Going away

This paper presents a piece of practice-based photographic research called Going Away that explores the coast as a ‘remembered place’based on my own childhood visits to the seaside. The work takes the form of wall-mounted prints, while existing also as a limited edition artist’s book. Going Away is fictional in that, although it depicts real places and real objects, it is not the same actual place experienced in childhood. Rather, it is a place that triggers notions of escape and imaginative departure into past time. The nineteen photographs that make up this body of work were taken along several distinct stretches of the Cumbrian coast. Going Away,although showing particular locations, suggests a more generic childhood memory of the seaside and the loss of those times

Childhood Obesity Fieldwork Summary Report: The Food Education Project

Childhood Obesity and diabetes is on the rise and the health risk for developing various diseases is a major public health issue. This paper examines the public health issue on childhood obesity and diabetes. This paper explains the importance and magnitude of this problem by providing statistics, research efforts, educational efforts and the importance of preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. The paper will summarize, explain observations and provide insight on fieldwork completed through a project called The Food Education Project. The project focuses on addressing the major public health problem through educating children and adolescents on health, nutrition, food and the environment. The project also focuses on improving the resources and tools that are currently in place in preventing this epidemic. This paper will also address current statics provided by various institutions. Keywords: childhood obesity, diabetes, nutrition, health, enviornemen

Reflections from the Classroom: Towards a Radical Pedagogy for Early Years

This article comprises some critical reflections on the teaching of a second year undergraduate module called Children’s Cultural Worlds in which students are required to engage with original studies which are then used to stimulate self-reflection and engagement with wider issues relating to our understanding of children’s place in the social world. It will be argued that when individual memories are shared, it is possible to identify continuities and discontinuities in childhood experiences as well as the intersections between childhood and other social divisions such as gender, class and ethnicity. The requirement that students recall and reflect on their childhood memories and share them with others is a way of students learning through their own experiences, reflecting on their views and values. Furthermore, as it will be shown, it opens up spaces for alternative values and viewpoints to emerge about how we might ‘regulate’ early childhood because ‘When we tell stories and process them, using reflective dialogues, we create the possibility of change in ourselves and others’.</jats:p

Gnaw Bone

Even in the woods of Indiana (in an unincorporated community called Gnaw Bone, to be exact) life happens much as it happens elsewhere—people fight, they fall in love, they go to jail. I escaped this place of my childhood and moved to Washington, D.C., where I learned that much is the same no matter where I go. By exploring significant moments of my childhood in the region many call the Heartland and comparing it to my new city life, I touch on themes our country as a whole is pondering—identity, belonging, acceptance, and greed. I shine a light on an often-overlooked part of the country that, for me, contains a family that is beautiful and loving because of their imperfections

Weaving Child-Plastic Relations with Early Childhood Educators in the Ecuadorian Andes

In a small village in the Ecuadorian Andes called Racar, plastics are intimately woven into social and ecological structures. These entanglements move beyond human control and generate toxic dependencies between humans, plastics, and others. This requires a pedagogical shift in how early childhood educators understand and respond to plastics. Drawing on field research with educators in Racar, this paper attempts to interrupt human-centric discourses of the child as separate from Andean ecologies and resituates childhoods as differentially embedded in complex place relations

Jane Eyre

This new adaptation of the beloved Gothic novel imaginatively incorporates haunting visual images, dreamlike memories and innovative staging. Orphaned Jane Eyre overcomes her lonely and abusive childhood to become an accomplished governess for Mr. Rochester’s ward at mysterious Thornfield, a place with dark and terrifying secrets. Her psychological journey allows her to triumph over the oppression of the Victorian era, in a script that Chicago Magazine called “a tide of loving and sure storytelling that treats its audience with reverence and respect.”https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/theatre_productions/1035/thumbnail.jp

Repatriating childhood: issues in the ethical return of Venda children's musical materials from the archival collection of John Blacking

In ethnomusicological research, children are often conceptualised as the next generation of culture bearers who must be entrusted with valuable cultural materials to be sustained into the future. This conception, whether from cultural insiders, invested outsiders, or those in-between, often positions childhood as a place for re-embedding so called ‘endangered musical traditions’. Understanding children as the next generation of culture bearers informs the ways we approach the research process surrounding the documentation, archiving, and repatriation of musical cultures

From Play To Literacy: Implications For The Classroom

There are many perspectives on the connections between play and literacy. Writers and speakers concerned with this topic include professional educators in the area of literacy development, early childhood education specialists, and child development experts. My own interest evolved initially from my years as a first and second grade public school teacher. Later, as director of the Sarah Lawrence Early Childhood Center I wrote a book for parents called What You Need To Know When Your Child Is Learning To Read (1999), a book that focuses on variations in timing and domain among children as they seek different entry points into literacy: I wanted to emphasize the fact that parents and other good observers of young children can use the individual differences demonstrated by emergent readers and writers to facilitate literacy development. Most recently, my colleagues at the Sarah Lawrence Child Development Institute and I undertook the co-production of a public television documentary called When A Child Pretends (1999). The filming took place at our Early Childhood Center, and at Central Park East I Elementary School in East Harlem. All of these experiences have led me to consider the framework of this paper. To clarify, I define early childhood as spanning birth to age eight, and my definition of play extends past its pure form as exemplified by imaginative play to include active, child-initiated and adult-facilitated experiences characterized by playfulness and the disposition to investigate. I believe that there are five distinct literacy goals that can be reached by supporting children’s natural inclination towards playful endeavors. To illustrate how these goals may be achieved, I have identified five aspects of early childhood classrooms which value play and playful attitudes and are particularly relevant to fostering children’s literacy

Mantle

Through a large-scale installation called mantle, I explore how the queer body becomes uncanny to the home through a human sized dollhouse and using scenic design ideas. Home for many is a safe place, but for queers, it can be a difficult one, wrought with not belonging in a childhood of heteronormativity. Being stuck in that heteronormative space is what I communicate through a stage set, composed of four theater flats, printed and collaged wallpaper, free-standing photos mounted on MDF, a giant necklace in a separate room, and impromptu pieces made in the space

Socioeconomic Status Impacts on Learning and Development

Abstract: This research project seeks to explore how social constructs such as social class and economic position impacts the development and learning process in early childhood, specifically between the ages of three to eight when an important biological phenomenon called synaptic explosion and synaptic pruning takes place. Past research findings suggest that there is a correlation between learning and developmental problems and economic status which reflects resources afforded to children. These social resources due to class position have been found to have a large impact on the biological development of children, which in return affects their capacity to learn.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1076/thumbnail.jp