Session Information
07 SES 09 A, Intercultural Education and Social Justice
Paper Session
Contribution
Young children engage in task of positionality through play, activities, communication and conversation. This paper relies on data from a case study of fourteen preschool children's knowledge of children's literature and popular culture, and their use of it in free play and other preschools activities during their preschool attendance. The focus is on the role of literature and popular culture in the children’s constructions of respectability through play and conversations in two Reykjavik preschools. Despite the teachers’ aspirations for social justice and equality in their classrooms, the findings imply that cultural discrimination, affected by the children's access to children's literature and popular culture at home, appeared during play and conversation in the classrooms.
This paper relies on data from a study of preschool children's cultural literacy in two Reykjavik preschools, who started with participant observations to gain understanding of the different kind of material the children was exposed to and their access to the same material at their homes was examined by a survey. The last part (which is in focus here) was a case study of 14 children's use of this material in free play in the preschools and how it was confirmed, rejected or ignored among the peers.
The aim of the study was to critically examine how 4 and 5 year old preschool-children’s differing knowledge of literature and popular culture, was related to their construction of respectability related to gender, ethnicity and parents’ education and how these factors affected their social status within the peer-group.
I argue, that lack of emphasise of how cultural factors such as preschool children´s home learned knowledge, in preschool teachers education, turn down preschool- teachers abilities to analyse cultural discrimination in the class rooms in contravention of heir emphasize on equality.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford: University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gulløv, E. (1999). Betydningsdannelse blandt børn. [Meaning making among children].Copenhagen: Social Pædagogiske Bibliotek. Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of class and gender - becoming respectable. London: Sage. Skeggs, B. (1999). Seeking differently: Ethnography and explanatory power. Australian Education researcher., 26(1). Skeggs, B. (2004). Class, self, culture. London: Routledge. Skeggs, B. (2004b). Context and background:Pierres Bourdieu analysis of class, gender and sexuality. In L. Adkins and B. Skeggs (Eds.), Feminism after Bourdieu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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