Session Information
25 SES 02, Children's Rights: Methodological and Theoretical Issues
Paper Session
Contribution
Common Western constructions of young children position them as existing in a self-indulgent world of play (Roche, 1999), with little to no understanding of how to negotiate co-existence with others (civic learning). A sociologically informed definition of citizenship describes it "as a social process through which
individuals and social groups engage in claiming, expanding or losing
rights” (Isin & Turner, 2002). However, civic learning and action in education tends to be designed for secondary school children and is largely focused on the maintenance of social and political institutions and the social integration of children and young people into the current political system (Flanagan, 2012). Recent sociology of childhood theorising (e.g., see James, Jenks & Prout, 1998) and empirical studies (e.g., see Phillips, 2011), recognise young children as competent and capable social actors who can contribute to the world as citizens of today. To support civic learning and action as a life long continuum of negotiating co-existence with others, a tri-nation comparative study titled Civic Action and Learning with Young Children: Comparing Approaches in New Zealand, Australia and the United States (funded by the US Spencer Foundation) investigates the civic capacities that marginalized young children demonstrate in early childhood education settings. The study aims to inform both civics education as well as the field of early childhood education by documenting the capacity of young children to be social actors as well as the potential of preschool settings to be sites of civic learning and education. This paper focuses on the research question: What aspects of civic action do young children bring from home and/or inherently use when faced with issues they feel are unjust, troubling or problematic?
Theoretically, the study is informed by sociology of childhood, communitarian citizenship theory (Delanty, 2002, Etzioni, 1993) and Bergson’s (1998) theory of creative evolution. Communitarianism citizenship focuses on social cohesion through care and concern for fellow community members and responsibility to the community. This way of thinking about citizenship seems to offer compatibility with possibilities for young children within the communities they partake in, such as their neighbourhood, childcare centre, kindergarten or school. In communitarianism, the sharing of interests and experiences produces “shared values and cultural cohesion…for the functioning of a political community” (Dahlgren, 2006, p. 269) enacted through a strong sense of community responsibility (Delanty, 2002). Communitarian citizenship key concepts of social responsibility, civic identity, civic agency and civic participation are used as a framework for identifying evidence of young children’s citizenship. However, following fixed categories leads to what Bergson (1998) describes as lines of descent a practice of pinning down, defining and fitting into predefined categories, which western research has long legacy of enacting. Western conditioning cultivates ready categorisation. Resisting the need to fix and place in a category and instead being open to the not-yet-known, offers what Bergson refers to as lines of ascent. Lines of ascent and descent are not distinctly separate. Lines of ascent can emerge from the coherence or the unsettling closure of lines of descent. For a study that is interested in children’s agency in society, we wanted the child participants to have agency in the research: to have “the power to engage with others in ways that open up the capacity of thought and being” (Davies, 2014), as opposed to being bound by set categories and definitions. Through openness to surprising encounters (lines of ascent), we gained further insight of the rich and infinite variability of young children’s citizenship. This paper shares the methodological considerations and initial findings from the Australian site of the study: an Aboriginal Australian governed childcare centre in and Aboriginal community in south-west Queensland.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bergson, H. (1998). Creative evolution. Mineola, NY: Dover publications. Cannella, G. S., & Viruru, R. (2004). Childhood and postcolonization: Power, education and contemporary practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Dahlgren, P. (2006). Doing citizenship: The cultural origins of civic agancy in the public sphere. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(3), 267-286. doi: 10.1177/1367549406066073 Davies, B. (2014). Listening to Children: Being and becoming. Abingdon, OX: Routledge. Delanty, G. (2002). Communitarianism and citizenship. In E. F. Isin & B. Turner (Eds.), Handbook of citizenship studies (pp. 161-174). London: Sage Publications. Etzioni, A. (1993). The spirit of community: Rights, responsibilities, and the communitarian agenda. New York: Crown. Flanagan, C. (2012). Civic Learning/Civic Action: The State of the Field. Commissioned report for The Spencer Foundation’s strategic initiative on Civic Learning and Civic Action. Chicago, IL: The Spencer Foundation. Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12. Isin, E., & Turner, B. (2002). Citizenship studies: An introduction. In E. Isin & B. Turner (Eds.), Handbook of citizenship studies (pp. 1-10). London: Sage. James, A., Jencks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing childhood. Oxford: Polity Press. Martin, K. (2003). Ways of knowing, ways of being and ways of doing: a theoretical framework and methods for Indigenous re-search and Indigenist research. Journal of Australian Studies, 76, 203-221. Phillips, L. G. (2011). Possibilities and quandaries for young children's active citizenship. Early Education and Development, 22(5), 778-794. Roche, J. (1999). Children: Rights, participation and citizenship. Childhood, 6(4), 475-493. Smith. L.T. (2012). Decolonising methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London: Zed Books. Tobin, J., Wu, D., & Davidson, D. (1989). Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China, and the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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