Intergenerational transmission or situated inequality in school life?
- Children participating and developing personal agency in and across various social
practices
Charlotte Højholt, Roskilde University, charh@ruc.dk & Dorte Kousholt, Aarhus
University, dkou@edu.au.dk - Denmark
Paper presented at 4th congress of ISCAR, Sydney, Australia Sept30-Oct3 2014
1. Introduction
My point of departure in this paper is the dilemma that the way we understand children and
families living with social problems or a so-called problematic background seems to be part
of the very problem.
In the symposium we take a common point of reference in a historical situation
characterized by shared care between various care-givers as parents, teachers, and social
workers as well as a child life across different kinds of social practices as the family, the
school, the special help arrangements – and together with peers.
In this situation it seem as a paradox that no matter where children may find themselves in
trouble the widespread reaction is to point to problems related to their family background.
In the many-sided conflicts about the problems, it appears legitimate, scientific and
professional to focus on intergenerational transmission.
Nevertheless, this is turning the interventions towards the individual child and his family
and concepts connected to the intergenerational transmission and not to the concrete
conditions of everyday life.
Seen from the perspectives of the families it sometimes seem as thou we diminish their
disposal of everyday matters instead of expanding their possibilities for participation and
influence on different life contexts.
Such dilemmas are central to the following analysis were I will try to unfold an approach to
social practice in which situated meanings, agency and conflicts are interlinked.
I will discuss these general dilemmas through concrete examples from observations of
children’s conduct of everyday life across social contexts - where different parties have
different kinds of responsibility and conflicting perspectives on the children. The children
you will meet are 8-10 years old.
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2. Social inequalities conceptualized as a question of intergenerational transmission
Searching for the scientific formulations of this widespread understanding of a kind of
automatic process of transfer between children’s family backgrounds and their performance
in school, led me to investigations of ‘intergenerational transmission’.
Characteristic of these often large-scale longitudinal studies is that quite a lot of different
issues are composed in a scientific figure of factors and variables. This could for instance be
formulations as (my underlining of concepts I want to emphasize):
‘to determine how parental worklessness impacts on children’s cognitive ability,
education attainment, behaviours, attitude to school, academic aspirations...’ (Barnes et al
2012 p 4)
‘Among these individuals, parents’ childhood risk profile (…) has been shown to
contribute to subsequent socioeconomic disadvantage’ (Saltaris et al 2004 p 106)
‘parental stimulation predicts the intellectual functioning of preschool-aged offspring’
(ibid p 1);‘
‘In light of these indications of intergenerational transfer of risk by the time the
second generation reached school age, we became interested in uncovering the potential
mechanisms contributing to the continuity of maladjustment, (ibid p 107).
The reading illustrated complexity, interrelated meanings and contradictory findings but still
the very concepts of ‘intergenerational transfer of risk’, ‘prediction’ and ‘mechanism’ seem
unchallenged and turn the interventions towards ‘these individuals’ at the expense of the
meanings of the problematic conditions.
This very picture of transfer has consequences for how professionals experience and relate
to the problems.
In a study about family treatments the professionals point to psychological concepts of
attachment, parents being attentive, having a good eye contact etc. - concepts associated
with the black box of ‘transfer’.
In contrast to this, the parents are pointing to the social conditions that were the point of
departure of the research - as for instance economic problems, housing problems, a lack of
network and support – and also to difficulties and conflicts in relation to the way the
children are met, received and involved in the educational contexts.
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At the same time the parents relate to the understanding of the problem they become part of
as seen in an example from our research. Paul and his family are send to a family class - an
intervention where parents participate to prevent intergenerational transmission.
Paul’s mother is angry with the professionals; she feels that they insinuate that
her way of being a mother is the basis of the problems.
Paul’s parents are both young and uneducated, and he is, in discussions about
the problems, regarded as having a “weak background” (Højholt & Kousholt
2015).
So in the concrete collaboration this way of formulating the problems of the children is as a
matter of fact part of conflictual processes across a plurality of different perspectives
(Højholt 2006, 2012).
If we return to the model of transmission it is striking that other contexts in the life of the
children (as the school and child institutions) are not involved in the analyses.
Nonetheless the concept of personal agency is involved - but in this economic figure agency
and conditions become independent factors:
‘Being a poor child increases the chances of being a poor adult but this is not
always the case, and other factors can operate independently to affect well-being
over the life-course. Although highly context specific, household characteristics and
initial endowments have been found to be important – an individual’s asset bundle,
their capabilities and characteristics, and their power to exercise agency.’ (ibid p. v)
In such formulations assets, characteristics and agency are set up as isolated.
In this way I find the overview of these investigations illustrative for the theoretical
dilemma of analysing agency, situated interplay, and concrete meanings of social conditions
in a coherent framework where none of the aspects can be seen as isolated from the others.
The great paradox is that an attention to unequal conditions of everyday life in the figure of
transmission - and in the interventions - is turned away from precisely the social conditions.
Now I will unfold a bit of situated analyses of everyday life pointing to the personal
meanings of unequal conditions. This is meant to encourage possibilities for understanding
how agency, in contrast to an independent variable, is entangled in the conflictuality of
social practice.
3. Developing agency through participation in social practice
– theoretical background and general observations
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To connect the personal way of taking part in social life and the contextual conditions for
children’s lives, I will anchor a concept of development in a theoretical approach to social practice. In this
approach, the historical and conflictual nature of social processes is emphasised (Lave 2008,
2011).
And to address how children actively arrange their lives in institutional arrangements across
contexts and in relation to a plurality of different demands, possibilities, contradictions and
conflicts, I build on a concept of ‘conduct of everyday life’ (Holzkamp 2013).
This concept is meant to connect societal life conditions and personal ways of dealing with
these in daily life. This is highlighting the creative but ordinary and unattended processes
often overlooked in theorizing.
The recent developments in our research communities emphasize that the conduct of
everyday life is a fundamental collective process - subjects conduct their life in
collaboration with other subjects and in relation to different matters in their lives (Chimirri
2013; Dreier 2008, 2011; Højholt & Kousholt 2015; Juul 2015; Røn Larsen & Stanek 2015)
This attention points to social coordination and conflicts as central problems of the personal
conduct of life (Axel 2002, 2011).
In the school we observe the children coordinating about the tasks, the resources as books,
pencils and balls, about how to orientate in the timetable – and at the same time busy
negotiating, conflicting and arranging what to do and with whom.
In the institutions for children’s leisure time we observe the children negotiate about who
can take part, about where and how to start up common activities, how to prioritize and
organize and how to maintain and carry through their plans.
And especially we observe the children coordinate their movements across the different
contexts as for instance when they change from the school to the institutions for children’s
leisure time.
This is not easy – it involve a lot of personal and common effort - and often conflicts,
exclusion and the situation of being left behind occur.
The personal task of developing conduct of life, personal preferences, plans and priorities is
closely connected to participation in social communities. The developmental challenges are
interwoven in social coordination, negotiations and possibilities for creating something
together with someone else.
With these observations I want to point to some general challenges in the life of children
that we as adults often overlook and when we do that, we cannot see the general
conflictuality as a background for specific dilemmas.
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When we overlook the social complexity of children’s daily life and the ordinary difficulties
in relation to organising a child’s life,
And problems appear related to deviant circumstances, often related to an individual child
and its background and intergenerational transmission.
In this way we overlook how the children are positioned differently in relation to managing
the general challenges.
4. Examples
To discuss this kind of situated inequality I will give you some glimpses into the situations
of 3 of the children we follow in their transitions between family class and the institutions
for children’s leisure time.
Observations of Paul whom you have heard about reveal how he actively seeks out the other
children and tries to engage in their play - continuously struggling to connect to activities
and relations and to make his contributions count.
Still he rarely becomes a central actor, exerting an influence on the progress of the activities
and he repeatedly loses his grip on the social interplay and is left alone.
One afternoon he succeeds in playing with 2 other boys but then the father of one of them
arrives. The 2 boys are used to go home with each other and Paul tries to join – but the
father seems a little confused and declares that he does not have Paul’s parents' phone
number.
When he leaves with his son the other boy leaves Pauls as well - no longer interested in
playing. Paul looks at some other boys, wanders around a bit, listen to other children telling
about whom to visit and he states:
Paul: "Nobody can come home to me - I don’t have anybody who is coming home
to me” (Højholt & Kousholt 2015)
When we follow these children over time there seems to be a change from struggling hard to
find a place in the children’s communities, towards withdrawing - the adults as well as and
the other children seem to give up along the way, and they end up concluding “We can do
nothing more for him.”
And it seems that Paul also thinks so himself. There seems to be a dynamic of mutual
resignation - where the different parties experience restricted influence and give up on each
other.
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Another boy, Mads, is trying to arrange his participation in the institution in other ways. He
seeks the attention from his former friend but in relation to that he turns into conflicts with a
third boy - and it is concluded that “Mads goes crazy”.
By observing daily life of the children, we became aware of the other children’s
explanations, that Mads had been moved to a different school “to learn how to behave
properly.”
This provides insights into how describing Mads as someone “who goes crazy” seems to be
self-evident and how this representation in itself becomes part of the problem.
After the conflict the observer finds Mads alone at the edge of the play area, barricading
himself in a fort and explaining:
Mads: I don’t play with anyone. I don’t have any friends here. (Højholt &
Kousholt 2014)
In relation to the third boy – Jacob – the intervention changes during the process we follow
Jacob. One of the special teachers from the special institution joins Jacob in his general
class – emphasizing that:
‘When I am there I am not just there for Jacob. I am there for the entire
class.’(Højholt 2011, Røn Larsen 2011).
She makes observations of the children together, meetings with all the parents, and work
with general dilemmas and conflicts between the children as well as about the children.
At an interdisciplinary meeting about Jacobs’s family Jacob’s mother tells as an important
change in the case, that a parent to a girl in the class called her to tell that Jacob had played
with her daughter and that she has a very nice boy.
In this way the meanings of other parents may play a part in processes of exclusion as well
as in processes of support and inclusion. And it is interesting how the picture of Jacob
changes during these processes.
The family class is meant to change the behaviour of individual children so that they will
participate in new more adequate ways in their general class
- but social positions in social communities are collectively created in relation to general
dynamics in these communities
A single child can’t change such dynamics but in the interplay small things as invitations
from others, and the possibilities to experiences each other in situations outside the school
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and especially the active collaboration between the involved adults seem to be quite
revolutionary.
5. Conclusions
With this I want to illuminate how personal ‘agency’ is interwoven with the ways social
conflicts develop.
In the discussions of intergenerational transmission personal agency was involved as an
independent variable – and also beyond statistic accounts, personal agency is often involved
as something some persons ‘have’ or have not - a question that seems to stay mysterious and
outside analysis.
When personal actions are seen as entangled in collective actions agency become related to
participation in conflictual social practice.
Following different cases in school life our situated analyses illustrate how different
perspectives on the general conflicts sometimes are connected.
This is not just a question of harmony but when the involved parties see themselves and
each other as contributing to the ‘same but many-sided concern’ - the conflicts may lead to
development of understanding and this might open up for action possibilities and an
extension of cooperation.
Other times several parties are giving up and giving up seems to constitute difficult
conditions for interaction and various parties seem to loose influence and their personal
grasp of the issues.
In these processes the children are sometimes giving up strategies for taking part in lessons
as well. Thus the development of self-understanding and agency should not be seen
determined by but related to social possibilities for taking part in social practice.
This critical analysis is not meant to question whether social conditions as e g family
resources have meanings; but to explore how we can understand personal meanings as
related to situated inequality in relation to the social distribution of possibilities for taking
part in and influencing different social contexts.
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