspective refers to the processes through which children are socialised in specific assumptions about society, their position within society and the position of other groups in society. A case study in three neighbourhoods in the city of Ghent shows that the neighbourhood influences the socialisation process of children in very different ways. In each of these three neighbourhoods, different views were found on dwelling, citizenship and the role of public space in the social and cultural opportunities of residents. As part of this research, an innovative methodology has been developed and implemented to study the social-pedagogical meaning of the neighbourhood. This methodology consists of a three dimensional cartography of the neighbourhood, building on three interrelated dimensions of this space: the built, shared and lived environment.
11.30-12.00
Coffee break
12.00-12.45
Understanding civic learning through psychogeographic mapping
Gillian Cowell & Gert Biesta
If civic learning occurs within communities of plurality and difference, then one of the methodological problems with research on civic learning stems from the fact that the communities in and through which such learning processes might happen do not simply exist objectively, i.e., as phenomena ‘ready’ for observation and investigation. Communities are not simply ‘there,’ but exist through a complex combination of subjective and objective ‘elements’ which include space, place and location and the ways these are being perceived used and enacted or performed. To understand the dynamics of civic learning within communities it is therefore important to focus on how community is ‘done’, i.e., how community is experienced, performed and enacted. This requires methodologies that are able to give a place to the interplay between subjective and objective dimensions and 1st person and 3rd person perspectives. One such an approach is psychogeographic mapping (Debord 1992; see also Hart 2004). In this paper we explore the potential of psychogeographic mapping for developing an understanding of community-as-enacted and discuss how this can help us to get a better sense of the dynamics of processes of civic learning within communities. The paper makes use of findings from a community education project conducted in a town/sub-urban setting in Scotland.
12.45-14.00
Lunch
14.00-14.45
A social pedagogical perspective and evidence-based practice
Wim De Mey
Care for families with children with behavioral problems includes that parents are supported in meeting the societal expectations through their parenting behavior. Good care means also giving an answer on the demand for help of these parents. An intervention/care is best based on the best scientific evidence available on the moment. To prove the effectiveness/efficacy of the intervention and to continue reflecting on the evidence quantitative research can be helpful.
From a social pedagogy perspective the relationship parental ideas or perspective – societal expectations (evidence based practice) is questioned, because care/interventions are detached from the problem definition or construction on which they are based. This means that we have to look at which (research) questions are asked and which not.
14.45-15.15
Coffee break
15.15-16.00
The Action Researcher as an Actor. An Independent Position
Rudi Roose & Maria De Bie
The ambition of action research is often the ambition of emancipatory research, that is the research should contribute towards changing the situation under investigation, and this change should involve an improvement. It is often claimed that emancipatory research should be viewed as democratic research: it does not involve the implementation of changes desired by the researcher in social reality, but it involves a societal change induced by a democratic research process in which not only the researcher but also policymakers and clients take an active part. We will review the features we believe to be essential to emancipatory action research: the focus on the growing problem content of the situation, and the starting point of a subject-subject relationship between researchers and other actors participating in the research. We will discuss these features basing ourselves on the findings of an action research we conducted. This analysis will show that emancipatory research is subject to several preconditions, which are hard to achieve in the practice of action research, however. One of the conclusions is that it is the action researcher’s task to help to materialise these conditions. This presupposes a modest attitude linked to a strong involvement with the problem situation that is the subject of the research.
16.00-16.30
Outline of the discussions
Day 2: 20 May 2011 UGent – H. Dunantlaan 2, room auditorium 3
10.00-10.45
A narrative perspective on learning to live together in multicultural cities
Griet Roets
In various cities of Flanders, there is a profusion of practices in which people are stimulated to tell their story about their neighboorhood. In these practices narratives are employed in view of different aims. Some practitioners use these stories as a means of oral history, trying to know more about the daily life of people at a particular time in history. Others see storytelling as a community building process, fostering inhabitants to develop a sense of belonging to the place and the people they live with. Still others support stories as a voice making process by which ordinary citizens can speak out loud about the way they experience their daily environment. As researchers we have a particular interest in how the looseness and open-endedness of storytelling possibly opens new ways for citizens to name and explore narratively the dilemmas and contradictions of living with the plurality and diversity of an urban context. Searching for answers to this question we will elaborate on how storytelling strengthens citizens’ learning not only because of the content of its narratives (particularities of persons, complexities and ambiguities of human affairs) but also, and primarily, because of its style (appeals to imagination, evokes involvement beyond the private world, accepts ambivalence as a source for community building etc.)
10.45-11.30
Research as response: Participatory research in Flemish community services
Carmen Mathijssen
Inspired by Biesta’s theoretical work on ‘learning as response’ a research methodology took form that could be described as ‘research as response’. Participatory research methods enabled the researcher and six West-Flemish community services to engage in a joint learning process. At round table discussions the practitioners exposed their vulnerability by starting from a problem that they all struggled with. They found it hard to convey that their way of working involves more than providing ‘employment for opportunity groups’ and ‘tailor-made service provision’. By mutual agreement, this inability to demonstrate their participatory way of working was chosen as a starting point of this research component. Through round table discussions, the practitioners were closely involved in the research design as well as in the collection, analysis and reporting of data. The research took the form of protest on behalf of, and together with, those whose dignity is wrongfully lost. During the research process the community services engaged in a learning process and took several actions to develop and promote a more ‘reflexive’ activation strategy.
11.30-12.00
Coffee break
12.00-12.45
The Children’s Rights Movement as Educator. Mapping Constructions of Children’s Rights in The
Didier Reynaert, Maria De Bie & Stijn Vandevelde
In the study of children’s rights and child policy, the notion of thematization points at the way the children’s rights movement enacts the provisions of the Children’s Rights Convention in the cultural, political, social and historical context of social policy for children. The method of cartography, defined as “the art and science of mapping ways of seeing” provides a useful framework to analyze the process of thematization. In this paper we will demonstrate how cartography as a qualitative research method concerned with localizing the social positioning of children’s rights in Belgian child policy can offer an important contribution to the study of the relationship between the child and society.
12.45-14.00
Lunch
14.00-14.45
The meaning of historical research for social work practice
Filip Coussée & Tineke Vandewalle
Historical consciousness is not strong in social work. This is not only a matter of better knowledge of historical facts and figures. On a global scale social work shows itself in very diverse appearances. The social professions seem to have on thing in common: the discussion on their identity between universal method and cultural relativity. Historical consciousness is important in this identity discussion. History cannot show us the one and only, universal and eternal fixed social work identity. ‘Social work histories’ can show us the richness of different social work shapes. They can throw a light on previous discussions on social work, discussions that may be very parallel to nowadays discussions. In other words: social work history does not serve present evolutions, but has the power to frame them in a broader context, thus feeding and inspiring the present discussion on youth work identity. The international comparative dimension in this contribution (focusing on youth work as a social work practice) incorporates another way of going beyond a narrow ‘presentism’.
14.45-15.30
Concluding Statements
Gert Biesta
