Understanding gypsy children’s conceptions of learning: A phenomenographic study

Abstract

In Portugal, as in other European countries, gypsy children remain largely at the margins of the educational system. Their underachievement and the associated dropout rates from school are serious educational issues and factors contributing to their marginalization in society. However, there is limited research qualitatively examining the different ways in which gypsy children think about learning. The current study examined data provided by 26 Portuguese gypsy elementary school children ranging from 9- to 13- years-old. Data analysis presented an outcome space representing the gypsy children’s qualitatively different conceptions of learning. Accordingly with their gypsy culture, these Portuguese students perceived their learning of basic numeracy and literacy skills as important for helping their families selling at fairs. These children indicated that they do not intend to continue studying beyond elementary school as they believe that learning of these basic skills is enough for living as a gypsy. The implications for educational processes and school practices are discussed.

Keywords

Conceptions of learning gypsy students phenomenography Portugal underachievement

Introduction

Although there are different groups of gypsies all over Europe (e.g. gypsy, travelers, roma), each of which are characterized by their own characteristics, all of them share a set of cultural features such as family cohesion, participation in family events, and respect for family traditions (Fraser, 1992; Kenrick & Clark, 1999). Official reports about school outcomes for gypsy children are non-existent in Portugal. Gypsy families sometimes sustain fragile relationships with local authorities which might help explain this situation. Social service agencies implementing intervention programs with these communities, such as Red Cross Youth, confirm the general occurrence of high rates of school failure among gypsy children in elementary school, with one study (Casa-Nova, 2006) reporting a failure rate of about 70%.

Gypsy people perceive school as something strange and threatening, although not necessarily hostile, as long as school is not misaligned with their own rules and does not disvalue the deep oral tradition of their communities (Myers, McGhee, & Bhopal, 2010). Compared to daily activities (e.g. selling in fairs, participating in birthday parties and long lasting celebrations), school is seen by gypsy people as being marginally important on their life-style. The distant and fragile relationship gypsies maintain with school resulting in absenteeism and subsequent underachievement, which in turn increases discrimination and segregation towards them, lowers their already limited valuation of schooling.

However, some studies (Bhopal, 2006; Derrington & Kendall, 2004; Padfield & Jordan, 2004; Reynolds, McCartan, & Knipe, 2003) reveal that in general gypsy parents have a positive image of education and favor its value which is sometimes disturbed by the occurrence of incidents such as bullying, racism, and exposure to tobacco (Derrington & Kendall, 2004; Levinson & Sparkes, 2006; Padfield, 2005; Parker-Jenkins & Hartas, 2002). In response to these cultural conflicts, gypsy families try to protect their children by building a type of family-centered cultural ghetto, with regard to their conduct and life-style. This protective behavior is organized by Portuguese gypsy families for the maintenance of two main concerns: (a) Preservation of tradition and life-style (e.g. entering adult life through marriage at 13- to 15-years-old and giving them an increased level of responsibility compared to their Busnó (non-gypsy) classmates; and (b) minimizing the negative influence of mainstream society in their lives (e.g. in Portugal, behaving as Phillips (2004) coined as the last form of ‘respectable’ racism, some people put frogs at the entry of bars, knowing that gypsy people will avoid them).

Although attitudes towards education are changing slowly among Portuguese gypsies, when compared to school duties, family and work factors remain a priority (e.g. working in fairs, attending funerals, participating in wedding celebrations, and visiting relatives in jails). When teachers and school administrators devalue these priorities and moral obligations, the already fragile relationship between gypsy families and school can be further disturbed (Myers et al., 2010).

Purpose of this study

Gypsy communities have been living in Portugal for almost five centuries and throughout this period contrasting policies have supported either their expulsion or assimilation (Casa-Nova, 2008). In spite of these erratic policies, gypsy people have preserved their own ethnic identity due to a self- imposed alienation towards the surrounding Busnó society.

The 40,000 to 50,000 Portuguese gypsy individuals (there are no accurate official records) living in Portugal are mainly sedentary with living conditions at a level below neighborhood norms (e.g. 68.8% have no potable water in their houses, Bastos, 2003). In recent years, however, social initiatives such as Rendimento Mínimo Garantido (a stipend provided by the Government to insolvent families) have fostered settlement which allows them to obtain a fixed address and facilitate their children attending school. However, despite these efforts of integration and educational projects implemented to fight marginalization, about one-half of adult gypsies remain illiterate. Among young people (15- to 25-year-olds) illiteracy has fallen to about half of that percentage (Casa-Nova, 2006).

School systems and compensatory educational programs have made little inroads into helping at-risk gypsy students in reducing their rates of school failure and drop-out (Casa-Nova, 2008). In order to increase the efficacy of compensatory programs it would be helpful to learn and understand what gypsy children think about their learning. Literature on conceptions of learning has consistently revealed a relationship between students’ conceptions of learning and the quality of learning outcomes (Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993; Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton & Säljö, 1976a, 1976b). Thus, the main goal of the current study is to analyse the way gypsy children conceptualize learning by means of a phenomenographic research approach. We intended to investigate, for the first time, gypsy children’s conceptions of learning, not only because research about children’s learning perceptions is still meager (Jaidin, 2009; Pramling, 1983; Steketee, 1997) but also because there is a dearth of research on gypsy culture from the perspective of gypsy children. Since conceptualization of learning is cultural and context dependent (Marton, Watkins, & Tang, 1997) this study also adds to the limited literature on children’s conception of learning from a cross-cultural perspective.

Method

This study focused on the conceptualization of learning by gypsy children. Research on conceptions of learning started in Sweden with the work of Marton and Säljö (1976a, 1976b) with their investigations of learning from the learner’s perspective. Phenomenography, a ‘research specialization’ (Marton & Booth, 1997, p. 100), aims at describing the different variations of conceptions people have about a particular phenomenon. In the context of phenomenography, Marton (1981, 1986) explained that a conception refers to actual experiences and reflects the way individuals see or understand that experience.

The current study focused on defining a set of categories of description representing different ways of experiencing the phenomenon of learning. Similar to Pramling’s (1983) work on children’s conceptions of learning, the current study used the what/how framework that includes (a) a focus on the what aspect—‘dealing with what the children perceive as learning’; and (b) a focus on the how aspect— ‘dealing with the children’s ideas of how a particular learning comes about’ (p. 88).

Participants

Red Cross Youth volunteers, working with the gypsy community in Braga, a moderate size city in northwestern Portugal, helped the research team to establish contact with the gypsy community. The research project was explained to the gypsy families, living in the town of Braga and surroundings, in 12 independent visits. The parents, who gave permission for their children to participate in the study, signed a consent form in person. Parents who were unable to write their names made their mark.

The elementary schools attended by these children were contacted and formal authorization from each school’s Board was obtained. Participants comprised 26 gypsy children in fourth-grade from five classes in four public schools in the north of Portugal. Participants included 15 boys and 11 girls with ages ranging from 9- to 13-years-old.

Data collection

All the students were interviewed individually by the first author. The semi-structured interviews lasted about 20-minutes and took place about nine-months into the school year. In the ‘interview introduction’ (Åkerlind, 2005) students were told that: (1) They were going to take part in a research project about gypsy children’s ideas about learning; (2) the data were confidential; (3) there were no right or wrong answers; and (4) since they were the experts on the subject that is why they had been chosen for the study. Fictional names were assigned to each participant as a substitute. Children were asked for a permission to tape record the interviews and told not to make any comments about the interview contents to other children. The purpose of these phenomenographic interviews was to encourage gypsy children to explore their personal experiences and their conceptual meaning of learning. The current study sought to answer the following questions:

How do Portuguese gypsy children from Braga, conceptualize learning?

What strategies do they report using to engage in their learning?

All students answered the following questions:

Tell me about an occasion/episode during which you learned something.

What did you learn?

Why do you think you have learned something?

What strategies do you use to learn?

What helps you to learn?

These four questions also helped students during the discussion. When there were long pauses and to encourage participants to explain and clarify their speech, the investigator used follow-up questions such as: ‘Why do you say that?’, ‘Can you explain it with an example?’. For the reasons stated above, this study assumed an exploratory nature as it was based on limited knowledge about gypsy children’s understandings of their learning process.

Data analysis

In his 1981 study Marton distinguished a first and a second order perspective in research. The latter represents how people experience the world around them, while the former describes that same world from the researcher’s point of view. Phenomenographic research assumes a second-order perspective (Marton, 1981) and in the current study the second-order perspective is represented by the gypsy children’s conceptions of learning.

In the phenomenographic tradition, the ‘categories of description’ are descriptions of other people’s conceptions of the phenomenon using their own voices (Marton, 1981). ‘[Categories of description] are simply abstract tools used to characterize conceptions. They represent an attempt to formalize the researcher’s understanding of the conceptions’ (Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993, p. 283). Researchers are not indifferent to the phenomenon or the elements of the research, so their voice in reporting the findings is, therefore, inevitable.

In this sense, although it is impossible to avoid subjectivity associated with these analyses, caution has been taken to minimize this effect. While codifying data, participants’ words have been transcribed verbatim and researchers have not followed previous results nor have used pre-existent categories. Interviews were transcribed and analysed according to Marton (1986): ‘In concrete terms, the process looks like this: quotes are sorted into piles, borderline cases are examined, and eventually the criterion attributes for each group are made explicit. In this way, the groups of quotes are arranged and rearranged, are narrowed into categories, and finally are defined’ (pp. 42–43).

Each interview transcript was reviewed at least twice by the researcher. The familiarization with the corpus of data allowed a first attempt to distinguish qualitatively different ways of experiencing the phenomenon emerging in the global discourse, more than in the individual responses (Dahlgren & Fallsberg, 1991). Phenomenographic research aims to map the range of conceptions within a sample group, as a group, not the range of conceptions for each individual participant (Åkerlind, 2005).

First, the researcher compared the utterances and grouped them in pools of similar meaning relating to the two aspects of the what/how framework: The what (what learning is) and the how (how to engage in learning) aspects. Next, the researcher grouped the statements in units of meaning and then compared and contrasted data in order to find and establish an inclusion criterion of data in the pool. This step is rather important as Bowden (1994) states that: ‘students often say similar things but their underlying meaning is different (…) students also express similar ideas in quite different ways’ (p. 51).

For example, in the current study the following statements of the students were grouped in a what pool of meaning, helpful and happy:

Daniel: Learning things at school is rather useful, because it helps, because we learn to give the right change when we are selling things in the fair. When we give the wrong change we can lose money or the customer. When I do all well my uncle beats me in the neck [he makes the movement] and that is a good sign. When you can read well, that helps because you can answer your children’s questions.

Juliana: My grandma cannot read and she is always asking me to read the letters my uncle sends from jail. Then, she asks me to write him back. When I finish writing I feel happy and get a kiss.

These statements articulate the utility of what is learned at school and the satisfaction experienced when one feels able to use that learning in daily life tasks. This connection between the utility and the satisfaction associated with learning was the criterion used to include data in the pool of meaning, which later on has been integrated into the what category useful for.

Data in pools were next abstracted in categories of description (Marton, 1981). The final step relates to the organization of the categories of description in an outcome space corresponding to the collection of ‘description categories’ of the phenomenon as experienced by this group of students (Marton & Booth, 1997). Pramling (1983) explained the link between the what and how aspects in her study as follows:

Theoretically, all these combinations are possible (i.e. any of the ‘what’ categories can be combined with any of the ‘how’ categories). … But there is some trend towards a certain correlation, that is learning TO DO takes place primarily by DOING; learning TO KNOW takes place primarily by PERCEIVING. Logically, learning to UNDERSTAND comes about in the first hand by THINKING. (p. 107)

In the current study the what and the how categories were aligned in the outcome space following Harris’ (2011) method. The two categories in the outcome space were considered related whenever data within the same original statements were placed in separate what and how categories revealing high levels of alignment.

The outcome space in phenomenographic research is the product of an exhaustive iterative process of analysis and validation with data, and as that outcome space regards the possible ways of how that specific population described the phenomenon, replication is not a condition of reliability (Marton, 1986, Säljö, 1988). For this reason and aligned with the phenomenographic tradition, inter-judge reliability was not used in this study (Sandberg, 1997).

Nevertheless, as the researcher’s voice in reporting data is inevitable, in order to engage fully with gypsy children’s experiences and assure a maximum fidelity of data, the categories and the final outcome space were presented by the first author to the other authors of the article. These researchers analysed the data set and the steps followed by the first author thoroughly. Researchers’ feedback and suggestions were discussed and resulted in important contributions to fit the data analysis (i.e. categories of description and outcome space). Following the phenomenographic tradition, the final outcome space with representative students’ statements was presented graphically (see Table 1; Supplementary Material).

Results

Gypsy children’s conceptions of learning will be described in terms of the way they conceptualize learning (what aspect) and the way they see strategies to facilitate that learning (how aspect). Each one of these aspects will be illustrated with verbatim quotations and their relationship can be seen in Table 1.

The ‘what’ aspect categories

Three different what categories describe the way gypsy students define learning. In the first what aspect category, named knowing things, the gypsy children said that they conceptualized learning as a process during which they learn something new and develop skills. This definition is similar to the one found in Pramling (1993), learning as knowing or in Stekettee (1997) learning as knowing more things.

For example, one child defined learning as:

Andreia: Today I learned nice things about whales at school. I did not know that there were whales in the Azores.

Interviewer: Why do you think you learned ‘things’ about whales in the Azores?

Andreia: Now I know that whales talk to one another when they are swimming in the sea. I’d love to go there to hear their talks. The teacher showed the whales sounds in the Internet. They were strange noises, I did not understand what they were saying, but I learnt a lot of new things.

Here, learning is described as a process for acquiring new school-related content and teachers are the main source of information, playing an important role in providing students with knowledge.

Within the next what category, useful for, learning was defined as means to become able to perform certain tasks, not necessarily academic tasks (e.g. reading documents from Social Welfare Services). This category stresses how important to daily life activities learning can be to the commercial activities developed by the gypsy families (usually selling clothes and shoes in fairs).

Alberto: Going to school is important so that we can give the change in the fair.

Interviewer: Can you give an example?

Alberto: Yes. People pay for the clothes and we have to give the right change.

Interviewer: What does it mean to ‘give the right change’?

Alberto: Don’t you know?

Interviewer: I’m not sure if I know. Can you explain it?

Alberto: Yes. When people pay we have to know and make the sums quickly and give the right change. We have to be smart. When we make a mistake people complain.

Here a child refers to the importance of basic learning contents, such as basic mathematical skills, reading, and writing in his daily life, without anticipating the usefulness of this kind of initial knowledge in later and more advanced grade levels (perhaps because the period of time they stay at school, especially for girls, is truncated).

Rosana: You know, I have to learn well but quickly.

Interviewer: Yes, I understand, but why must it be ‘quickly’? What do you mean?

Rosana: It has to be quick, because it is so.

Interviewer: Can you explain it better?

Rosana: Yes, because I have to leave school soon, that’s what my mother said.

Interviewer: What do you mean by ‘soon’? Are you going to stop attending classes?

Rosana: It is up to my mother to decide that, but I have to get ready to marry and she says it will be soon. [Rosana is 11-years-old]

The third what category, overcome obstacles describes one of the aspects of the instrumental component of learning, underlining its importance in overcoming obstacles that occur outside of school. The role the teacher plays when projecting the consequences of learning in daily life is reported by one of the children:

José: In class the teacher said that we all have a lot of frogs in our life and learning makes the frogs go away [see the reference to frogs in the introduction].

Interviewer: Can you explain to me what do you mean?

José: Mnnn.

Interviewer: How can learning make the frogs go away and keep them out of your life?

José: Because learning open doors.

Interviewer: What do you mean by ‘learning open doors’? Can you give an example?

José: Mnnn. At the beginning I didn’t read very well and used to say that I didn’t like reading. I was very slow and got annoyed because I never got till the end. Then I didn’t feel like reading.

Interviewer: I see.

José: The teacher helped me to learn, to send the frogs away. Now I can read the letters sent by the Town Hall to us about the fair fees.

Within these what categories of description, the description of learning emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge and its application to practice in order to help them in coping with school and daily life tasks. Gypsy children’s understanding of learning appeared primarily to be focused on learning new things at school with the help of teachers, progressing to applying this new knowledge to school tasks as well as to daily life tasks. Finally, they moved to a broader understanding of what learning might look like, with the final what aspect describing learning as overcoming obstacles in life outside the school context. This sense of usefulness, primarily centered in learning how to read, write, and count in the school context, moved to applying that knowledge to daily life tasks (e.g. read documents from social welfare, write letters to send to relatives in jail), which children reported to be of some help in overcoming obstacles in life.

The ‘how’ aspects categories

The three what aspects previously described are intimately linked to the three how aspect categories: Doing things, being on time, and asking for help—which describe the way students engage in learning. In the first how category—doing things—the students report that they learn when they perform academic tasks. They also state that they need to pay attention and concentrate on learning tasks.

Rogério: I learn when I read

Daniel: I learn arithmetic and mental calculation at school

Idalécia: While I’m learning I can’t be absent minded, I have to focus or I don’t learn.

Within the second how category—being on time—students said that in order to learn it was necessary to be at school on time to participate in the school activities.

António: When I’m late to school I don’t learn and stay behind.

Interviewer: Do you want to explain why you don’t learn when you are late to school?

António: [silence]

Interviewer: Why do you say you ‘stay behind’?

António: Because I do.

Interviewer: What do you mean? Can you give me an example?

António: Because I can’t wake up for myself and I always get late to school, at break time. The other children have already learned a lot of things, and I haven’t, then I stay behind.

Portuguese gypsy families don’t wake their children in the morning, children wake up by themselves. As António openly says: ‘[I arrive at school] almost at break time.’ This cultural mores makes it difficult for gypsy children to respect the school timetable, to be at school when school activities begin, and does not facilitate their school engagement. As a result, instructional deficits magnify. Besides the lack of punctuality these students miss classes throughout the school year (e.g. to work with their family members in the local weekly fairs, to go to funerals, or participate in weddings) which does not allow them to follow the class activities and to develop expected skills and competences.

In the final how category—asking for help—students conceptualize that asking for help facilitates their learning. Students report that in order to learn they ask their teachers’ and relatives’ for help in performing school tasks (and especially their siblings and cousins), as well as in daily life activities.

Rogério: To do the school tasks I ask the teacher for help.

Interviewer: How do you ask her for help?

Rogério: I call her to my desk.

Interviewer: And how does she help you?

Rogério: The teacher reads the questions in the worksheet and explains what I have to do.

Raquel: My elder brother taught me how to tidy the shoe boxes in the van.

Within the three how aspects, while the first one focused on learning by doing school-tasks (e.g. pay attention in class, solve mathematics problems), the last two stress conditions needed for learning to occur. To engage in learning, children report the need for being on time and also the importance of asking for help from teachers and family members in order to learn school contents, finish school tasks, but also to solve daily problems.

Discussion

An outcome space combining the what and the how aspects discovered in the current study is presented in Table 1 (Supplementary Material). Category 1 in both the what and the how aspects are aligned. Within these categories students focused on knowing new information and reported engaging in learning by doing school activities with the help of teachers. Category 2 in the what aspect is linked to Category 2 in the how aspect. These categories focus on the usefulness of the knowledge acquired at school not only as it applies to school tasks, but also to other activities outside of school. Students stress the need for being on time for classes to engage on learning activities. Lastly, Category 3 in the what aspect is aligned with Category 3 in the how aspect. Within these categories, students talk about the importance of learning as a tool to overcome obstacles in daily life, and report the importance of asking for teachers and family help for accomplishing personal goals.

In sum, gypsy children perceive learning as knowing things, being useful for, and overcoming obstacles. Correspondingly, they saw learning as occurring by doing, by being-on-time and by asking-for-help. Our results only partially corroborate those of Jaidin (2009), Pramling (1983), and Steketees (1997). In a study with 300 Swedish children aged 3- to 8-years-old, Pramling (1983) identified three what aspects (learning to do, to know, or to understand) related to three how aspects (doing, perceiving, or thinking). Steketee (1997) in a study with six Australian children (ages ranging from 5- to 11-years-old) found a set of six conceptions: (1) Generic learning; (2) learning as physically doing; (3) learning as knowing more things; (4) learning as knowing harder things; (5) learning as searching for meaning; and (6) learning as constructing new understanding. More recently, Jaidin (2009), with a sample of 16 children from Brunei (ages ranging from 8- to 11-years-old), found a set of three categories of description. Those Brunei children saw themselves as learning as acquiring, as remembering, and as having active participation. The apparent mismatch between our results and those described is not surprising as stated conceptions of learning are cultural and context dependent (Marton et al., 1997) as there are no context-free meanings (Schwandt, 1997).

It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. The results of the current research could be due to the phenomenographic framework used in this study, the instrument used, the small sample size, or the participant themselves. But it could also reflect to the cultural differences between gypsy children in this study and participants in other studies.

Liégeois (1998) noted that gypsy parents’ lack of confidence towards school is due to the educational role played by school rather than to its instructional role. A long term relation between their children and school is somehow feared by gypsy parents because they think it can put their system of values at risk and weaken gypsy children’s association with their culture and traditions (Liégeois, 1998; O’Hanlon & Holmes, 2004).

Maybe this lack of confidence and this apprehension, together with the generalized belief that a basic educational level (e.g. simple arithmetic operations, reading and writing with some fluency) is sufficient to live successfully as a gypsy (Bhophal, 2004, Levinson, 2007; Myers et al., 2010) helps justify the maintenance of habits misaligned with the engagement in school? For example, the fact that gypsy adults do not wake their children in the morning, letting them wake up by themselves in accordance to their needs, frees them from a real sense of discipline and schools’ diurnal rhythm for engaging in learning.

Our data suggest that learning is understood by gypsy children as related to the acquisition of a basic level of literacy, to be applied into daily tasks, mainly in their selling activities. It is possible that gypsy children feel compelled to perpetuate the gypsy Life Style (e.g. early marriage, selling in fairs)—a decision that could be reinforced by the evidence that gypsy people are not commonly accepted in regular jobs run by the Busnó people. Future research should examine the role of the learned application of the contents and their importance for school success, analysing how fourth-grade students in a range of international contexts understand learning.

Conclusions

If we want to know what characterizes children’s learning, we must know how they see it from their own perspective. And if our knowledge about children’s learning should make children’s better ‘learners’, we must develop their understanding of their own learning. (Pramling, 1996, p. 565)

In order to promote school success among gypsy children it is important to involve all the relevant individuals in the child’s life. For example, it is essential to develop a relationship with gypsy families to reinforce the value of learning and attending school and following school rules—but also to sensitize teachers and provide them with information about gypsy traditions and culture aiming at fostering in these students engagement in school (Derrington & Kendall, 2008; Lloyd, Stead, & Jordan, 1999). Finally, as Pramling (1996) suggested, it would also be important to create opportunities to help gypsy students to reflect upon their own learning; for example by implementing self-regulated learning enhancing programs (Rosário et al., 2010) designed to strengthen the instrumental dimension of learning, so evident in the students quotations and intimately connected with aspects of the gypsy culture.

Footnotes

Note

Author biographies

Pedro Rosário is Associate Professor in the Escola de Psicologia at Universidade do Minho, Portugal. His research interests include students’ self-regulation of their learning and the conceptions of learning of minorities and excluded populations. Pedro runs projects to enhance self-regulation in Portugal, Brazil and Chile. He is the Director of the Integrated Master’s Degree in Psychology at the Escola de Psicologia. He is the principal investigator of a story-tool project running with gypsy children.

José Carlos Núnez is full Professor in the Departamento de Psicologia at Universidade de Oviedo, Spain. He is the Director of the Department of Psychology and one of the Editors of Psicothema. His research interests include approaches to learning and learning strategies among secondary and university students.

Raquel Azevedo is a registered Educational Psychologist. She finished her graduate degree in the Escola de Psicologia da Universidade do Minho. Her major research includes conceptions of learning in marginalized children. She participates in the activities of the Red Cross Youth volunteers, working with the Gypsy community in Braga.

Jennifer Cunha is a graduate student in the Educational Psychology Program at the Universidade do Minho. Her major research interests include homework and school achievement of marginalized children.

Armanda Pereira is finishing her school psychology practicum to apply for registration as an Educational Psychologist. She graduated from the Escola de Psicologia da Universidade do Minho. Her major research includes learning strategies in elementary school. She is participating in a story-tools project to enhance gypsy children school achievement.

Rosa Mourão teaches English to fifth graders. She received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from Universidade do Minho. Her major research interest includes homework and its impact in school achievement and marginalized indigenous population of children.

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