Practicing Palimpsest: Layering Stories and Disrupting Dominant Western Narratives in Early Childhood Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53232Keywords:
hermeneutics, early childhood education, narrative, identity, diversity, languageAbstract
Interpreting and contextualizing the meanings of spoken, transcribed, visual and embodied languages, we explore how the life stories of immigrant educators evoke socio-cultural and diverse imaginaries. We incorporate the Greek practice of palimpsest - a layering of stories, voices, fragments, and traces - to understand forms of active becomings which provide possibilities for dissonance and transformation and treat the self as relational and inherently multiple. Critically reflecting on this stratum of narratives and cultural understandings, we draw on the insights of several theoreticians and scholars to consider how the language of immigration, trauma, and displacement emerge in educator’s thinking about the curriculum they are given. In transcribing stories - the participants and our own - we heard “layered voices†(Aoki, 2005) that pointed us to different understandings about the immigrant experience, the connections between the self and other and what it means for immigrant educators and students to live together in ECE settings.
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Keywords: hermeneutics; early childhood education; narrative; identity; diversity; language
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Bjartveit, C., & Panayotidis, E. L. (in press). Pointing to Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and re-imagining visual poetics in research. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education.
Bruner, J. (2002). Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cannella, G. (2002). Deconstructing early childhood education. Social justice & revolution.
New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Carr, M., & Lee. W. (2012). Learning stories. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Depalma, R. (2010). Toward a practice of polyphonic dialogue in multicultural teacher education. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(3), 436-453.
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Diamond, P., Arnold, R., & Wearing, C. (1997). An empathic inquiry into qualitative research: A palimpsest. The Australian Educational Researcher, 24(3), 83-96.
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Huyssen, A. (2003). Present pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Henning, K., & Kirova, A. (2012). The role of cultural artefacts in play as tools to mediate learning, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(3), 226-241.
Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), 14–25.
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McArdle, F., & Piscitelli, B. (2002). Early childhood art education: A palimpsest. Australian Art Education, 25(1), 11-15.
McKenna, J., & McDade, T. (2005). Why babies should never sleep alone: A review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding. Pediatric Respiratory Reviews, 6, 134-152.
Munro Hendry, P. (2008). Engendering wisdom. Listening to Kuan Yin and Julian of Norwich. In C. Eppert & H. Wang (Eds.) Cross-cultural studies in curriculum. Eastern thought, educational insights, (pp. 207-226). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Paley, V. (1981). Wally’s stories. Conversations in the kindergarten. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Panayotidis, E. L. (2011). Thinking/teaching in multiple tongues. The Interdisciplinary Imagination. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(1), 48-63.
Peterson, E., & Coltrane, B. (2003). Culture in second language teaching. Center for Applied Linguistics. Washington, DC: Eric Clearninghouse on Languages and Linguistics. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/digest_pdfs/0309peterson.pdf
Powell, K.A. (2008). Remapping the city: Palimpsest, place, and identity in art education research. Studies in Art Education: National Art Education Association: A Journal of Issues and Research, 50(1), 6-21.
Rodari, G. (1996). The grammar of fantasy. An introduction to the art of inventing stories. New York, NY: Teachers and Writers Collaborative.
Saunders, L. (2003). Flying, writing poetry and doing educational research. British Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 175-187.
Smits, H. (2010). “The uncannily correct and the elusively trueâ€: A conversation with Ted Aoki. One World, 42(2), 12-20.
Tan, S. (2006). The arrival. New York, NY: Arthur A. Levine Books an Imprint of Scholastic Inc.
Taylor, A., & Giugni, M. (2012). Common worlds: Reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 108-119.
Thompson, P., & Zizek, S. (2013). The privatization of hope. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wood, M. (2012). The other case. Daedalus, 141(1), 130–138.
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Zeitgeist Films (Producer) (2002). Derrida [YouTube Video] Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtcpwJCC6Co
Aoki, T. (2005). Curriculum in a new key. The collected works of Ted. T. Aoki. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bee, H., & Boyd, D. (2010). The developing child, (12th ed). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Bhabha, H. (1996). Culture’s in-between. In S. Hall & P. Du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 53-60). London, UK: Sage.
Bjartveit, C. (2011). Speaking the language of nature: Reconceptualizing early literacy in telling the stories from the garden. Canadian Children, 36(2), 17-23.
Bjartveit, C., & Panayotidis, E. L. (in press). Pointing to Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and re-imagining visual poetics in research. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education.
Bruner, J. (2002). Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cannella, G. (2002). Deconstructing early childhood education. Social justice & revolution.
New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Carr, M., & Lee. W. (2012). Learning stories. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Carr, P., & Lund, D. (2007). The great white north? Exploring whiteness, privilege and identity in education. Rotterdam, NL: Sense.
Depalma, R. (2010). Toward a practice of polyphonic dialogue in multicultural teacher education. Curriculum Inquiry, 40(3), 436-453.
Derrida, J., & Dufourmantelle, A. (2000). Of hospitality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Diamond, P., Arnold, R., & Wearing, C. (1997). An empathic inquiry into qualitative research: A palimpsest. The Australian Educational Researcher, 24(3), 83-96.
Eppert, C. (2008). Fear, (educational) fictions of character, and Buddhist insights for an arts-based witnessing curriculum. In C. Eppert & H. Wang, Cross-cultural studies in curriculum. Eastern thought, educational insights (pp. 55-108). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gadamer, H. G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed.) (D.G. Marshall & J. Weinsheimer, Trans). New York, NY: Continuum.
Ganesh, S., & Holmes, P. (2013). Positioning intercultural dialogue – Theories, pragmatics, and an agenda. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 4(20, 81-86.
Ghiso, M.P., & Low, D.E. (2013). Students using multimodal literacies to surface micronarratives of United States immigration. Literacy, 47,26-34. Retrieved from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-4369.2012.00678.x/pdf
Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2008). Diversity in early care and education (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination. Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Grieshaber, S., & Cannella, G. (Eds.) (2001). Embracing identities in early childhood education. Diversity and possibilities. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Huyssen, A. (2003). Present pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Henning, K., & Kirova, A. (2012). The role of cultural artefacts in play as tools to mediate learning, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(3), 226-241.
Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), 14–25.
Kazmi, Y. (1990). On being educated in the west: The disruption in self as a narrative and authenticity and inauthenticity of self. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 10, 281-295.
Kearney, R. (2002). On stories. New York, NY: Routledge.
Kearney, R. (2003). Strangers, gods and monsters. New York, NY: Routledge.
Kearney, R. (2011). What is diacritical hermeneutics? Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, Article 1. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy59z90p5
Kearney, R., & Taylor, V. (2005). A conversation with Richard Kearney. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 6 (2), 17-26.
Kohler Riessman, C. (2000). Analysis of personal narratives. Retrieved from http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~brooks/storybiz/riessman.pdf
Kohler Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Hoffmann Davis, J. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
MacNaughton, G., & Davis, K. (Eds.) (2009). “Raceâ€and early childhood education. An international approach to identity, politics, and pedagogy. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
McArdle, F., & Piscitelli, B. (2002). Early childhood art education: A palimpsest. Australian Art Education, 25(1), 11-15.
McKenna, J., & McDade, T. (2005). Why babies should never sleep alone: A review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding. Pediatric Respiratory Reviews, 6, 134-152.
Munro Hendry, P. (2008). Engendering wisdom. Listening to Kuan Yin and Julian of Norwich. In C. Eppert & H. Wang (Eds.) Cross-cultural studies in curriculum. Eastern thought, educational insights, (pp. 207-226). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Online etymology dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=lay&searchmode=none
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (Ed.) (2010). Flows, rhythms, & intensities of early childhood education curriculum. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2010). A curriculum for social change: Experimenting with politics of action or imperceptibility. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw (Ed.) Flows, rhythms, & intensities of early childhood education curriculum (pp. 133-154). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Paley, V. (1981). Wally’s stories. Conversations in the kindergarten. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Panayotidis, E. L. (2011). Thinking/teaching in multiple tongues. The Interdisciplinary Imagination. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(1), 48-63.
Peterson, E., & Coltrane, B. (2003). Culture in second language teaching. Center for Applied Linguistics. Washington, DC: Eric Clearninghouse on Languages and Linguistics. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/digest_pdfs/0309peterson.pdf
Powell, K.A. (2008). Remapping the city: Palimpsest, place, and identity in art education research. Studies in Art Education: National Art Education Association: A Journal of Issues and Research, 50(1), 6-21.
Rodari, G. (1996). The grammar of fantasy. An introduction to the art of inventing stories. New York, NY: Teachers and Writers Collaborative.
Saunders, L. (2003). Flying, writing poetry and doing educational research. British Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 175-187.
Smits, H. (2010). “The uncannily correct and the elusively trueâ€: A conversation with Ted Aoki. One World, 42(2), 12-20.
Tan, S. (2006). The arrival. New York, NY: Arthur A. Levine Books an Imprint of Scholastic Inc.
Taylor, A., & Giugni, M. (2012). Common worlds: Reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 108-119.
Thompson, P., & Zizek, S. (2013). The privatization of hope. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wood, M. (2012). The other case. Daedalus, 141(1), 130–138.
Yang, G.L. (November 11, 2007). Stranger in a strange land. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Yang-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print[CB1]
Zeitgeist Films (Producer) (2002). Derrida [YouTube Video] Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtcpwJCC6Co
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