Cracking with affect: relationality in young people’s movements in and out of mainstream schooling

Abstract

This paper focusses on the schooling stories of two young women who moved from mainstream schooling into alternative learning program set up for Indigenous students and back into mainstream schooling to complete their Year 12 education. The manner in which these young women narrated their stories is understood through the prism of Indigenous notions of relatedness and affect theory and is as revealing as the actual reporting of the events and rationales in these young women’s schooling trajectories. Young people’s insights into the challenges of mainstream pedagogies and promises of relational pedagogies invite us to consider what could be different in structures and processes which aim to deliver educational equity. We argue there is a need for more research which offers rich accounts of the emotional and relational fields which underpin student subjectivities and engagement.

Keywords:

• ethnography
• identity
• inclusive education
• indigenous issues
• inequality/social exclusion in education
• language - culture - pedagogy
• qualitative research methods

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support and insights of community elders, Dr Gareth Jenkins and Dr Margaret Raven, who helped us access the young people and understand their worlds.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Skattebol

Jennifer Skattebol conducts policy-relevant research with respect to children, young people and their families in contexts of disadvantage. She has expertise in the design of methodologies which are sensitive to the politics of marginalisation, and in incorporating educational and capacity-building elements in research design.

Debra Hayes

Debra Hayes’s main area of research is equity in education, especially as it is influenced by pedagogical and leadership practices.