Session Information
25 SES 01, Children’s Rights in Pre-School, Early Childhood and Out of School Contexts
Paper Session
Contribution
In urbanized societies, day care centres serve as important everyday life environments of a growing number of young children. For these children, the daily practices of day care centres provide the framework within which children’s rights to express their views and to be listened to and heard are realized (CRC, 1989). Recent research literature on early childhood education highlights the need to include children’s voices and perspectives in the educational practices of day care centres (e.g. Einarsdottir, Dockett & Perry, 2009; Flewitt, 2005; Smith, 2007). Our research question is: How do children’s narrative rights and narrative control appear in a day care centre context?
The paper is based on our ongoing research project “Children’s storied daily lives in a day care centre context” funded by the Academy of Finland (project number 21892). The theoretical framework of the research is based on a narrative approach. In our conception of narrativity, we are not only interested in oral and written narratives. Our starting-point is that children’s ways of narrating are inherently embodied (Rogers et al. 2006). In addition to the verbal narratives, children narrate through their actions, for example at play and in arts and crafts (Schiller 2005). In previous studies concerning children and narratives, the meaning of children’s narratives is primarily linked with children’s language and cognitive development. We have suggested that the significance of children’s narratives is more profound, and that it extends into children’s well-being (Puroila, Estola & Syrjälä, in press). Narratives involve deep ethical and moral questions about children’s voices: their right to express their views, opinions and experiences, and to be listened to and heard.
In narrative inquiry, the traditional research focus has been on the contents of narratives. Recent views on narrative research highlight the need to expand analyses beyond the contents of the narratives to their contextual and interactional aspects (e.g. Engel, 2006; Gubrium & Holstein, 2008; Hyvärinen, 2008). In this paper, we are especially interested in day care centres as narrative environments. We have been inspired by Gubrium’s and Holstein’s (1998) ideas on how the institutional everyday arrangements provide formal narrative control and create conditions in which individuals’ narrative rights are realized. According to Gubrium and Holstein (1998, 179), institutions and settings “specify who can, or should, tell what kind of story or, indeed, tell any story at all”. Through analysing the everyday practices of day care centres, we aim to deepen our understanding how day care centres enable, enhance or confine the narratives of young children.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
CRC (1989) Convention of the Rights of the Child. United Nations. Einarsdottir, J., Dockett, S. & Perry, B. (2009) Making meaning: children’s perspectives expressed through drawings. Early Child Development and Care 179(2), 217-232. Engel, S. (2006) Narrative analysis of children’s experience. In Greene, S. & Hogan, D. (Eds.) Researching Children’s Experience. Approaches and Methods. London: Sage Publications,199-216. Flewitt, R. (2005) Is every child’s voice heard? Researching the different ways 3-year-old children communicate and make meaning at home and in pre-school playgroup. Early Years, 25, 207-222. Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin books. Gubrium, J.F. & Holstein, J.A. (2008) Narrative ethnography. In Hesse-Biber, S.N. & Leavy, P. (Eds.) Handbook of Emergent Methods. New York: The Guilfrod Press, 241-264. Gubrium, J.F. & Holstein, J.A. (1998) Narrative practice and the coherence of personal stories. The sociological quarterly 39(1), 163-187. Hyvärinen, M. (2008) Narrative form and narrative content. In Järventie, I. & Lähde, M. (Eds.) Methodological Challenges in Childhood and Family Research. Childhood and Family Research Unit Net Series. Tampere:Tampere University Press, 43-63. Puroila, A-M., Estola, E. & Syrjälä, L. (in press) Does Santa exist? Children’s everyday narratives as dynamic meeting places in a day care centre context. Rogers, A.G., Casey, M., Ekert, J. & Holland, J. (2006) Interviewing children using an interpretive poetics. In Greene, S. & Hogan, D. Researching Children’s Experience. Approaches and Methods. London: SAGE Publications. Schiller, W. (2005) Children’s perceptions of life arts performances: a longitudinal study. Early Child Development and Care. 176(6), 543-552. Smith, A. (2007) Children and Young People’s Participation Rights in Education 15, 147-164.
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