Performance as Pedagogy: Children’s Trust and the Negotiation of Subjectivities in the Context of Deliberative Dialogue

Abstract

In this article, we examine children’s (aged 9–11) experience of deliberative dialogue in which they sought to reach consensus around a shared problem with their peers. Through analysis of pre- and post-task interviews as well as videotapes of the sessions, we explore the pedagogical nature of children’s engagement. In light of shifting trust assessments of their peers, children tried on new roles and identities, even as they bumped up against entrenched narratives of self gleaned from prior experience. It is in the negotiation of these multiple subjectivities that children demonstrated their potential for rereadings of themselves in relation to others, challenging stereotyped subjectivities, and experimenting with their emerging voices. We foreground three children, Helen, David, and Addie, whose experiences serve as windows into the role of trust in civic learning.

Keywords:

• children
• civic education
• dialogue
• elementary
• trust

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Dr. Lauren Harris and Dr. Bruce VanSledright for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

FUNDING

This research program was generously supported by the Spencer Foundation’s New Civics Program.

Notes

1 Cobb Elementary School and all students’ names are pseudonyms.

2 Our use of the word “market” here is in the simple sense of exchange, à la Bourdieu (1991), and not in the traditional capitalistic economic sense, as in Friedman et al.’s “free market” ideology.

Additional information

Funding

This research program was generously supported by the Spencer Foundation’s New Civics Program.