Content
The “Inclusive Spaces 2.0: My School and my Block!“ project is about researching social spaces of New Middle Schools and communities in the 22nd district of Vienna: Which experiences do young people gather at their "blocks"? And how do these impact on the social spaces of schools? Students and professional researchers will investigate these questions jointly, using innovative methods that connect to the lifestyles of young people. Using mobiles and tablets, students will produce digital social cartographies of their ‚blocks’ and schools. Young researchers will disseminate results at a conference: they will present digital maps and use further mediums, such as drama performances, to disseminate the project to heterogeneous audiences in an accessible way. Thus, the project aims to facilitate a productive dialogue between schools and communities. Furthermore, findings will be transferred into teacher education, in order to prepare future teachers for challenges in and out of schools and sustain the results of the project.
Methods
Hypothesis: Researchers think that, due to broader societal discourses, young people need to behave in a specific way in their communities – if they want to get recognised by their peers. This includes problematic behaviours, such as ‘hyper-masculine’ demonstrations of power. Young persons incorporate this type of behaviour and, thus, show it in schools as well, which is hindering implementing inclusive education as this pedagogy is based on equality of all students.
Methods: Within the project, students will use a web-based app to produce social cartographies: they can ‘pin’ spaces on these maps and add videos or photos to illustrate their experiences with these spaces.
How are young people being involved? In a series of workshops, young people will learn how to use their mobile phones and tablets for social research. Data produced will be analysed in depth by young ‚veteran’ researchers of the Sparkling Science-project ‘Inclusive Spaces’ and professional researchers together.
What´s new? "Inclusive Spaces 2.0: My School and My Block" is planned and designed by young and adult researchers together. Within the project, young people will acquire academic research skills and will learn to use these to improve their communities. Doing so, the project tries to strengthen dialogue between science and society by demonstrating how research can be used to tackle concrete problems at local level.