Discourses Of Childhood Research Articles

Adaptation studies has a kids problem

Abstract While children’s books have proved fertile ground for the theorization of adaptation as process and product, adaptation studies has proved remarkably reluctant to explore the relationship between adaptation studies and childhood itself. This paper takes this hesitancy as its central focus, combining recent metacritical studies of adaptation and its theorization (Elliott 2018; 2020) with theory from the fields of children’s literature and childhood studies in order to demonstrate how adaptation studies has operated under what I will describe as the ‘anxiety of infantilization’. This paper will explore how this anxiety of infantilization manifests by engaging the work of three prominent scholars in the field—Deborah Cartmell, Thomas Leitch, and Kyle Meikle—and analysing the discourses of childhood that underpin their discussions of the relationship between adaptation and childhood. It will be my contention that existing discussions of the child and adaptation studies remain enmeshed in what Marah Gubar labels as ‘difference’ and ‘deficit’ models of childhood (2013; 2016), and that if we are ever to get out from under our anxiety of infantilization, we must find a way to Gubar’s third model: ‘kinship’ (ibid.).

Gendering innocence: An empirical inquiry into the lived experience of gender incongruence in childhood

AbstractGender diversity in childhood has become an issue of significant public debate in Britain. Growing concerns have amassed around the exposure of children and adolescents to new forms of gendered knowledge and expression, arousing discourses of childhood ‘vulnerability’ and ‘innocence’. These ideas draw on a specific framework for understanding ‘childhood’, in which children are depicted as passive, dependent and in need of protection, as they follow a universal, predetermined developmental pathway. Among other effects, this has resulted in a dearth of empirical research that has explored gender diversity as a developmental experience in childhood. This article draws on evidence from interviews with 40 gender and sex variant young people and 30 caregivers of transgender children. Participants' accounts illustrate the deep psychic investment in embodied gender incongruence that young people may manifest from the earliest years of childhood. They highlight the profound distress sometimes experienced by children denied external recognition of their internal (gendered) selves and required to conform to extraneous expectations informed by essentialist understandings of biological sex. Far from ‘innocent’ of gender (difference), children can be deeply and actively involved in creating and adopting gendered subject positions, sometimes generating unanticipated forms of diversity.

ДЕТИ «БОЛЬШИЕ» И «МАЛЫЕ»: «ДЕТСКИЙ» ФЕЛЬЕТОН ВАСИЛИЯ СЛЕПЦОВА В КОНТЕКСТЕ ПОЛЕМИКИ О ДЕТСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ И ВОСПИТАНИИ 1860-Х ГОДОВ

The article analyzes Vasily Sleptsov’s feuilleton A Spring Walk with Children Along the Streets of Saint Petersburg (1863), part of the Petersburg Notes cycle. Addressed to progressive youth of the 1860s, the feuilleton is seen here as evidence of ongoing public debate about the role of childhood in shaping man and citizen, as it seeks to find the most appropriate way to write for and about children in a changing socio-political environment. The study examines the uniqueness of Sleptsov’s literary form. On the one hand, it could be described as a feuilleton; on the other hand, it reveals signs of various genres of children’s educational literature. This use of a genealogically complex form may indicate similarities in rhetorical strategies employed by writers and educators in discussions about younger generations, whether they be children or young adults. It is also suggested that in the 1860s, children’s literature and childhood discourse were influenced not only by literature for adult readers but also by the tradition of critical reflection. Sleptsov’s feuilleton can be considered an example of reverse genre transfer, as it explicitly demonstrates how narrative forms adapted by children’s literature influence adult literature.

Understanding Middle Eastern parents’ expectations for their children’s early education in New Zealand: Early childhood teachers’ perspectives

The Middle Eastern population in New Zealand has grown significantly in the past two decades. However, little is known about Middle Eastern parents’ expectations and their children’s experiences of the New Zealand early education system. The PhD research on which this article is based was an attempt to address this gap. The findings discussed in this article derive from semistructured interviews with four case-study teachers. Using thematic analysis and drawing on constructs from critical multiculturalism and funds of knowledge, I argue that there is a lack of congruence between the early childhood discourses promoted by the New Zealand teachers and Middle Eastern parents’ expectations for their children’s early education. Possible implications for early childhood pedagogy are suggested to meet the needs of increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse early childhood educational contexts.

Imagining the Irish Child: Discourses of Childhood in Irish Anglican Writing of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Jarlath Killeen (review)

Imagining the Irish Child: Discourses of Childhood in Irish Anglican Writing of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Jarlath Killeen (review)

The present and the future of doing philosophy with children

This paper is an introduction to the dossier on “the present and the future of doing philosophy with children”, which itself drew inspiration from a conference on the same topic that was held in University College Dublin on the 24th of June 2022. While the conference aimed at building a case for the importance of engaging pre-college students in philosophical thinking, it also aspired to function as a forum where the participants can critically reflect on the practice of doing philosophy with children. The participants were asked to reflect on 1) the ways in which philosophy prepares children to engage with an increasingly complex world; 2) the future challenges of the P4wC movement; 3) the ways in which and the extent to which P4wC practice contributes to the decolonization of childhood discourses; 4) the ways in which and the extent to which the philosophy with children initiative addresses issues of epistemic injustice and educational and social inequalities. Building on the discussions that took place during and after the conference, the authors in this dossier interrogate the hierarchical opposition between child and adult, and cast a critical gaze on adultist assumptions that prevent Philosophy for/with Children initiatives from achieving their full potential.

The “Innocent” Other: Hollywood’s Post 9/11 Muslim Child and Childhood

The present article interrogates the ways in which Hollywood cinema articulates the exclusion of the Muslim child from popular discourses of childhood and how such exclusion continues to condition the cultural identity of children and most importantly how it defines the notion of childhood. This paper opts for a textual and discursive analysis of Hollywood’s post-9/11 film through a cultural and postcolonial studies’ lens. The main purpose behind this is to scrutinize Hollywood’s cultural conceptualization of children, how it represents different childhoods, in what way it categorizes children and who is perceived as a child.

Early Childhood Discourse and the Categorization of Children: Focused on Care in Childcare Center

Early Childhood Discourse and the Categorization of Children: Focused on Care in Childcare Center

Who do you think you are? Children's definitions of being a ‘child’

AbstractWe asked 92 children in North West England, aged 2–17, if they were children and what it meant to be a child. Our findings show that not all children think they are a ‘child’. Although different age groups defined ‘childness’ in different ways, children reproduced normative Western discourses of childhood, including ideas which subordinate them. The children in our study seemed unable to articulate their capabilities and contributions. We argue that children and adults need to co‐produce positive definitions of childness to facilitate adult acceptance of children's participation in society and continue the struggle against adultism.

“The Ice is Melting and I Don’t Want Santa to Drown!”: Reflections on Childhood, Climate Action, and Futurity

This paper’s reading of a specific cultural artifact to emerge from children’s climate activism in contemporary Australia enacts an argument that children themselves can be seen to be redefining childhood and futurity through their climate activism and demonstrates how their placards are evidence of this. It argues that we as critical childhood scholars can follow their lead by uncovering the discourses that underpin their activist slogans. In doing so, we can set about contesting the limiting and disempowering discourses of childhood that would dismiss the very idea of children as political participants in the fight to save the planet.

An artistic infantilisation of war: “The Mythogenic Love of Casts” by S. Anufriev and P. Pepperstein and “Achtung, Zelig! The Second War” by K. Gawronkiewicz and K. Rosenberg

The paper examines the novel “The Mythogenic Love of Casts” (1999– 2002) by Sergey Anufriev and Pavel Pepperstein, both from the younger generation of the Moscow Conceptualists, and the comic strip “Achtung, Zelig! The Second War” (2004) by the Polish authors Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz and Krystian Rosenberg from the perspective of a specific representation of the Second World War (a narrative on the border between the reality and fantasy, adulthood and childhood, historical facts and grotesque). Of particular interest is the psychological and aesthetic motivation of the Russian and the Polish authors. The texts are an attempt to capture the experience of children of the 1970s: Both the unimaginable nature of war (and the Holocaust in the case of Polish comic strips) and the oversaturation of consciousness with approximate and fragmented, yet ideologized and mythologized knowledge of the former. The mythologemes of war are brought into the circle of “childhood discourse” and the concept of war is associated with the discourse of childhood and infantile behavior. By combining adult-real and children-fairytale perspectives, the official stereotypes indoctrinated into the mass historical consciousness through literature, film, posters, school, comic strips and political cartoons are reconsidered. On the one hand, the “childish”, inaccurate, fabulous, or fantastic, fragmentary idea of the war is literalized. On the other hand, adult play with the war mythologems takes place: The authors act as interpreters of the myth using the templates present in the minds of any representative of their generation. Both texts are embodiments of generational experience of existence within the ideology, they are also an attempt to achieve a unity between childhood and adulthood, naive and sophisticated, Socialism and Post-Socialism.

Hegemonic childhood in the Polish community of West Prussia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries

In this article, I present the hegemonic concept of childhood in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries among the Polish community of West Prussia. The subject of the analyses was the content of articles dealing with children’s issues, published in the local Polish press. The essential feature of the hegemonic discourse of childhood for the Polish community in the analysed region was that it was clearly based on the Catholic religion and national ideas, as well as on a strong relationship with the conservative and post-feudal image of family relations. The conducted research made possible the identification of seven basic categories of the hegemonic understanding of childhood in the Polish environment of West Prussia, which are: Polish and Catholic childhood, childhood sensitive to the needs of others, heroic childhood, tidy and pupil childhood, neat and orderly childhood, childhood based on obedience and subordination, sexual purity childhood.

CHILDREN’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD IN RELATION TO PLAY ACTIVITIES

Children’s play articulates the social ideologies and discourses of childhood and play. This study combined espousals from childhood studies, and play theories to analyze children’s conceptualization of childhood play, and trace social influences of their conceptions. The research consisting of 112 fifth-grade students who live in an urban environment indicated that their conceptualization of childhood referred to many types of play. In contrast to the discourse of the competent child, they almost exclusively appropriated the romantic discourse of the innocent child who plays outdoors with other children or alone, unsupervised by adults, far from institutionalized learning, intellectual games, urban activities, and new technology toys. Their conceptualizations reflected gender stereotypes of play and the influence of a competitive social structure.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0476/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Children as ‘difference makers’: viral discourses of childhood innocence and activism in #Blacklivesmatter

ABSTRACT Viral images on social media during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 brought heightened attention to the debate over children’s political participation. Therefore, our inquiry sought to discover what the circulation of and response to viral images of children engaged in protest might tell us about the discursive landscapes of childhood in regard to children’s social and political participation. We describe the historical and discursive context that has positioned children’s agency in opposition to innocence. Informed by Foucault’s theory of discourse, we situate Internet virality as a social practice and analyze the videos and still images alongside the accompanying commentary from online news and social media. We ask what these viral image responses reveal about the socially and historically situated construct of childhood innocence and what implications these revelations might hold for adult perspectives on children as political actors and co-participants in social change. We explore themes of participation, privilege, and protection that emerged from a cross-comparison of the video commentary and consider how these themes could inform ongoing efforts to reframe childhood discourse in light of social justice.

CHILDHOOD IN THE DISCOURSE OF HUMANITARIAN STUDIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTERY

The aim of the study is to analyze the modern scientific discourse of research on childhood problems. The article examines the peculiarities of the interpretation of the phenomenon of childhood at the turn of the century. It has been established that modern researchers of childhood interpret it mostly through traditional academic discourses, which consist in the division of childhood between psychology, sociology and anthropology. The peculiarities of the interdisciplinary approach in the process of childhood research are revealed, which refers to the integrated methodology of studying problems related to the life of children and their protection, which, in its turn, forms the modern interpretation of "the child in context". This vision of childhood allows us to consider it as one of the priorities of state policy in many countries of the world. The research substantiates the idea that the problem of childhood in modern social sciences is quite often defined as a direction that largely consists in traditional theorizing and recognition of a large number of means of social construction and reconstruction of childhood, depending on time and place, age and gender, ethnic and religious differences, etc. The concept of "child", which refers to an "immature" personality, has been studied; at the same time, the concept of "childhood" is more general and abstract and indicates the status of those who are called minors. In particular, it is outlined that adulthood can be defined through physical or sexual maturity, sometimes through legal capacity. We can state that the term "childhood" focuses mainly on the child's state of being, without having to do with an individual child; it assumes the existence of a distinct, separate, fundamentally different social category – "childhood". However, the most difficult task remains to find out to what extent critical stages of social life, changes and trends belong to the research field and academic discourse of childhood and how much they reflect and characterize the patterns of development of social sciences, as well as paradigmatic changes in pedagogy.

Teach your children well: Adam Goodes, from unruly child to Indigenous statesman

ABSTRACT The ‘Goodes saga’ in Australian Football transformed Adam Goodes’ persona as a dutiful son of the sport into a polarising celebrity, most infamously through an encounter with a female teenage fan. In this article, we argue that the ‘Goodes saga’ exposed the contested nature of Indigenous celebrity stemming from settler anxieties about the unruly child and Indigenous statesman. Goodes transformed from a sports star, a dutiful ‘son’ of the sport to the national celebrity of a political statesman – a position of adulthood that might be described as characteristic of Eldership. Goodes’ self-manufactured celebrity persona, based in his concept of Indigeneity as ‘having a foot in both worlds’, was enacted through his mission to incorporate Indigenous cultural practices into the sport and wider settler-Australian culture. These actions were persistently disparaged through recourses to Euro-centric concept of the child and childhood as a state of innocence. We prompt readers to consider why the settler-public and its national institutions like the Australian Football League are so invested with surrounding Indigenous stars with a discourse of childhood. Why might the AFL and settler society more broadly consider the possibility that Aboriginal men might ascend to adulthood such a terrifying proposition?

“But there is a God”: Teaching Nat Turner in early childhood education

This study set out to gain a deeper understanding of how early childhood students, specifically Black boys in first and second grade, would respond to the teaching of historical figures and events traditionally omitted from classrooms. Contrary to general assumptions, these students were able to astutely contribute to classroom lessons, discussions, and interviews about Nat Turner, an enslaved Black American, who led a rebellion in 1831. Employing notions of Black intellectual thought and curricular and pedagogical resuscitation as theoretical frameworks, in addition to critical hermeneutic phenomenology as its methodology, this study highlights the voices of young Black boys often missing in early childhood discourse. Findings indicate that the students expressed a favorable assessment of Nat Turner and his comrades. The statement, “But there is a God,” ultimately confronts the unavailability and restricted options for Black humanity in a racist society, but also an awareness testifying to a self-ordained defense of the Black body. This study gives added perspective to the understanding of the early learning process, cultural meaning-making, and connection to a Black educational legacy spanning generations.

Bursting the ‘childhood bubble’: reframing discourses of LGBTQ+ teachers and their students

ABSTRACT LGBTQ+ teachers have been noted to struggle with conflicting professional and personal subjectivities within schools, which are sites of (re)production of heteronormativity. This clash relies upon positioning LGBTQ+ as an adult activity in opposition to discourses of childhood, which are framed around protection and innocence. This research, however, took place at a time of potential change, with aspects of LGBTQ+ inclusion being present within UK schools to varying degrees. In 2020, 50 UK LGBTQ+ teachers engaged in individual semi-structured interviews. Thematic Foucauldian analysis was applied to the data to examine both the discourses produced by the teachers and the subjectivities that were navigated. Findings suggest that many teachers are able to disrupt the binaries of professional/personal and a ‘new’ teacher subjectivity emerges, that acknowledges their LGBTQ+ status. This is framed around neoliberal traits of honesty and authenticity. In relation, the binary distinction between student and teacher is navigated, and childhood is no longer discursively constructed by the teachers as innocent; instead, students are framed around their agency and social awareness. However, there is evidence that protectionist discourses of the child, and professional discourses of the teacher, are also being used to prevent LGBTQ+ inclusion, and restrict LGBTQ+ teachers.

Disputed meanings about child labour, its consequences, and interventions: discussions based on ethnographic research in Argentina

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographies with working children and their families in low-income neighbourhoods in Argentina, this article explores the experiences constructed around child labour, its meanings, and consequences, taking into account the locations and social relations in which it takes place. In doing so, it offers a nuanced reading of child labour that distances it from the dualistic thinking, deeply rooted in social sciences, in which, on the one hand, researchers conclude that child labour should be eradicated (the work-free childhood discourse) and, on the other hand, it is recognised as a right (the regulationist perspective). Based on field studies, the article challenges this dualistic thinking and presents a nuanced, alternative narrative.

Death In Children's Literature Against The Background Of Selected Child And Childhood Discourses

The author of the article discusses the sensitive topic of the social taboo of death with regard to the process of the child’s education and development, with particular focus on the use of thanatological literature as a factor shaping the child’s personality. The text presents the perception of the death phenomenon by children, and the essence as well as functions of thanatological literature. It also shows the impact of child and childhood discourses on four well-known literary works for children (at the kindergarten and pre-school age), dealing with the discussed topic. The selected research method consists in qualitative analysis of the content. The works have been selected due to their popularity and presence in scientific publications on the topic of death in children’s literature. Analytical categories of the selected literary works include subjective and objective approach to the child and childhood. The first approach is consistent with the perspective of sociology of childhood and the post-colonial theory, as presented in the article, whereas the second approach refers to the mainstream developmental psychology and the colonial theory.
 Based on the analysis of content values of the four literary works, it can be concluded that respect for the child’s subjectivity and the value of their voice supports development of the youngest, among others, in the aspect of dealing with the sensitive topic of death.