Session Information
25 SES 10, Citizenship: Views, Acts and Contestations
Paper Session
Contribution
Recent discussions of young children’s active citizenship (e.g., Alderson, 2008; Kulnych, 2001; Lansdown, 2005; Lister, 2007; MacNaughton, Hughes, & Smith, 2008) are built on children’s rights to participation in particular Articles 12 and 13 (UNCRC, 1989). This paper draws from a doctoral study with an early years class in urban Australia to explore possibilities for young children’s active citizenship and who young children might be as active citizens. The study investigated civics learning with children aged five to six years as provoked through social justice storytelling. The class was told stories that made visible social justice issues to see what civic actions the stories might motivate.
The theory of action espoused by Arendt (1958/1998) offers a means to define and understand the processes of action in active citizenship. In this theory, speech and action are understood as conditions of political life, that is, human practices of living with others. To Arendt, action is about beginning something new in the public realm or polis (as distinguished from our internal and personal spaces), and speech consists of the spoken words that articulate an initiated action of setting something in motion. Young children’s individual experiences were identified as active citizenship through speech and actions they initiated to redress injustice in the public sphere. According to Arendt, speech and action produce life stories of courage. They demonstrate a willingness to act and speak. Based on these understandings, possibilities for young children’s active citizenship and who young children might be as active citizens are defined by drawing on individual stories of experience.
Influences on possibilities for young children’s active citizenship participation were viewed in terms of narrative. The concepts of metanarratives and counternarratives offered ways of examining political influences on possibilities for young children’s active citizenship. Metanarratives were of interest in this study from <>a critical perspective by acknowledging their continuing effect on adult views of children and citizenship. In critical theory (e.g., Lukacs, 1920/1967; Marcuse, 1964) metanarratives are understood to have a hegemonic impact on beliefs and practices and are used to justify acts of oppression. According to Stephens and McCallum (1998), metanarratives permeate traditional stories and children’s literature. Traditional stories and much of children’s literature perpetuate metanarratives of children and citizenship. The provision of a program that viewed young children as politically and rationally capable of dialoguing on social justice issues and participating as active citizens was a small but intentional act to disturb metanarratives of childhood innocence and impulsivity.
The idea of counternarratives (see Lankshear and Peters, 1996) offered a means to make visible the dominating and exploitative effects of metanarratives. Counternarratives as small-localised narratives provide accounts of individual experiences of exploitation. To redress metanarratives of innocent child and good citizen, tales were told by focalising or emphasising acts by children that challenge views of citizenship and childhood as obedience. Individual experiences were recognised as counternarratives to metanarratives of children (e.g., child as innocent, child as developing) and citizenship (e.g., citizen as good).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Arendt, H. (1958/1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Alderson, P. (2008). When does citizenship begin? Economics and early childhood. In A. Invernizzi & J. Williams (Eds.), Children and citizenship (pp. 108-119). London: Sage Publications Ltd. Kulnych, J. (2001). No playing the public sphere: Democratic theory and the exclusion of children. Social theory and practice, 27(2), 231-265. Lankshear, C., & Peters, M. (1996). Postmodern counternarratives. In H. Giroux, C. Lankshear, P. McLaren & M. Peters (Eds.), Counternarratives: Cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces (pp. 1-40). New York: Routledge. Lansdown, G. (2005). Innocenti insight: The evolving capacities of the child. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. Lister, R. (2007). Why citizenship: Where, when and how children? Theoretical inquiries in Law, 8(2), 693-718. Lukacs, G. (1920/1967). History and class consciousness (R. Livingstone, Trans.). London: Merlin Press. MacNaughton, G., Hughes, P., & Smith, K. (Eds.). (2008). Young children as active citizens: Principles, policies and pedagogies. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Marcuse, H. (1964). One dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press. Stephens, J., & McCallum, R. (1998). Retelling stories, framing culture: Traditional story and metanarratives in children's literature. New York: Garland Pub. United Nations General Assembly. (1989). Convention on the rights of the child. New York: United Nations. Whitehead, J., & McNiff, J. (2006). Action research: A living theory. London: Sage.
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