Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood Research Observation - by Jayne Osgood (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book challenges the developmentalist paradigm that dominates research into children and childhood, focusing on observation as a research method. It offers new postdevelopmental ways of conducting childhood observations which are diverse in context and theoretical orientation, and in the process, deconstructs the dominant traditions of childhood research. Written by leading scholars based in Canada, Norway, the UK, and the USA, the chapters consider observation as it is enacted in the home, nursery or classroom. Drawing on a range of theories including feminist new materialism, social semiotics, and posthumanism, the chapters cover a range of topics including reciprocal methods, photography, childhood art, and memoir.

Review Quotes

[This book] pushes the boundaries of early childhood research taking a fresh look at how we research with and about child development. The examples from real world research affords readers the opportunity to see how postdevelopmental approaches to observation, as a research method, may be applied to their own work. The authors embrace the move away from traditional research methods, and place a spotlight on children's participation and agency in research, this is an excellent addition to the research canon.

This volume will support the doctoral student as she negotiates the tricky terrain of undertaking observations when there is the desire to work outside of conventional developmental frames. It will serve as a rallying cry to all those who want to foreground the importance of affect where what is sensed and felt should be brought in from the cold.

About the Author

Jayne Osgood is Professor of Education at Middlesex University, UK. She is Editor of the Gender and Education journal and co-series editor, with Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, of the Feminist Thought in Childhood Research series, published by Bloomsbury.