Children's Conceptions of Time for Literacy Learning

• In Event: Theorizing Time and Space in Empirical Research: Potentials and Possibilities

Abstract

Purposes
In schools, time is marked in the physical, material and practice dimensions of schooling. Time is also a part of how schools represent children and their learning. Conceptions such as development over time or age-based expectations are descriptions of children’s learning, and yet in many ways they ignore the experiences and understandings of children all together. In this paper, I report on research that actively sought to gain insights into children’s perspectives on learning literacy over time. The paper demonstrates the complexity of children’s understandings of time and how these provide insights into their understandings of school and learning.

Theoretical Framework
Everything that we do is “embedded and extended in time” (Henwood & Shirani, 2012, p.1). And yet time is not simple, but rather multidimensional and complex. It is relative, in that it is connected to experiences, and also to the human, material and spatial dimensions of learning relations. Lemke (2000) reminds us that language can invoke certain ‘timescales’, and that these can relate to now and also to long term processes and experiences over time. In this paper I draw these ideas together to consider time as a multidimensional construct, constructed through the language we use.

Methods
Data reported was collected in a study where our interest was on learning to write in the early years of school. Drawing on a sociomaterial frame, we asked who, what, where, why, with what and with whom children were learning to write. One dimension was to survey children, and in this paper I am particularly interested in their responses to being questioned about when they learned to write.

Data Sources
The children’s survey was administered by researchers who recorded children’s responses into the online survey. The discussion was audio recorded to enable further detail to be entered later. The data set analyzed was collected at one school, with 152 children, aged 4 to 8, responding. The children were asked ‘when do you write?’ and responded with an open response.

Findings
Keeping to the fore that time can manifest in a diverse range of ways (Compton Lilly, 2012) and that it is contextual, the analysis provides insights into the temporal constructs of children when asked about their learning. As examples, the children referenced ongoing timescales (Compton Lilly, 2011) (e.g. school activities, times of the day and other day-to-day activities). However the children also referenced emotions and made references to relationships with materials, people spaces and literacy practices.

Scholarly Significance
Children’s conceptions of time are not often foregrounded in either the practice or research of education, and yet these can provide insights into the everyday experience of schooling and learning. This paper provides an example of methods that open spaces for researchers to hear the perspectives of young children. It also demonstrates the multidimensional temporal

Author

• Annette Woods, Queensland University of Technology
  Presenting Author