A decade of Cloud 8

This blog, which is part of EAPRIL’s ‘Clouds in the Spotlight’ initiative, reflects on the constant changes within Cloud 8 ‘Diversity and equality in different contexts’ including the theory and practice around the topic since its formation ten years ago, with the help of some nephology (study of clouds).

EAPRIL may well have decided on the term ‘Clouds’ to distinguish them from the special interest groups (SiGs) of its elder sister organization, EARLI. The EAPRIL website explains that, ‘Clouds are able to take various forms and shapes and may alter from one year to the next’.

A cloud can be defined as ‘a visible mass of condensed water droplets in the air’. Yet, the word is itself is a metaphor coming from the Old English word for a hill or mass of stone. English speakers began using the metaphor of ‘cloud’ instead of literal words that had their roots in the Old High German term ‘wolkan’.

The double metaphor of the ‘cloud’ contains the idea of something slight and fleeting that is literally nebulous, but also the sense of something with substance like a hill. The songwriter Joni Mitchell captures these contradictions when she sings of seeing clouds as ‘Rows and flows of angel hair. And ice cream castles in the air. And feather canyons ev’rywhere’[i].

Since its formation ten years ago by Eila Burns, Kaija Penna-Korpioja and me, Cloud 8 has been represented at every annual EAPRIL conference and held its first of many between conference webinars in 2018. Nick Gee and then Sibel Inci became Cloud 8 coordinators in the years that followed.

Eila Burns and I published an article about managers’ and teachers’ perspectives of dyslexic teachers in English and Finnish Further Education[ii]. We noted the concern for addressing the needs of school students with ‘specific learning difficulties’ but there had been little attention given to, for example, dyslexic teachers in the school workforce and during vocational training. This work led to the proposal for a new EAPRIL Cloud, which the Board approved in 2016 with the title of ‘Diversity and equality in different contexts’ and the number eight.

Diversity and equality were well established terms in education and organization studies at the time appearing in European Union documents and UNESCO’s 2030 goals. The first activities of the Cloud at annual conferences and its inaugural webinar were focused on diversity at work, emotional intelligence in professional education and the wellbeing of teachers.

Inclusion tended to be reserved for use in school classrooms within a language of special needs in the 2010s. Yet, over time, it has become widely used in many more settings and increasingly appeared in the titles of Cloud 8 events from 2020 onwards. The work of Cloud 8 reflects wider changes in theory and practice altering from year to year as its form and shape changes.

Cloud 8 is made of more than any one person as it is the work of many people acting together condensing and making visible theory and practice in the field. Thanks go to all Cloud 8 members and supporters who have contributed over the last decade and long may Cloud 8 continue to change in the next decade in interesting ways as its encourages and supports work in the field.

Anthony Thorpe

Joint coordinator with Dr Sibel Inci of Cloud 8 Diversity and equality in different contexts

[i] Mitchell, J. (1969) Both sides now. On Clouds. A&M records.

[ii] Thorpe, A., & Burns, E. (2016). Managers' and teachers' perspectives of dyslexic teachers in the English and Finnish Further Education workforce: new insights from organizational routines. Oxford Review of Education, 42(2), 200-213. DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2016.1157062