Agency as assemblage: Using childhood artefacts and memories to examine children’s relations with schooling
Abstract views: 2532
/ 
PDF downloads: 536
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37291/2717638X.202232170Keywords:
Childhood, Agency, Schooling, Memories, ArtefactsAbstract
In this article, we explore how childhood artefacts and memories might help us think retrospectively about children’s agency and its relationship to schooling and teaching. Across four university sites in Canada and the United States, we asked undergraduate students in teacher education and childhood studies programs to choose an artefact or object that encapsulates contemporary conceptions of childhood and to discuss them in a focus group setting at each site. Building on three participants’ descriptions of how they remembered and reflected upon school-oriented objects – a progress report, a notebook, and a pencil sharpener – we explore how participants used their artefacts in ways that allow us to theorize children’s agencies as assemblages, where agency is relational and contingent on multiple social and cultural factors. Drawing on our participants’ interpretations, we consider how a reconceptualized concept of agency may expand our understanding of the possibilities of children’s agencies in school and raise new questions about the meaning of childhood within contexts of teacher education and childhood studies.
References
Ahmed, S. (2019). What’s the use? On the uses of use. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478007210
Archer, L. (2008). The new neoliberal subjects? Young/er academics’ constructions of professional identity. Journal of Education Policy, 23(3), 265–285. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930701754047
Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, standardized testing as a racial project of neoliberal multiculturalism. Educational Policy, 30(1), 39–62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904815614916
Ball, S.J., Maguire, M.M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203153185
Bamberg, M. (2006). Biographic-narrative research, quo vadis? A critical review of ‘big stories’ from the perspective of ‘small stories.’ In K. Milnes, C. Horrocks, N. Kelly, B. Roberts, & D. Robinson (Eds.), Narrative, memory and knowledge: Representations, aesthetics and contexts, 63-80. University of Huddersfield Press.
Bell, J. (1995). Understanding adultism: A major obstacle to developing positive youth-adult relationships. YouthBuild USA. http://actioncivics.scoe.net/pdf/Understanding_Adultism.pdf
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391623
Betebenner, D.W., & Wenning, R.J. (2021). Understanding pandemic learning loss and learning recovery: The role of student growth & satewide testing. National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED611296.pdf
Butler J., Gambetti, Z. & Sabsay, L. (2016). Vulnerability in Resistance. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373490
Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519-531. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893
Canosa, A., & Graham, A. (2020). Tracing the contribution of childhood studies: Maintaining momentum while navigating tensions. Childhood, 27(1), 25-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219886619
Chang-Kredl, S., Garlen, J., Sonu, D., & Farley, L. (2021). Models of possible selves: Prospective teachers’ reflections on their childhood memories of parents. Teaching Education, Online first. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2021.1948989
Darling-Hammond, L., & Hyler, M. (2020). Preparing educators for the time of COVID . . . and beyond. European Journal of Teacher Education. 43(4), 457-465. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1816961
Davies, B. (2006). Subjectification: The relevance of Butler’s analysis for education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 425-438. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690600802907
Davies, B., & Gannon, S. (Eds). (2006). Doing collective biography. Open University Press.
de Castro, L. R. (2020). Why global? Children and childhood from a decolonial perspective. Childhood, 27(1), 48–62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219885379
De Lissovoy, N. (2012). Education and violation: Conceptualizing power, domination, and agency in the hidden curriculum. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(4), 463-484. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.618831
Dejong, K., & Love, B. J. (2015). Youth oppression as a technology of colonialism: Conceptual frameworks and possibilities for social justice education praxis. Equity & Excellence in Education, 48(3), 489-508. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2015.1057086
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press.
Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., & Viruleg, E. (2020). Covid-19 and learning loss - disparities grow and students need help. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-learning-loss-disparities-grow-and-students-need-help
Dovey, K., & Fisher, K. (2014). Designing for adaptation: the school as socio-spatial assemblage. Journal of Architecture (London, England), 19(1), 43–63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2014.882376
Economist Leader. (2020). The risks of keeping schools closed far outweigh the benefits. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-keeping-schools-closed-faroutweigh-the-benefits
Farley, L., Garlen, J., Chang-Kredl, S., & Sonu, D. (2022). The critical work of memory and the nostalgic return of innocence: How emergent teachers represent childhood. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Online first. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2022.2063930
Farley, L., Sonu, D., Garlen, J., & Chang-Kredl, S. (2020). Childhood memories of playful antics and punishable acts: Risking an imperfect future of teaching and learning. The New Educator, 16(2), 106-121. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2020.1731036
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. Editions Gallimard. (Original work published 1966).
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1975).
Gallagher, M. (2019). Rethinking children’s agency: Power, assemblages, freedom and materiality. Global Studies of Childhood, 9(3), 188–199. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610619860993
Gallo, S. (2017). The care of the self and biopolitics: Resistance and practices of freedom. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(7), 691–701. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1204735
Gannon, S. (2015). Collective biography and memory work: girls reading fiction. English in Australia, 50(3), 61. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A453916729/AONE?u=anon~fd1f05f5&sid=googleScholar&xid=fc08fce2
Garlen, J. (2021). The end of innocence: Childhood and schooling for a post-pandemic world. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 15(2), 21-39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22329/jtl.v15i2.6724
Garlen, J., Chang-Kredl, S., Farley, L., & Sonu, D. (2021). Childhood innocence and experience: Memory, discourse, and practice. Children & Society, 35 (5), 648–662. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12428
Goldman, R.K., & Gilbert, D.C. (1992). Prediction of risk in Kindergarten children. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 75(3), 1033-1034. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1992.75.3f.1033
Goodenough, F. L. (1926). The measurement of intelligence by drawing. World Books.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare and G. Nowell, Trans). International Publishers.
Grosz, E. (2010). Feminism, materialism, and freedom. In D. Coole, & S. Frost (Eds.), New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics (pp. 137–157). Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw2wk.9
Guo, K., & Dalli, C. (2016). Belonging as a force of agency: An exploration of immigrant children’s everyday life in early childhood settings. Global Studies of Childhood, 6(3), 254–267. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610616665036
Harris, D. B. (1963). Children's drawings as measures of intellectual maturity. A revision and extension of the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test. Harcourt, Brace, and World.
Horgan, D., Forde, C., Martin, S., & Parkes, A. (2017). Children’s participation: Moving from the performative to the social. Children’s Geographies, 15(3), 274–288. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2016.1219022
Horton, J., Kraftl, P., & Tucker, F. (2008). The challenges of ‘Children's Geographies’: a reaffirmation. Children's Geographies, 6(4), 335-348. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280802338049
Huijsmans, R. (2011). Child migration and questions of agency. Development and Change, 42(5), 1307–1321. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01729.x
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge.
Irizarry, J. G., & Welton, A. D. (2014). Latina/o youth as educational researchers: Implications for teaching and learning in urban schools. In H. R. Milner, & K. Lomotey (Eds.), Handbook of urban education (pp. 239–255). Routledge.
James, A. & Prout, A. (1990). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: New directions in the sociological study of childhood (2nd ed.). Falmer Press.
James, A., Jenks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing childhood. Polity Press.
James, J., & James, A. (2012). Key concepts in childhood studies. Sage Publications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526435613
Jones, L., MacLure, M., Holmes, R., & MacRae, C. (2012). Children and objects: Affection and infection. Early Years: An International Research Journal, 32(1), 49-60. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2011.593029
Jones, O. (2008). ‘True geography [ ] quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe’: Approaching the otherness of childhood. Children’s Geographies, 6(2), 195–212. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280801963193
Kuhfield, M., Soland, J., Tarasawa, B., Johnson, A., Ruzek, E., & Liu, J. (2020). Projecting the potential impact of COVID-19 school closures on academic achievement. Educational Researcher, 49(8), 549–565. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20965918
LeBuffe, P.A., Shapiro, V.B., & Naglieri, J.A. (2009). The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). Kaplan Press.
Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic. American Psychologist, 56(4), 227–238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.227
McKinney de Royston, M., & Vossoughi, S. (2020). Fixating on pandemic “learning loss” undermines the need to transform education. https://truthout.org/articles/fixating-on-pandemic-learning-loss-undermines-the-need-to-transform-education/
McShane, M. (2021). Prioritizing learning time post pandemic. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2021/07/22/prioritizing-learning-time-post-pandemic/?sh=4ca9e6b41412
Millei, Z. Silova, I., & Gannon S. (2019). Thinking through memories of childhood in (post)socialist spaces: Ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Children's Geographies, 20(3), 324-337. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1648759
Mitchell, K. (2021). Leading and sustaining a strong culture for post-pandemic schools. AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice, 18(1), 4-7.
Nail, T. (2017). What is assemblage? SubStance, 46(1), 21-37. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sub.2017.0001
Percy-Smith, B. (2010). Councils, consultation and community: Rethinking the spaces for children and young people’s participation. Children’s Geographies, 8(2), 107-122. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733281003691368
Percy-Smith, B. (2015). Negotiating active citizenship: Young people’s participation in everyday spaces. Politics, Citizenship and Rights, 26(1), 1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-94-1_26-1
Phelan, A.M., & Hansen, D.R. (2021). Toward a “thoughtful lightness”: Education in viral times. Prospects (Paris), 51(1-3), 15–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09536-4
Prout, A. (2011). Taking a step away from modernity: Reconsidering the new sociology of childhood. Global Studies of Childhood, 1(1), 4-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.4
Quijada Cerecer, D. A., Cahill, C., & Bradley, M. (2013). Toward a critical youth policy praxis: Critical youth studies and participatory action research. Theory into Practice, 52(3), 216–233. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2013.804316
Raby, R. (2014). Children's participation as neo-liberal governance?. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1), 77-89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2012.739468
Roche, J. (1999). Children: Rights, participation and citizenship. Childhood, 6(4), 475–493. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568299006004006
Salvio, P.M., & Boldt, G. (2010). Who let the dogs out?: Unleashing an uncanny sense of audience in writing workshop. In M. O’Loughlin, & R.T. Johnson (Eds.), Imagining children otherwise: Theoretical and critical perspectives on childhood subjectivity (pp. 179-205). Peter Lang.
Silin, J. (2006). Reading, writing, and the wrath of my father. In G.M. Boldt, & P.M. Salvio (Eds.), Love’s return: Psychoanalytic essays on Childhood, Teaching, and Learning (pp. 227-241). Routledge.
Smith, A. (2007). Children and young people’s participation rights in education. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15(1), 147-164. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/092755607X181739
Sonu, D., & Benson, J. (2016). The quasi-human child: How normative conceptions of childhood enabled neoliberal school reform in the United States. Curriculum Inquiry, 46(3), 230-247. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2016.1168259
Sonu, D., Farley, L, Chang-Kredl, S. & Garlen, J. (2022). Sick at school: Teachers’ memories and the affective challenges that bodies present to constructions of childhood innocence, normalcy, and ignorance. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 44(2), 147-165. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2022.2031693
Sonu, D., Farley, L, Chang-Kredl, S., & Garlen, J. (2020). The dreamwork of childhood memory: The futures teachers make from the schooling past. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 35(4), 15-27.
Stenberg, S. (2015). Repurposing composition: Feminist interventions for a neoliberal age. University of Colorado Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7330/9781607323884
Vaughn, M. (2021). Student agency in the classroom: Honoring student voice in the curriculum. Teachers College Press.
Whitley, J., Beauchamp, M.H., & Brown, C. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the learning and achievement of vulnerable Canadian children and youth. Facets (Ottawa), 6, 1693–1713. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0096
World Bank. (2021). Urgent, effective action required to quell the impact of COVID-19 on education worldwide. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2021/01/22/urgent-effectiveaction-required-to-quell-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-education-worldwide
Ylitapio-Mäntylä, O. (2013). Reflecting caring and power in early childhood education: Recalling memories of educational practices. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 57(3), 263-276. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2011.637230
Zhao, Y. (2021). Build back better: Avoid the learning loss trap. Prospects. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-021-09544-y
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Childhood, Education & Society
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
NoDerivatives: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
Author(s) must confirm that the Journal of Childhood, Education & Society retains all the copyrights unconditionally and indefinitely to publish articles.
