Revisioning: Positioning of a parent, student, and researcher in response to classroom context

Abstract

This reflection on a study is grounded in a revisioning of one set of data from a longitudinal study of children who were prenatally exposed to crack/cocaine. For this revisioning, positioning theory was used as a lens to reinterpret the original data. As a result of this reanalysis, the varying positions of a foster mother (the child's biological grandmother), student (her male foster child), and researcher are described. The classroom contexts that the child, experienced in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade are used as benchmarks for analysis. The results show that the foster mother most often positioned herself as a leader or expert, the child positioned himself as a successful student, and the researcher was positioned by these two as a recipient of information.