Tedate and an emergentist theory of children’s agency

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article develops an emergentist theory of children’s agency. To make this claim, it first identifies the following two predicaments that scholars have faced in children’s agency research: 1) social ambiguity in distinguishing children’s learning from adults’ guidance, and 2) causal uncertainty between children’s cognitive development and the affordance of their social contexts. Then, this article discusses tedate, a type of instructional scaffolding that uses these predicaments to foster agency in classrooms. It explains tedate through a two-step process: 1) situating students as liminal beings who use everyday objects as a heuristic for solving problems and a pivot to enter imaginary worlds, and 2) developing students’ reflexivity by helping them articulate everyday objects as signs of their literacy. In doing so, this article puts forth an emergentist theory that argues tedate helps children develop their capacity for agency by introducing everyday objects in subject lessons that build their reflexivity and literacies.