Here is my plan for tomorrow’s class. Please comment if you have other ideas.
- We can start by listening to Mona Gleason’s lecture Constructing Child Health. My hope is that this provoking lecture will help us to start our discussion of the readings. What have we learned? And now what might we do with this information? By the way, check out Mona’s blog Small Matters: Research on the History of Canadian Children.
- We probably won’t have time to watch Veronica Stong-Boag’s lecture on Parents of Canada’s Foster Children. You might want to watch it yourself – particularly if you are doing research with foster children.
- I’d like to try some small group discussions around two ideas:
- How are child & youth care’s values/principles/ethics connected to the historical trajectories that the authors trace?
- Select a specific practice (e.g., developmentally appropriate practice- DAP), and try to map its geneology. Feel free to bring your computer etc to do research in class. You might ask questions such as: What views of children/youth/families does this [practice] reveal? How have these views emerged? What social/economic/political shifts are linked to [this practice]?What tensions can be identified within [this practice]? What do [practices] intend to resolve at a social/cultural/political level? What meta-narratives run through [this practice]? How are those interrelated? How are diverse groups positioned differently in relation to these practices? What issues come up in [this practice], and what issues are absent? To what values does [this practice] commit itself? How do those values emerge in [the practice]? What is the logic of [this practice]? What contradictions are present? How does [this practice] circulate? What are some of the discourses and power/knowledge relations that have come together in different spaces (including, for example, schools, child care centres, neighbourhoods, community centres, hospitals) to allow this practice?
- Should we leave some time to help each other to organize our blogs?
- We will address your questions about assignments at the end of class
- Anything else??