PARS 2021 Conference November 20th

PARS playwork – the pro-child profession

One year on from our first ‘experimental’ 2020 conference, we are very much looking forward to our second PARS playwork conference on International Children’s Day! John Bertelsen, the first playworker at Emdrup, talked about the importance of adults being ‘pro-child’ on adventure playgrounds, which gives us our theme for this year’s conference: PARS – the pro-child profession. In many ways this theme reflects the PARS journey over the last twelve months. As a result of the fantastic energy and support generated by last year’s conference, the growing international PARS community has spent the last 12 months working on the professionalisation of PARS. This means helping those outside the PARS community to recognise our distinctive approach to working with children as legitimate, by adopting a coherent set of shared values, methods, knowledge and practices, on both an individual and group level within the PARS community. This has included setting up administration and assessment teams, becoming an NCFE Award Centre, launching our new PPP4 NCFE accredited qualification and expanding our international training team to 19 PARS Licensed Trainers, working in 9 different countries and delivering PARS training in 5 different languages.

For PARS 2021 we’ve invited academic and practitioner experts from around the world to help us think more about two key questions for professionalising PARS playwork:

What does it mean to be ‘pro-child’?
What does it mean to be a profession?

Pars 2021 is 12 hours of fascinating approaches to these two questions from diverse practical and theoretical perspectives, from Iceland to Mongolia, from China to Russia, from USA to Australia, and an awful lot of places in between! We welcome anyone interested in the PARS approach to working with children to join us for….

Presentations from PARS practitioners and trainers around the world on how they are putting PARS into practice
Round table discussions on our key questions with expert academics, practitioners and policy makers
Presentations on the theory of being pro-child by international scholars in areas such as children’s rights, childism and historical perspectives on childhood.
Presentations on the practice of being pro-child by international scholars in areas such as reflexivity, risk-taking and the Play Cycle

…and much more! You can download the conference programme here and find out more about the sessions and individual speakers below.

PARS 2021 is an online, 12 hour conference and is open to anyone interested in the PARS playwork approach to working with children.

Our Speakers

Dr Jennifer Cartmel is an Associate Professor at Griffith University, Australia. Her academic research focus is with school-age childcare services. Jennifer completed the first PhD on the topic in Australia and continues to contribute expert advice to the sector.

Dr Jennifer Cartmel

Australia

Dr Marilyn Casely is Lecturer in Child and Family Studies in the School of Human Services and Social Work. Marilyn has extensive experience working with children’s services, and providing professional development for practitioners working in children’s services.

Dr Marilyn Casley

Australia

Dr Jennifer Wong-Powell is the Founder of JWP Consulting. There is an urgency to restore play in early childhood education, and this is what Jennifer is passionate about.

Dr Jennifer Wong-Powell

Mongolia

Kylie Branelly is the Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland Children’s Activities Network (QCAN) and Chairperson of the National Outside School Hours Services Alliance in Australia. Kylie has been involved in the Education and Care Services sector in various support, advocacy and leadership roles for more than 30 years.

Kylie Branelly

Australia

Martin van Rooijen

The Netherlands

Dr Keith Cranwell

Dr Linda Shaw

Susan Chlebowski is a certified Montessori teacher and forest school leader who studies and teaches research-based models of living and learning that honour a child's right to play and experience nature as part of a healthy, happy childhood.

Susan Chlebowski

USA

Professor John Wall is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Childhood Studies at Rutgers University Camden, US. He is a theoretical ethicist who researches moral life's relation to language, power, culture, childhoods, and children's rights.

Professor John Wall

USA

Ada Wong has 15 years experience of providing training in various kindergartens, professional bodies, tertiary institute, NGOs and government departments.

Ada Wong

Hong Kong

Rarni is an educational leader who spent most of her 26 year career working out of a school based service in South East Queensland, Australia.

Rarni Rothwell

Australia

Rebekah Jackson is a childcare, early years and playwork consultant and trainer with over 15 years of experience supporting the development of children’s childcare and out of school settings in both England and Wales.

Rebekah Jackson

QIAN Zheng (Caron) 钱铮 is the founder of the Shanghai Playwork Fund, Shanghai United Foundation.

Zheng Qian (Caron)

Mainland China

Dr Shelly Newstead created the PARS playwork model as part of her doctoral research at the UCL Institute of Education, London, and has been appointed as an Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University, Brisbane Australia.

Dr Shelly Newstead

Professor Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter is a Professor in the Department of Physical Education and Health at Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education (QMUC) in Trondheim, Norway.

Professor Ellen B. Sandseter

Norway

Dr Pete King is a senior lecturer and researcher at Swansea University and the programme director for the MA Developmental and Therapeutic Play course.

Dr Pete King

Andrew has been working with the Scottish Out of School Care Network (SOSCN), the national intermediary charitable organisation representing school-age childcare in Scotland, since 2001.

Andrew Shoolbread

Prof. Roza A.Valeeva

Russia

Doug is in his tenth year as General Secretary and Treasurer of the GFTU. He is the organisation's longest serving Executive member having first been elected to the EC in 1995.

Doug Nicholls

I have been married almost 26 years, have 4 kids and 2 grandchildren. I always knew I would be a teacher of some sort, but I never realized I’d do most of my learning from the children.

Heather Boomhower

Canada

Baptiste is a postdoctoral researcher at Université de Brest (France) working currently on residential school trips and outdoor education.

Dr Baptiste Besse-Patin

France

Kolbrún Þ. Pálsdóttir is Dean of the School of Education at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik. She works with her colleagues to create a vibrant educational community with young people who have a passion to become professionals and future leaders within formal and informal education settings.

Associate Prof. Kolbrún Þ. Pálsdóttir

Iceland

Peter Kraftl is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Birmingham.

Professor Peter Kraftl

Dr. Fikile Nxumalo is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her work is centered on environmental and place-attuned early childhood education that is situated within and responsive to children's inheritances of settler colonialism, anti-Blackness and environmental precarity. Her book, Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2019) examines the entanglements of place, environmental education, childhood, race, and settler colonialism in early learning contexts on unceded Coast Salish territories.

Dr Fikile Nxumalo

Canada

Rick Worch, Ph.D., is a professor in the Inclusive Early Childhood Education Program at Bowling Green State University in the United States.

Professor Rick Worch

USA

Janet Scott

Dr CHAN Po Lin, Pauline is a currently serving senior lecturer under the Early Childhood Education Department of The Education University of Hong Kong.

Dr Pauline Chan

Hong Kong

'Naomi is an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law

Dr Naomi Lott

Dr. Jonathan McCloud received his PhD in Curriculum & Instruction with emphasis on Educational Psychology from Virginia Tech in 2015. His research and teaching have included topics such as peer observation of teaching in higher education, play in educational settings, and early childhood education. Jonathan’s scholarly pursuits are linked by an expression of respect and care for the individual, and he is most interested in ways that play is fostered through democratic structures and agentive practices. Jonathan’s work with pre-service and professional educators focuses on how to reflect on one’s underlying assumptions of the teacher/adult role in the educational environment. Jonathan finds PARS playwork to be a natural extension of these pursuits as it aims to compensate children for the presence of adults in their time and space. Jonathan is a former classical guitarist and enjoys learning about Mister Rogers, cooking, and gardening. He also likes sunshine on his shoulders.

Dr Jonathan McCloud

USA

Grant Lambie is an independent free play advocate, who has been involved in over 45 UK adventure playgrounds, (plus schools, parks and estates play areas) over the last 20 years.

Grant Lambie

Professor Marianne Schüpbach is a chair in Primary Education at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Professor Marianne Schüpbach

Germany

Janine Dodge is currently a Director of the International Play Association (IPA) in Brazil. Formerly President, she has been guiding IPA Brasil in the development and expansion of their playwork training program since 2015. IPA Brasil offers the only certified Professional Qualification in Play Agents course in Brazil. She is a recognized speaker about play and coauthor of several publications, including the book, A Descoberta do Brincar ("The Discovery of Play"), documenting a national research initiative about play and the Brazilian family. Prior to joining IPA, Janine had a successful 20-year career as an executive and director in large multinationals in Brazil, Canada, the US and Chile. She has a degree in International Relations from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Schulich School of Business and is a certified Master Integral Coach. She is the proud mother of 3 teen-age children, Luc, Sabrina and Alec.

Janine Dodge

Brazil

“The first conference last year was really impressive and wonderful!”

Dr He MinNormal University, China

“I came away from the conference with a persistent internal dialogue surrounding openness and vulnerability as the possible birthplace for constant change and growth. This post conference mantra has stayed with me ever since prefixing my thoughts, decisions and managerial practice which was an unexpected but welcomed outcome.”

Ross PodymaDirector of Social Change, Sporting Communities CIC, UK

“My first PARS Playwork Conference absolutely blew me away! To be a small part of a large team of extraordinary people who are so passionate about the role they play within the playwork sector left me completely hooked to my laptop for almost the whole 12 hours. In an Out of School Club you can often feel you are 'out there on your own' but believe me when you listen to the speakers from around the world, their passion and knowledge in this ever changing world makes you feel a part of something much bigger and exciting. It also leaves you wanting to put the ideas and current practice from around the world into practice at your own setting.”

NicolaEnglish, Wasps Club, UK

“As with all things play, you always have to expect the unexpected and the PARS 2020 conference certainly delivered beyond my expectations. I found the conference very informative, exciting and I came away with new ideas and information which re-affirmed my belief in children’s play. I was reassured to know that they are still plenty of us out there who are continuing to promote the importance of children’s play and Article 31 of the UNCRC.”

Helen StephensonDevon County Council, UK

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Talking Circles

Her academic research focus is with school-age childcare services. Jennifer completed the first PhD on the topic in Australia and continues to contribute expert advice to the sector. Jennifer was commissioned in 2010 by the Australian Department of Education to write the first National Framework for School Age Care. Jennifer’s research contributes to increasing professionalisation across the school-age childcare workforce working closely with Australian state governments and peak associations (National Out of Hours Services Alliance) to deepen understanding about the features of delivering services to school age children.

Dr Jennifer Cartmel

Australia

Marilyn has extensive experience working with children’s services, and providing professional development for practitioners working in children’s services. Marilyn is a designer and facilitator of conversational processes and experiential learning programs. Marilyn’s research interests focus around using conversational processes to develop resilience, participatory skills and leadership with children and young people. Marilyn is also known for the development of pedagogical leadership and integrated practice in children’s and human services

Dr Marilyn Casley

Australia

Talking circles are designed to encourage children to ask questions about their social purpose and how they can make a difference. In the Talking Circle children explore and play with ideas and concepts through talking and listening. The ‘talking circle’ framework is characterised by ancient wisdom and systems thinking where shared learning spaces for diverse individuals are created in order for the group to build relationships and make the connections. This means individually share what each other knows so that together they can act as a ‘whole’ to co-create new opportunities and innovative ideas.

The facilitator provides the time and space for children to talk about the things that matter to them. The children are co-constructors of knowledge in partnership with the facilitator, giving them control over the agenda of the talking circle, which in turn, encourages them to become creators of their own future.

Jennifer and Marilyn foreground critical reflection as both a research approach and a tool for professional development. They received federal funding to develop a resource for workplace capacity building through critical reflection Leading Learning Circles for Educators engaged in Study and this is used in the children’s services sector. Simultaneously Jennifer and Marilyn to develop a resource to use with children, Talking Circles. In this presentation they will share the value of and the process for using Talking Circles with all ages of children.

The right to a bruise: connecting the work of Janusz Korczak to children’s risk-taking in play

Martin van Rooijen is a doctoral candidate at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and currently works as an independent pedagogue, researcher, consultant on nature play and as a writer and trainer. Since the 2000s he was a community worker for youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods and worked as a practicing playground worker and was the coordinator of the professional team in two ‘building playgrounds’ in the city of Utrecht. In 2013 Martin obtained his Master’s degree with honors in (Ecological) Pedagogy (MEd), with a thesis on ‘Parents and risky play’. His current research interests include risk-taking in children’s play, the resilience of children in outdoor environments and normative professionalism of pedagogues with children in their care. He is involved in Dutch networks on nature play and children’s play rights, and is member of the Dutch Korczak Foundation.

Martin van Rooijen

The Netherlands

In my PhD research I am investigating influencing factors on professional attitudes towards children’s risk-taking in play. Pedagogical foundations can play an important role in the beliefs playwork practitioners develop towards challenging play. I will introduce the principles of the Polish educationalist Janusz Korczak, a doctor in Poland at the beginning of the 20th century. He was known as a pedagogue and principal of an orphanage where he organized initiatives with children focusing on their responsibility. Korczak formulated several children’s rights, long before the United Nations did. One of these is the right of a child to his own death: ‘From fear that death will take our child away, we deprive our child his life; because we do not want it to die, we will not allow it to live’ (Korczak, 1984, p 50). This is not to take literally, Korczak state adult’s perception of risk in play may be based on fear, and sometimes they see dangers that are not there. We will discuss dilemmas on facilitating children’s risk-taking in play and how children’s rights and pedagogy can give playworkers a foundation to their daily practice.

Martin is appointed to the board of the International Journal of Playwork Practice, member of the Dutch branch of the IPA (International Play Association), member of the Special Interest Group Outdoor Play & Learning of the EECERA (European Early Childhood & Education Research Association) and has built up an international network towards the subject of ‘risky play’. Martin published articles in several Dutch professional journals and is co-author on the ‘Position paper on Risky Play’ in collaboration with the Dutch Consumer Safety Institute (2017). He also contributed on the discussion paper ‘Advancing Outdoor Play and Early Childhood Education’ from the Canadian Lawson Foundation (2019).

Disrupting Childhood: A playful hunt for childness in historical and sociology contexts

Dr Linda Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in child development and education at Oxford Brookes University. Linda teaches undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in childhood and youth studies, specialising in research methods and sociology of childhood. Her special interests are in poststructural feminism and the tensions between theory and practice in work with children and young people. Linda has a background in social policy, including ten years working as an advisor and project lead for a Local Authority in the English Midlands. She has carried out ethnographic studies in early years' provision, schools, out of school settings and holiday playschemes. Recent publications include Shaw, L. (2020). Play spaces as heterotopia. International Journal of Playwork Practice 5:1 https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/ijpp/ and Shaw, L.J. (2020) Imagining playwork using sociological perspectives from Mills, Foucault and Gordon. in King P. and Newstead S.(eds.) Further perspectives on researching play from a playwork perspective: process, playfulness, rights-based and critical reflection. London: Routledge.

Linda Shaw

Ambert (1986) commented on the near absence of studies on children in mainstream sociology. Since then, a number of key strands have emerged from historical and sociological research into children and childhood, specifically the concepts of childhood as a social construct; children as agents and structural approaches to children as citizens (Mayall, 2013). Drawing on PhD research from 2017 and an evolving interest in playwork as a ‘missing in action’ field for mainstream sociology, this paper examines the potential of post-structural and feminist paradigms for turning a critical lens on the importance of playwork in research which is pro-child in the sense of constructing children as active citizens who should have a voice in society, political decision making and matters pertaining to social justice. The methods used are primarily auto ethnographic, drawing on stories of play both contemporary and historical with the stated intention of disrupting thinking, including my own assumptions, about the role of research, researchers and dominant discourses in work and play with children and young people. Findings relate to the possibility of (re)viewing, by which I mean looking again, at children as a social group in their own right, with the same complex personhoods and intersectionality’s as groups of adults made visible by research and social activism. The aim is not to discount other ways of accounting for childhood but to make them more visible in order to consider new possibilities for enactments of social practices in spaces in which adults and children encounter one another.

Challenges and opportunities of after school education in Russia

Professor, D.Sc. of Pedagogic Sciences, Head of the Pedagogy Department at the Institute of Psychology and Education in Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University, Kremlevskaya 18, Kazan, 420021, Russia. Honored Scientist of the Republic of Tatarstan. Honored Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation. The President of Janusz Korczak Society in Russia, member of the Board of the International Korczak Association (IKA). She is the national representative in the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). Member of the Americal Educational Research Association. Editorial Board member of the Journal of Advances in Higher Education (JAHE). Review Editor in Teacher Education, part of the journal(s) Frontiers in Education. Editor in Chief of the journal Education and Self Development.
The first researcher of Janusz Korczak pedagogical ideas and practice in the former Soviet Union (PhD dissertation,1982). Her D.Sc. of Pedagogic Sciences Dissertation “Theory and Practice of humanistic education in the XXth century European Pedagogy” (1997) presents the analysis of the historical and theoretical foundations and guidelines for humanization of the educational process in school, contains the original concept of conditions for the realization of humanistic education. She is a well-known scientist in Russia in the sphere of humanistic education, the author of more than 300 scientific books and articles. E-mail: valeykin@yandex.ru

Roza A. Valeeva

Russia

Latest Publications

Gulnara F. Biktagirova a, Roza A. Valeeva a, Roman S. Nagovitsyn (2021) Reflexive Teacher: Main Difficulties of the Reflexive Activity of Teachers with Various Pedagogical Work Experience. European Journal of Contemporary Education. 10(1): 18-28. DOI: 10.13187/ejced.2021.1.18

Gafurov, I., Kalimullin, A., Valeeva, R., Rushby, N. (Eds.) (2020). Developing Teacher Competences: Key Issues and values. New York: Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 9781536182279

Valeeva, R. and Kasimova R. (2020). Supplementary education in Russia. In S. Bae, J. Mahoney, S. Maschke, & L. Stecher (Eds.), International developments in research on extended education: Perspectives on extracurricular activities, after-school programs, and all-day schools. Berlin: Barbara Budrich Publishers, pp.265-284. ISBN: 9783847423355

Valeeva, R.A. & Kalimullin, A.M. (2019). Learning To Teach In Russia: A Review of Policy and Empirical Research. In Tatto, M.T. and Menter, I. (Eds.) Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education: a Cross-National Study (pp. 193-213). London: Bloomsbury. https://books.google.ru/books?id=DsqFDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&q&f=false

Valeeva, R., & Kalimullin, A. (2019). Teacher education in Russia. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.446

Dr. Professor, Head of the Pedagogy Department, Institute of Psychology and Education, Kazan (Volga region) federal university, Russia

After school (supplementary) education of children as part of the Russian Federation education system has acquired its main characteristics only in the 90s of the past century. Supplementary education of children has grown from non-formal education, which has in its history a hundred years of activity in Tsarist Russia and then in the Soviet Union. Russian system of extended education of children is formed on the basis of extracurricular institutions. The emergence of the first extracurricular institutions for children in Russia is connected with the names of S.T. Shatsky (1922) and A.U. Zelenko (1938).

The suggested Russian strategic “Conception of supplementary education of children development” (2014) was a timely step. This document has led to important changes in policy direction with serious consequences in terms of the structure and curriculum of after school education. The purpose of the Concept is to ensure children’s rights to development, personal self-determination and self-realization, the expansion of capabilities to meet the diverse interests of children and their families in the area of extended education, the development of innovative potential of the state.

Improving the quality and availability of the after school education for every child; updating the content of an extended education of children in accordance with the interests of children, families and the needs of society; infrastructure development of extended education of children, including through the provision of investment attractiveness; creating conditions for the participation of the family and the community in the management of the extended education of children system development lie in the heart of the reform.

The reform efforts involve a significant change, not only within organization but also within the content of teaching. The paper is devoted to the main trends and results of scientific and innovative activity in the field of after school education in Russia, design and construction of a highly efficient educational system. The paper reveals history and the role of after school education in Russia as well as the main challenges and opportunities in the development of after school education policy. The paper presents the new concepts and approaches to after school education in Russia, as well as their implementation in different educational institutions.

The main data sources are the reviews and subsequent after school education regulations policy documents in the Russian Federation; research papers on realization of the concept.

References

Conception of supplementary education of children development (2014).URL: http://government.ru/media/files/ipA1NW42XOA.pdf

Shatsky, S.T. (1922). Children – the future employees. Moscow: Rabotnik Prosvetschenia.

Zelenko, A.U. (1938). Children’s parks. Moscow, Leningrad: Gosstroyizdat.

Doug is in his tenth year as General Secretary and Treasurer of the GFTU. He is the organisation's longest serving Executive member having first been elected to the EC in 1995. He served as the GFTU's President in 2007/2009 and was proud of making it possible in that time to rebuild trade union links with Vietnam and to inaugurate the now annual GFTU youth development weekend to help create a new generation of trade union leaders. Doug is the UK's longest serving trade union General Secretary, having been elected as the GS of the Community and Youth Workers' Union (CYWU - now part of Unite the union) in 1987. He was Secretary of the Coventry Trade Union Council for ten years and Secretary of the Coventry Miners' Support Committee in 1984/85. Doug is a prolific author of books and articles on many topics and a published poet and believes strongly that art and culture and history are essential to trade union education. Doug joined his trade union as a part time worker and eventually led the first successful campaign to win a national collective bargaining agreement for part time workers based on full parity. It was a ground breaking agreement. As a former competitive table tennis player, outside work you'll find Doug now admiring the devastating forehand shots of Ma Long or the backhand of Timo Boll on YouTube. He'll probably be doing this in his workshop where he likes to make things from wood for friends and family.

Doug Nicholls

Driven by how Hong Kong ECE curriculum has been infusing free play through their latest curriculum guidelines, this sharing will focus on how currently free play has been locally implemented. Mainly, there will be four main topics I will discuss. Firstly, as we have conducted years of study in understanding free play implementation in Hong Kong, we will unfold on how the conceptualization of free play has changed over the course of three years exploration. Then, development of an adapted mode of free play will also be discussed, as a solution for local practitioners in implementing free play. Thirdly, a shift of perspective by ECE practitioners in understanding child-centered approach will also be reviewed. Lastly, this discussion will be narrowed down to the raising concern towards children who live under the poverty line and under particular needs, specifically in having a comparably limited opportunity to have their own free play, compared to most children in Hong Kong.

Two participated kindergartens (HK):

Rhenish Mission School

TWGHs Chan King Har Kindergarten

Incorporating PARS into Everyday Practice

I have been married almost 26 years, have 4 kids and 2 grandchildren. I always knew I would be a teacher of some sort, but I never realized I’d do most of my learning from the children. I took my 2-year Early Childhood Education and Development Diploma way back in the dark ages, the late 80’s. I have done a lot of professional development over the intervening years. I’ve been involved in helping get a conference for School Age Care up and running. This is my fifth school year with my current employer and have made leaps and bounds in my learning here. I am currently the Service Excellence Team Lead (helping ensure all 14 of our sites are maintaining government and company policies, staff support and training, etc.) and am currently enrolled in the PARS trainers course coming up in May. With well over 30 years in the business, I have worked in many environments. Nanny. Montessori. Home-based care. Religion-based. Themes. Cookie cutter. Then along came Playwork, and I found my niche! How freeing to be in an environment where the children are in charge of what they do! In my spare time, I like to visit with my grandchildren, read, play games, and I’ve made about 800 masks in the last year!

Heather Boomhower

Canada

The benefits for the children being in an environment that is self-directed are plentiful! They are engaged and engrossed more deeply, there are fewer challenging behaviors due to the children being busier, and they get to create who they want to be in any situation. For the educators, being willing to step out of our comfort zones is a huge step forward, being able to play freely and without our own agendas meets some of our needs, and we are realizing our effects on children and their play just by being there makes us more aware and present.

The result of adopting the PARS playwork practice is we are realizing that children know more about their wants, needs and abilities than most adults give them credit for. Seeing them learn so much about themselves and their interests is very humbling.

My “aha!” moment came one afternoon when a child asked me what craft we were doing that day. I thought about it and wondered what the children could come up with on their own, without adult interference (adulteration), and told the child we were going to do things differently from now on and I was so excited to see what they could come up with from their own imaginations, instead of us telling and showing them what to make. That was my turning point. Reflecting on their interests and how best to incorporate these into what materials and supplies to provide took a lot of thinking, trial and error, organization, and a dedicated space for everything.

On the spot reflections were very helpful in re-arranging the environment to best meet the children’s needs and make the best possible space for the children, in light of the fact that they have to share that space with us!

Reflecting on the challenges of researching
'after the child'

Peter Kraftl is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. An interdisciplinary scholar of childhood and youth, he is a Director of the University's interdisciplinary 'Children and Childhoods Network', which has over 200 members from across the campus and beyond. Peter is most interested in children's interactions with material things, environmental processes, and in their emotional and embodied lives. He has researched, amongst other things: children's experiences of urban environments; young people's understandings of food, water and energy; plastics; alternative education spaces; and school architectures. Peter is the author of 8 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Peter's works regularly with local, national and international organisations - from informing Local Authorities about building more inclusive urban spaces for children, to his role as a co-ordinating lead author for UNESCO's current international review of education.

Professor Peter Kraftl

In this talk I will reflect on the challenges of researching ‘after the child’ whilst simultaneously being ‘pro-child’. My academic research has been part of a growing trend to ‘decentre’ children from childhood research. Whilst not seeking to ignore children, this research seeks to acknowledge that children – like all humans – are deeply inter-connected with a range of non-human things and processes. This acknowledgment has been particularly important for research (and practice) around children’s experiences of environmental changes and challenges – from the objects and resources they consume in their everyday lives to the forms of pollution or climate change they live with. Focusing on my recent work about children and plastics, I will discuss what I mean by doing research ‘after the child’, and how I have been trying to re-think environment, materiality and media in children’s lives in a way that might some ways be more powerfully ‘pro-child’ than other approaches to childhood research.

Installing a nature play space in a disused inner city park

Rick Worch, Ph.D., is a professor in the Inclusive Early Childhood Education Program at Bowling Green State University in the United States. Rick’s research is focused on children’s play and learning in formal and informal settings. He began his play research journey in 1993 by studying socioecological factors that impact the play of wild monkeys in Uganda and Costa Rica. Since about 2010, Rick has been fascinated with playwork and theories, philosophies, and empirical studies informing playwork practice. He is an associate editor of International Journal of Playwork Practice.

Rick Worch

USA

To help our team install a nature play space in a disused inner city park in Toledo, Ohio USA, we invited local elementary school children to design it. The neighborhoods surrounding these schools lack natural spaces in which children are free to explore and play; therefore, we needed to provide children opportunities to interact with natural materials. Children were surprised to discover a variety of loose and fixed natural materials in their schools’ play yards when they went out for recess. The natural materials included moveable and immoveable logs, tree cookies, tree stumps, branches and bamboo, hemp rope, canvas tarps, shells, leaves, rocks, mud, water, sand, and clay. Manufactured materials, such as shovels, pails, paint brushes, a stream table, and mud kitchen were also available. Teachers agreed to allow members of Toledo Zoo’s Education Department, who are trained in some of the fundamental practices of playwork, to set up and support the recess experiences.

After these experiences, teachers showed videos of children playing in natural playgrounds and provided photographs of features often found in natural playgrounds. Children were then given art materials to draw and write about the kinds of features with which they would like to play in their new neighborhood park. I will share with you the children’s artwork and renditions of their works by a professional artist for us to present to our funding agency for approval to build, as well as some key observations of children interacting with the materials and each other during recess.

Marianne Schüpbach Professor Dr.

Marianne Schüpbach Professor Dr. is a chair in Primary Education at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Schuepbach is an empirical researcher whose research focuses on extended education (all-day school, afterschool etc.) predominantly in Switzerland and Germany, school career transitions as grade retention, school teaching and school. In the last years, she has carried out different studies funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation and starting in 2021 from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the field of extended education, multi-professional collaboration in school and teaching and acculturation of immigrant students. She received her PhD from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland (CH) in 2004 and her Habilitation from the University of Bern (CH) in 2009. From 2010 till 2014 she has been an assistant professor of research on teaching and school at the Institute of Educational Science, University of Bern (CH) and from 2014 till 2019 she was a chair in Primary Education at the Institute of Educational Science, University of Bamberg, Germany.

Professor Marianne Schüpbach

Germany

How can professionalism in the field of extended education be achieved in a school offering extended education, e.g. an all-day school in Germany or Switzerland, and aiming at providing a coordinated educational entity, or whole. Research findings from the United States and the German-speaking parts of Europe have shown that high quality in extended education is essential for children and young people’s positive development. More specifically, qualified staff and collaboration between staff members have been identified as key factors of quality in extended education. In other words, to ensure professionalism there needs to be a stronger focus on the education and training of both teachers and other educational staff in the future.

To offer extended education offerings such that there is educational unity between teaching and extended education activities, as is for instance expected of all-day schools, and thus to create a new school with an expanded school day, a common basic university-based education for teachers and other educational staff is needed. Basic university-based education of this kind is already available in Sweden, for instance. In Sweden most of staff working with School-Age Educare activities are trained School-Age Educare teachers who have completed a three-year university-based teacher education program. This model of common basic education makes it possible to create a common pedagogical basis for the different actors in the school context. Furthermore, this is a way to create a central foundation and conditions for equal cooperation of all actors in the school. Moreover, common education provides a means to increase the prestige of the work of staff in extended education activities and offerings. Further, it is needed a quality framework for all-day schools. It also requires management responsibility, which is either in the hand of school principals or other management staff, and includes leadership in organization and management, personnel management and moderating, and full-day management as pedagogical management. These, in turn, require specific competencies of the school management, which must be built up. Another central basis for bringing together teaching and extended education into an educational whole is a curriculum that covers both education and care.

In summary, these statements show that the discussion on professionalism in the field of extended education addresses the development of professionalism of the occupation as a whole, the individual development of professionalism, and the emergence of a professional identity. Furthermore, it can be noted that it is necessary to understand professional development as a long-term process that needs to be supported and must be advanced on various levels by different stakeholders.

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