Education in Indigenous, Nomadic and Travelling Communities provides a thorough examination of up-to-date case studies of educational provision to travelling communities and indigenous people in their homelands or in host countries. Education is usually under-utilised during phases of transition. In many instances, indigenous groups and travelling people, including nomads, do not have educational opportunities equal to that of their settled counterpart-citizens. For such groups, this results in early school leaving, high school drop-out rates, low school attendance and low success rates. Indeed, indigenous, traveling and nomadic groups often begin their working life at an early age and often experience difficulties penetrating the formal employment arena. In this volume international researchers analyse the internal and external factors affecting educational provision to travelling, nomadic and indigenous groups. A comparative examination of the issues is enabled through the global case studies including the Roma people in Europe; indigenous groups in Malaysia; the Gypsies of England; the Travellers of Ireland; the Sami nomadic people of Scandinavia and Russia as well as the Amazonian Indians of Latin America.

Education in Indigenous, Nomadic and Travelling Communities provides a thorough examination of up-to-date case studies of educational provision to travelling communities and indigenous people in their homelands or in host countries. Education is usually under-utilised during phases of transition. In many instances, indigenous groups and travelling people, including nomads, do not have educational opportunities equal to that of their settled counterpart-citizens. For such groups, this results in early school leaving, high school drop-out rates, low school attendance and low success rates. Indeed, indigenous, traveling and nomadic groups often begin their working life at an early age and often experience difficulties penetrating the formal employment arena. In this volume international researchers analyse the internal and external factors affecting educational provision to travelling, nomadic and indigenous groups. A comparative examination of the issues is enabled through the global case studies including the Roma people in Europe; indigenous groups in Malaysia; the Gypsies of England; the Travellers of Ireland; the Sami nomadic people of Scandinavia and Russia as well as the Amazonian Indians of Latin America.

Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education presents international accounts of approaches to educating mobile communities such as circus and fairground people, herders, hunters, Roma and Travellers. The chapters focus on three key dimensions of educational change: the client group moving from school to school; those schools having their demographics changed and seeking to change the mobile learners; and these learners contributing to fundamental change to the nature of schooling. The book brings together decades of research into the challenges and opportunities presented by mobile learners interacting with educational systems predicated on fixed residence. It identifies several obstacles to those learners receiving an equitable education, including negative stereotypes and centuries-old prejudice. Yet the book also explores a number of educational innovations that bring mobility and schooling together, ranging from specialised literacy programs and distance and online education to mobile schools and specially trained teachers. These innovations allow us to think differently about how education can and should be, for mobile and non-mobile learners alike.

This book calls for a re-thinking of educational provision for Gypsy / Traveller communities. Despite having been recognised by the government and educational providers for over fifty years, underachievement of children from Gypsy / Traveller communities persists. Rather than focusing specifically on access, attendance and attainment, the author provides a structural analysis of the cultural tensions that often exist between Nomadic communities and current school provision based on the interests and values of Sedentarism. The author uses spatial theory as a base upon which to build knowledge and understanding of the educational exclusion of children from Gypsy / Traveller communities, highlighting the social role that space plays within schools. This innovative book will be of interest and value for students and scholars interested in not only education and Gypsy / Traveller communities, but education for minority communities more widely.

This book explores the Irish Traveller community through an ethnographic and folk linguistic lens. It sheds new light on Irish Traveller language, commonly referred to as Gammon or Cant, an integral part of the community’s cultural heritage that has long been viewed as a form of secret code. The author addresses Travellers’ metalinguistic and ideological reflections on their language use, providing deep insights into the culture and values of community members, and into their perceived social reality in wider society. In doing so, she demonstrates that its interrelationship with other cultural elements means that the language is in a constant flux, and by analysing speakers’ experiences of language in action, provides a dynamic view of language use. The book takes the reader on a journey through oral history, language naming practices, ideologies of languageness and structure, descriptions of language use and contexts, negotiations of the ‘authentic’ Cant, and Cant as ‘identity’. Based on a two-year ethnographic fieldwork project in a Traveller Training Centre in the West of Ireland, this book will appeal to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language in society, language ideology, folk linguistics, minority communities and languages, and cultural and linguistic anthropology.

This volume recognises how many researchers across the social sciences, and in comparative and international education in particular, see themselves as insiders or outsiders or, more pertinently, shifting combinations of both, in the research process. The book revisits and problematises these concepts in an era where the global mobility of researchers and ideas has increased dramatically, and when advances in comparative, qualitative research methodologies seek to be more inclusive, collaborative, participatory, reflexive and nuanced. Collectively, the chapters argue that, in the context of such change, it has become more difficult to categorise and label groups and individuals as being ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ systems, professional communities, or research environments. In doing so, it is recognised that individual and group identities can be multiple, flexible and changing such that the boundary between the inside and the outside is permeable, less stable and less easy to draw. The book draws upon an exciting collection of original research carried out in a diversity of educational systems from British, European, Latin American, Indian Ocean, South Asian, African and Chinese contexts and cultures. This develops a deep and innovative reconsideration of key issues that must be faced by all researchers involved in the planning and conduct of in-depth field research. This is a challenging and stimulating methodological contribution, designed to advance critical and reflective thinking while providing practical and accessible guidance, insights and support for new and experienced researchers within and beyond the field of comparative and international education.

This thought-provoking research anthology adopts a postmodern stance and fills in a gap of knowledge for the education of professional development in teacher education, health sciences and the arts. Allowing subjectivity and multiple voices, the authors add to the intimate and negotiated knowledge of being and becoming – indigenous, architect, mother, teacher, health researcher, and supervisor. In fifteen chapters, the authors share knowledge of pain and reward in critical events in the realm of professional identity formation. The book provides a selection of personal and far-reaching stories and adds to the reflexivity of memories of critical events. Contributors are: Geir Aaserud, Åsta Birkeland, Bodil H. Blix, Sidsel Boldermo, Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen, Nanna Kathrine Edvardsen, Rikke Gürgens Gjærum, Tona Gulpinar, Carola Kleemann, Tove Lafton, Mette Bøe Lyngstad, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Anna-Lena Østern, Alicja R. Sadownik, Tiri Bergesen Schei and Vibeke Solbue.

This volume provides a series of international case studies, prefaced by a comprehensive literature review and concluding with an end note drawing together the themes and key issues relating to educational services for nomadic groups around the world. [Book jacket].

This is an engaging discussion about the functions of education, drawing on a range of educational situations. "Education as a Global Concern" introduces the issues covered by this exciting new series, "Education as a Humanitarian Response". Colin Brock challenges the existing functions of education as widely and conventionally perceived, and promotes the notion of education as a humanitarian response as the prime function. He will examine the educational situations of a range of human groups that are marginalized or excluded from mainstream provision and will also consider the idea that 'humane' means 'appropriate'. This series presents an authoritative, coherent and focused collection of texts to introduce and promote the notion of education as a humanitarian response as a prime function of educational activity. The series takes a holistic interpretation of education, dealing not only with formal schooling and other systemic provisions in the mainstream, but rather with educational reality - teaching and learning in whatever form it comes at any age.

Indigenous people have often been confronted with education systems that ignore their cultural and historical perspectives. Largely unsuccessful projects of assimilation have been the predominant outcome of indigenous communities' encounters with state schools, as many indigenous students fail to conform to mainstream cultural norms. This insightful volume is an important contribution to our understanding of indigenous empowerment through education. The contributors to this volume work in the fields of education, social development and community empowerment among indigenous communities around the world. Their essays create a new foundation for implementing specialized indigenous/minority education worldwide, and engage the simultaneous projects of cultural preservation and social integration. This work will be vital for scholars in Native American studies, ethnic studies, and education.