Odd: feeling different in the world of education

这个为期3年的跨学科项目将调查那些发现不容易在学校“融入”的孩子的经历和影响。虽然这种感觉并不总是痛苦的，但Young Minds(2016)的统计数据表明，每个教室里都有三个孩子被诊断出心理健康问题。这项建议是与研究将位于曼彻斯特勒文舒尔姆的阿尔玛公园小学合作制定的，该学校因其多样化的学校和当地社区而被选中。首先，这项研究是及时的，首先，在其创新的方法上，重新思考“差异”，为学校的反欺凌和包容议程贡献新的知识；其次，在其方法上，建立在社区联合产生的知识的发展领域(Facer和Enright，2016)，并将艺术和人类学的镜头集中在对奇怪的实质性探索上，以及发展跨学科方法和协议的理论工作上。在过去的5年里，英国政府在多样性、心理健康和福祉方面投入了大量资金，特别关注幼儿的韧性(DfE，2016；DOH，2014)。我们合作学校的日常工作反映了许多学校的风气；受这些举措的启发，他们明显致力于“庆祝差异”，但他们对从教育政策中渗入的个性化话语表示担忧，这些话语共同定义了哪些人不属于教育和社会规范。拟议的项目认识到，需要一种跨学科的方法来打破关于差异和一致性的传统教育思维。我们将汇集艺术、人类学和教育学的观点，研究“格格不入”、“孤独者”或“孤独者”的感觉如何对一些孩子产生不利影响，同时认识到其他人可能会更自信地占据这个空间。儿童被认为是世界上有能力、有技能的社交行为者，他们在这个话题上有迷人的视角。这项研究将与整个小学社区合作，涉及所有年龄组的儿童(4-11岁)、家长、教师和非教学人员，将产生不同类型的以实践为基础的合作，通过对奇数的生成概念的询问，提出紧迫而困难的政策修辞和学校实践问题；奇数的含义；它的价值是什么；它为什么重要，它告诉我们关于日常生活中彼此、地点和事物的普通遭遇。研究集体将开发以艺术为主导的战略和其他资源，以最大限度地减少感觉“奇怪”或“不同”的破坏性影响，但也将试图利用差异的力量，作为一种创造力、赋权和政策批评的力量。就我们的目的而言，在一个关于差异、多样性和包容性的强有力的论述(诺里奇，2014)与正常化和一致性的具体过程(Brisard，Menter&Smith，2010)相冲突的学校背景下，奇数一词为我们打开了一个不同的思考空间。这个项目将产生新的跨学科知识，增进理解，并发展创造性的洞察力，了解艺术理论和实践以及社会科学方法如何通过经验为关注不同之处的新兴工作领域做出贡献(Barad，2014)。项目团队拥有进行这项跨学科研究所需的专业知识：一位在人类学和艺术/设计之间的跨学科联系方面有专长的视觉人类学家(Ravetz)；一位在人、物和场所互动的大型社会环境中工作的参与社会的艺术家(Shaw)；一位合拍顾问(Pool)和教育家(Pahl)，对合拍和学校的实证工作有广泛的知识；一位在外部资助的关于儿童和儿童的研究以及跨学科、艺术知识丰富的方法方面有丰富经验的PI(Holmes)。

This 3-year interdisciplinary project will investigate the experiences of, and repercussions for, children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school. While such feelings are not always traumatic, statistics produced by Young Minds (2016) suggest three children in every classroom have diagnosed mental health issues. This proposal has been developed in partnership with the school where the research will be located, Alma Park Primary School in Levenshulme, Manchester, selected for its diverse school and local communities. This research is timely, firstly, in its innovative approach to rethinking 'difference' to contribute new knowledge to the anti-bullying and inclusion agendas in school and secondly, in its methodology, building on the developing field of community co-produced knowledge (Facer and Enright, 2016), and focusing the lenses of art and anthropology on both the substantive inquiry into oddness, and the theoretical work of developing interdisciplinary methodology and protocols.Over the last 5 years the UK government has invested heavily in diversity, mental health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on young children's resilience (DfE, 2016; DoH, 2014). The day-to-day work of our partner school reflects the ethos of many schools; informed by such initiatives, their commitment to 'celebrating difference' palpable, yet they express concern for individualising discourses that filter down from educational policy, collectively defining who falls outside of educational and social norms. The proposed project recognises that an interdisciplinary approach is needed to break out of conventional educational thinking about difference and conformity. We will bring together perspectives from art, anthropology and education to examine how feeling a 'misfit', 'loner' or the 'odd one out' can have a detrimental impact on some children, whilst recognising others may occupy this space more confidently. Children are perceived as capable, skilled social actors in the world, who have fascinating perspectives on this topic. Working in co-production with a whole primary school community, involving children from all year groups (aged 4-11), parents, teachers and non-teaching staff, the research will produce different kinds of practice-based collaborations to ask pressing and difficult questions of policy rhetoric and practices in school via interrogations of the generative idea of odd; what odd means; what its value is and why this matters, what it tells us about ordinary, everyday encounters with one another, places and things. The research collective will develop arts-led strategies and other resources for minimizing the destructive effects of feeling 'odd' or 'different', but will also attempt to harness the potency of difference as a force for creativity, empowerment and policy critique. For our purposes, the term odd opens a space for thinking otherwise in a school context where powerful discourses of difference, diversity and inclusion (Norwich, 2014) rub up against material processes of normalisation and conformity (Brisard, Menter & Smith, 2010). This project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge, enhance understandings and develop creative insights into how art theory and practice, together with social science methodologies contribute empirically to an emerging field of work that attends to difference differently (Barad, 2014). The project team have the expertise required for this interdisciplinary study: a visual anthropologist with expertise in interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design (Ravetz); a socially engaged artist working in large social environments where people, object and places interact (Shaw); a co-production consultant (Pool) and educationalist (Pahl) with extensive knowledge of co-production and empirical work in schools; a PI with extensive experience of externally-funded research on children and childhood and interdisciplinary, arts-informed methodologies (Holmes).