Gillen, J and Cameron, Catherine Ann (2017) Negotiating citizenship : a young child’s collaborative meaning-making constructions of beavers as a symbol of Canada. Language and Education, 31 (4). pp. 330-350. ISSN 0950-0782
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Abstract
The right to share the social heritage of a nation is an element of citizenship closely associated with education (Marshall [1950]1992). 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 (Gillen, Cameron, et.al.), 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. Suhani both 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 (Gallagher 2016). 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, with Pagani (2009, 92), ‘complexes of representations and practices’ in the negotiation of citizenship through daily life routines.