Rita Chawla-Duggan

Breaking out, breaking through: accessing knowledge in a non‐western overseas educational setting—methodological issues for an outsider

This paper is concerned with processes of international enquiry. It focuses upon the relationship between a research problem and access to conduct research in a country. It uses data from an ethnographic study of primary education in a Northern Indian District. Conceptually drawing upon the insider‐outsider debate within the sociology of knowledge, the paper raises issues about the relationship between the research problem, accessing knowledge and being an outsider to a research setting. It considers problems facing a particular form of outsider—a foreigner. The paper maintains that when researchers who are outsiders embark on designing research in non‐western international educational settings, then questions considering the relationship between the research problem, access strategies and the culture of the research setting are vital. Grappling with such questions allows for the development and promotion of new forms of partnership, alongside a deeper understanding of culture and context, when developing comparative and international research policy agendas.

Researcher-child relations in Indian educational settings

The article discusses how the use of ethnographic approaches to the study of researcher–child relations highlights the importance of structures that shape and define childrens actions. The discussion is illustrated by using case study material from research with pre-school and pre-adolescent children in Indian educational settings. The article argues that whilst an ethnographic approach to understanding children can shed light upon how childhood as a structural classification of society, and in particular Indian society, is governed by its relationship with the adult world; attempts to provide explanations of childhood as a structural feature, necessitate an account of the age of children as a structural condition. Childrens relationships with the adult world are quite different at different ages. This has implications for the educational ethnographer when attempting to gather data that provide understandings of childrens social actions.

Working with practitioners’ perspectives: supporting father involvement in family services in England

The paper draws on a study aiming to work with practitioners’ perspectives to support involvement through family services. Data were collected from a cluster sample of practitioners conducting father groups in south-west England. The paper focuses upon working with their perspectives. Two issues in their perspectives were associated with ‘masculinity’ and ‘blocks’ preventing father involvement. Using an interventionist-based method known as the ‘change laboratory’, conducted through a series of development work research (DWR) workshops, practitioners reflected on contradictions in their practice. Implications from the study suggest that, first, if practitioners identify contradictions with which they work, they can explore possibilities for developing their work. Second, being an involved father may be played out differently in terms of identity, according to social and cultural contexts. By implication, practitioners can help fathers to express themselves in several identities and support them in their understanding, through being part of a group.

Exploring the role of father development workers in supporting early years learning

This qualitative study presents findings from initial exploratory work that examined how father development workers (FDWs) supported fathers to become involved in their childrens learning, within the context of father groups. The study found that there were two main purposes behind the father groups and the subsequent role of FDWs in supporting father involvement. First, its purpose was to raise confidence and responsibility amongst fathers; and second, it was to improve and influence childrens learning. As part of raising confidence and responsibility, FDWs supported fathers to ‘be themselves’, to interact with the group, to develop a father–child relationship and to make decisions. FDWs used both indirect and direct learning approaches with fathers in order to improve and influence childrens learning. The study calls for further research into the area of father groups and supporting father involvement in childrens learning, as this is an important area that is currently under‐researched in the UK.

Father involvement in young children’s care and education: exploring boundaries and starting conversations

This paper analyses the impact of a UK local authority initiative – Fathers’ Friday – aiming to involve fathers in their children’s education, which took place in 20 early years’ and primary school settings. Whilst the study involved a range of methods, in this paper interview data associated with practitioners’ perspectives of the initiative are used. Theoretically, Bernstein’s concept of boundary and related notions of classification and framing provide a framework for exploring fathers’ positioning, and Bernstein’s concept of ‘voice’ helps to explain how relations are repositioned, as fathers engage with settings through their participation in the initiative. The authors’ contention is that whilst an existing structure of social relations positions how settings and individuals can relate to one another, experiencing the Fathers’ Friday initiative under changed conditions produces a weakened boundary space for fathers, from which ‘conversations can start’. Children themselves form part of this process of redrawing weakened boundaries.

Reflexivity and visual technology in research: young children’s perspectives of paternal engagement in the home environment

Although existing notions of reflexivity address the positionality of researchers, they rarely consider the processes through which methods and methodologies can come about. This study builds children’s reflexivity into the research design. Drawing on footage from a pilot visual ethnography of paternal engagement in home environments, we show first, that at one level, building children’s reflexivity into data collection and analysis, allows us to look at the relationship between the child, technology and the subject of their images; thereby establishing a position from which their perspective is produced. We found that their age and the particular visual technology used, shaped how the children positioned themselves and in turn, the kind of representations we gathered. As this was a collaborative study with a film maker and also involving discussions of film findings with teachers; a more general level reflexive analysis allowed us generate different viewpoints from which their perspectives were produced.

Pedagogy and quality in Indian slum school settings: A Bernsteinian analysis of visual representations in the Integrated Child Development Service:

This paper focuses upon the micro level of the pre-school classroom, taking the example of the Indian Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS), and the discourse of ‘child-centred’ pedagogy that is often associated with quality pre-schooling. Through an analysis of visual data, semi-structured and film elicitation interviews drawn from a pilot study of six ICDS settings (anganwadis) within two Mumbai slums, Bernstein’s ideas about social relations of pedagogy are used to explore modalities of pedagogic practice. The paper argues that the forms of pedagogy that were observed are not yet reconciled with current notions of quality pedagogy that underpin the pre-school education component of the ICDS, but that there is scope for a weakened framing that may allow for a more contextualised version of child-centred pedagogic discourse.