Tugging on Superman's Cape: Heroism in Children's Literature Post 9/11

Heroic Identities in children's books about September 1

The challenges of participatory research with 'tech-savvy' youth

This paper focuses on participatory research and how it can be understood and employed when researching children and youth. The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretically and empirically grounded discussion of participatory research methodologies with respect to investigating the dynamic and evolving phenomenon of young people growing up in networked societies. Initially, we review the nature of participatory research and how other researchers have endeavoured to involve young people (children and youth) in their research projects. Our review of these approaches aims to elucidate what we see as recurring and emerging issues with respect to the methodological design of involving young people as co-researchers. In the light of these issues and in keeping with our aim, we offer a case study of our own research project that seeks to understand the ways in which high school students use new media and network ICT systems (Internet, mobile phone applications, social networking sites) to construct identities, form social relations, and engage in creative practices as part of their everyday lives. The article concludes by offering an assessment of our tripartite model of participatory research that may benefit other researchers who share a similar interest in youth and new media

Combining thematic and narrative analysis of qualitative interviews to understand children’s spatialities in Andhra Pradesh, India

One of the foremost questions for any researcher setting out on a qualitative study is which form of analysis to use. There are a diverse range of qualitative analytical methods, each offering different forms of insight. In this paper, we discuss our experience of combining two distinct but complementary analytic methods – thematic and narrative analysis. We provide a worked example that combines the two approaches to analyse secondary data from the Young Lives study (see www.younglives.org.uk), in a project carried out as part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Node, NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches, see www.novella.ac.uk). We reflect on the challenges and benefits that result from our combined approach, aiming to illuminate the ways in which the integration of narrative and thematic analysis can support and enrich understanding of a complex dataset

Making Meaning of Gender and Sexual Identities in Early Childhood: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Canadian Early Childhood Curricula

This study is a critical discourse analysis of kindergarten programmatic curricula across Canada. The prime goal of the study was to produce knowledge of programmatic curricula’s treatment of diverse gender and sexual identities. The research questions investigated what gender and sexual identities are included in the curricula, how these identities are configured, the meaning making opportunities children are thereby offered, and the implications for students’ gender and sexual identity options and their understandings of gender and sexual minority youth and same-sex parented families. The data collection tool drew upon Fairclough’s (1995) textual analysis (including linguistic and intertextual components), Dillon’s (2009) questions of curriculum (modified to explore the nature, elements, and practice of gender and sexual identities), and the six dimensions of language arts (reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and representing). Findings indicate that most of the examined curricula lacked explicit language to specify what gender and sexual identities should be included in classroom curricula. Null and hidden curricula were identified that reinforce traditional gender identities and could limit identity options for children. Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) figured prominently in the curricula and placed constraints on classroom curricula relative to diverse gender and sexual identities. Recommendations include changes to programmatic curricula to be more specific regarding identities to include in teaching, how to resolve conflict over differences, and that programmatic curricula move beyond narrow perspectives of DAP. Educator professional learning is required to support all recommendations

Free the sheep: Improvised song and performance in and around a minecraft community

Recent work around the use of virtual world video games in educational contexts has conceptualised literacies as communal processes, whilst considering complex notions of collaboration through participants' multiplicity of presence in hybrid virtual / physical locations. However, further research is necessary in order to help us understand how the complex interactions afforded by such spaces influence - and are influenced by - children's social relationships. This article draws upon data from a year-long ethnographic study, investigating a group of ten and eleven year old children's engagement with the video game 'Minecraft' as they collaborate to build a 'virtual community'. With a particular focus on the children's improvised singing and use of song during the club, I examine how their creative practices - drawing on a wide range of self-selected resources, played out both in and out of the virtual world - help to fundamentally shape the nature of the space around them. Furthermore, through examination of one particular performance, I demonstrate the importance of ensuring that such details are not written out of accounts of children interactions around technology, if we are to understand the true potential of such environments

'Surely the most natural scenario in the world’: Representations of ‘Family’ in BBC Pre-school Television

Historically, the majority of work on British children’s television has adopted either an institutional or an audience focus, with the texts themselves often overlooked. This neglect has meant that questions of representation in British children’s television – including issues such as family, gender, class or ethnicity - have been infrequently analysed in the UK context. In this article, we adopt a primarily qualitative methodology and analyse the various textual manifestations of ‘family’, group, or community as represented in a selected number of BBC pre-school programmes. In doing so, we question the (limited amount of) international work that has examined representations of the family in children’s television, and argue that nuclear family structures do not predominate in this sphere

Superheroines and superstereotypes? Queer postfeminism, intersectionality and female superheroes in Supergirl

Since the new millennium, there has been a remarkable increase in audio-visual adaptations of superhero comic books (Garcia-Escriva, 2018). Whereas these adaptations used to include predominantly male superheroes, they have started to feature more female superheroes (Curtis & Cardo, 2018). An increase, however, does not imply diverse and rounded representations, since women in superhero movies tend to be depicted in stereotypical and sexualized ways (Kaplan, Miller & Rauch, 2016). Even though previous research has addressed the genre's politics of gender representation, there is a need for research that looks at televised female superheroes from a queer postfeminist lens. Therefore, this study conducted a textual analysis, informed by queer postfeminism and intersectionality theory, to explore how leading female superheroes in the series Supergirl are represented. We concluded that the superhero series Supergirl subverts hegemonic gendered identities through its depiction of both traditional and queer femininities