Ann Farrell

Accounting for young children’s competence in educational research: New perspectives on research ethics

Educational researchers working with young children face ethical issues when researching the talk and interactions of young children. Issues around the competence of children to participate in research pose challenges to educational researchers and to the young participants and their families, within what are seen as increasingly risky and regulated research environments. This paper examines some of these issues in light of recent sociological perspectives that account for children as competent practitioners of their social worlds. Drawing on research investigating the governance of the lives of young children in Australia, we examine the rights of children to be both seen and heard as competent research participants. These sociological directions afford opportunities to reconsider the ethical issues around research with young children. Such an approach breaks new ground in early childhood education research.

the contested terrain of teachers detecting and reporting child abuse and neglect

This article establishes the important role of early childhood teachers in child abuse and neglect and argues for empirical research into their practice of detecting, and reporting, known or suspected child abuse and neglect in a State with new and unique reporting obligations for teachers. It emphasizes the practical value of such research for the early childhood profession and ultimately for the children in their care.

Listening to Children: A study of child and family services

This paper reports on child data generated in a pilot project of the ACCESS Study of Child and Family Services , an investigation of the degree to which child and family services meet user needs within local communities. Based on theoretical perspectives drawn from social capital theories, the pilot study was undertaken by a partnership of local early childhood services within the precinct of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Australia) and included two childcare centres, two kindergartens/ preschools, one playgroup and one primary school. Seventy-six children aged 3-8 years were asked, in informal conversations with their caregivers, to comment on their experiences in the service and to consider possible advice they might give to children coming into the service. Theoretical perspectives from the sociology of childhood are used to examine childrens accounts of their lived experience in early childhood services.

`I told you so': justification used in disputes in young children's interactions in an early childhood classroom

While justifications are used frequently by young children in their everyday interactions, their use has not been examined to any great extent. This article examines the interactional phenomenon of justification used by young children as they manage social organization of their peer group in an early childhood classroom. The methodological approaches of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were used to analyse video-recorded and transcribed interactions of young children (aged 4—6 years) in a preparatory classroom in a primary school in Australia. The focus is an episode that occurred within the play area of the classroom and involved a dispute of ownership relating to a small, wooden plank. Justifications were frequent occurrences as the young participants drew upon justificatory devices to support their stances. The justifications related to the concepts of ownership and were used by those engaged in the particular dispute to support their positions and provide reasons for their actions. Four types of justificatory responses using child-constructed rules are highlighted. They are: justification based on the rule of transferred ownership; the rule of first possession; rules associated with custodianship; and the rule of third-party verification. The justifications are practices that work to build and reinforce individual childrens status within the group, which in turn contributes to the social order of the classroom.

Policies for Incarcerated Mothers and their Families in Australian Corrections

The incarceration of a mother usually brings considerable dislocation to the offending womans children and family. This paper examines current policies for the inmate mother, for her children and for the caregiver(s) of her children on the outside and argues for reform with respect to these policies. To this end, it reports on the Australian component of a comparative policy study, Incarcerated Mothers and Children: Impact of Prison Environments (IMCIPE), which investigated the impact of the prison environment on incarcerated mothers and their young children (including both mothers whose children live with them in custody and mothers who are separated from their children), in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and England. The paper draws on data from policy analyses; interviews with policy-makers, with inmate mothers, and with custodial and non-custodial staff; and observations within six womens prisons and their respective correctional authorities in the three Australian states. The study found that while inmate mothers need support from “significant others” within and outside the prison to cope with the dual roles of prisoner and mother, the custodial environment with its philosophy of incarceration, its mode of containment and the prison rules and regulations runs counter to such needs.

investigating an account of children ‘passing notes’ in the classroom how boys and girls operate differently in relation to an everyday, classroom regulatory practice

This article draws on the sociology of childhood framework in order to examine one primary school girl’s account of how the children in her classroom pass notes to each other when they are ‘not allowed to talk at all’. Close examination of the account shows how the girls and boys in this particular classroom co-construct gendered membership activities in order to negotiate the teacher’s regulation of their classroom interactions. The girls competently participate in the covert activity of passing notes outside of teacher regulation, whereas the boys competently participate in the overt activity of passing notes, thereby gaining the membership of their male teacher into their activity. The boys draw upon their gendered membership activity as a strategy for collaborating with their teacher in the construction of a new classroom order. This work is an important part of our ongoing study of how children understand and deal with governance in their everyday lives.

Young people whose parents are separated or divorced: a case for researching their experiences at the intersection of home and school

Background: Young people whose parents are separated or divorced form a significant and increasing proportion of young people who attend school. To date, empirical research with young people whose parents are separated or divorced has tended to focus on either their household context, or their school context, rather than on both contexts together. This paper redresses this singular focus by examining the intersection of the experiences of young people at both home and school. Purpose: The paper seeks to map the empirical evidence of young peoples home and school experiences as they move between households and schools. Sources of evidence: The paper provides a narrative review of the literature from the 1990s to the present, locating Australian research within an international context. The review is framed by four main questions. What is the impact upon young people of the family transitions that occur when parents separate or divorce? What is the everyday impact upon young people of moving between one household and another? What does the research reveal regarding educational, social and emotional outcomes for this group? What does the research reveal regarding their school experiences? Main argument: The review reveals a paucity of Australian research at the intersection of home and school. It shows that, while young people from these contexts form a growing proportion of the school population, there is little empirical evidence of what is actually occurring in their everyday lives. The review reveals the importance of researching from the perspectives of the young people themselves. Conclusions: Evidence provided in the paper shows that many young people whose parents separate or divorce are affected socially, emotionally and educationally. Such evidence points to the need for research into the everyday experiences of the young people at school, in order to identify, from their perspective, how schools can better cater for these young people and their families.

Evaluative decision-making for high-quality professional development: Cultivating an evaluative stance

Unprecedented policy attention to early childhood education internationally has highlighted the crucial need for a skilled early years workforce. Consequently, professional development of early years educators has become a global policy imperative. At the same time, many maintain that professional development research has reached an impasse. In this paper, we offer a new approach to addressing this impasse. In contrast to calls for a redesign of comparative studies of professional development programmes, or for the refinement of researcher-constructed professional development evaluation frameworks, we argue the need to cultivate what we refer to as an ‘evaluative stance’ amongst all involved in making decisions about professional development in the early years – from senior bureaucrats with responsibilities for funding professional development programmes to individual educators with choices about which professional development opportunities to take up. Drawing on three bodies of literature – evaluation capacity-building, personal epistemology and co-production – that, for the most part, have been overlooked with respect to early years professional learning, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to explain why cultivating an evaluative stance in professional development decision-making has rich possibilities for systemic, sustainable and transformative change in early years education.

Locking the unlockable: Children’s invocation of pretence to define and manage place

Young children use pretence in their interactions with their peers. This article focuses on their use of pretence to establish, define and formulate places within their peer interaction. A talk-in-interaction approach is used to analyse video-recorded and transcribed interactions of children aged 4—6 years in the block area of an early childhood classroom in Australia. The complex and collaborative interactive work of the children produced shared understandings of pretence, which they used as a device to manage their use of classroom physical and social spaces.

How Does Homework "Work" for Young Children? Children's Accounts of Homework in Their Everyday Lives.

Homework is an increasing yet under-researched part of young children’s everyday lives. Framed by the international agendas of starting strong and school accountability, homework in the lives of young children has been either overlooked or considered from the perspective of adults rather than from the perspective of children themselves. This paper redresses this situation by reporting on an Australian study of 120 young children, aged four to eight years, where homework emerges as a key part of their everyday lives. Children’s own accounts of their everyday decision-making, using audio-taped conversations and concurrent paper-based timeline activities, show homework as accomplishing the institutional purposes of the school, while affording the children opportunities to demonstrate their competence in operating in an adult-generated education regime.