Page 117 - Štremfel, Urška, and Maša Vidmar (eds.). 2018. Early School Leaving: Cooperation Perspectives. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 117
team cooperation in addressing esl ....
Another exception is research work on educational alliances and
ESL. In Switzerland, Allenbach (2014) conducted interviews with profes-
sionals already involved in collaborative practices (specialist teachers, psy-
chologists, nurses, meditators, speech therapists and psycho-moto thera-
pists). The professionals identified the following practices as being crucial
for building an educational alliance with teachers: (1) the quality of the lis-
tening (to be interested in the emotions and needs of the teacher); (2) dis-
tancing oneself from the figure of expert, because positioning oneself as
an expert is an obstacle to the development of collaborative practices (in-
stead of sharing, reflecting, and planning actions together); (3) negotiat-
ing all the multiple alliances (with the child, other actors, and hierarchi-
cal instances that appointed him/her, as well as alliances between other
actors). Studies (e.g. Desmarais, Merri, Salvà, Cauvier, Moriau, & Dionne,
2014; Poirier, 2015; Blaya, Gilles, Plunus, & Tièche Christinat, 2011) show
the effectiveness of educational alliances between schools and community
organisations that share the mission of educating young people. Youngsters
in the situation of ESL are referred by school professionals to special cen-
tres providing pedagogical, psychological, social, legal, health support, in-
cluding their own educational programmes. They accompany youngsters
on their entry to school after having stayed at their organisations. There
is a lively debate in these alliances – several members (stakeholders) are
convinced the student should be prevented from creating a distance from
school, while others believe entering the labour market will allow them to
mature and return to school later. These alliances allow for new opportuni-
ties in the educational career of the youngsters and provide for the (re)con-
struction of identity. Another study (Liechti et al., 2014) showed that teach-
ers within educational alliances are turning to different stakeholders and
consider different actions depending on the profile of the students at risk of
ESL; for ‘disruptive’ students, teachers are more likely to turn to external
actors from a different professional sphere, while for a ‘quiet’ student teach-
ers turn to both actors working in their sphere as well as external actors.
Moignard (2015) studied educational alliances and observed the strength-
ening of the traditional school forms beyond school boundaries and a log-
ic of outsourcing, that illustrate the injunctive character of the new part-
nership forms. Studies also show that teachers assign little weight to some
internal organisational and structural factors in the school system (strong-
ly associated with ESL and mendable by schools), suggesting that efforts
117
Another exception is research work on educational alliances and
ESL. In Switzerland, Allenbach (2014) conducted interviews with profes-
sionals already involved in collaborative practices (specialist teachers, psy-
chologists, nurses, meditators, speech therapists and psycho-moto thera-
pists). The professionals identified the following practices as being crucial
for building an educational alliance with teachers: (1) the quality of the lis-
tening (to be interested in the emotions and needs of the teacher); (2) dis-
tancing oneself from the figure of expert, because positioning oneself as
an expert is an obstacle to the development of collaborative practices (in-
stead of sharing, reflecting, and planning actions together); (3) negotiat-
ing all the multiple alliances (with the child, other actors, and hierarchi-
cal instances that appointed him/her, as well as alliances between other
actors). Studies (e.g. Desmarais, Merri, Salvà, Cauvier, Moriau, & Dionne,
2014; Poirier, 2015; Blaya, Gilles, Plunus, & Tièche Christinat, 2011) show
the effectiveness of educational alliances between schools and community
organisations that share the mission of educating young people. Youngsters
in the situation of ESL are referred by school professionals to special cen-
tres providing pedagogical, psychological, social, legal, health support, in-
cluding their own educational programmes. They accompany youngsters
on their entry to school after having stayed at their organisations. There
is a lively debate in these alliances – several members (stakeholders) are
convinced the student should be prevented from creating a distance from
school, while others believe entering the labour market will allow them to
mature and return to school later. These alliances allow for new opportuni-
ties in the educational career of the youngsters and provide for the (re)con-
struction of identity. Another study (Liechti et al., 2014) showed that teach-
ers within educational alliances are turning to different stakeholders and
consider different actions depending on the profile of the students at risk of
ESL; for ‘disruptive’ students, teachers are more likely to turn to external
actors from a different professional sphere, while for a ‘quiet’ student teach-
ers turn to both actors working in their sphere as well as external actors.
Moignard (2015) studied educational alliances and observed the strength-
ening of the traditional school forms beyond school boundaries and a log-
ic of outsourcing, that illustrate the injunctive character of the new part-
nership forms. Studies also show that teachers assign little weight to some
internal organisational and structural factors in the school system (strong-
ly associated with ESL and mendable by schools), suggesting that efforts
117
