Facilitating Children's Agency in the Interaction: Challenges for the Education System (Studies in Childhood and Youth)

This book analyzes children's agency as interactional achievement in formal and informal contexts of education and illuminates how agency can be encouraged and supported in these educational contexts. Taking a sociological approach, the author deals with children as social agents rather than learners and considers structures of interaction which encourage and support agency, rather than teaching. The book draws from field research conducted over more than twenty years in a variety of Italian and international contexts. This book is unique in providing a theoretical reflection on the social structures that can support childrens agency, as well as a large amount of examples which show how these structures and agency work. Claudio Baraldi is Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes in the Department of Studies on Language and Culture at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. His research concerns communication systems, especially intercultural and interlinguistic communication and adult-children interactions in educational contexts. He has co-authored, edited and co-edited eight books for international publishers, and published more than 60 chapters and articles in international volumes and journals Acknowledgments Contents About the Author List of Photographs Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Structure of the Book Chapter 2: The Concept of Agency and the Sociology of Childhood 1 The Conceptual Narrative of Children’s Agency 2 Children’s Agency as a Controversial Concept 2.1 Participation and Agency 2.2 Social Constructionism and Agency 2.3 Children’s Marginalization and Agency 2.4 What Is Wrong with the Concept of Children’s Agency? 3 Children’s Agency in Communication Systems 3.1 Participation and Communication Systems 3.2 The Conditions of Children’s Participation in Communication Systems 3.3 The Meaning and Structural Constraints of Agency 3.4 Interaction Systems and the Media System 4 Conclusions: Researching Agency in Communication Systems References Chapter 3: Educational Interaction: Tradition and ­Change 1 The Constraints of Children’s Agency in Education 2 The Function of Education and the Teaching Interaction 3 The Structure of Education 3.1 Other Structural Constraints in the Education System 4 Is the Teaching Interaction Changing? 4.1 Changes in Education in Early Childhood 4.2 Are Changes in Education Effective? 4.3 Why Change Education? 5 Cultural Differences and Intercultural Communication in the Education System 6 Education and Language Barriers 7 Conclusions: Education and Agency References Chapter 4: Facilitation in the Education System 1 Introduction 2 The Communicative Construction of Children’s Personal Expressions 3 From Child-Centered Education to Facilitation 4 The System of Facilitation 4.1 Facilitated Interactions 4.2 Facilitation as a Complex Communication System 5 Facilitation, Trust Building, and Conflict Management 6 Facilitation as a Dialogic System 6.1 Facilitation as Reflexive Coordination 6.2 From Reflexive Coordination to the Coordination of Reflection 7 The Facilitation of Children’s Personal Cultural Trajectories 8 Conclusions on the Facilitation System References Chapter 5: Researching Agency and Interaction: Methodological Considerations 1 Introduction: The Meaning of Methodology 2 Methodologies for Collecting Data on Children’s Agency 3 Video Recording as a Support for Second-Order Observation 3.1 Video Recording, Conversation Analysis, and the Analysis of Interaction Systems 4 Technical Aspects of Video Recording 5 Sources of the Analysis of Children’s Agency 6 Video Recording and Facilitation During the COVID-19 Pandemic 7 Conclusions References Chapter 6: Ways of Facilitating Children’ Agency 1 Facilitative Actions and Children’s Agency 2 Facilitation as Encouragement 3 Minimal Facilitation 4 Facilitation as Perspective-Taking and Support 5 Facilitation as Commentary and Personal Storytelling 5.1 Displacements 6 Facilitation as Coordination of Reflection 7 The Complex Hybrid Facilitated Interaction: An Example 8 Conclusions References Chapter 7: Facilitating Children’s Autonomous Initiatives 1 Introduction 2 Giving the Floor to Children’s Initiatives 3 Managing Children’s Initiatives 4 Child and Adolescent Leaders and Coordinators in Interactions 5 Conclusions References Chapter 8: Facilitating Children’s Agency Across Cultures and Languages 1 Introduction 2 Constructions of Cultural Identity 3 Constructions of Hybrid Identity 4 Deconstructions of Cultural Identity 5 Overcoming Language Barriers 6 Conclusions References Chapter 9: Managing Conflicts Related to Children’s Agency 1 Introduction 2 From Facilitation to the Mediation of Conflict Production 2.1 The Facilitation of Conflict Production 2.2 Mediation as the Development of Conflicts 3 Deconstructing Negative Identities and Proposing Alternative Narratives 4 Conclusions References Chapter 10: Reducing and Suppressing Children’s Agency 1 Introduction 2 Normative Expectations and Unequal Distribution of Participation 3 Conflict Management as Imposition and Negative Assessment 4 Repression of Children’s Deviant Agency 5 A Dialogic Approach to Dealing with Children’s Deviant Actions 6 Conclusions References Chapter 11: Conclusions: Beyond Education? 1 The Facilitation System: A Summary 1.1 The Facilitation System as the Combination of Facilitative Actions 1.2 A Brief Review of “Children’s Agency” 1.3 Are There Specific Forms of Facilitation? 1.4 The Complexity of Facilitation 2 Facilitation and Education 3 Implementing the Facilitation System 3.1 Realization 3.2 Training 4 Future Lines of Research 5 The Relevance of Agency References Index