Children's personal learning agendas at home

Abstract

Ethnographic case studies of nine British working class children were conducted in order to investigate learning from the perspectives of the families. The research aim was to study children learning outside school in situations that were not specifically set up with learning in mind; in social contexts where learning was not an obligation or purpose and was therefore incidental and non‐self‐conscious; and to study children learning in the company of adults who were not professionals. This article does not offer a universal portrait of these children's learning, but a particular way of seeing and interpreting it. The children's home learning is fuelled by social and emotional dimensions. There are multiple competitors for children's attention in any given learning opportunity, and children are not necessarily learning what adults think they are. The children in the study transform the outcomes of their opportunities for learning into learning about their experiences of the human condition.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the children and their families for their generosity in welcoming me into their homes and lives; and Professor Donald McIntyre and Mary Jane Drummond for their continued encouragement and support. This research was funded by the ESRC.

Notes

1. Douglas (1976, pp. 124–125) describe ‘the development of a systematic understanding which is clearly recognisable and understandable to the members of the setting and which is done as much as possible in their own terms. … It uses their words, ideas and methods of expression wherever possible, but cautiously goes beyond these’.

2. The voices of fathers were predominantly reported second‐hand by the mothers and children.

3. I outline ‘the three’ who appeared within the scope of this study. There are probably many more: the child their friends know, the child the grandparents know, the child the lunchtime supervisor knows …

4. Barry was talking to his mother about fighting at school. She told him that ‘violence [doesn't] work’ and that it takes a ‘bigger man to walk away’. This was Barry's retort.

5. Katy took a photograph of the boy next door who had been handcuffed in their play. Katy explained how the policewoman in their imaginative play had handcuffed him because he had ‘pushed someone’ and ‘pulled [their] hair’.