Life in 1B, 2M and 3B

Curious qualities of time and space.

Alma Park is a school noted for its diversity, both within school and the surrounding communities, and its longstanding commitment to ‘diversity and difference’.

Life in 1B, 2M and 3B, led by Professor Rachel Holmes, looks into the dynamism of the everyday life at Alma Park. It attempts to understand how ‘difference’ shows itself and what the implications might be for children and the adults in the class.

Rachel followed one class across two years at Alma Park, joining a second class during the national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This offered opportunities for Rachel to work closely with two teachers at Alma Park Primary School.

Background

Research suggests the power of ‘normal’ is exercised on children in school by adults (teachers as well as parents) and children as they encounter others who may not conform (Watson, 2017).

Despite decades of educational interventions around inclusion and wellbeing, the project was mindful that some schools continue to be hostile environments for many children who fail to achieve ‘normality’ (Deschenes et al. 2001; Watson 2016).

Within a school environment, processes defining what is ‘normal’, whether we mean ‘normal’ behaviour, a ‘normal’ relationship, ‘normal’ ways of learning, simultaneously determine some children as different.

Examples include the learning-disabled child (Ryan, 2006); the gender non-conforming child (Gerouki, 2010; Biegel, 2010) and the gifted and talented child (Geake and Gross, 2008).

Project overview

Rachel wanted to understand the processes at work across the school. She was particularly interested to work with the teachers and children to understand difference differently.

This interest was motivated by the Government’s mental health agenda in schools.

She wanted to pay close attention to hidden forces, and the complex entanglements of language, expectations, policy, practices, labels, affects, child development theory, curriculum, pedagogies, and diagnoses, that produce difference and its effects in the classroom.

In order to try and get a sense of this, she spent a day every week observing Year 2 (2M) in the summer term of 2019.

She has continued her research with the same group of children as they progressed into Year 3 (into 3B).

She continued her research until 20 March 2020, when the school closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Then, post lockdown in January 2021, she moved into Year 1 (1B) for her final months working with the school.

Across this time, it was apparent that there were a number of objects, affective atmospheres, movements and events that (dis)connected adults, children and the school environment in interesting and, at times, unconventional ways.

Rachel saw these as particular kinds of eruptions or disturbances into typical classroom ‘order’, moments when the heavy, solid air of the classroom ripples, diffuses, disperses, rumbles and ricochets through, across and in between bodies, things and architecture.

There were moments when the heterogeneity of children’s school lives produced a gap in the linearity of things, which momentarily ruptured the permanency of the normal classroom state.

blurred image of playground surface and childrens feet — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

Children's coats piled on top of a piece of gym equipment in the school hall — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

A close up image of a yellow rubber quoit with a cracked surface — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

A colourful heap of children's lunch bags in a corridor at school — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

a cardboard model made by a child, balanced precariously on a school book, on a window ledge in school — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

a school chair with hula hoops stacked behind it — Some aspects of the school environment as captured by the research team during their field work.

The observations made in 2M inspired the book chapter co-written with Professor Amanda Ravetz (Growing in the Midst of Things) in ‘Knowing From The Inside: Design For A Curriculum’, edited by Professor Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen).

In 1B and 3B Rachel and the class teacher, Gabby Birelo, started to keep a shared blog. This inspired an abstract that led to a short film and paper presentation (see below), given as part of the ‘In and Out of Time at School’ symposiumat the Childhood and Time Conference at Tampere University, Finland.