The Co-production of Children’s Rights-in-Relation: The Interacting Roles of Place, Practice, and Generation

Author(s):

Greg Mannion(presenting / submitting)Gillian Cowell(presenting)John I'Anson

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 09, UNCRC and Traditions of Theorising

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

11:00-12:30

Room:

B034 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Ann Quennerstedt

Contribution

Various theoretical resources are now available that allow us to consider children’s rights in different ways. This paper makes two contributions: a theoretical account and an empirical account each showing how children’s rights can be understood through using a practice orientation. By this view, children’s rights are co-produced (Durose) as responses to place (Mannion et al) within the on-going performance of practice within a given or 'assembled' places; this always happens, we argue, across generations and in the midst of a variety of agencies, human and more-than-human.

Our first move will be to explain and explore what we mean by seeing children’s rights as co-produced through the interactions of all manner of entities that allow for practices to emerge (Schatzki). This position arises from taking a socio-material view, drawing on practice theory and eco-social theories of place from the Heideggerian tradition, to argue that if practices are what constitutes the social, then it must be as practices that diverse agencies conspire to produce what we can talk of as the expressions in the world of human rights of all kinds. We explore the consequences of this view, especially the notion that these practice performances are produced non-autonomously. We consider (after Schatzki’s and other pragmatist readings of Heidegger and Wittgenstein) the consequences of the view that rights-as-practices are not completely rational, intentional or causal, but are rather enmeshed performances in the on-going and indeterminate social and material world (Mannion and Gilbert).

The second move will be to explore this theoretical position as expressed in a recent research project designed to discover the effects of cultures of rights-based practice in secondary schools in Scotland.

Method

Methodology Our empirical project involved the consideration of young people's own experiences of rights in schools contexts in areas of deprivation in Scotland. For the collection of data in secondary schools we used a place-sensitive ethnographic approach (Pink, Hopwood). Our methods included walking interviews (Anderson) and other approaches that allowed participants to 'locate' and narrate in practice-oriented ways what they felt were important with respect to lived everyday rights experiences. These ethnographically-informed methods included the work of facilitators who specialised in arts-based approaches to generating and performing young people's 'voice' through the use of story and poem. Our sample only included schools where pupils had achieved better than expected in attainments despite being located in areas of deprivation. Our focus was on the differences rights-based practices meant to young people's sense of their own attainment and achievement. In this empirical work, two theoretical premises inform a ‘rights-as-practices-in-relation’ approach in relation to data collection: (a) people and places are reciprocally enmeshed and co-emergent through practice, (b) people learn through the practice of participating in embodied transactions, responding to differences found in places (Mannion and Gilbert). Data from young people derived from walking interviews and arts-based approaches are analysed to show when and how our theoretical perspective was borne out and when it was not.

Expected Outcomes

From our starting point, the empirical target was ‘rights-as-practices-in-relation’ and the differences, from young people's own viewpoint these made to attainment and achievement. In this case, the ‘important’ relations, responses to difference, place-based, and generational aspects from young people’s perspectives are outlined. We conclude with a summary of the findings from this research which was funded by the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People. We focus on the consequences for educational practice and policy of seeing rights as embedded within indeterminate practices. We explore some of the affordances of theorising, collecting data and analyzing them in this way.

References

Anderson, J. (2004). Talking whilst walking: A geographical archaeology of knowledge. Area, 36, 254-261. Durose, C., Beebeejaun, Y., Rees, J., Richardson, J., and Richardson, L. (2011) Towards Co-Production in Research with Communities Swindon, AHRC Hopwood N. (forthcoming) Ethnographic fieldwork as embodied material practice: reflections from theory and the field. In N K Denzin (Ed) Studies in symbolic interaction. Bingley: Emerald Press. Mannion, G & Gilbert, J. (forthcoming 2014) Place-responsive Intergenerational Education. In R. Vanderbeck and N. Worth (Eds) Intergenerational Space. London: Routledge. Mannion, G., Fenwick, A., Lynch, J. (2013) Place-responsive pedagogy: learning from teachers’ experiences of excursions in nature. Environmental Education Research, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp 792-809. Mannion, G. (2012) Intergenerational Education: the significance of reciprocity and place. In Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp 386-399. Pink, S. (2009) Doing sensory ethnography. London: Sage. Schatzki, T. R. (1996). Social practices. A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social. A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Author Information

Greg Mannion (presenting / submitting)

University of Stirling

Education

Stirling

Gillian Cowell (presenting)

University of Stirling

School of Education

Paisley

John I'Anson

University of Stirling, United Kingdom

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