A third space pedagogy: embracing complexity in a super-diverse, early childhood education setting

Abstract

In Britain, 'super-diverse' communities, where children navigate multiple cultural repertoires, are increasingly prevalent. However, Reception teachers are pressured to ensure children, aged four and five, conform to a narrow conception of 'school-readiness'. Research demonstrates children in multicultural contexts construct a 'third space', bridging their home and school discourses. This research shows how opportunities for third space creation are inherently tied to the nature of physical space, and its concomitant social expectations. It is argued that complexity in super-diverse communities can be harnessed and embraced, rather than reduced. Data presented were drawn from a year-long collaborative ethnographic study of children in a Reception class in the north of England. Children co-created cartoons, collaborating with the researcher in interpreting the data. Significantly, findings indicate that teachers can incorporate the third space as an alternative lens through which to understand and meet the challenges of teaching a linguistically and culturally diverse student cohort.

Ενίσχυση Των Συμμετοχικών Πρακτικών Στην Προσχολική Εκπαίδευση: Μετασχηματίζοντας Την Ερευνητική Γνώση Σε Εκπαιδευτικό Υλικό

“…Οι μαθησιακές διαδικασίες θα πρέπει να μπορούν να προσαρμόζονται στις αλλαγές που προτείνουν τα παιδιά ή στις καταστάσεις που προκύπτουν (Baraldi, 2014· Chaille & Britain, 1997· Smith, 2016. Αυτή η προσαρμοστικότητα επιτρέπει στη μάθηση να ανταποκρίνεται στις αναδυόμενες ανάγκες και να παρέχει γνώσεις και δεξιότητες που μπορούν να εφαρμοστούν στον πραγματικό κόσμο (Tatham-Fashanu, 2023).…”

Play and learning in early childhood education: tensions and challenges

“…Research on children's free play makes many claims to its benefits in the domains of development (cognitive/metacognitive, physical/embodied, social/relational and affective) and specific benefits in areas of learning such as literacy (Brooker, Blaise & Edwards, 2014;Stagg-Peterson & Friedrich, 2022) and mathematics (Worthington & van Oers, 2016). Research on children's peer cultures has noted the significance of play for social affiliation and co-operation (Chesworth, 2019), for sharing multimodal, cultural and linguistic repertoires (Rogoff, Correa-Chávez & Dexter, 2015;Tatham-Fashanu, 2021), for building relationships with peers and adults and taking up powerful social roles (Stagg-Peterson, Young Jang & Tjandra, 2020). Children can be actively involved in co-creating their own developmental environments, where they are able to express their agency, identities, interests, heritages, languages and cultural practices.…”