SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

Introduction: Socioeconomic factors exert a significant influence on children’s academic progress, learning and participation in school activities. Communities with low socioeconomic status are often associated with low- and middle-income countries (e.g., South Africa), but these are rising in high-income countries (e.g., Sweden), affecting the future of children and societies. In South Africa, research has shown that a socioeconomically disadvantaged context negatively affects children’s health and ability to focus on academic tasks, leading to a greater risk of school absence, and poor academic performance that are likely to impact their life prospects. Similarly, Swedish national educational results indicate that a higher socio-economic background promotes children’s satisfaction with their participation in school and higher social and psychological well-being than their less socio-economically advantaged peers. Most health promotion projects tend to focus on children, parents, teachers or other professionals as unrelated groups. There is a lack of collaborative projects in the school context that develop knowledge about a more integrated and sustainable approach.
Aim/purpose: This workshop aims to present the results of the first activities of an ongoing interdisciplinary project funded by SASUF. This project aims to create partnerships to address challenges affecting children’s learning and participation in schools located in socio-economically disadvantaged areas in Sweden and South Africa. The partners in this project so far are occupational therapists and educators working with future occupational thereapists and teachers in universities in Cape Town in South Africa, and Stockholm and Uppsala in Sweden.
Plan for developing future collaboration: The overall goal of the project is to develop new partnerships and networks for capacity building to design new strategies to support children’s learning and participation in schools located in socio-economically disadvantaged areas. This interdisciplinary approach has the potential to yield insights relevant to diverse projects. The workshop will be used as an opportunity to present the first activities conducted by partners of this project and formulate, together with attendants, contextually relevant research questions that should be addressed in this project based on participants previous experiences and the challenges found in a rapid appraisal of literature in the field (e.g., what models have been used to support collaboration among professionals in mainstream schools to support children’s learning and participation). All the insights gathered in the workshop will be disseminated to the participants and if there is interest then there will be an option to form a list of contacts that could be transformed into a network of participants with relevant knowledge and skills to advance the project. As such, the workshop will facilitate knowledge exchange and opportunities for the
attendants to keep communicating with each other and follow the project’s next steps or nurture ideas for projects that can emerge.
Structure of the workshop (120 minutes)
- Brief introduction of the workshop, the project, and the partners previous experiences in the field (25 min)
- Introduction of attendants (depending on the number of attendents this can be made in a circle or just introducing themselves to the 2 persons sitting closest to them) (15 min)
- Presentation of the results of the rapid appraisal of the literature reviewed in the field (e.g., what models have been used to support collaboration among professionals in mainstream schools to support children’s learning and participation) (20 min)
- Discussion in small groups with questions proposed by the presenters (30 min). The questions will focus on facilitating discussion about potential knowledge gaps, research question, innovative methods, and next steps of the project and possible further inter-disciplinary research (i.e., what needs to be done/addressed? how co-operation in a future network could be realized?)
- Small groups present the main point of their discussion to the main group (20 min)
- Summary of the main points raised in the discussion (10 min)
Keywords: School settings, partnerships, socioeconomically disadvantaged areas,
teachers, occupational therapists