Scaling and Subjectification in an ESD Educational Project

Abstract

The aim of the article is to investigate, in the light of the emphasis laid on scaling by UNESCO (UNESCO, 2014a), how subjectification of those involved in educational innovations both enables and constricts scaling understood as a learning process. This is carried out through a case study of the Alforja Educativa, an educational project in Ecuador on antibiotic resistance (ABR). The ABR has been described as a sustainability challenge comparable to climate change. The way in which subjectification enables and constricts scaling as a learning process is analysed by drawing on educational scaling research and the article illustrates how the subject positions of those involved in scaling emerge as scaling subjects in transactional relationships, both with the sites where the educational project is to be scaled, and in relation to that, which will be scaled.

Keywords

Scaling education for sustainable development transaction antibiotic resistance global action programme on education for sustainable development

Introduction

In the context of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), health has been part of the global discussion both in the Millennium Development Goals and the current Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2000, 2006, 2014a, 2014b). In medical and public health researches, antibiotic resistance (ABR) has emerged as a sustainability issue comparable in complexity and severity to climate change (UN, 2016; WHO, 2015); yet, ESD research on ABR is very limited (Cars et al., 2008; Jasovský, Littmann, Zorzet & Cars, 2016; Laxminarayan et al., 2013, Laxminarayan & Chaudhury, 2016; Littmann, Buyx & Cars, 2015; Nathan & Cars, 2014). We therefore argue that if ABR as a sustainability challenge is to be addressed, it is essential that knowledge is created about the scaling of ABR educational projects when introduced in new contexts.

Educational scaling research (Coburn, 2003; Harwell, 2012; McLaughlin & Mitra, 2001) has emphasized the lack of empirically based research on scaling. Meanwhile, the UNESCO global action plan on ESD (UNESCO, 2014a) has emphasized scaling in the continued ESD efforts.

Our concept of scaling (our preferred concept to scaling-up) is based on the introduction of educational innovations into new contexts and ongoing activities. With support from a conceptual framework on scaling developed through a participatory research approach with researchers and practitioners in Southern Africa (Mickelsson, Kronlid & Lotz-Sisitka (2018)), we understand scaling as a learning process. This underscores the fact that it is a complex process not just regarding spread, but in that educational innovations transact (Dewey, 1938) with those involved and with the sites where educational innovations are scaled.

To this end, this article investigates one such ABR educational project developed in Ecuador, the Alforja Educativa. What makes the case of the Alforja Educativa interesting is how it allowed us to address subjectification (Davies, 2006; Foucault, 1980, 1982; Heller, 1996), the process by which those involved in scaling of educational innovations are expected to understand both the world and their positions in certain ways, and to act accordingly. As such, the educational project of the Alforja Educativa provides opportunities to explore the role of subjectification and how it both enables and constricts scaling of educational innovations. This is exemplified in the central findings of the article where the drive for promoting specific metaphors of ABR grounded in what is described as ancestral knowledge is promoted, sometimes in tension with a methodology characterized by open-endedness and a learner-defined approach. Based on these findings, we show the importance of scaling efforts to focus not only on the educational project but also to consider where the project will be introduced and who will be involved.

Aim and Research Questions

The article aims to investigate how subjectification of those involved in the scaling of educational innovations both enables and constricts how scaling is understood as a learning process.

Research Questions

What subject positions are the educators, children, parents and community involved in the scaling of the Alforja Educativa educational project expected to submit to and what chafings emerge in the educational content of the project?

How did the participants in the workshop on the Alforja Educativa educational project enact the expectations of the educational content?

How might these expectations regarding subject positions both enable and constrict the possibilities of scaling the Alforja Educativa into different contexts?

Previous Research

Educational Scaling Research

The issue of scaling is at the very heart of how change is achieved in and through education: conceptualizing the effects of an educational project or reform in terms of scaling creates novel ways of approaching the purpose of education and how educational projects can enable change (Coburn, 2003; Hatch, 1998; McLaughlin & Mitra, 2001).

Education is crucial to addressing the global challenges we face (UNESCO, 2014a, 2014b). These challenges demand changes to our societies, economic structures and our daily lives. As such, matters relating to scaling are arguably among the most pressing educational research issues (Coburn, 2003; Hatch, 1998; McLaughlin & Mitra, 2001). Scaling within educational research is not a new phenomenon, but conceptualizing it as scaling is a relatively recent development, and as Harwell (2012) points out, the field of scaling lacks theories based on empirical evidence. This includes both the actual process of scaling as well as the factors that promote or enable it. Denton, Vaughn and Fletcher (2003) agree with Harwell (2012), but they argue that the existing scaling research in other areas such as health (Ellis et al., 2003; Greenhalgh, Robert, MacFarlane, Bate & Kyriakidou, 2004) or business research (Bloom & Chatterji, 2009; Ford Foundation, 2006; The World Bank, 2004) while outlining a series of theories still lacks strong empirical research to support their claims.

Theoretical Positioning

Our understanding of learning is informed by John Dewey’s conceptualization of the transactional encounters and relations of those involved in educational processes and the educational content as well as the educational environment through which they are constituted and transformed (Dewey, 1896, 1938, 1925; Dewey & Bentley, 1949). Accordingly, the experiences of those involved in education develop and change them as individuals as part of our transactions with and in our environment (Dewey, 1938).

This focuses our analytical gaze on how the educational content of the Alforja Educativa through the scaling process transacts with those involved in scaling as well as the environments where the educational events occur and are envisioned to occur, thus generating a subjectification, which enables and constricts different potentials for scaling along different dimensions.

To apply Dewey’s concepts of learning as a process of transaction to questions of scaling educational innovations (Looi & Teh, 2015), we use a conceptual framework on scaling as learning that is further outlined in Mickelsson et al. (forthcoming). By operationalizing the theoretical framework in a series of analytical concepts, we analytically distinguish subjects from the environment and educational content while, following Garrison (2001), ontologically acknowledging their transactional interwovenness.

The conceptual framework considers three main aspects of scaling as a learning process:

Scaling subjects address the question of who is involved in the learning process of scaling and in what positions these individuals are involved. As we argued in the previous section, this has significant implications for the success of the scaling process, especially as we also want to address ethical considerations.

Scaling object(ive)s enable the identification of which aspects or components of the educational programme are to be scaled and thus where the objective of the scaling effort lies. Informed by Dewey’s understanding that education and learning are always driven by ends-in-view, these scaling object(ive)s can differ from the very concrete to the more abstract, but importantly, always move and emerge as the scaling effort and the challenges which the educational innovation is set to address evolves (Rittel & Webber, 1973).

Scaling site relates to the specifics of where the educational programme was developed and the characteristics of the context into which the programme is to be introduced.

In this article, we refine the framework developed by Mickelsson et al. (forthcoming) by understanding scaling subjects as being produced through a process of subjectification (Butler, 1997; Foucault, 1982). As argued by Davies (2006), the subject is not possible without a simultaneous submission and mastery, something that is particularly pertinent in educational situations. This does not mean that the subjects are passively shaped by the educational process, but that their agency is conditioned (Butler, 1997). Those involved in the learning process of scaling are expected to assume different subject positions. In the analysis, we explore what subject positions they are expected to assume by relating scaling subjects to the concepts of scaling site and scaling object(ive). These relationships are further elaborated in light of the scaling dimensions of depth, sustainability, evolution and shift in ownership (Clarke & Dede, 2009; Coburn, 2003).

A crucial dynamic of scaling is the requirement for adaptivity and fidelity, the need for scaled projects to retain core ideas while remaining flexible. Dewa et al. (2002) support adaptivity to different contexts as long as the purpose of the project is retained, something that Harwell (2012) conceptualizes as fidelity to the project’s core ideas. McMaster and Fuchs (2011) point to the need to balance fidelity with adaptivity. Adaptation in scaling relies on the scaling subject, sharing to some degree principles or values with the scaling object, which can enable a shift in ownership and more sustainable/evolving scaling (Clarke & Dede, 2009; Coburn, 2006). An example of such shared principles from the empirical material is the ancestral worldview, which the educational project suggests is shared by the Ecuadorian communities.

Empirical Material, Methodology and Analytical Approach

The article employs a case approach that focuses on the emerging scaling of the Alforja Educativa project in Ecuador. The case study approach generates an enhanced understanding of why certain processes developed as they did, and what might be important to look at more extensively in future research (Bowen, 2009; Flyvbjerg, 2006; Owen, 2014). As such, this case constitutes an instance that may form the basis of creating knowledge about scaling as a learning process: what enables and constricts scaling of educational innovations (Thomas & Magilvy, 2011).

The Alforja Educativa educational project was developed during a 3-year period (2012–2015) and is the subject of a gradual and on-going scaling effort in Ecuador. The project strives to extend community-based health promotion and education to involve children as well as parents and the local community to create positive ABR management. This includes moving beyond a strictly medical conceptualization of ABR and the use of war metaphors when discussing bacteria. The project is grounded in the worldviews of Sumak Kawsay, Life in Plenitude or Good Living, which understands humans as both belonging to nature and society. Educational practitioners as well as schoolchildren are involved: children develop knowledge of ABR as well as themselves, promoting awareness in families and local communities. During its development, the educational project centred on the collaboration with 41 teachers in 17 schools in the region of one of Ecuador’s largest cities. The rural areas of the region are centred economically around agriculture and livestock, while the urban area is organized around workshops focusing on crafts, shops and a significant degree of public sector employment. The schools involved were urban, rural, public, private and schools characterized both as Hispanic and intercultural. In addition to the teachers and schools, the educational project also included support from artists, medical professionals and collaboration with local authorities, parents and students.

The empirical material of the article consists of three parts:

Four annual progress reports and a concluding project report. These reports go beyond being strictly administrative and detail where, with whom and how the project developed, as well as its preliminary results. As such, the conditions for ABR education in Ecuador are detailed. In the later reports, the progress of the project is more thoroughly described with regard to results of the project and which educational strategies have been successful.

Educational material, providing an extensive description of the educational purposes and principles of the Alforja Educativa, involving the two principal themes of ‘Sumak Kawsay and health’ and ‘child-to-child methodology’, respectively. These purposes and principles are coupled with an outline of subject positions of those involved in the project, subject positions that, as we show in our analysis, may both enable and constrict scaling. The material also provides an account of the results and successes of the educational project up to that point in 2015/2016.

Written reflections by the participants in a workshop held with educators in Ecuador in July 2016, providing an in-depth perspective on the workshops that is a central component of the Alforja Educativa. The workshop held in the urban area involved 40 educational practitioners, many of whom were elementary school teachers, but it also included university lecturers and professors, community and NGO activists, artists and farmers. They were from both the rural and urban areas of the region, and also included participants from other parts of Latin America. The empirical material from the workshop provides an in-depth perspective on scaling as a learning process. The purpose of the workshop was to train the participants in the use of the Alforja Educativa.

Our involvement in the five-day workshop, ‘School Health and the Microbial World: Child-to-Child Strategy’, had the dual purposes of collecting empirical material while also contributing to the development of the workshop as an educational process. To achieve both purposes, we employed the pedagogical method of writing to learn (Dysthe, Hertzberg, Hoel & Andersson, 2000), which centres on recurring writing exercises in which participants are given opportunities to gather and relate to thoughts and experiences in a retrospective structure. The method enabled the educators to reflect on how the educational content and methods could be adapted to their context while generating written empirical material. Dysthe et al. (2000) view writing as having the potential to become a crucial learning strategy. This method was operationalized in four reflective exercises and one visioning exercise. Writing as learning has three relevant components for this article. During the workshop, the method was used as a daily reflective exercise on how the educational content of the workshop could be employed in the participants’ educational practice. The collected material provides us with an empirical basis for how the participants imagine their involvement in the scaling of the educational project. This also enables us to get a sense of where the educational project could be headed, to which sites, who would be included as drivers of the project, and who the beneficiaries and partners in this process would be.

The document material of the case study (annual reports, final project report and workshop documentation) is approached through a combination of content analysis and thematic analysis, where we identified recurring themes and patterns using the analytical concepts based on educational scaling research (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Muir-Cochrane & Fereday, 2006).

The analysis process followed an abductive or iterative approach in which we moved back and forth between the workshop reflections as a representative event of the educational project and the documentation, which included educational material and the reports. As we consider the workshop reflections an instance of the larger educational project, we utilized the document material to further substantiate and structure our analysis, using the concepts of scaling subject, scaling site and scaling object. This enabled us to look at the relations between the features of the material identified by these concepts, and how they presented a larger picture with regard to what can enable and constrict scaling in relation to subjectification.

Findings

In this section, we will first present a summary of the findings in two principal themes that emerged through our analysis of the empirical material: Sumak Kawsay and health, and child-to-child methodology. These two themes are then further explored and substantiated with examples from the empirical material.

The first theme defines the scaling object(ive) as notions of ABR based on ancestral knowledge and onto-epistemologies, the joint being and knowing of the Andean peoples which can be understood as efforts to relate the scaling object(ive) to certain scaling sites as well as scaling subjects. While this has the potential of enhancing the relevance of the educational project, it also illustrates a constriction to scaling by being connected to an onto-epistemology that is more or less shared with the scaling site and scaling subjects. The analytical focus on subject positions illustrates how scaling subjects emerge through scaling and depending on the scaling sites. The scaling subjects can sometimes be expected to assume contradictory subject positions at the same time. This is exemplified in the importance given to children’s subject position of drawing on their experiences to engage with their families and community.

With regard to the second theme, the analysis illustrates how the scaling subjects are expected to assume certain subject positions based on their relationship to different scaling sites. The children and the experiences they bring with them into the scaling process become important because of how experience extends both forward into the future and back into the past. The experiential encounters with the scaling site(s) create depth in terms of the scaling subjects, that is, the children and the community, having an experimental history with and in the scaling site. The experiential encounters extending into the future enable the children to contribute to the shift in ownership, evolving the educational project.

Theme 1: Sumak Kawsay and Health

Educational Content

The educational content is outlined in the annual project reports as consisting of knowledge of the microbial world and the roles played by microorganisms and bacteria (in our everyday lives), highlighting that bacteria are not just potentially harmful, but also provide us with many ecological services. This is done in part by establishing new metaphors in the educational material:

We take on the collective challenge to sensitize ourselves and try to understand the complex world of bacteria from a friendly perspective by overcoming the metaphor of war. (Alforja Educativa: Salud Escolar y Mundo Microbiano, part 1, p.10)

The role of microorganisms and bacteria is further linked to a holistic perspective of health as expressed in Sumak Kawsay (translated as Life in Plenitude). This conceptualization is presented as central to the ancestral understanding of health and the relationship between humans and nature. This holistic perspective on health is further constitutionally established as the goal of the people of Ecuador (Constitución Política del Ecuador, 2008; Plan Nacional del Buen vivir, 2009–2013, 2013–2017). By outlining the educational content in this way, it is argued to acknowledge the cultural identities of Ecuador and connecting to local identities and communities: ‘Teachers recommend the following practices if you want a healthy life […] promoting cultural identity of children’ (Annual Report, CSO-Project, 2012).

This emphasis on the value of cultural identity is also present in the educational material of the project, where the name of the entire educational project, Alforja Educativa, is related to the small knapsack which the peasant communities of Abya Yala use to carry important objects on journeys. This argument for a cultural connection is also made when the educational project is presented in the educational material as the result of collaborative work and collective experience among children, teachers, researchers, artists and community communicators to enable social and participatory engagement with issues of ABR in educational institutions and local communities.

Apart from the biomedical and epidemiological components, ABR is understood as having sociological, economic, ecological and developmental dimensions that need to be addressed to manage the emerging threat of ABR to global health. As such, this conceptualization sets the challenge of ABR in the context of inner harmony, harmony with others and a balance of socioeconomic conditions and nature that involves the recovery of ancestral knowledge (Sumak Kawsay).

The educational content is argued to have the potential to inform understandings of antibiotic use and the development of bacterial resistance, including the effect of using antibiotics in livestock. Sumak Kawsay provides a contextual understanding that directs and informs the selection of educational content about ABR in the project.

This leads to the focus of the educational material on the learner’s individual, bodily relationship to the microbial world and to their local ecosystem with the clear aim of coexisting in harmony. The material emphasizes the importance of maintaining health in a holistic sense throughout ecosystems and among individual humans and the community, which involves addressing ABR in terms of both use and resistance at home, at school and in the community.

Subject Positions in Transaction with Place

In the annual reports, teachers and educators are described as lacking knowledge and understanding of ABR and of the proper use of antibiotics. Educators are often described as either having a negative understanding of health as the absence of sickness, or an individualistic understanding of health as physical and psychological well-being and a comfortable life. Thus, the educational project positions the teachers as lacking a more holistic notion of health, considering the balance between humans and the environment. In doing so, the educators are described as having an insufficient understanding of ‘…the problem of bacterial resistance from an integrative and multilateral perspective, starting from the understanding of the microbial world and its role in the fabric of life, expanding our understanding of human life as one of the interconnected threads’ (Alforja Educativa: Salud Escolar y Mundo Microbiano, part 1, p. 9). The argument is that this affects the prevention of disease and ABR at school, at home and in the neighbourhood and community.

According to the annual reports, the aim of the educational project is to facilitate the development of health behaviour in schools, families and communities. A crucial step in this direction was the workshops held with 42 teachers and a number of health educators. These educational practitioners were expected on the one hand to submit to the acquisition of an ‘appropriate notion’ about ABR and to work with partners in workshops to adapt the educational content to their practice and place, conceptualized here as a scaling site. ‘The microbial world and an eco-health approach capture a lot of interest, and make it easier to teach about ABR and the appropriate use of antibiotics’ (Annual Report, 2015, p. 6). ‘The percent of teachers with an appropriate notion about ABR increased from 38% to 87%’ (CSO Final Report, 2012, p. 9). In subsequent annual reports and the final project report, educators and children were expected to assume a way of educating ABR that reaches beyond the medical paradigm as well as submitting to a sense of belonging to the holistic vision and ancestral knowledge of Sumak Kawsay, as expressed in the concept of the local community and identity, as well as the cultural identities of Ecuador.

In the educational material, teachers are expected to generate learning that is crucial for building the social fabric of the school and the community, which involves on one hand disseminating knowledge about ABR, and on the other, on developing processes enabling children to actively participate in learning. The children are also expected to submit to and assume a subject position in relation to their families and communities as educators. In this process, the educators and children are expected to adapt the scaling objectives and educational content to the conditions of their perceived community, including what the educational material describes as the temporal, spatial conditions of participants and community, respecting the rhythm of their lives. These themes in how teachers and children are also expected, as part of a larger community, to define and formulate the challenges of ABR locally to be addressed by the educational project.

Workshop Reflections

Educational Content

The workshop reflections outline the educational content as an approach to learning and knowledge that moves away from what is described as the prevailing war metaphor. This metaphor is characterized as constituting relations/relationships of opposition, and of bacteria as harmful and a threat to human health. In its place, a metaphor of co-existence is proposed with dynamic and interwoven relationships, including both humans and bacteria, in health and in sickness. This educational content is related to the reflections on everyday life and the community as well as to ancestral and traditional knowledge that clarifies the relationship between bacteria that are considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Sumak Kawsay is emphasized as knowledge that involves developing an understanding of the causes of ABR as a challenge and the need to generate closer relationships with microorganisms to find alternative and natural methods instead of using antibiotics. Part of this educational content also involves enabling children’s individual experiences with the microbial world to be related to the reality beyond the educational institutions in families and communities via ‘spontaneous expressions’ through art and creative work. As a part of this educational content, use of a wide range of educational forms is encouraged, including the arts, theatre, stories, games and songs.

Subject Positions in Transaction with Place

In the workshop reflections, community members (including teachers and children) were described as engaging in improper use of antibiotics: ‘motivate children to eat healthy, avoiding self-medication, abusing medicine…’ (Reflections, Day 2, Participant 1, Prevencion y Salud Group). The community was also described as using a prevailing war metaphor for the human relationship with bacteria. Meanwhile, there are also descriptions portraying the community as simply not grasping basic facts about bacterial resistance. The reflections describe how places where the subjects engaged with the educational project are not limited to the schools, although they are the principal focus. The schools are often in the reflections, positioned relative to the family homes and the local community of the school children.

Children are at the centre of many of the reflections. They are expected to submit to and assume positions of dynamic participation, and to engage in researching the local challenges of ABR. Children are assumed to be capable of grasping complex ideas and concepts, such as microbes; of expressing them in easily understandable words; of relating these understandings of ABR to their experience; and of assuming the position of agent in addressing the challenge both at school and at home: ‘preschool children can grasp complex ideas or concepts such as microbes and express them in easy-to-understand words that you remember, and concepts that can spread to other larger groups including children and parents’ (Reflections, Day 2, Participant 2, Entreococos Group).

Thus, the children are expected to engage in what is described as authentic and spontaneous interactions with family and the local community to improve their health. This is paired with expectations expressed in the reflection of children engaging with their families and community, and assuming the role of an educator.

The reflections express an assumption that educational practitioners will be committed to having children participate in a wide range of novel educational activities, such as socio-drama and creative puppetry. The educational practitioner is expected to value unexpected learning over specific results. For the educational practitioners, this also includes an expectation that they approach parents and guardians to encourage change in the whole family and community. Both children and adults, including educational practitioners, are expected to draw on their life experiences, and teachers are expected to be committed to creating environments in which children are expected, with support and encouragement, to identify and conceptualize the local problems of ABR, including their causes and consequences.

The expectations outlined by workshop reflections are not limited to the children, teachers or school, but extend to the broader community. According to the reflections, educational practitioners and children are expected to assume an ontological perspective of the world, characterized by dynamic inter-relationships of bodily states involving both health and sickness, where bacteria can be both good and bad for humans: ‘Microbial resistance looks like a world of dynamic interrelationships between different bodily states: health-sickness’ (Reflections, Day 1, Participant 1, Verde Esperanza Group); ‘Inform children that there are good and bad bacteria; avoid to proliferate the bad and give the possibility to the good that grow in your body’ (Reflections, Day 2, Participant 1, Prevencion y salud Group). Furthermore, there are assumptions about submitting to bacteria among us, and that we therefore need to find ways to live with bacteria and assume the subject position that if bacteria are bad for us, it is often because they have not kept the balance as expressed in the ancestral principles of Sumak Kawsay. The community is expected to assume the knowledge and values of maintaining good microbes and bacteria, and to avoid disproportionate and uncontrolled medication. The reflections express the expectation of a willingness on the part of the community to want to generate closer relationships with microorganisms and to find out how to cope with them in everyday life to find alternative and natural methods for the challenge of ABR, instead of using antibiotics.

Another group about which the reflections include expectations is the educational community, including the headmaster, teachers and service personnel, who are expected to produce an attitude adjustment and become engaged with the issue of bacterial resistance. As part of this engagement, the educational community is expected to identify core problems, causes and effects and develop new ideas, identifying solutions for ABR in the local community. In multiple reflections, this takes the form of an expectation of education practitioners to conduct a situational analysis to detect the problems in the educational institution that require the most attention regarding health, and to manage knowledge about the microbial world. In this situational analysis, the educational practitioners are also expected to assume responsibility for taking care of involved individuals in the community, as well as individuals who should be involved in addressing the challenge of ABR. In some reflections, this educational community also includes other educational practitioners working with teens, adults, parents and the community in general regarding health education even though their positions are not clearly stated. Among these, universities are brought up in the reflections as places where educators could replicate the workshop.

In relating to the expectations of the educational project, educational practitioners resist the understanding of education being promoted, especially the emphasis on horizontal rather than vertical relationships with the children. The challenge of adding new themes to a school year that is pre-planned is also emphasized in the reflections. Some reflections point to educators feeling they lack the necessary tools to help children spread information about the bacterial world to other children and their families.

Theme 2: Child-To-Child Methodology

Educational Content

A key issue in Alforja Educativa is that the specific problems and needs related to the challenge of ABR are to be selected and framed by the school, the families and/or the community.

Choosing and understanding: It is a diagnostic stage in which the problems and needs of the school, family or community are identified. During this stage, the objectives, changes and impacts that are expected to be generated, goals to be fulfilled and what is expected to be learned at the end of the process of each one of the activities are presented; the guides and activities are designed in such a way that they can be adapted easily and freely to the conditions of each community, time, space, number of participants, and different ages. (Alforja Educativa: Salud Escolar y Mundo Microbiano, Part 1, pp. 9, 13)

The project aims to build a supportive environment that enables children to do research themselves on the use of antibiotics by approaching ABR through a combination of research, art and games. To facilitate this, the educational material outlines a five-stage learning process based on the child-to-child methodology.

Choosing and understanding

Investigate and discover

Plan

Going into action

Evaluate

The approach is grounded in an understanding of children as dynamic agents in families as well as in communities. The children are constituted as subjects with their own experiences and understandings of the causes and consequences of the challenges of ABR. This involves them being the active partners in communication and education about the challenges of ABR. In the educational material, the children are presented as active participants in their own and others’ lives. They are expected to research the use of antibiotics, develop educational materials with teachers on ABR, and improve their own and others’ health. Meanwhile, it is emphasized that this needs to be done together with teachers and parents to enable more effective learning and education, including help with detailing the educational material and contextualization in relation to the local community.

The educational project included workshops with diverse participation of academics, health and cultural promoters, teachers, grassroots people, ecologists and artists in a collaborative environment aimed at promoting new ideas. These workshops involved academic allies and collaborations from universities, technical universities, faculties of arts and nutrition schools. The educational report stresses that the differing perspectives of the diverse participants produced a dynamic, creative environment, as the participants could re-negotiate the educational project in light of one another’s ideas and promote new ideas, thus serving as a crucial vehicle for the evolution of the project. In the next step, the workshop participants were to scale the educational project to their children by enabling them to be co-creators in accordance with the child-to-child methodology. The school children would thus be educated in accordance with the purpose of the educational project, while also participating in activities to develop knowledge resources and promote awareness of ABR. In addition, the educational project is directed at parents and families of the children, and at the wider community. The children’s families and communities thus constitute crucial scaling sites, where the children research the use of antibiotics in their close vicinity. The children also engaged in what the final report called innovative approaches, in which they both produced and shared materials, which were picked up by other stakeholders in more organized community activities, including art exhibits produced by the children on topics related to the educational project.

The project reports assume that the current educational practices in which the educational practitioners and the children engaged are not aligned with the child-to-child methodology, by presenting the educational project as potentially transformative in that it uses play and art to build a supportive environment for the children’s active participation. As such, the description of the project takes stock against an assumed didactic teacher position and an assumed passive position for children.

In the project reports and in the educational material, both children and educational professionals are simultaneously constituted as learners and educators. The workshops in which the educational professionals are involved can be considered as modelling co-operative learning: they are expected to perform in their home communities, and the educational professionals are positioned as learners of this particular approach. The mastery of child-to-child methodology aims at constituting an educator who, in turn, is able to produce the learners who are considered desirable in child-to-child methodology. This learner is one who is actively and creatively engaged in ABR and, in turn, able to take on a position as an agent of change in terms of ABR in their local community, thus serving as an educator. Thus, the children are constituted as being capable of interpreting, discussing and analysing information on ABR. Both children and educational practitioners are constituted as active participants in the engagement with and negotiation of educational content. The active positions of the scaling subjects are also stressed as crucial in the annual reports. The project reports also positioned schools as having a leading position and responsibility in the implementation of the educational project, as an integrative part of scaling to the local communities and through horizontal scaling from school to school. Activities were co-organized with partners brought in from art and civil society in order to forge stronger links to the community, and this understanding of schools as transformative scaling sites structures a field of action for the children, where their agency is not confined to educating other children (as implied by the term child-to-child methodology), but where they are assumed to be capable of scaling the educational content to families and communities. The schoolchildren are thus to be both educated in accordance with the purpose of the educational project, but also to participate in activities to develop knowledge resources and promote awareness of ABR.

Workshop reflections

A number of workshop reflections emphasized the importance of the children having agency in how the educational content is framed locally and in identifying challenges and problems, highlighting dissemination through child-to-child methodology. The position of the children is outlined in a horizontal relationship, where they are participants rather than recipients and part of framing the challenge or matter of concern as well as contributing their point of view in finding solutions. This generates what some of the participants call active participation. Enabling experiences with the microbial world to the reality beyond the educational institutions is crucial for this scaling object as a methodology, using methods that enable children’s interactions with family and the local community in authentic and spontaneous ways.

In the workshop reflections, the children as scaling subjects are considered able to grasp complex ideas and concepts, such as microbes, and able to express them in easily understandable words. Solutions are sought from the children’s point of view, and the children spread the knowledge they have been involved with developing further. In relation to their parents, the children are thus positioned as powerful scaling subjects through their assumed capability to express complicated concepts in simple ways: ‘Preschool children who understand the concepts of microbes and bacteria make them clear and talk about them with their parents’ (Reflections, Day 2, Participant 4, Alegremia Group). At the same time, the educational practitioners point out in the reflections the importance of respecting the rhythm of the children, as these children are potentially very young. Even though the participants’ reflections express great confidence in the capability of children to understand, develop and educate others about ABR, the participants also express that they see a challenge in generating interest in ABR among small children, which actions to take, and how to individualize the education on ABR. Hence, the education practitioners express a tension between the desirable subject positions for children envisioned by the educational project and what they perceive as realistic: ‘the challenge is putting it into practice and promoting it, and to make it public policy as far as possible’ (Reflection, Day 2, Participant 5, Streptococcus Group). These uncertainties also extend to how to enable the children to be the carriers of information on ABR in the best way, and their ability to change the health culture outside the educational institution and at home: ‘challenges to use the workshop in my practice would be that preschool children who understand the concepts of microbes and bacteria are able to clearly talk about it them with their parents, [and] parents taking the time to listen and learn from children’ (Reflections, Day 2, Participant 3, Prevencion y salud Group). Some reflections show educational practitioners resisting the active learner positions advocated by the child-to-child methodology, and instead position the children as needing to be recipients of a more transmission-oriented teaching, in which the children are to be informed about bacteria and how they should act in school and their daily lives. Others question the feasibility of children assuming the role of educator with their parents, thus requiring parents to submit to an altered hierarchical relationship with their children.

Discussion and Implications

This discussion is structured around how subjectification in the Alforja Educativa can be understood through transactional relations of scaling subjects to scaling site(s) and scaling object(ive)s, and how this analysis can inform our understanding of how the subjectification of those involved in the scaling of educational innovations both enables and constricts scaling as learning.

To Enable Scaling by Flattening the Plane of Scaling Subjects

In Alforja Educativa, the scaling subjects are presumed to be subjectified on a flat plane, attempting to avoid traditional hierarchical relations between medical doctors, teachers and children with regard to enacting agency in the scaling process. As part of this flattening, there was also openness to non-medical onto-epistemologies, allowing for different conceptualizations of health and the challenge of ABR to coexist. Together with the diversity of participants in the workshops, this allowed for some encounters and events that otherwise tend to be absent from scaling, focused on spreading a predefined scaling object(ive). This flattening among scaling subjects reflects scaling research (Clarke & Dede, 2009; Coburn, 2006; Harwell, 2012) and processes of subjectification could therefore enable scaling with depth, promoting a shift in ownership and securing sustainability and evolution in the scaling effort.

Meanwhile, the case of the Alfroja Educativa has shown that such flattening often involves challenging existing subject positions. As the educational project aims to change ingrained perceptions of health and the negative role of bacteria, it not only adds new knowledge but also challenges educators’ perceptions and knowledge of unlearning (Delahaye & Becker, 2006) and learning. As shown throughout the analysis, such challenges are seldom unproblematic and resistance was enacted among teachers when they perceived conflicts with other objectives and values of the educational system and their educational practice. They also expressed doubts about both their own and the children’s abilities to assume what they perceived as the subject positions to which the Alforja Educativa expected them to submit. This reflects a tension between participatory educational approaches and the educators’ understanding of teaching and learning.

The Possibilities and Limitations of being ’of’ a Scaling Site

The analysis of the empirical material gathered from the Alfroja Educativa illustrates how scaling of educational projects has the potential to extend beyond the initial scaling site, in this case the school, into the everyday lives of the children and community. By attempting through the participation of children to create school knowledge that is applicable to the community, the scaling effort follows how the sustainability challenge is diffused in the community, including the school. As such, the scaling of the Alforja Educativa engages in an effort to avoid the division of school and community. Children as scaling subjects are not subjectified to a specific scaling site, but in a more holistic view, the educational project affords them multiple subject positions that differ between sites. The school thus becomes the first level of scaling sites, what could be considered a platform from which the educational project is scaled to the other scaling sites of families and the local community. Children are expected to assume the subject positions of learners, agents of change and educators, depending on the site enabling the education to reach beyond the school.

Throughout the Alforja Educativa, multiple subject positions of the scaling subjects became actualized depending on the scaling site. Teachers were expected to assume subject positions as learners in the workshops and to be educators in the classroom with the children, while the children were expected to assume subject positions as learners in the school but to be educators in their families and the local community outside of school. The relationship of subjectification to scaling sites came to the fore in the expectation that teachers as well as children assume the holistic onto-epistemology of Sumak Kawsay, especially with reference to their relationship to and experience with the scaling site of the Andean region, and what was described in the empirical material as the ancestral peoples.

The scaling subjects in the Alforja Educativa are from a transactional perspective of a certain scaling site and as such, they acquire certain experiences, knowledge and insights related to this site. This scaling site is not static; rather, it is emerging as it transacts with scaling subjects, resulting in the experiences that shape and contribute to the becoming of the scaling subject. We argue that the scaling subject can therefore be related to the scaling site both in a positive and in a more problematic way through subjectification. It could be said that the scaling site has both repressive and productive power (Foucault, 1995). While such transactional relationships can enable them to contribute to the scaling of educational projects at said site, there is a risk of assumptions being made about the scaling subjects and their experiences, thus leading to the scaling subjects being expected to submit to certain subject positions.

Fidelity and Adaptation in Relation to Scaling Object(ive)s

Throughout the analysis, there was a recurring tension between the scaling object(ive) that aims to scale certain metaphors and ancestral/traditional values on the one hand, and on the other hand, the child-to-child methodology which emphasizes greater agency for scaling subjects to define the challenges of ABR. But what if the challenges are defined as wrong in a way that conflicts with educators’ or researchers’ ontologies and values? The Alfroja Educativa illustrates the challenges of scaling object(ive)s involving expanding agency, as this can come into conflict with other scaling object(ive)s. This points to the important realization that not every educational innovation is scalable to every scaling subject and scaling site. The existence of a degree of coherence or shared principles between the scaling object(ive)s and the scaling subjects is important for enabling scaling. As outlined in the theory section, the relationship between scaling subject, scaling site and scaling object can be understood in terms of fidelity and adaptation of educational innovations (Dewa et al., 2002; Harwell, 2012; McMaster & Fuchs, 2011). In light of the transactional relation to scaling sites, the scaling subjects have experiences, knowledge and insights that enable them to adapt the scaling object(ive)s to enact change at the scaling site. Meanwhile, to be able to perform this adaptation, the scaling subject must already have enacted this change themselves to some degree. If the distance is too large in terms of ontology and ethics, there is a risk that the adaptation will lead not to the scaling object(ive) being enacted, but in effect to some other educational innovation. Just because an educational innovation is considered a best practice at a specific scaling site with certain scaling subjects does not mean it can easily be scaled elsewhere. There is a need in scaling to shift the ownership of the scaling effort (Clarke & Dede, 2009; Coburn, 2003) to those who, through their experiences, are ‘of’ the scaling site. This enables us to ask questions such as how could the transactional encounter of scaling object(ive), scaling site and scaling subjects be set up to mutually develop and benefit them all in terms of enabling learning and change? By understanding why initially successful educational innovations falter when taken to a larger scale and by designing our scaling efforts to be able to be re-contextualized and adapted to the conditions and challenges of the scaling site, the educational innovation has the potential to evolve with the challenge and become more in tune with the actual challenges faced.

Implications for Future Research

The research presented in this article has contributed to a better understanding of how scaling is enabled and constricted by the subjectification of scaling subjects through transactional encounters and relationships with scaling object(ive)s and scaling sites. Meanwhile, a feature of both the scaling object(ive)s and scaling sites in the Alforja Educativa is indigenous knowledge systems (Agrawal, 1995), described in the material as the ancestral knowledge of Sumak Kawsay. This knowledge is connected to the Andean peoples and, within the educational project, it is combined with medical knowledge. As such it brings up questions for future research about the oppressive and potentially productive relations of indigenous knowledge systems (Agrawal, 1995) with other knowledge systems, geopolitics of knowledge (Mignolo, 2002) and the possibilities of third space epistemologies (Bhabha, 1994, 1996; Soja, 2010). While addressing these questions of indigenous knowledge systems and how the relation to other knowledge systems affects scaling is outside the extent of this article, it is an important topic for future research.

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