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Abstract
The concept of social justice and critical thinking are prevalent topics in conversations about early childhood education. Usually, critical conversations around these practices tend to involve academics in discussion rather than include practitioners. In today’s world, young children are frequently confronted with the realities of violence and tragedy. It is through critical pedagogy in critical-thinking classroom communities that children are able to develop empowered, thoughtful, agentive perspectives on these experiences that shape their lives. This article addresses an important intersection in social justice in early childhood: a critical perspective from the stance of a practitioner. As a preschool teacher, the author situates herself as a critical participant in the practice of social justice and critical awareness in her classroom as she and her students work to make sense of the Boston Marathon bombings. The author examines the dimensions of this practice, addressing not just what to teach, but how critical awareness might evolve in a classroom community. The interweaving of theory and practice, of research and daily reality, offers an essential perspective on the evolution of critical perspectives that support and empower the voices of young children.
A time for talk
I wanted to tell you a different story. I had a much better story to tell, one that was much more pleasant, yet there are the stories that we want to tell and the stories that demand to be told. On 15 April 2013 a new story began in my classroom, and that is the story that I keep coming back to, the one that insists on being told.
In Boston, at 2.50 p.m. on 15 April, the story of our classroom changed. As I watched our local news, the explosions repeating themselves again and again, I thought again and again: “How will we talk about this at school? How will we talk to the children?”
School the next day was almost startling in its normality. We began our morning with listening. As the children played, we listened, letting their stories swirl around us, shaping our next steps. The children moved around the playground with typical abandon, tricycles whizzing and sand flying at random out of the sandbox, as the “giant hole to the middle of the earth” grew in depth. Yet, if you listened carefully, you could hear the discordant note in the air. The stories were different. The tricyclists were racing away from “big explosions that make everyone scream and fall down!” and it was suggested that the giant hole could house “a really big bomb!” I overheard a child retelling the story of the bombing with news reporter detail, and another child responded: “But my mommy does running. Will she get a bomb?”
It was time to talk.
Problematizing perspective: A matter of stance
The purpose of this article is to examine the shape and practice of critical awareness and social justice in the body of an early childhood classroom. While much is written regarding social justice, relatively few voices offer a critical perspective from within the classroom. Karan Gallas (1997) offers a critical look at power construction with older children (first and second grade) and Vivian Paley’s (2000) work White Teacher addresses early critical explorations of race in a kindergarten classroom. However, these critical perspectives from within the classroom are few and far between, in large part because early childhood educators are not typically seen as engaging in critical pedagogy (Souto-Manning, 2010). As a teacher, these are not easy practices; it is far easier to say that we believe in social justice than it is to actually find and implement critical perspectives in teaching and learning (Souto-Manning, 2010). Despite this seeming distance between the academic concept of critical perspectives and the actual practice of teaching, events such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary demand that practitioners create critical communities that support and empower young children. Children are and continue to be shaped by these tragedies, whether we are ready to accept these impacts or not (Boutte, 2008). Schoorman (2011: 341) argues: “To advance an education that is rooted in social justice requires a movement toward critical awareness.” While the academic field of early childhood is aware of the necessity of this critical awareness, it is not often that the practices of early childhood educators are made visible, engaging in the critical practice of and research around social justice.
I am a teacher. I am also a researcher. I am writing this because it is necessary, because it is vital that the children we teach be able to navigate the flawed world in which they live. Dahlberg et al. explain that the child is
not innocent, apart from the world, to be sheltered in some nostalgic representation of the past reproduced by adults. Rather, the young child is in the world as it is today, embodies the world, is acted upon by the world—but also acts on it and makes meaning from it. (Dahlberg et al., 1999: 50–51)
It is from this perspective on the child that critical work can emerge. It is a perspective which accepts that the child is of, and in, the tragedies and the comedies that comprise the world (Dahlberg et al., 1999). When we see the child as a creature of, not apart from, this world, we enable the first steps toward critical awareness (Schoorman, 2011).
The year 2013 was emotional. Yet, it was also a powerful year of learning for our classroom community. I am writing this from a belief that we need to have opportunities to express and explore contexts in which issues can be interrogated in a critical manner involving teachers and children, in order to seek stability, understanding, and agency about these issues.
This article examines the enactment of critical perspectives and thinking around social justice in response to the Boston Marathon bombings, addressing our struggles, our shortcomings, and our successes as a community seeking meaning and action around these complex issues. The purpose of this article is to look closely and reflexively at a situated representation of critical awareness (Schoorman, 2011) and the ways in which this critical perspective may impact the life of the classroom. Through teacher research (Gallas, 1994; Paley, 2014), I highlight the visceral enactment of critical perspectives in the early childhood classroom, and the agency that emerges when these perspectives are made available to children and practitioners.
My research questions are as follows:
Who is invited to have a critical perspective? What voices are enabled to take that critical stance? What voices are silenced?
In what ways does critical awareness emerge in the everyday lives of four- and five-year-olds?
How might the experiences of one teacher and her classroom inform a consideration of critical perspectives on social justice as meaningful practices for young children?
Theoretical framework
This article is founded on components of critical pedagogy (Souto-Manning, 2010): a particular construct of the young child (Boutte, 2008; Rinaldi, 2001), the role of the teacher (Boutte, 2008; Souto-Manning and Mitchell, 2010; Taylor and Richardson, 2005; Wohlwend, 2007), and the shape of social justice in the early childhood classroom (Schoorman, 2011; Skattebol, 2005). When located in conversation with each other, these three concepts facilitate and support critical thinking and understandings about social justice.
In the context of this classroom provocation, the child is identified as a competent, capable individual able to develop a critical perspective around social justice (Rinaldi, 2001; Taylor and Richardson, 2005). Rinaldi’s (2001) stance on the child as a capable, meaning-making individual is essential to framing children as active participants in social justice. I would argue that the concept of the child as an agentive citizen emerges directly from work done with young children in Reggio Emilia; the Reggio Approach offers a foundation for the practice of children engaging in critical thinking around social justice (Rinaldi, 2001). Too often, young children are identified as somehow unready or unable to handle concepts of this magnitude—a serious underestimation of young children’s meaning-making process (Derman-Sparks and Ramsey, 2011; Taylor and Richardson, 2005). Boutte (2008: 170) explains that “while we are waiting for young children to be developmentally ready to consider these issues, they are already developing values and beliefs about them.” Here, I view children as active thinkers already in the process of making meaning around social justice. It is essential that children engage in meaningful conversation around social justice in order to approach the world feeling empowered, thoughtfully, and with the ability to take a critical stance.
The evolution toward critical awareness requires a disruption of the traditional identity of the teacher as the sole authority and holder of knowledge (Skattebol, 2005; Wohlwend, 2007). This process challenges the construct of “the knowing and protective adult, as distinct from the unknowing and sheltered child” (Taylor and Richardson, 2005: 163). The teacher is framed around the concept of a “humble stance” (Souto-Manning and Mitchell, 2010), as a participant and facilitator of discussion, but not as the keeper of answers. The teacher is both a participant and a supporter of this work toward critical awareness, her engagement always tempered by a respect for children’s perspectives and thoughts (Skattebol, 2005). This construction of the teacher’s role as participant enables more complex, culturally situated meanings to emerge, due to their immediacy and collaborative nature (Dewey, 1902; Hyun, 2007; Souto-Manning and Mitchell, 2010). This particular perspective on the teacher is essential to the movement toward critical awareness (Schoorman, 2011), shifting meaning making from the hands of the teacher to the collective co-construction of the classroom community.
In the context of this article, social justice is identified as “a movement toward critical awareness” (Schoorman, 2011: 341). By critical awareness, I refer to a perspective that invites children (and teachers) to question, problematize, and destabilize the normative, traditional structures that often dominate the social world (Freire, 1970; Souto-Manning, 2010). Ayers (2001: 8) writes: “There are still worlds to change—including specific, individual worlds, one by one—and classrooms can be places of possibility and transformation for youngsters, certainly, but also for teachers. Teaching can still do world-changing work.”
In the context of this classroom provocation, social justice work is based around the development of a way of approaching, questioning, and potentially transforming the normative constructs of the world (Ayers, 2001; Freire, 1970; Souto-Manning, 2010). This critical awareness demands that we, as a classroom community, look carefully and critically at the “cultural models” (Wohlwend, 2007) that shape our everyday lives, actively considering what is made possible and impossible. We perceive these practices as part of a heightened awareness and questioning stance, in which we, as a classroom, “learn how to read the world, to problematize it and to transform it” (Souto-Manning, 2010: 8). This construct of social justice as critical awareness shapes the ways in which we approach curricular philosophy, practice, and community in early childhood.
When placed in discourse with each other, the competent child, the teacher as community member, and the movement toward critical awareness offer a powerful foundation for rethinking practices of social justice in the early childhood classroom.
Voices in the classroom: A messy methodology
I come to this research as a teacher researcher. Academic methodologies that prescribe specific approaches are difficult to apply in the life of our classroom. Our days are messy, multilayered, and continually shifting, according to the needs, voices, and experiences of an eclectic group of four- and five-year-olds. Our days shift as new needs and ideas occur spontaneously. We are constantly moving and responding to a plethora of people, things, and ideas. While I enter into a research project with particular methodological lenses and perspectives in mind, these are always subservient to my desire to understand the passions and revelations that are central to the life of the young child which occur every day in our room. The methodology represented in this article illustrates the lively, layered, shifting nature of early childhood education, resulting in a multilayered research stance. Thus, I present our messy methodology, a kind that emerges from the lives and experiences of those living each day in the classroom. I apologize in advance for the paint stains and fingerprints.
Methodology
The methodology of this classroom provocation is framed around practitioner inquiry (Lytle and Cochran-Smith, 1992) and teacher research (Gallas, 1994, 1997; Paley, 2000, 2014) stances which offer insights into the nuanced daily realities of classroom life through the perspective of the teacher as participant observer. This methodological perspective was selected due to the value and import it places on the intuitions and insights of the practitioner within the flow of classroom life (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009; Lytle and Cochran-Smith, 1992). The data themselves are shaped using narrative inquiry (Chase, 2005), through which daily classroom life is reconstructed and reconstituted through a process of meaning making. According to Chase (2005: 656): “Narrative is a way of understanding one’s own and others’ actions, of organizing events and objects into a meaningful whole, and of connecting and seeing the consequences of actions and events over time.” A third, and vital, methodological element comes into play in this classroom provocation, as narrative inquiry (Chase, 2005) is identified not only as a meaning-making act, but also a creative process by which the practitioner engaged in an artistic practice through the reconstitutive act of writing (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009; Richardson, 2005).
The data collected for this classroom provocation are multilayered. While this article contains narratives about a specific process of critical thinking around the Boston Marathon bombings, the data collection and examination of critical perspectives on social justice occurred over a three-year period (2010–2013). I collected data by creating a written record of narratives around issues of social justice as they occurred in day-to-day classroom experiences for three years. Notes on narratives were recorded as they were verbalized or immediately following their occurrence, in an attempt to capture the most fundamental ways in which young children developed critical awareness in the context of their lived experience. Particular class discussions were selected based on my assessment as a classroom teacher of their importance to the development of meaning around social justice (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009). I engaged in a narrative inquiry process that was both inductive and deductive. Initially, I reconstructed classroom narratives based on notes and memories of the school day; after reviewing two years’ worth of narratives, certain themes in the narratives asserted themselves as the most frequent and powerful in my experience as a practitioner (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009; Gallas, 1994, 1997; Paley, 2000, 2014). These themes were used to organize, highlight, and deductively select future narratives. I analyzed each narrative in order to delve into the complexities of children’s thinking around social justice and the pedagogies surrounding this evolution. The results offer a critical perspective on authentic work toward critical awareness from within the classroom.
The narratives that comprise the data were collected daily over three years within the context of my emergent pre-kindergarten classroom, within a small independent school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Forty-eight children aged four through six were observed during their daily interactions and classroom engagements. The narrative data specifically reflected in this article were documented during the period that began with the Boston Marathon bombings on 15 April 2013, and the subsequent manhunt and lockdown in the Boston area on 19 April 2013. The specific narratives reflected in this article document the responses and experiences of the 16 children in my class during the 2012–2013 school year. All of the children live in Boston or nearby cities and experienced the repercussions of the Boston Marathon bombings, the manhunt, and the lockdown of Boston and its environs. The narratives that shape this article document the thinking and critical work done by teachers and students around this tragedy in our city.
Powerful spaces: Finding our champions
We joined together in our usual classroom circle, but I situated myself on a stool, slightly above the group. “I’m going to tell you a true story that is sad,” I shared, “but today it will be my turn to tell the story and then we can talk.” In the simplest words I explained that there was an explosion at the Boston Marathon and that people were hurt. “It was sad and scary, and it is okay to feel bad. Do you know the good thing though?” Their eyes lifted, looking for the answer. “Many, many people came to help. So many people came to the rescue.”
With that statement I left my perch on the stool and rejoined the circle, my crossed knees touching theirs. “Does anyone have any idea who came to help? Who could come to the rescue? Do you all know anything about rescuers?”
It was a trickle at first, and then the room erupted with their knowledge on a topic they know and love: rescuers. Firemen, policemen, and the army were all named. As it happened, our classroom was a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about rescuers.
Then Eleanor raised her hand. “My mommy is a doctor and she could really help because she can fix the people who were hurt. She’s at the hospital now, fixing them.”
This observation brought our conversation to a new level as the children dipped into their personal lives for those who “could really help.” Suddenly, these anonymous rescuers took on shape and substance in the form of our most loved adults. I could almost feel their world becoming safe again, championed by parents assuming superhero attributes in their ability to help.
At a lull in the conversation, Patricia raised her hand thoughtfully. “I know someone who helps. Our teachers.”
In that moment I almost lost my composure with sheer pride and gratitude. I managed to choke out: “So what is our way of helping?”
“Well,” she said, looking toward the ceiling as if the answer were hanging there amidst our solar system model. “Your most important job is to take care of us. So you’re always a helper.”
I don’t know if the conversation came to a close because of the enormity of her comment or because I was simply unable to talk, but with those words we moved on with our day. And amazingly, so did the children. There were no more bombs, no more discussions of dead people or dramatizations of getting exploded. And for one tiny moment I was filled with the incredible peace of maybe, possibly “getting it right” at a time when it seemed like “right” of any kind was just impossible against such overwhelming wrongness.
Powerful spaces
The study of evolving critical awareness in the classroom highlights the importance of the classroom space and community, and what it makes possible when challenging young children to engage in these issues (Boutte, 2008; Hyland, 2010). The data in this classroom provocation illustrate the complexity of the construct of this “safe space,” which includes the physical, emotional, social, and curricular aspects of the classroom itself. The narratives demonstrate a privileging of issues related to relationships and community within the classroom; this pedagogical choice shapes the classroom space as a whole. On a basic level, the children are accustomed to coming together in a circle for discussion when issues emerge. Through practice, they become aware of the weight of their own voices in these discussions and the importance placed on their words. They learn that this is a safe space in which to deposit their thoughts and perspectives. On a more particular level, the choice to engage in the conversation was entirely based on observations of the children, their needs, and experiences. Discussions do not emerge because the teacher determines their necessity, but instead because the children’s experience dictates their importance. The construction of this space occurs over a period of time, during which the children develop relationships with one another, the classroom structure, as well as their teachers. Conversations such as the one above do not simply occur on the first day of school. They emerge out of a space that has been constructed over time, a space that values relationships, connections, and the perspectives of all members of the community.
Many elements in the narrative provide evidence of the complexity of the “safe space” constructed in the classroom. As the teacher, I take specific steps to facilitate, separating myself on a stool above the children as I offer the necessary story of the bombings, but shifting to physically join the children in a circle when engaging in active conversation. In this way, I both engage and disrupt “cultural models” (Wohlwend, 2007) of teacher identity, taking on the traditional role of teacher as authority in the delivery of the story while seated above the children, then destabilizing this authority as I physically join the children on the floor to engage as a participant. This is a precise dance of control and freedom, in which a traditional authoritative model is enacted and then released in an attempt to provide the children with a sense of safety, but also the latitude in which to construct their own meanings. In this delicate conversation, specific steps are taken to shape but not wholly control the process (Skattebol, 2005). When engaging in active conversation with the children, the narrative of the tragedy is shifted to focus on rescuers—a topic on which the children have a great deal of information. The identification of family and loved ones as rescuers serves to provide a deep sense of knowledge and agency, providing a space of strength and familiarity from which to make sense of the tragedy.
The critical conversations that emerge are developed out of specific practices that come to embody the nature and structure of the community as a whole. During conversations, teachers act as leaders and participants who have questions and make mistakes. All contributions and perspectives are honored, and no one “right” comment is given precedence over others. Finally, questions are not uniformly fielded by teachers; they are to be answered by the community as a whole. A child’s answer is given power and precedence in this space, thereby embodying the concept that children are holders of viable knowledge. These complex characteristics and practices establish the “safe space” in which children and teachers are able to confront their demons and find real champions in the form of those they most cherish (Boutte, 2008).
Disrupting pedagogy: “We don’t need you in this game”
Five days later, we were faced with a new piece of the story. If the events of the manhunt and lockdown on Friday, 19 April 2013, didn’t destroy our sense of well-being, the expectation of silence certainly did. There was a great deal of discomfort over the idea of discussing these events with the children. And really, how can you have a conversation with four- and five-year-olds about a manhunt, a lockdown, and shoot-out? But then … how can you not? Ultimately, the topic was deemed “too violent and scary” for school, and so we moved forward uneasily, aware that the “silence” we had created was farcical, and not silent at all.
As the teachers struggled with silence, the children resolutely played out their knowledge. The dramatic play area erupted into visceral bad guy /good guy play, explosions filling the air. The play had a hardness, an edge that it does not usually carry. It did not feel safe. Finally, I jumped in bodily, allowing the bad guy to capture me.
“I’ll lock you up!” Dan snarled, pulling me behind a table. His small face carried that terrible expression of part pretend, part fear. He enacted the bad guy, while simultaneously fearing the bad guy that he portrayed.
“Don’t worry—the police will rescue you!” yelled Franz, a small army of police behind him wielding the ever present thumb-and-index-finger gun.
As I played, I questioned their game, shifting back and forth as teacher and participant, gently prodding them to explain their thoughts:
“Why is he the bad guy? What bad thing did he do? What was the policeman’s job? How will you save me?” I wondered aloud.
Through our talk and play, the tenor of the game slowly lightened. The edgy roughness of the story shifted as the children began to think through their choices. Slowly we returned to the comfortable chaos that typifies bad guy/good guy play.
“Yeah, I’m the bad guy because, because.” Dan stopped, unsure of the origins of his badness.
“Because you robbed the toy store!” declared Franz.
“But I’m gonna get good, I think,” reasoned Dan, “because I gived back all the toys.”
The team of policemen encircled us: me—the kidnapped, Dan—the bad guy, and Franz—the final decision maker of all things bad guy and good guy.
“Okay,” he said gruffly. “You can get good again. But you have to go to the jail over there for one day so that you know to be good. Then you can be a policeman.”
Dan happily ensconced himself in jail for “one day,” designated by the lights being turned off for “night” and then on again for “day.” The large plastic cheetahs from our animal bin were relegated to bad guy status.
“And me?” I asked them. “What should I do now? I’m not kidnapped anymore.”
Franz looked around, surveying the scene, and then shrugged.
“I think we don’t need you in this game anymore.”
And I knew it was time to leave.
Disrupting pedagogy
This classroom provocation demonstrates the importance of the teacher’s inquiry stance in the development of critical awareness. The teacher takes an active role as both community member and facilitator, asking questions but looking to the children to negotiate and construct meaning. In order to engage in this process, the teacher must literally wrench herself away from the safety of the traditional stance of holder of knowledge and be willing to embrace the uncertainty that emerges from the co-construction of meaning alongside the children (Greene, 2000; Skattebol, 2005; Souto-Manning, 2010). This is an active, physical embodiment of the critical perspective in the classroom, as I enter into the play not only as a participant, but also as an inquirer. This process is a delicate one. I am not arguing that the teacher relinquish all control or leadership. Quite the contrary; what I am arguing for is a particularly nuanced teacher stance, in which the teacher enters the children’s world of play and, through a balance of play and critical questioning, supports the children’s critical perspectives on the issues and concerns emerging in their play. This is a delicate process, since, in the words of Skattebol (2005: 198), “[t]here is always a risk that teacher authority will foreclose children’s expression of their ideas, resistance, and agency.” This critical practice of restrained engagement places deep reliance on the teacher’s intuition—her knowledge of the shape and feeling of the play, the time and way in which to enter, and the moment when she is no longer needed (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009; Lawrence Lightfoot, 2004). In an educational world dominated by numbers, standards, assessments, and milestones, it is perhaps audacious to suggest a reliance on intuition. As a teacher, I will tell you that this knowledge, constructed with and through the children, is the most important element of practice and assessment. This is the perception that tells me when children’s play is laced with something dark and frightening. This is the guide which informs me that I must be “the kidnapped” because the children need to play this out, but are actively fearful of playing the victim in a story so real and raw. This intuition is the voice that questions through play, not shutting down the story but engaging children in the inquiry, which will help them to think critically and gain agency. Finally, my teacher knowledge leads me out of the play when “we don’t need you in this game anymore.”
This stance supports the community’s deep thinking around social justice through the teacher’s rejection of the traditional shape of instruction (Souto-Manning and Mitchell, 2010). The teacher’s methods include questioning, remaining silent, offering information, and, most importantly, engaging in discomfort. Through the intuitive interweaving of these stances—community member, questioner, supporter, listener, and facilitator—I better position myself to co-construct concepts of social justice based around our own perspectives, discomforts, questions, and experiences as a classroom community.
Authentic experiences: The return of Officer Jones
In the aftermath of our lockdown and the manhunt that raged around Boston, we were certain that some closure was needed—some response that we could collectively take as a community. Unable to actually speak as a group about the event, we struggled with the sense that we were doing the children a disservice, but were unsure of where to go next. As always, the answer came in the form of a child.
Anne’s mother came in that morning and asked to speak with her teacher, Priya, for a moment. She said: “I just wanted to tell you that you might want to move the phones in the classroom area out of Anne’s reach.”
Priya looked at her, puzzled.
“Well, you know the police officer who visited your classroom earlier this year?” Priya nodded. Officer Jones visited our classroom as a part of an earlier project. “Well, Anne called 911 during the lockdown day, trying to check to see if he was alright. I actually had to hide the phones in the house. She said that he told them to call 911 when they needed help, and he would come. She just thought that he would answer and she could make sure that he was safe.”
We were stunned at the appropriateness of the response. Thanking Anne’s mother profusely, we promised to keep all phones out of reach. That morning, we called Officer Jones ourselves and invited him to come back to our classroom.
Officer Jones was there next day, resplendent in his uniform, complete with the handcuffs, which were the focus of practically every one of the 32 children who filled the room. They presented him with a large thank you card filled with all of their drawings, and we sat together for our second question and answer time with this man. The questions were different this time, although they were still tinged with the practically tangible excitement inspired by any individual in possession of “real handcuffs!” There were lots of questions about what a policeman really does, how he saves people, and how he knows that a person is “really bad and not just pretending.”
As our time together began to draw to a close, Dan raised his hand. Always interested in the gray areas of bad-guyness, Dan asked: “What happens to the bad guy when you get him? Is he a bad guy forever?”
Officer Jones stopped for a moment. “No, they’re not always bad forever. Sometimes they just have to go to jail to think about what they did.”
Dan’s eyes brightened with understanding. “So it’s like time out!” he said. “You can think about it and then you get good!”
We finished our visit on that note, and Officer Jones bestowed a “real police badge” upon us, which the children affixed to the board in the center of our classroom.
Authentic experiences
This study demonstrates the complex yet necessary process of grounding children’s acquisition of critical perspectives and social justice work in their authentic experiences and understandings of the world (Boutte, 2008; Hyland, 2010). The data illustrate the complex reality of making sense of these varied experiences and perspectives that children bring to their development of critical awareness. Complex issues and tragedies such as the Boston Marathon bombings bring out fears and questions about safety, protection, good, and evil. The calming voice of an adult may silence these questions for a moment, but this attitude glosses over the deep thinking and meaning making in which the children are engaging (Boutte, 2008; Skattebol, 2005). Skattebol (2005: 201) explains: “the children’s assertions of governmentality suggests it is important for all children to be provided with the opportunity to shape their public spaces in order to see themselves as agentic social actors.” Thus, it is through the children, through their ideas and perspectives, that we are able to ground the elusive concerns and reasoning of their minds with a concrete reality to anchor their thinking.
In the case of our classroom, Anne’s determination and the resultant return of Officer Jones offered a concrete manner in which to engage the children’s perspectives genuinely, but in a safe space. Their questions about rescuing, jail, bad guys, and the ability to “get good again” demonstrate the children’s ability to navigate social justice through concrete connections to themselves and their understandings of the world. Through this process, the children depolarize the dominant constructs of “good” and “bad” in favor of nuanced understandings that offer the possibility of change or redemption. In this way, these children embody Skattebol’s notion of social justice:
The tactics children use to subvert established orders are critical pointers for teachers committed to assisting children to open doors, turn baddies into goodies, and question the goodness of those who impose their world-views in ways that are oppressive and dominating. (Skattebol, 2005: 201)
In this narrative, the children not only face their fears, but also mobilize the heavy-handed notions of “good” and “evil,” thereby destabilizing and reinventing traditional social structures (Freire, 1970; Souto-Manning, 2010). Most importantly, the experience itself was based on choices made by the children, an already established relationship, and their authentic inquiry into the world. By engaging these experiential foundations, we worked toward a critical awareness that included issues of justice, pretense, good and evil, and redemption (Boutte, 2008; Franklin, 1994; Hyland, 2010).
Conclusions, implications, and questions: Who speaks and who is silent?
This classroom provocation signals the need for critical perspectives from within the classroom in identifying and examining social justice practices as they evolve in early childhood education. Not only do children have a right to engage with these critical perspectives, but it is a necessity that they have these strategies with which to navigate the world around them. It is only through the creation of a critical community that agency and empowerment become possible. While many of the themes addressed in this article have been examined by other researchers, the complexity of their nature in practice is not often fully addressed from the perspective of a critical practitioner. It is essential that we look carefully at how critical practice is embodied. How does it speak? How does it move? When is it silent? When does it reach out and when does it step back? It is through these questions, these practices, that critical perspectives emerge in the body of the early childhood classroom, through the collaboration of teachers and young children.
This classroom provocation has implications for educators who wish to understand or engage in “culturally relevant pedagogy”(Ladson-Billings, 1995) toward critical awareness (Schoorman, 2011) in the early childhood classroom. It sheds light on the shape of practice, curriculum, pedagogy, community, conversation, and even the organization of the day, all of which must be considered and addressed when developing a classroom which supports critical perspectives about social justice (Boutte, 2008; Hyland, 2010; Schoorman, 2011; Souto-Manning and Mitchell, 2010). These data identify the complexities of classroom life, demanding that we think critically not just about what makes critical awareness possible, but about the intricacies of how it is made possible in the life of the classroom.
Words and silence
A relative calm has returned to the classroom and we have refocused our attentions on the real dramas of school life, such as who can make it across the monkey bars the fastest, and who knows how to make “a really real pirate flag.”
We are so much the same, but we will never be the same. We glance at the police badge resolutely standing guard at the front of our classroom, and I hope that the children are reminded that sometimes “you can think about it and then get good.”
I am reminded that, no matter the fear, no matter the reprimand, our imperfect words are always better than silence.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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Author biography
Dana Frantz Bentley has been an early childhood educator for 13 years. She is a writer and teacher researcher focusing on artistic, emergent, and critical practices from within the early childhood classroom. Dr Bentley uses her perspectives and experiences as a teacher to shape her research on the education of young children. She holds a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Doctorate of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.