Storied by children: Authored by adults

Kirsten Kinash
Shelley Kinash, Bond University

Article comments

Kinash, K., & Kinash, S. (2008). Storied by children: authored by adults. In P. A. Danaher & R. Henderson (eds), Troubling terrains: Tactics for traversing and transforming contemporary educational research. Teneriffe, Qld: Post-Pressed, 29-48. ISBN 978-1-921214-31-8.

For further information please access the publishers website.

Copyright © Kirsten Kinash & Shelley Kinash, 2008.

Abstract

The dominant school discourse is urban, American, anthored by academics in a linear format. This chapter troubles the spatial, agency and modal terrains. A critical read of educational research necessitates three questions: Where is the school experience situated? Whose voice is shared? And how is it represented? As academics in faculties of teacher preparation, a primary concern is how best to help children learn. Ironically, most educational research is about rather than with children, and is truncated from their phenomenological experience. Adult researchers frame the questions and choose the population, sample, and methodology. The adults disseminate the results and interpretations in academic journals inaccessible to the children and most of their teachers. This chapter is situated in a rural Queensland primary school.

The authors of this chapter are a nine year-old Canadian schoolgirl and her much older Canadian tertiary-educator mother. The text is composed in an interrupted format with two dominant voices.