The integrated maturation theory describes psychosocial, adult role, and identity maturation as interrelated domains associated with criminal desistance, but to this point these domains have not been ...examined simultaneously, which raises questions about the relative importance of each domain to desistance. The aims of the current study were to unravel the development of maturation by examining interrelationships across components of psychosocial, adult role, and identity domains while also clarifying which components were related to desistance. Data were used from the Pathways to Desistance Study on male (
n
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1170) and female (
n
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184) youth with a history of offending. Participants were an average age of 14.04 (
SD
=
1.14) at baseline and were followed for seven years. Network modeling examined, from between-subjects and within-individual perspectives, (a) relationships among repeated measures of psychosocial, adult role, and identity maturation components and (b) relationships between these components and offending. Based on centrality indexes from the between-subjects network, responsibility (psychosocial domain), work orientation (adult role domain), and self identity (identity domain) were most important to the development of maturation. After accounting for interrelationships among maturation components, measures of consideration of others (adult role domain) and moral disengagement (identity domain) related to both lower levels of offending and within-individual declines in offending. The findings supported the integrated maturation theory’s description of maturation as comprised of a wide range of interrelated components across different domains that are important to desistance.
This article draws on data from a comparative ethnography of two UK primary schools to explore the complexities inherent in Mandell’s ‘least adult role’. In the interest of gaining insight into ...children’s informal productions of sexuality and gender, this role was used to gain access to peer group cultures and diffuse the imbalance of power between researcher and researched. However, while found to be productive in a number of ways, ‘least adulthood’ was revealed as a positionality suffused with practical, ethical and emotional complexities, and characterised by a fundamental misconstruction of the workings of ‘power’. In line with recent critiques that have recognised both ‘power’ and ‘agency’ as largely under-theorised in childhood research, I conclude this article by offering a tentative alternative to least adulthood, which attempts to respond to some of the key methodological and ethical challenges in contemporary childhood ethnography.
This exploratory study examines non-refugee immigrant students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) from Latin America pursuing their secondary education. The education system and the ...language (English) used differ from the system and language (Spanish) used in their home countries, leading to the educational exclusion of this group. Therefore, we focus on analysing the positive role of high expectations and adult role models concerning the educational inclusion of SLIFE in the host country. To this end, we conducted an empirical research using the communicative approach, interviewing 36 Latin American SLIFE between 15 and 20 years and 14 of their families. Ključne riječi SLIFE, education, emotional factors, high expectations, adult role models
Researchers who wish to become insiders to children's cultural worlds need to genuinely engage with the difference in social power between them and their participants. Most published accounts of ...adult positionality have been provided by those who have explored children's school practices. The ethnography discussed in this paper focused on the home and school literacy practices of children in a rural village in India. Cognisant of the unequal teacher-student relationships in this part of the world, I positioned myself as a least-teacher which, I argue, presents a cultural approximant for the least-adult role extensively discussed in literature. The role enabled the children to view me differently from their teachers - as a madamii. In this paper, I discuss its various facets with the twin focus of examining the efficacy of the role for future research and its affordances for the vision of a teacher provided by Indian policy documents.
This article aims to use the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) framework to analyse the participation of an early childhood teacher in children's creative play, in order to enhance and ...support creativity. The study is grounded on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, and highlights teacher's play involvement and the arts as a cultural context for creativity development. Data sources such as video recordings, reflective journal and planning documents were used to describe play episodes from a play area titled the 'Toy factory'. These were analysed by assigning each one to specific rules (e.g. technical, conceptual) and then creativity elements (e.g. process, product) were noted. Findings highlight that creative play underpinned by the CHAT framework is a cultural activity in which children and teachers (involvement) participate in the processes of creation and creativity (rules) in the context of the arts (degrees of freedom). Moreover, the teacher takes on the role of the mediator and scaffolds children's creative play, using cultural tools while endorsing creativity elements. This study provides ample ground to propose corresponding activity strategies (Solve, Reflect, Share and Connect) as unfolded through the teacher's actions, handed to children, to support and enhance their creative play experiences thus framing their Zone of Proximal Creative Development.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
La criminologie des parcours de vie concernant le désistement de la délinquance a fourni peu de lignes directrices quant aux stratégies d’intervention visant les jeunes adultes. Étant donné le ...caractère dynamique de la maturité ainsi que de la délinquance à ce stade de développement, la présente étude propose un regard sur le concept de maturité et son impact possible sur le processus de désistement. Bien mettre en évidence les aspects spécifiques de la maturité qui sont importants pour le désistement de la délinquance peut aider les intervenants à déterminer de quelle façon ils peuvent contribuer au processus de désistement lorsqu’ils travaillent auprès de clients plus jeunes pour qui les points tournants traditionnels tels que le mariage et l’emploi ne sont pas nécessairement immédiatement accessibles, voire même pertinents pour ce groupe d’âge. La présente étude s’appuie sur des données concernant les individus de sexe masculin interviewés dans le cadre de l’étude longitudinale Pathways to Desistance Study qui étaient âgés de 16 ou 17 ans au début de l’étude (n = 704). Une série d’analyses statistiques à effets fixes montre que des changements intra-individuels sur le plan de la maturité sont associés à un ralentissement de la délinquance autorapportée. En particulier, les résultats de l’étude mettent en évidence l’importance des changements sur le plan identitaire et psychosocial ainsi qu’une plus grande ouverture quant à l’adoption d’un statut d’adulte. Les stratégies d’intervention qui aident au développement de ces aspects de la maturité sont plus susceptibles de favoriser le processus de désistement d’une clientèle de jeunes adultes.
In this article, I engage the argument of getting around adult power in child-centered ethnographic research by presenting and discussing my experiences as a man researching with South African ...children in the early years of schooling. I present and discuss the different strategies I used in order to try and disassociate myself from the presumed position of adult male formal power and authority among children who were in my study. In Gender Play, Barrie Thorne coined the term “learning from the children” to describe a critical child-centered ethnographic approach which seeks to engage children as experts in their everyday social lives. However, Thorne acknowledged that when adults seek to learn from the children, the major challenge for the researcher is reducing the perceptions of adult formal power while establishing child-centered relations with the children. While Thorne discussed the issues of gender power in her relationships and interactions with boys and girls during her ethnographic research, this article considers a different perspective. It provides a male perspective on the relational issues and dynamics around adult–child power relations during child-centered ethnographic research on Gender Play in a South African primary school. The focus is on my attempts to reduce perceptions of adult male power so as to establish child-centered relations with young boys and girls in my research. I highlight the challenges encountered in my attempts to reduce these perceptions, given the children’s variegated expressions of agency that manifest by way of resistance—serving to reinforce adult–child power differentials. The article highlights how adult–child power relations operate in complex ways during fieldwork. It highlights how this complexity compelled the adult male researcher to acknowledge that power is not the sole preserve of adults. Rather, power is fluid and is constantly in flux between the adult male conducting the research and the young boys and girls who are actively participating in the research process.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In recent decades, the notion of the competent child has, in the field of Early Childhood Education, become a powerful discourse. In this paradigm, inspired by the sociology of childhood, the child ...is seen as a competent social actor having agency in his or her life. However, critical comments have been made at both the micro- and macro-level about how this conceptual construction is interpreted and put into practice. In this article, children are made visible through a close and systematic observation resulting in hearing 'children's voices' that are much more nuanced than those of the 'new resilient competent' child. The observation data challenges the overgeneralizations of the current discourse of the competent child. Instead of finding 'old fragile novice' or 'new resilient competent' children, we seem to find both characterizations in the same children, who are eager to learn, are competent and strong, but also vulnerable, immature and needy in different respects. The differences between individual children are also remarkable. What the children communicate in their behaviour challenges the adults who work with them to reflect on their espoused theories and theories-in use.
Abstract
In this chapter, I focus on two methodological issues involved with conducting ethnographies of very young children; establishing a researcher role in preschool classrooms while ...simultaneously gaining access into children’s culture and the trust of adult gatekeepers involved (i.e., teachers). Drawing on my participant observation experiences in 10 preschool classrooms (over 470 hours and 19 months of observations), I challenge the use of the friend role (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988) and least-adult role (Mandell, 1988) in research with young children. I examine how teachers mediate the researcher’s role in participant observation of children in preschool classrooms demonstrating the importance of establishing a middle manager role between teachers and children when conducting participant observations. I also discuss strategies used to overcome adult’s mediation of the researcher’s role, and strategies for simultaneously gaining teachers and children’s rapport in participant observation research in ways that formulate positive relationships with adults and children. I demonstrate the importance of researcher reflexivity of children’s and adults’ assessments of researchers’ roles in the field, highlighting how researchers’ impacts on children are not dependent on the times they are present in the field. Instead, I show that children continue to critically assess researchers’ positionality and roles in the field, often times seeking the help of adults (i.e., parents and teachers), further stressing the need for researchers to negotiate an understanding of their roles with both adults and children prior to and while in the field.
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