Children's Agency Research Articles

Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought

Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought

Reconceptualising the role of the child portfolio in assessment: How it serves for ‘assessment as learning’

Although the concept of assessment as learning has important educational and practical implications, the utilisation and creation of contexts for assessment as learning in early childhood education are contemporary issues that need to be clarified. The overall goal of this work is to reconceptualise the role of the child portfolio as a tool for promoting assessment as learning in early childhood education. This theoretical framework provides some conceptual insights into children's agency in the learning and assessment process through the use of child portfolios. The main issue addressed is the progressive use of the child portfolio, which comprises observations of classroom experiences, documentation of these observations, revisiting learning experiences and a celebration of children's achievements. These aspects are discussed along with arguments that raise the question of how portfolios can act as catalysts for assessment as learning. This article further advocates that the multidimensional processes of creating a child portfolio may be considered a promising context for promoting autonomy, self-regulation, metacognition and reflection in early childhood education.

Children's right to be hostile: Emotions and agency through psychodynamic lens

This paper explores children's hostility towards adult researchers and shows how individual acts of hostility might be linked to wider contexts in children's lives and to their relationships with others. Drawing on ethnographic research with children in Slovakia and psychodynamic theories of Alfred Adler and Anna Freud, the paper argues for hostility to be seen as a legitimate form of children's political agency and one which might require escape from adult logics and interpretations. It suggests that children's hostility towards the researcher should be seen as a right before it is considered a problem, and it should not on its own exclude children from participation in research. Tracing the emotional dynamics of research-participant encounters and their links to other social relationships, personal histories and emotional materials, the paper suggests that recognising children's agency as too elusive for adult interpretations might facilitate new forms of research participation, one which would not rest as heavily on the adult conceptions of childhood.

Preschool-aged children's agency in shared book reading: the relation to the literacy environment in Czech families

ABSTRACT This study explores children's agency in shared book reading sessions with parents and its relation to family literacy characteristics, parents' literacy practices with children and children's print knowledge. Research participants were 142 Czech children, ages 3–6, and their parents. Parents rated their children's agency and the attributes of the home literacy environment in a questionnaire. The data shows that children in the sample exerted agency in shared book reading situations, some of them extensively. Out of the four components of agency, children's manifestations of volition in shared book reading appeared to be the most extensive, followed by asking questions, imitating reading and monitoring parents when they were reading to them. Overall, the results indicate that literacy-aimed activities, which the parents carry out with their children, relate to children's agency more than literacy qualities of the home, like the number of children's books, children's exposure to literacy, or parental education.

Young children’s agency with digital technologies

AbstractThis paper examines the evidence of children's agency in research about infants, toddlers and technologies. It finds that an implicit reliance on technological determinism as a theoretical perspective for positioning technologies relative to young children's development tends to shape research in terms of understanding the impact of technologies on young children. Drawing on critical constructivism as a philosophical stance on technologies, this paper argues that children's agency with technologies may be further investigated in terms of practice architectures to better understand the social mediation of infant and toddler interactions and engagements with technologies.

“I Feel Good When I Sing It Right”: Singing Agency in Children

Abstract The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain insight into learner perceptions of their singing agency (their belief in their capacity to sing aloud) in their elementary school music class. Guiding research questions focused on children's ideas about learning experiences that might foster or hinder singing agency. Data included field notes from classroom observations, video recordings of class sessions, semistructured interviews with 93 individual learners and the music teacher, and written responses from 175 children ages 8–11. Data analysis revealed four emergent themes: Participants ages 8–11 linked perceptions of singing agency with both (a) vocal skill and (b) musical understanding. At around age 9, (c) pervasive characteristics of perfectionism emerged, relating to perceived mistakes or quality of performance, hindering singing agency, and (d) participatory, authentically meaningful singing experiences enhance singing agency, despite psychological phenomena developmentally occurring at age 9. Implications for music education practice and further research are discussed.

After Childhood: Re‐thinking environment, materiality and media in children's lives By PeterKraftl. London & New York: Routledge, 2020. ISBN: 978‐1‐138‐08824‐5 (hbk), 237 pp.; 120£(hbk)/33£ (eb)

For the past few decades, childhood studies have sought to make pressing challenges regarding children's voice, agency and mobility perceptible. This quest has made childhood studies both a melting pot of concepts and ideas often adapted from other disciplines and a field known for methodological experimentation and innovation. Peter Kraftl's After Childhood continues along these lines, with a critical edge. While holding on to the key issues of childhood studies, Kraftl suggests, paradoxically it seems, that it is (sometimes) necessary to start with something else than children—their voice, agency and mobilities—when studying childhoods. This does not necessarily mean starting with institutional practices or discourses either. Drawing on the recent materiality-thinking, particularly speculative realism/object-oriented ontology but also from queer and critical race studies on materiality, children are re-cognized as always entangled with assemblages containing a vast array of stuff. While Kraftl shows how studying children's water-food-energy nexuses can be a fruitful venue to locate operations of resource-power and the related productions of inequalities and vulnerabilities, he seeks to think materiality beyond anthropocentric definitions. Asking the reader to ignore children for a while and let them move out of focus makes space for the key sensitizing concepts—“pull focus” (following Timothy Morton), “arts of (not) noticing” (following Anna Tsing) and holding “multiple foci”—as well as for the key question: “where are children, precisely?” As we get further in the book, the complexity of this question begins to unravel, extending from issues of spatiality (scales) to those of temporality (speeds). The explorations that follow ground on years of work done in various research projects and comprise phenomena such as datafication, massification, (en)plasticisation, circulation of metals and energy. Traces and circuits of childhoods are found in diverse places, such as landfills, online selling sites, social media platforms, archaeological diggings and abandoned buildings allowing Kraftl to develop speculative accounts and approaches (inspired of Donna Haraway) and draw in an extensive package of concepts such as circulation, phasing, interface, hyperobject, friction and stickiness. Sometimes visual mappings, energy walks, biosampling and art workshops are utilized to draw children—some children, somewhere, as we are reminded—back into the scene. Thus, when I open the book to read another chapter, I feel like opening one of those lift lid school desks populated by stuff most fascinating. For example, in one of the innovative sections of the book students collected environmental samples from tap water, soil, their own breath and urine that were then analysed by nanoscientists to detect the presence of certain metals and plastics. These findings were enriched with students' accounts of their everyday life and considerations on the intractability of urban metabolism. Such experiments not only allow considerations on the ways in which (anthropogenic) substances flow and circulate through bodies depending on how they are located geographically (and temporally), but also demand for complex analyses to speculate on the entanglements of the bio and the social. Insightfully, when the participating children were quoted, the concentration levels were marked next to the commonplace nominators of name, sex and age, allowing questions of representation to arise. In the book “starting-with” matter, such as bricks, toys, data, (digital/social) media, plastics, metals and energy, works for developing the key original concept “infra-generations.” This concept seeks to draw attention to the ways in which (often anthropogenic) stuff weaves together human and more-than-human generations also exceeding human finitude. Playing with an idea that generations emerge from, with and through the stuff we live our lives by offers, I think, a valuable critique—stuff, such as plastics, are both generations (of queer more-than-human kinships) and generative (of human and more-than-human worlds). In addition, the term “infra-generations” seeks to account for the residues, effects, cuts, doings that produce (or generate) multiple spatiotemporalities that are largely “out of control” (as in the case of nuclear waste, data, plastics, metals, chemicals, and so on). In all, After Childhood provides several important and critical insights for research on childhood, but next to this, I feel it among the fine efforts towards interdisciplinary studies of entanglements, assemblages and interfaces, with this time also childhoods included.

Contesting digital leisure time: Parental struggles in relation to young children's play with tablets at home

AbstractYoung children's practices with tablet computers has been a topic in parenting discourses for several years, drawing on earlier debates over technologies and media in children's lives. In this article, I analyse data from a video observation–based media ethnography of seven Danish children (aged 4–6) and engage with the research tradition attributed to parental mediation. The analysis suggests two major paths in the struggles that stand out from the discourses and in situ practices of parents and children in the empirical data. These paths encompass struggles in relation to supporting and directing children's play activities and setting boundaries in their use of tablets and content. The nuances and implications of both paths are analysed and discussed in terms of strategies that emerge to support children's agency and rapport with parents, as well as what this means for future research.

Funds of knowledge and agentic strategies of three- and four-year-old children in South Africa

In South Africa, little is known about the funds of knowledge of young children, and how they use this resource to affirm their agency in early childhood centres to build their childhood experiences. With this article we contribute knowledge through exploring the strategies that young children use to show their agency and thereby their funds of knowledge in a marginalised context. The funds of knowledge approach is helpful for illuminating meaning-making endeavours that foreground agentic actions that are imaginative, creative and beyond normative expectations. The study reported on in this article was conducted in Bloemfontein, South Africa, at 4 early childhood centres. Data were obtained through observation of 30 three- and 4-year-old children. The findings suggest that young children engage in agentic strategies of avoiding, ignoring and challenging adult control, pretend-play, imitation of adults and peers, and gendered negotiations, as efforts to contest a largely teacher-controlled environment. The insights from this study contribute to the understanding of the kinds of practices in which young children routinely engage, but which are often disregarded and undervalued by teachers. The agentic imagery of children, together with intersections of other imagery, needs to be part of the knowledge mix to inform teacher development and policy on early childhood care and education of children between birth and 4 years old in South Africa.

“Did you just say transformers?” A Child's agency and social actions in language-focused sequences

This study aims to contribute to current understandings about young children's roles and actions in discourse about language with adults in informal contexts. Using conversation analysis, we examine how a young child (aged 3;7 to 4;2) initiated talk about aspects of language in conversations with his parents in language-focused sequences (sequences in which at least one participant oriented to a language form). The child initiated these sequences through requests for linguistic information, unelicited displays of linguistic abilities, and repairs of the parent's language. He also employed a range of interactional practices to actively pursue talk about language. In addition to analyzing the child's agency, we demonstrate that an initial focus on a language form served as a springboard for the accomplishment of a variety of social actions, including (a) the learning and teaching of linguistic knowledge, cultural values, and practical knowledge about the world as well as (b) the display and negotiation of affective, social, and epistemic stances, linguistic competence, norm-compliance/defiance, self-assertion, and identities.

Children's spaces in coastal cities: challenges to conventional urban understandings and prospects for child-friendly blue urbanism

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relevance of the ocean in children's urban experiences, putting into dialogue the premises of blue urbanism and child-friendly cities. The focus is on discussing how children's lives are entangled with coastal cities, urging the field of children's geographies to unpack how spatial conditions in coastal cities serve as a lens to make sense of children's narratives in urban spaces. The most significant themes that emerged from this interest include the narratives of children in coastal public spaces, child-specific risks, diversity of childhood(s) in coastal cities, and children's agency toward disaster resilience. Such discussions suggest that both the principles of blue urbanism and child-friendly cities are instructive to shift the fixity of our thinking about children's urban spaces, urging children's geographies to extend its mantle to cover the emergent logics of children's narratives in the coastal cities. Overall, this work is an invitation for children's geographers to further explore the ocean-child interconnectedness as a way of rethinking urbanity. Child-friendly blue urbanism is still uncharted but the opportunities thereof are immense. It is then the task of children's geographers to build on this potential and traverse other disciplines toward further navigating children's lives in coastal cities.

Negotiating child agency in childcare practices among immigrant families

AbstractIn the context of migration, different perspectives of child agency can influence childcare practices and may create tensions within families and in the host society. This study explores the individual, relational, environmental, and cultural factors that influence how child agency is understood and exercised within immigrant households. Focus group discussions were conducted with first‐ and second‐generation immigrant children (12‐ to 17‐year‐old) (N = 46) and parents (N = 19) from South‐Asia, Latin‐America and the Caribbean in Montreal. Our findings suggest that children exercise agency by taking actions to ensure their own safety and contributing to their families' needs. Moreover, we found that negotiating children's agency is influenced by the nature of the parent–child relationship, the material and social resources available to the family, and the perceived and lived experiences of authority and safety in the host society. This study advances our understanding of how immigrant children contribute to their families and the role that contextual factors play in shaping, promoting and hindering child agency. Policy makers and service providers in host societies should consider the perspectives of immigrant children and parents in order to develop a more culturally responsive understanding of the elements and processes that influence childcare and supervision practices of immigrant families.

I agreed to go because........examining the Agency of Children within a phenomenon conceptualised as trafficking in Ghana

AbstractThe legal and policy framework on child trafficking is dismissive of children's agency and regards them as vulnerable personalities. This paper examines the scope of children's agency in their transportation to other communities for fishing in Ghana. Using a phenomenological design, 17 child returnees' views were elicited on their movement for fishing activities. Findings revealed that children's agentive capabilities progressed primarily from consent giving to negotiation. Highlighting the relational and material context within which children's agency unfolds, the study suggests that it is erroneous to generally ascribe the discursive label of ‘innocence’ to children who are considered as trafficked.

Connections and disconnections between home and kindergarten: A case study of a 4‐year old child's digital practices and experiences in early childhood

AbstractVarious studies outline the ‘digital disconnect’ that exists between the digital experiences that children have with technologies at home and at school. It is however important to document the increasingly multimodal technological world that young children are inhabiting. Framed by socio‐cultural and ecological theoretical perspectives, this case study of a 4‐year old girl investigates how the contexts surrounding the child impact the use of digital technologies and the differences, if any, between the two contexts. Participatory methods are used to gather data from the child participant in relation to her experiences, preferences and interactions with technology, which was triangulated with the views of one parent and her current educator. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. Four themes emerged as follows: technological uses and competences, child agency and participation, individual and collective funds of knowledge and bridging of children's lifeworlds. Findings indicated that the differences or digital disconnect between the home and the school are not necessarily perceived as negative or limiting, yet there is also room for fluidity and openness to explore these technological spaces as possibilities or bridges for children's participation, engagement and agency in the two lifeworlds. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about the topic The notion of digital disconnect between the home and the school characterises children's encounters with technology. Learning is culturally, historically and socially situated, and a result of participation and immersion in the cultural milieu through the mediation of social and cultural tools. What this paper adds Empirical evidence of young children's experiences of their multimodal lifeworlds through case study research. Understanding of a young child's perceptions on the use of digital technologies in the home and the school from her own lens using participatory methods with children. Realisation that at age 4, a child may already have developed clear distinctions between formal and informal spaces. Implications for practice and/or policy Implications regarding the ways early childhood settings may respond in light of findings related to how young children may regard the existence of a digital disconnect from a positive or neutral lens. Considerations around the need to give young children a voice before effecting changes to their learning spaces through participatory, child‐friendly methods, in concordance with a rights‐based approach. Suggestions on the role of the adults (parents and educators) in ensuring that young children are provided with opportunities to experience and use digital technologies for multiple purposes through modelling, scaffolding and creativity.

From Hitler’s Disciple to Wartime Refugee

Abstract Building on recent investigations into children as historical actors, this article examines the experiences of ethnic German (Donauschwaben) expellees from northern Yugoslavia’s Vojvodina region. Using original oral history interviews, the article embeds these individuals’ childhood experiences of World War ii and expulsion into their greater life stories, thereby highlighting children’s multifaceted wartime roles and opportunities for agency. Contrary to prevailing (German) historiographic and popular imagination—as encouraged particularly by postwar expellee organizations—young ethnic Germans were not the mere passive victims of war and expulsion. Rather, even during their expulsion, they actively participated in Nazi youth organizations, accompanied columns of Jewish camp evacuees, worked in Nazi munitions factories, and fought in the Third Reich’s final desperate military “storm.” At different occasions, children and youth thus became both witting and unwitting agents of wartime destruction. As the article concludes, a more concerted investigation into questions of childhood agency in war is central to the analysis of such contested topics as German victimhood and perpetration during World War ii, the Vertreibung (expulsion), and Germany’s transgenerational postwar reckoning with the crimes of its past.

Research with young children: Exploring the methodological advantages and challenges of using hand puppets and draw and tell

AbstractThis paper explores the methodological advantages and challenges of participatory tools used in research with young children in Ireland. Taking a child‐centred approach, hand puppets and ‘draw and tell’ helped elicit children's expressions and meanings. Both techniques assisted in shifting the power balance between children and researchers, encouraged dialogue, created a fun atmosphere and promoted children's participation. When children are given the space, opportunity and means, and with skilled facilitation, they can clearly share their perspectives and meanings. It is important that researchers and practitioners use techniques that will facilitate and maximise young children's competencies, agency and preferences.

Correction to: Examining Agency in Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books

In the original publication of the article unfortunately contained a mistake in the name of co-author Vera Sotirvoska.The correct name should be Vera Sotirovska.

Infâncias, Crianças e as tramas montadas para pensar sobre elas: dialogando com os estudos da infância

RESUMO: Este texto ensaia uma breve e pontual reflexão sobre as infâncias, as crianças e os desdobramentos evidenciados com a inauguração dos estudos da infância. Nele, consideraremos as perspectivas históricas e sociológicas como forma de compreender a origem do conceito de infância, os modos de vida das crianças em diferentes temporalidades e a modernidade como lastro na estruturação do pensamento contemporâneo. Na contemporaneidade, as pesquisas, cada vez mais, têm demostrado que as crianças e suas infâncias tramam significados a partir de suas práticas cotidianas, interferem na dinâmica social e são produtoras das culturas infantis. O objetivo do texto será estabelecer um debate sobre as concepções historicamente instituídas no campo multidisciplinar dos estudos da infância e as relações com a educação infantil, pensando como elas reverberam no cotidiano de crianças e professores (as). Nesse momento da pesquisa que se encontra na fase inicial, estamos nos aproximando do campo e produzindo elementos que nos aproximem desse estado da arte. Dialogaremos com pesquisas de Arroyo (1994), Cohn (2005), Qvortrup (2014), Sarmento (2004, 2007), Sarmento e Marchi (2017), Oliveira (2008), entre outros. As discussões apontam para um campo fecundo de pesquisas e metodologias criativas, voltadas à compreensão das infâncias e narradas a partir do olhar das crianças, denotando complexidades, particularidades e singularidades na potência de suas vozes. Ainda recente, esse campo de conhecimento tem impulsionado ganhos em torno dos direitos sociais e da agência infantil. No entanto, ainda temos um longo caminho a percorrer em busca de uma infância cidadã, aquela que tenha a presença dos corpos infantis na história social de seus territórios. 
 PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Infância; Crianças; Educação Infantil.

Examining Agency in Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books

Given increased attention toward nonfiction and informational texts due to recent educational reforms in the nation, it is critical to examine how various cultural identities are depicted in nonfiction children’s picture books. Focusing on the Orbis Pictus honor and awarded texts (n = 60) from 1990 to 2019, this article reports the findings of a critical multicultural analysis of the depictions of age, sex, socio-economic status, ethnicities, and geographic regions of these awarded texts. Using a secondary analysis of opportunities for agency, we examine how focal subjects (Crisp in Lang Arts 92(4):241–255, 2015) exert their agency in their respective contexts. Our aim in doing so is to problematize the notion of agency in these texts, specifically understanding who exerts agency, how, and for what purposes. Findings suggest that the authors of these awarded texts rely on highlighting White, European males where agency is typically depicted as an act that occurs in adulthood. As a result, discussion focuses on how such texts, although well-meaning, perhaps perpetuate the traditional notion and passivity of young children in relation to their agency and calls to question the lack of multiple perspectives and voices in the awarded texts.

Fulfilling food practices: Applying the capability approach to ethnographic research in the Northern Netherlands.

Often, food practices are evaluated in terms of their healthiness or lack thereof, but fulfilling food practices based on other values and influenced by family members' capabilities are overlooked. This study analyses food practices in families with low socio-economic status, and aims to explain how family households come to prioritise one food practice over another. We conducted an ethnographic study using the capability approach as an analytical framework. In-depth interviews and observations concerning food patterns and health-related choices with family members from three generations were analysed. Two dimensions of fulfilling food practices which emerged from our study are having a healthy as well as harmonious meal. The families under study tended to prioritise having harmonious meals over having healthy meals, despite the attempts by mothers to serve healthy meals. This choice can be understood from the perspective of capabilities, such as being able to enjoy meals, eating what everybody else eats in the region, avoiding conflicts, creating good relationships with children and serving and organising meals with ease. Within the cultural environment, there prevailed a tendency not to care too much about nutritional outcomes, which also supported the preference for harmonious over healthy meals. In the decision about whether to have a healthy or a harmonious meal, children's agency often outweighed the voices of parents and grandparents. The capability approach helped unravel the complexity of family food practices and the role of intergenerational family dynamics in a setting of low socio-economic status. Acknowledging the multi-dimensional nature of food practices, and including dimensions beyond the food domain, such as harmony at the dinner table, contribute to a better understanding of this complexity. It also helps to shed new light on opportunity deprivation in households, for example in relation to agency, which should be accounted for in health interventions.