Visible Voices

Current PhD student Nathan Archer and two EdD graduates Dr. Elizabeth Henderson and Dr Alex Poll from the School of Education recently presented papers at a self-organised symposium in Greece.

The group attended the 29th European Early Childhood Research Association (EECERA) conference in Thessaloniki 20–23 August at the Universities of Thessaloniki and Macedonia. This year’s EECERA conference was attend by almost a thousand colleagues from across the globe with over 170 papers presented.

The symposium was entitled ‘Visible Voices: Using narratives to explore identity, emotion, attachment and dissonance.’ The three papers explored the strength of narratives to articulate the complexity that exists in early years work; the social and cultural structures that define and constrain us, often leading to dissonance and conflict with personal values. Collectively the papers asked: What do narratives uniquely contribute to early childhood education and care research? and how might we further develop their use to build a platform that raises the profile of those who live and work with young children and our intention to provide a responsive, caring, high-quality provision for our children?

Nathan Archer shared his work on borderland narratives of early childhood educators, exploring agency and activism. Dr Alex Poll spoke about her research understanding emotional intimacy between secular Jewish Israeli mothers and their children. Dr. Elizabeth Henderson offered a performative autoethnography exploring emotional labour in a time of increasing accountability.

The symposium sought to address the conference sub-themes:

‘How useful are descriptive accounts, observations and multi-perspective narratives in illuminating our understanding, for example, in giving a grounded, participatory, democratic vision? Participants who tell it as they experience it? What is the role and utility of qualitative paradigms in capturing cases, phenomena and events? Does Early Years need to develop new methodologies more sensitive to the human sciences and the human condition? How do these accounts illuminate and how can they be improved?’ (EECERA 2019).

We agreed what a positive, collaborative and engaging conference it had been.

Nathan Archer (Doctoral Student)

EECERA (2019) https://www.eecera2019.org/about/strands