Research

I take an interdisciplinary approach to early childhood studies and elementary (teacher) education to interrogate how writing with a variety of communicative resources (e.g., visuals, audio, material items) facilitates new spaces for human diversities. Below, I highlight current and past research projects exploring such concepts.

NFRF Grant: Coastal Climate Kids

COVID-19 forced field-based researchers to reconsider possibilities for data generation. Many educational researchers paused their ethnographic studies indefinitely because it was unsafe to engage children in physical spaces. Thus, participant recruitment, retention, and distribution of educative materials to children needed reimagining.

Designed as a comparative multi-sited case study across three coastal communities, we trialed two recruitment efforts: an open call for participation online and a more traditional form–inviting children from partner schools. However, in our study, schools served only as a starting point for connecting to children rather than our primary research site.

Supported by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) and aligned with North America’s meteorological seasons, children in the Coastal Climate Kid Collective received a seasonal kit full of fun, child-centered activities. Through the series of seasonal observations and at-home exercises, each Coastal Climate Kid:

1. Cultivated relationships within the ecosystems of their coastal city;

2. Crafted representations of their dynamic environments and their changing relationship within them across seasons; 

3. Communicated with a connected network of learners across three geographically-diverse coastal regions.

This collaborative study with Kathleen Schenkel (San Diego State University) and Jon M. Wargo (University of Michigan) and the Coastal Climate Kids Collective forwarded alternative ways to remotely conduct place-based science education inquiries with children in the focal cities of Boston, Massachusetts; San Diego, California; and Toronto, Ontario.

Growing Democracy: Examining Children’s Civic Literacies in Presidential Election Years

Although there is a renewed interest in civics within educational circles, much of the research focuses on young adults close to voting age, despite that children form politically relevant social identities early on. Thus, more longitudinal research examining how children develop long-lasting preferences, affiliations, and habits of civic participation is needed. This work is especially critical in a politically polarized U.S. society.

Supported by a Research Development Award from the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Research Foundation, This qualitative study is among the first to trace children’s civic literacies within schools across time, age, and political landscapes. By closely examining children’s writing, action, and talk, this longitudinal study will consider how children engage with wider discourses and how they (re)produce political rhetoric. Findings will yield insights about how the civic life of children develops and broaden possibilities for teachers’ pedagogical practices and children’s civic literacies within schools.

Learning to ‘Be Loud’ Through Radio Broadcasting:

Examining How Children Use Digital Literacies to Amplify Community Stories

Once considered a “new” force in education (Ryan, 1938), radio (or, recently, podcasting) is a powerful tool for K-16 teaching. While many scholars have examined youth’s digital creations, few have explored how children use technologies to enhance understandings of community or reimagine preferable futures. Whereas others have studied collaborative child-adult broadcasts or how podcasting supports literacy learning, in this study, I considered how children use radio as “a tool to carve out opportunities in which ideas of self and other are imagined, produced, and lived” (Bosch, 2007, p. 277) and shift “the centre of gravity from the university to the field in a way that includes dialog and collaboration with parents and community members” by partnering with Be Loud Studios, a New Orleans-based community organization (Sleeter, 2008, p. 1954).

With support from a National Council of Teachers of English-ELATE Research Initiative Grant and a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant (COVID-19 Special Initiative), the long-term goal of this project was to provide insights about possibilities for teaching with/in community and for children to share their funds of knowledge through the digital and, specifically, child-radio. Ultimately, this study offered new possibilities for bolstering children’s confidence as equity-oriented change agents by examining the possibilities of child-radio as a pedagogical tool while emphasizing the benefit of educators and researchers developing reciprocal relationships with community organizations.

Making Citizens in an Urban Primary Classroom:

Exploring Young Children's Critical Maker Literacies

‘Making’ and ‘makerspaces’ are quickly becoming more and more popular, and prevalent, in discussions of education (for an overview of ‘maker’ research, see EdWeek, 2016). While practicing teachers and educational researchers alike have engaged in exploring the potentials of ‘maker ed,’ little attention has yet been paid to the possibilities and practicalities of engaging our youngest learners in practices of making (MakEY, 2017). Because few studies have explored ‘making’ done by young children from racially and linguistically diverse backgrounds, my study offers an innovative opportunity for primary grade practitioners and researchers to understand this work within a richly diverse city.

With funding from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, I am examining how children in one Toronto primary school use ‘making’ to interrogate critical community issues and to develop confidence as socially-engaged citizens. Integrating ‘making’ with literacy and social studies, I am also considering making as a tool for understanding and building a) community, b) identity, c) relationships, and d) respect and how such integration may bolster young children’s confidence as equity-oriented change agents of their present (and future) communities.