Conceptions of Youth and Children in the Theory Into Practice Archive

Abstract

Conceptions of youth and children are central to educational practices of teaching and learning, as are the tacit ideas of socialization and development with which they are closely intertwined. But youth and children can stand-in for many dimensions of society and many processes. A recent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City portrayed “the child” as representing families, nations, and the future; young people are also connected with play, experimentation, and health (Museum of Modern Art, 2012). Twentieth-century children and childhood became a paradigm for progressive design thinking, in and out of formal education. Idealized views of children and youth also call up the past in nostalgic recollections of other times and spaces. Thus, youth and children are ready resources for talking about many topics, and they are simultaneously stuck to complex feelings about change, newness, creativity, tradition, optimism, morality, domesticity, and national orderliness. This article reviews 33 selected articles from the Theory Into Practice (TIP) archive with an eye to their assumptions, images, theories, and investments about young people. I am especially interested in the construction of public feelings around young people, as objects of promise, fear, worry, derision, and solicitude. In what ways are elementary and secondary educators and researchers drawn to youth and children, and how might those attachments shape educational research, practice, and policies? I read the articles from TIP as forms of knowledge, with particular topics and kinds of arguments, and as articulations of public feelings about children and youth. I close with some possibilities and challenges for scholars of youth and children.