Adolescence as opportunity: practitioner approaches in alternative provision

Contact:mag209@ex.ac.uk University of Exeter This research aims to contribute to the understanding of what effective alternative provision is in the UK. It draws from one alternative provision site - Eastbank - over an academic year, where each of the pupils, aged 14 16, had been excluded from mainstream school.
Research Questions 1. What characterised the practitioner approaches at Eastbank? 2. Where did these approaches lead? The practitioner approaches were framed within both context and complexity. It was not possible to separate the practitioners ways of dealing with the situation they were in from the wider context of that situation. Nor was it possible to disconnect my findings from a quality of intricacy and complication of a complex site. From these approaches evolved a mode of licensed chaos, which involved making space for play, immersion, risk-taking and ownership.

Margo Greenwood

Connected relationships within licensed chaos Overall outcomes of the practitioner approaches were that practitioners and pupils gained a sense of belonging and increased well-being. Also, each of the year 11 pupils were offered further training or employment. Findings Below is a visual overview of findings to the first research question: What characterised the practitioner approaches at Eastbank? Below is an overall integrated pattern in answer to the second research question: where did the practitioner approaches lead?

Empathic engagement and mission were central to the practitioner approaches of reflecting, building principles and exploring new practice. Empathic engagement is a fostering of emotional involvement that leads to empathic relations. Mission can be about being in touch with ones vocation, stepping out into new territory to negotiate or helping those in need. Empathic engagement and mission have a dialogic relationship with each other. One is fully engaged, present and influential even as the other acts. They are complementary forces, co-arising and interdependent, reaching out and responding, one to the other. They mutually transform and humanize.

Implications Schools will now be held directly accountable for the alternative provision they commission for their pupils, and responsible for ensuring that it is suitable, safe and effective. At a key time of re-design for alternative provision in the UK, this ethnographic case study offers a model of practitioner approach that can lead to belonging and well-being, arguing that both can change pupil perception and need to be included when considering the nature of success. It offers insight into the lives of hard-to-reach young people, promoting diversity and highlighting the challenge of context and complexity.

References
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. Cohen, J. (2006) Harvard Educational Review Vol. 76 No. 2 Summer 2006, p201-237 Craft, A. (2002) Creativity and Early Years Education London: Continuum. Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education, USA: The Free Press Fielding, M. & Moss, P. (2011) Radical education and the common school Routledge. Osterman, K. (2000) Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 323-367 Taylor, C (2012) Improving Alternative Provision www.education.gov.uk