Hopeful Lines of Flight: Opening up possibilities of imagining and enacting alternative discourses of education in the early years of primary school

Author(s):

Clare Alison Britt

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

PRE_C3, Preconference; Paper Session C3

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-08

13:15-14:45

Room:

C E38

Chair:

Michael Hansen

Contribution

This research project aims to locate sites of disruption and resistance of the dominant discourses of control within the early years of primary school, and identify the alternative discourses and positionings within discourses these schools are contributing to and operating within, in order to offer possibilities for imagining and enacting education ‘differently’, and produce hope for ‘different ways of living’ (St Pierre & Pillow, 2000) for primary schools in contemporary Australia. The aim of this research project is not to compare and contrast, or to find one true and good ‘model’ to implement as standardised practice, but to disrupt the regimes of truth of education (the ‘normal’, ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’ ways of being in education where other ways of being or possibilities are unimaginable, impossible) with multiple possibilities and many different ways of imagining primary school (where we can imagine primary school, children, teaching, learning, education in different ways, multiple ways). The potentialities offered through the mobilisation of hope and imagination, and hope and agency in transformative action suggest that through engaging with and operating within discourses of hope in this research project, further spaces may be opened up for alternative possibilities to be imagined and enacted in the early years of primary school. Therefore, through this research I aim to: • illuminate what is possible in the early years of primary school when time, space, knowledge and relationships are imagined differently • investigate how these school communities position themselves, and within what discourses; • explore how children experience this alternative positioning of teaching / learning / school; and • analyse what hope these schools offer in terms of opening up new ways / multiple possibilities of imagining and enacting schooling. Through this research, I aim to draw on and position both my research project and myself as a researcher within discourses of the philosophy and politics of hope, and within feminist poststructural understandings of research. This theoretical framwork is based in my belief that philosophies of hope and feminist poststructuralist understandings have broad spaces of overlap, of intersection – spaces that have the potential to open up dialogue, creativity and imagination. Indeed, Giroux (1997) draws strong links between a ‘discourse of possibility’ and the languages of critique and possibility found in feminist poststructuralism: “a discourse of imagination and hope that pushes history against the grain” (Giroux, 1997, p.224). I believe Davies (2004) also articulates the hopefulness of poststructuralist theory, “in its openness to meanings not yet thought of, and in its dedication to not getting stuck in old clichés and explanations”(p.9), and the potential for hopeful action and change offered within applications of poststructuralism.

Method

The research design for this ongoing project is case studies of three Australian primary schools (with a particular focus on the early years of primary school - 5-8 year old children) that open up possibilities of imagining and enacting alternative discourses of education. I have been influenced by the possibilities offered to research methodologies when the traditional privileging of science over art, intellect over emotion, word over image are disrupted (Lind, 2005; Richardson, 1997). The recognition of the importance of many representations and many ways of communicating, calls for research that is “composed of different forms of representation. These can challenge the violent dichotomy that institutionally separates image and text, body and mind, spirit and reason, female and male representations” (Lind, 2005 p.257). Thus approaches to, and methods of, data collection are informed by the use of the Mosaic Approach (Clarke & Moss, 2001) and Arts-Informed Research (Cole et al, 2004), with verbal forms of data collection (such as group interviewing, authentic conversations, storytelling and narrative); visual forms of data collection (photography, video/film, creative / visual representations); written forms of data collection (writing, document analysis) being used with both adults and children within school communities throughout the research project. Discourse analysis techniques are being used to explore the data, in order to make visible the ways in which the participants in this study are positioned and position themselves (and others) within the discourses they believe are available to them. The discourse analysis in this study focuses primarily on the ways in which metaphors and images are used to create meaning in ‘texts’ (Britt & Sumsion, 2003; Cook-Sather, 2001; Derrida, 1978; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Sumsion, 2001). Here I use ‘text’ in a meaning that “may involve various forms of semiosis, not just language” (Poynton & Lee, 2000, p. 5). Thus through discourse analysis, I will aim to analyse the ways in which stories, images, metaphors in the data can be de/reconstructed to highlight the discourses that the participants perceive are available to them as children/teachers/parents/administrators in a primary school – and where they have chosen to situate themselves and their experiences within these discourses.

Expected Outcomes

It is my hope that this research project will contribute significantly to debates around Australian educational policy by moving both through the philosophical and into the empirical, in order to “articulate a hopeful path of possibility” (Novinger & O’Brien, 2003, p.6). It is my hope that in the act of exploring, studying and revealing schools that are engaging with alternative discourses of education and constructions of childhood, other teachers and school communities may also “enter the space in which the fault lines in the social fabric can be made visible – revisable” (Davies, 2005, p.4). Furthermore, the dominant discourses currently circulating within mainstream Australian primary schools and across the socio-political context of neoliberalism serve to position children as invisible, subordinate and without agency (Cannella, 1999; Devine, 1999; Millei, 2005; Robinson & Kellet, 2004), therefore this research project is significant in its aim to create a space in education that allows children visibility and a voice in their own learning and in the creation of their school culture.

References

Britt, C., & Sumsion, J. (2003). Within the borderlands: Beginning early childhood teachers in primary schools. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 4(2), 115-136. Cannella, G. S. (1999). The scientific discourse of education: Predetermining the lives of others - Foucault, education and children. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 1(1), 36-44. Clarke, A., & Moss, P. (2001). Listening to young children: The mosaic approach London: National Children's Bureau and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Cole, A. L., Neilsen, L., Knowles, J. G., & Luciani, T. C. (Eds.). (2004). Provoked by art: Theorizing arts-informed research. Nova Scotia: Backalong Books. Cook-Sather, A. (2001). Between student and teacher: Learning to teach as translation. Teaching Education, 12(2), 177-110. Davies, B. (2004). Introduction: Poststructuralist lines of flight in Australia. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 17(1), 3-9. Davies, B. (2005). The (Im)possibility of intellectual work in neoliberal regimes. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(1), 1-14. Derrida, J. (1978). The retrait of metaphor. Enclitic, 2, 6-33. Devine, D. (1999). Children: Rights and status in education - A socio-historical analysis. Irish Educational Studies, 18(Spring). Giroux, H. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope: Theory, culture and schooling. Colerado: Westview Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lind, U. (2005). Identity and power, 'meaning', gender and age: Children's creative work as signifying practice. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 6(3), 256-268. Millei, Z. J. (2005). The discourse of control: Disruption and Foucault in an early childhood classroom. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 6(2), 128-139. Novinger, S., & O'Brien, L. (2003). Beyond 'boring, meaningless shit' in the academy: Early childhood teacher educators under the regulatory gaze. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 4(1). Poynton, C., & Lee, A. (2000). Culture & Text: an introduction. In A. Lee & C. Poynton (Eds.), Culture and Text: discourse and methodology in social research and cultural studies. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Robinson, C., & Kellet, M. (2004). Power. In S. Fraser, A. Lewis, S. Ding, M. Kellet & C. Robinson (Eds.), Doing Research with Children and Young People. St Pierre, E. A., & Pillow, W. S. (Eds.). (2000). Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in education. New York: Routledge. Sumsion, J. (2001). Rereading metaphors as cultural texts: A case study of early childhood teacher attrition. The Australian Educational Researcher, 30(3), 67-87.

Author Information

Clare Alison Britt

Charles Sturt University

School of Teacher Education

Sydney

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