‘That’s not fair’. Nurturing social justice

in young children

Glynne Mackey & Lia de Vocht

University of Canterbury

NZARE/AARE 2014

Equality for Sustainability OMEP Project: Children as Social Agents

We believe that the early childhood context needs to nurture in children a sense of social justice and

agency.

Teachers make space for children to dialogue, to express their thoughts and learning around social

justice, so that they become more confident and see themselves as capable agents who can affect social

change now and in the future.

Aims and objectives of the research

To nurture social agency in young children so that they view themselves as agents of change. Agency ‘refers to the capacity of a person to act and create change in a given context’ (Miller & Kirkland, 2010).

To make learning about social justice more visible to children, teachers and families, thereby strengthening children’s dispositions of social agency

To use Learning Stories about social justice supporting children to be active agents to capture children’s voices.

To build awareness in teachers about possible tools that can support children’s participation in being change agents.

Topic PhD: Exploring teacher-child dialogues in early childhood settings

Theory informing the research:

How can Bakhtinian theories be used to explore teacher-child dialogues in early childhood settings

View of children as active participants

Education as unfinalised and open-ended

Importance of dialogism

Education tends to be authoritative, monologic

Emphasis on process rather than outcome

Moral or ethical responsibility: to take action

• ‘I’ carries many voices; there are many genres

• Dialogue is open-ended

• There is no first word and no last

There is no final meaning of self

Participants as unfinalised or

‘becoming’

Bakhtin (1984): “ Life is by its very nature dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue, to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life (p.293).

MethodologyParticipants:

5 teachers from 5 early childhood settings: Bev, Tracy, Charlotte, Jo, Helen

Children aged 3-5years from these settings

Ethical approval from University of Canterbury

Information and consent from teachers, centre managers, children and parents.

Data Gathering:

Teacher workshops,

observations and field notes

Children’s learning stories

Literature related to Social Justice and Agency

Smith, (2013, p6) - Empowers children to contribute to positive change and improves their own as well as others’ well-being’

Mackey & Lockie, (2012. p.77) - ‘Equity pedagogy, in short, means taking action to limit inequalities’.

Phillips, (2010) - Storytelling led to child expressing his agency and identify him as a citizen ‘with a desire for real-world experiences to create real change’.

Using children’s books as a tool to build critical literacy

Hawkins (2008): help children reflect upon, clarify and articulate their awareness of and sensitivities to social justice issues.

Golding, C. (2003) : to scaffold children’s thinking about what is fair, what is true

Souto-Manning (2009): to let children see different perspectives, encouraging children to take action towards social justice

Gunn & de Vocht (2011): unexpected outcomes

Hyland (2010): to draw out thoughts on issues of equity and social justice.

Learning Stories as a tool to make children’s agency visible Dweck (2000): strengthening children’s dispositions by

making the learning visible, children can see themselves as a social agent

Kei Tua o te Pae (2009): foregrounding a particular lens in narrative assessment, shows what is valued learning

Gunn & de Vocht (2011): revisiting the LS again helps build confidence and competence towards social agency, increased dialogue

Carr (2011): teachers learning dialogic skills

Negotiating inclusion and being fair

‘The Hueys in the new jumpers’ – Oliver Jeffries

Sadie’s voice ‘Those boys being mean… they say I can’t play’

Teacher’s voice: We talked about what was fair and stories we had read about inclusion [such as ‘The Hueys’]. You

negotiated your inclusion and your acceptance that they also had rights or mana atua. Sadie, you demonstrated a sense of

fairness, acceptance of others or whakawhanaungatanga.(Charlotte, Term 1 2014)

The many faces of equity

Amazing Grace – Mary Hoffman

Girls can’t be firefighters. Only boys can be builders. 4yr old girl’s voice

Teacher’s voice: I wanted to extend your thinking and knowledge if you really wanted to do or be anything you

can. (Jo, April 2014)

Learning Story for Ella

“I was taking group time and read one of my favourite stories called, “The true story of the three little pigs”. This story is told by the wolf and is different from the traditional story, when I had finished you said, “that’s not it” and you proceeded to tell me and the other children the story of the wolf blowing the house down and eating the pigs. At the end you said, “that’s it, the story.” Good on you Ella, standing up for what you believe is right and fair is an admirable quality and one that needs to be fostered”. (Beverley, April 2014))

Strengthening children’s social agency: Beverley’s LS for Max (Feb 2014) “….Today you Ella and Ezra were outside in the hut making lunch. You

had taken on the role of “head chef” and were asking the other children what they wanted in their lunches. You were handing out the ingredients and seemed very comfortable in this role. Then Ezra asked for something that I could clearly see you wanted to keep for yourself and it was causing a dilemma for you.

The children were watching you and I decided to sit back and wait to see how you responded. You then looked at Ezra and handed the piece over and said, “here you are” and the play continued. Later I went up to you Max and said I felt it was a truly admirable thing to give Ezra something you wanted for yourself. Being fair can sometimes mean that you forego what you want and give to another. This is the beginning of being a socially just person and your parents must be so proud of you Max…..”

Research Challenges

Difficulty of establishing what do we mean by social justice and children’s agency, until we became more confident to accept uncertainty and complexity

Uncertainty about which children’s book to read to extend conversations with children

One of the teachers realised she needed to find out more about asking questions which scaffold children’s learning

Difficulty of finding time in busy day, especially to provide continuity

Lack of confidence, slow start to share Learning Stories

Teachers reflect and respond to the research experience Teachers are foregrounding social justice and children’s

agency in their dialogues with colleagues in their settings

Teachers presented at a teacher conference in Christchurch to share their practice

All teachers have grown confidence in using books as tools and understanding it doesn’t matter which book they read

All teachers have written a number of learning stories which relate to children’s agency, making children’s agency visible for children, parents and their community

All teachers have grown confidence to articulate what they see as social justice

References:

Dweck, C. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personalities and development. New York: Psychology Press.

Gunn, A. & de Vocht- van Alphen, L. (2011). Seeking social justice and equity through narrative assessment in early childhood education. International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood, 9)1), 31-43.

Hawkins, K. (2008). Pre-schoolers' awareness of, and sensitivities to, social justice issues: Children's literature and participatory action research. Journal of Australian Research in Early Childhood Education, 15(1), 69-81.

Hyland, N. (2010). Social Justice in Early Childhood Classrooms: What the research tells us. Young Children, 65(1), 82-90.

Lansdown, G. (2004). Participation and young children. Early Childhood Matters., November(103), 4-14.

Mackey, G., & Lockie, C. (2012). Huakina Mai: Opening doorways for children's participation within early childhood settings - economic disadvantage as a barrier to citizenship. In D. Gordon-Burns, Gunn, A, Purdue, K, Surtees, N. (Ed.), Te Aotūroa Tātaki. Inclusive early childhood education: Perspectives on inclusion, social justice and equity from Aotearoa New Zealand. (pp. 75-94). Wellington: NZCER Press.

Miller, sj, & Kirkland, D. (2010). Change Matters. Critical essays on moving social justice research from theory to policy . New York: Peter Lang.

Phillips, Louise. (2010). Social justice storytelling and young children's active citizenship. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31 (3), 363 - 376.

Ministry of Education. (2004-2009). Kei tua o te pae: Assessment for learning: Early childhood exemplars. Wellington: Learning Media.

Smith, A. (2013). Understanding children and childhood (5th Edition ed.). Wellington: Bridget Williams Books.

Souto-Manning, M. (2009). Negotiating culturally responsive pedagogy through multicultural children’s literature: Towards critical democratic literacy practices in a first grade classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. 9(1). p50-74.

Research literature Teacher-child dialogues: Mostly about importance of T-C dialogues and technical

teaching strategies for improvement.

(eg Cullen, Haworth, Simmons, Schimanski, McGarva & Kennedy, 2009; Dickinson, & Darrow, 2008; Durden & Rainer Dangel, 2008; Gjems, 2010; Harris & Williams, 2007; Siraj- Blatchford & Manni, 2008).

Shift to teachers asking open-ended questions and leaving a pause for children to respond but…

Teachers often ask questions they already know the answer to and questions tend to be non-challenging.

• Some studies from poststructural perspectives and about power inequity: eg Harwood, 2010; Jones & Brown, 2001; Lobman, 2006.

• Using Bakhtin: eg Cohen, 2009; Da Silva Iddings & McCafferty, 2007; Duncan & Turalli, 2003; White, 2009

Literature cont:Further Readings

• Some studies from poststructural perspectives and about power inequity: eg Harwood, 2010; Jones & Brown, 2001; Lobman, 2006.

• Using Bakhtin: eg Cohen, 2009; Da Silva Iddings & McCafferty, 2007; Duncan & Turalli, 2003; White, 2009