Negotiating citizenship: a young child's collaborative meaning-making constructions of beavers as a symbol of Canada

• Published in: Language and education Vol. 31; no. 4; pp. 330 - 350
• Main Authors: Gillen, Julia, Cameron, Catherine Ann
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 04-07-2017
• Subjects: Academic Discourse; citizenship; Citizenship Education; Collaboration; dialogic; discourse; Discourse Analysis; Educational Environment; Ethnography; Family Environment; Family Relationship; Foreign Countries; Interviews; Kindergarten; meaning making; multimodality; Observation; Self Concept; Video Technology; Canada
• ISSN: 0950-0782; 1747-7581
• DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2017.1302466

The right to share the social heritage of a nation is an element of citizenship closely associated with education. Social heritage is understood as the negotiation of understandings within a dialectical understanding of social practice across multiple timescales. In this paper the meaning-making practices of one young child concerned with beavers as symbols of Canada is studied, using the Day in the Life methodology, across two encounters in one day, the first in 'mat-time' at a kindergarten and the second at afternoon tea with her family. The teacher's careful orchestration of the event is analysed, and elements of her structuring of heteroglossic discourses identified. The young girl demonstrates close attention to certain complexities in her subsequent family dialogues and expands her narrative with imagined additional elements. The paper contributes to our understanding of bridging between the early development of academic discourse registers and home-based narratives. Methodologically, a contribution is made to consideration of processes of transcription, for analytic and dissemination purposes. In conclusion, deepening linguistic ethnography through the use of multimodal methods, we find complex layers of representations and practices in the negotiation of citizenship through daily life routines.