The cultural-historical concepts: relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency are introduced as central to the work of practitioners who offer a caring (care-full) relational approach to supporting the learning and development of others. Drawing on examples from the field, we examine how the concepts can explain interprofessional collaborations and the prevention of social exclusion, which may frequently include involving parents or carers in focusing on a difficult situation for a child. We consequently discuss and illustrate the concepts in professionals’ work with parents or carers, which aims at mutual support for a child’s social situation of development during transitions. We demonstrate how three concepts can explain how practitioners negotiate their way up a system to find additional support for a child who is in a situation of concern. Our final example is their use in an instrument that assesses the collaborative maturity of teams or networks. The use of the three relational concepts in pedagogy is detailed in Chapter 7.

This introductory chapter outlines how children are active agents with motives and intentions, and what practitioners can do to support children’s learning, development and well-being in different age periods. It is therefore relevant for adults who work with children from birth to late adolescence, both within and beyond formal institutions. We also intend it to be useful to researchers and other professionals concerned with children and young people.

Our aim is to look forward toward children’s futures and how they can be supported to benefit from and contribute to what society has to offer. We argue that, by taking children’s intentions and emotions seriously, we can create an education that benefits children across the age periods. When children move through the institutional practices that society creates for them, they will learn, acquire new motives and develop. Therefore, the tools that we offer will allow carers and practitioners to tailor their support to children in different age periods. These ideas underpin a caring relational form of pedagogy, which is particularly but not only, important when children are dealing with changes in society’s expectations for them. These changes occur as they move, for example, between family, day-care or school, and when new challenges arise in familiar situations.

In this chapter, we draw on the cultural-historical ideas explained in Chapter 7 and Vygotsky’s work on crises and turning points in development to discuss primary and middle school-age children and how they can be supported as agentic learners taking forward their social situations of development. Support and challenge come through how environments are structured and through interactions and relationships, which involve family members, teachers and the other professionals. Key to becoming agentic learners is children’s use of cognitive tools such as literacy and numeracy, which enable them to engage with the knowledge that is valued in society and address the challenges presented to them. We explain that supporting the competent use of these tools involves taking the child’s perspective to understand their motive orientation and giving care-full relational guidance that demystifies the demands on them. We consider how digital tools and processes such as Assessment for Learning can develop learner agency. We introduce Hedegaard’s work on the double move in pedagogy and the Radical-Local initiative, which builds on Davydov’s work. Both are elaborated in Chapter 9. We conclude by discussing a cultural-historical account of resilience, which focuses on enhancing children’s agency and its importance for social inclusion.

Irrespective of where you end up working in the field of human services, most of the people you work with will be living in relative poverty and experiencing a combination of problems that create a vicious cycle of disadvantage for children and families. In this chapter, we draw upon social work as a case study of a profession working to prevent and address poverty, while actively engaging with, and supporting, affected individuals, families, and communities. An understanding of the complexity and inter-relatedness of issues associated with living in poverty is vital to ensure, at a minimum, that practitioners do no (further) harm and do not perpetuate or replicate dominant or oppressive notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, or individual versus structural explanations of poverty. Social workers and human service professionals therefore need to develop their capacities in relation to poverty-aware practice and the multiple actions that are required to address this complex issue.

Moving away from the quantitative approach of Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3 considers service magicians’ social position. The chapter begins by exploring the official stance towards magic and magicians over the period: what sort of archetypal image is painted by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and how this changed over the centuries. This (overwhelmingly negative) characterisation acts as a point of comparison against popular attitudes towards service magic, and treatment of wizards in reality. The second section considers magicians living in London and uses their domiciliary location as a lens to look at how they lived and practised. Through this approach we see that most practitioners, though living on the edge of the city, were nevertheless carefully positioned to be as accessible to their client base as possible. Further investigation of court records and popular media (primarily plays) of the time demonstrates that service magicians were a recognised, even occasionally celebrated, part of London life. This leads to a conclusion that magic was broadly accepted in wider society, at least in an urban context.

The term ‘social exclusion’ appears to have originated in France in the 1970s and had a significant influence on European social policy before being taken up by the UK’s New Labour Government in the 1990s. This chapter outlines the concepts of social exclusion and some of the competing discourses associated with the term. Several notable definitions of the term are discussed before we settle on the CASE definition of ‘An individual is socially excluded if he or she does not participate in key activities of the society in which he or she lives’. The concepts of social exclusion may provide added value to discussing the more traditional concepts of poverty and deprivation. It is a relational concept and thus is of importance for developing a social psychiatric perspective. The relationship between Social Exclusion and Social Inclusion is complex and they are not necessarily polar opposites; rather, they may be viewed as a continuum, but a continuum of several dimensions which may differ over time and place. The chapter sets out a framework for examining the social exclusion of people with mental health conditions.

Measures that address racial and ethnic inequalities have been an important subject of legal and political discussion in many countries over the last decades. The legal questions include the meanings and purposes of equality, adequate methods of legal interpretation, and the possible role of constitutional courts in promoting social transformation. Participants in this debate also raise issues such as the role of the state in a democracy, the changing nature of racism, the social meanings of race and its correlation with national identity. This broad range of questions reveals the immense relevance of this topic for comparative analysis. An adequate understanding of this complex subject requires an examination of how law and race interact in different jurisdictions to produce and legitimate particular social arrangements. This is the case of Brazil, a country that implemented large scale affirmative action policies in the last fifteen years, a process that generated an intense debate about the social importance of race in a country that has historically represented itself as a racial democracy.

Politicians and other policy-makers often talk about the ‘rediscovery’ of crime prevention. Such language is misleading. Concepts and principles of social and environmental prevention do not need to be rediscovered or reinvented. If anyone has forgotten about crime prevention, it is politicians and policy-makers. To maintain and enhance their legitimacy, parties and their leaders need to be seen playing direct roles in protecting the public. Crime prevention, however, often works best when it is not so obvious: when it is subtly embedded in everyday routines and activities. This chapter outlines a framework that governments could adopt if they wanted to make prevention a key component of crime policy. It discusses how crime prevention evolved in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and demonstrates how developments in these countries influenced approaches to crime prevention adopted in Australia. It also suggests ways in which crime prevention policy can be enhanced through a shared version and local crime prevention plans.

Ecuador has a progressive approach to the social inclusion of migrants, which serves as a powerful counter-example to current global trends of social exclusion of these populations. But despite constitutional guarantees of free higher education, and legal commitments to equality in access, enormous gaps remain between policy and practice. Estimates suggest that the rate of access to university education for refugees in Ecuador is 2.5 per cent, less than a tenth of the national average, which is 36 per cent. This chapter will explore why this progressive vision falls short, and the implications for those seeking to democratise access to higher education in Ecuador. Access to higher education is largely defined through civil employees’ inflexible everyday interpretations of national legal frameworks. Issues of ownership of identity documents, migration status and documentation of education achievement are relevant, and pervasive social discrimination and poverty all have a profound impact on refugee’s ability to gain entry into universities. This chapter will explore how the label of ‘refugee’ is both employed and discarded by displaced youth and the bureaucratic state in the context of higher education access.

This chapter introduces the framework of a model of inclusive pedagogy that consists of four key dimensions: attitudinal inclusion, academic inclusion, linguistic inclusion and social inclusion. We illustrate the issues through reference to teacher data elicited at the project secondary schools. We discuss the prevalence of linguistic diversity in English schools that makes teachers’ knowledge about such language diversity essential to effectiveness in the classroom and, in light of this, we identify key forms of ‘bilingual assistance’ which support EAL pedagogy. The final section of the chapter presents an outline of a teacher knowledge framework which we argue needs to form the basis of teacher professional development in the EAL context.

Chapter 9 addresses selected substantive CRPD rights together, namely, the right to education, the right to access culture and the right to participate in political and public life. In the first instance, the chapter contains an overview of the development of the right to inclusive education and the meaning of the concept. It then outlines the goals of inclusive education and the measures to be adopted by States Parties under Article 24 CRPD. It addresses the key challenges encountered in the implementation of Article 24 CRPD as well as best practices in the field. In the second instance, the chapter turns to an examination of the right to access culture and the obligations stemming from that right. In analysing the scope and content of Article 30 CRPD, the chapter also addresses the protection and promotion of sign languages and Deaf culture. Finally, the chapter sets out the right to political participation, which is an essential component in achieving active citizenship, and it examines the normative content of Article 29 CRPD.

Chapter 9 addresses selected substantive CRPD rights together, namely, the right to education, the right to access culture and the right to participate in political and public life. In the first instance, the chapter contains an overview of the development of the right to inclusive education and the meaning of the concept. It then outlines the goals of inclusive education and the measures to be adopted by States Parties under Article 24 CRPD. It addresses the key challenges encountered in the implementation of Article 24 CRPD as well as best practices in the field. In the second instance, the chapter turns to an examination of the right to access culture and the obligations stemming from that right. In analysing the scope and content of Article 30 CRPD, the chapter also addresses the protection and promotion of sign languages and Deaf culture. Finally, the chapter sets out the right to political participation, which is an essential component in achieving active citizenship, and it examines the normative content of Article 29 CRPD.