Session Information
04 SES 02 B, Policy and Ethnic Diversity
Paper Session
Contribution
The educational and cultural challenge
Importantly, Travellers’ voices suggest that ICT is being mobilised by Travellers to ensure that their distinctive identities, cultures and lifestyles are acknowledged in educational debates. Gypsy and Traveller families in the UK do not comprise a homogeneous group, for example social networks resounded with families’ challenges regarding the views and lifestyles reflected in the TV series, ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. Unlike the families portrayed, many Gypsy and Traveller families who make up Scotland’s diverse Gypsy and Traveller communities, live mobile lifestyles; largely for employment reasons, but also to avoid racism. After reading online comments and reactions to the TV programme, a young Gypsy/Traveller boy asked his Mum, “Why do they hate us?” His question reflects Gypsies’ and Travellers’ shared experience of racism for ‘being a Traveller’.
Patterns of and reasons for family mobility vary from the well organised, advanced notice of arrivals and departures of circus and Show people to the more spontaneous mobility patterns of Gypsy/Traveller families for family, cultural and employment reasons. Any family’s mobility, e.g. Gypsy/Travellers, those in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, those seeking asylum and those seeking refuge from violence in the home, inevitably contributes to their children’s and young people’s experience of interrupted learning and inequalities in accessing educational opportunities open to peers who regularly attend school (Padfield, P. & Cameron, G. 2009). Thus regular attendance at school structures learners’ access to their entitlement to education. While all parents have a duty to ensure that their children receive an education that meets their learning needs, that duty does not mean that their children must attend school. While education authorities have a duty to provide education, in practice their duties apply to children and young people registered/recorded on a school roll.
Policy makers’ and practioners’ reactions to these challenges vary across the UK’s different education systems, however both education systems have drawn upon ICT to deliver distance learning as a means of overcoming the poverty of educational outcomes experienced by Travelling children and young people in the UK.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bancroft, A (2005) Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion, Avebury: Ashgate Press. Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York, Basic Books. Jordan, E. (2002). Partnership Approaches: new futures for Travellers. Addressing Difficulties in Literacy Development. J. Wearmouth, J. Soler and G. Reid. London, Routledge and Falmer: Chapter 8. Marks, K and Rowlands, M (2010) Home Access on the Move: Providing for mobile families NATT+, Leeds Marks, K. (2003) 'EFECOT: supporting the travelling tradition' in Bradley J (ed) The Open Classroom: distance learning in and out of schools. Kogan Page, London and New York Marks, K (2004) Traveller Education: changing times, changing technologies Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent. Marks, K (2005) 'Developments in supported distance learning' in Tyler C. (ed), Traveller Education: accounts of good practice. Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent. Padfield, P. & Cameron, G. (2009) Inclusive Education for Children and Young People with Interrupted Learning in Scotland in Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education, eds. Patrick Alan Danaher; Máirín Kenny; Judith Remy Leder. Padfield, P. (2006) Learning at a Distance Supported by ICT for Gypsies and Travellers: Young peoples' views, Research Report Scottish Executive Education Department Sponsored Research Programme.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.