This study examines the integration of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) into English pedagogy within initial teacher education in Ireland by employing a collaborative self-study methodology to explore how one teacher educator designed and implemented a learning-unit focused on social justice issues in a module involving five pre-service teachers. Findings reveal that English pedagogy serves as a powerful medium for introducing GCE, promoting critical thinking, empathy and social awareness among PSTs. However, challenges emerged, including limited prior knowledge of GCE, managing discomfort associated with sensitive topics and navigating institutional constraints. The study highlights the interplay between the teacher educator's reflective practices, pedagogical choices and the students' experiences, demonstrating how GCE and a pedagogy of discomfort can deepen critical engagement in English teaching while balancing ethical responsibility and supportive learning. It offers valuable insights for teacher educators integrating GCE into subject-specific curricula, while also contributing to the broader discourse on GCE.
This study explores how newly arrived migrant students (NAMS) experience social and educational inclusion in Norway's Extended Basic Education Programme (EBEP), designed to prepare and qualify them for upper secondary education. Although the programme is implemented in upper secondary schools to ensure age-appropriate schooling, these schools tend to have high proportions of students with immigrant backgrounds. Based on qualitative interviews with 15 NAMS in three Oslo schools, the study suggests that this concentration limits opportunities for meaningful interaction with Norwegian-born students and restricts access to the dominant linguistic and cultural capital essential for the social and academic inclusion of NAMS. Using Bourdieu's concepts of cultural, symbolic and social capital, the study highlights a central paradox in inclusion: despite inclusive policy intentions, the structural placement of the EBEP limits access to the dominant linguistic and cultural resources valued within the educational field. Upon completing the EBEP, many students express a desire to transfer to different upper secondary schools with more Norwegian-born peers in order to improve their Norwegian, expand their social networks and feel integrated. The study calls for a re-evaluation of inclusion policies and programme placement, advocating for models that facilitate broader participation and integration within the educational landscape.
Much of the ongoing discourse on technology and education tends to prioritise either of the two over the other. Yet in the postdigital world of teaching and learning, education and technology are heavily intertwined. Following an entangled pedagogy logic, this paper explores how technology-influenced learning and learner agency operate differently across diverse global contexts. Drawing from collaborative ethnography that incorporates narrative inquiry and response community frameworks, this study investigates differences and similarities in the use, access to, and value placed on educational technology in teaching and learning across multiple contexts. The writing collaboration, conducted entirely online during an international doctoral research forum, arrived at four overarching themes: learning, spaces, education, and knowledge. Findings show how the global pandemic both exacerbated inequalities and accelerated opportunities, how narrow definitions of technology obscure the power of simpler tools like writing, and how access to technology does not ensure technological fluency.
A headteacher driving refugee children to school in her own car is not a policy requirement; it is empathy. This paper explores how Afghan refugee children and their caregivers experience safety and belonging across their educational journey in England, from school placement to classroom life. Using narrative interviews, child-led storytelling and creative visual methods with six families, we examine how inclusion is experienced, disrupted and negotiated. Our findings show that safety and belonging are not guaranteed by enrolment or policy compliance alone but arise through everyday acts of relational care, including recognition, listening and empathy. Where families were heard and children were known, engagement and confidence grew. Where systemic silences or cultural misrecognition persisted, children withdrew. We argue that meaningful inclusion must go beyond procedural access towards relational readiness. Belonging is not a policy output; it is a lived experience shaped through care, trust and connection.
This study explores how food-based pedagogies foster belonging among Black undergraduate students at a predominantly White institution. Grounded in critical race theory and using a narrative inquiry approach, the study centers the experiences of three first-year Black students who participated in a food justice-themed seminar. Through activities including community cookbook development, food storytelling, and group cooking sessions, participants engaged in practices that affirmed their identities, strengthened community, and challenged experiences of marginalisation. Their narratives demonstrate how food-centered pedagogies can disrupt dominant institutional norms and create spaces of connection, agency, and joy. By examining the intersections of race, food, and pedagogy, this study contributes to scholarship on inclusive teaching and student belonging. The findings suggest that food-based pedagogies offer a meaningful and accessible approach to centering Black student voices and cultivating transformative learning environments, particularly within higher education contexts where equity, inclusion, and belonging remain contested and urgent concerns.
This paper explores how community makerspaces and children's everyday art practices can contribute to worldmaking by opening possibilities for new forms of commonality. Centring a narrative of Mateo and his paper pocketbook, it rethinks 'usefulness' as a material-discursive concept shaped by neoliberal logics that standardise and constrain childhood. By examining how such assumptions operate, the paper shifts attention towards children's making practices as sites of emergence, relationality and creativity. In doing so, it suggests that engaging seriously with these practices can help educators and researchers move beyond hyper-capitalist values such as individualism, competition and relentless growth, towards more interconnected and responsive ways of being.
This paper examines a critical classroom incident at a Norwegian university to explore how dehumanisation, epistemic ignorance, racism, and resistance operate within the Westernised university. Using membership categorisation analysis (MCA) and concepts from dehumanization studies, we analyse how students in a media studies seminar invoke and respond to categories of the human during classroom discussion. We show that students' investments and disinvestments in dehumanisation function as a microcosm of broader dynamics in the Westernised university, including epistemic (white) ignorance, academic ideals of detachment, and a lack of relationality. Furthermore, one student's unsuccessful attempts to resist dehumanisation demonstrate how sentimentality and ignorance of colonial histories can be implicated in the failure to disrupt the status quo. The paper concludes by reflecting on pedagogical responses to the powerful (white) desire not-to-know and the ideal of academic detachment.
In Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us', the central refrain is one of naming the gap between performed identity and actual impact. As Black queer teacher educators, this dynamic resonated immediately with our experiences navigating critical early childhood spaces, where peers openly communicate their allyship while their actions tell a different story. Grounded in a Queer of Color Critique lens, we utilised bi-weekly kitchen-table talks to transparently and vulnerably share our experiences navigating higher education. The objective of this inquiry was to centre Black queer women and nonbinary early-career educators and scholars in early childhood teacher education and to clarify who 'us' is and what makes our standpoint unique. Our reflections illuminated three themes: advancing criticality, disrupting respectability politics, and reflecting on becoming new. We imagine a future where Black queer scholarship and intersectional knowledge empower educators and children, promoting true safety, belonging, and thriving across teacher education.
Discussions surrounding decolonisation in African music education predominantly emphasise curriculum reform, whereas assessment practices remain largely aligned with Eurocentric frameworks. This paper contends that examinations constitute an overlooked domain of epistemic hierarchy, wherein African oral-aural traditions, communal performance, and contextual learning are marginalised in favour of Western notation-based standards. This study utilises postcolonial theory, constructivism, and culturally responsive pedagogy to propose a hybrid six-dimensional assessment framework that regards African and Western epistemologies as equally foundational for the evaluation of musicianship. The framework incorporates communal performance, improvisation, contextual grounding, master-apprentice learning, collaborative reflexivity, and the integration of orality and notation. The framework is constructed as a modular and adaptable model for higher education in Africa, aiming to maintain academic rigour while improving cultural relevance, student motivation, and epistemic inclusivity. This paper argues that hybrid assessment presents a feasible approach to achieving greater equity and global relevance in music education.
This paper presents an alternative to resisting constructs of the early career teacher identity as evident in recent education policy in England and in its dominant critical voices, through the inclusion of mentoring practices informed by psychoanalysis. Drawing on Butler, Lacan and Foucault's work on subjectivation, we explore the possibilities afforded by Butler's insights for resisting the process of subjection which new teachers experience in the current policy climate, particularly the 'Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework'. We acknowledge the underrepresentation of psychoanalysis in the field of educational studies and thus draw on original empirical work that uses psychoanalytic methods in interviews with trainee teachers. In conversation with Butler's critical discussion of both subjection and resistance, we argue these interventions offer a resource for the resignification of teacher professional identity and make a case for the radical rethinking of the teacher beyond discourses of identity via mentoring processes.
Research into feedback for students in higher education has shifted from investigating unidirectional models, where students are positioned as passive receivers of information, to examining more interactive practices where students are active participants in a dialogue about their learning. Along with this shift, studies have explored the feedback literacy required by lecturers and students that can facilitate this interactive feedback. However, few studies have explored how higher education lecturers develop their feedback literacy. This article addresses that gap in the literature by presenting a narrative inquiry, which identifies key experiences of one teacher educator from Indonesia (first author Rini), as she developed her feedback literacy, starting with her time as a student in secondary school, continuing into her experiences as a higher education student and/or lecturer in Indonesia, the US and Australia. The main data comprises autobiographical narratives and reflections written by Indonesian first author Rini, in dialogue with her Australian PhD supervisors. These narratives document key experiences over more than a decade that shaped Rini's developing feedback literacy. The narrative inquiry approach enables a theorised and contextualised account of feedback in particular higher education contexts and also provides practical insights into some effective methods of developing feedback literacy in higher education settings.
This article examines the complexities of national education implemented beyond its geographic and cultural origins, focusing on the Indonesian School of The Hague (SIDH) in the Netherlands. Through a qualitative phenomenological approach, drawing on interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, it critically explores the adaptation of the Indonesian national curriculum within a transnational context and the negotiation of cultural identity among diasporic communities. The findings position teachers as crucial pedagogical mediators, bridging standardized curricular expectations and students' hybrid realities abroad. The study also highlights a pedagogical partnership with the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden, facilitating intercultural learning through Indonesian cultural artefacts. However, inherent tensions between curriculum standardisation and learners' fluid identities in multicultural environments are revealed. The article argues that integrating a national curriculum, character education, and institutional collaboration fosters culturally grounded and globally competent learners, ultimately contributing to global debates on diaspora schooling by framing education as a dynamic site of identity formation and cultural negotiation.
This study investigates the exploratory process of a pre-service teacher (PST) developing their pathway to using differentiated instruction in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) classrooms in Australia. Adopting a qualitative self-study methodology, the study focuses on the PST's personal and professional growth, highlighting the reflective and developmental journey of building instructional strategies. Data were gathered through reflective notes documenting the PST's experiences and challenges. These notes were analysed using a qualitative thematic analysis approach. The findings reveal the intricate process of self-discovery, resilience, and adaptation as the PST navigated obstacles in CALD classrooms. This exploration is a pathway for developing professional identity and pedagogical competence. The study underscores the need for teacher education programmes to emphasise experiential learning and reflective practices that prepare PSTs for the dynamic challenges of CALD classrooms. Tailored strategies integrating professional development with the exploration process can better equip PSTs for such teaching environments.
Educational research highlights persistent gender disparities in STEM participation, where the global underrepresentation of girls and young women remains a serious concern. This paper explores the science learner identities of 21 middle-school girls (aged 11-14 years), drawing on theoretical work in girlhood studies. We highlight how the girls' perceptions of a good scientist and a good science student influence how they discursively see themselves as science learners. Our findings point to a tripartite typology regarding how they position themselves as science learners 1) 'the compliant learner'; 2) 'the ambivalent and waning science learner'; and 3) 'the hardworking scientist in the making'. The data illustrate that despite performing confident science learner identities, many of the girls do not aspire to a science-related career. The paper concludes with an argument for further research that foregrounds the ways girls construct themselves as science learners to help foster parity of participation in the sciences.
For many Muslim immigrant girls in U.S. schools, mathematics is shaped by cultural and social dynamics that misinterpret their ways of knowing. This study offers a critical analysis of digital storytelling, as a perspective rarely applied in mathematics education. Drawing on narrative inquiry with five Muslim immigrant girls at a Midwestern community centre, we examine how creating digital mathematics stories becomes a means of negotiating belonging, naming epistemic injustice, and reclaiming interpretive authority. Using story circles as decolonial spaces, we analyse digital stories and discussions through lenses of belonging, epistemic injustice, counter-storytelling, and intersectionality. Their narratives show how school practices systematically misrecognise their mathematical competence, cultural knowledge, and emotional labour. Through digital storytelling, participants authored counter-narratives that challenged deficit framings and reframed mathematics as a space of identity and resistance. We argue that digital storytelling functions as an epistemic intervention, expanding whose stories are heard, and what mathematics can become.
In an era of super-complexity, where wicked problems resist straightforward solutions and the very frameworks for producing knowledge are contested, transformative learning is not a pedagogical option but a necessity. Without the capacity for systemic, transdisciplinary thinking, learners risk being overwhelmed by information complexity, susceptible to misinformation, and unable to act meaningfully on the challenges they face. This paper argues that Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) offer a distinctive pedagogical instrument for bridging this gap: by immersing learners in nonlinear, perspective-shifting narrative experiences, IDNs can cultivate the critical literacies and systemic sensibilities that transformative learning requires. However, realising this potential demands a principled framework for design and implementation. We introduce two connected contributions: the concept of Systemic Learning IDNs, which are narrative experiences explicitly designed to support learners in exploring complex systems, and the CLASS transdisciplinary pedagogical framework, a structured model integrating systems thinking, design thinking, and interactive storytelling to guide their creation and use. Applying CLASS to two contrasting case studies, a commercial narrative simulation and a student-developed educational prototype, we demonstrate how IDNs can be designed and deployed to foster media literacy, systemic thinking, and collaborative problem-solving across disciplinary contexts. The paper offers both conceptual grounding and practical recommendations for educators seeking to implement transformative, systems-oriented learning in an increasingly complex world.
