Seminar - Young children's civic agency and capabilities
Event Details
- Date:
- Wednesday, 25 November 2015
- Time:
- 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
- Room:
- S402
- UQ Location:
- Social Sciences Building (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://www.issr.uq.edu.au
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Ms Naomi White
- Phone:
- 3365 6227
- Email:
- secretary@education.uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Humanities and Social Sciences
Event Description
- Full Description:
- Young children are typically understood as existing in a self-indulgent world of play, with little to no understanding of how to negotiate co-existence with others, that is, citizenship. Civic education tends to be designed for upper primary school aged children and is largely focused on the maintenance of social and political institutions and the social integration of children and young people into the current political system. If civic learning and action is reconceptualised as a lifelong continuum, how might it be understood for young children in early childhood education?
The tri-nation comparative study titled Civic Action and Learning with Young Children: Comparing Approaches in New Zealand, Australia and the United States (funded by the US Spencer Foundation) seeks to identify the types of civic action understandings children bring with them to preschool from their homes and communities.
Through ethnography. The study explores how young children from an Aboriginal Australian child care centre, a Maori and Pacific Island community kindergarten (New Zealand), and a Latino Immigrant kindergarten (the United States) use their own resources and understanding to negotiate coexistence with others. To propose possibilities for young children’s civic agency and capabilities, Jenn Keys Adair (The University of Texas at Austin) will explain potential for understanding young children’s agency drawing on economic theories of human development, agency and capability. Then Louise Phillips and Kerryn Moroney (School of Education, UQ) will share their process of researching with the community of an Aboriginal child care centre and initial findings of children’s civic agency and capabilities for these Aboriginal children. Jenny Ritchie from Victoria University, Wellington, will follow with evidence of Māori and Pacific Islands’ children’s civic agency and capabilities. Dialogue will be encouraged in response to our early findings.
Dr Louise Phillips (School of Education, UQ) is a lecturer in early years’ education and researches children’s citizenship in education and public spaces.
Kerryn Moroney (School of Education, UQ) is a proud Luritja woman and early childhood consultant.
Dr Jennifer Keys Adair (The University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor of curriculum & instruction who uses comparative, video-cued ethnography to better understand the cultural nature of children's agency.
Dr Jenny Ritchie (Victoria University, Wellington) has a background in early childhood care and education and teacher education, her research focusses on social, cultural and environmental justice.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
-
- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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