Children engage with diverse policies and practices in early years institutions. The aim of this study is to show how this relationship plays a part in children‘s construction of gender and national identities. Identity construction is a complex and ongoing process that involves both the individual themselves and others. In this process what identities schools offer and how children interpret these identities in their making meaning of themselves is the main concern of this research. Therefore it is important to understand which discourses are available for children and how they reproduce or challenge them to perform their identities. In order to understand these complex relations, this research was conducted in two preschool classrooms in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey,during a six-month period of fieldwork with intervals. The data were gathered from classroom observations, interviews with forty-seven children aged 4-5, two preschool teachers, two head teachers and two assistants of head teachers, as well as an analysis of curriculum and some policy documents. The analyses reveal that most of the time children follow and reproduce dominant discourses that are available to them. While children try to do their gender right by performing hegemonic masculinity and emphasising femininity forms, the dominant national discourse, Atatürk nationalism, is used by children to do their national identity right. However it was also found that children are aware that doing their identities right brings them advantages and by knowing this some children take risks to perform other ways of being. Conducting the fieldwork in two classrooms showed how the approaches and ideas of teachers and schools influence children‘s staying within or crossing boundaries in their identity construction. It is safe to say that the children tended to follow the dominant discourses of the teachers‘ approaches and ideas in terms of certain ways of being. At this point the Turkish education system aims to make the Other into the Same (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005) rather than offering and welcoming other ways of being.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:694632 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Gündoğdu, Nehir |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/81989/ |
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