Welcoming Narratives in Education: A Tribute to the Life Work of Jonathan Silin

Issue 45 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series is a labor of love. It testifies to our love for Jonathan Silin, who for 17 years served as Editor-in-Chief. The issue is also a testament to our respect for the things that matter to him. We have designed Issue 45 to exemplify two commitments that have shaped the decades of Jonathan’s career and that we believe will resonate with readers of the Occasional Paper Series

Waldorf Kindergarten and Reggio-Inspired Kindergarten: Documenting Value and Effectiveness of Two Arts-Based Approaches

Waldorf kindergarten and Reggio-inspired kindergarten are two arts-based approaches to early childhood education that are viewed as strong educational alternatives to traditional education and serve as sources of inspiration for progressive educational reform. This study describes, interprets, and appraises the intentions and operations of two Waldorf kindergartens and two Reggio-inspired kindergartens in the United States in order to uncover the aims, practices, and values of both. Five questions guide this study: (1) What are the intentions of Waldorf kindergarten and Reggio-inspired kindergarten? (2) What do Waldorf kindergarten and Reggio-inspired kindergarten look like in practice? (3) What do the children have the opportunity to learn in each of these environments? (4) What perspectives do parents have of Waldorf and Reggio-inspired kindergarten? And (5) what are the implications of Waldorf kindergarten and Reggio-inspired kindergarten? Educational connoisseurship and criticism are the methodology used to investigate Waldorf kindergarten and Reggio-inspired kindergarten. Educational criticism is composed of four dimensions: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics. The six features that contribute to the ecology of schooling provided the conceptual framework for observing these kindergarten classroom settings. They are the intentional, structural, curricular, pedagogical, evaluative, and aesthetic dimensions. From my research questions, there are three findings: (1) in an arts-based kindergarten, children are not only learning knowledge, but also learning to be creative and imaginative with the knowledge they learn; (2) in order to have a successful arts-based kindergarten approach, the teacher, the child, the parents, the materials, and the environment all need to be involved within the curriculum; and (3) in order to fully evoke the qualities of a Waldorf kindergarten and a Reggio-inspired kindergarten the teacher must be able to fully support the philosophies and methods of their respective approach. These findings suggest that arts-based curriculums aid in the development of the whole child to not only mature in their own time and space but also encouraging the child to build meaningful relationships with other children, the teachers, their parents, and the environment around them

The Mockingbird

Matthew Allen [Decline]; Maria Bledsoe [Gentility of Steel for Jack Higgs]; Joseph Bowman [All That’s Left]; Keith Brake [Walk-Off]; Madison Brown [Blue Plums]; DeVan Burton [Lemons on the Avenue]; Sam Campbell [Fading]; Luke Champouillon [Cold steel infinity]; Maggie Colvett [Seasonal, Postdiluvians, Voie ]; Rima Day [Rococo Head]; Emily Eversgerd [Spring Frost]; Nancy Fischman [Bottle I]; Jane Hicks [Mistress Mine]; John Hodgson [Jormungandr]; Jake Ingram [Marie]; Heather Justice [Tortoise Man]; Laura Higgs Kappel [An Interview with Dr. Jack Higgs by His Daughter,Laura Higgs Kappel]; Robert Kottage [Bonnaroo 2007: A “Coming of Middle Age” Story]; Adam Lambert [Picture of My Father as a Young Man, April 18th , Words I wish we had]; Derek Laurendeau [Desire]; Jake Lawson [A Great Collapse]; Kim McCoy [Turtle Truck]; Nell McGrady [Painting in First Person]; Jody Mitchell [Plato’s Chair]; Daniel Morefield [When I Die]; Melanie Norris [Frank]; Jerianne Paul [Utah Territory, 1861]; Charles Anthony Perkins [Station 13: Atonement]; Rita Quillen [October Dusk]; Janet Leigh Robinson [Laura]; Laura Simpson [The Rabbit Pot]; Nicholas Smith [Flute, A Poem for the Palm of Your Hand]; Natasha Snyder [Garden Party]; Alyssa Spooner [This Shed Had a Tree Fall on It, Dragon]; Greta Talton [Photograph from an Old Album]; Sara West [Silver Spoon, Have You Heard the One about the Methodist Who Walks into the Southern Baptist Convention?]https://dc.etsu.edu/mockingbird/1004/thumbnail.jp

A Nature Adventure Chapter Book for Early Readers and How it Can Influence Children\u27s Interest in and Desire to Explore the Natural World

With the increase in screen-time, children are spending less and less time outside in nature. Many studies are finding significant negative impacts upon their mental, physical and emotional well-being. The author attempted to develop an age-appropriate fictional story based upon accurate and appropriate nature and science lessons. The book, The Adventurers…Journey to the Crooked Forest was created to test if children would be more interested in going outside in nature as well as if the book could increase children’s knowledge of nature and science topics through storytelling. The effectiveness of the book was tested on fifty 1st -3 rd grade students from the local elementary school. The book was read to each of the classes one to two times a week over a two-month period. Using pre- and post-assessments, student’s attitudes towards, interest and knowledge in nature and science topics were evaluated. Parents also completed an assessment questionnaire after the reading in order to determine if they noticed any changes in their child’s interest in nature. Findings show that the book noticeably increased the majority of students’ interest in going outdoors and their knowledge of various nature and science topics. Teachers provided positive feedback pertaining to the relevancy of the content to their classes, engagement of their students and the age-appropriateness of the book. The teachers reported increased curiosity and retention of content over extended periods of time with their students. It was concluded that this book was effective in engaging, educating and motivating students with nature and science. Implications for future studies include expanding the sample size, utilizing more quanititative assessment questions and including suburban and urban students to identify similarities and differences in the book’s effect on those populations

EXPLORING CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN INDIGENOUS EARLY CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE IMMERSION PROGRAMS: AN INDIGENOUS STORYWORK JOURNEY THROUGH THE KIOWA ENCAMPMENT STORY CIRCLE METHODOLOGY

Our children represent the future of our people. Each generation has a responsibility to ensure the younger generations have what they need to carry our people forward. With this in mind, I am sharing with you, the reader, a story. This story is the journey that I took to conduct my doctoral dissertation research and the lessons learned as I implemented an Indigenous research methodology in order to explore the process of curriculum development in Indigenous early childhood language immersion programs across the United States. This research story is my way to share a little bit about who I am, where I come from, and how it is that I am doing my part to ensure the success of future generations. I come to you in a good way, with an open heart and with the utmost respect. I want to pause here and offer a note to you, as a reader, regarding the structure of this dissertation. I invite you to step through the boundary between the linear worldview and the relational worldview, and meet me on the other side, where the worldviews intersect. Join me in exploring a research journey grounded firmly in Indigenous ways of knowing, and specifically approached from my own Kiowa perspective. In an effort to remain true to who I am as an Indigenous scholar, I am using the methodology of Indigenous Storywork (ISW) (Archibald, 2008), specifically, I am writing from my own Indigenous worldview of the Kiowa people. Through this approach I will explore the various facets of my dissertation journey. Like all Kiowa stories of lived experiences, there is a beginning event, the journey to the destination, and a lesson to be learned. You have entered a space for decolonized research methodologies. I invite you to join me in this journey, a journey towards exploring curriculum development in Indigenous early childhood language immersion programs. Ah-koh (let us begin)

InSEA European Regional Congress: Tales of art and curiosity

Proceedings volume from the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) European Regional Congress

Movement, meaning and affect: the stuff childhood literacies are made of

This thesis emanates from an ethnographically informed study involving a close examination of the multiple ways that meaning making emerges in children’s ongoing, self-initiated activity. I adopt a poststructuralist frame which provides conceptual tools of emergence, movement and affect and pay attention to activity that spontaneously arose across children. I present a detailed description of the significance of movement in young children’s meaning making that involves the re-shaping, re-imagining and repurposing of materials and classroom areas. Movements are seen as integral to children’s symbolic meaning making and the kinds of practices that emerge. I make four contributions to knowledge through presenting new insights into movement during the process of meaning making in one Early Years settings as follows. I have shown the way children’s interest played out in their movement and identified three prevalent interest/ movement formations. I have underlined the importance of movement by illustrating the ways in which movement is deeply implicated within material arrangements of the classroom. I have suggested that the quality or dynamics of movement are related to affective atmospheres. Through juxtaposing movement, materials and classrooms, I have generated a conceptual framework for analysing the way in which agency is distributed across children’s moving bodies, the classroom, and its materials. My account of children’s activity has implications for the way that teachers might work to: see literacy as a collective endeavour deeply implicated with available materials be open to diverse pathways to literacy learning acknowledge literacy development as a non-linear trajectory take account of children’s spontaneous exploratory movement in classrooms take account of the way that movement contributes to the affective atmospheres in classrooms offer children opportunity for spontaneous exploration of meanings, real and imagined, so allowing diverse child-generated sites for participation forge broader understanding of the relationship between literacy and pla

Young children’s engagement with television and related media in the digital age

This thesis is one output of a White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership (WRDTP) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) studentship, devised by The Universities of Sheffield and Leeds in partnership with CBeebies. Taking a sociomaterial approach (Barad, 2003) to digital literacies in early childhood, this thesis focuses on United Kingdom (UK) preschool children’s intra-actions and social practices (Wohlwend, 2009) with television and related media (TV&RM) at home. It examines how both well-established and new verbal and non-verbal intra-actions constitute children’s unique social practices. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1977), this thesis asks how social class is implicated in these practices. These inquiries are addressed empirically using a mixed-methods approach. The results of a UK-wide survey of 1,200 parents of preschool children and ethnographic case studies with 6 families in Sheffield, UK are presented. Several original contributions to empirical, theoretical and methodological knowledge are made in this thesis. Firstly, in their everyday engagements with TV&RM, preschool children amalgamate fragments of media texts with other material and/or immaterial things to constitute synthesised texts (‘synthesised practices’). Secondly, preschool children and their families share habitus in relation to TV&RM (’family media habitus’). Thirdly, preschool children have relationships with narrative media texts without ever having engaged directly with them, via proxies including physical artifacts and social contact (‘proxy media engagement’). Fourthly, family members engage with preschool children’s TV&RM interests in ways which extend their learning in relation to literacies. Middle-class families use their children’s TV&RM interests as the basis for engaging children in school-like literacies learning (‘media practice schoolification’). Working-class families tend to extend their children’s TV&RM interests in terms of operational, critical and cultural digital literacies and embodied literacies. Methodologically, the thesis develops a framework for ‘Sociomaterial Nexus Analysis’ and ‘nexus mapping’

The Intersection of Young Children\u27s Play Activities and Multimodal Practices for Social Purposes

This qualitative study examined how children’s play activities and multimodal practices intersected for social purposes. Mediated Discourse Analysis (Scollon, 2001) informed the theory and methodology. Four questions guided the study: 1) In what types of play do preschoolers engage? 2) What strategies do preschoolers use to navigate the social boundaries of playframes? 3) What are the various modes and resources preschoolers use to engage in playframes and how do they use them? 4) What social positionings do preschoolers take on and resist in playframes? Participants included two co-teachers and twelve of the children in their pre-kindergarten classroom. Data was collected over a five-month period using participant observations and field notes. Analysis focused on multimodal discourse that took place during free play time. Four findings emerged from the study: 1) Six types of play emerged across playframes; 2) Children used entry, invitation, sustainment, and protection strategies in their playframes; 3) Children used various modes and resources, including their bodies, props, and alphabetic print, to enact character roles and social roles; and 4) Children moved fluidly within and across insider and outsider social positionings in playframes. This study extends research focused on the social dynamics of young children’s classroom play experiences and argues for an extended conceptualization of multimodal literacy as analyzed in young children’s play