Welcome to the first issue of Volume 41 of Pastoral Care in Education.
In his January 1944 State of the Union address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that the US needed a Second Bill of Rights, given that the existing Constitution and Bill of Rights had proved ‘inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness’. In calling for the post-war establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before, Roosevelt invoked the importance of security and liberty which were dependent on economic wellbeing:
We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure … We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Among the eight rights proposed by Roosevelt was ‘the right to a good education’ and it is as incontestably important today as it was then, but that right to a good education is also necessarily bound up with other rights which include the ‘right to a useful and remunerative job’, ‘the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation’, ‘the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health’ and ‘the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment’. Roosevelt concluded that the US nation must move forward together to implement these rights and towards ‘new goals of human happiness and well-being.’
As we continue to struggle with the current cost of living crisis, rising food and energy costs, high inflation and interest rates, compounded by continued underinvestment in public services, the importance of school-based pastoral care is more evident than ever before. In the series of six articles in this current issue, researchers from across the world explore a range of innovative pastoral approaches which seek to promote the pastoral wellbeing of our children and young people. Almost 80 years on from Roosevelt’s address, it is all too apparent that we still have too many ‘necessitous’ children and young people from ‘necessitous’ homes and communities across the world, whose wellbeing is threatened. Nonetheless we can perhaps draw encouragement from the many committed educational practitioners whose unsung efforts (reflected in the following articles) continue to make a tangible difference to children’s lives.
In the opening article of this issue, Sean-Jason Schat describes a constructivist grounded-theory study exploring Canadian adolescent perceptions and experiences of what the author describes as educational care (as offered to them by their teachers), a term similar to the British concept of pastoral care in schools. Schat identifies a total of 13 categories of teacher behaviours from his analysis of the interviews with the adolescents, from which he proposes 3 dimensions of educational care: the personal dimension (teacher actions that communicate that the teacher cares for the student as a person), the pedagogical dimension (relating to care for the student as a learner) and, perhaps most originally, the interpersonal dimension (which relates to care for the student as a member of the class community). The study also highlights the pre-eminence of ‘care communication’, in which, as one of the adolescents commented, ‘everything a teacher does is care communication.’
This is followed by a study of early school leaving and trauma-based education in four European countries (Malta, Austria, Ireland and Italy). In this article, Rachel Spiteri, Mollie Rose O’Riordan, Carmel Cefai, Grainne Hickey and Stephen Smith explore the use of trauma-sensitive practices in second chance education using an online questionnaire to collect data from 249 educators. Although there is variation between countries, typically second chance education systems adopt person-centred approaches to re-engage young people (often from socially disadvantaged backgrounds) with education through meaningful social, personal and academic experiences. The findings highlight educators’ reporting of high levels of trauma among the young people in second chance education, and a high level of perceived understanding of trauma among the educators. The study also discusses the importance of specialist training and the potential for secondary traumatic stress which educators may experience.
In the third article, Victoria Samuel, Chloe Constable, Emma Harris and Susan Channon report on the content development of a new universal school programme, the In-School Training in Emotional Resilience (InTER-ACT) programme which is based on the framework of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and aims to prevent and reduce mental health difficulties in schools. The article charts the process of content development, delivery and evaluation (in light of pupil and teacher feedback) of this school-based programme within the UK. Particular challenges are honestly discussed including the adaptation required to move from a one-to-one clinical intervention by health professionals to a programme suitable for a universal application across the school.
Evidence would suggest that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to an increase in loneliness in society. In our next article by Aimée Robyn Cole, Caroline Bond and Pamela Qualter, findings are presented from a study conducted during the pandemic which examined young children’s understanding and experiences of loneliness. Drawing on interviews with six Year 4 and 5 children (aged 8-10) in the north-west of England, the research confirms many existing ideas about childhood loneliness from previous quantitative studies, but offers new insights into the importance of play and friendship as buffers against loneliness, as well as greater understanding of emotional loneliness and the role of adults in providing support. Implications for post-lockdown recovery are discussed.
Professional curiosity can be broadly understood as the ability to explore what is happening within a family beyond accepting superficial appearances or making assumptions without supporting evidence. It is often understood within the context of understanding situations of suspected child abuse. In our fifth article, Katie Cramphorn and Emma Maynard examine the experiences of school-based non-teaching pastoral staff and their use of professional curiosity with and about parents in relation to safeguarding concerns. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of a series of seven semi-structured interviews, the study highlights the discomfort of practitioners in relation to the concept or practice of professional curiosity, which some but not all participants saw as part of their professional identity. The study also reports a wide range of emotional responses on the part of pastoral staff and the need for more consistent systems of support.
In the sixth and final article in this issue, Amanda Simon explores the importance of Ethnic and Racial Identity within supplementary schools in the UK. Supplementary schools are non-compulsory schools that run outside of regular school hours and have been established and operated by community groups sharing religious beliefs, language and/or cultural traditions. They are typically run by Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) staff, representative of the communities they serve. Amanda Simon’s article uses data from 16 semi-structured interviews with supplementary school leaders to highlight the promotion of central components of Ethnic and Racial Identity (e.g. belonging and positive group identity) which, it is argued, contribute to the wellbeing of students.