Constructing children : one educator's dichotomy between ideology and pedagogy regarding children and achievement
Abstract
Historically speaking, educational discourse and practices tend to objectify children through biological and psychological units of analysis. These socially accepted assumptions have created regimes of truth (Foucault, 1977) that construct children as lacking ontology; a premise that guides educational policy and practice. These discourses become problematic since they shape the way educators view and treat children and, in turn, their experiences. Working toward a (re)imagining of schooling and the construction of children within education, this inquiry sought to make visible the discontinuities within discourses that have situated children within schooling. In so doing, this inquiry focused on one elementary art educator's thinking and construction of "children" through the lens of academic achievement and its resulting pedagogical practices. I chose to work from a poststructural paradigm engaging in thinking with theory (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012, 2018) approach using Foucauldian concepts. With respect to qualitative research, I constructed "permeable" boundaries around the field of inquiry, the participants, and data through the iterative process of thinking with literature, data, and theory. This inquiry disrupts the assumed inevitability of hierarchical structures and truth regimes that produces a binarized either/or. Instead, this inquiry implies that power/knowledge is relational allowing space to (re)construct ways in which to view and interact with children within the current structures of public education inviting a yes/and approach whether in practice or research.
Degree
Ph. D.