Research "After the Child": Responses to Misconceptions About Posthuman and New Materialist Research With Children

• In Event: 64.089 - Sheraton Roundtable 12 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 64.089-8 - Disrupting Narratives of Children: Embodiment, Materiality, and the "Whole" Child

Abstract

This paper has three objectives: 1) to outline how a humanist notion of the child has created significant inequities in the lives of children, especially those considered “in need of support”, thus leaving behind children who do not conform to a Western and middle class ideal of childhood; 2) to discuss how childhood scholars and education researchers are re-thinking the notion of the “child” through posthuman and new materialist perspectives, and 3) to consider the opportunities and challenges of these perspectives and how they inform research about children’s lives. In doing so, we identify and respond to three misconceptions in regards to what it might means to de-center the child in educational research based on interviews with childhood scholars.

Authors

• Claudia Diaz-Diaz, The University of British Columbia

• Paulina Semenec, The University of British Columbia