Revisioning Fairness as Social Justice: Examining Civic Action in Context

• In Event: 34.071 - Rethinking Civic Action as Embodied and Child-Driven in Early Childhood Settings

Abstract

The majority of extant research on how young children engage in “doing” fairness and helping behaviors diminishes these behaviors in non-nuanced, uncomplicated ways; however, this research has largely been conducted in highly controlled experiments in laboratory settings (Grocke, Rossano, & Tomasello, 2015; Warneken, 2013; Wittig, Jensen, & Tomasello, 2013). This prevents researchers from observing the ways children “do” fairness in “real life,” in everyday spaces. This paper examines the various capabilities that children demonstrate when encountering something unfair in their classrooms and how these capability demonstrations are deepened or constrained by adults.

We center global south perspectives that problematize Eurocentric ways of knowing (i.e., global north perspectives) and focus instead on the “lived ways of knowing and being of minoritized people” (Perez & Saavedra, 2017, p.2) and the brilliance of children of color; we emphasize their situated and embodied knowledge while placing their stories at the center.

The data for this paper comes from a larger Blinded Study project, an international comparative ethnographic study in preschools of Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. In this paper, we focus on the three classrooms in Head Start preschools within the U.S. This paper draws on ethnographic data (field notes, pictures, and film) from three classrooms (two general education, one inclusion) at two Head Start centers, located in two neighboring large southwestern cities.  Both centers serve Latinx immigrant and African American children. Across the two sites, we spent over 460 hours and 101 days in the classrooms, compiling examples into a comprehensive list of civic actions we saw young children doing. We documented how children helped one another, participated in shared endeavors, approached social conflict, acted collectively to solve shared problems, addressed injustice and acted in the interest of the group, rather than just themselves - all elements of civic action, i.e. acting on behalf of the community.  Data analysis began with open coding of field notes, video documentation, and photographs to generate a set of themes around civic action. Through team coding meetings, we compared and contrasted themes and agreed on the core themes of civic action present in classrooms at the Head Start Centers.

Our findings indicate that when children encountered issues of fairness at school and teachers solved the issues, the solutions often aligned with the uncomplicated notions of fairness that previous research has indicated (e.g. taking turns, 50/50 resource allocation, etc.). However, when children solved these issues among themselves, they often advocated for solutions that were contextualized and aligned more with a social justice perspective (e.g. considering who the other children are and their needs, advocating for themselves and others, etc.).  These findings are significant because they problematize previous research about children's capabilities to resolve issues in complex, nuanced ways. It also emphasizes children’s embodied knowledge and actions (Perez & Saavedra, 2017), which helps us acknowledge their abilities of advocating for social justice rather than traditional "fairness", and assisting each other in ways that align more with civic action.

Authors

• Katherina Ann Payne, The University of Texas at Austin

• Sunmin Lee, Texas State University

• David Barry, Boston Public Schools