Behaving Badly: Critiquing the Discourses of "Children" and Their "Mis"Behaviors

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Emotion and Discipline Within "Civil" State Discourse

Abstract

Discourses of children as deficient or deviant are common within the education system and shape how educators interact with and respond to children. To illustrate this, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of a policy document that directs schools in the development of their Codes of Conduct. Drawing on poststructural theory, we demonstrate the ways in which the discourses within policy construct and reify particular identities of the child and of misbehaviour and how these discourse influence conceptions of behaviour “management”. From our analysis, we argue for a reconceptualization of the identity of the child as a contextualized and socially embedded being and articulate an opening for ethical engagements with children.

Authors

• Melanie D. Janzen, University of Manitoba

• Karen D. Schwartz, University of Manitoba