Play and leisure in Australian School Age Care: Reconceptualizing children’s waiting as a site of play and labour

Childhood ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
School Age ◽  
Australian School ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
The Status ◽  
A Site ◽  
Programming Practices

Australian School Age Care programmes are little researched childhood settings that are commonly understood as sites of leisure and play in between school and home. This article draws on recent research to consider the status of a seemingly non-playful activity, that of children’s waiting in School Age Care. The poststructural framing in this article conceptualizes waiting as an activity that incorporates acts of emotional labour, play and identity construction. It prompts consideration of whether waiting is a site of play and should therefore be incorporated in programming practices in School Age Care and other play-based settings.

scholarly journals A Bridge to Portugal: Language and Identity in Bridgeport, CT

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Fabio Scetti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
American English ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Status

Here I present the results of BridgePORT, an ethnographic study I carried out in 2018 within the Portuguese community of Bridgeport, CT (USA). I describe language use and representation among Portuguese speakers within the community, and I investigate the integration of these speakers into the dominant American English speech community. Through my fieldwork, I observe mixing practices in day-to-day interaction, while I also consider the evolution of the Portuguese language in light of language contact and speakers’ discourse as this relates to ideologies about the status of Portuguese within the community. My findings rely on questionnaires, participant observation of verbal interaction, and semi-structured interviews. My aim is to show how verbal practice shapes the process of identity construction and how ideas of linguistic “purity” mediate the maintenance of a link to Portugal and Portuguese identity.

Beyond Overcoming: A Woman Writer’s Articulation of Pain in Socialist China

NAN Nü ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-336
Author(s):  
Daniela Licandro
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Party State ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Status Of Women

Abstract Feminist inquiries into the status of women in Mao-era China have shed light on the challenges women experienced in their double role as producers and reproducers in the nascent socialist state. Less is known about how women lived up to expectations of (re)productivity while struggling with illness. Drawing on gender studies, literary studies, history, and the history of medicine, this article examines articulations of pain in the diaries that writer Yang Mo (1914-95) kept between 1945 and 1982, and published in 1985, to explore intersections among normative configurations of pain, gender politics, and identity construction in socialist China. Yang’s diaries show that the narrative of pain is fundamentally shaped by cultural and political discourses of “overcoming” physical and ideological shortcomings – discourses that the party-state upheld to transform the Chinese people into physically-fit, ideologically-correct socialist citizens. Within this context, this study focuses on Yang’s embodied experience to reveal both the empowering potential of these discourses and their inherent limits.

Re-theorising the pre-adolescent child in School Age Care

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Bruce Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Care Setting ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
School Age ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Australian School ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Children's Play ◽  
Adolescent Child ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Insight Into

School Age Care is a setting that is little researched and the research that has been conducted has not often sought the perspectives of older children. This article describes a participatory and ethnographic research project that sought a deeper insight into older children’s experiences of an Australian School Age Care setting, seeking their views about how to successfully program for other children their age. Older children in School Age Care are commonly spoken of as rebellious, bored, disruptive and unsuited to School Age Care. The Foucauldian theories underpinning the research challenged the normative developmental discourses that circulate School Age Care. The research shows that older children have access to these developmental and maturational discourses. The participants actively engaged with language, architecture and resources in the School Age Care setting to actively construct themselves as a more mature, distinct category of child. The findings suggest that School Age Care practitioners should be aware of how developmental discourses are both enacted by children and reinforced through programming design and consider the impacts of segregating routines and practices on children’s play and leisure. While this research does not ‘solve’ the question of older children in School Age Care, it unsettles dominant understandings, therefore inviting practitioners to imagine new programming approaches that might improve School Age Care for older children.

Suffering and Sacrifice

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Sarah Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
The Status ◽  
Spiritual Self ◽  
And Function ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

This article offers the argument that suffering (yisurin) in the Babylonian Talmud functions as a locus for the relationship between God and rabbinic Jews. Scholars of rabbinic martyrdom and asceticism have tended to claim that the Talmud's positive portrayal of suffering is a theodical apology for unexplained evil in the world. However, the article argues that the Talmud—in contrast to earlier rabbinic texts—presents suffering as spiritually relevant not primarily to justify preexisting suffering, but rather to develop a site at which to interpret information about an individual's spiritual status. The article draws on theories of sacrifice's structure and function, in conjunction with close analysis of rabbinic texts that relate suffering to sacrifice. The pericope at the core of the article's argument demonstrates a strikingly technical approach to the human experience of suffering, describing four examples of yisurin in which no real physical suffering occurs; in each instance the “victim” experiences extremely mild discomfort at most, and at the least barely registers an experience of inconvenience. Nonetheless, these experiences all qualify as “suffering,” and are thus still understood to bear indisputable soteriological import. Physical suffering in the Talmud is thus open for interpretation, yielding information about the status of the sufferer's spiritual self. Human suffering is viewed as religiously desirable in both late rabbinic and early Christian literatures. By developing an understanding of its hermeneutical function for the rabbis, this article helps to elucidate the value of suffering for rabbinic literature as a subset of late antique religious discourse.

Transition Into and Out of Special Education Services by Young Australian School Children Between 2006 and 2010

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Dempsey
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
School System ◽  
Special Education Services ◽  
Australian School ◽  
School Students ◽  
Education Services ◽  
The Status ◽  
Education Support ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Over Time

The extent to which school students continue to receive special education services over time is largely unknown because longitudinal studies are rare in this area. The present study examined a large Australian longitudinal database to track the status of children who received special education support in 2006 and whether they continued to access such support over a 4-year period. Nearly two thirds of the children receiving additional assistance in 2006 did not receive such assistance 4 years later. There were substantial variations in the principal reason for providing special education services to students over this period, and the relative academic performance of the students who received special education support across the 4 years substantially declined. The findings have ramifications for the way we consider changes in the needs of young children as they progress through the primary school system.

scholarly journals Before and After School: Literature Review about Australian School Age Child Care

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Cartmel ◽  
Amy Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Parent Expectations ◽  
After School ◽  
School Age ◽  
Australian School ◽  
Service Usage ◽  
Children’S Wellbeing ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Demand For Children ◽  
Workforce Needs

One in three Australian children attend school-age childcare. School Age Care (SAC) services have increased to meet the growing demand for children to have somewhere safe to go before and after school while their parents work. SAC services have continued to grow in size, but are still considered a “care” rather than “education” service. This literature review highlights some current features of Australian SAC childcare sector. Key features detailed include the growth in service usage and the particular organisation types that characterise the sector. Other themes identified relate to parent expectations, venues, workforce needs and children's wellbeing. This literature review advocates for more research about the SAC sector.

The value of and values in the work of teachers in Estonia

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eeva Kesküla ◽  
Krista Loogma
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Value System ◽  
Material Recognition ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Societal Value ◽  
The Status ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
A Site

This article considers how the status of teachers relates to a changing value system, and how the perceived worth of a profession depends on the values its practitioners carry. The article analyses the work of teachers as both productive and reproductive, needing both material and non-material recognition. It argues that in times of radical social change, social groups struggle to determine what value is. The rapid introduction of a neoliberal market economy in Estonia has created a situation where teachers’ labour becomes a site of contestation determining what values prevail in society. Based on 24 semi-structured life history interviews, this article combines theories of the value of labour, of professionalism and the anthropological theory of value to argue for the key role that teachers play during rapid change to a societal value regime.

scholarly journals Making History Usable: Al-Andalus as a Site of Identity Construction in Arab American Women’s Narratives

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-28
Author(s):  
Al-Jayikh Ali Kareem
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arab American ◽  
Ethnic Literature ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

AbstractIn ethnic literature, the historical and cultural past constantly haunt the present, producing contemporary narratives which emphasize how the heritage plays an essential role in preserving ethnic identity. From a trans-historical perspective, Arab American women’s narratives tend to turn the history of Al-Andalus (Medieval Moorish Spain) into cultural memory as a way of coping with the threats to their existence in the United States, particularly post-9/11, as well as of resisting the hegemonic culture. The aim of this paper is to investigate how Al-Andalus is intended to be seen as a construct of cultural memory and how this site of memory has the power to reshape individual and collective identity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document