The cultural brokering power of social pedagogy in education for Roma students

Abstract

Throughout history, people have concerned themselves with how people can live and work together in an inclusive society that encourages cooperative and productive bonds. This question is highly relevant in contemporary society that is characterized by growing migration and social differentiation. One, maybe obvious, solution is to provide people the opportunity to participate in education, creating conditions for a more inclusive society. In that context, questions are often raised about the relation between education and integration of immigrants. Social pedagogy aims to combine educational and social interventions. This study takes place at a school for adult Roma students and the aim is to identify and explain social pedagogical strategies with respect to inclusion processes. The results show how theoretical foundations of social pedagogy works as a ‘facilitator’ and guide the teachers’ actions. By taking cultural belonging into account, shed light on issues relating to learning processes as well as mobilization and inclusion.

Keywords:

• Education
• exclusion/inclusion
• immigration
• social pedagogy

Introduction

In Europe, politicians and educators often raise questions about society’s role in educating immigrants and people with a foreign background. These questions are highly relevant as contemporary society is characterized by growing social and educational differentiation. Schools often struggle to provide students opportunities to participate in various communities and to create conditions for a more inclusive environment. An inclusive school provides all students, irrespective of their ethnic and national background, equal educational opportunities. When minority students are not provided the same education as majority students, they will not have the same opportunities to participate fully in society (McGinnis 2015).

Several studies (Blakeslee 2015; Hilburn et al. 2015) have demonstrated that a good education is the primary way to gain knowledge, socioeconomic mobility, self-actualization, and power in a so-called democratic and meritocratic society. Clearly, if pedagogical strategies do not mobilize immigrants and minority students, these students will risk facing structural barriers with respect to their political, personal, and economic lives (Blakeslee 2015). These barriers include legislation, curriculum, and educational practices designed to physically, intellectually, and socially restrain students, and these conditions make it easier for educators to avoid engaging diversity and rectifying inequities. In the end, rectifying these exclusive practices is a matter of pedagogy.

In this situation, several scholars (Blatchford et al. 2003; Eichsteller and Holthoff 2012; Smith and Whyte 2008) argue that social pedagogy has a theoretical and practical capability for understanding and handling such issues, as it emphasizes the importance of community in the educational process, and the strivings to help disadvantaged individuals through education.

This study analyses how a school in Sweden that has an outspoken social pedagogical profile and primarily educates adult immigrants and minorities, especially Roma, uses social pedagogical strategies to help students confront and resist inequities, negotiate cultural identities, and enact agency. These students generally often feel themselves excluded from educational settings and society (SOU 2010, 2017). The purpose of this article is to gain an understanding of social pedagogy as it is perceived by teachers at a school where social pedagogy is an outspoken common ground. Given the current integration patterns, I argue that understanding practical social pedagogical strategies with respect to inclusion processes is crucial for theoretical development and for improving immigrant conditions and opportunities. The following research questions are addressed: What do staff at a school se as relevant aspects of social pedagogy in inclusion processes? How are these social pedagogical strategies distributed individually and jointly in a school context?

Background

Both Freire (1976) and Dewey (1963) argue that participation and integration in society is a result of the ability to adapt oneself to reality and have the capability and willingness to critically relate to and change the world. They also believe that if one loses the ability to choose, one will be forced to submit to the choices of others. According to Freire, knowledge is a way to develop the power to make decisions for oneself, and that is why education is important for all human development. If we do not become aware of this power, we risk leaving our fate to other people’s decisions, a wholly undemocratic state of affairs. From that one can argue that if people resign themselves to adapting to society’s norms rather than integrating their norms into society, then society will necessarily be less egalitarian. It is education, according to Freire (1976), that can provide the means for such integration, liberating people to pursue a more egalitarian society.

Over the last several decades in Europe the enrolment of recent immigrants and minorities in public schools has rapidly increased. A growing body of research focuses on how to integrate immigrants and minorities and how social services, such as education, encourage acculturation and integration (Alba and Foner 2014; Morales and Giugni 2016; de Vroome, Martinovic, and Verkuyten 2014).

As an initial and critical point of contact for immigrants and minorities, education systems in these contexts must adapt to serve these growing populations. This article unpacks practical social pedagogical strategies in the context of education for adult immigrants and minorities. Building on established definitions of social pedagogy, this article aims to explore the particular forms of social pedagogical strategy relevant to this demographic change.

Much can be learned about how immigrants and minorities seek agency through education and how educators can facilitate rather than block this endeavour (Obondo, Lahdenperä, and Sandevärn 2016). There is also a moral imperative for educators to metaphorically cross borders, but in a way that they can leave their comfortable and privileged zones to better understand, engage, and justly serve diverse students (Blakeslee 2015). To facilitate learning about these issues, this article examines data from a Swedish school for adult immigrants, particularly Roma students. The school is chosen since it statistically has achieved good results in education for students that other schools often fail with in educational settings.

In addition to presenting a descriptive analysis of social pedagogical strategy and in light of the importance of environmental factors in educational change, this study ends by discussing implications for research and practice related to methods that support immigrants and minorities in their education and inclusion process. In this text, ‘immigrants’ refers to both immigrants born in another country and who immigrated to Sweden as well as first generation adults and their Swedish born children (second generation). Second-generation Roma youth usually speak and write both Swedish and Romani and often have close ties to their parents’ home countries and cultures.

Social pedagogy

The concept of social pedagogy, first developed in the nineteenth century, was seen as an alternative to the accepted pedagogy of the day. This new concept focused on the individual in the milieu of the school setting. Furthermore, social pedagogy became a response to the needs that arise when a society faces major changes that affect the relationship between the individual and society (Jarning 2006). Just this relationship implied the need of a societal pedagogical strategy to prevent social exclusion and marginalization. This preventive strategy was intended to decrease the risk of the society becoming fragmented, a condition that inevitably would lead to isolation of certain groups. Therefore, social pedagogy can be said to be an integration concept that not only focuses on education but also on the community writ large.

Natorp (1854–1924) believed that social pedagogy should focus on the social conditions that improve people’s lives and encourage social life. When Natorp made these observations, the main concern was human communities. In this context, social pedagogy concerns itself with a larger social structure and emphasizes factors concerning individuality and demands for equality and justice regarding participation in division of labour, politics, and social life management. This focus requires examining the existing and developing actors, structures, and the socio-economic conditions that influence education and community building (Kurtén-Vartio 2005; Lorenz 2008; Madsen 2006; Mathiesen 2000; Winman and Eriksson 2010). This social aspect is a fundamental concept of social pedagogy as social pedagogy concerns itself with resolving the social problems associated with integration issues. In addition, social pedagogy attempts to reshape society by providing strategies based on justice and equality that encourage social inclusion and mobilization.

A challenge as well as a point of departure for social pedagogy is how to create pedagogy that encourages participation without coercion and without compromising a person’s own uniqueness. Paulo Freire (1976), for example, argues that integration is a result of the ability to adapt oneself to reality and have the capability to critically relate to and willingness to change the world. Freire also believes that if people lose their ability to choose, they will be forced to submit to the choices of others. But to develop knowledge, according to Freire, is also to develop the power to make decisions. This autonomy is why education is so important for human development. If people are not aware of their inherent power, then they risk being manipulated by others, the people who will make decisions for them. Therefore, Freire believes that education is key for the development of an egalitarian society.

Roma people in Sweden generally have lower levels of education compared to the majority-population (Eklund Karlsson et al. 2013; SOU 2010). Even though Roma people themselves have identified education and employment as key elements for participation on equal terms in society, they have often been treated as a helpless group in need of expert help and action from others (Eklund Karlsson et al. 2013). However, from a social pedagogical perspective, mobilization of groups of people, such as Romas, should derive from their own norms and traditions, rather than from norms and traditions that are perceived as unilateral demands from the non-Roma society.

The basis of social pedagogy can thereby be said to be an integrative concept, a social pedagogy, and is therefore not only an educational idea, but it has strong ties to community development. Consequently, social pedagogy cannot be separated from understandings of the preconditions for what is considered as a good society, social development and social wellbeing. So it is reflected, and reflects, differently in different social orders, political systems and cultural structures. As Hämäläinen (2012) argues, social pedagogy has been discussed and conceptualized in education primarily in reference to societal life, welfare and culture.

In Sweden, like in the other Nordic countries, social pedagogy has been developed largely in the context of the professional social care system and the welfare model (Hämäläinen 2012). Since the nineteenth century, social pedagogy has been seen as an alternative to contemporary more accepted pedagogy in Sweden, since it had a more defined individual-focus that mainly characterized school.

Smith and Whyte (2008) argue that while political actions strive to effect the external elements of society, such as structures, institutions and legislation, social pedagogy aspires to change society by influencing the personal in society: citizens, morals and culture. And while some education theories has a point of departure in cognitive perspective, social pedagogy complement these theories with a social dimensions of human acting. This puts relations as central in social pedagogy from both a theoretical and a practical perspective, which involves elements of personal development, identity construction and human growth from both teacher and student. Social pedagogy can then be seen as both assisting and overcoming social problems and obstacles to progress.

About the school

The immigration of Roma people in Sweden has increased the last decade but Roma is not a new group in Sweden and neither can they be seen as a homogeneous group. Already in 1512, Roma are mentioned for the first time in Sweden. Approximately 50 000 live in Sweden and since 2000, Romani has been recognized as an official historic minority language in Sweden.

Roma history is both internationally and nationally marked by marginalization and discrimination and Roma people are overrepresented concerning illiterate which has to do with established structures and processes that often has reinforced exclusion as historically rooted prejudices still thrived (Cederberg 2004). There are probably many cooperative factors that contribute to exclusion, but a prerequisite for social inclusion and mobilization is education and knowledge.

The school where the data collection took part started in 2007 with government subsidies, and is the first school in northern Europe focusing on Roma. The school includes a preparatory middle school and a high school. There are about 200 students who all are between 18 and 51 years old, whereof 70% are Roma and the others are immigrants with similar living conditions as the Roma, which means they live in socio-economic disadvantaged areas. In 2015, the students represented 17 nationalities and spoke 14 different mother tongues, and 16 were born in in the country. Two of those who were born in country had the national majority language as a mother tongue. Several of the students had never been to school before, and the average previous school experience was 5.5 years.

The school principal is Roma and there are 11 teachers, whereof four are immigrants and four are Roma. Such self-ascribed ethnic and cultural identification is of course not always accurate; nonetheless, in this study the teachers themselves decided to claim and categorize their ethnicity.

Since 2012, all staff participates in monthly held seminars about social pedagogy, where different speakers from the outside the school are invited. The seminars are between 1 and 2 h and have different topics within a social pedagogical framework. The seminars are usually divided in one lecturing part with a following discussion part where questions, comments, etc. are often a way to contextualize the topic of the day. From these seminars, they have focused on four elements in their educational work: Participation, Mobilization, Acknowledgment, and Inclusion. The school’s outspoken philosophical foundation is that they see education as a way of empowering marginalized groups where social pedagogy approaches theoretical and pedagogical tools to emphasize cultural identity in terms of language, history, customs, and traditions. A challenge and simultaneously a point of departure for the school is how to create a social pedagogical process that encourages participation without coercion and without compromising people’s uniqueness.

Method

All the teachers and the principal were asked to participate in the intervention, and were given oral and written information about the aim. They were also guaranteed confidentiality and informed that, without further explanation, they could withdraw their participation. They were also informed that all data, recorded and written material, would be codified and handled carefully, and that it would remain strictly confidential and used solely for research. The principal and nine teachers agreed to participate in the study. However, two of the teachers were sick at the time for the interviews, which ended in interviews with the principal and seven teachers, who all had significant work experience.

The participants decided when they would be interviewed and that the interviews would be conducted at a study room at their workplaces. The interviews where carried out 2–3 per week in close conjunction to their working hours. All participants, the principal and the seven teachers were interviewed individually, and each interview lasted for about one hour and the audio was recorded. All interviews were based on a joint interview template that contained themes that focused on how the teachers perceived and coped with the professional demand to contribute to their students’ particular learning and pedagogical issues. The interviews concerned the pedagogical perspectives and processes of the teachers and the relationship between cultural identity, meaning making, and development of knowledge. Focus was directed on the pedagogical approaches the teachers perceived they needed to make sense of information for their students.

All of the audio recordings were transcribed on the same day or the following day. The transcriptions were read and reread to identify patterns in the language teachers used to talk about pedagogy, important skills, and learning processes, including how they rationalized their beliefs. Subsequently, the repeated analyses of the audio recordings focused on identifying how pedagogical processes were used to bridge different forms of knowledge and experiences and thereby link culture, perspectives, and ideas to the practice of teaching. Re-readings and notes in the margin of the transcriptions (Hammersly and Atkinson 1995; Silverman 2000) guided the further analysis to understand what can be regarded as a social pedagogical strategy.

The analysis of the interviews also tried to uncover how the teachers understood education for immigrants and minorities as an activity that provided an opportunity to adopt and develop pedagogical concepts for use in practice and how they perceived their ability to link theoretical concepts to new situations. This part of the analysis explored how the teachers viewed the purpose and practice of education in general as well as in their own classrooms, particularly the challenges they experienced in their classrooms. This approach was a way to move from mere descriptions of situations to more thorough understandings of why they made the pedagogical choices they made and how they implemented their pedagogical strategies. Finally, the study was presented at the school to ensure that all analyses where valid and that they could recognize themselves and the results, which they did.

Results

This study focuses on how the principal and teachers at a school use social pedagogy to respond to the needs of their students with respect to knowledge creation that encourages new learning pathways created to strengthen Roma institutional building and mobilization. All excerpts in the results were chosen because they represent patterns that were found in the analyses of the whole corpus of data.

Mobilizing cultural identities

The results show that there are some vital environmental factors that influence the educational strategies. Since it is impossible for any school to take all facets of a person’s life (history, thoughts, needs, etc.) into account simultaneously, it is a necessity to apply a set of categories to describe a person and his or her situation (Järvinen and Mik-Meyer 2003). At the school, people are transformed citizens in a broad perspective to Roma, which allows, or even demands, the school to process people in certain ways. The transformation is on the one hand crucial and on the other hand a professional act, in where a person is processed, reduced and/or focused on as having some cultural needs.

Obviously, there is a problem when categorizing people as Roma or by national origin. By using terms such as ‘diversity,’ ‘immigrants’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, and ‘multiculturalism’, do we thereby claim that there are differences that are significant? Yes and no. (principal)

The principal and the teachers say that they have discussed this question several times and that they are conscious that categorization might be precarious. They came, however, to a conclusion that to categorize someone as Roma can be a type of prerogative; a way to increase Roma participation in Swedish society. They mean the categorization can be used to emphasize differences in the population, according to the principal and teachers. The discussions ended up in a statement that as long as an individual is entitled to be categorized as Roma in society, the school must also be able to make use of the Roma identity as a category. Such categorization, the teachers say, has no intrinsic value. Instead it forces the school to always take identification into consideration and make a marginalized position into a possible strength.

A presumption at the school is that the students shall both identify with, and feel confidence in their education in terms of language, history, customs, and traditions. (teacher)

As the quotation above indicates, there is an assumption that confidence in one’s own cultural identity makes it easier as a minority to interact with dominant norms and identities. Roma students who have knowledge about Roma culture and language can better integrate into Swedish society. From this standpoint, it seems like the main goal with categorizing people as Roma is to facilitate an adaption to the surrounding society.

However, even though all teachers share the basic values ​​of inclusiveness, cultural diversity, cultural rights, social mobilization, cultural recognition, and social inclusion, none of the interviews reflected on the diversity of methods to reach the same goal. Categorizing people and actions through categories is, as said, a professional act but as Beyea (1999) argues, since professionals act and speak through scientific and administrative institutionalized categories, there needs to be a mutual understanding about their (the categories) meaning and what they imply. As Mehan (1993) says, in an ambiguous world, categorization helps to bring clarity to objects, events, people etc. according to the way they are used and have been communicated through history. Sacks (1992) argues that a great deal of the professional knowledge is stored in categories that allow professionals to use and develop a terminology to talk about complex and temporal properties of work. To develop professional knowledge implies getting more and more familiar with the categories that apply to activities within the setting. Therefore, to not collectively reflect and critically discuss categories increases the risk for disruption and misconceptions.

The activity-aspect that came up during the interviews is tantamount to Mäkitalo (2002) and Säljö (2013), who argue that categorization is often bound to activities and thereby also constitutes phenomena that become conducive to a social practice. That means that categories and categorizing often are used to organize and coordinate work and professional skills.

What is interesting is that no aspect of power was mentioned during the interviews, such as of asymmetric relationships. The risk of ascribing people positions and characteristics did not come up either. There might, however, still be a reason to problematize whether the division into different groups (i.e. Roma and non-Roma) poses problems or creates opportunities to change relationships with the surrounding community and especially an individual’s social positions, affiliations, and identities.

Culture, learning and social pedagogy

According to the data, it is important for the school to convey traditional subjects such as language or mathematics as well as to see all education in a wider perspective. The pedagogy at the school will, according to the teachers, emanate from a social pedagogical approach where:

..concepts such as participation, mobilization, cultural identity, language, and cultural acknowledgement are cornerstones in our educational concept. (teacher)

The teachers mean that from a social pedagogical perspective, it is important to be aware of how the treatment of students influences how students perceive themselves, for example, as competent or incompetent. That means that all courses should involve culture, aesthetics, and philosophical thinking and from that encourage students and teachers to discuss social issues.

Furthermore, as one of the teachers noted,

In this way we see learning not only on the individual level, but also on the group level // the mobilization of a group of people who largely have remained outside the traditional educational system. (teacher)

From its beginnings, the school prioritized some basic values concerning equality, gender, and ethnicity. The gender perspective is seen as important for breaking and changing historical hierarchies, so gender is, according to the interviews, highlighted and discussed in all educational programmes.

Gender patterns are considered in all processes from admissions of students to the accomplishment of the education. In addition, the gender dimension has permeated recruitment of staff as well as the design of the physical and social environment. (the principal)

All teachers stated that the main goal of the school is to offer students an education that serves as a basis for the students’ development and continued participation in society, or as one of the teachers says:

The groups I have met as a teacher consist of individuals of different genders, religions and social classes. // But despite that, I would not say that the group’s culture or ethnicity is the strongest ingredient of their identity, instead there are other nuances related to gender, class, religion and personal experiences to make.

The teachers argue that from a social pedagogical perspective, gender is a social pattern where men are the norm, which means that men are socially superior to women. They also see that such a pattern tends to be re-created so that women occupy a subordinate position in society, if it is not problematized and discussed. Class, some teachers argue during the interviews, is another aspect of equality in which today’s society is organized into classes based on citizens’ financial assets that affect the ability to influence society and peoples’ own lives.

Equality is another subject that is often discussed at the school; involving issues of sex education, equal treatment of boys and girls, culture and domestic violence. To encourage women to participate in the discussion of such topics in the men’s presence is a challenge that the teachers say they meet sometimes, especially in groups where most the participants are men. However, just as belonging to a group can constitute security, the same belonging can actually create an obstacle, says one of the teachers.

In discussions about e.g. equality, the students often look to other members of their group to seek confirmation and support. One can say that the group constitutes a social control but at the same time, the group is a support, depending on how you want to deal with it.

A successful strategy for the teacher is to talk about general rights and equality principles, the historical development of equality in the nation, children’s rights and the welfare state. The teacher motivates that strategy with that it usually leads to new insights and understanding of such concepts that can easily be perceived as difficult to talk about from a Swedish discourse. Having the courage to tackle the dilemmas, obstacles and possibilities and creatively and with respect for others, set up developing learning processes, is one of the most important aspects of working with social pedagogy, according to the data, or as one of the teachers argues:

There may be a we-they-thinking in group discussions towards other cultures which I think originated in that many students have grown up in nations based on the idea that all citizens of a country are united around a common national culture and identity // our students can learn to respond to opinions that differ from their own values without being prejudiced and discriminatory.

In society gender, class and culture occur almost in interaction with each other and intolerance for inequality is most virulent in areas where cultural differences coincide with class differences. This however, cannot be dealt with as a problem, says the principal. From their social pedagogical standpoint they do not see it as something static, but as something to work with and thereby be turned into an opportunity for development and mobilization.

The pedagogical process

How knowledge is developed and mediated at the school is a central issue at the school. The school’s pedagogy is based on what they themselves call emancipatory relationships where the Roma community is recognized as marginalized from certain social arenas. The pedagogical process at the school is related to Natorp’s (1854–1924) belief that social pedagogy should concern itself with a larger social structure, and it emphasizes factors concerning individuality and demands for equality and justice regarding participation in division of labour, politics, and social life management.

To encourage participation, the teachers say that they try to emphasize motivation, commitment, and personal responsibility for learning. They want their students to recognize and respect each other’s differences. Further the teachers argue that in part, this recognition can be promoted by helping students develop their capacity of critical reflection and by helping them manage the complexities associated with studying and their future professional life.

Our idea is that by raising awareness for the student’s own abilities and own responsibilities, based on the student’s own experiences, their own identities change and develop. This identity development is aimed as a change in self-perception, tolerance, understanding, and respect for people’s differences, which has implications for a student’s own perception of Roma identity as well as for society’s perception of the Roma. (teacher)

The social pedagogical process is thereby seen as a way to develop and strengthen the students’ ability to work both individually and in groups. In this way, the teachers see the pedagogical process as a way to integrate various aspects of the problems, challenges, and areas of knowledge. According to the interviews, the overall philosophy of the school rests on a simple concept: teaching students how to learn. That is, the teachers present material in a way that the students can grasp the content using the students’ unique experiences, their context. In this manner, the social pedagogical strategy is to mobilize students to take responsibility for, and control over, their own learning:

By starting from the students’ individual needs and resources and by altering different working methods I am sure that students gain a deeper understanding and a grasp of their own learning. (teacher)

The school’s overall philosophy should, according to the principal, be characterized by a humanistic and democratic vision where the individual’s own abilities are emphasized and developed through respect, dialogue, and discussion in a way that supports the learning of subject knowledge as well as values. Students must know and feel that they have the support of all teachers, but they should also understand that they have a responsibility for their own knowledge and personal development. At the same time, they must feel they have a shared responsibility for each other’s development, conditions that should be supported by the pedagogical strategies.

..such an approach does not mean the students are left to defend for themselves. On the contrary, this approach must be guided by us teachers with the ambition that the social pedagogical process gradually moves the student from being marginalized to being a strong, independent participant in society. (teachers)

The quotation above is tantamount to Dewey (1963) who argues that if knowledge is to have real meaning, it must also be useful. Based on such an approach, it is important to tie knowledge to the individual’s lived world and not to reduce knowledge to something that exists only in the framework of the school. Such an approach can be seen as a precondition for and a deepening of the social pedagogy put into action with respect to participation and engagement where students’ own abilities, resources, and skills are challenged and supported in the classroom. The assumption at the school is that if the students are encouraged to reflect on their own learning and their own abilities, individually as well as collectively, their education will reinforce the various forms of work and activities they will encounter in their future lives.

Culture and acknowledgement

According to Madsen (2006), a key aspect for working with education, inclusion, and spaciousness is acknowledgement, which emanates from Axel Honneth’s discussions concerning the importance of acknowledging the other as a unique person with his or her own value. That is in line with the results in this study where it involves everything from acknowledging the students unique life experiences in everyday classroom situations, to acknowledging Roma as an equal culture. Acknowledgement is thereby not seen as equal to ‘acceptance’, which instead is seen as based on authority where one party has the power to approve or disapprove the other.

At the school, identity is understood as a milieu of relationship building that conveys different degrees of acknowledgement and these acknowledgements directly affect how people understand their relationship with others as well as themselves. Education, and by extension inclusion, should acknowledge the diverse identities (e.g. ethnic and gender identities) in the classroom by:

..acknowledging the students as an independent and unique person//that is opposed to ‘approval’ that from my point of view is more or less based upon an authority where one party has the power to approve or reject another party, including how they identify themselves. (teacher)

Many of the teachers also say that they use their own experiences and knowledge to make a ‘bridge’ between the students’ different cultural perspectives with the objective to create a common multifaceted learning situation. However, one of the teacher argues:

…this must be a two-way process where the students’ different experiences are used to reach a common understanding of the situation. This pedagogical strategy aims to form a common understanding and has the student as its starting point. (teacher)

The purpose of such a pedagogical strategy is that the teaching and inclusion activities undertaken will then be transformed into new connotations and communicated further in the next activity:

That [acknowledging] is an example of how different resources are used in the classroom, where differences become a resource instead of an obstacle. (teacher)

Everybody’s memories, experiences, and knowledge of similar problems may be a shared recourse to create new understandings in learning processes. A challenge and simultaneously a point of departure for the pedagogy at the school is to encourage students to participate without coercion and without compromising people’s own uniqueness. Instead, the intention is to empower everybody.

We strive for [social pedagogical] learning processes where cultural and social experiences are resources, not something negative, and we believe that learning is an integral aspect of all student activities. (principal)

Thus, learning is seen as inevitable and when students participate in a variety of social practices, learning takes place both within and between different communities of practice. Because the majority community is not usually integrated but rather adapted, pedagogy can promote an egalitarian society:

…we see it as that the spoken language is an expression both to co-speak and co-think, which makes it essential in our approach to learning, cognition, and action. (principal)

That is, interaction and conversation in and about situated social practices become important for learning and it is partly through these that students learn, but also that it is through these that they ‘learn to learn’. Speech then is seen as a collective and developed resource that precedes thinking. The words are seen as both a way of learning and a consequence of learning. It also means that language is relative to the context in which it arises and is used, making language a substrate for both cognition and learning.

Discussion

Several scholars (Blatchford et al. 2003; Hämäläinen 2015) argue that the concept of social pedagogy is ambiguous and difficult to explain and more or less elusive. However, theoretically and philosophically there are some common denominators, such as the interconnection of social and educational processes and the interest in opportunities to empower and mobilize marginalized groups through education can be identified. As seen in this study, social pedagogy can be used as a tool or a force to alleviate social exclusion through education. Moreover, the education is contextualized more or less from an inclusiveness-perspective and consciously elected to support student’s social integration, participation and active citizenship.

From the results it is reasonable to argue that what is distinctive with social pedagogy is its interest in how the relationship between individuals (marginalized) and society (majority) should be organized from the point of view of education. This relationship is to a large extent characterized by its focus on the social opportunities for individual’s development into active citizenship. And as the principal says ‘One of the major goals at the school is to support the students’ movement from a marginalised position to a more central and active participation in community life’. One can say that from a social pedagogical perspective, education is believed to serve a wider purpose – to compensate and equalize social inequalities. Dewey (1963) argued that education could serve a wider purpose than individual learning; that is, education can compensate and equalize social inequalities by reducing social gaps and inequalities. Moreover, Dewey claimed that if knowledge is to have real meaning, it must also be useful. Based on such an approach, it is important to tie knowledge to the individual’s lived world, not reducing knowledge to something that exists only in the framework of the school.

That is tantamount to Eriksson (2011) and Lorenz (2008) who mean that social pedagogy can be used as a social education strategy that aims to reduce social gaps and inequalities. Also, Hämäläinen (2015) argues that in social pedagogy attention is often paid to the social preconditions of human growth and to the pedagogical opportunities for development. From that follows what might distinguish social pedagogy from other disciplines or knowledge domains, which is the interest on the individual and society and the relations between them.

It is reasonable to think it is common that teachers in general do not have the same frames of reference as their ethnically and culturally diverse students simply because they are part of the dominate culture. At this school however, such a cultural gap is bridged within a social pedagogical approach by encouraging teachers to cross cultural boundaries, moving between different social worlds (cultural and social systems) to make information intelligible for students with different backgrounds and belongings, an approach that Akkerman and Bakker (2012) refer to as boundary crossing.

The idea of boundary crossing makes visible the complex efforts teachers use to move in and out of identities and experiences, so boundary crossing can be seen as bidirectional and dynamic. As boundary crossing involves both the teachers and the students, it draws attention to a range of relevant processes involved in integrating different types of experiences, cultures, and knowledge to be shared and learned in the school context. This boundary crossing is encouraged through the school’s pedagogical strategy, a strategy that appeals to the students’ ethnic and cultural identities where differences between groups can be transformed into tools to gain active participation in community life.

The study makes visible what the practically oriented dimension of social pedagogy at the school is, which is influenced by different political ideologies and interests. The school is of course also discursive, meaning that teachers and students have to relate to it in some way. The school’s mandate, methodology, and ideology help define its culture through communicative cultural acts expressed, in part, through its pedagogical processes. The same is, of course, true for the students; they also belong to their own cultures, including ethnic, social, gender, and even student cultures. This amalgamation of cultures means that the social pedagogical processes strive to help students develop a common base of information, whereby the world can be understood, a goal that characterizes much of the activities at the school.

The school’s discourse can be seen as learned by its members through a process of socialisation where new teachers are both integrated and assimilated into their role. That is, organizational discourse functions as a positive reinforcement of effective working practice that upholds continuity as well as a method of avoiding less effective measures. Adapting to a role is thereby a way teachers develop strategies and competence in relation to what is or what will be considered professional knowledge, validating the values of an organizational member and as such re-inscribing the organization’s assumptions (Schein 1992). Such an adaptive process highlights the relationship between individual learning and the social situations where learning occurs for the teachers. As the results in this study reveals, such an approach helps teachers see and understand learning in the workplace as a process through which one appropriates what is valued in a culture and in turn contributes to that culture.

Neither students nor teachers can function at their best under circumstances that are not ‘safe and supportive’ for learning. Thus being able to identify stress-provoking factors in an intercultural learning environment and knowing how to alleviate them can be a vital way to improve the overall quality of teaching in pluralistic classrooms. I find it important for the school organization to pronouncedly encourage and clarify the teachers’ ability and responsibility to let their experience and uniqueness be fortified in the same way the pedagogical strategies of the school encourage the students’ experiences and uniqueness. Otherwise there is a risk that adaption to the school’s set-up culture will be impedimental or even discouraging.

It is impossible for a school, to take all facets of a person’s life, their history, thoughts, needs, concerns, and circumstances into account simultaneously. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a set of categories in order to describe people and their situations in ways that are relevant to the school’s obligations and routines. In education, citizens are transformed daily to students, a condition that allows, or even demands, schools to process people through the institution. This change of perspective in school, from a citizen to a student perspective, is a crucial professional act. That is, a person is processed, reduced, and/or focused on as having some learning needs. To categorize people as Roma or immigrants means that even one more category is supplied. There is a risk that dividing people into ethnic groups may signal that differences are static and ‘given by nature’ (de los Reyes, Molina, and Mulinari 2002). This ‘given by nature’ is problematic since ethnic categories are often used as a way to exclude people from society.

This potential to exclude puts great demands on the teachers to embrace their cultural broker capacity in their pedagogical competence, so they can function as a cultural broker who thoroughly understands different cultural systems and has the capability to interpret cultural symbols from one frame of reference to another. Otherwise, there is a risk that they, in opposition to their intent, will manifest cultural incompatibilities or shortcomings instead of bridging or establishing links across cultures in ways that facilitate learning and mobilize processes. That presumes, just like Otto, Polutta, and Ziegler (2009) argue, that social pedagogy characterizes as being a ‘reflexive profession’. From the results in this study that means that the reflexive process needs to consider, emerge and challenge at the intersection of organizational culture, professional experiences, theoretical espousals and the students’ and society’s conditions and feasibilities.

Conclusions

Previous research has identified dilemmas concerning education and integration of Roma people. As seen in this study, social pedagogy has the potential to benefit the Roma students to support immigrants and minorities in their education and inclusion process, which of course is beneficial for the whole society. But if learning is seen as a social activity a preconditions is that teachers encourage students to participate in and take responsibility for their own processes of participation in social practices. Mobilization and the willingness to participate in the collective is a key aspect to successful education. Knowledge can be seen as personal, but also as manifested and shared among people sharing in activities. Such processes, however, can never be understood outside of a specific context or contexts. On the contrary, context is here understood as an integral aspect of practices and activity systems that become an identifiable whole where one acts. As such, there are no neutral contexts as processes are always situated and can only be understood within the activity system they are a part of. It is in this interaction between human and context, between theory, methods and practice that further research and development of social pedagogy is needed.

By boundary crossing, shared identities across differences can be constructed that constitute a particular kind of education and integration work, which I see as central for social pedagogy. This does not mean that schools should produce sameness, but rather affirm and organize for the potential strength in difference. That can be performed by defining a category at the school that emphasize cultural belonging in terms of language, history, customs, and traditions, in which the students could position themselves. Thereafter one needs to signalling the openness of this category to all students, which can be done by introduce actions and procedures, or referencing discourses and symbols that are familiar to the students and thus potentially meaningful for education and integration. So instead by and by emphasizing obstructive differences, one can highlighting characteristics that group members share (at least putatively) that encourages participation without coercion and without compromising people’s uniqueness.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.