Traveller Education: Accounts of Good Practice

Review of Chris Tyler (ed.), Traveller Education: Accounts of Good Practice, Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent, UK and Sterling, USA, 2005, ISBN 1 85856 308 9According to Chris Tyler, editor of Traveller Education: Accounts of Good Practice, the book is underpinned by two key concepts. "The first is a recognition of the need to examine and make concrete the pedagogy of Traveller Education. [as a] strand of educational theory and practice in its own right. [The second is] a recognition of the collegiate nature of Traveller Education" (p. viii). "Traveller Education" in the context of the book refers to educational provision for two principal categories of learners: those whose families' occupations require them to be mobile; and those whose cultural backgrounds are associated with Gypsy Travellers. In the United Kingdom (specifically England), where the book is set, the main groups within and across these categories are English Gypsies, Irish/Scottish/Welsh Travellers, fairground and show people, circus people, Romany Gypsy refugees and asylum seekers, New Travellers, bargee and water craft Travellers and migratory seasonal workers (pp. x-xi). The proposition that these various groups of learners need and receive a specialised form of pedagogy known as "Traveller Education" is promoted throughout the book's 14 chapters, of which we have space to refer to only a few. The opening chapter, by Arthur Ivatts, who had national responsibility for Traveller education as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, explores the conflict between inclusive schools and an exclusionary society, thereby highlighting traditional and contemporary prejudice towards "Gypsies" and mobile communities. In Chapter Two, Brian Foster and Hilary Horton draw on achievement data across seven London Local Education Authorities to interrogate the National Primary Strategies developed to strengthen the teaching of basic skills, and conclude that ". there is always a danger that Travellers, for reasons beyond their control, will miss out on or benefit less from initiatives designed to meet their needs" (p. 21). Chris Tyler's own chapter elaborates a number of key principles that need to underpin effective Traveller education practice, including "The school as inclusive mirror", "Travellers will travel", "Achieving inclusivity", "Whole school planning" and "What happens if they go? ". Other chapters deal respectively with early childhood, primary and secondary education for Traveller learners. Ken Marks's chapter explores the provision of distance education "learning packs" and the possibilities afforded by information and communication technologies, such as wireless laptop computers and datacards, to link mobile technologies with a mobile lifestyle. The final chapter, by Jim Donovan, focuses on "housed Travellers" in the London borough of Camden, and underscores the complexities of identity formation among Irish Travellers and East European Roma who are living in individual houses yet are determined "to maintain their way of life and principles" (p. 145). The book concludes with three appendices: an example of a whole school planning document; a "Literacy for All" list of strategies for teachers; and a school self-evaluation pro forma for the effectiveness of provision for "Gypsy and Traveller pupils". The editor and authors are all experienced Traveller educators in one way or another. Chris Tyler (who along with Lucy Beckett and Margaret Wood, two of the authors, was interviewed by the second-named reviewer during study leave in 1999) worked previously as a travelling teacher to a circus and is currently Head of the Hertfordshire Traveller Education Project. The authors represent services in Basildon, Buckinghamshire, Cambridge, Durham, Essex, Hertford, Leeds, London, Norfolk and Oxford.The book is intentionally positioned as "a handbook for all schools that have Traveller pupils" (back cover), and it fulfils its promise admirably of "outlin[ing] good practice, based on proven success in schools" (back cover). …