Exporting Australia: National Identity and Australian Picture Books

2019

Children's Geographies

Nationalism as an ideology seeks to assert the primacy of national community in children's thinking, beings and feelings through curricula and official school rituals. Another form of nationalism permeating the daily routines and mundane spaces of everyday life, however, often remains imperceptible to our critical gaze. This paper brings these invisible practices into sight in young children's institutional lives and uniquely focuses on their affective and emotional dimensions. To understand how these affective practices operate, it zooms in on two situations, first, in which a teacher invites young children to engage with the nation's affective and emotional dimensions, and second, where affective practices of nation are performed by children. Situations are drawn from an ethnographic study in an Australian preschool. The paper calls for more recognition of and a critical engagement with everyday nationalism and its affective practices that often go unnoticed yet seamlessly reproduce exclusive ideals of nation.

Section: Reading Possum Magicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reading Possum Magicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Affective practices of everyday nationalism in an Australian preschool

2019

Children's Geographies

“…In this event, the human and the non-human teacher -the song -play equally important roles in what and how nation is being performed. The story draws on a stereotypical Australian imaginary: going to the bush, hot, UTE, picnic and cricket (Bradford, 1995). The teacher enacts the cheers with excitement, drawing together human didactics with feelings for the nation that some children mimic.…”

Section: Song: Non-human Teachermentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education: Multi-Sited Comparison between Pedagogies of Nation in Australia and Hungary

Lappalainen

2019

European Education

This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organising social life. The 'pedagogy of nation' operates in different ways in these two settings.In Australia, it draws on contemporary patterns of lifestyle, whereas in Hungary it rekindles past traditions within contemporary global flows of culture. The paper concludes by calling for the relevance of revealing everyday nationalism in institutions for young children and for reflexivity to trouble its exclusionary forms.

“…Aussie Easter is about a quintessential and stale Australian story full of stereotypical tropes, such as the UTE, picnic or cricket, representing an Anglo-Australian myth and the ‘informality, classlessness, and love of the natural that typifies “Australia”’ (Bradford, 1995: 112). Animated possibly by her patriotic emotions arising as she is singing and acting the song, the teacher loudly cheers with voice and movement.…”

Section: Operationalizing ‘Pedagogy Of Nation’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pedagogy of nation: A concept and method to research nationalism in young children’s institutional lives

2018

Childhood

In our current context, researching how young children encounter and inhabit the nation among diverse people is ever-more important. In societies free of conflict, the nation operates beneath the surface, therefore, it is difficult to study. By bringing together the perspectives of 'everyday nationalism' and 'cultural pedagogy', I develop the concept of 'pedagogy of nation' to focus on and account for various didactic means through which young children learn to inhabit the nation and to further explore everyday nationalism.