Both parts of this symposium address the professional challenge rapid new-deregulations of laws and standards, freeing people of human-rights (neoliberalism), have created systemic injustice, and the widest gap between the poorest and the richest since World War II. Mistrust leads to students, more than willing to work hard, dropping out of school without them or their families knowing what to do to earn a living. Children and families turn to begging at the limits of poverty and are vulnerable to recruitment into regimes of Violence, Uncertainty, Chaos and Ambiguity.

To address the professional challenge in this first part of a larger symposium the following themes are addressed by perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including Iraq, Morocco, Palestine, and Syrian Refugees' experiences in Lebanon, Turkey and France of:

1. Authoritarian hierarchical top-down delivery of PISA driven curriculums in classrooms de-professionalize educators and administrators by removing their autonomy (Sahlberg, 2012). Reduced to transmitters of government ideology, teachers are prevented from culturally responsive lesson-planning using students’ baseline-assessments to inform differentiated learning-plans for success. This creates systemic injustice as students with the system's ‘right capital’ succeed and get richer and those without drop out of school to become beggars, or engage with risky business of trafficking of illegal goods and people, or  fail at school and, in any case get poorer. 

 2. Capital of disadvantaged students with intersectionalities of discrimination, assessed using deficit models, is found wanting. Students’ marginalised capital remains unrecognised and no differentiated lesson-planning creates pathways to curriculum Intended Learning Outcomes. Rather, they are segregated/streamed to Special Education Needs and Disability/lower ability classrooms with low expectations. This perpetuates patterns of illiteracy and prevents accessing knowledge of community-building to stop neoliberalism and systemic injustice implemented by power of a person, not power of the law.

Presenters offer culturally relevant responses to ways their Universities' Education Departments address the following question:

1. How and in what ways can University Schools of Education act as hubs to support a school to build a professional development community of practice.

Each partner of our symposium addresses the question and our themes step by step. 

Step 1 The intricate challenges posed by climate change exacerbated by war and forced migration, significantly impact impoverished families, perpetuating social injustice and impeding sustainable development. The symposium partners draw on Dewey's Professional Educators and Administrators Committees for Empowerment (PEACE) to build Participation, Experience, Association, Communication, and Environment. This theoretical foundation employing action research methodology throughout the curriculum design, delves into the multifaceted consequences of climate change, war, forced migration and reaching the limits of poverty. The adverse effects, such as irregular rainfall patterns, prolonged droughts, and heightened temperatures for nationals and for new arrivals, directly jeopardise agricultural productivity—the linchpin of rural livelihoods. Lacking resources and knowledge to navigate these challenges, impoverished families face heightened vulnerability, further exacerbated by limited access to crucial information,  technologies and transparent democratic policy for social justice. Consequently, children from these families often confront early school dropout, if schooling is even available, which amplifies cycles of poverty and social injustice. 

Step 2 Adapting ‘A Blueprint for Character Development for Evolution (ABCDE) to offer five stages drawing on social contract theory, to prepare teachers to recognise bias and reverse it when building community with teachers, students and families. 

Each partner incorporates diverse perspectives and community building using the frameworks and methodologies above, to reverse local inequality, and through powerful Higher Education networks, mainstream them in education systems to reverse g/local inequality.

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