Eclipsing Voice in Research with Young Children

2003 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenda MacNaughton
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Diversity ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Children’S Voices

This article examines two vignettes taken from a research project designed to give voice to children's understandings of equity and social diversity in order to raise questions about how this project potentially reinforced inequities in children's lives. A rhizoanalysis of the vignettes is used to raise questions about how young children perform diverse discourses of ‘race’. This paper specifically focuses on the extent to which some of the voices produced in the research colluded in the production of racist and sexist practices. It uses this focus to raise questions generated through the rhizoanalysis for researchers who want to give voice to young children. Specifically, it asks if it is time for researchers to move beyond a concern for children's ‘voices’ and towards transforming inequitable power relations in our research with them.

Lollipop stories: Listening to children’s voices in the classroom and narrative ethnographical research

Childhood ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 548-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Hohti ◽  
Liisa Karlsson
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Classroom Observation ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
School Classroom ◽  
Children’S Voices ◽  
Reflexive Analysis ◽  
Reciprocal Processes

This article offers a methodological contribution to the concept of children’s voices and the ways of listening to them. Children’s voices are studied in a narrative ethnographical research project in a school classroom. The authors follow children’s voices from the level of classroom observation to an analysis on narrative data produced by the Storycrafting method and finally to a more reflexive analysis. By defining three interrelated analytical spaces, the study illustrates how voices are emergent, contingent on their social, discursive and physical environments and power relations, and constructed in reciprocal processes of telling and listening. Finally, the authors discuss the significance of reflexive listening to children’s voices.

scholarly journals Uncertainty and practical judgement in research: a call for attentive ‘listening’

2021 ◽  
pp. 146879412098568
Author(s):  
Daniela Mercieca ◽  
Duncan P. Mercieca ◽  
Sarah Piscopo Mercieca
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Mosaic Approach ◽  
Children’S Voices

This paper draws upon research projects in which efforts have been made to find ways of listening to young children’s voices in early years contexts. This listening, namely in the mosaic approach, helps us to see how children make sense of their world, and adopt our planning and ‘being with’ young children. After setting the context of early years pedagogy and ideology of mosaic approach, this paper focuses on the researcher’s journey to turn her gaze inward before making any claims about her engagement with and listening to young children. Since this approach purposely leaves unanswered the question what kind of data is going to be collected, researchers have to decide what data is in the course of a research project, through their engagement with children. We argue for befriending uncertainty and dilemmatic thinking as it provides us with a different way of seeing, knowing and listening the hard to know. Through writing about phronêsis, this paper focuses on the process of decision-making and judgements that researchers undertake. The final argument calls for attentiveness and aims to acknowledge practical judgements as a fundamental part of researching early years.

scholarly journals ‘Place’ as conceptual centre: a methodological focus on the bodily relations, movements and expressions of children up to three years of age in kindergarten

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Hognestad ◽  
Marit Bøe
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Place Learning ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Research Analysis

The purpose of this article is to show how attention on ‘place’ can be productive in methodology concerning the bodily relations, movements and expressions of children up to three years of age who are enrolled in kindergarten. While research that has adopted a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach has contributed to important knowledge concerning young children, we propose re-thinking methodology that takes children’s bodily relations, movements and expressions into concern. Using ‘place’ as a lens, we show how power relations are interrupted and allow for alternative ways for the researcher to relate to data. Inspired by Somerville (2010), elements of place are situated at the centre of the research analysis. The three key elements of place that are put to work are as follows: our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; place learning is local and embodied; and place is a contact zone for cultural contact. The paper is part of a research project which explores how place can be more explicit in educational practices to strengthen kindergarten as a learning arena. We seek to explore how place relations work and what they have the possibility of producing in the analyzing process.

scholarly journals Young Children about School: Whose Voices Do We Hear?

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Tertoolen ◽  
Jeannette Geldens ◽  
Bert Van Oers ◽  
Herman Popeijus
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Teachers And Parents ◽  
Children’S Voices ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

School is one of the important educational practices, in which children are actively involved. When we want to contribute to the development of young children’s voices, we need deeper insight into the way children act as they do. Therefore, we have to distinguish how young children’s voices are composed, as we proclaim that all voices are essentially polyphonic. We found children’s expressions which were not corresponding with their own teachers’ and parents’ expressions. Many of the presented examples of non-corresponding expressions by the children, refer to situations in which resistance, one of the identifiers of voice, is shown. This article is part of a larger study we conducted on young children’s voices. In our research we want to explore the content of young children’s voices and the meaning they attribute to the educational contexts they are involved in. We conducted five case studies with young children, aged 5-6, in school. We have analyzed their expressions and presented our findings earlier. In this phase of our research project we are looking for possible correspondences between the children’s expressions and the expressions of their teachers and parents

How preschool children think about libraries: Evidence from six children’s libraries in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-440
Author(s):  
Jianhua Xu ◽  
Pianran Wang ◽  
Brian W. Sturm ◽  
Yingying Wu
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Library Services ◽  
Third Place ◽  
Children’S Perspectives ◽  
Interpersonal Needs ◽  
Mosaic Approach ◽  
Children’S Voices

Listening to young children’s voices is crucial to improving children’s library services. The first step is unveiling how young children think about the library. Thus, researchers recruited the Mosaic approach including photography, interview, and drawing to explore the features of children’s libraries in children’s perspectives in six libraries in China. The results indicate that first, the children’s library is a “primary third place”. Second, the children’s library is an overlapping of home and society. Third, children can read books in the children’s library, but not just read. Fourth, the children’s library improves children’s awareness as patrons. It is suggested that young patrons already form initial understandings of the library, begin to complain about any problems, and put forward requirements for the library. Additionally, their interpersonal needs should be paid attention to. Therefore, librarians and researchers should respect the rights of children and listen to their voice when designing and providing library services associated with children.

De Analfabetische Blik en de Geletterde Bril

2002 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 9-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Kurvers
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Low Educated ◽  
Metalinguistic Knowledge

Until recently, studies about adults' metalinguistic knowledge nearly always dealt with adult readers. Since explanations about the development of children's metalinguistic knowledge are not conclusive about the influence of either (language) development or experience with written language. Adult illiterates form a nice test case for these contrasting hypotheses, since they are both experienced language users and inexperienced in the written code. Therefore, a research project was carried out to compare the metalinguistic knowledge of adult illiterates with another group of non-readers (young children) and with low-educated adult readers. The research project was carried out with 24 young pre-readers, 25 adult (true) illiterates and 23 adult readers with about four years of schooling. All groups were offered different tests of metalinguistic awareness on the phonological, lexical/semantic and discourse-level of language. Analysis of variance and posthoc analyses showed that, on the whole, there were hardly any differences between young children and all adults in the knowledge of linguistic entities (favouring the developmental hypotheses) while there were many significant differences between the no-nreaders on the one hand (both children and adults) and low-educated literates on the other hand. It is concluded that experience with writing systems plays a major role in triggering metalinguistic knowledge.

scholarly journals Understanding the Experiences of Young Children on the Autism Spectrum as They Navigate the Irish Early Years’ Education System: Valuing Voices in Child-Centered Narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692091469
Author(s):  
Sarah O’Leary ◽  
Mary Moloney
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Education System ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Visual Storytelling ◽  
Early Years Education ◽  
Shared Stories ◽  
Children’S Voices

This article, which focuses upon narrative inquiry as a means of including the voice and experience of children on the autism spectrum, draws upon a doctoral study that explores the experiences of young children as they and their families navigate the Irish Early Years’ Education System (both preschool and primary school). It focuses, in particular, on the need to acknowledge and appreciate the experiences of these children within their homes and educational settings, their immediate microsystem. It also urges an increased awareness of how the development of these children’s voices is heavily impacted by the roles and actions of others. Six parents shared stories of navigating the Irish Early Years’ Education System with their young child on the autism spectrum. Their children’s voices were incorporated into these narratives using visual storytelling methods. This research adopted an ecological or intercontextual interpretive stance, thus providing valuable insight into the coconstructed experiences of those who identify as “different” or “other,” in this instance, young children on the autism spectrum and their families. In terms of the present article, this ecological stance encompasses the central aim of the overarching study; the critical restorying of parents’ lived experiences of navigating the Irish Early Years’ Education System with their child on the autism spectrum which is thus, underpinned by narrative inquiry and voice.

Take Care of Mother Earth: Technology and the Environment

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 414-419
Author(s):  
Diane L. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Young Children ◽  
School Mathematics ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Mother Earth

Principles and Standards for School Mathematics recommends an increased emphasis on data analysis from the earliest grades on: “Because young children are naturally curious about their world, they often raise questions such as, How many? How much? What kind? or Which of these? Such questions often offer opportunities for beginning the study of data analysis and probability” (NCTM 2000, p. 49). Using technology to support such studies can give young children access to topics and ideas that are far beyond what might once have been thought possible. In this article, I share a research project that began with my students' real questions and evolved over a period of two years to incorporate technology in ways that enriched and extended their learning far beyond expectations.

Making Art – Taking Part! Negotiating participation and the playful opening of liminal spaces in a collaborative process

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Elke Zobl ◽  
Laila Huber
Keyword(s):  
Art Education ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Participatory Research ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Making Art

How can we open participatory spaces playfully and critically? Our article raises this question in the context of a research project at the intersection of participatory and interventionist art, critical art education and participatory research. In the project “Making Art – Taking Part!” (www.takingpart.at), which the authors, along with additional team members, conducted with students aged 14–16 in Salzburg, Austria, an artistic intervention in public space was developed based on the ideas, experiences, and desires of the students. In a collaborative process, we explored strategies for self-empowerment, deconstruction of established knowledge and power relations, and appropriation by artistic and art mediation means around the topic of “living together”. In this paper, we argue that by employing such strategies, a liminal space can be opened – in a playful, yet critical way – in which the meaning of participation is collaboratively negotiated.

Identifying conduct problems in young children

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Morrison ◽  
Grant Macdonald ◽  
Terry LeBlanc
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Conduct Problems ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Early Identification ◽  
Service Systems ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Financial Costs ◽  
Personal Costs

Conduct problems in young children, if not addressed, can develop into extremely serious and costly problems by the time adolescence is reached. The findings of this research project indicate that there are effective, affordable interventions for young children. Early identification and intervention are the keys to reducing the personal costs to troubled children and their families as well as the financial costs to health and social service systems.

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