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In this research article, Haeny Yoon and Tran Nguyen Templeton explore the challenges of listening to children in both classrooms and research that purports to center young children. Through two stories from their respective studies, Yoon and Templeton highlight the complexities of following children's leads given the competing agendas situating the work of teachers and researchers in neoliberal contexts. Time constraints, curricular mandates, and research expectations limit children's valuable contributions to their sociocultural communities. The authors' goal is to discuss the possibilities in taking up children's words, gestures, and moves as knowledge. They contend that children's voices should not simply be heard for curricular purposes, for adults' amusement, to forward a neoliberal agenda, or to maximize our own goals and pursuits. Instead, we should listen to understand the creativity and intelligence of young children whose social worlds are meaningful.
Keywords: early childhood education, cridcal childhood studies, literacy, photography, qualitative research, neoliberalism
Tran: [Your] mom told me a little bit about how school's going for you . . .
Saryu: Did she tell you that we sit down so much?! [Taking on the teacher's voice] "Sit down on the rug, sit down on the chairs, sit down on the rug, sit down on the rug!" And she doesn't want us to talk, almost. Even when we're playing she wants us to be quiet and she wants us to whisper . . . Then we try to get loud and then she hears us and she's like, "Stop." We have to. Then she claps. Then we have to follow what she does, and then she says, "K-2, it's getting very noisy!"
In an informal interview, five-year-old Saryu described how it feels to be in school and subject to the will of teachers. Later in the interview she recounted the children's attempts to secure more than the one choice time they get during the day. During choice time, they selected their own activities and engaged in free play; for the children in the classroom, choice time meant a respite from academic and "quiet" activities with space to pursue their own agendas and interests. Saryu had quickly learned that if she and her classmates are quiet, there's a chance the teacher will give them more time to play...