Sonic Materialities for 21st-Century Childhoods

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Early Childhood, K-12 Education, and Postfoundational Thought (Table 4)

Abstract

While the arts can facilitate children’s ability to imagine and experience the world from multiple perspectives, much of their potential is constrained by the humanist frameworks that dominate arts education. This paper brings together three researchers to map out the potentialities of sound and its posthuman resonances in our artistic work with children. Working with three inquiries generated across settler-colonial contexts - Australia, Canada, and the United States - we think with stories from practice, tracing their intersections through soundscapes and sound sculptures as vibrant presences in pedagogical inquiry. Utilizing both qualitative and post-qualitative research methods, we argue that sound and its unique properties open up new possibilities for collectively thinking and learning with the world in 21st-century childhoods.

Authors

• Angela Molloy Murphy, University of Melbourne

• Cory Jobb, Thompson Rivers University

• Louisa Penfold, Harvard University