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This book explores how poststructural theory can make an important contribution to the growing body of work on playwork as an academic field of practice and research. Drawing on theoretical concepts used by sociologists and philosophers, such as the sociological imagination (Mills); hauntings and the fictive (Derrida) and technologies of power and the self (Foucault), the text considers how these devices may be methodologically productive for playwork research. It reframes research into children and childhood as a process in which research and practice are connected but diverse skills. The book raises questions around power and voice, and highlights the complexity of research which involves human participants and their roles as researcher and/or researched. Chapters relate concepts from post-structural, feminist research and frame them within the context of playwork practice through the use of vignettes constructed from stories told by playwork practitioners and the children with whom they work. A valuable addition to an emerging academic field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in the fields of playwork research, education and youth studies, early childhood students, and the sociology of education.
Recognizing the potential research with and about young people can have in decision making on multiple levels of policy and service provision, this book provides a key foundation for considering the influence of urban environments on young people, and vice versa.
WINNER: 2004 AESA Critics' Choice Award "With wonderful clarity Maggie MacLure shows how deconstructionism opens new avenues of critical inquiry and understanding for educational researchers. In exposing the hidden, ideological side of terms like clarity, certainty, mastery, and relevance she allows us to see schooling and educational policy in new ways. In so doing she allows us to imagine classrooms as liberating, pedagogical places, as places where new forms of desire, knowledge, and learning take place" Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This book is both practical and provocative. It demonstrates the insights and the challenges of a discourse-based orientation to educational and social research. Drawing on a variety of educational and social science 'texts' - including press articles, life history interviews, parent-teacher consultations, policy debates and ethnographies - the author shows how knowledge, power, identities and realities are constructed and problematised in discourse. The book also deals with research itself as discursive practice, examining the texts that qualitative researchers produce and consume: reports, monographs, journal articles. Practical examples are included for researchers and graduate students wishing to 'interrogate' their own data from a discourse perspective. The author develops a critical awareness of the researcher's role as writer/reader of texts. The book makes the case for 'discursive literacy' in research. While its primary allegiances are to poststructuralism and deconstruction, it draws from a wide range of disciplines, including interaction sociology, feminist ethnography, literary theory, critical discourse analysis and art history. What holds the book together is the persistent question: how to do educational research and social research within a 'crisis of representation' that has unsettled the relationship between words and worlds?
Children’s play throughout history has been free, spontaneous, and intertwined with work, set in the playgrounds of the fields, streams, and barnyards. Children in cities enjoyed similar forms of play but their playgrounds were the vacant lands and parks. Today, children have become increasingly inactive, abandoning traditional outdoor play for sedentary, indoor cyber play and poor diets. The consequences of play deprivation, the elimination and diminution of recess, and the abandonment of outdoor play are fundamental issues in a growing crisis that threatens the health, development, and welfare of children. This valuable book traces the history of children’s play and play environments from their roots in ancient Greece and Rome to the present time in the high stakes testing environment. Through this exploration, scholar Dr. Joe Frost shows how this history informs where we are today and why we need to re-establish play as a priority. Ultimately, the author proposes active solutions to play deprivation. This book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of early childhood education and child development.
Through compelling examples, Brian Edmiston presents the case for why and how adults should play with young children to create with them a 'workshop for life'. In a chapter on 'mythic play' Edmiston confronts adult discomfort over children's play with pretend weapons, as he encourages adults both to support children's desires to experience in imagination the limits of life and death, and to travel with children on their transformational journeys into unknown territory. This book provides researchers and students with a sound theoretical framework for re-conceptualising significant aspects of pretend play in early childhood. Its many practical illustrations make this a compelling and provocative read for any student taking courses in Early Childhood Studies.
This international handbook gives a comprehensive overview of findings from longstanding and contemporary research, theory, and practices in early childhood education in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The first volume of the handbook addresses theory, methodology, and the research activities and research needs of particular regions. The second volume examines in detail innovations and longstanding programs, curriculum and assessment, and conceptions and research into child, family and communities. The two volumes of this handbook address the current theory, methodologies and research needs of specific countries and provide insight into existing global similarities in early childhood practices. By paying special attention to what is happening in the larger world contexts, the volumes provide a representative overview of early childhood education practices and research, and redress the current North-South imbalance of published work on the subject.
The growing regional and international concerns about the educational performance of males reflect a broader social anxiety about the plight of men in general and black men in particular. This concern has culminated in the marginalized male thesis, which has gained considerable academic attention and popular support in the media. In addressing the issue of male underachievement, the book challenges the popularly held assumption that boys fail because girls achieve. Rather than blaming Caribbean females for male underachievement, the book locates male educational performance in the historical context of Caribbean gender relationships, and structural constraints on the development of Caribbean gender identities. UNICEF and the Institute of Social and Economic Research funded the research on gender and Caribbean high school achievement upon which this book is based. Odette Parry and her colleagues conducted extensive in-depth interviews and participant observation research at schools in Jamaica, Barbados, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. After providing the research background and acknowledging the effect of the interviewers' cultural differences, Parry discusses key findings in t
Building on the success of the first volume of Researching Play from a Playwork Perspective, this book further develops the crucial research of playwork as an emerging and unique discipline. The first volume explored how an understanding of playwork theory and practice can inform research into children’s play. From the seven contributors, four common themes to researching play from a playwork perspective were identified: rights-based; process, critical reflection and playfulness. This second volume aims to explore these four factors from two angles. The first considers how four more playworkers have researched play in four different contexts: prison, gender and toys, in Dutch play provision, and in the area of autism. In the second part of the book, the four pillars of playwork research are explored by academics from other disciplines with an interest in playwork research. This will be of great interest to researchers and upper-level students in the fields of playwork, childcare, early years, education, psychology and children’s rights. It will also appeal to practitioners in a wide variety of professional contexts, including childcare and therapy.
Evolutionary Playwork and Reflective Analytic Practice will enable playwork students, practitioners and researchers to reassess the impact and purpose of playwork on children.
"Even as they see their wages go down and their buying power decrease, many parents are still putting their kids' material desires first. These parents struggle with how to handle children's consumer wants, which continue unabated despite the economic downturn. And, indeed, parents and other adults continue to spend billions of dollars on children every year. Why do children seem to desire so much, so often, so soon, and why do parents capitulate so readily? To determine what forces lie behind the onslaught of Nintendo Wiis and Bratz dolls, Allison J. Pugh spent three years observing and interviewing children and their families. In Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture, Pugh teases out the complex factors that contribute to how we buy, from lunchroom conversations about Game Boys to the stark inequalities facing American children. Pugh finds that children's desires stem less from striving for status or falling victim to advertising than from their yearning to join the conversation at school or in the neighborhood. Most parents respond to children's need to belong by buying the particular goods and experiences that act as passports in children's social worlds, because they sympathize with their children's fear of being different from their peers. Even under financial constraints, families prioritize children "feeling normal". Pugh masterfully illuminates the surprising similarities in the fears and hopes of parents and children from vastly different social contexts, showing that while corporate marketing and materialism play a part in the commodification of childhood, at the heart of the matter is the desire to belong."--pub. desc.