Abstract
ABSTRACT In Britain, ‘super-diverse’ communities, where children navigate multiple cultural repertoires, are increasingly prevalent. However, Reception teachers are pressured to ensure children, aged four and five, conform to a narrow conception of ‘school-readiness’. Research demonstrates children in multicultural contexts construct a ‘third space’, bridging their home and school discourses. This research shows how opportunities for third space creation are inherently tied to the nature of physical space, and its concomitant social expectations. It is argued that complexity in super-diverse communities can be harnessed and embraced, rather than reduced. Data presented were drawn from a year-long collaborative ethnographic study of children in a Reception class in the north of England. Children co-created cartoons, collaborating with the researcher in interpreting the data. Significantly, findings indicate that teachers can incorporate the third space as an alternative lens through which to understand and meet the challenges of teaching a linguistically and culturally diverse student cohort.
Highlights
In Britain, ‘super-diverse’ communities, such as the site of this research, are becoming increasingly prevalent (Vertovec 2006) with this trend continuing since the 1990s (Vertovec 2013)
The aim of this paper is to add to the existing body of knowledge on the pedagogical implications of super-diversity, by looking at how children in a super-diverse, Early Childhood Education (ECE) setting engage with the learning of new topics by creating a ‘third space’ to connect
The findings presented below illustrate how children use the third space creatively to navigate the dissonances between home and school cultural discourses
Summary
In Britain, ‘super-diverse’ communities, such as the site of this research, are becoming increasingly prevalent (Vertovec 2006) with this trend continuing since the 1990s (Vertovec 2013). The existence of superdiversity is well established, ‘understanding the implications of this remains topical and relevant’ (Meissner and Vertovec 2015, 6). With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to add to the existing body of knowledge on the pedagogical implications of super-diversity, by looking at how children in a super-diverse, Early Childhood Education (ECE) setting engage with the learning of new topics by creating a ‘third space’ to connect. According to Soja, ‘Thirdspace [note the difference in spelling] is a meeting point, a hybrid place, where one can move beyond the existing borders . . . ’ (2009, 56)
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