Making sense of children's sexuality: Understanding sexual development and activity in education contexts.

Most adults find that responding to sexual activity by children and between children is challenging. This is especially so for teachers in early childhood and primary education contexts. One common view is that children should not be sexual or, if they are, that there is something wrong. These concerns are strengthened by popular adult discourses of sexuality and accompanying ideas of sexual privacy. Among discourses of child development sit ideas of childhood innocence and natural curiosity. However, assumptions of abuse arise when children's sexual curiosity extends beyond what is considered appropriate or "normal". This article examines pre-adolescent child sexual development. It scans some of the ideas and practices that shape adults' understandings in the construction of children's sexual identities. These ideas and practices also shape children's knowledges. Adult responses to children's sexual actions often portray children as abused, abusive or deviant. Using a social constructionist lens, this paper offers educators an exploration of a range of understandings and alternative thinking about sexuality in the worlds of children-yet also critiques ideas of normative behaviour and development. The reader is invited to think about how children can be encouraged to share their subjective meanings and understandings

The Social Informatics of Ignorance

Social informatics researchers use a variety of techniques to explore the intersections between technology and society. Current interest has turned to making more explicit our commonly tacit knowledge processes that involve people and technology. Knowledge creation, sharing, and management processes are commonly hidden, and this is even more the case regarding ignorance processes such as the denial and obfuscation of knowledge. Understanding the construction, generation, and perpetuation of ignorance can: (i) provide insights into social phenomena that might otherwise seem inexplicable (for instance, persistence of “urban myths”), and (ii) enable development of interventions to either facilitate (as with privacy‐sensitive material) or combat (as with malicious disinformation) ignorance. Although several pressing information issues relate to ignorance, agnotology (the study of ignorance) has only recently entered into the information science literature. An agnotologic approach expands the repertoire of methods and approaches in social informatics, better enabling the field to grapple with pressing contemporary issues of mis/dis/lack of information. Using Robert Proctor\u27s typology of constructions of ignorance, this article describes ways that each type may be germane to and within social informatics, highlighting social informatics topics that would benefit from agnotologic exploration, and suggesting theoretical and methodological approaches useful to a social informatics of ignorance

Visual analysis of information world maps: An exploration of four methods

Information researchers increasingly use participatory, arts-based methods to better understand the social contexts of individuals and populations. However, it remains rare to engage in qualitative analysis of the resulting visual artefacts. This article explores approaches to analysing visual media generated through a specific arts-based method, information world mapping (IWM), an interdisciplinary draw-and-talk technique that elicits data about individuals’ social information worlds. Here, we test four approaches to analysing visual media generated through IWM: directed qualitative content analysis (QCA), compositional interpretation, conceptual analysis and visual discourse analysis using situational analysis (SA). QCA was effective in creating an overview of participants’ information practices, yet raised concern regarding interpretive bias. Using an inductive taxonomy for compositional interpretation, we identified genre conventions for IWMs. Conceptual analysis resulted primarily in a reflection of the research procedures and epistemology. SA, while time-consuming, generated a large amount of rich data, including discourses and power relations that were not identified in previous analysis of textual data. In a reversal of our previous stance that cautioned against IWM analysis, we encourage other researchers to consider integrated or secondary visual analysis of IWMs

The Scholar and Her Servants: Further Thoughts on Postcolonialism and Education

The hypothesis of the paper is twofold. By juxtaposing the two subject-positions of mistress and servant, moving between one and the other to highlight how each is largely constructed by the interaction, we illuminate the questions of margin and centre, silence and voice, and can ponder on how to do anthropology better. But secondly, to the work of several scholars who propose various approaches to these questions, I add the particular insight offered by the perspective of education. Because one of the subject-positions is that of ‘the scholar’, someone professionally engaged in knowledge production, the new question I want to consider is regarding the formation of this authoritative knowledge, its seemingly autonomous history, and the existing and potential intersections of that history with the history of the ‘non-scholar’. If I study India the question is how the history of India impinges on the history of the subjects involved in the study. The solution proposed is a radical one. Might one consider that the fancily educated, laboriously trained western or modern indigenous scholar who is in the field to do her research for degree or publication may contribute something to the necessary education of her less-than-perfectly educated informants? If this sounds illegitimate or unfeasible, I suggest that it is so because of certain problems in our understanding of ‘colonialism’ and ‘culture’, and that these could be resolved particularly by reflecting further on several histories. My suggestion then is to work to create what I call a postcolonial context, defined by the attempt to minimize the dichotomy between the scholar as subject and her non-scholarly, indeed, unschooled, subjects of study

Applying discursive approaches to health psychology

Objective: The aim of this paper is to outline the contribution of two strands of discursive research, glossed as ‘macro’ and ‘micro’, to the field of health psychology. A further goal is to highlight some contemporary debates in methodology associated with the use of interview data versus more naturalistic data in qualitative health research. Method: Discursive psychology is a way of analysing talk as a social practice which considers how descriptions are put together and what actions they achieve. Results: A selection of recent examples of discursive research from one applied area of health psychology, studies of diet and obesity, are drawn upon in order to illustrate the specifics of both strands. Whilst both approaches focus on accountability, ‘macro’ discourse work is most useful for identifying the cultural context of talk and can demonstrate how individuals are positioned within such discourses, and examine how such discourses are negotiated and resisted. ‘Micro’ discursive research pays closer attention to the sequential organisation of constructions and focuses on naturalistic settings which allow for the inclusion of an analysis of the health professional. Conclusion: Diets are typically depicted as an individual responsibility in mainstream health psychology but discursive research highlights how discourses are collectively produced and bound up with social practices

Women Belonging in the Social Worlds of Graduate Mathematics

The participation of women in post-graduate mathematics still lags substantially behind that of men. Drawing upon sociocultural theories of learning, I argue that success in graduate school necessitates learning mathematical content, participating in mathematical practices, and developing a sense of belonging in mathematics. Using an institutional ethnography approach, I interviewed 12 women graduate students from three mathematics departments in the U.S. to document their experiences within the social relations of graduate mathematics. They described both intrinsic and extrinsic obstacles to belonging, including a tension between their desire to belong and their needs to distance themselves from what they perceived to be the mathematical culture. These women’s stories are interpreted in terms of the ways they are multiply “marked” as deviant (Damarin, 2000)—as women, as mathematically talented, and as women in mathematics; for women of color or mothers, these markings are even more complex

"What exactly is a paedophile?" Children talking about Internet risk

Reports tell us that the internet is opening new dangers to children, including online grooming, exposure to pornography and financial scams (Carr 2004; Gardner 2003; UK Home Office 2001; O'Connell 2003). The result has been various initiatives which attempt to teach children safe surfing habits. The UK Home Office "ThinkUKnow" campaign featured advertisements on the radio, internet and cinemas, targeting teens and preteens with the message that the person they are chatting to "may not be who you think they are". There are indications that such campaigns have had an impact on children's awareness of "stranger danger" on the internet (Livingstone/Bober 2003). However, many organisations are still struggling with the question of how best to prevent internet-related harm to children. Children are exposed not only to advertising campaigns about stranger danger but also sensationalist stories about, for example, what happens to girls who enter chat rooms. When a teenage girl goes missing, police investigations routinely include looking at the girls' online activities, and tabloid media frequently make the connection between missing school girls and chat room activities. These connections are firmly embedded in the minds of the children we interviewed for the study we will be discussing. Alongside the very rational and prohibitive discourse coming from campaigns which warn children against any chat with strangers, sit the folkloric stories about girls meeting up and getting killed by paedophiles. The challenge to educators is to find an approach which will engage with both sets of discourses.Reports tell us that the internet is opening new dangers to children, including online grooming, exposure to pornography and financial scams (Carr 2004; Gardner 2003; UK Home Office 2001; O'Connell 2003). The result has been various initiatives which attempt to teach children safe surfing habits. The UK Home Office “ThinkUKnow” campaign featured advertisements on the radio, internet and cinemas, targeting teens and preteens with the message that the person they are chatting to “may not be who you think they are”. There are indications that such campaigns have had an impact on children's awareness of “stranger danger” on the internet (Livingstone/Bober 2003). However, many organisations are still struggling with the question of how best to prevent internet-related harm to children. Children are exposed not only to advertising campaigns about stranger danger but also sensationalist stories about, for example, what happens to girls who enter chat rooms. When a teenage girl goes missing, police investigations routinely include looking at the girls' online activities, and tabloid media frequently make the connection between missing school girls and chat room activities. These connections are firmly embedded in the minds of the children we interviewed for the study we will be discussing. Alongside the very rational and prohibitive discourse coming from campaigns which warn children against any chat with strangers, sit the folkloric stories about girls meeting up and getting killed by paedophiles. The challenge to educators is to find an approach which will engage with both sets of discourses