Papers by Katherina A Payne
Inquiry through the Lens of Identity: An Exploration and Inquiry in the Fifth Grade
Social studies and the young learner, 2018
The Civic and Political Assets of Preservice Teachers: Understanding our Millennial Students
Teacher Education and Practice, 2011
Child-Driven Civics: A Framework to Recognize the Everyday Civic Action of Young Children
Proceedings of the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting, 2020
Democracy education, 2020
The article adds to a growing conversation that recognizes and supports young children's civic ca... more The article adds to a growing conversation that recognizes and supports young children's civic capabilities, positioning them as citizens-now and not simply citizens in the future. They detail how three different classrooms sought to work with children to engage in social action on behalf of their broader community. This response wonders alongside the authors about how adults can best work with children to support their civic action and proposes that teachers engage children's visions for a more just, humanizing democratic society. The article offers three avenues of action for teachers as they support children's civicness: reflection on our views and experiences with democracy, educating ourselves in the traditions and histories of community organizing, and developing practices that involve children's visions of society.
¡<i>Los policías</i>! Latinx children’s agency in highly regulated early childhood contexts
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, May 31, 2021
This article shows how two Latina bilingual teachers provided opportunities for their Latinx stud... more This article shows how two Latina bilingual teachers provided opportunities for their Latinx students from immigrant families to enact their agency in a highly regulated Head Start bilingual preschool classroom in ways that aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy. Using video-cued ethnography and data from the Blinded Study, the authors center three- and four-year-old children who engaged in a collaborative, dynamic make-believe game involving a struggle between family members and los policías (“the police”). Using traditional qualitative methods, the authors first identify and name all the different ways in which the children enacted their agency and demonstrated capabilities in their play, particularly the cultural capabilities that challenge deficit discourses about Latinx immigrant communities. They contextualize the children’s play using teacher interview data in which the teachers explained their thinking behind the pedagogical decisions that made this type of learning and play possible. Finally, the authors explore how the teachers’ identities and histories positioned them to engage with their students in culturally sustaining ways. It is argued that with the growing global awakening to white supremacy structures and violence, there is urgency in creating time and space to support young children’s agency and their right to practice the skills they need to contribute to their communities’ well-being and survival now and in the future.
The social studies, Mar 4, 2018
Civic education for our youngest citizens faces two challenges if we want to imagine new possibil... more Civic education for our youngest citizens faces two challenges if we want to imagine new possibilities. First, the field of social studies uses frames of analyzing citizenship education based on studies of older students. Second, predetermined adult ideas (and ideals) of what it means to act civically dominate our conceptions of civic education for young children. Drawing on data from a yearlong multivocal video-cued ethnography, this article argues that social studies needs to focus on the everyday, embodied ways that young children act civically. Using a vignette from a typical day, this article illustrates how young children's everyday relationships and interactions highlight a different vision of being civic-a more caring and relational idea of the common good. When we recognize young children's construction of a common good in their smaller, yet no less important, civic spaces of school, we can expand our notions of civic education.
Teaching and Teacher Education, Mar 1, 2019
h i g h l i g h t s Case study of an exceptional elementary teacher who engaged with contentious ... more h i g h l i g h t s Case study of an exceptional elementary teacher who engaged with contentious political issues. Uses Sondel et al.'s (2018) pedagogy of political trauma. An example of how contentious identity politics can be broached with young learners. Explores teaching in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
Doing democracy through simulation, deliberation, and inquiry with elementary students
Social studies research & practice, May 23, 2017
Purpose Democracy is learned through doing, not telling. The purpose of this paper is to report t... more Purpose Democracy is learned through doing, not telling. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from an action research project where a group of fourth-grade students participated in a simulation that explored the possibilities and the constraints of acting democratically, while faced with the dilemmas of environmental disaster and establishing a new society. Design/methodology/approach The authors studied how participating students engaged in deliberations and self-directed inquiry. The authors focused the data collection on the responses of students to the challenges presented in the simulation. Findings Based on the analysis of student work during the simulation and reflection on the simulation after the project, the authors documented the ways in which students critiqued authority or expressed their distrust in it, engaged in difficult deliberations around controversial issues, and developed expanded agency through inquiry-based learning. Originality/value This paper presented a model of inquiry learning that can be critical, i.e. examining issues of power and justice, while engaging in deliberation via a simulation that integrated social studies and English language arts. Creating space for young students to deliberate issues, steeped in values, and ethics, allows them to recognize the inherent tension and dissension necessary to a healthy democracy.
“Courage to take on the bull”: Cultural citizenship in fifth-grade social studies
Theory and Research in Social Education, Oct 14, 2020
ABSTRACT Critiques of traditional civic education as exclusionary toward individuals and groups t... more ABSTRACT Critiques of traditional civic education as exclusionary toward individuals and groups that are linguistically, culturally, and age-diverse have led to critical civic education that foregrounds the experiences and assets of Communities of Color. Elementary-aged Children of Color face civic marginalization because of their multiple identities, including culture and age. We present a case study of one white fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Vine, and her two classes of culturally and linguistically diverse students who engaged in critical social studies content that created opportunities for students to use and learn about cultural citizenship. We highlight three cultural citizenship practices seen across students’ engagement with social studies content. First, students engaged in self-definition and identity work, laying the groundwork for further critical civic education. Second, the class interrogated issues of injustice and civic action through attention to counternarratives inclusive of Children and Communities of Color as civic actors. Finally, students grappled with historical agency in counternarratives and negotiated agency within the classroom. These cultural citizenship practices enabled Black and Brown children to draw on their civic assets, engage a conception of civicness reflective of people like themselves, and forwarded critical elementary social studies practices.
Moving Teacher Education into Urban Schools and Communities
Routledge eBooks, May 7, 2013
Action in teacher education, Apr 3, 2018
Much like preservice teachers, who cite cooperating teachers as influential to the learning-to-te... more Much like preservice teachers, who cite cooperating teachers as influential to the learning-to-teach process, this study and its findings center the work of cooperating teachers as essential to teacher education for democratic education. The mentoring practices of cooperating teachers often reflect their teaching practices with students in their classroom; as such, this study examines the mentoring practices of five democratic teachers who worked with six preservice teachers in a one-semester clinical experience. Democratic mentoring affords preservice teachers opportunities to observe democratic teaching practices, to attempt enacting democratic practices within a classroom context ready for progressive practices and curricula, and importantly, to experience democratic education in their own learningto-teach process. Further, recognition of the democratic mentoring practices of cooperating teachers, as teacher educators, democratizes teacher education by attending to multiple spaces of knowledge about teaching and students.
Uploads
Papers by Katherina A Payne