When Children's Meanings Meet Adult Frameworks: A Narrative Review of Literature on Epistemological Misalignments

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Children’s Perspectives

Abstract

This narrative review examines epistemological tensions between young children's meaning-making and adult interpretative frameworks around topics that become contested sites of knowledge and power. Drawing on critical childhood studies, we argue that interactions between young children and adults can reveal competing ways of knowing. Through analysis of early childhood literature, we identify three dimensions of these contestations: (1) adults' interpretive frameworks can determine which topics are regulated; (2) children's purposes and meaning-making practices operate within different epistemological registers, often resisting adult frameworks; and (3) contextual variations shape and reshape how adult-child interactions play out. These dimensions highlight ongoing negotiations over whose knowledge counts, demonstrating children's capacity for resistance and sophisticated meaning-making that challenges adult attempts at regulating discourses.

Authors

• Tran Templeton, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Sidney Hacker, Teachers College, Columbia University