This paper reports on a study of teachers’ perceptions of teaching and learning in Scotland during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of engaged pedagogy and the ideas of bell hooks. It aimed to explore the different ways that teachers experienced teaching and learning during this time and the impact this may have had on teacher identity. Sixty teachers and head teachers were interviewed using MS Teams in the period April-June, 2020. For this paper, 18 transcripts were analyzed by members (...) of the research team. Four key themes emerged from the interview data: Working from home, parental engagement, teacher identity, and changes in pedagogy. Each of these themes were discussed in terms of concepts such as engaged pedagogy, agency, self-actualization, recognition and boundary transgression situated in the work of bell hooks. The idea of boundaries wove itself throughout our data as teachers expressed how the transgression of boundaries was occurring in multiple, and often contradictory, ways in pedagogical, professional, institutional and personal spaces and systems. We see in our data evidence of a shift in practice not just in the way teachers are ‘doing’ education but also, perhaps, in the way that teachers are ‘being’ as educators as they adapt to different ways of knowing. This study provides a unique exploration of a time and space in Scotland during 2020. However, the themes and understandings that emerged are of relevance to educators internationally. Schools across the world were impacted by various lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and teachers faced a common set of challenges that were resolved via re-negotiation and recognition of individual and collective agency to create new pedagogies. (shrink)

Research in school psychologist report writing has argued for reports that connect to the client’s context; have clear links between the referral questions and the answers to these questions; have integrated interpretations; address client strengths and problem areas; have specific, concrete and feasible recommendations; and are adapted to the language and literacy level of the reader. The training of school psychologists involves attention to these factors. However, this paper argues that the experience of aporia, as described by the French philosopher (...) Jacques Derrida, is often removed from the process of report writing, as the aim seems to be to find a formula that works. We call for ethics which is concerned about the good life – this is a broader view than resorting to ethics only when faced with an ethical question. This paper, based on a small qualitative study of seven experienced school psychologists, highlights that psychologists in the process of report writing are caught in the aporia.... (shrink)

Early intervention comes in-between the lives of children, families and teachers. This article uses part of a report written by an educational psychologist about a little girl to question the nature of intervention through Rancière’s writings. As children and parents are seen as put into the position of inadequacy, they require such intervention, which in turn makes them more inadequate. The article goes on to highlight the numerous ‘givings’ involved in early intervention, through Derrida’s writing. However, such giving is questioned (...) as creating expectations that receivers of the gift must fulfil, thus nullifying the gift. The conclusion suggests that starting from a perspective of equality and acknowledging the aporia involved could help the people in this scenario to take a different approach. (shrink)

This paper draws upon Deleuze and Guattari's ideas to suggest a different kind of reading of a narrative of a mother of a child with severe disability, and thus a different kind of ethical response to them. This reading gives readers the possibility of opening up experiences of parents and children with disability, rather than compartmentalising such stories. The reader becomes, is transformed, through reading these narratives and through engaging with the intensities which are recognised in the text, asking the (...) question ‘Does it work for me?’ This is what Gilles Deleuze calls ‘reading with love’. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the issue of the death of migrants and invites us to recognise bodily vulnerability and precariousness when confronted with the faceless and nameless dead migrant. It explores...

This paper outlines a typical referral made on behalf of a school to the author, who is an educational psychologist. Regarded as the expert, the psychologist is consulted by the head of school with the expectation that answers can be given as to what works with the child in question. In the context of a runaway world, it is easy to look for that which is certain and for what works. The aim of the paper is to problematize the view (...) of the expert psychologist who always knows and who can impart skills which will solve the problem. It seeks to put forward the idea of the professional who works with uncertainty and who acknowledges the importance of, rather than resists, the idea of not knowing. Notwithstanding the attempts of the institutions within which the professions work to standardize procedures and responses, and notwithstanding the attempts to leave nothing to chance, children still slip through the gaps. The author is suggesting that an openness to contingency and uncertainty will allow for the complex situations which constitute children's difficulties, and thus ensure better professionalism. In turn, learning to tolerate not knowing generates the professional who is in a constant process of becoming through her practice. Through thinking again, the practitioner is encouraged to be open to the complexities which children's situations offer. (shrink)