Exploring Education and Childhood

From current certainties to new visions

Dominic Wyse, Rosemary Davis, Phil Jones, Sue Rogers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317505150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Education has become dominated by testing, standards, interventions, strategies and political policy. Yet while elements such as these are important, Exploring Education and Childhood contends it is childhood - including its sociology and psychology - that is the vital holistic context for teaching and learning.

Written by a team of specialists who bring both experience of classroom teaching, teacher training, and of rigorous research and scholarship, each chapter examines a topic that is of vital importance to teaching and the work of teachers. The book explores examples of educational practice that illuminate contemporary problems and future possibilities for education; develops educational theory to better understand practice and policy; and critically evaluates education policy in the international context. With an emphasis on reflection and deep thinking - something that all the best teachers are able to do - key issues in the book include:

• the voice of the child
• metacognitive strategies
• agency, pedagogy and curriculum
• performativity, standards, and school readiness
• educational settings and new technology
• teacher expertise and agency
• diversity and child agency
• families, society and school choice.

Illustrated with powerful examples of practice, together with key questions for reflection and further reading, Exploring Education and Childhood challenges education professionals, policy makers, and all peple with an interest in education to envision a new future. It will be essential reading for all student teachers and teachers, and is particular appropriate for Masters-level research, professional studies, Education Studies.

Part I
The foundations of childhood

Chapter 1
Childhoods and contemporary practices

Phil Jones

Chapter summary

This chapter reviews the ways in which provision in early years and primary education is driven by powerful ideas and ideals about children. It is argued that the ways contemporary theory and policy situates children needs to be critically examined in the light of problems of oversimplification and dualism. Research into how children see their experience of provision is used as a model to redress this tendency in theory, policy and practice. The chapter sets an agenda for engaging more fully with the lived experiences of children and professionals.

The children knew they were going to move to secondary school (and another phase of their childhoods was about to start). They depicted the transition as a road, from primary school to secondary school (Figure 1.1). They wanted to know what would happen to the relationships with their peers and with their teachers. The words they chose to reflect their feelings were: ‘isolation’, ‘abandoned’, ‘un-loved’ and ‘anxious’ (Figure 1.1). Anxieties included new academic challenges, new teachers and leaving friends behind.

The schools on either side were identified as full of relationships and interactions (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). These were seen as positive, negative and ambiguous. However, the importance for this chapter is that the pupils viewed their provision as dynamic, changing and complex: forming a matrix of different elements being brought into relationship with each other. Figure 1.5 illustrates this – with a range of issues from academic challenge to relationships such as new teachers or leaving friends, identifying the dynamics between pupils and their educational space and work: ‘bullying’, ‘new teachers’, ‘new lessons’, ‘finding way around’, ‘getting lost’ and arriving ‘late’, ‘judged’, ‘being different’, ‘puberty’ and ‘fitting in’. Here the children were making meaning of their education as a space that contains interactions between subject learning, relationships between professionals and with fellow pupils, and as an emotional and social space. Their reflections addressed areas such as difference and inclusion, home life and school, dynamic changes in time and space.

The images were used to identify the most common themes identified by the words chosen, then pupils in each group voted on the issues they felt needed attention within the research – each had voting labels for 1st, 2nd and 3rd and used these (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.1 The ‘road’ to transition.

These votes were tallied and then small group work was used to create sentences around the words, developing what pupils felt were important about them. These sentences were collated using Wordle to help identify phrases and terms that were foregrounded. These were discussed with the pupils in each school and used to support them in deciding upon, and forming, the questions for the research.

Figure 1.2 Primary school children preparing for transition.

Figure 1.3 From words about transition to pictures and votes.

Figure 1.4 Voting sample.

Figure 1.5 Pupils key words about transition represented as a Wordle.

Figures 1.1–1.5 are from research that aimed to explore pupil experiences of transition from primary to secondary school. The project involved designing research to establish and explore the views of children as experts in their own, and each other’s, experiences of transition. Six classes from different schools co-worked with staff from the School of Education, University of Leeds (comprising Phil Jones, Mary Chambers and Emma Truelove). Class groups ranged in size from seventeen to 28 pupils and all were engaged with the process of transition. Consent was negotiated with the children, school and parents to take part and to share data. The research involved children in the design of the research project. This included participatory workshops with each class exploring areas such as the nature of research, research methodology and ethics. Sessions then engaged pupils in designing the research, and in identifying issues about transition to form research questions. Figures 1.1–1.3 are from participatory activities which pupils engaged with as part of these sessions. This involved a group drawing activity followed by the children attaching words as they discussed and identified their experiences and responses. This material reveals the ways in which pupils assemble meaning and reflect upon the dynamics and experience of their lives in education. The images and text show the complexity and richness of the children’s perceptions of educational life and the relationships within it. The images and the Wordle reveal children’s perceptions of life in education, and their identity there, as complex, as a living matrix of interactions and negotiations.

The following sections of the chapter explore the relationships between this complexity and the ways childhood has been framed by the sociology of childhood and by recent policies and practices in education. I examine whether these ideas and policies adequately reflect the lived realities of life in educational settings reflected in the pictures created by the children.

Key questions for reflection

How do children see early years and primary school life?

In what ways do early years or primary schools create spaces for children to reflect on, and make meaning of, their experiences of the setting?

In what ways do settings limit or deny spaces for children to reflect on and make meaning of their experiences?

Identify the strengths and limitations of creating such spaces?

Rethinking the sociology of childhood and educational provision

Recent attention to childhood has involved the evaluation of a particular phase of theory and related research, often described as the ‘new sociology of childhood’ (Prout, 2005; Tisdall, 2012; Wyse, 2004). This phase challenged traditional ways of exploring childhood, which, it argued, tended to see children through adult lenses and agendas rather than trying to understand and value children’s own perspectives (Komulainen, 2007). The theory and research emphasised that childhood has changed over time, and that childhood differed for children according to their countries and contexts. The new sociology of childhood helped to examine ideas and practices that were thought to be static ‘facts’ about children and suggested that they were often ideas and myths constructed through powerful adult attitudes which tended to see children in negative stereotypes (Jones, 2009). An example is the assumption that children are incapable of making decisions or of having opinions of worth about what was happening in their lives. These kinds of ideas and myths, it was argued, often underestimated children’s actual capabilities and hindered their true potential. Authors such as James have defined a key aspect of this approach as seeing childhood as ‘socially constructed and that children are active social agents in the construction of their own childhoods’ (2010, p. 486). Other connected concerns related to advocating the importance of children’s perspectives or ‘voice’; questioning traditional assumptions about the ways adults view children’s competency; and seeing children as rights holders (James, 2010; Jones and Welch, 2010; Prout, 2011). A variety of factors had brought about these changes. The impetus to promote the participation of children in making decisions about their lives and having a say in what their services should be like, for example, had been fuelled by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Article 12 of the convention states that a child has a right ‘to express an opinion and to have that opinion taken into account, in any matter or procedures that affect the child, in accordance with his or her age and maturity’ (http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx). The new sociology of childhood has, to date, often been seen as a dialectic, offering a challenge to many ‘traditional’ ways of seeing and treating children by offering an ‘alternative view … often set up as a series of oppositional views’ (Jones, 2009, p. 56). Table 1.1 illustrates such oppositional views. On the one hand, the ‘traditional position’ saw children primarily through negative stereotypes, contrasted with an ‘emerging position’ which identified and valued children’s capacities. This can usefully be seen in terms of dualism: that ‘for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles’ seen in opposition to each other (Robinson, 2012, p. 1).

Table 1.1 Traditional and emerging views of children

Traditional position	Emerging position
Incapable	Capable
Not able to make valuable decisions	Active decision-makers with opinions that matter and making decisions of worth
Incomplete adults	Seen in terms of own capacities, not in terms of deficits, or as futurities based on adult set outcomes or adult functioning as a norm or goal

Source: Jones, 2009, p. 56.

Recent years have seen many shifts in the ways domains such as education think about how children are seen and treated, some influenced by seeing childhood as ‘constructed’, challenging negative adult stereotypes, and seeing children as capable, as rights holders and holding views of worth about their experiences of schooling. This can be understood as an interdisciplinary process which creates innovation, as the ideas of the new sociology of childhood are brought into dialogue with ideas and practices in domains such as health or education. For example, in 2008 such ideas are drawn on in the joint statement from the UK Children’s Commissioners:

Children are, however, still not viewed as key participants in education: discussions around improving education are often adult-based and fail to include children and their views. We are also concerned that educational inequalities persist, despite considerable investment in education across the UK. Access to sufficient, quality education remains a problem for particular groups (such as Gypsy and Traveller children, children within the juvenile justice system and children in care). (UK Children’s Commissioners, 2008, p. 27)

In the UK today, the gap between rich and poor is increasing, along with associated disparities in the well-being of children and respect for their rights. As Children’s Commissioners, we take seriously our responsibility to ensure that the rights of children are promoted and their voices heard within the clamour of competing claims.

(UK Children’s Commissioners, 2008, p. 35)

Here children are seen as active agents in their own education in that they are described as ‘participants’. This is connected to the idea that they should have a voice: meaning that their views are valuable and should be given weight in relation to what a service such as a school, or early years setting, is like. Education is also seen within a rights perspective, so children are seen as rig...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• PART I The foundations of childhood
• PART II Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment
• PART III Teacher development
• PART IV Education and society
• Conclusion Early childhood and primary education: new visions and a manifesto for change
• Index