On Reflexivity: Tribute to Catherine Kohler Riessman

This paper is a tribute to Catherine Kohler Riessman, whose imprint on the field of narrative studies is legendary. It draws on some of her most influential publications to highlight her enduring commitment to and practice of researcher “reflexivity” and how her scholarship has influenced my work. I draw upon several of Cathy's most influential publications to highlight her model of reflexivity in practice—a tacking back and forth between research questions, the literature, the data we collect and interpretations we make, our intellectual biographies, politics, personal experiences, and research relationships. We can look to Cathy's scholarship for the power of revisiting, re-feeling, revising and re-envisioning our data. Her brand of feminist scholarship serves as a guide for bringing intellectual labour; historical, political and theoretical change; and personal lives into closer relation

What Grown-Ups Aren’t Thinking About: A Response to Tran Nguyen Templeton

Tran Templeton opens her article “Whose Story Is It?: Thinking Through Early Childhood with Young Children’s Photographs” with a compelling adult-child encounter. Tran and 6-year-old Saloma are viewing photographs taken of Saloma by early childhood teachers in the preschool classroom where Tran taught and conducted her research. Saloma offers a piercing analysis of “grown-ups” who neglect to consider children’s own wishes. “Maybe the people [children] don’t want you to take a picture of them when they’re like that,” Saloma cautions. But it isn’t just that adults are taking pictures that may be unwanted; what bothers Saloma is how we as adults position children in diminutive ways. Tran registers the indignation in Saloma’s voice as the 6-year-old states her objection, “Like they [adults] just think, ‘Oh that’s so cute’ (makes a shutter noise ‘chk!’) and they [children] don’t even want you to do that. What about that? Grown-ups aren’t thinking about that!

A Place to be Together:: Cultivating Spaces of Discomfort and Not Knowing in Visual Analysis. The Collaborative Seeing Studio.

This article describes our transmethodological practice and the affective space of making and making sense of visual research in community. We purposefully embrace complexity and richness in visual data analysis, rather than seeking to reductively avoid doubt and uncertainty. To do this, we bring multiple ways of seeing together into a collaborative, poly-vocal construction. Our ‘studio’ is designed to be a safe space for risk and creativity. We are at different levels of experience and confidence, but we all learn from each other. Seeing collaboratively depends on translating our ways of reading visual material “out of our heads” and “into our shared space.” In the sense that we love what we are doing, we revel at opening ourselves to new possibilities. In-Progress: Victoria Restler Narrates a Collaborative Seeing Studio Session. Wendy Luttrell leads us into collaging as both metaphor and tools of Collaborative Seeing. We end with a brief reflection

Covid-19 and Racial Justice in Urban Education: NYC Parents Speak Out

The COVID-19 pandemic and global calls for racial justice surfaced tremendous inequities and revitalized the debate about schooling and its purpose. NYC Parents Speak Out is a public engagement project, based on an interactive survey and interviews that records and reflects NYC family educational experiences during the unprecedented school year of 2020-2021. Our research collective, comprised of researchers, parents, advocates, teachers, and school leaders from the Urban Education Ph.D. Program at The Graduate Center (CUNY) identified three key recommendations based on research findings: to improve communication through family and community engagement; give greater attention to social-emotional and mental health; and teach about systemic racism and racial justice

The Inq13 POOC::A Participatory Experiment in Open, Collaborative Teaching and Learning.

This article offers a broad analysis of a POOC (“Participatory Open Online Course”) offered through the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2013. The large collaborative team of instructors, librarians, educational technologists, videographers, students, and project leaders reflects on the goals, aims, successes, and challenges of the experimental learning project. The graduate course, which sought to explore issues of participatory research, inequality and engaged uses of digital technology with and through the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, set forth a unique model of connected learning that stands in contrast to the popular MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model

Children and Value – Education in Neo-liberal Times

This special issue arises from an international conference, Researching Children, Global Childhoods and Education, at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) in 2011. The goal of the conference was to advance theories and methodological practices that cultivate children’s agency in research and educational practices. Many topics were raised -- including child poverty, migration, the growing significance of technologies, consumerism and marketization, the speeding up of children’s lives, child labour and children’s role as carers, shifting gender roles and family dynamics and the greater acknowledgement of children’s rights to provision, protection and participation. As the organizers of the conference, we identified a recurring theme: the changing value of children in education. There was a shared concern within this network of international scholars that education policy and investment in children’s education is being shaped by a vision that is narrowing children’s experience of learning and measuring quality in education through an economically instrumentalist lens