‘That’s not fair’.
Nurturing social justice
in young children
Glynne Mackey & Lia de Vocht
University of Canterbury
NZARE/AARE 2014
Equality for Sustainability
OMEP Project: Children as Social Agents
We believe that the early childhood context needs to
nurture in children a sense of social justice and
agency.
Teachers make space for children to dialogue, to
express their thoughts and learning around social
justice, so that they become more confident and see
themselves as capable agents who can affect social
change now and in the future.
Aims and objectives of the research
 To nurture social agency in young children so that they view
themselves as agents of change. Agency ‘refers to the
capacity of a person to act and create change in a given
context’ (Miller & Kirkland, 2010).
 To make learning about social justice more visible to
children, teachers and families, thereby strengthening
children’s dispositions of social agency
 To use Learning Stories about social justice supporting
children to be active agents to capture children’s voices.
 To build awareness in teachers about possible tools that can
support children’s participation in being change agents.
Topic PhD: Exploring teacher-child dialogues
in early childhood settings
Theory informing the research:
 How can Bakhtinian theories be used to explore
teacher-child dialogues in early childhood settings
 View of children as active participants
 Education as unfinalised and open-ended
 Importance of dialogism
 Education tends to be authoritative, monologic
 Emphasis on process rather than outcome
 Moral or ethical responsibility: to take action
• ‘I’ carries many voices; there are many genres
• Dialogue is open-ended
• There is no first word and no last
 There is no final meaning of self
 Participants as unfinalised or
‘becoming’
Bakhtin (1984): “ Life is by its very nature dialogic. To live means to
participate in dialogue, to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to
agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and
throughout his whole life (p.293).
Participants:
Methodology
5 teachers from 5 early childhood settings: Bev, Tracy,
Charlotte, Jo, Helen
Children aged 3-5years from these settings
Ethical approval from University of Canterbury
Information and consent from teachers, centre managers,
children and parents.
Data Gathering:
Teacher workshops,
observations and field notes
Children’s learning stories
Literature related to Social Justice and Agency
 Smith, (2013, p6) - Empowers children to contribute to
positive change and improves their own as well as others’
well-being’
 Mackey & Lockie, (2012. p.77) - ‘Equity pedagogy, in short,
means taking action to limit inequalities’.
 Phillips, (2010) - Storytelling led to child expressing his
agency and identify him as a citizen ‘with a desire for realworld experiences to create real change’.
Using children’s books as a tool to build critical literacy
 Hawkins (2008): help children reflect upon, clarify and
articulate their awareness of and sensitivities to social
justice issues.
 Golding, C. (2003) : to scaffold children’s thinking about
what is fair, what is true
 Souto-Manning (2009): to let children see different
perspectives, encouraging children to take action towards
social justice
 Gunn & de Vocht (2011): unexpected outcomes
 Hyland (2010): to draw out thoughts on issues of equity and
social justice.
Learning Stories as a tool to make children’s agency
visible
 Dweck (2000): strengthening children’s dispositions by
making the learning visible, children can see themselves as
a social agent
 Kei Tua o te Pae (2009): foregrounding a particular lens in
narrative assessment, shows what is valued learning
 Gunn & de Vocht (2011): revisiting the LS again helps build
confidence and competence towards social agency,
increased dialogue
 Carr (2011): teachers learning dialogic skills
Negotiating inclusion and being fair
‘The Hueys in the new
jumpers’ – Oliver Jeffries
Sadie’s voice ‘Those boys being
mean… they say I can’t play’
Teacher’s voice: We talked about what was fair and stories
we had read about inclusion [such as ‘The Hueys’]. You
negotiated your inclusion and your acceptance that they also
had rights or mana atua. Sadie, you demonstrated a sense of
fairness, acceptance of others or
whakawhanaungatanga.(Charlotte, Term 1 2014)
The many faces of equity
Amazing Grace – Mary Hoffman
Girls can’t be firefighters. Only boys can be
builders. 4yr old girl’s voice
Teacher’s voice: I wanted to extend your thinking and
knowledge if you really wanted to do or be anything you
can. (Jo, April 2014)
Learning Story for Ella
“I was taking group time and read one of my favourite stories
called, “The true story of the three little pigs”. This story is told
by the wolf and is different from the traditional story, when I had
finished you said, “that’s not it” and you proceeded to tell me
and the other children the story of the wolf blowing the house
down and eating the pigs. At the end you said, “that’s it, the
story.” Good on you Ella, standing up for what you believe is
right and fair is an admirable quality and one that needs to be
fostered”. (Beverley, April 2014))
Strengthening children’s social agency:
Beverley’s LS for Max (Feb 2014)
 “….Today you Ella and Ezra were outside in the hut making lunch. You
had taken on the role of “head chef” and were asking the other children
what they wanted in their lunches. You were handing out the ingredients
and seemed very comfortable in this role. Then Ezra asked for something
that I could clearly see you wanted to keep for yourself and it was
causing a dilemma for you.
 The children were watching you and I decided to sit back and wait to see
how you responded. You then looked at Ezra and handed the piece over
and said, “here you are” and the play continued. Later I went up to you
Max and said I felt it was a truly admirable thing to give Ezra something
you wanted for yourself. Being fair can sometimes mean that you forego
what you want and give to another. This is the beginning of being a
socially just person and your parents must be so proud of you Max…..”
Research Challenges
 Difficulty of establishing what do we mean by social justice
and children’s agency, until we became more confident to
accept uncertainty and complexity
 Uncertainty about which children’s book to read to extend
conversations with children
 One of the teachers realised she needed to find out more
about asking questions which scaffold children’s learning
 Difficulty of finding time in busy day, especially to provide
continuity
 Lack of confidence, slow start to share Learning Stories
Teachers reflect and respond to the research
experience
 Teachers are foregrounding social justice and children’s
agency in their dialogues with colleagues in their settings
 Teachers presented at a teacher conference in Christchurch
to share their practice
 All teachers have grown confidence in using books as tools
and understanding it doesn’t matter which book they read
 All teachers have written a number of learning stories which
relate to children’s agency, making children’s agency visible
for children, parents and their community
 All teachers have grown confidence to articulate what they
see as social justice
References:

Dweck, C. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personalities and development. New York: Psychology Press.

Gunn, A. & de Vocht- van Alphen, L. (2011). Seeking social justice and equity through narrative assessment in early
childhood education. International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood, 9)1), 31-43.

Hawkins, K. (2008). Pre-schoolers' awareness of, and sensitivities to, social justice issues: Children's literature and
participatory action research. Journal of Australian Research in Early Childhood Education, 15(1), 69-81.

Hyland, N. (2010). Social Justice in Early Childhood Classrooms: What the research tells us. Young Children, 65(1), 82-90.

Lansdown, G. (2004). Participation and young children. Early Childhood Matters., November(103), 4-14.

Mackey, G., & Lockie, C. (2012). Huakina Mai: Opening doorways for children's participation within early childhood
settings - economic disadvantage as a barrier to citizenship. In D. Gordon-Burns, Gunn, A, Purdue, K, Surtees, N. (Ed.), Te
Aotūroa Tātaki. Inclusive early childhood education: Perspectives on inclusion, social justice and equity from Aotearoa
New Zealand. (pp. 75-94). Wellington: NZCER Press.

Miller, sj, & Kirkland, D. (2010). Change Matters. Critical essays on moving social justice research from theory to policy.
New York: Peter Lang.

Phillips, Louise. (2010). Social justice storytelling and young children's active citizenship. Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education, 31 (3), 363 - 376.

Ministry of Education. (2004-2009). Kei tua o te pae: Assessment for learning: Early childhood exemplars. Wellington:
Learning Media.

Smith, A. (2013). Understanding children and childhood (5th Edition ed.). Wellington: Bridget Williams Books.

Souto-Manning, M. (2009). Negotiating culturally responsive pedagogy through multicultural children’s literature:
Towards critical democratic literacy practices in a first grade classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. 9(1). p50-74.
Research literature Teacher-child dialogues:
 Mostly about importance of T-C dialogues and technical
teaching strategies for improvement.
 (eg Cullen, Haworth, Simmons, Schimanski, McGarva &
Kennedy, 2009; Dickinson, & Darrow, 2008; Durden & Rainer
Dangel, 2008; Gjems, 2010; Harris & Williams, 2007; SirajBlatchford & Manni, 2008).
 Shift to teachers asking open-ended questions and leaving a
pause for children to respond but…
 Teachers often ask questions they already know the answer
to and questions tend to be non-challenging.
• Some studies from poststructural perspectives and about power
inequity: eg Harwood, 2010; Jones & Brown, 2001; Lobman, 2006.
• Using Bakhtin: eg Cohen, 2009; Da Silva Iddings & McCafferty,
2007; Duncan & Turalli, 2003; White, 2009
Further
Readings
Literature cont:
• Some studies from poststructural perspectives and about
power inequity: eg Harwood, 2010; Jones & Brown,
2001; Lobman, 2006.
• Using Bakhtin: eg Cohen, 2009; Da Silva Iddings &
McCafferty, 2007; Duncan & Turalli, 2003; White, 2009