Book review: Handbook of early childhood literacy

Joanne Larson and Shira May Peterson highlight the paucity of research on how talk is used in pre-school settings compared to school settings. They locate the wealth of research studies on talk and discourse in formal learning settings in terms of the different ideological positions adopted. They use two continua; Streets (1995) distinction between ideological and autonomous conceptions of literacy and whether the function of literacy is seen as fixed or fluid to separate the studies into four quadrants, each with a distinctive ideological base. This means that their analysis does not highlight the groundbreaking impact of individual studies, but it does illustrate very effectively how ideological assumptions shape both research design and the resulting recommendations for practice. It also highlights some key research problems: that ideological rigidity means researchers can miss opportunities to build on each others' findings

The Case of the disappearing object: narratives and artefacts in homes and a museum exhibition from Pakistani heritage families in South Yorkshire

This article describes a small-scale research project focused on a small group of families of Pakistani heritage who were interviewed about their possessions and the stories associated with those objects, in order to create an exhibition of intergenerational home objects. It looks at what happens when home objects are placed in a museum exhibition context. In particular, the article considers the phenomenon by which intergenerational objects that have crossed continents are sometimes lost, and discusses whether this requires special attention in the context of studies of post-colonialist identities and objects. An interesting dissonance appears in the representation of the exhibition when objects are lost and then replaced in exhibitions. An artefact from the museum collection can be substituted for the lost object in an exhibition, but there is still an issue of the ‘original’ object not being found. This article considers the context of these objects and stories and how these can be related to the literature on British Asian post-colonial identities

Introduction: Learning With Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times

As we write this in a cool and rainy north of England, the planet is burning. Some of the highest temperatures in Earth’s history are currently being recorded in Death Valley, US. Italy is recording temperatures of 118 degrees farenheit (48 degrees Celsius). Rhodes is on fire. I (Kate) remember when I realized the extent of the disaster that is the climate emergency coming upon us. It was listening to a geologist describing the slow and then very fast loss of a glacier in the High Arctic. We are realizing our world is slipping away from us

Recognizing Young People’s Civic Engagement Practices: Re-Thinking Literacy Ontologies through Co-Production

In this article I argue that it is important to find a language to describe youth engagement practices in informal settings. I argue that many young people do not have the resources to be heard on visible platforms, but their work, and meaning making practices might provide important information about their ideas and relay key concepts about how communicational practices are constructed. Drawing on embedded, ethnographic and artistically informed projects with young people in communities, I argue for a deeper kind of listening. Artistic forms such as poetry, visual art, dance and music are important modes of engagement. I draw on cultural practice theory together with theory from new literacy studies and media studies to explore four questions: How do you craft what you know? How do you speak/make what you feel? How do you transform practice? How do you articulate action? I see these as components of the process of producing relationally oriented modes of address that others can also engage with. Taken together, they suggest a language of description for the mode that is civic engagement communicational practice, that is, oriented beyond individual experience but drawing from experience to make change happen in relational ways

Trees and Us: Learning About/From Trees and Treescapes From Primary School Children in the United Kingdom

In recent years, there is a growing interest for attending to children’s voice in environmental research. The theoretical developments in knowledge about children view them as social agents who can make sense of their own experiences in relation to the environment surrounded them. In this report, we add reflections from an ongoing project “voices of the future” which aims to reimagine future of treescapes in the UK. Using examples from two primary schools in the northwest of England, we discuss children’s knowledge about trees and how children talk about their lived experiences with trees. Centring on our field work experiences, we discuss how children skilfully communicate distinctive meanings of trees using distinctive modes of communication. We look at how children make sense of the world around them, stressing on developing multiple and relational ways of attending to children’s knowledge about trees and their experiences of natural environment in educational settings

Doing Research-Creation in School: Keeping an Eye on the Ball

This article explores the potential of the idea of ‘research-creation’ when working with children making films in the context of a project that explored children’s experience of school. The proposition of the article is that rather than see children’s work as something to be discussed or extracted from, if it is seen as ‘the work’ it is differently situated. In the article, an artist and an ethnographer explore the potential of artistic methodologies in working collaboratively with children. The article describes this process, and engages with an interdisciplinary lens to explore the nature of this kind of work. The results of the art-making activities included a series of short films made by children on their experience of feeling Odd in school. Within these films, ideas surfaced such as the idea of the uncanny. In the conclusion the implications for artistic research with children are explored

Re-Imagining Artistic Subjectivities within Community Projects

In this article an artist and an academic consider how the idea of subjectivities manifests itself in community projects. Taking an example of an ‘artist-in-residence’ on a co-produced research project, the authors experientially consider how their work has been articulated and presented. We draw on a dialogue, jointly written on a research blog, to discuss this. We consider collective forms of theory building and whether it is possible to re-imagine theory within a future-oriented process. The approach is necessarily fragmented and, as within any co-produced enquiry, poly-vocal. We aim to open a window on an iterative thinking process moving between and across domains. We do not desire consensus or agreement; nothing is settled or sedimented within this text