Children giving accounts of their cultural and linguistic identities and experiences and perspectives of belonging and school inclusion – an arts-based study with children in primary schools in the North-east of England

Abstract

This PhD thesis explores children’s voices and experiences in two diverse primary schools in the North-east of England. It employs participatory, arts-based inquiry to investigate how children give accounts of themselves and their identities, related to their perspectives and experiences of belonging and inclusion in school and in their wider lives. In recent years, transnational flows of people, capital, technology, and materials, and high levels of migrant mobility associated with political instability and inequality, has increased the diversity of the UK’s cultural, ethnic, and linguistic landscapes. This has coincided with anti-immigrant and anti-other rhetoric in political and social discourses. As such, questions about who belongs and who does not belong remain a contentious and ongoing subject for many people. However, the voices of children of primary school age in England remains under-researched in academic work at the intersections of education, identity, and inclusion. The project’s main aim, then, is to investigate the interconnectivity in discourses on self-identification, otherness, belonging, and school inclusion - I am interested in how children experience, conceptualise, and contest these spaces.
The study answers three questions:
1. What are children’s feelings and experiences of belonging and inclusion, in school and in their wider lives?
2. How do children give accounts of themselves and talk about their (linguistic, religious, ethnic, cultural) identities?
3. Through their narratives of belonging and inclusion (RQ1) and accounts of their identity (RQ2), how do children articulate and experience otherness and differences in relation to school and their wider lives?
The theoretical framework, to help address these questions, is comprised of i) new childhood studies and child voice, ii) new materialism, and iii) Judith Butler’s theorisation in Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). This theoretical perspective allowed for multiple levels of analysis, which positioned children’s identities as inscribed with material, affective, and symbolic dimensions. This study is underpinned by a concept of childhood that is agentic and fluid, and the dynamic, collective, and unfinished forms of belonging and self-identification in the intercultural context.
A multi-methods approach was utilised, including focus groups, painting, drawing, collage, storyboarding, co-analysis pinboards, and dance and drama performances. At the heart of the methodology was a desire to stimulate discursive, participatory, and kinaesthetic forms of knowledge. The workshops took place over several months, one workshop per week, in two primary schools in the North-east of England. A total of 27 year 6 pupils (aged 10-11) took part. To make sense of children’s voices, I employed a qualitative analysis and iterative coding process, including NVivo 12 software, memoing, and exploratory researcher poetry.
This research finds that children gave multiple and complex accounts of their cultural, religious, and linguistic identities and sense of belonging. School inclusion related to ‘being included’ in peer groups, and having meaningful relationships with teachers, as well as navigating school as a newly arrived learner. Participants spoke about their heritage language practices, and often positioned themselves, and others, as multilingual. Children spoke about perspectives and experiences of otherness and differences related to peer group relationships, school norms, and religious, ethnic and linguistic identities. Participants also shared their feelings of belonging related to ‘home’, migration and connections with their heritage countries.
This study contributes to pedagogical and educational literature on childhood, identities, intercultural encounters, and inclusion within the context of the UK. This thesis has strong methodological implications too, which allowed for active and reflexive thinking about the research questions. This study concludes that there is value in listening to the voices of children and involving them in research in creative and critical ways to further understand children’s worlds and their situated experiences and perspectives of identity, belonging, and school inclusion.