22 January 2025, 4 - 5pm (Teams)
Presenter: Jessica Wythe, Birmingham City University
Title: Balancing Motherhood, Academia, and Teaching: A Doctoral Student’s Journey
Motherhood, an esteemed yet multifaceted role, often intersects
with professional pursuits, including academia and teaching (Barnett
and Hyde, 2001). This presentation examines the challenges and strategies encountered by a doctoral student and lecturer at Birmingham City University (BCU) who recently transitioned into motherhood. Drawing upon personal experiences, relevant literature and theoretical paradigms, this narrative offers insights into the complexities of balancing family responsibilities with academic and professional endeavours.
26 February (MST)
Core members EYRG meeting
19 March 2025, 3 - 4pm MS (Teams)
Presenter: Bryndís Gunnarsdóttir, PhD Student, University of Iceland, bgunnars@hi.is
Title: Embodied participation in the toddler peer group
This study discusses the embodied strategies used by a toddler in an attempt to enter an ongoing participation framework with peers in an early childhood education and care setting (ECEC) in Iceland. This is an ethnomethodological (EM) case study using conversation analysis (CA) to examine interactions in the toddler peer group that were video recorded over a nine-month period in the ECEC setting. The findings are a part of a larger PhD study where the aim is to examine the embodied strategies toddlers use to initiate interaction with their peers in competent and creative ways. In this article, we are exploring how one of the participating toddlers actively participated in ongoing play through competent use of embodied strategies. The findings showcase how skilled the participating toddler is at social interactions through embodied strategies that she uses to navigate social interactions with her peers.
30 April 2025
Core members EYRG meeting
7 May 2025, 3 - 4pm Teams
Presenter: Children’s Participation in Schools project members – Dr Sarah Chicken, UWE
Title: Exploring teacher understandings of participatory pedagogies via approaches to children’s rights in Wales
This paper reports on phase-two of an ESRC-funded project, aiming to examine teachers understanding of participation and how it relates to their pedagogy in Wales. Previous research of the team argues that understandings of participatory pedagogies are varied (Chicken and Tyrie, 2023) reflecting ‘boundaried’ approaches to children’s enactment of rights (Clement et al, in press), The study adopted a rights -based approach (Bessell, 2017) and an axiological position with young children constructed as capable,agentic meaning-makers (Malaguzzi, 1998). Rooted in socio-constructionist interpretivism, participatory action research was utilised (Townsend, 2013) for data-generation. During collaborative dialogical workshops, Reggio Emilian pedagogy was explored as an example of a participatory pedagogy and later participants experimented with ‘projects’ investigating what ‘rights’ meant to children. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 14 teachers before and after engagement. The research team were steered by a duty of care to participants with ‘care to do no harm’ as a guiding principle, EECERA (2015) ethical code was adhered to, and appropriate ongoing consent gained.
Initial findings suggest that teacher understandings of participative rights and associated pedagogy are underpin by a complex interrelationship between implicit constructions of (a) young children and (b) teachers (and their role) and further, with wider philosophical debates about the purpose of education. Consequently, opportunities for teachers to explicitly unpick constructions of children and teachers may be useful in actualising a children’s right agenda, allowing an avenue through which discussions and agitations can be explored to support the increased enactment of participative rights within practice.