Context and background

Immigrants in Ireland, quite like other Eurpoean countries, come from almost two hundred countries around the world (Department of Education and Skills, 2017), and this rich tapestry of diverse cultures and languages is fully represented in the schools (OECD, 2018). This situation poses immense challenges for the school leaders to ensure equity of participation and education success for all. Schools around the globe are collaborating with agencies and other schools to take collective actions for the improvement of teaching and learning and ascertain the provision of all services to students (Chapman, 2019; Muijs et al., 2010). Thereby making provision of services and improvement ‘the joint responsibility of the network, instead of that of single schools. Of course, in different countries, the degree of autonomy granted to individual schools or networks varies a great deal, as do the formal structures underpinning collective actions (Ehren et al., 2017, p.367). To explore the mechanism and capacity of the educational networks concerning intercultural education in Ireland, the present study was undertaken. This study is a part of a European Union-funded Project, entitled Intercultural Community-based Evaluation and Planning in Schools (ICCEP), that aims at devising an innovative system of quality assurance as well as educational governance that effectively and efficiently brings improvement in networked schools and provides requisite skill development training to the school leaders and sectoral support agencies for the enhancement of the life chances of migration background students in networked school communities. The following set of questions guide this research:

-         What different educational networks are the school participating in?

-         How are they governed and managed?

-         What student support activities are planned, implemented and evaluated through these   

           networks? 

-         How well are they facilitating the integration of migration background students in schools              and the wider community?

Theoretical Framework

ICCEP is a multidimensional concept that focuses on the provision of intercultural education in schools through inter-agency collaboration and community networking. It is about schools collaborating with each other and external agencies to deal with the challenges of ever-changing demographics of the schools due to global migration and ensure equity of opportunity, educational success and psychosocial well-being of all cohorts of students. According to O’ Hara et al. (2021), networking is vital to enhancing organisational capacity, be it schools or any organisation, whether in the public or private sector, as it results in the efficient use of resources, heightens the innovation capacity and leads to system-wide improvement. The development of educational networks or area learning communities though a new in the education sector has successfully been implemented in several education systems, for instance, Netherlands, Spain (Barcelona region), England and Chile to name a few (Chapman, 2019; Muijs et al., 2010; O’Hara et al., 2021). The creation of educational networks is indeed a symbiotic support system ‘when schools reach a certain quality threshold, they can further improve best through a coordinated, collaborative effort between clusters of schools and external agencies such as, for example, social services and training providers (Brown et al., 2020). The success of these educational networks relies heavily on the definite and shared purpose, open communication, collaborative working and trust that facilitates the flow of every form of knowledge within the network (Daly & Finnigan, 2010). 

The exemplars of educational networks have most often focused on acquiring or sharing resources, attaining collective goals, broadening opportunities, and provision of effective Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to teachers and staff for the better learning outcomes of the students. While, ICCEP stretches this practice further and incorporates joint planning, implementation and monitoring and ultimately joint evaluation of the network’s activities. 

The methodology used in this study is a multi-site case study research design because ‘a multi-site case study offers a means of understanding a practice or a programme via multiple representations of that phenomenon (Bishop, 2010). Additionally, evidence gathered through multi-site case studies is not just reflective of the context but is generally considered robust, compelling and instrumental while also holding broader applicability across settings (Herriott & Firestone, 1983; Jenkins et al., 2018). Five schools were identified keeping in vein with Stake’s purposive sampling to ascertain typicality, variety, accessibility, and opportunity for learning (2005). The selection criteria included geographical locations (rural/urban), educational levels (primary/post-primary) as well a high percentage of migration background students (at least 10%) to study varieties of practice. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with the principals, teachers with middle management function, parents, Home School Community Liaison Coordinators, School Completion Coordinators and Parents. Prior to deciding the interview protocol, guidelines and questions, an extensive literature review about educational networks and area learning communities developed to address psychosocial, health or other needs of students, which an individual school cannot provide was conducted. This review of literature helped the researchers in identifying the manifest constructs that guided the formation of the interview questions. The semi-structured interviews offered flexibility to the researcher to probe for more information and clarity and to the respondents to generate, clarify, elaborate and challenge the phenomenon under study (Blee & Taylor, 2002). These interviews intended at gaining information about the multiple stakeholders’ perspectives and networking or inter-agency collaboration practices in the schools. Data collected through interviews were initially analysed within-cases using deductive coding, followed by cross-case analysis to identify emerging patterns, commonalities and contradictions among five schools (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The deductive codes employed for within-case and cross-case analysis included: Examples of educational networks that schools are involved in, Network governance, Activities and measures, Sustainability of network (hindering and supporting factors), Support for children and young people with a migration/refugee background; Effects and evaluation of the networks; and Networking during covid-19. The within-case analysis comprised developing a detailed write-up for each school according to the focus of the research, followed by a cross-case analysis report.

Generally, the interviewees of this study spoke about several networks, both formal or informal, that their schools are a part of. Among the formal networks, they talked about Education and Training Boards, School Completion Programme (SCP, TUSLA Agency) and Home School Community Liaison or DEIS (Delivering Equality in Education in Schools) Programme while the informal networks included different sports services (Football Association of Ireland & Gaelic Athletic Association), National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), National Council for Special Education (NCSE), National Association of principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), Teachers Union, Local Community Centres, Local businesses and Charities. All the respondents reported the unavailability of any community programme that focuses exclusively on the support for migration background students. Among the abovementioned networks, the respondents referred to the SCP and the DEIS that they have some scope to facilitate inclusion of the migrant or refugee students if they belong to a disadvantaged background or meet the criterion for support. The overall governance of the formal networks, as mentioned above, is beyond the remit of school principals or the boards of management at schools, but the principals are responsible for making decisions concerning their schools and students. The management boards of the networks (SCP and DEIS) decide the activities that take place under the aegis of the networks, but how these activities are to be managed at schools is always a joint decision of the schools and the collaborating agencies. Broadly similar is the evaluation process of these collective community endeavours, for instance, in the case of the DEIS programme, Home School Liaison Coordinator manages the record of the parents contacted whereas, for School Completion Programme, principals of the primary schools and Guidance counsellors of the post-primary schools often manage the data of students completing schooling and moving to the next level of education.

Bishop, P. (2010). Multi-site case study. Encyclopedia of case study research, 2, 587-590.Sage Thousand Oaks, CA Blee, K. M., & Taylor, V. (2002). Semi-structured interviewing in social movement research. Methods of social movement research, 16, 92-117. Chapman, C. (2019). From hierarchies to networks: possibilities and pitfalls for educational reform of the middle tier. Journal of Educational Administration. DOI:10.1108/JEA-12-2018-0222 Department of Education and Skills. (2017). Languages connect: Ireland’s strategy for foreign languages in education, 2017–2026. The Stationery Office Dublin. Ehren, M. C., Janssens, F. J. G., Brown, M., McNamara, G., O’Hara, J., & Shevlin, P. (2017). Evaluation and decentralised governance: Examples of inspections in polycentric education systems. Journal of Educational Change, 18(3), 365-383. Jenkins, E. K., Slemon, A., Haines-Saah, R. J., & Oliffe, J. (2018). A guide to multisite qualitative analysis. Qualitative health research, 28(12), 1969-1977. Miles, M. & Huberman, A. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Source Book. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Muijs, D. Mel West, and Mel Ainscow. 2010.“Why Network. Theoretical Perspectives on Networking.” School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 21(1), 5-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243450903569692 OECD (2018), The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background: Factors that Shape Well-being, OECD Reviews of Migrant Education, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264292093-en. O’Hara, J., Shevlin, P., Brown, M., & McNamara, G. (2021). Educational networks: a key driving force for school development in a time of crisis and change. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 98). EDP Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20219802003 Stake, R.E. (2005). Qualitative case studies. In N.K. Denzin &Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.),The Sage handbook of qualitative research(3rd ed., pp. 443–466). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.