Children Framing Childhoods: A Counterarchive of Learning, Being, and Doing

• In Event: Democratizing Qualitative Methods: Insights From Critical Childhood Studies

Abstract

Purpose: This presentation addresses a key implication of the critical studies of childhood approach by problematizing the dominant image of “the child of school” (Popkewitz 1989) -- as objects rather than subjects to be targeted, labeled, blamed, explained, worried about, remediated, and fixed. Children’s goodness, normalcy and value get produced through the force of educational standards, measures and practices as if they were given not made, even when we know these mis-identifications and mis-recognitions are shaped by culture, race, class, gender and power (McDermott, Raney & Seyer-Ochi, 2009; McDermott, Goldman & Varenne, 2006). The presentation will highlight an alternative way of seeing the “child of school.”

Data and Analysis: The presentation draws upon a longitudinal visual ethnography following a group of thirty-six children growing up in urban, poor and working-class communities in the northeastern U.S. city of Worcester, MA. The children were given cameras to portray their everyday family, school and community lives at ages 10, 12, 16 and 18. At each point in time, they were interviewed individually and in small groups about their pictures, what they were meant to convey, why they took them, what pictures they wished they had taken but couldn’t, and finally which pictures they wanted to make public that would best represent who they are and “what matters most” in their lives. The project generated a visual “counter archive” (Tonkiss 1998; Phillips 2013) that includes the following: over 2,000 photographs; sixty-five hours of audio and videotaped individual and group interviews; voicethreads (online annotated visual narratives made by participants at age 16 and 18); and youth-made videos of everyday life.

The project is theoretically rooted in ideas about how images operate and owes to Foucault’s interlocking theories of discourse, knowledge, and power. Images operate within and produce truth regimes —they prescribe and abide by certain rules regarding, in this case, how children, families, and schooling can be talked about or represented. The materials are analyzed through a combination of narrative and inter-textual discourse I refer to as “collaborative seeing” (Author, 2010; Lico & author, 2012; Author, Restler & Fontaine, 2012; Author, 2013).

Findings and Significance: Two interwoven themes are identified through this methodology and presented in the form of a video montage. First is a reconceptualization of home and school not as distinct domains, but as enmeshed, complex, and, at times, competing care worlds. Second is a reformulation of the “productive” or “performing” child of the twenty-first century. A key finding of the project is that the young people acknowledge the demands upon them and their desires to be a “caring” and “cared for” child, a dimension of self and human-ness that has been silenced in contemporary debate about educational standards and reform. They express a care consciousness that is neglected, if not denied by the organization of schooling and its over-emphasis on individualization, competition and standardization. This alternative way of seeing the “child of school” undermines deficit discourse and engages public debate about the purpose of schooling in a diverse democracy.

Author

• Wendy L. Luttrell, Graduate Center City University of New York