Acculturation and religion in schools: the views of young people from minority belief backgrounds

This paper aims to explore the relationship between religious identity, acculturation strategies and perceptions of acculturation orientation in the school context amongst young people from minority
belief backgrounds. Based on a qualitative study including interviews with 26 young people from religious minority belief backgrounds in Northern Ireland, it is argued that acculturation theory provides a useful lens for understanding how young people from religious minority belief backgrounds navigate majority religious school contexts. Using a qualitative approach to explore acculturation theory enables an in-depth understanding of the inter-relationship between minority belief youth’s acculturation strategies and their respective school contexts. Similar to previous research, integrationist attitudes generally prevailed amongst minority belief young people in this study. The findings highlight how young people negotiate their religious identities in a complex web of inter-relationships between their minority religious belief community and the mainstream school culture as represented through peer and staff attitudes, school ethos and practices and religious education. Young people demonstrated differentiated understandings of acculturation orientations within the school context, which they evaluated on the basis of complex perceptions of educational policy, interpersonal relationships and individuals’ motivations. Findings are discussed in view of acculturation tensions, which arose particularly in relation to the religious education curriculum and their implications for opt-out provision as stipulated by human rights law.

Inclusion & the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Resource Base In Mainstream Schools: Physical Factors to Maximise Effectiveness.

As a society, we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive built environment. As part of the need to promote inclusion, there is now a growing trend to place pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) into a mainstream school setting. This is often facilitated by providing a specialist SEN resource base located within the mainstream school. If so, the following paper outlines why the whole school should be considered when locating and implementing a SEN resource base. It also highlights the wider opportunities for enhancing inclusion for SEN pupils if giving holistic thought to the wider context of the resource base. It then indicates a four-stage approach, using the ASD pupil as an illustrative example, to help evaluate the optimum SEN resource base location within a mainstream school setting. Finally it highlights in conclusion, some benefits and challenges for an enriched school environment for all pupils, if considering genuine inclusion.

Affective disruption: Walter Benjamin and the 'history' of Ireland's industrial schools

What role do organizations play in writing history? In this paper, I address the part played by organizations in the enactment of large-scale violence, and focus on the ways in which the resulting histories come to be written. Drawing on the case of Ireland's industrial schools, I demonstrate how such accounts can act to serve the interests of those in power, effectively silencing and marginalizing weaker people. A theoretical lens that draws on ideas from Walter Benjamin and Judith Butler is helpful in understanding this; the concept of 'affective disruption' enables an exploration of how people's experiences of organizational violence can be reclaimed from the past, and protected in a continuous remembrance. Overall, this paper contributes a new perspective on the writing of organizational histories, particularly in relation to the enactment of violence.