What is our role as educators in contributing to the development of the childs identity as a learner, a social agent, and a participant in our society?
Introduction
How we view young children – who they are within a social-cultural context and who they are as learners within educational spaces – influences our expectations of them and of ourselves as educators. John Nimmo (1998) says, “As a teacher, I have learned repeatedly that my understanding of young children is limited by my own experience and knowledge, and that I need to always be open to new truths, new perspectives on children’s capabilities, and most of all, new protagonists or people who stimulate change” (p. 295).
This module is an invitation to think about contemporary conceptions of young children and the relation of these conceptions to the pedagogical paths educators choose to embrace in the classroom. An additional question for us to think about is, What is our role as educators in contributing to the development of the child’s identity as a learner, a social agent, and a participant in our society?
As the reading by Malaguzzi for this module will emphasize, we all have an image, or even multiple images of the child. This image is influence by many experiences, cultural beliefs, traditions and histories, and various bodies of knowledge (i.e. psychology, sociology). Our image of the child is heavily influenced by philosophies and theories that we have discussed in this course. For example, John Dewey taught us to view children as social agent and active learners, Erikson and Freud’s theories of personal development enriched our thinking about children as social and emotional beings, Piaget’s theory of the stages of intellectual development helps us see children as thinkers, and Vygotsky’s ideas about the reciprocal relationships between the child and the social context for learning focused our attentions on children as participants in the meaning making process.
Susan Fraser (2006) further clarifies the sources from which the image of the child is constructed. She speaks of our personal experiences as children, our empirical knowledge of children that stems from directly observing children, and the cultural one – the image that is built on values and understandings about “what childhood should be at the time and place where we live” (p.20). These lenses through which we interpret children are in “conversation” with each other. These images and definitions of the child change and expand when we encounter new ways to understand who children are and who they can be.