Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education

Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education presents international accounts of approaches to educating mobile communities such as circus and fairground people, herders, hunters, Roma and Travellers. The chapters focus on three key dimensions of educational change: the client group moving from school to school; those schools having their demographics changed and seeking to change the mobile learners; and these learners contributing to fundamental change to the nature of schooling.

The book brings together decades of research into the challenges and opportunities presented by mobile learners interacting with educational systems predicated on fixed residence. It identifies several obstacles to those learners receiving an equitable education, including negative stereotypes and centuries-old prejudice. Yet the book also explores a number of educational innovations that bring mobility and schooling together, ranging from specialised literacy programs and distance and online education to mobile schools and specially trained teachers. These innovations allow us to think differently about how education can and should be, for mobile and non-mobile learners alike.

Patrick Alan Danaher is Associate Professor (Education Research) in the Faculty of Education, and Scholarship of Learning and Teaching Program Leader in the Centre for Research in Transformative Pedagogies, at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland University, Australia.

Mairin Kenny was Headmistress until 1998 of a primary school for Traveller children. She now works as a research consultant, and has written and lectured extensively on intercultural school provision and on Travellers’ ethnic identity.

Judith Remy Leder is a writing consultant and retired Director of the California State University, Fullerton, Business Writing Program.