Social justice storytelling and young children's active citizenship

Abstract

This paper examines empirical data with regard to recent theorizing and conceptualizing of children's citizenship. It draws on a doctoral study where the author told social justice stories to one class of children aged five to six years to investigate the active citizenship that the stories set in motion. By imagining this action research study rhizomatically, organic and tangent pathways were mapped of what the stories set in motion. Analysis was informed by poststructuralist discourse theory and critical theory on political action, which enabled identification of enablers and constrainers of young children's actual practice of citizenship. A case is argued for acknowledgement of young children's political identities and capacity to act as communitarian citizens.

Keywords:

• children's citizenship
• constructs of children
• political
• social actions
• storytelling
• transformative education

Notes

1. Prep is the first year of schooling in Queensland, Australia. It is a non-compulsory year.

2. This is the name this child selected as a pseudonym.

3. This story was based on biographical details of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani child labourer and activist.

4. This story was based on Craig Kielberger's journey of forming the Free the Children network, the world's largest network of children helping children free from war, labour and poverty (Free the Children, 2007; Stasiulis, 2002).

5. This is the name this child selected as a pseudonym.