Facilitating Children's Agency in the Interaction: Challenges for the Education System (Studies in Childhood and Youth) 303109977X, 9783031099779

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STUDIES IN CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction Challenges for the Education System Claudio Baraldi

Studies in Childhood and Youth Series Editors

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh University of Bristol Bristol, UK Nigel Patrick Thomas University of Central Lancashire Preston, UK Spyros Spyrou European University Cyprus Nicosia, Cyprus Anandini Dar School of Education Studies Ambedkar University Delhi New Delhi, India

This well-established series embraces global and multi-disciplinary scholarship on childhood and youth as social, historical, cultural and material phenomena. With the rapid expansion of childhood and youth studies in recent decades, the series encourages diverse and emerging theoretical and methodological approaches. We welcome proposals which explore the diversities and complexities of children’s and young people’s lives and which address gaps in the current literature relating to childhoods and youth in space, place and time. We are particularly keen to encourage writing that advances theory or that engages with contemporary global challenges. Studies in Childhood and Youth will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of areas, including Childhood Studies, Youth Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Politics, Psychology, Education, Health, Social Work and Social Policy.

Claudio Baraldi

Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction Challenges for the Education System

Claudio Baraldi Dipartimento Studi Linguistici e Culturali Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Modena, Italy

ISSN 2731-6467     ISSN 2731-6475 (electronic) Studies in Childhood and Youth ISBN 978-3-031-09977-9    ISBN 978-3-031-09978-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

My interest in studying children and childhood was (unintentionally and unpredictably) enhanced by my daughter, Irene, who was in her early childhood when I started my research in this field. For her indirect affective support to my research and my infinite love for her, I dedicate this book to Irene. I hope her agency is enhanced and supported as she goes forward in her life.

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank the people and organizations that created the basis for a long-lasting research project out of which this book emerged. Since the 1980s, Giuliano Piazzi has inspired me to reflect on the theoretical and interdisciplinary foundations of sociology. During the 1990s, Guido Maggioni encouraged me to conduct research on children and to reflect on the best method to use for my research. These same years, Francesco Tonucci, an advocate for a movement encouraging children’s autonomous choices (the Town of Children), offered me the opportunity to do important field research on the promotion of children’s agency. This century, Maria Teresa Vacatello, an advocate for an association of teachers focused on facilitating classroom interactions, offered me the opportunity to conduct extensive research that enhanced my overall sense of facilitation. The international and national offices of Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV), an important organization of world camps for children and adolescents, supported another extensive research project on the facilitation of children’s agency in education. Other relevant studies were supported by the School of Peace “Monte Sole,” the regional council of Emilia-Romagna, the Camina association, and, more recently, the European Commission. My research program would not have been realized without collaboration with other researchers. Some of them still work with me inside the university system. They are Vittorio Iervese and Elisa Rossi (associate professors at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Federico Farini (a professor at the University of Northampton), and, more recently, Sara Amadasi (a contracted senior researcher at the University of Modena and vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Reggio Emilia). In a more precarious position, Chiara Ballestri has worked and still works with me as a very competent researcher and research organizer. I feel deep affection for all of these people; with Vittorio, Elisa, and Federico I also share a long-lasting friendship. Other researchers have invaluably contributed to the development of this field in the past years, such as Gabriella Cortesi, Alessandro La Palombara, and Alberto Dreossi—who are all now engaged in other roles. They have contributed not only to research activities in the field, but also to books and papers based on their research. My research has been supported by a very large number of passionate students who dealt with complex and unusual themes and methods in their degree and post-degree theses. Among them, I would like to thank particularly those who collaborated with me as coauthors of book chapters concerning research on CISV and the School of Peace of Monte Sole: Rosanna Blasi, Monica Bonilauri, Alessandra Braglia, Cristina Caiti, and Elena Gambari. I would also like to express my gratitude to all teachers, school heads, and local NGOs that collaborated with me over the last twenty years. Above all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all children and adolescents who were willing to be recorded and to their parents who consented to these recordings. International connections and confrontations with several researchers have also been very important for my research. In particular, my research was informed by the boards organizing research for the Sociology of Childhood and the European and International Sociological Associations. Collaborations with Tom Cockburn, Lucia Rabello De Castro, and Hanne Warming have been particularly insightful. I have also enjoyed very insightful collaborations in the field of education with Adrian Holliday and Erica Joslyn. I would also like to thank Zhu Hua, who offered me the opportunity to present and discuss my research in London. I would like to give special thanks to Marco Vincenzi, an inspiring facilitator and expert in sociology with whom I have collaborated since the first phases of my research, and from whom I have learned the importance and power of photography in facilitating children’s agency. With Marco, I share a long-time friendship. Marco is the author of the photographs included in this book, which are inspired by the contents of the chapter and which inspire the chapter’s interpretations. The photographs were proposed by Marco and chosen by me as expressions of the invaluable contribution of art to the social sciences.

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Last but not least, I would like to express my infinite gratitude to Laura Gavioli, a colleague and friend from whom I have learned so much about the value of studying interactions and how to study them, and with whom I have long shared research and publications in another very important field, public service interpreting as language mediation.

Contents

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Introduction  1 1 Structure of the Book  5

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The Concept of Agency and the Sociology of Childhood  7 1 The Conceptual Narrative of Children’s Agency  8 2 Children’s Agency as a Controversial Concept 10 2.1 Participation and Agency 11 2.2 Social Constructionism and Agency 12 2.3 Children’s Marginalization and Agency 13 2.4 What Is Wrong with the Concept of Children’s Agency? 16 3 Children’s Agency in Communication Systems 17 3.1 Participation and Communication Systems 17 3.2 The Conditions of Children’s Participation in Communication Systems 18 3.3 The Meaning and Structural Constraints of Agency 21 3.4 Interaction Systems and the Media System 25 4 Conclusions: Researching Agency in Communication Systems  26 References 27

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 Educational Interaction: Tradition and ­Change 39 1 The Constraints of Children’s Agency in Education 40 2 The Function of Education and the Teaching Interaction 40

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3 The Structure of Education 42 3.1 Other Structural Constraints in the Education System 45 4 Is the Teaching Interaction Changing? 47 4.1 Changes in Education in Early Childhood 49 4.2 Are Changes in Education Effective? 50 4.3 Why Change Education? 52 5 Cultural Differences and Intercultural Communication in the Education System 53 6 Education and Language Barriers 55 7 Conclusions: Education and Agency 57 References 58 4

 Facilitation in the Education System 67 1 Introduction 68 2 The Communicative Construction of Children’s Personal Expressions 68 3 From Child-Centered Education to Facilitation 71 4 The System of Facilitation 74 4.1 Facilitated Interactions 74 4.2 Facilitation as a Complex Communication System 76 5 Facilitation, Trust Building, and Conflict Management 77 6 Facilitation as a Dialogic System 79 6.1 Facilitation as Reflexive Coordination 81 6.2 From Reflexive Coordination to the Coordination of Reflection 82 7 The Facilitation of Children’s Personal Cultural Trajectories 83 8 Conclusions on the Facilitation System 85 References 87

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 Researching Agency and Interaction: Methodological Considerations 95 1 Introduction: The Meaning of Methodology 96 2 Methodologies for Collecting Data on Children’s Agency 96 3 Video Recording as a Support for Second-Order Observation 98 3.1 Video Recording, Conversation Analysis, and the Analysis of Interaction Systems 99

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4 Technical Aspects of Video Recording100 5 Sources of the Analysis of Children’s Agency103 6 Video Recording and Facilitation During the COVID-19 Pandemic108 7 Conclusions109 References111 6

 Ways of Facilitating Children’ Agency115 1 Facilitative Actions and Children’s Agency116 2 Facilitation as Encouragement117 3 Minimal Facilitation120 4 Facilitation as Perspective-Taking and Support126 5 Facilitation as Commentary and Personal Storytelling134 5.1 Displacements138 6 Facilitation as Coordination of Reflection140 7 The Complex Hybrid Facilitated Interaction: An Example143 8 Conclusions145 References146

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 Facilitating Children’s Autonomous Initiatives149 1 Introduction150 2 Giving the Floor to Children’s Initiatives150 3 Managing Children’s Initiatives153 4 Child and Adolescent Leaders and Coordinators in Interactions158 5 Conclusions169 References169

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 Facilitating Children’s Agency Across Cultures and Languages171 1 Introduction172 2 Constructions of Cultural Identity172 3 Constructions of Hybrid Identity175 4 Deconstructions of Cultural Identity180 5 Overcoming Language Barriers187 6 Conclusions192 References193

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Contents

 Managing Conflicts Related to Children’s Agency195 1 Introduction196 2 From Facilitation to the Mediation of Conflict Production197 2.1 The Facilitation of Conflict Production197 2.2 Mediation as the Development of Conflicts203 3 Deconstructing Negative Identities and Proposing Alternative Narratives205 4 Conclusions217 References218

10 Reducing  and Suppressing Children’s Agency221 1 Introduction222 2 Normative Expectations and Unequal Distribution of Participation222 3 Conflict Management as Imposition and Negative Assessment229 4 Repression of Children’s Deviant Agency233 5 A Dialogic Approach to Dealing with Children’s Deviant Actions237 6 Conclusions238 References239 11 Conclusions: Beyond Education?241 1 The Facilitation System: A Summary242 1.1 The Facilitation System as the Combination of Facilitative Actions242 1.2 A Brief Review of “Children’s Agency”245 1.3 Are There Specific Forms of Facilitation?245 1.4 The Complexity of Facilitation246 2 Facilitation and Education247 3 Implementing the Facilitation System250 3.1 Realization250 3.2 Training251 4 Future Lines of Research252 5 The Relevance of Agency254 References255 Index257

About the Author

Claudio  Baraldi (PhD) is Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His main research interests concern (1) facilitation of adult–children communication in the education system and (2) cultural and linguistic mediation in healthcare services and schools. On these topics, he has published extensively on edited international books and international journals (among which Childhood, Communication Theory, Current Sociology, Intercultural Education, International Journal of Early Childhood, International Journal of Sociology of Education, Journal of Pragmatics, Language and Dialogue, and Language and Intercultural Communication), and he has published and edited international books. Recently, he has coordinated the Erasmus+ project SHARMED (Shared Memories and Dialogues), planning innovative educational classroom activities in primary and secondary schools (2016–18) and the HORIZON 2020 project CHILD-UP (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation) on migrant children integration in schools and community (2019–22). He is currently coordinating a national project (in Italy) on childhood in education and healthcare (2019–23). He is past president of the Research Committee Sociology of Childhood (International Sociological Association). He serves as a member of the Board of the Research Network Sociology of Children and Childhood (European Sociological Association).

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List of Photographs

The photographs included in this book were taken by Marco Vincenzi, photographer, sociologist, and facilitator. The photographs were chosen together by Marco and myself. Each chapter is introduced by a photograph. The photographs do not “represent” the contents of the chapters; rather they realize the social function of art that “consists in demonstrating the compelling forces of order in the realm of possible” (Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System, Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 148, italics in the original), that is, of the unpredictable. Photo 1. Unpredictability Photo 2. Agency Photo 3. Education Photo 4. Facilitation Photo 5. Second-order observation Photo 6. Facilitative actions Photo 7. Initiatives Photo 8. Small cultures Photo 9. Mediation Photo 10. Not me Photo 11. Beyond education

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Unpredictability

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_1

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This book reflects on the concept of children’s agency and its social presuppositions in the context of education. It is based on over twenty years of theoretically oriented field research. Over the years, I integrated new types of field research and new theoretical studies into my approach; accordingly, my theoretical orientation has changed since I began my study. Although this book can be situated in the sociological field, its contents have been profoundly shaped by my interdisciplinary approach. My theoretical orientation combines agency and social structures; however, my perspective differs from the famous original approach to their combination formulated by Anthony Giddens. My basic interest is in the ways in which social structures allow, rather than constrain, the production of agency as unpredictability of action. This approach implies that agency is not a characteristic of human nature or human action; rather, it is the outcome of structured social processes. To understand how structured social processes produce agency, I turn primarily to social systems theory (SST), which is rarely applied in the field of the sociology of childhood (SC). According to SST, social structures orient communication, which is the basic social operation. Social structures can change to ensure the continuation of communication processes. Thus, instead of working to uncover predefined social structures, SST emphasizes the evolution of society from inside society. While structuralism claims that basic structures can explain social phenomena independently of their historical meanings, figuring social structures as dependent on communication processes admits that innovative local practices can change the structural orientations of social systems. This book stresses the importance of analyzing how different communication practices create different kinds of social structures especially those in the education system. In this book, I integrate SST into an interdisciplinary approach to explain children’s agency and focus on concepts such as systems of communication, interaction, design of action, positioning, epistemic authority, personal expression, and narratives. In particular, when I situate interactions as communication systems, I figure them as innovative social practices that can change social structures by giving value to participants’ agency. This book is mainly interested in these social practices and their formative relationship with structural changes in education. I reason that social structures produce social processes that can change social structures. While this conceptualization may seem circular, it can also be understood from an evolutionary and historical perspective: in Time Zero, social

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structures orient communicative processes that become relevant communication systems in Time One and that can change social structures in Time Two. Despite my focus on agency’s structural conditions, I still conceptualize agency in terms of unpredictable, autonomous choice. Traditional sociological theories have problems to deal with the unpredictability of individual autonomous choices and, in particular, children’s autonomous choices, since they focus on collective orientations and on the necessity that individuals internalize these orientations. SC has marked a historical break in this line of theory since the 1990s. However, recently SC has started to insist on the limitations of children’s agency, associating “autonomy” and “choice” with individualistic and “neoliberal” ideologies. In my view, this approach underscores the potential for using concepts of autonomy and choice to explore how children function as responsible persons in communication processes. Personal responsibility is an important result of social evolution, especially in terms of rights. This evolution explains the relevance of agency in society and, when applied to children, the most recent changes in the distributions of rights, such as the attribution of rights to women, Black people, young people, the LGBTQ community, and migrants (although migrant rights are yet to be fully realized). This evolution never ends; there are always new combinations of rights and responsibilities (i.e., new organizations of agency) that need recognition in societies dominated by hierarchical structures and corresponding narratives. As Chap. 2 explains, the critical approach that recent work in SC takes to children’s autonomy is based on an understanding of social phenomena as “relational.” Chapter 2 also explains that this book replaces this relational approach with a theory of communication as a basic social operation. This change in perspective changes how autonomy is observed. Agency is never an individual expression; it is the product of communication systems that signify personal expressions. In general, this book deals with the problem of constructing children’s agency as an attribution of personal rights and responsibilities related to knowledge in communication systems. Mainstream representations of childhood subordinate children’s rights and responsibilities to their learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it extraordinarily evident that children’s learning is a primary value in education and society: education and society fear the loss of children’s learning much more than the loss of children’s agency. While this observation

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may suggest that I take a critical approach to education (Chap. 3), this book does not only present a critical approach; it aims to nurture alternative approaches, focusing on a theory of change. Therefore, I develop my initial analysis of the difficulties and limitations of educational structures into an analysis of the non-linear differentiation and co-existence of forms of communication in the education system. This conceptualization, in which this study of children’s agency in communication systems is rooted, requires a specific type of research focused not on individual orientations but on communication processes. These communication processes can be observed when they are produced in interactions. The importance of interactions in this study inspired the use of a research method based on video recording of activities involving children (Chap. 5). This method has several limitations, but my intent is not to underscore these shortcomings. I also do not underscore other, much more popular methods, such as interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires. My point is that gathering information through video recording aligns with this book’s theoretical approach to research. For this reason, this book gives ample space to transcribed examples of video recordings. It is also important to stress several limitations of the type of research presented in this book. First, this research was done in limited settings—it was mostly conducted in Italy; however, some work was done in a handful of other locations (Chap. 5). Second, the research presented in this book has produced a huge number of recordings of interactions realized in the education system, but this book can only include a small number of transcribed excerpts from these recordings. Third, and above all, this book presents “Western-style” research on children’s agency. However, at least in Italy, Western boundaries are blurred by migration processes; children with migrant backgrounds are represented in the most recent research projects included in this book (in particular in Chap. 8). Undoubtedly, experiencing migration and social life in the Global South impacts a child’s agency. Given these limitations, this book does not aspire to offer universally generalizable research results and conclusions. While some of its theoretical concepts may be generalized, others are both theoretically and empirically controversial. This book does not want to feed the illusion that children’s agency and the structural presuppositions of children’s agency can be easily constructed in today’s global society. Instead, it seeks to describe and explain a specific communication system that facilitates the production of children’s agency and consider its generalizability (Chap. 11).

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Research is a never-ending story, the result of collective effort, and irreducible to an individual career. While I hope to have more opportunities to continue my research and while other projects are starting as I write this book, I hope this type of research can continue after my retirement.

1   Structure of the Book Chapters 2–4 introduce the basic concepts necessary to understand what it means to enhance and support children’s agency. Chapter 2 deals with the basic assumptions of SC, stressing in particular the relevance and meaning of children’s agency in the context of the debate about the relationship between agency and social structures at both the micro level (interaction) and the macro level (social systems including interactions). Chapter 3 highlights the limitations of children’s agency in the education system, especially in classrooms or groups. Additionally, it shows the ways in which recent pedagogical reflections have attempted to reduce the negative impact of education on children’s participation. This chapter also focuses on the production of language differences and the social constructions of cultural identities and differences in education in contemporary Western societies, where work on enhancing and supporting children’s agency often concerns children from migrant backgrounds and children with different national origins and thus is particularly rooted in intercultural and language issues. Against the background of Chaps. 2 and 3, Chap. 4 explains the concept of “facilitation,” which can be defined as a structure of interaction that aims to encourage and support children’s agency. Facilitation can be applied beyond the educational context, but this book only explores facilitation in education. This chapter analyses how facilitation can enhance and support all possible expressions of children’s agency. Chapter 5 introduces the ways in which social research can uncover the dynamics of children’s agency in social interactions and social structures of facilitation that enhance and support (or do not enhance and support) children’s agency. In particular, this chapter stresses the importance of qualitative methods, especially video recordings and their transcriptions (which can easily capture interactions), for analysis. This chapter also analyses the problems and functions of conducting social research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapters 6–10 show the results of a large number of research projects concerning the ways in which children’s agency can be encouraged,

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enhanced, and supported through facilitation and that provide numerous examples of transcriptions of social interactions. These chapters explore the different meanings of facilitating children’s agency and reflect on methods and actions that encourage, enhance, and support children’s agency. These chapters focus on all expressions of children’s agency. Chapter 6 discusses the most important facilitative actions and ways of facilitating children’s agency. Chapter 7 argues that the facilitation of children’s initiatives is the most effective way to support children’s agency. Chapter 8 focuses on the specific forms of facilitation that may be used when migrant children or children from different national origins are involved in interactions; in these cases, facilitation focuses on personal cultural trajectories, language use, and children’s contributions. Chapter 9 deals with facilitation as a way to manage conflicts that children raise or narrate in interactions. Finally, Chap. 10 describes some ways in which facilitation fails to enhance and support children’s agency. Chapter 11 surveys different ways of interpreting contemporary educational settings. These settings so overwhelm children’s public lives that they cannot be simply considered learning contexts. Rather, educational settings may be conceived as the most important social contexts in which children’s agency may be exercised or suppressed; notably, this suggests that encouraging and supporting children’s agency in educational contexts is a basic social and developmental task. The complexity of this book also concerns its references. In the last thirty years, SC has produced a huge number of papers and books on childhood and children. Moreover, other important concepts included in this book, such as intercultural communication and conflict mediation, have been very extensively studied since the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was impossible to include all relevant references and to conduct in-depth analyses of all the specific themes included in the book. To give space to examples from field research on the facilitation of children’s agency, I only discuss single studies in detail when it is strictly necessary to elucidate a central theme of the book. I generally sought to provide a general discussion on agency, education, and facilitation and to describe and explain the results of field research that contributes to understanding the facilitation of children’s agency. Of course, any mistake in omitting, citing, or using relevant literature is exclusively my fault.

CHAPTER 2

The Concept of Agency and the Sociology of Childhood

Agency

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_2

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1   The Conceptual Narrative of Children’s Agency The meanings of children and childhood are constructed as narratives. Narratives are social constructions that interpret an observed reality, such as childhood in the form of a story, in historically and culturally grounded ways (Baker 2006; Fisher 1987). By using Somers’ categories (1994), SC can be interpreted as a conceptual narrative encapsulated in a historically and culturally grounded metanarrative. The metanarrative of childhood has been enhanced in Western society since the beginning of modernity (Ariès 1962) as the combined result of the importance of children’s selfrealization and the need to exercise control on children (Prout 2000a). The importance of self-realization is based on a metanarrative that suggests that individuals can choose their own identities rather than having their identities prescribed to them by social groups. The importance of controlling children’s self-realization, primarily in families and schools, is based on a metanarrative that suggests that individuals must realize a stable identity, reach cognitive maturity, practice emotional self-control, and become aware of norms and limits (Hill et al. 2004). In the second half of the twentieth century, the importance of the metanarrative of children’s self-realization has strongly increased in society. Against this background, SC has pointed out that children are competent in assigning meanings to the social world and in participating in social relations. This competence has been conceptualized as agency. Oswell (2013, p.  3) states that “The long twentieth century is, and has been, undoubtedly the age of children’s agency.” However, CS shows that children’s agency was largely suppressed or at least limited in all social contexts in the twentieth century (e.g., Alanen 2009; James and James 2004). Thus, the only thing that can be said for sure is that the first two decades of the twenty-first century have been the age in which the concept of children’s agency has become very important. The concept of agency became prominent in sociological studies in structuration theory (Giddens 1984), which aims to explain the relation between individual action and social structures. Notably, structuration theory does not distinguish between action and agency. The terms “human actor” and “human agent” are used as synonyms; human actors are human agents because they are reflexive beings monitoring their own actions. Agency characterizes the human condition (see also Archer 2002). Agency “refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their

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capability of doing those things in the first place” (Giddens 1984, p. 9), that is, agency “refers to doing” (ibid., p. 10). Agency means that “the individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differently” (ibid., p. 9). In this view, agency signifies the unpredictability of choice given possible alternative actions, which situates each action as a specific actualization among different possibilities (see also Luhmann 1995). The dimension of possible and unpredictable actions is inherent to human agency, and for this reason, human agency can influence social processes. However, human agency is constrained by social structures. While social systems “would plainly not exist without human agency […] it is not the case that actors create social systems; they reproduce or transform them, remarking what is already made in the continuity of praxis” (Giddens 1984, p. 171). In sum, “agents, action and interaction are constrained by, yet generative of, the structural dimension of social reality” (Giddens and Turner 1987, p. 8). This theoretical approach conceives of children’s agency as “simple agency,” which develops in time toward a full adult agency. SC rejects the idea that children’s agency is simple agency. During the 1990s, the conceptual turn of SC was based on two different understandings: (1) childhood is a structural dimension of society (Qvortrup et  al. 1994; see also Qvortrup 2009), and (2) children are active participants in social life. The second approach criticized traditional studies in psychology, pedagogy, and sociology (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Denzin 1979; Parsons and Bales 1955; Shibutani 1961) on children’s socialization, which supported the concept of “simple agency” and children’s development, and instead interpreted childhood as a social construction (James and Prout 1990) and children as “active in the construction and determination of their own social lives, the life of those around them and of the societies in which they live” (Prout and James 1990, p. 8). This concept of children’s agency emerged with complaints about the lack of children’s participation in decision-making (James and Prout 1997). The “discovery of children as agents” (James et al. 1998, p. 6) was combined with the critique of the “fundamental dichotomy” between agency and structure (ibid., pp.  200–202). However, the concept of agency was not clearly defined; agency was simply associated with children’s daily experiences and their participation in interactions, strategies, and tactics of action (ibid., p. 138). SC started to produce a child-centered approach that considers children as social agents and situates their social competencies as manifesting in their everyday lives (Alanen 2005).

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2   Children’s Agency as a Controversial Concept In the following years, a distinction between children as social actors and children as social agents was developed in response to agency becoming associated with participation in social change (James and James 2004; Mayall 2002) and the recognition that agency can alter the individual’s “place in the social structure and the traditional expectations attached to their positioning” (Leonard 2016, p.  8). Agency was conceptualized as the “capacity of individuals to act independently” (James and James 2008, p. 9), make choices, and contribute to social change (James, 2009). This conceptualization led scholars “to reconfigure our understanding of social structure as more open to the dynamic interactions and influences of children as agentic beings” (Oswell 2013, p. 37; see also Moran-Ellis 2013). Despite the critique of structuration theory, SC observed that children’s agency is constrained by a “generational order,” that is, “a structured network of relations between generational categories that are positioned in and act within necessary interrelations with each other” (Alanen 2009, pp. 161–162; see also Mayall 2002). A generational order implies the capillary exercise of power in adult–children relations that compel children to act “within the social, moral, political and economic constraints of society” (James and James 2008, p.  11) and figures children’s agency as something that can either be “permitted” or treated negatively (ibid., pp. 37–40). This combination of agency and social structures, which has been named “generagency” by Leonard (2016, pp. 132–145), has been developed through new studies inspired by Bourdieu, Honneth, and the capability approach (Alanen et  al. 2015; Bonvin and Stoecklin 2014; Cockburn 2013; Thomas and Stoecklin 2018). The structural constraints of children’s agency have been mostly explained in relational terms in the context of a hierarchical, although dynamic, generational order of relations. Children can exercise their agency “by actively using their resources and abilities in their relations with others in both positive and negative ways” (Bjerke 2011, p. 94; see also Fichtner and Trần 2020; Gundersen 2021; Oswell 2013; Moosa-­ Mitha 2005; Valentine 2011). The relational constraints on agency can also be observed in extreme conditions, such as domestic violence (Katz 2015). Relational constraints can offer opportunities and determine limitations for children’s agency. The concept of children’s agency shows the basic tension between children’s autonomy and their dependence on social constraints.

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Children are systematically exposed to narratives concerning their bodies and they can also participate in their construction (Backett-Milburn 2000; Fattore 2020; Lupton 2011; Robinson 2005). Thus, the child’s body is considered another constraint on their agency (Fingerson 2009). Embodied practices that show children’s intentions (e.g., gestures, gazes, or facial expressions) can be notable ways in which children’s agency manifests in the interaction. However, the importance assigned to children’s bodies is not limited to bodily practices. Thinking with the Actor–Network Theory (Latour 2005), Prout (2000b) also conceives of the child’s body as an agent in itself (Prout 2000b). This complex and controversial background shows that the concept of agency presents several problems (Canosa and Graham 2020). Below, I describe what I consider the three most relevant problems. 2.1   Participation and Agency The relation between agency and participation is unclear. In SC, interest in children’s participation was initially inspired by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), signed in 1989, which introduced the right for children to have their opinions and participation taken into consideration (Article 12). The right to participation has become an important issue in SC (Invernizzi and Williams 2008; Percy-­ Smith and Thomas 2010; Thomas 2007), although the UNCRC has been criticized for failing to recognize the nuances of non-Western countries (Twum-Danso Imoh 2012). Participation is a controversial concept in SC.  Several studies consider decision-making to be the most important way in which children can participate in social contexts (Clark and Percy-­ Smith 2006; Percy-Smith 2006; Hill et  al. 2004; Murray and Hallett 2000; Shier 2001). However, other studies have stressed different levels and forms of children’s participation, such as (1) consultative, collaborative, and child-led participation (Lansdown 2010); (2) participation as attendance, involvement, and influence (Elfström Pettersson 2015); and (3) participation as the acceptance of asymmetrical power, challenges to power relations, and requests for more support (Kaukko and Wernesjö 2017). According to Lansdown (2010), consultative, collaborative, and child-led participation can be relevant depending on the social context. In several studies, participation is loosely connected with agency (Cotmore 2004; Jans 2004; Nolas 2015; Elfström Pettersson 2015; Prout et  al. 2006; Thomas 2007); however, other studies on participation do not use

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the concept of agency (Rivera and Santos 2016; Shier 2001; Sinclair 2004; Tisdall and Davis 2004; Wyse 2001). Only a small number of studies conceptualize participation as a way of showing agency in the context of social relations (Horgan et  al. 2017; Moosa-Mitha 2005; Percy-Smith 2012, 2018). In particular, children’s agency is primarily associated with participation in decision-making. Sancar and Severcan define agency as “having the power to make decisions that impact on self and others and to act on them” and consider participation “a precondition for agency” (2010, p. 277). According to Wyness, children’s participation “means [the] recognition of children’s agency in the way that they are in a position to voice their interests and that these interests are recognised through decision-making processes within which children are prominent actors” (2018, p. 68). If participation is not always an expression of agency, it is legitimate to ask, “how it is that children sometimes exercise it, that is bringing about some effects in the relationship in which they are embedded, whilst on other occasions they do not” (Prout 2000b, p. 16)? 2.2   Social Constructionism and Agency The second problem in the concept of children’s agency concerns its combination with the epistemology of social constructionism. Oswell (2013, p. 10) explains that “Those beings which we perceive as children are perceived and understood as separate entities with definable attributes and qualities only by virtue of their being socially constructed”; this social construction is conditioned “by the institutions which reproduce this category of childhood.” Thus, critical approaches contest the connection between agency as action, on the one hand, and the child’s individuality (e.g., the child’s reflexivity, competence, and abilities) on the other (Archard 2004; Bjerke 2011; James 2013). Individual agency is seen as an essentialist or “substantialist” concept (Esser 2018). The concepts of agency as individual achievement, the child’s voice, the independent child, and the child’s autonomy are rejected since they are based on the liberal conception of individual rationality and choice (Valentine, 2011) and the modernist view of the subject as the protagonist in society (Prout 2005, 2011). Children’s agency is based on social relations (James 2013; Larkins 2019; Leonard 2016; Moosa-Mitha 2005; Oswell 2013; Stoecklin and Fattore 2017) and their ways of living these social relations (Percy-Smith 2010) by negotiating meanings, actions, and power (Wyness 2013a).

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Children’s agency “is both constituted in social contexts and negotiated through social interaction with ‘other’ generations” (Abebe 2019, p. 12). It is based on “children’s embeddedness in the social and their connectedness” (James 2013, p. 15). In particular, “postmodern” theories observe agency as dispersed and assembled (Esser et  al. 2016; Oswell 2013). The relational concept of agency is thus brought to an extreme in a critical perspective (Spyrou 2018). Abebe (2019, p. 2) proposes to go “beyond the recognition that children are social actors to reveal the social, cultural, material, and political contexts as well as relational processes within which their everyday agency unfolds.” Kirby (2020, p. 20) theorizes “a nuanced understanding of agency, emphasising children’s inventive power and extending beyond simple framings of resistance as opposed to conformity, where, for example, the effort and exertion involved in inhabiting norms might also become a form of agency.” Agency “is directed to either reproducing or contesting this structurally reproduced category of childhood” (Oswell 2013, p. 10). These studies link agency to children’s everyday lives and contingent relations and reject conceptualizations of agency as a universal condition (Pozzo & Evers, 2016). According to Abebe (2019), agency is a continuum based on contingent negotiations and specific situations and thus manifests with intermittence and as dependency/interdependency rather than as autonomy. 2.3   Children’s Marginalization and Agency The third issue in the concept of children’s agency is the problematic relation between the Western narrative of childhood and the conditions of children experiencing poverty, deviancy, psychosocial discomfort, social marginality, and violence—in short children experiencing a position of inferiority and weakness. Weakness, marginalization, and inequality are particularly evident in the global society in conditions of forced migration, child labor, the abandonment of children in the streets, illiteracy, genital mutilation, enforced enrolment in armed bands, and so on. In these situations, children’s actions depend on the logic of social groups that do not consider children important or that emerge in large and very poor urban conglomerates. Difficulties also arise from migration flows and the consequent presence of children who belong to cultural minorities; in this context, children’s marginalization can stem from insufficient attention or rejection (Bass 2020; Fresnoza-Flot and Nagasaka 2020).

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Several studies have dealt with the conditions of children’s participation in a global society (Honwana and De Boeck 2005; Hunner-Kreisel and Bohne 2016; Percy-Smith and Thomas 2010; Twum-Danso Imoh and Ame 2012; Wells 2015). The (neo)liberal, individualistic narrative of children’s agency is criticized since it ignores how the specific conditions of the Global South are based on more complex socio-political dynamics (Balagopalan 2002; Cerqueira Filho and Neder 2001; Sarmento et  al. 2018; Wells 2011) and forgets poverty and marginalization in Western societies (Morrison et al. 2019; Skattebol et al. 2017). The concept that children’s agency is based on choice, competence, and autonomy is overshadowed by inequalities and social constraints. Critical studies on agency in global society draw on the postmodern approach in applying agency to “African societies” that share “similar structural contexts of poverty, familial arrangements, sibling relationships, modes of socialization, and livelihood activities” (Abebe 2019, p 2). The concept of agency as rooted in a continuum and interdependence is based on the assumption that “agency is not a universal experience” but “dynamic, situated, and contextual” (ibid., p. 11). Thus, agency is expressed in different ways in different specific conditions. Several recent studies have conceptualized children’s agency as based on community norms and hierarchical structures (André and Godin 2014; Bühler-Niederberger and Schwitteck 2014; Clemensen 2016; Gadhoke 2015; Smørholm 2016). The observation of these conditions has raised questions about the Western “voice-based global standard” of children’s agency (Wyness, 2013b). This change of view is reflected in the conceptualization of new forms of agency, such as thin agency (Klocker 2007; Muftee 2015) and tactical agency (Honwana 2005). Thin agency explains children’s minimal contributions (e.g., minimal responses to adults) when contributions are not expected given strongly hierarchical constraints. This concept explains both children’s subordination to adult authority and children’s active cooperation in the reproduction of the social order, especially in collectivistic contexts characterized by hierarchical arrangements and strong obligation to the collective. Subordination and cooperation imply that children accept existing social and cultural orientations. Tactical agency explains how children cope with their concrete and immediate life conditions, such as in militarized and violent (see also Shepler 2012; Wyness 2016) or trafficking contexts (Koomson et al. 2021). This concept explains how children can exploit opportunities in their social contexts, including their positions as victims and perpetrators (Honwana 2005). For instance, the

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concept of tactical agency has been applied to explain children’s work on the streets to financially support their families or cooperate with their peers (Bass 2003; Davies 2008; Mandel Butler 2009; Mizen and Ofosu-­ Kusi 2010; Wells 2015), child labor as an alternative to conditions of marginalization (Abebe and Kiorholt 2009; Morrow 2010), and migrant children’s actions in marginalizing social conditions (Hunner-Kreisel and Bohne 2016). The concept of tactical agency highlights that children are capable of actively tackling their problems and are not limited to passively enduring changes imposed by external forces. The concepts of thin and tactical agency have been applied to extend children’s agency to the global society, explain children’s subordination to adult power, and uncover how children reproduce the social order in collectivist contexts. When children demonstrate thin or tactical agency, they accept adult authority. These concepts stress both the contrast and the mix between the Western narrative of agency and global inequalities (Twum-­ Danso Imoh and Ame 2012). According to studies of thin and tactical agency, children demonstrate agency “in various, often self-invented, spaces and practices of resistance, negotiation and opposition, but also of collaboration, negotiation and invention” (De Boeck and Honwana 2005, p. 9). Other studies on global society are less critical about the Western concept of agency. For instance, Danic (2020) critically outlines how children demonstrate agency in Burkina Faso. Danic’s study found that in Burkina Faso children’s agency is reduced by their families’ economic conditions, religious beliefs, fatalistic and passive attitudes, and past experiences (e.g., illnesses or loss of parents) and enhanced by the possibility of an education that may allow them to access to better living conditions. According to Danic, children’s agency is limited both when it is impeded by societal and cultural factors and when it is enhanced by ideologies that situate children as educable beings (i.e., as not-yet-agents). Additionally, Rama’s (2020) study in South Africa criticizes children’s absence from decision-making spaces, processes, and structures and thus enhances existing universal conceptions of children’s agency. Meanwhile, existing arguments about how migration processes shape children’s agency are controversial. Caneva (2015) shows that children’s agency shapes migration processes for Latin American and Eastern European families. Droz (2006) and Rübner Jorgeseen (2017) support the idea that children’s agency and rights are limited by family constraints. Pozzo and Evers (2016) problematize existing conceptions of agency in young refugees. Other scholars have

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suggested that existing understandings of children’s agency require more nuance in the contexts of asylum-seeking (Ottosson et al. 2017) and children’s labor (Bourdillon 2005; Huijsmans 2008). 2.4   What Is Wrong with the Concept of Children’s Agency? Skepticism about the concept of children’s agency as the child’s ability to make choices that change social structures has emerged at the intersection of two critical approaches to the Western, neoliberal narrative of agency. The first critical approach is based on a “postmodern” and “anti-­Cartesian” (Esser 2018) epistemology, which is an epistemology based on social relations. Since the 1980s, socio-constructionism (Gergen 1989; Harré 1984) took this epistemological stance, aiming to replace what it situated as the “wrong” theory of the Cartesian mind with a theory of social relations; ultimately, this shift negated the concept of the individual self in the social sciences. This kind of epistemology is risky and recalls traditional socialization theories: by denying the child’s individual self, it underscores the child’s contributions to celebrated social relations. However, in the context of SC, it is difficult to deny that children are indeed actors in social relations. Thus, postmodern and anti-Cartesian epistemology’s contribution to research on children’s actions in everyday social life is unclear. This problem is highlighted by James’s approach to children’s socialization focused on children’s perspectives about their experiences of growing up and on how their everyday encounters with other people and narratives affect their interpretations of the world (James 2013). This approach stresses that children’s actions influence other people and narratives and implies that “embracing the uncertainty and ambiguity of the growing up process” (ibid., p. 174) in everyday life is central to socialization. Clearly, this approach to socialization implies that children’s actions are not socially determined. This epistemological stance seems to merge with the second critical approach, which is based on concepts such as thin and tactical agency and aims to extend the relational concept of agency to non-Western conditions in which children are marginalized. The Western narrative of childhood situates the poor participation of marginalized children as the result of adults wielding power over their lives; in this narrative, children’s emancipation from social control is impeded by “unresolved tensions, ambiguities and social power relations” (Fitzgerald et  al. 2010,  p. 293). Put differently, this narrative assumes that hierarchical structures limit

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children’s participation (Thomas 2007); in this context, limiting child participation enables institutions based on adult control and adult-driven frameworks to function smoothly (Hill et al. 2004; Prout 2003; Wyness 2009). A more nuanced position (Wells 2015) criticizes the child-saving narrative applied to the Global South as guided by a liberal conception of the child, on the one hand, and the reproduction of inequalities on the other. However, critiques of the Western narrative suggest that the difference between children’s subordination to or cooperation with adults and children’s autonomy do not inform the boundaries of children’s agency. Thus, agency coincides with any form of participation. The concept of individual agency is criticized and replaced with the concept of relational and dispersed agency on the one hand, and a concept of thin or tactical agency, on the other. A closer look reveals that these two new concepts focus on different critical aspects of the Western narrative of agency in spite of attempts to unify them (Abebe 2019; Koomson et al. 2021). The concept of thin or tactical agency is an ad hoc application of the concept of agency to the global society, while the concept of relational and dispersed agency is a new Western postmodern version of agency.

3   Children’s Agency in Communication Systems 3.1   Participation and Communication Systems I agree with Thomas (2021), who recently suggested that agency is an empirical rather than an ideological question. In Chaps. 6–10, I analyze the empirical dimension of agency. However, I deepen Thomas’ logic; I not only argue that agency is not a normative or ideological question and that it is an empirical question, but also that agency is at once a theoretical question. Taking a theoretical approach to agency challenges the merging of clearly different forms of participation in the concept of agency. Understanding opportunities for and the limitations of children’s agency means focusing on its operational and structural conditions and on the relations between these conditions. In this book, this understanding is based on bringing SST into conversation with SC. SST suggests that individual participation is achieved in communication systems (Luhmann 1995). Here, “communication” includes a participant’s action (e.g., making a claim), other participants’ understandings of the meaning of this action (e.g., the intention of the claim), and the information produced through this action (e.g., the content of claim). Understanding can

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enhance new actions (e.g., responses to the claim); this shows that communication (e.g., information about the claim or the intention of the claim) has been achieved. A communication system emerges from continued communication, which can be observed through the chain or sequence of actions (e.g., making a claim, responding to the claim, and any further actions that follow this response). Communication is shown by this chain or sequence of actions since understanding is not visible in itself, but only through action. Thus, a “communication system” is the production of a network of communications that is visible as a chain or sequence of actions. According to SST, all social systems can be observed as communication systems. Interactions are communication systems in which each participant can perceive the other participants’ contributions (Luhmann 1995). The perception of perception (i.e., reflexive perception), can be based on physical presence, telephone calls, or online chats. In interaction systems, perception is not important as an individual activity but as a condition for participating in communication. Reflexive perception enables continuous alternate actions among participants; for our purposes, it is important to note here that interaction systems make it possible for all participants to contribute to communication—in interaction systems, “active participation can be expected” (Luhmann 2013, p.  133). Conversation Analysis (CA) emphasizes the importance of participating in interactions: CA suggests that a given action (a “turn of talk”) restricts or enlarges opportunities for further actions/turns, both in everyday (Sacks et  al. 1974) and institutional interactions (Heritage and Clayman 2010). 3.2   The Conditions of Children’s Participation in Communication Systems Children’s participation in communication systems is relevant because (1) children’s understanding (giving meanings) enables communication that involves children, (2) children’s active participation can evidence their understandings, and (3) children’s actions are always part of a chain/ sequence of actions and thus comprise a communication system. In particular, CA has shown some ways in which children’s actions are realized in interactions (i.e., in sequences of actions). CA shows that children’s actions both are conditioned by other participants’ actions and condition other participants’ actions (Fasulo et  al. 2007; Gardner and Forrester 2010; Hutchby 2007; Stivers et al. 2018; Wingard 2007). CA emphasizes

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interactions, but the most important interactions involving children notably emerge in complex social systems, such as families, the education system, the healthcare system, and the social care system; therefore, children’s participation not only exists in interaction systems but more broadly in the complex social systems of which they are a part; for instance, in a teacher– student interaction and the education system that includes this interaction or in a parent–child interaction and the family that includes this interaction. In complex communication systems, each interaction is included in a wider network of communications. For instance, the education system includes teacher–student interactions in the classroom, organizational meetings, encounters between teachers and parents, written regulations, written teaching programs and assessments, and different forms of oral and written and verbal and non-verbal communication that impact the organization and goals of education. Thus, interactions are small systems operating in wider and more complex communication systems. Therefore, opportunities for and the limitations of children’s participation are defined by both the structures of specific interactions and the structures of the complex communication systems that include these interactions. Notably, the structures of complex communication systems shape interactions and children’s participation in these interactions. Below, I discuss three concepts useful for understanding these structures and how they influence children’s agency. The concept of code (Luhmann 2000, 2012) suggests that the basic structure of complex communication systems is based on the distinction between positive and negative values. For instance, the basic distinction between loving and not loving guides interactions between children and their parents in families; the basic distinction between safe and unsafe living conditions guides communications with and about children in social services; the basic distinction between right and wrong actions guides communications with and about children in the legal system; and the basic distinction between illness and health guides communications involving children in the healthcare system. The second concept that can be used to understand social structures is that of positioning. This concept suggests that a cluster of attributes locate participants in a communication system; condition their potential actions; and determine their rights, duties, obligations, and entitlements (Van Langenhove and Harré 1999). Positioning is “sensitive to the subtleties and nuances of moment-by-moment interaction” but it also “locates these subtleties and nuances in the context of wider societal discourse” (Winslade

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and Monk 2008, p. 98). In this wider societal discourse (i.e., in communication systems), participants are frequently positioned in roles, such as the roles of pupils and teachers (Chap. 3). Role positioning locates participants based on their performances. Notably, positioning does not significantly nuance participant actions; instead, actions are based on the predefined standards of the communication system. However, participant actions do become more nuanced when participants are positioned as persons (Baraldi 2015). Generally, in the context of communication, a person is an individual with a constructed identity within a communication system (Luhmann 2002). Positioning individuals as persons allows a variety of individual (personal) actions. Children are frequently positioned as incomplete persons—individuals who are not completely responsible for their contributions to communication—and thus as taking on the roles of learners and protected minors. This implies that subtleties and nuances of children’s positioning are very limited. There is however a variety of conditions for children’s positioning, since the specific form of positioning is based on the basic value distinctions in different communication systems. For instance, in the family system—which is based on love—parents and children are popularly positioned as persons; meanwhile, in the legal system—which is based on right—children are often positioned as performing victim or offender roles. The third concept is structures of reflexive expectations (Luhmann 1995; see also Leonard 2016) which are structures of mutual and shared expectations about ways of implementing value distinctions and positioning in communication systems. In communication systems, expectations can be shown as explicit requirements (“I expect that you”) or suggestions (“it would be better that you”), but frequently they are implicit and visible through compliant actions. They become visible when they are disappointed through a claim for re-establishment or change. Different structures of expectations apply in different communication systems. For instance, in families, children (and parents) are expected to disclose themselves (expectations are affective), while in the education system, children are expected to show change by learning (expectations concern cognitive performances). In all communication systems in which children are expected to align with adults’ orientations, expectations are normative, that is, they are maintained even if children do not align with them. When expectations are disappointed, the incompetence or deviance of participants (e.g., parents, teachers, social workers, medical doctors, children themselves) is sanctioned and blamed. Differences in positioning and

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expectations concerning children’s actions are not always clear-cut in communication systems: positioning (within roles or as a particular kind of person) and different expectation structures can mix in the same communication system. Against this theoretical background, hierarchical structures in communication systems can constrain children’s actions if they normalize a “generational order” (Alanen 2009). In general, structures are hierarchical when they involve role positioning informed by normative expectations that determine different (1) epistemic statuses (Heritage 2012), which associate roles with direct access to knowledge, and, consequently, (2) epistemic authority (Heritage and Raymond 2005), which defines rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge. Here, a generational order emerges when these expectations situate adults as having high (or very high) epistemic status and authority and children as having low (or very low) epistemic status and authority. Such a hierarchical structure produces a metanarrative that suggests that children are incomplete and incompetent—and therefore unreliable—in communication systems in which they are either observed (e.g., the political system) or involved (e.g., families, education, social and healthcare services). This metanarrative is more effective when it is produced in communication systems involving children: in these systems, the metanarrative supports specific requests of children’s action, thus it is directly experienced by children. The metanarrative of the incompetent child is produced any time adult–children interactions demonstrate a hierarchy of epistemic status and authority in which adults are positioned as managers. This narrative expects children to adapt to this structure and figures children who reject the structure as “problem stories” (Winslade and Williams 2012). However, the specific basic value distinctions that guide communication systems can reduce or eliminate normative expectations about epistemic status and authority in adults and children. 3.3   The Meaning and Structural Constraints of Agency Constraints on children’s participation are based on hierarchical structures and legitimized by the mainstream metanarrative of childhood. However, while structural constraints are unavoidable, social structures cannot determine actions, including children’s actions, and high status/authority does not mean that adults can control communication with children. A non-­ deterministic concept of socialization, as achieved through participation in

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communication systems, clarifies this point; more specifically, this approach includes self-socialization in socialization (Luhmann 1995): the ways in which children experience communication result from a coupling of their capacity for autonomous interpretation and the structures of communication systems. The results of children’s self-socialization are evident when they act in the ways detailed below, which either accept or reject the structure of communication (Baraldi 2008). At a basic level, all children’s actions modify the trajectories of interactions. For instance, research in CA shows that all actions influence the production of sequences of actions. Thus, children even affect adult–children interactions when they confirm communication system’s predefined orientations, such as when they accept adults’ higher epistemic status and authority—a demonstration of thin or tactical agency. Beyond this, research in CA also shows that children can refuse to comply with adults (Hutchby 2007), can ignore adults’ attempts to control their actions (Danby and Baker 1998), and can take initiative in an interaction (e.g., opening an interaction, negotiating, or arguing with an adult) (Wingard 2007). Thus, children can resist or reject adults’ actions and related hierarchical structures, triggering unpredictable consequences for orientations in communication systems. Against this background, it is also possible to define children’s agency. Agency can be defined as a specific form of active participation that enhances unpredictability, thus contributing to change the structures of communication systems and the narratives that these systems produce. In this sense, agency means the emergence of unpredictable courses of action (Van Langenhove and Harré 1999) in a communication system (Baraldi 2014; Baraldi and Cockburn 2018). The unpredictability of action means that the communication system shows that any one action is one of many possible actions. In this setting, the production of agency does not depend on individual actions, motivations, or intentions; instead, agency is produced in and through communication—it is a specific construction of the meaning of action in a communication system. Children’s actions are unpredictable if communication systems include expectations of children’s autonomous access to knowledge and children’s rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge, that is, in choosing ways of producing knowledge and the contents of knowledge. Children’s actions can only be unpredictable in communication processes; thus, children’s choices, autonomy, rights, and responsibilities are produced in communication systems. Adults’ attempts to control children’s actions depend on their

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observations of the risks of the communicative production of unpredictability. Children’s agency is visible in chains of mutually formative actions. First, children’s agency must be understood, enhanced, and supported in communication systems. Second, children’s agency is visible if their actions change the trajectory of a communication system. Children’s unpredictable actions need to be accepted, encouraged, and supported through other participants’ actions in order to affect other participants’ actions. In particular, the communicative production of children’s agency is based on children’s positioning as persons. Agency is evident in personal expressions of points of view, experiences, and emotions. Personal expressions show children’s rights and responsibilities in knowledge production. Notably, knowledge production does not mean the production of specific information or skills. Instead, the production of knowledge—rather than reproduction of knowledge—makes personal expressions visible in communication systems. For our purposes, what is important to consider about knowledge production is the dovetailing of rights and responsibilities. Two key things should be noted here. First, rights are associated with responsibilities rather than distinguished from duties. Second, consequently, responsibility is the relevant aspect of agency here: the production of children’s agency means production of personal responsibility. When personal responsibility is socially constructed, normative expectations of duties are no longer necessary; this upgrades the epistemic status and autonomy of children. Children’s agency is produced in communication systems when their structural conditions encourage and support children’s unpredictable actions (Percy-Smith 2018). Communication systems can potentially combine structural conditions and children’s unpredictable actions, thereby changing the hierarchy of epistemic status and authority in adult– children communication. Communication systems can upgrade children’s epistemic authority by producing opportunities for children to express their perspectives, experiences, and emotions, thus replacing the metanarrative of incompetent and unreliable children with a metanarrative of children as competent agents. However, only communication systems in which no structure of communication is unavoidable can produce the kind of structural change that yields interest in children’s agency. Communication is unavoidable in society, and communication processes can stabilize or change social structures (Luhmann 1995). Communication systems that welcome unpredictable actions can trouble hierarchical structures.

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The conditions of children’s agency in society result from complexly differentiated and interrelated communication systems. For instance, while children’s agency can be supported in family and healthcare systems, economic and political systems can set limits to children’s agency. Poverty or exclusion from political decisions determines the hierarchical constraints of agency. This book does not discuss how such complexly interrelated structured communication systems impact children’s agency, but it remains important to recognize that they can produce inequalities and discrimination. The concept of intersectionality (Cho et  al. 2013; Crenshaw 1994; Mason 2010) aims to explain these inequalities and discriminations. Intersectionality is an analytical approach that shows that inequalities “are the outcome of intersections of different social locations, power relations and experiences” (Hankvisky 2014, p. 2). To date, a handful of scholars have applied intersectionality to children’s rights (Frödén and Quennerstedt 2020). An intersectional approach emphasizes that factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, social class, sexuality, ability, geography, religion, and migration condition children’s agency. These factors emerge with the narratives produced in communication systems, such as narratives about differences in gender or age, sexual preference, and migration backgrounds produced in families, educational contexts, and politics. These narratives can significantly impact communication systems by strengthening hierarchical structures and discrimination. Chapter 3 briefly analyzes narratives about age, gender, and ethnicity in education as part of a critique of some of the popular conceptualizations of social structures in sociology. These concepts fall short because they involve a structuralist epistemology (Ducrot et al. 1968; Parsons 1964; Piaget 1968), which situates social structures as self-producing and self-transforming and thus as immutable and unavoidable constraints on children’s access to and production of knowledge. Chapter 4 shows that communication systems can also deactivate discriminatory or marginalizing narratives. Because children’s agency is much less relevant than adults’ agency in adult-oriented communication that characterizes society, hierarchical structures can also exploit children’s personal expressions. For instance, adults’ intentions to protect children can suppress children’s personal expressions while claiming to enhance and support their agency (Baraldi 2019). This fake agency and its instrumental role in supporting adult-­ oriented communication are based on subordinating children’s actions to hierarchical structures of communication that feed the metanarrative that

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children are emotionally and cognitively weak compared to adults. Hierarchical structures limit the range of children’s actions by blocking their unpredictable actions while requiring their active participation, since children are asked to demonstrate learning and compliance. Relatedly, hierarchical structures prevent children from contributing to social change. The concepts of thin or tactical agency indicate forms of predictable action under the conditions of hierarchical structures. Thus, understanding hierarchical structures is important to explain the conditions of children’s agency. To sum up, when we talk about how children’s agency is produced in a communication system, we are talking about how the system produces children’s unpredictable actions. The production of children’s unpredictable actions can lead to changes in the structural orientations of communication systems. While children’s actions cannot produce structural change, they can contribute to changing the expectations of children as individuals with low epistemic status and authority. Encouraging and supporting any unpredictable action enhances and supports children’s agency (Holland and O’Neill 2006); therefore, children’s agency here does not necessarily mean that children are able to participate in decision-making. Decisions are made whenever agency is exercised in any communication system. However, agency can be prevented by hierarchical structures, metanarratives of incompetent children, and discrimination. Chapter 4 discusses how these barriers may be broken. 3.4   Interaction Systems and the Media System This book analyzes how children’s agency emerges in interaction systems, which make it possible for children to participate systematically in communication. Interaction systems maximize the potential for the production of agency and show the possible consequences of this production in the complex communication systems in which they are included, such as the education system. The media system also produces an incredible amount of communication in which children actively and popularly participate. Children’s mediatized participation has been widely and critically discussed. In the twentieth century, scholars focused primarily on television (e.g., Buckingham 2009a; Dorr 1986); more recently, scholars have focused on the Internet, especially social media (Beuchamp and Kennewell 2010; Buckingham 2009b; Drotner 2009; Grimaldi and Ball 2021;

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Livingstone 2012). The field of media studies primarily investigates the potential risks of children’s participation in the media system; only a few media studies scholars stress children’s agency. Among them, a notable study by Lundmark and Evaldsson (2017) demonstrates how website and e-service design facilitate or restrict children’s agency in the context of children’s use of online youth counseling services. However, generally, studies on children’s use or design of media miss the importance of communication structures produced through the media and the ways in which these structures affect children’s agency. This book does not deal primarily with children’s agency in the media system, even though this is a fascinating and important theme; existing theoretical considerations and field research are not yet substantial enough to make sense of the ways in which the media system—as a structured communication system—produces the conditions of children’s agency. Accordingly, media studies have not yet explicitly addressed how structures of mediatized communication impact children’s agency. Regarding media, Chapter 5 offers a methodological discussion of the ways in which digital media use can promote children’s agency and surveys existing studies on this topic.

4   Conclusions: Researching Agency in Communication Systems The different conceptions of children’s agency reviewed above share some basic ideas. First, these approaches suggest that children’s actions are interlaced with adults’ actions. Second, they maintain that children are sensitive to adults’ expectations and metanarratives of childhood. Third, they reason that children’s actions can have both weak and strong impacts on social relations. Fourth, they highlight that children can be encouraged to and discouraged from expressing their opinions, experiences, and emotions. The problem with these prevailing approaches is the way in which they link children’s actions and children’s agency. Several studies collapse all children’s actions into expressions of agency and figure them as dependent on social relations. In my view, children only express agency through unpredictable actions produced in communication systems. Delineations of agency depend on the theoretical and empirical frames from which the concept is approached. This book figures agency based on the visible (i.e., theoretically and empirically evident) distinction in

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communication systems between the production of predictable and subordinate actions within hierarchical orders and the production of unpredictable actions that demonstrate autonomy, rights, responsibilities, and choices. In Chaps. 6–10, this distinction is shown through analyses of specific cases of interactions in the education system that demonstrate the ways in which the unpredictability of children’s actions—and thus children’s agency—is produced or inhibited in communication systems. The concepts of autonomy and choice, associated with children’s actions, may be considered expressions of a Western neoliberal narrative. However, the conceptual narrative of neoliberalism is only “a rhetorical tool and a moral device” outside of economics (Venugopal 2015, p. 183). I propose an understanding of children’s agency as a communicative (interactional) construction of children’s rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge about their own points of view, experiences, and emotions. In my view, genuine social and cultural change can stem from the communicative production of structural conditions of children’s agency. An analysis of these communication systems can reconfigure conceptual distinctions regarding children’s involvement in social relations, high and low epistemic status and authority, positive and negative responsibilities, and thin and thick agency. Accordingly, a theoretical and empirical analysis of the structural conditions of children’s agency in communication systems can elucidate social change, especially in the education system.

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Rama, S (2020). Examining child mobility and transport in South Africa: Challenges for theory and practice. In C. Baraldi & L. Rabello de Castro (Eds.), Global Childhoods in International Perspective: Universality, Diversity and Inequalities (pp. 86-105). London: Sage. Shepler, S. (2012). The rites of the child: global discourses of youth and reintegrating child soldiers in Sierra Leone. In A.  Twum-Danso Imoh & R.  Ame (eds.). Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and Global (pp.  174-189). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Shibutani, T. (1961). Society and Personality. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Shier, H. (2001). Pathways to participation: openings, opportunities and obligations. Children & Society, 15, 107-117. Sinclair, R. (2004). Participation in practice: Making it meaningful, effective and sustainable. Children and Society, 18(2), 106-118. Skattebol, J., Redmond, G. & Zizzo, G (2017). Expanding Children’s Agency: Cases of Young People Experiencing Economic Adversity. Children & Society, 31, 315-329. Smørholm, S. (2016). Pure as the angels, wise as the dead: perceptions of infants’ agency in a Zambian community. Childhood, 23(3), 348-361. Somers, M.  R. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23(5), 605-649. Spyrou, S. (2018). Disclosing Childhoods. Research and Knowledge Production for a Critical Childhood Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Stivers, T., Sidnell, J. & Bergen, C. (2018). Children’s responses to questions in peer interaction: A window into the ontogenesis of interactional competence. Journal of Pragmatics, 124, 14-30. Stoecklin, D. & Fattore, T. (2017). Children’s multidimensional agency: Insights into the structuration of choice. Childhood, 25(1), 47-62. Thomas, N. (2007). Towards a theory of children’s participation. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15(2), 199-218. Thomas, N. (2021). Child-led research, children’s rights and childhood studies: A defence. Childhood, 28(2), 186-199. Thomas, N. & Stoecklin, D. (2018). Recognition and capability: A new way to understand how children can achieve their rights?. In C. Baraldi & T. Cockburn (Eds.), Theorizing Childhood. Citizenship, Rights and Participation (pp. 73-94). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Tisdall, K. & Davis, J. (2004). Making a Difference? Bringing Children’s and Young People’s Views into Policy-Making. Children & Society, 18, 131-142. Twum-Danso Imoh, A. (2012). The Convention on the Rights of the Child: a product and facilitator of a global childhood. In A.  Twum-Danso Imoh & R. Ame (Eds.), Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and Global (pp. 17-33). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Twum-Danso Imoh, A. & Ame R. (2012) (Eds.), Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and Global Basingstoke: Palgrave. Valentine, K. (2011). Accounting for agency. Children & Society, 25, 347-358. Van Langenhove, L., & Harré, R. (1999). Introducing Positioning Theory. In R. Harré & L. Van Langenhove (Eds.), Positioning Theory (pp. 14-31). Oxford: Blackwell. Venugopal, R. (2015). Neoliberalism as concept. Economy and Society, 44(2), 167-185. Wells, K. (2011). The politics of life: Governing childhood. Global Studies of Childhood, 1(1), 15-25. Wells, K. (2015). Childhood in a Global Perspective. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wingard, L. (2007). Constructing time and prioritizing activities in parent-child interaction. Discourse & Society, 18(1), 75-91. Winslade, J. & Monk, G. (2008). Practicing Narrative Mediation: Loosening the Grip of Conflict. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Winslade, J. & Williams, M. (2012). Safe and Peaceful Schools: Addressing Conflict and Eliminating Violence. Thousand Oaks: Corwin. Wyness, M. (2009). Children representing children: Participation and the problem of diversity in UK Youth Councils. Childhood, 16(4), 535-552. Wyness, M. (2013a). Children’s participation and intergenerational dialogue: bringing adults back into the analysis. Childhood, 20(4), 429-442. Wyness, M. (2013b). Global standards and deficit childhoods: the contested meaning of children’s participation. Children’s Geographies, 11(3), 340-353. Wyness, M. (2016). Childhood, Human Rights and Adversity: the case of children and military conflict. Children and Society, 30(5), 345-355. Wyness, M. (2018). Children’s participation: Definitions, narratives and disputes. In C.  Baraldi & T.  Cockburn (Eds.), Theorizing Childhood. Citizenship, Rights and Participation (pp. 53-72). Basingstoke: Palgrave.  Wyse, D. (2001). Felt tip pens in school councils: Children’s participation rights in four English schools. Children & Society, 15, 209-218.

CHAPTER 3

Educational Interaction: Tradition and ­Change

Education © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_3

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1   The Constraints of Children’s Agency in Education SC has been very critical about the possibility that the education system can enhance children’s agency, and about children’s experiences of education in general (Devine 2002; Farini 2018; Gallagher 2006; James and James 2004; Mayall 2002; Osman 2005; Wyness 1999). Education has been considered the key site of adult control on children and has been associated with development narratives that support an approach to education in which education introduces children into society by determining “how, as adults, they will find their place within it” (James and James 2004, p. 123). Consequently, “the shaping of children is a fundamental drive within educational policy” (Prout 2000, pp. 306–307) and education does not support children’s agency, even inside participatory projects (Cotmore 2004; Wyse 2001). In education, “children are less creative; less able to construct meaning because their school lives are more or less determined by curricular and behavioral rules and structures” (Wyness 1999, p. 356). As long as we unilaterally define childhood from a modern, educational perspective, the potential of children’s citizenship will remain shadowed by the problems and inauguration rituals they face as well as by their need for protection (Jans 2004, p. 40).

2   The Function of Education and the Teaching Interaction Problems in enhancing and supporting children’s agency can be explained by the function of education. This function has been historically explored by classical sociology (e.g., Durkheim 1972; Parsons 1964). According to SST, the function of education is the intentional transformation of an individual’s psychic system in person (Luhmann 2002) by giving meaning to individual consciousness in the education system. In the education system, children’s persons are addressed as points of attribution of not-yet-­ adequate actions and motivations to act. This function implies that through education children become persons, that is, they become progressively able to realize motivations and possibilities for action. Thus, children never achieve the positioning as full persons in the education system. In the global society, the function of education is to support personhood of both privileged and marginalized children. For this reason, the

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education system is one of the most globalized social systems in contemporary society. In the education system, intentionality enables education to transform an individual’s psychic system in person. Notably, intentionality differentiates education from socialization (ibid., pp. 53–55). Socialization (which is discussed in more detail in Chap. 2) is a general process that occurs unintentionally in every social situation. Socialization affects psychic systems, but does not totally determine their systematic and guided transformation in persons. The education system includes all communications that evidence pedagogical intentions and thus supplements or corrects the results of socialization. More specifically, intentional education is produced through teaching interactions. As Chap. 2 details, in interaction systems, active participation is expected from all participants. Therefore, in teaching interactions, all children’s actions are considered important and informative for teaching. The teaching interaction ensures the independence of the education system from external socialization (e.g., socialization in families) and incidental education. This is shown, for instance, by the difference between how problems related to understanding are repaired in socializing contexts and how these problems are systematically corrected in educational interactions (Macbeth 2004). Given their important function in education, teaching interactions are generalized within the education system: they do not depend upon or vary with what is contingently taught in the classroom or with the features of specific groups of learners (Luhmann 2002, pp. 102–109). Therefore, when we discuss children’s participation in education, we are thinking about how children participate in teaching interactions. Scholars in the sociology of education have conducted several analyses of teaching interactions since the 1970s. For example, Delamont (1976) described teachers’ and pupils’ roles and how they negotiate their relationships. Mehan (1979) analyzed the ways in which language structures teaching interactions. Both Delamont and Mehan interpreted teaching interactions as constructions that are collectively produced (i.e., that emerge with children’s collaboration). Mehan proposed analyzing this interaction using a framework deriving from studies in linguistics (McHoul 1978; Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) that conceptualize teaching as based on a triplet in which the teacher initiates the interaction (frequently with a question), the pupil responds, and the teacher gives evaluative feedback. This approach is often called the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE), Initiation-Feedback-Response (IRF) (Sinclair  and Coulthard 1975), or

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Question-Answer-Comment sequence (McHoul 1978) and has been studied since the 1970s. In the last twenty years of the twentieth century, several studies focused on teachers’ classroom management strategies (Cohen et al. 1989; Pollard 1982; Waterhouse 1991) and pupils’ contributions to the construction and maintenance of this order (Davies 1980, 1983; Eder 1981; Scarth 1987; Stevenson 1991). However, these sociological studies did not consider children’s agency because they figured the hierarchical relation between teacher and pupils—a generational order— was unavoidable.

3   The Structure of Education As shown by Oswell (2013), several analyses of teaching interactions underestimate the importance of their contexts. Delamont (1976) acknowledged that teaching interactions can only be understood against the background of a comprehensive education system. Teaching interactions are based on the structure of the education system. The education system establishes the structural preconditions for the production of each teaching interaction and ensures the continuity of teaching beyond single interactions. It establishes the structures of expectations that, on the one hand, can be used to orient the reproduction of each teaching interaction and, on the other, ensure connections beyond each teaching interaction. Educational structures enable the expansion of educational capacity in teaching interactions because they generate meanings that extend beyond the boundaries of any specific teaching interaction and thus provide a wide range of opportunities for teacher–pupil communication. The basic structure that ensures the realization of education—and thus of teaching interactions—is the conveyance (Vermittlung) of knowledge (Luhmann 2002, pp. 59–60). Teaching is guided by the basic value distinction between conveyable and non-conveyable knowledge. The positive value of conveyable knowledge connects the communication system of teaching, while the negative value of non-conveyable knowledge reflects the failure to convey knowledge. This basic value distinction concerns everything that can be included in the education system; it is both universal (i.e., valid for all teaching interactions) and specific (i.e., it indicates what is conveyable in any teaching interaction). A secondary structure of education is selection, which makes the results of conveyance visible through the evaluation of children’s performances. The basic value distinction here is between children’s correct (“good”) and incorrect (“bad”)

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performances. This distinction is based on ways of testing children’s learning. The structure of the selection determines the systematic evaluation of children’s performances, orienting the production of the IRE sequence (i.e., teachers’ initiations of interactions with children, children’s responses to teachers, and the teachers’ feedback to the children). The combination of conveyance and selection/evaluation accounts for everything that may be relevant in educational communication. Conveyance and selection are the basic structures of the education system and they determine the hierarchical differentiation of the roles of teacher and pupil, which enables teachers to convey knowledge and evaluate their pupils’ learning. The complementary and asymmetric positioning of teachers’ and pupils’ roles determines the primacy of the teacher’s agency over the pupils’ simple participation. This hierarchical structure is shown by the difference between accessing knowledge and exercising rights and responsibilities in constructing it, that is, by the hierarchical distribution of epistemic status and authority in teaching interactions. Variations of the teaching interaction are ways of checking (Sert 2013) and structuring the hierarchy of epistemic status and authority. The hierarchical structure of the education system affects the communication process in teaching interactions in two ways: (1) teachers speak and pupils listen to them speaking (conveyance) and (2) teachers assess pupils and pupils accept their assessments (evaluation). It is interesting to note that several studies on teaching interactions are based on the ways of soliciting children’s responses and giving feedback on these responses, that is, they analyze the effects of selection (which determines evaluation) produced in the interaction. These studies do not consider teachers’ presentations, lectures, or recitations (Diehl and McFarland 2012). When conveyance structures the teaching interaction, children may be silent; however, this does not mean that communication is missing—silent listening is one way in which children can respond to their teachers. In such cases, the teacher talks and the children are invited to be silently attentive to ensure that they correctly understand the teacher and thus will be able to demonstrate their knowledge in future sequences initiated by their teachers. To sum up: 1. The teaching interaction fulfills the function of education because teachers’ actions evidence their intention to guide their pupils’ learning experiences.

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2. The education system provides the structures of expectations that can be used in teaching interactions and ensures connections between these interactions. 3. The basic structure of the education system is the conveyance of knowledge. The structure of selection, which enables systemic evaluations in teaching interactions, shows whether conveyance was effective. 4. The reproduction of conveyance and selection/evaluation is ensured by the hierarchical differentiation of the roles of teacher and pupil, which determine the hierarchical structure of teaching interactions. Teaching takes the form of a monologue. In a monologue, “language use is regarded from the perspective of the speaker,” that is, “the meanings of words and utterances are seen as resulting from the speakers’ intentions or strategies alone, while co-present people are seen as recipients of the units of information prepared by the speaker” (Wadensjö 1998, p.  8). Monologues emerge in the education system based on the hierarchical structure of the teaching interaction. Meanings of words and utterances seem to result only from the teacher’s intentions and strategies, and pupils are seen as recipients of the units of information prepared by the teacher. In this context, a monologue is based on the teachers’ expectations of the unequal distribution of action in the communication and a lack of interest in children’s agency, that is, the treatment of children’s alternative perspectives and disagreements as irrelevant or damaging to the interaction. A monologue is not based on the failure to understand or consider children; rather, it is based on a particular way of understanding and considering children. In a monologue, the teacher claims the primary right to act and controls the distribution of opportunities for action. First, the teacher’s action is more important than the child’s way of understanding. Second, the teacher’s action displays the certainty of the child’s understanding. Third, the teacher attributes errors to the child’s understanding (learning) or action (performance). Finally, the teacher’s evaluation displays a basic degree of indifference for its consequences on children’s feelings and views, despite possible mitigations. Thus, in a monologue, children’s agency is treated as irrelevant and hence their views and feelings are overlooked. The structure of the education system explains why children’s agency cannot be considered relevant in education. In the education system, the child is considered a learner, that is, an individual mind in need of

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transformation. The education system turns children into pupils by teaching them how to be “proper children” (James and James 2004, p. 123). Children “become mere recipients of information from the teacher” (Sharma 2015, p. 173). The role of the child as pupil is based on the peculiar and paradoxical plan of transforming minds in persons. This transformation is based on the conveyance of knowledge, which situates the individual child as a medium of education (Luhmann 1991). The child is a medium that must take the form of a person as the final outcome of acquired knowledge, and the transformation of individual children into persons aims to reduce the unpredictability of children’s individual thinking (Luhmann 2002). The shaping of children’s minds is based on the narrative of children as trivial machines that create outputs with the input of teachers’ actions conveying knowledge. It is unrealistic to consider the child as a mere medium and a trivial machine, but education generally expresses this narrative in its work to transform the child into a person. 3.1   Other Structural Constraints in the Education System Studies in the sociology of education have frequently focused on other structural conditions of children’s access to and success in learning. In this view, social structures and their consequences on children’s socialization can determine children’s inclusion and destinies in the education system. These social structures are social class, possession of social and cultural capital, gender, and ethnic origins (considered in more detail below). Bernstein’s influential theory (1971) suggested that the structural constraints of children’s education are based on differences in social class and corresponding language competencies (“codes”) that determine children’s role performances. Other studies have focused on problems related to the equality of access to education based on social class (Bourdieu 1986). This approach has evolved into a theory of cultural and social capital as structures that can differentiate children’s educational achievements, which has become extremely popular in the sociology of education (e.g., Dika and Singh 2002; Edgerton and Roberts 2014; Grenfell 2009; Lareau and Weininger 2003; Plagens 2011; Reay 2004). Children who have access to important social relations or cultural resources through their families are likely to be more successful in school than children who do not have access to such forms of capital. Gender is another constraining social structure frequently observed in studies of children’s socialization and educational experiences. Gender is

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seen as a social structure that is constructed in institutions and interactions (Connell 2009). In particular, gender is displayed and performed in social interactions (West and Zimmerman 1987) and can become visible through narratives of identities and relationships. However, gender seems to be a fluid structure, allowing negotiations and adaptations that can either “redo” or “undo” gender (Butler 2004; Connell 2010; Deutsch 2007). Almost thirty years ago, in a school-based study, Thorne (1993) observed both differences and relations between boys and girls and stressed the situational construction of gender in the interaction. Gender differences seemed to increase or decrease in different situations, suggesting that no clear correlation existed between gender and education. In this view, gender is constructed through the combination of children’s agency and structural constraints (Connell 2009; Danby 2005). These approaches are based on the structuralist epistemology (Chap. 2), which proposes a deterministic conception of the function of education as based on external structures that regulate socialization and education. The empirical value of structuralism is not based on the analysis of the direct influence of processes of communication for socialization and education, but on statistical methods that have a high probability of showing that a reasonable percentage of poor or working-class children, children with low cultural and social capital, and girls do not do well or face discrimination in school. As for all statistical analyses, there is no way of analyzing what processes lead from socialization to education. There is also no way of demonstrating whether the results are generalizable—typically, only a part of a sample in a statistical analysis coheres with a study’s theoretical presuppositions. This is not to say that social class, cultural and social capital, and gender do not count. However, their potential impact depends on the way in which the education system conveys and evaluates pupils’ knowledge and thus determines which pupils are successful and unsuccessful—a point critical pedagogy has stressed since the 1960s (Freire 1970; Mayo 2013). Structural constraints only appear to be external because they are produced in the education system on the bases of educational structures. This is also true for the negative or ambiguous effects of educational planning. Bernstein (1990, 1996) has discussed the influence of pedagogical narratives on educational practices. More recently, educational planning has been critically studied in relation to the use of digital devices and platforms (Grimaldi and Ball 2019; Decuypere 2019; Landri 2018). Pedagogical

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narratives and planning are only relevant in teaching interactions in the education system. Like the book more generally, this chapter is not focused on the production of structural constraints of learning in the education system. Its concern is the production of children’s agency in classroom interactions. The focus is on how teaching interactions constrain children’s agency and the possibility of reducing these constraints.

4  Is the Teaching Interaction Changing? According to SC, education can support children’s rights, critical thinking, and responsible participation (Invernizzi and Williams 2008). SC has also stressed the necessity of alternative forms of children’s participation in learning and education (Holdsworth 2005; Percy-Smith 2018). Alternative forms of education have been suggested since the beginning of the twentieth century by philosophical and pedagogical studies stressing the importance of children’s active participation in the education system (Dewey 1955; Montessori 1967). A child-centered form of education was proposed in the mid-twentieth century that affirmed the student’s capacity for autonomous learning and self-assessment; this approach advised that teachers should focus on actively listening to student self-expression (Rogers 1951, 1969). In response to a broader series of suggestions regarding teachers’ attitudes and behaviors in the classroom, a child-­ centered teaching method was developed (Gordon 1974). This approach situates pupils as active participants in meaning construction and their own learning. Inquiries into how student agency emerges in the teaching interaction arose during the period in which SC started to analyze children as social agents (Davies 1990). More recently, several studies have explored how teaching can support children as active constructors of knowledge who can express their views, challenge different views, and explore different options through a form of dialogic teaching (Kovalainen and Kumpulainen 2007; Mercer 2000, 2002; Sharpe 2008; Wells 2015). More specifically, “dialogic teaching” is a pedagogy “in which both teachers and pupils make substantial and significant contributions and through which children’s thinking on a given idea or theme is helped to move forward” and through which “teachers can encourage students to participate actively” (Mercer and Littleton 2007, p.  41). Notably, dialogic teaching figures education as a practice in which knowledge is socially constructed

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(Dragonas et al. 2015) and thus reasons that learning is based on reciprocal and mutually formative interactions between teachers and pupils. Teachers can “orchestrate” this participation (Erickson 1996). Learner experience is affected by the extent to which dialogue “enables them to appreciate the purpose of the activities they do, and how these activities fit together into a meaningful sequence of events” (ibid., p.  55). For our purposes, it is important to note that Walsh (2011) shows that when the teaching interaction aims to improve communication skills, it cannot rely on any form of hierarchical guidance. An interesting type of child-centered educational action is “revoicing,” which is “a particular kind of re-uttering of a student’s contribution” (O’Connor and Michaels 1996, p. 71) performed by the teacher in the third turn of a question-answer sequence. Revoicing is an alternative approach to traditional forms of evaluation and leads to extreme scaffolding. Revoicing “may include a change in the propositional content of the student’s formulation or in the language used to frame that contribution” (ibid. p. 65). Consider, for example, the following sequence (ibid., p. 70): Teacher: […] Marshall / what did you do // Marshall (student): I/I started at Alewife / in the / beginning //… because / um / it’s just the beginning / um / I think Alewife’s a good terminal // (students laugh) and I been to Alewife three times and I liked the way it looked // Teacher: okay / so you chose Alewife based on your own personal experience The teacher’s third turn (“so you chose Alewife on your own personal experience”), introduced by an acknowledgment of the student’s contribution (“okay”) reformulates the content of the pupil’s answer, promoting its explanation. The teacher introduces the idea of “choice based on personal experience” as a development of “I been to Alewife three times and I liked the way it looked.” The teacher makes the idea of personal experience explicit and infers the implications of the student’s contribution. Revoicing generally functions “to credit a student for his or her contribution while still clarifying or reframing the contribution in terms most useful for group consumption” (O’Connor and Michaels 1996, p.  64). Thus, revoicing replaces traditional evaluation and therefore changes the traditional structure of the IRE sequence. Revoicing may be seen as one

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specific strategy for enhancing children’s “reasoned participation,” a form of active participation that can produce “accountable talk” (Michaels et al. 2008). Revoicing can help children to recognize what they already know, foster interactions between children so they can learn from one another, and encourage children to revise their thinking without being prompted by the teacher (Lawrence 2006). 4.1   Changes in Education in Early Childhood This change to child-centered education is particularly relevant for early childhood education. Education in early childhood is a particularly delicate issue since the narrative of age is particularly important in the education system. Age is a basic component of the mainstream metanarrative of development in Western society. Age narratives support the hierarchical structure of epistemic status and authority in communication systems in which children are involved or observed. Generally, age narratives concern the child’s ability to act; for instance, popular age narratives support the expectation that children are able to talk at a particular age. Thus, age narratives support the distinctions between different phases of childhood. Against this background, age can be used to differentiate adolescence from childhood; terms such as “teenagers” or “teen-age culture” (Bernard 1961) show how age narratives impact this differentiation. In developmental psychology, age defines different phases of childhood, such as early childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence. Notably, in education, age narratives affect the narrative of ability in learning and thus the inclusion of children in school classes and transitions in the education system; for instance, from nursery school to primary school and from primary school to secondary school. Age narratives have become increasingly unstable since the last decades of the twentieth century, at least in Western society. This instability shows that the limitations conceptions of age place on understandings of children’s agency can be challenged. Several studies have analyzed agency in nursery schools, in which interactions are very loosely based on conveyance rather than selection (Dahlberg 2009; Danby and Baker 1998; Farini and Scollan 2019; Markström and Halldén 2009). The well-known “Reggio” approach to nursery school is an important example of child-­ centered communication, in which children’s agency is very evident (Baraldi 2015; Edwards et  al. 1998; Kirova et  al. 2019). The Reggio approach locates the child as naturally competent and autonomous in the

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construction of knowledge and in establishing relations with peers. Educators are asked to avoid claiming superior epistemic authority in their interactions with children. They are encouraged to support children’s autonomous access to and production of knowledge, as well as to support peer relations. In this approach, conveyance of knowledge seems to be irrelevant, rather than loose. The Reggio approach is considered “democratic”; notably, democracy is often considered a basic value in nursery schools (Bath 2013; Dahlberg and Moss 2005; Moss 2009; Pascal and Bertram 2009). 4.2   Are Changes in Education Effective? These changes have led SC to a more positive evaluation of education, based on recognition of its possible support of children’s agency. Far from producing docile subjects, modern schools facilitate children’s agency, not least inasmuch as this has constituted both an explicit philosophy of the modern school (i.e., learning is through doing) and as this provides the umbrella for a number of innovations regarding children’s agency (Oswell 2013, p 113). As Oswell suggests, changes in teaching interactions are linked to the concept of experiential learning or “learning by doing.” However, this concept focuses on how the individual makes meaning out of direct experience (Kolb 1984). Largely, experiential learning is a novel approach in that it situates learners as actively reflecting on and conceptualizing their experiences (Lehmann-Rommel 2000; Sutinen 2008). Here, learning is experiential because it is based on the learner’s active participation in the interaction and is displayed in the interaction as the learner’s autonomous construction of meanings. Learning is “manifested as participants’ progress along trajectories of changing engagement in discursive practices” (Young 2007, p. 263). Thus, the concept of experiential learning stresses the child’s active construction of meanings and active participation in learning, rather than children’s agency. To what extent these approaches are effective in the education system is an open question. For instance, some empirical analyses show that nursery schools do not always apply a child-centered approach. Instead, these analyses show that children’s participation can be focused on learning (Alasuutari and Karila 2010); educators can inhibit peer-to-peer relations by staying at the center of interactions (Berthelsen 2005; Danby 2005; Harper and McCluskey 2003), which children can recognize through

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even a gaze (Kidwell 2009); and educators can support reading and writing (Tafa 2008). These studies also evidence the combination of many hierarchical structures and that children attempt to escape these structures or “defend” their autonomy from them (Danby and Baker 1998; Löfdahl and Hägglund 2007; Markström and Halldén 2009). Thus, these studies suggest that agency is not encouraged by educators in nursery schools. In these schools, teaching can be irrelevant, as theorized by the Reggio approach; however, the variety of forms of education in nursery schools cannot be reduced to the Reggio approach, despite its popularity in the global society. Moreover, the IRE sequence continues to be produced even in educational organizations in which experiential learning is considered fundamental (Farini 2011). Beyond the question of the generalization of the facilitation of agency, the meaning of the “facilitation of agency,” is very ambiguous (Oswell 2013). For instance, Kirby (2020) analyses both “agency in conformity” and agency as transformation in education. On the one hand, the agency of the “desiring child” challenges “the perceptual and epistemic order of the on-task classroom, offering a momentary liberation from the demanding rigidity of the current education system” (2020, p. 26). On the other hand, agency in conformity means that “children adopt ‘good’ and ‘clever’ positions in the on-task classroom that involves both effort and resistance; children demonstrate their cultural competency by working hard to perform what adults expect, contributing to the culture of conformity” (Kirby 2020, p. 21). The concept of “agency in conformity” is clearly coherent with the concepts of thin and tactical agency (described in Chap. 2), which blur differences across children’s actions in education. Several studies on the mitigation of educational hierarchies show that teachers’ epistemic authority may be downgraded in classroom interactions. However, a child-centered approach does not truly affect the hierarchical structure of a particular form of education. Variations in teaching interactions only provide more nuanced versions of teachers’ actions that control the production of knowledge. Children are still considered learners, even when they are active learners (i.e., even when they show learning through active participation). The interest in children’s participation in teaching interactions is still subordinated to the role positioning of children as pupils. Children’s agency is not (yet?) a primary interest in the teaching interaction and education system.

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4.3   Why Change Education? The introduction of a child-centered approach in the education system can be understood as a strategy to pursue the transformation of children as individuals, that is, as a strategy to improve learning. This strategy depends on the limitations of education; while the hierarchical structure of teaching enables the teacher to manage classroom interactions, this structure cannot truly bind individual mental capacities or the interaction system. First, just because a child’s mind can be transformed does not mean that it is externally determined (see my discussion of “socialization” in Chap. 2). Second, because it is impossible to determine children’s thoughts and actions, teaching interactions are characterized by unavoidable unpredictability and uncertainty. For this reason, a variety of paradoxical strategies for enhancing children’s participation are used to reduce unpredictability, which gives the process of making the child into a “person” an important function in teaching interactions (Luhmann 2002). However, while children are expected to collaborate in maintaining the structure of teaching interactions in a child-centered approach, they can also hinder its reproduction. Children expect that teachers want to educate them and react to this intention in unpredictable ways. Despite the narrative of children as trivial machines, children are active participants and classroom interactions cannot be shaped according to educational intentions. This is not to say that teachers cannot make a difference in classroom interactions, but instead that they cannot control classroom communication. Teaching cannot guarantee the child’s understanding or acceptance. Teaching interactions cannot predict future outcomes and actions that lead to successful teaching cannot be foreseen, however well-prepared and competent teachers may be. These principles explain the theory of the “hidden curriculum” (Dreeben 1968), that is, a curriculum that is latent, parallel, and different from the official one. Put differently, children’s learning is not restricted to what is taught: they learn attitudes, behaviors, cultural values, motives, and strategies through classroom interactions with both their teachers and peers. Against this backdrop, despite the structures of conveyance and selection/evaluation, teaching interactions generate randomness (Luhmann 1985), that is, unpredictability. Thus, teaching interactions produce the unity of stability, based on structures, and unpredictability, based on children’s active participation, which compels the teaching interaction to

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focus on how they are positioned as persons. The unintended and uncontrollable effects of teaching interactions depend on the ways in which children react to teachers’ actions. Each teaching interaction can both reproduce its own structures and open new and unpredictable opportunities for action. Teachers should find ways of managing the unity of stability and unpredictability, exploiting the opportunities for action that arise in classroom interactions. In other words, teaching interactions enhance a systematic need for the re-specification of teachers’ actions depending on how interactions are contingently constructed. This determines the systematic possibility of variations in teaching interactions. The positioning of children in subordinated roles and as the authors of their own personal contributions explains the ambiguity of using the concept of agency for both “good children,” that is, children who diligently adapt to the educational expectations, and “desiring children,” who try to gain spaces for personal expression (Kirby 2020). In fact, despite the systematic production of unpredictability in teaching interactions, children’s agency is not allowed in the education system; it can only be observed through the “desiring” child’s attempts to escape the normativity of the system.

5   Cultural Differences and Intercultural Communication in the Education System A relevant constraint on children’s agency in the education system is based on narratives of ethnicity that produce cultural differences and identities. In teaching interactions, the participation of children from migrant, minority, or non-normative national and linguistic backgrounds is often seen as an indicator of “super-diversity” (Vertovec 2007), which enhances fear of a complexity that cannot be reduced. This situation has attracted concerns and critical analyzes about the problem of ensuring access, inclusion, and learning for migrant and minority students. However, the meaning of teaching interactions in these contexts is unclear. Several studies use concepts such as “intercultural communication” and “intercultural education” without any explicit link to migrant or minority children’s agency. The problem here is if and in which ways the agency of children with migrant, minority, or non-normative national and linguistic backgrounds can be encouraged or discouraged in multicultural settings, such as multicultural classrooms.

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Apparently, teaching becomes highly unpredictable when cultural differences become evident in teaching interactions. This has been observed in nursery school classes with migrant children (Harris and Kaur 2012; Lauritsen 2011; Palludan 2007; Seele 2012). The concern is that teachers’ actions fail to enhance the learning of migrant children because they belong to different cultural groups or speak different languages (Devine 2013). This concern is based on a specific metanarrative of cultural diversity and identity. Several studies have focused on the ways in which cultural diversity influences classroom communication. For instance, considering the underachievement of ethnic groups in US schools, Gay (2000) advised that culturally responsive pedagogies should be implemented in ethnically diverse classrooms; in particular, she stressed the importance of cultural identity, different communication styles, associated with cultural groups, and culturally diverse curricula. Mahon and Cushner (2012) focused on multicultural classrooms as based on cultural diversity among pupils, stressing the need for teachers to be able to engage in intercultural communication by, for example, learning about their students’ cultural experiences; this work can help build trusting relationships across cultures and highlight the importance of culturally influenced factors, such as communication contexts and styles, in education. This approach follows the well-known theory that intercultural communication is achieved through “interaction between people of different cultures” (Zhu Hua 2014, p. 1) and cultural differences are important in teaching interactions (Schell 2009; Spencer-Oatey and Franklin 2009). This approach, which insists on ethnic or cultural groups, is also used to investigate children’s narratives on diversity (Kostet et al. 2021). In this view, individual identity is associated with membership in a specific cultural group and teaching interactions need to deal with cultural identities. For instance, Collier (2015) assumes that cultural identity is necessarily shared by participants in communication processes and that communication necessarily establishes group identities. Culture is “a system of values and practices of a group or community of people” (Zhu Hua 2014, p. 1), and participants in communication are expected to follow this system of values and orientations, which construct their cultural identities or we-­ identities (Ting-Toomey 1999), and display these identities in communication. Against this conceptual background, the recognition and treatment of students’ cultural identities is the condition of intercultural education necessary to enhance positive intercultural relations. Several studies suggest

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that the production of examples and tasks regarding cultural knowledge, attitudes, and skills should be used to enhance teaching in multicultural settings (e.g., Huber and Reynolds 2014; Radstake and Leeman 2010; Samovar et  al. 2013). Intercultural communication is seen as a positive recognition of cultural diversity and as an important way of dealing with cultural identity (Alred et al. 2003; Grant and Portera 2011; Guilherme 2012; Portera 2008). While this approach suggests that recognizing and giving value to differences in a multicultural setting is a reasonable way of dealing with them, it has been criticized as “essentialist” for presenting “people’s individual behaviour as entirely defined and constrained by the cultures in which they live so that the stereotype becomes the essence of who they are” (Holliday 2011, p. 4). The metanarrative of this cultural constraint blocks children’s agency by assuming that in the education system—and in particular in teaching interactions—children are members of cultural groups and their actions follow the rules of these groups. This approach translates the hierarchical structure of education within a Eurocentric form of communication in which cultural or ethnic labels are applied to migrant children or children from minorities without explicit intentions to discriminate against or marginalize them.

6  Education and Language Barriers Language barriers are the most frequent problem in so-called multicultural classrooms since communication is blocked by basic problems of understanding. Dialogue and public service interpreting are often used to deal with language barriers (Baraldi and Gavioli 2012; Tipton and Furmanek 2016). However, studies on dialogue interpreting in the education system show that it often occurs in teacher–parent interactions, parent–teacher conferences, or one-on-one meetings, rather than in teacher–student interactions. Studies on teacher–parent interactions state that mediators display a high degree of involvement and social responsibility associated with the intention of supporting pupils’ learning (Tipton and Furmanek 2016), thus adopting a quasi-pedagogical approach (Vargas-Urpi and Arumi Ribas 2014). Moreover, it is sustained that language mediation may not be effective in involving migrant parents in interactions (Davitti 2013; Vargas-Urpi 2015, 2017) or may have unintended or unpredictable results (Davitti 2015). However, it can also be argued that teachers have an important responsibility to prevent the possible failure of interpreting; notably, teachers tend to reproduce the

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hierarchical structure of the teaching interaction when they engage migrant parents (Baraldi 2022). Migrant children are more frequently involved in second language teaching than in interpreter-mediated interactions. Walsh (2011) describes four discursive patterns (or “microcontexts”) comprising particular pedagogical goals and interactional structures representative of trends in second language classrooms, which are called “modes”; namely, the managerial mode, materials mode, skills and systems mode, and classroom context mode. The “managerial mode” simply involves conveying information, organizing activities, explaining materials, and changing between modes; notably, in this mode, teachers dominate interactions (or take “extended turns”) by explaining or giving instructions and learners do not meaningfully contribute to interactions. The “materials mode” enhances linguistic practices by engaging children with materials (e.g., encouraging them to respond to the material) and checking and clarifying the children’s engagements with the materials; accordingly, this mode is based on the IRE scheme, focused questions, feedback on linguistic forms, and scaffolding. The “skills and systems” mode involves creating the conditions in which children can produce correct forms and check their use of language, giving corrective feedback on linguistic forms, promoting specific abilities, and highlighting correct answers. Last, the “classroom context” mode promotes clear linguistic expressions, considers context, and encourages communicative fluidity; in this mode, teachers’ take short turns, make minimal corrections, give feedback on contents, clarify questions, and create scaffolding, and children are encouraged to take extended turns. Second language teaching may also be conceived as an opportunity for intercultural education; however, this approach may lead to interpretations of children first as “migrants” with a cultural identity, in an essentialist perspective (Baraldi 2012; Forsman 2010; Hajisoteriou and Angelides 2013). An alternative way of dealing with language barriers in teaching interactions is based on the theory and method of translanguaging (Canagarajah 2011; Garcia and Li Wei 2014; Li Wei 2018). “Translanguaging” involves integrating different languages and language varieties in teaching interactions geared to construct new knowledge. Translanguaging is an ambivalent form of language education. On the one hand, it aims to unite different dimensions of personal narratives and experiences to combine and generate new language practices and identities. On the other hand, by focusing on the conveyance of learning, the method of translanguaging

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does not dismiss the structural conditions of education, although it seems to mitigate them.

7   Conclusions: Education and Agency The education system is the only communication system that can ensure systematic learning and the personalization of children through teaching interactions. Because the conveyance of knowledge and agency appear incompatible in the education system—despite the unity of stability and unpredictability characterizing this system—it seems like the system negates children’s agency. The structures that ensure predictable education seem to contrast with changes in the system based on unpredictability. As Gallagher puts it, “Schools govern by producing knowledge of pupils, assessing and examining them, classifying and ranking them, quantifying their personalities and abilities” (2006, p. 171). The education system is based on monologic teaching, in which teachers only engage children to ensure that they reiterate the conveyed knowledge. In such a rubric, in which the child is a medium of learning and a trivial machine that can only transform the teacher’s input through their output, there is no way to introduce children’s agency into the education system. Attempts to introduce variations and mitigations in this hierarchical structure of teaching interactions cannot change the system’s norm of transforming individuals into particular kinds of persons, even when these interventions affirm children’s active participation in such interactions— teaching interactions adapt to the pressures of children’s unpredictable participation to preserve the structure of the education system. Against this general background, the difficulties of producing the conditions of children’s agency in the education system have been increased by the pandemic. The consideration of the child as a medium of education has been strengthened by the breakdown of teaching interactions in schools, which has determined the breakdown of children’s involvement in classroom interactions. Attempts to re-establish education through online learning have reduced children to disembodied media working through digital media. Thus, the pandemic has made the construction of the child as a medium of learning an increasingly relevant topic; however, inquiries into how best to enhance and support the child as a person have been buried by growing narratives about the negative effects of the pandemic on learning. The narrative of the child as a medium has been strengthened through the narratives about pandemic-based risks related

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to the health and safety of children, teachers, and children’s families. Children’s options for active participation, according to a child-centered approach, have been weakened in this context, in which the child is simultaneously narrated as a potential medium of contagion and a necessary medium of learning. Analyses of children’s education should avoid confusing structural conditions that have adapted to children’s unpredictable participation and the structural conditions of children’s agency. Increasing efforts to enhance children’s active participation do not necessarily imply that children’s agency is enhanced and supported in teaching interactions. The next chapter discusses whether the hierarchical structure of teaching interactions can be changed to a genuine dialogic structure.

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Stevenson, D.L. (1991). Deviant students as a collective resource in classroom control. Sociology of Education, 64(2), 127-133. Sutinen, A. (2008). Constructivism and education: education as an interpretative transformational process. Studies in Philosophy of Education, 27, 1-14. Tafa, E. (2008). Kindergarten reading and writing curricula in the European Union. Literacy, 42(3), 162-170. Thorne, B. (1993). Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Ting-Toomey, S. (1999). Communication Across Cultures. New  York: The Guilford Press. Tipton, R. & Furmanek O. (2016) Dialogue Interpreting: A Guide to Interpreting in Public Services and the Community. London: Routledge. Vargas-Urpi, M. (2015). Dialogue interpreting in multi-party encounters: Two examples from educational settings. The Interpreters’ Newsletter, 20, 107-121. Vargas-Urpi, M. (2017). Empoderamiento o asimilición? Estudio de dos casos de comunicación mediada en el ámbito educativo catalán. Trans, Revista de traductologia, 21, 187-205. Vargas-Urpi, M. & Arumí Ribas, M. (2014). Estrategias de interpretación en los servicios públicos en el ámbito educativo: estudio de caso en la combinación chino-catalán. Intralinea (www.intralinea.org/archive/article/2040) Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024-1054. Wadensjö, C. (1998). Interpreting as interaction. London: Longman. Walsh, S. (2011). Exploring classroom discourse: Language in action. New York/ London: Routledge. Waterhouse, S. (1991). Person formulation in the process of schooling. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(1), 45-60. Wells, G. (2015). Dialogic learning: Talking our way into understanding. In T. Dragonas, K. Gergen, S. McNamee, & E. Tseliou (Eds.), Education as Social Construction. Contributions to Theory, Research and Practice (pp.  62-89). Chagrin Falls (OH): Publications of Taos Institute. West, C., & Zimmerman, D.  H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125-151. Wyness, M. (1999). Children representing children: Participation and the problem of diversity in UK Youth Councils. Childhood, 16(4), 535-552. Wyse, D. (2001). Felt tip pens and school councils: Children’s participation rights in four English schools. Children & Society, 15, 209-218. Young, R.F. (2007). Language learning and teaching as discursive practice. In Zhu Hua, P. Seedhouse, W. Li & V. Cook (eds), Language Learning and Teaching as Social Inter-action (pp. 251-271). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Zhu Hua (2014). Exploring Intercultural Communication. Language in action. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

Facilitation in the Education System

Facilitation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_4

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1   Introduction This chapter focuses on the communication systems that produce the structural conditions of children’s agency (explained in Chap. 2). The production of children’s agency in communication systems is frequently based on adult–child communications; thus, it is important to understand how adults’ actions can enhance and support children’s agency (Wyness 2013a). Agency can also be based on specific cultures of childhood (James et al. 1998). For instance, Corsaro (2003) analyzed children’s agency in peer interactions in early childhood services, Evaldsson (2007) studied agency in informal groups of girls, and Cromdal (2001) studied children’s negotiations in play entry. However, these studies show that cultures of childhood also depend on children’s involvement in interaction systems promoted by adults. For instance, interactions among children in nursery schools are directly enhanced by adults (e.g., school breaks, birthday parties, outdoor activities, trips; see also Danby and Baker 1998; Thorne 1993) and interactions among adolescents in informal groups can be indirectly enhanced by adults (Baraldi 1996; Rossi and Baraldi 2009).

2  The Communicative Construction of Children’s Personal Expressions Interest in communication systems involving both children and adults— especially interest in how to enhance and support children’s agency in communication—is historically and socially rooted in changes in how children and young people are positioned in Western society. Such changes were highlighted in the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.  Salinger (1951), which fascinated several generations of young people. The novel depicts the experiences of an adolescent, Holden Caulfield, over a few days. Holden is completely unsatisfied with his education and escapes from the college in which he is studying. He walks the streets of New York, meeting several people of different ages and positions. He remains unsatisfied and constantly restless. His only relief is his affective rapport with his younger sister Phoebe, with whom he notably discusses his future. Holden tells Phoebe of his dream to be a catcher of children in the rye, preventing them from falling off a cliff. This reminds him of a poem by Robert Burns, which he recalls stating that “a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” However, Phoebe advises him that the correct line from the poem is “a body meet a body coming through the rye” (Salinger 1964, p.  173,

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italics in the original text), thus suggesting the importance of affect rather than control. Salinger’s novel anticipated changes in how young people were positioned in society during the 1960s. At large, the 1960s was an era in which what it meant to be a person more generally was changing, but this cultural shift had certain effects on young people—during this time, the young generation rejected its predefined roles and subordination to adults’ normative orientations and claimed rights to personal choices and expressions (Keniston 1962, 1965). This change concerned the way of adolescents’ positioning. By the 1990s, it was suggested to focus on children’s personal expressions in communication systems, in particular in the education system. This shift in what it meant to be a youth increased the importance of the pupil in the education system (Chap. 3). However, this change did not fully capture the complexity of children’s positioning; the education system still seeks to transform children into particular kinds of persons through learning. The complexity of positioning an individual as a person can be captured by three dimensions. First, while a role (e.g., the role of pupil) can be performed by several individuals, a person is a unique, single individual. Second, relatedly, while a role is reproduced independently of specific individuals (e.g., individuals who fulfill the role of pupil at a given time are replaced by other individuals at different times), one person cannot be replaced with another. Finally, a person is expected to act differently from any other person on the basis of their own will; thus, a person exhibits autonomy in choice. This combination of uniqueness, specificity, and autonomy defines the positioning of individuals as persons and expectation of personal expressions. More specifically, personal expressions of views, experiences, and emotions evidence uniqueness, specificity, and autonomy in communication because they are expressions of personal rights and responsibilities in the process of knowledge production— accordingly, personal expressions are expressions of agency. Holden Caulfield exemplifies a child’s desire to escape predetermined roles and to enjoy personal expression and the difficulties involved in doing so in a society in which this change is not permitted for adolescents. The poem by Robert Burns, quoted by Phoebe, suggests that personal expression is realized by meeting persons, rather than “catching” persons. The problem was (and is) how persons can meet, that is, how personal expressions can be produced in communication systems, especially in the education system.

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It is important to clarify the distinction between the concept of personal expression and the concept of individualization (Beck and Beck-­ Gernsheim 2002). The concept of “individualization” includes several aspects of individual action, including manifestations of independence and performances (e.g., earning the best grades, achieving professional success, winning a democratic election, publishing in important journals). On the contrary, personal expressions are only evident in interpersonal communications, which require mutual support, collaboration, and closeness. Being a person means that one has autonomy; we may contrast autonomy with the freedom of self-assertion, which is associated with individualization. According to the classical metanarrative of liberalism (see Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty published in 1859), freedom applies to relations between individual self-assertion and social organization (e.g., between an individual and the State). The difference between “autonomy” and “freedom of self-assertion” has become particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, through the claim that state constraints to control the spread of the virus illegitimately limited individual actions. In this narrative of freedom, state-imposed constraints on how close we can be to each other when suffering from illness—situated as necessary for us to eventually get back to “normal” life—violate the right of individuals to act independently from any structured system of communication in society. On the contrary, personal expressions of autonomy are based on a combination of participants’ positioning as persons and affective expectations (i.e., expectations of unpredictable personal expressions) in a communication system. Paradoxically, positioning as persons and affective expectations amplify the subtleties and nuances of action by constraining action to interpersonal communication. Personal expressions have been historically associated with intimate communication systems (Giddens 1992; Luhmann 1987). The importance of enhancing and supporting children’s personal expressions in these systems has been stressed by the concept of affective attunement, which is based on research in psychology (Haft and Slade 1989; Legerstee 2005; Stern 1995). “Affective attunement” suggests that a newborn child can understand and react to their caregiver’s actions when they reflect the quality of the child’s emotions. The concept of “attunement” means that the adult’s actions convey attention and sensitivity to and acceptance of the child’s actions, thus triggering the child’s personal expressions in the interaction, which positions the child as a person. Therefore, affective attunement can upgrade the child’s authority in self-expression and encourage

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the child to recognize personal expression as an important way to participate in an interaction and change its trajectory (e.g., the importance of smiling or crying). From a sociological point of view, Alderson (2008) highlights how newborn babies demonstrate agency in their actions, which adults understand as expressions of their views and preferences. Children can express themselves in ways that evidence unpredictability—and therefore agency—from a very early age. Affective attunement does not depend on adults’ actions; it is a product of structured interaction systems in which affective expectations and persons are relevant. While the psychological conditions of children personal are unknown, their personal expressions are certainly produced in interpersonal communication systems. Notably, personal expressions can be relevant in some communication systems and not in others. For instance, in the education system, the role of the learner prevails over personal expression. Positioning individuals as persons and affective expectations have been historically associated with interpersonal communication systems, especially with families. As for the education system, the question is whether particular approaches to positioning children as persons and affective expectations can enhance and support children’s personal expressions and thus their agency.

3  From Child-Centered Education to Facilitation The trend toward person-centered approaches to education (Chap. 3) does not change the primacy of the role positioning of the child as a pupil in the education system over the positioning of the child as a person. However, this trend shows an increasing uncertainty about the meaning of teaching. Since the hierarchical structure of teaching cannot bind children’s mental capacities, the narrative of a child as a medium is illusionary. Psychic systems are autonomous systems and the child’s mind cannot be determined by any communication system. The narrative of the child as a medium of education has long been a kind of self-deception. Teaching is characterized by unavoidable uncertainty about the combination of stability, based on role performances, and unpredictability, based on children’s personal expressions. For this reason, in order to address this inevitable uncertainty, pedagogy must first recognize it rather than approaching learning as an ordered transfer of knowledge directly from the teacher to the study; accordingly, person-centered theories of teaching and learning have attracted attention. The question is whether the need to change

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pedagogy to handle unpredictability will impact the structure of the education system. The need to change teaching methods has led to an increased emphasis on “the role of teacher as facilitator” (Young and Sachdev 2007, p. 235). This approach invites teachers to recognize that children can tackle important issues (Holdsworth 2005) and orchestrate classroom interactions to support their active participation in exploring issues and problems (Kovalainen et al. 2001). Despite this invitation, facilitation is much more frequently characterized as new professional roles of “facilitators rather than technicians,” which situate children and adults as “co-constructors of knowledge and expertise” (Hill et  al. 2004, p.  84). By refusing to simply pass their expertise on to students, professional facilitators leave aside their role as experts to invite children to participate in facilitated communication. The novelty and increasing relevance of this new professional role of “facilitator” has been described and developed by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) (Schuman 2005). Some studies in SC also describe different ways of facilitating children’s agency (Matthews 2003; Shier 2001; Sinclair 2004). These studies identify important ways of performing the role of facilitator and order them based on their impact on children’s agency. In ascending order of impact, these methods are (1) active listening; (2) encouraging personal expressions; (3) engaging in dialogues that account for the child’s perspective; (4) involving children in decisions through consultation, joint planning, and co-constructing decisions; (5) integrating children in the community; and (6) sharing power by giving children full responsibility in decisions. Facilitation seems to be a versatile method; it can adapt education to the needs of local communities (Mayall and Hood 2001; Moss 2006). It can promote effective social relations, social responsibility and self-­ regulation (Hendry 2009), mentoring (Butler 2004), and problem and conflict management in schools (Winslade and Williams 2012) and universities (Maoz 2001). Notably, facilitation can be adopted by international organizations (Amnesty International 2011; Blanchet-Cohen and Rainbow 2006); in particular, Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV)—a world organization that manages important initiatives with children (Chap. 5)—introduced facilitated activities with children in more than 70 countries and in all continents (CISV 2002/2003). While the ways of facilitating children’s agency may differ across Western ad Non-­ western contexts (Shier 2010), facilitation is a globally affirmed approach

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to facilitating children’s agency (Baraldi and Rabello de Castro 2020; Lansdown 2006; Twum-Danso Imoh 2012; White and Choudhury 2010; Wyness 2013b) and thus remains important for both Western and non-­ Western countries alike (Lansdown 2001; Wells 2015). Facilitation can also be applied to urban contexts (e.g., streets, squares, pubs) in which groups of adolescents meet to support communication in and with these groups. Informal groups of adolescents can be considered unique communication systems combining intense interpersonal communication and fun (Baraldi and Rossi 2000). Personal expressions and closeness are extremely relevant in intense interpersonal communication. While adolescents can sometimes find close interpersonal communication constraining, being part of an informal group balances this close form of communication with opportunities for fun and therefore allows adolescents to engage in enjoyable (e.g., joking, nondemanding/relaxed) interpersonal interactions with each other. In these informal groups, facilitation means the promotion of the unity of intense interpersonal communication and fun to support the adolescents’ positive experiences and participation in social life. Facilitation does not aim to change the structure of the informal group and only works if it is accepted by the informal group. My research in Italy in the 1990s (Baraldi 1996; Rossi and Baraldi 2009) revealed two means of facilitation in informal groups including adolescents: (1) itinerant vehicles that support adolescents’ public expression of points of view and proposals and (2) dedicated physical spaces in which informal group communication could be reproduced autonomously. An interesting example of facilitation applied to both urban contexts and school settings is the “Town of Children,” an important project that promoted children’s agency in sixty Italian towns during the 1990s (Baraldi 2003). This project aimed to give children the opportunity to increase their participation in  local communities. First, this project included the initiative “We Go to School by Ourselves,” which encouraged children to travel autonomously from home to school and sought to create an urban context that supported their autonomy. Second, this project included two important activities based on facilitated interactions. The first was the Children’s Council, in which a group of children attending primary schools engaged in a discussion facilitated by experts about themes and political strategies for their town’s development. The second was the Participated Planning, in which town planners and teachers helped groups of children plan improvements for the urban environment. These

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facilitated activities enhanced and supported children’s agency as counselors for local administrative decisions and urban planning. Several studies have affirmed the importance of facilitation as a way to enhance and support children’s agency in schools, communities, international organizations, and informal groups. These studies show that facilitation can enhance and support children’s interpersonal relations, exercise of rights, cooperation, respect of diversity, and expression of concerns. Facilitation is clearly much less common than teaching, but it is now rather widespread and its importance is increasing, as the worldwide expansion of the IAF shows. The increasing diffusion of facilitation suggests that changing the metanarrative of childhood—from children as learners to children as social agents—is possible in practice.

4  The System of Facilitation 4.1   Facilitated Interactions I will now explore the meanings and effects of facilitation in the education system. This exploration requires an understanding of facilitation as a specific communication system, realized through interactions. Facilitation is a communication system that aims to encourage, enhance, and support children’s agency and which is visible through chains of alternate facilitators’ actions and children’s actions. Facilitation can be a way to create the environmental preconditions for the production of autonomous communication systems, such as informal groups of adolescents or urban systems. However, research highlights that facilitation is frequently realized in interaction systems, such as classroom meetings or other types of workshops involving children. Facilitated interaction systems include organized sequences of facilitator actions that encourage, enhance, and support children’s agency and children’s unpredictable actions that show agency  (Baraldi 2014a). Thus, facilitation is the management of unpredictability in interaction systems. Facilitated interaction is paradoxical interaction (Baraldi 2014a), which is a specific version of the paradox of personal expressions constrained by interpersonal communication: children’s unpredictable actions that show agency depend on the facilitator’s choices of action. This paradox originates from the role positioning of children in society and especially in the education system, which determines the hierarchical difference between the epistemic statuses and authority of adults and children (Chap. 2). In these conditions, children’s agency is also wholly dependent upon

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facilitative actions that support children’s actions in ways that subvert the adult hierarchy in communication systems (e.g., education system, local administrative systems involving children). Paradoxical facilitated interactions can combine their own structures with children’s unpredictable actions, creating opportunities for children to express their perspectives, experiences, and emotions. Facilitation can produce adult–children interactions that create the conditions for children’s agency. Facilitation is not based on the hierarchical structure of epistemic status/authority and facilitators are not simply positioned as roles. Facilitators choose actions, which evidence their ability to autonomously select from among a range of options—their epistemic authority— in a way that can upgrade children’s epistemic authority. Facilitators’ actions show agency if they produce the conditions for children’s agency. The paradox of facilitation is that interactional upgrading concerns both children’s epistemic authority and the facilitator’s epistemic authority. A new non-hierarchical structure can be produced in facilitated interactions as communication systems, rather than simply by an adult engaging in facilitative actions that enhance a child’s agency, or by a child demonstrating agency in his or her actions. The new structure is produced in specific facilitated interactions and can be extended to complex social systems that include such interactions. Facilitation produces agency by encouraging, enhancing, and supporting children’s actions that contribute to changing the trajectory of communication processes. These actions include expressions of personal points of view (including proposals, decisions, and rejections), experiences, and emotions, which demonstrate children’s autonomous production of knowledge (i.e., their epistemic authority). These actions can be both a child’s initiatives and his or her responses to facilitators’ or other children’s initiatives. The facilitated production of children’s agency may be shown through the construction of narratives. Narratives are not only important for their contents, but also, and above all, for the rights associated with the activity of narrating (Norrick 2007). Thus, the facilitation of agency may mean the facilitation of children’s rights to produce knowledge in narrative forms. In particular, facilitation may involve the construction of ontological narratives (Somers 1994), which make sense of children’s lives and, possibly, their identities (Bamberg 2011). Moreover, these ontological narratives may be encapsulated in larger narratives, such as those related to family or schooling, and/or metanarratives, such as those related to migration or the COVID-19 pandemic. Facilitation may enhance and support the interlacement of linked narratives.

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4.2   Facilitation as a Complex Communication System Facilitated interactions can evolve in a complex communication system involving different facilitated interaction systems. Facilitated interactions do not exhaust the facilitation system, which may also include the planning of the conditions of children’s autonomous choices and children’s autonomous use of media (Chap. 2). However, research on facilitated interactions is the most developed type of research on the facilitation system. The complex facilitation system is based on a specific structure, including a basic value distinction, specific positioning, and a specific structure of expectations (Chap. 2). The basic structure guiding all facilitated interactions is the distinction between the positive value of the equal participation of children and facilitators and the negative value of their unequal participation (Maoz 2005). This distinction is combined with the positioning of children as persons and with an affective structure of expectations for unpredictable actions; this positioning and these expectations enhance a variety of children’s personal expressions. Thus, the structure of the facilitation system is the combination of the value of equal participation, positioning as person, and affective expectations. This structure produces the conditions of children’s agency, since children can be as active as facilitators and expect facilitators to expect their unpredictable actions. The facilitation system can amplify the effects of children’s agency in ways that can change the mainstream structures of the conveyance of knowledge and evaluation of children’s performances, role positioning, and the expectations of children’s learning (based on conveyance of knowledge) in the education system. This potentially structural change can be extended to other systems, such as town administration and planning or cultural and social services. In the education system, the hierarchical structure of the conveyance and evaluation of knowledge, role positioning, and corresponding expectations of learning can be disabled since, in the facilitation system, knowledge is actively conveyed by children and is never evaluated by facilitators. Against this background, an important question emerges: can facilitation enhance and support learning? In the facilitation system, learning cannot be associated with teachers’ conveyance of knowledge; learning should be associated with the interactional production of children’s agency. In this context, the concept of “learning by doing” is clearly paradoxical—“doing” coincides with the experience of learning (Chap. 3). The facilitation system comprises actions

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involved in the production of knowledge that evidence children’s agency, which means that children have the right and responsibility of producing their own learning through their own unpredictable actions. The facilitation system has the function of enhancing and supporting children’s agency as epistemic authority. In this system, participation is equal; children are positioned as persons who can utter their own perspectives, experiences, and emotions; and expectations are affective, that is, expectations anticipate unpredictable personal expressions. Despite its paradoxical structure, the facilitation system can enhance and support children’s unpredictable actions, including failures to align with facilitators’ actions, and to secure children’s rights and responsibilities. The facilitation system is structured to accept, encourage, and support children’s autonomous expressions and initiatives, regardless of their form. This systematically enhances the need to respecify approaches to facilitation based on children’s ways of participating.

5  Facilitation, Trust Building, and Conflict Management Facilitation can fail if children break its paradox by rejecting invitations to act. In other words, facilitation can fail to produce children’s agency when children’s agency means rejecting the facilitation or simply avoiding any action. A child’s unpredictable actions should not be expected to satisfy a facilitator’s expectations in any case, even if the facilitator’s actions support the child’s personal expressions: “adult society must accept that there will be complexities when children express views that do not coincide with those of adults” (Holland and O’Neill 2006, p. 96). However, the facilitation system can enhance a child’s trust in the communication, which can discourage rejection or withdrawal. Trust is important because it encourages children to engage in communication even when it could be disappointing (Giddens 1990, 1991; Luhmann 1988). Trust supports the risk of choosing “one action in preference to others in spite of the possibility of being disappointed by the action of others” (Luhmann 1988, p. 97). Trust mobilizes personal engagement, “extending the range and degree of participation” (Luhmann 1988, p. 99; see also Pinkney 2013), thus assuring the reproduction of communication systems. On the contrary, distrust jeopardizes the reproduction of communication systems by reducing opportunities for participation. Creating conditions for trusting

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commitment in communication means promoting the production of risky alternative actions. In the facilitation system, trusting commitment is needed because both facilitators and children choose among alternative actions, that is, they risk different actions. In particular, the production of children’s agency requires children to trust the facilitation system—agency involves the risk of unpredictable actions. If children do not trust the system, they cannot risk unpredictable actions. According to Giddens (1990, 1991), there are two ways to build trust. First, trust can be based on expert roles: for instance, within the education system, trust can be based on teachers’ expertise since teachers are held to be the experts who must be trusted for their knowledge and competence. However, this way of building trust is weak—it can fail when expertise proves ineffective or fails to motivate action; in particular, interactions that convey knowledge and evaluate children’s performances may not enhance children’s trust (Chap. 3). Despite the risk of distrust, it seems impossible for the education system to give up its trust in expert roles. Second, trust can be based on affective communication, which is much more motivating than expertise (Ule 2013). However, trust in affective communication is highly risky—when it fails, it leaves the floor open for strong disappointment and distrust (Grosse and Warming 2013). The facilitation system can support children’s trusting commitment by combining facilitators’ role positioning (which enhances and supports children’s epistemic authority) and affective expectations (which show that the facilitator is sensitive to the children’s personal expressions). It is particularly important to facilitate children’s trusting commitment when their previous experience encourages them to distrust communication systems (Baraldi and Farini 2013). Kelman (2005) analyzed different ways of building trust in facilitated meetings organized to yield peaceful agreements between Israeli and Palestinian representatives. These meetings are obviously different from those involving children in facilitated interactions; however, Kelman’s analysis offers some insights on how to facilitate trusting commitment when distrust prevails in a communication system. Kelman suggests building a form of working trust, based on joint solutions to specific problems. Here, facilitation helps participants contribute to constructive communication and establishes the preconditions for mutual reassurance, which is based here on acknowledgments of the participants’ needs and fears and on responsiveness to them. Working trust does not presuppose affective communication, but it can dovetail with it. This analysis suggests that the facilitation system can enable children’s

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agency by creating conditions of working trust in unfamiliar interactional conditions in which expectations are not shared and there are no preconditions for affective communication. The subsequent merging of working trust and affective communication allows children to open onto risky alternative actions; put differently, the integration of working trust and affective communication can support children’s agency. Trusting commitment plays an important role in enhancing unpredictable personal expressions. However, unpredictable actions amplify the risk of conflicts: by enhancing children’s agency, facilitation can heighten the potential for the emergence of conflicts involving children. In the facilitation system, the risk of conflicts is based on the combination of working trust and affective communication, rather than on distrust. Luhmann (1995) suggests that conflicts may block or challenge the existing structures of communication, but that they can also provide a starting point for establishing new structures of communication. This can be realized through conflict management, which makes it possible to carry out a decision-­making process within the interaction about the conflict, feeding trusting commitment and avoiding judgments. On the one hand, the facilitation system can enhance and support children’s conflicting actions and thus deal with their opposing preferences; on the other hand, it can modify conflictive forms of communication through conflict mediation. Facilitation can enhance mediation as the transformation of relationships (Bush and Folger 1994; Fritz 2014) and mediations between different first-person stories (Winslade and Williams 2012). Thus, facilitators may actively intervene in conflicts as providers of opportunities and help to construct new narratives about conflicts. The facilitation system can both encourage children’s actions and prevent blocks in communication (Chap. 9).

6  Facilitation as a Dialogic System The structure of the facilitation system is made evident by its promotion of a dialogic form of communication (Baraldi 2009; Graham and Fitzgerald 2010; Mannion 2010; Pearce and Pearce 2001; Wyness 2013a). While “dialogue” may be seen as a synonym for conversation or language use (Weigand 1994), this book’s theoretical perspective situates dialogue as a specific form of communication that takes children’s views into account, creating the conditions for recognizing and supporting children’s agency. A dialogic form of communication is based on “mutual interdependence,

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recognition and respect for children and their views and experiences” (Fitzgerald et  al. 2010, p.  300). First, dialogue is based on generalized agency as “the collective way of opening up judgements and assumptions” (Bohm 1996, p. 53). Second, dialogue emphasizes that agency “implies that each party makes a step in the direction of the other, not that they reach a shared position or even mutual warm feelings” (Wierbizcka 2006, p. 692). Here, dialogue is not intended as normative and idealistic. Dialogue is the expression of the facilitation system: it is based on equal participation, sensitivity to participants’ personal expressions of interests and/or needs, and the production of alternative perspectives and disagreements to enrich communication. Dialogue is sometimes described as a form of empowerment, although this concept has been criticized as neoliberal because it is frequently applied to individuals (Priestley 2020). However, dialogue is a form of communication that produces empowering and empowered actions; empowerment does not concern individuals but communication. Dialogue can be clarified by distinguishing it against monologue (Chap. 3). Dialogic facilitation contrasts with monologic teaching: dialogue reproduces the facilitation system as a dialogic system. The facilitation system includes dialogic actions, which have been analyzed in existing research. Notably, these studies offer several examples of the facilitation of children’s agency in classroom interactions and international camps (Baraldi 2009, 2012, 2014b; Baraldi and Farini 2011; Baraldi and Iervese 2014, 2017; Baraldi et al. 2021). Such studies show the most important dialogic ways of enhancing and supporting children’s agency. Here, “enhancing” means both encouraging and confirming children’s opinions, experiences, and/or emotions. Meanwhile, “supporting” means taking children’s perspectives—or perspective-taking (Black 2008)—and thus managing their different, complex, unclear, and interlaced expressions of opinions, experiences, and/or emotions or providing personalized comments to show openness to their personal and unpredictable expressions. These dialogic facilitative actions show how opportunities can be created for children to express their personal perspectives, experiences, and emotions. They enable children’s rights and responsibilities related to producing knowledge and thus increase their epistemic authority. This research shows the paradoxical facilitation of children’s agency, which depends on facilitators’ dialogic actions. However, this research also shows that the chain of adults’ dialogic actions and children’s action showing agency can create the conditions for replacing the hierarchical structure of

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communication with dialogue, thus showing that the structure of the education system has a historical and contingent meaning. While teaching combines stability with undesired unpredictability (Chap. 3), the dialogic system of facilitation generates unpredictability by producing agency, since the outcome of dialogue is also unpredictable. Producing agency means taking seriously that “when the children are able to determine the issues that they consider to be important, the results cannot be known in advance” (Hill et al. 2004, p. 86). Facilitation increases children’s unpredictability and enhances ways of dealing with it directly and intentionally. The key challenge for facilitators is that children understand and feel comfortable with dialogue that produces unpredictability. Facilitation requires an openness to new understandings and insights that cannot be generated by one of the partners alone (Dahlberg and Moss 2005, p. 160). Dialogue is not only the way in which the facilitation system manifests, but also the outcome of facilitation—the communicative expression of children’s agency is a basic factor in its success. Facilitators’ dialogic actions create the conditions for children’s dialogic actions that show agency. 6.1   Facilitation as Reflexive Coordination The facilitation system is based on reflexive coordination. “Reflexivity” means that a communication process refers to itself (Luhmann 1995, pp. 450–54), that is, that the communication focuses on the way in which the communication process is produced. Reflexive coordination means that facilitators’ actions focus on the ways in which the communication process is produced, clarifying opportunities or stressing problems or doubts concerning information and actions. The facilitator may clarify previous information (e.g., the meaning and purpose of the child’s utterance) or the child’s intentions (e.g., the reasons for her/his action). Reflexive coordination is useful when children’s utterances include relevant information or intentions, are complicated or unclear, or are delicate and emotional. Facilitators’ actions do not only focus on the conditions of the communication process; they also explore alternative ways of producing this process. Reflexive coordination encourages, enhances, and supports children’s agency, focusing on the intentions, reasons, and motivations the children show in their own actions and on the conditions in which they understand and accept communication. Accordingly, reflexive coordination can enhance children’s rights and responsibilities related

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to accessing and producing knowledge. Reflexive coordination is not simply achieved by facilitators’ actions; it is achieved in communication systems and all participants contribute to it. Reflexive coordination is based on facilitative actions that enhance and support children’s personal agency. Reflexive coordination can focus on both present actions and narratives and new actions and narratives that connect to present ones. Thus, it can also produce interlaced actions and narratives: it supports actions and stories that hook on current or preceding ones and that result in a sequence of related actions and narratives. Reflexive coordination may establish a common experience (e.g., an experience lived by several children) or may stress a new contribution to the interaction and/or a new narrative produced in the interaction (e.g., a child presents an opinion or an experience as particularly significant). Reflexive coordination can open to new contributions and narratives, which children can either share or refute. Thus, reflexive coordination can provide opportunities for children to tell their points of view, emotions, and stories; expand on a specific theme or recall similar experiences; and show understanding of and appreciation for previous actions and stories. 6.2   From Reflexive Coordination to the Coordination of Reflection Reflexive coordination can enhance reflection in the system of facilitation. This is a three-step process. First, reflexive coordination can produce self-­ observation. Self-observation is a selection of communications and narratives produced in the facilitation system (e.g., in a classroom or group of children) about the meanings of what is happening in this system (e.g., what we are doing). Self-observation reduces the complexity of the facilitation system to the specific way in which the facilitation system observes itself (we are doing this and this). Self-observations can affect the production of the facilitation system (observations of what we are doing can give a direction to the facilitated interaction) and are affected by the production of the facilitation system (what we are doing depends on the aim of the facilitation). Second, self-observation can generate self-descriptions, that is, descriptions of the facilitation system within the facilitation system (e.g., the aim of the facilitation). Self-description is a simplified construction of the unity of a communication system in the communication system (e.g., the unity of the facilitation system in a classroom or a group in the facilitation

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system in a classroom or a group) (Luhmann 2013). Of course, it is impossible to fully observe the complexity of a communication system and thus to comprehensively describe this system. Therefore, the unity of the facilitation system can only be produced through an internal description (e.g., a description of the aims of facilitation). Third, the production of self-self-descriptions can generate reflection, which is a specific form of self-description concerning the structure of the communication system. Reflection means that the structure of a communication system is described in the communication system (Luhmann 1995). However, this can problematize the system’s success. Thus, reflexive coordination can become a way to coordinate reflection on the structure of the facilitation system (e.g., how do equal participation, positioning as persons, and expectations of unpredictability emerge and work in the system). Notably, the coordination of reflection is rare; facilitation systems only occasionally produce descriptions of their own structures in particular situations.

7  The Facilitation of Children’s Personal Cultural Trajectories The facilitation system also defines the conditions for the construction of narratives about diversity differently from those for intercultural education (Chap. 3). Reflexive coordination can focus on the construction of narratives about identity in communication processes regarding the child as a person, rather than the child as member of a cultural group (Baraldi 2015, 2018; Holliday and Amadasi 2020). Thus, the facilitation system can enhance and support personal expressions of diversity, producing a dialogic form of intercultural communication by stressing the prefix “inter” (Byrd Clark and Dervin 2014) and enhancing fluid, malleable, and contingently constructed identities (Dervin and Liddicoat 2013; Piller 2011; Tupas 2014). Holliday (1999, 2011) defines the contingent constructions of meanings of cultural identity as small cultures, that is, as negotiated constructions in specific social activities, such as classroom interactions. The facilitated formation of small cultures is based on the enhancement and support of narratives about different personal cultural trajectories, which lead to the construction of contingent and differentiated meanings of “diversity” and “identity” (Holliday and Amadasi 2020). The facilitation

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of these contingent narratives enhances and supports the production of hybridity: different narratives about personal cultural trajectories express different hybrid forms of identity (Baraldi 2018; Holliday and Amadasi 2000; Jackson 2014; Kramsch and Uryu 2012; Nair-Venugopal 2009). The concept of “hybridity” does not refer to the specificity of an individual identity, but to the way in which its narrative is constructed in facilitated interactions. First, the construction of personal cultural trajectories is hybrid because it is negotiated in facilitated interactions: the facilitation system paves the way for children to express their agency by telling their personal stories. Second, narratives about personal cultural trajectories are hybrid—they show a variety of conditions, events, and changes related to experiences of migration or everyday life. Hybrid narratives about cultural differences and identities evidence that children’s agency is being produced in the facilitation system. Cultural differences and identities arise from the facilitation of children’s agency in narrating personal cultural trajectories. The facilitation of intercultural communication is based on the following interactional processes: 1. Cultures are produced as small cultures, that is, as local and situated narratives of personal cultural trajectories. 2. Narratives about different personal cultural trajectories lead to the construction of loose, fluid, and unstable personal cultural identities. 3. Narratives about personal cultural trajectories and personal identities are based on enhancing and supporting children’s agency by encouraging them to produce their own stories. The facilitation system aims to abolish ethnocentric boundaries among cultures (Pearce 1989) and promote the production of hybrid narratives about personal cultural trajectories. A classroom or a group of children can be defined as “multicultural” when cultural differences and identities are narrated as small cultures, rather than originating from predefined cultures. When children are not proficient in the language in which facilitation is produced, it can be difficult for them to construct narratives. In these cases, facilitation can fail to enhance and support the agency of some children, which can cause facilitation to discriminate between children based on whether they are “talented” in personal expression. This can be avoided by using interpreting as language mediation. Here, “language mediation” means the coordination and management of bilingual communication systems (Baraldi 2017). Language mediation is an interactional achievement

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(Wadensjö 1998) based on mediators’ exercise of agency (Baraldi 2019; Mason 2009), which can support the participation of disadvantaged individuals (Mason and Ren 2012). Mediators can enhance and support migrants’ participation (e.g., Baraldi and Gavioli 2015) and thus too their rights and responsibilities related to their access to and production of knowledge (i.e., their epistemic authority) (Baraldi and Gavioli 2020). Some examples of approaches to language mediation that proved to effectively enhance children’s agency or that failed to enhance children’s agency are discussed in Chaps. 8 and 10, respectively. How can children’s agency be facilitated when they do not speak the language of facilitation well and there is no mediator present? In such cases, facilitators can encourage the use of a second language. Facilitation is clearly different from second language teaching, which is based on the explicit conveyance of knowledge to increase migrant children’s learning. Chapter 8 presents two examples in which children’s agency is facilitated right as they struggle to use the dominant language in nursery schools. Notably, the second example shows some elements of translanguaging (Chap. 2). However, field research remains insufficient to clarify whether facilitation can enhance and support translanguaging.

8  Conclusions on the Facilitation System The promotion of facilitated classroom interactions reflects an increasing interest in children’s personal expressions and the teachers’ management of their unpredictable participation in the education system. This interest can take different forms, including scaffolding of children’s learning, dialogic teaching, and facilitation, which can all enhance and support children’s personal expressions. However, only facilitation can introduce favorable structural conditions for producing children’s agency. Facilitation and teaching are different interaction systems based on different social structures. Facilitated interactions trigger a structural change in classroom communication by enhancing and supporting the production of children’s agency. When facilitation is enhanced in classrooms, teaching is no longer the only interaction system involving children. This means that the constitution of a facilitation system can potentially affect the hierarchical structure within the education system by enhancing children’s agency in this system. However, episodic facilitated interactions only create very limited change in the education system.

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Let’s return to one of our key questions: can the facilitation system be integrated into the education system? Children’s agency can be included in the education system only if the structural differentiation of an overall facilitation system, including its specific facilitated interaction systems, is realized in the education system. The differentiation of a facilitation system in the education system requires the stabilization of (1) a basic distinction between the positive value of equal participation and the negative value of unequal participation and (2) a primary orientation in which children’s unpredictable personal expressions are expected. Children’s agency can be included in the education system only if it is possible to draw a clear line between conveyance and evaluation, on the one hand, and equal participation based on their unpredictable personal expressions on the other. While the education system can easily accept occasional facilitated classroom interactions, it is very likely to reject the differentiation of the facilitation system, since the facilitation system cannot legitimize the prevailing pedagogical metanarrative that children are (still) incompetent beings, which normalizes the conveyance and evaluation of learning. Including the facilitation system in education may have negative consequences for the function of education, that is, for the way in which education aims to transform children into persons. Facilitation’s project of prioritizing equal participation based on children’s unpredictable agency collides with education’s understanding of learning, based on the teacher’s conveyance of knowledge. While the teacher’s conveyance of knowledge is considered the primary way of emancipating children, several studies suggest that agency is important for de-marginalizing children (Honwana 2005; Lansdown 2001; Shier 2010). Teaching can support a child-centered form of education (Chap. 3), but it cannot subvert the metanarrative of the child as a medium of learning that the education system systematically reproduces. Consequently, for the time being, facilitation is primarily applied in noncurricular activities that do not require explicit evaluations of learning and thus that do not have the same authority as teaching in the education system. Children may see facilitation as an enjoyable parenthesis with no consequences for education (i.e., for the conveyance of knowledge and for the evaluation of learning). The differentiation of the facilitation system is neither a reality nor a general project in the education system. The structure of facilitation appears and disappears in interactions, without continuity. Thus, children’s agency cannot be systematically included and supported in the education system, in which the primacy of children’s personal expressions and the primacy of children’s role performances are incompatible.

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The differentiation of a facilitation system, therefore, cannot be the internal differentiation of the education system. Its possible constitution as a stable communication system cannot be negated—as children’s agency becomes more relevant in society at large, it is likely to also become more relevant in education. In Chaps. 6–9, I describe the conditions in which facilitation can be successfully promoted in the education system and the requisites of this promotion.

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CHAPTER 5

Researching Agency and Interaction: Methodological Considerations

Second-order observation

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1   Introduction: The Meaning of Methodology This chapter focuses on a research methodology for analyzing the communicative production of children’s agency, especially in interaction systems (Chaps. 2 and 4). First, is helpful to note that “methodology” has an epistemological meaning: it is the basic orientation of data collection. Methodology as epistemology is combined with theory: methodology defines the way of investigating and theory defines what must be investigated. The distinction between theory and methodology is useful for understanding the differentiated presuppositions of research. Second, methodology has a technical meaning: it is a way of collecting data (e.g., questionnaires, interviews). This chapter focuses on both these meanings and suggests that video recording is a strong technique for analyzing children’s agency in interaction systems since it allows for the epistemology of the second-order observation of agency.

2   Methodologies for Collecting Data on Children’s Agency Methodology can be primarily observed in its technical meaning. From this perspective, doing field research on the interactional construction of children’s agency (Chap. 2) involves a preliminary methodological choice between the use of quantitative data and the use of qualitative data. Quantitative data can be useful in analyzing statistics about childhood as a permanent social structure (see Qvortrup et  al. 1994) and analyzing aggregated data on children’s perspectives on a theme of interest in the research. These types of data cannot show how children realize agency in communication systems because they focus on children as a collective. In the best case, these types of data can enable analyses of trends in perceptions of agency. Thus, field research on children’s agency requires a particular method of qualitative data collection. Several studies on children’s perspectives have been based on qualitative methods designed to uncover how individuals understand their participation in social contexts. The most popular method is individual or focus group interviews with children (e.g., Freeman and Mathison 2009; Mayall 2000; Punch 2002). This method is considered effective since the researchers’ questions allow the participating children to answer in ways that express their production of knowledge. However, this method presents two epistemological problems. First, the interviews are adult-led and

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based on the positioning of children as respondents; therefore, the children’s participation in the research does not truly show their agency. Second, the interviews collect data on individual perceptions, rather than on interactions, and rely on children’s monologues in the production of knowledge about their own views, in spite of the social construction of knowledge during the interview. An alternative method is based on the epistemological claim for the direct involvement of children in research, such as in the design of tools, data collection, and analysis (e.g., Horgan 2017; Lang and Shelley 2021; Montreuil et al. 2021). This method is based on the idea that children can exercise their agency by doing research. However, this method does not change the hierarchical structure of the interaction between researchers and children (Gallacher and Gallagher 2008). Researchers ask children to participate in the research and design the basic research objectives. Researchers can certainly facilitate children’s agency, but they use the result of this facilitation for their scientific objectives and careers. Children are not involved in exploiting the research results and their experience only includes their awareness of the collected data and results. A third method is the ethnographic observation of children’s participation (Christensen 2004). Ethnography is committed to understanding “the first-hand experience and exploration of a particular social or cultural setting” (Atkinson et al. 2007, p. 4). Ethnographic observation focuses on children’s activities in everyday life to gain a deep understanding of their participation in cultural and social contexts. A well-known example is research on the ways in which children interact in nursery schools (Corsaro 2003; see Chap. 4). Ethnography aims to observe children’s voices during their everyday practices. Historically, researchers have applied this methodology by taking notes on the events and processes they observe. But new technologies have emerged, such as the video camera. Does changing the technology by which notes are recorded—from, for example, a pen and paper to a video camera—impact ethnography? The video camera has proved to be a powerful tool for researching children’s use of language in interactions in the broader context of their participation in everyday life. Video recordings do not necessarily require the complex field strategies traditionally used in ethnographies and do not require researchers to spend a long time creating relationships with participants or becoming confident in the field. Here, the most important question concerns the epistemological meaning of this change.

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3   Video Recording as a Support for Second-Order Observation From my point of view, video recording is very useful for second-order observation (Luhmann 1995). Here, it is important to distinguish between two different orders of observation. First-order observation is the observation of objective facts or events. Second-order observation is based on a constructivist epistemology, which treats observations as constructed meanings of what is observed and focuses on the style of observation. Second-order observation recognizes that the observer (the researcher) affects what s/he observes through the way in which s/he observes it. In other words, second-order observation situates observations as dependent on the observer. This epistemological approach was generated by Second-­ Order Cybernetics in the 1960s (Foerster 1984) as a form of cognitive constructivism (Glasersfeld 1995), which assumes that observers are individuals able to give meanings to facts and events. In this view, individual interviews could be reconsidered as cognitive constructions. Since the 1980s, however, social constructivism has been applied to the analysis of communication systems by conceiving of communication as the construction of meanings (Luhmann 1995). Social constructivism encourages the use of a video camera to technically support second-order observation at a double level; namely, it supports the second-order observation of interaction systems in interaction systems. Regarding the observation of interaction systems, video recording does not enable first-order observation: “facts” and “events” are not recorded as they are—the researcher positions and moves the camera and thus selects or determines relevant facts and events during the recording. Additionally, events or situations, such as the chain of actions performed by adults and children that evidence the facilitation of agency or hierarchical teaching, are not observed on the spot but when researchers analyze the video-recorded events. First and foremost, video recording allows for the second-order observation of the ways in which (1) interaction systems are realized as sequences of actions (showing understanding), (2) narratives are produced in interaction systems, (3) social structures (basic value distinctions, positioning, and structures of expectation) become visible in interaction systems, and (4) agency is produced in interaction systems. Thus, filming an interaction system can enable researchers to clarify the structure of more complex systems, such as the education system or the facilitation system, and the ways in which they affect children’s agency.

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Chapters 6–10 present several examples of second-order observations based on video recording. It is certainly possible to enrich second-order observation by applying other techniques of field research, such as interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires designed to investigate participants’ points of view on interactions or issues linked to interactions (e.g., the meanings of personal autonomy, cultural differences, important social relations). However, while participants can observe the ways in which they and their interlocutors design actions, they cannot observe the social structures and trajectory changes that occur within the interaction system. The complexity of communication systems cannot be observed by participants while they are acting; during the communication, participants focus on their own utterances or those of the other interlocutors and cannot observe the whole communication system, its structures, and its effects. To recap, the second-order observation of children’s everyday lived experiences can mean observing their participation in interactions. Certainly, children experience several things that cannot be captured by a video camera, such as media systems (e.g., television, radio, the Internet), individual activities, and—as adolescents—sex. However, video recording can be useful for observing several interactions realized in complex communication systems. In particular, video recording can be used to observe interactions in which unpredictable or surprising communicative events are produced, such as facilitated interactions. Observing facilitation is interesting—this system produces unpredictability in adult–children interactions, which are otherwise rather predictable when they are based on hierarchical structures. Second-order observation of the facilitation system offers the opportunity to observe the production of unpredictable actions by showing children’s agency. 3.1   Video Recording, Conversation Analysis, and the Analysis of Interaction Systems The change in technology from taking notes to recording (initially audio recording) has enhanced research in CA, which has established a solid and popular methodology for the second-order observation of interactions, especially institutional interactions (Drew and Heritage 1992; Heritage and Clayman 2010). CA uses interactional materials “to investigate the procedural bases of reasoning and action through which actors recognize, constitute, and reproduce the social and phenomenal worlds they inhabit”

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(Goodwin and Heritage 1990, p. 287). CA is interested in describing “the parties’ relevancies, orientations, and thereby informed action” (Schegloff 1987, p.  209). Thus, CA focuses on participants’ actions, orientations, and recognitions, and on the reproduction of social phenomena in social interactions: CA interprets interactions as reproduced by participants’ actions and orientations. Thus, CA does not investigate the reproduction of communication systems and their social structures and is not interested in the relationship between interaction systems and more complex communication systems. According to CA, interaction “is the primordial means through which the business of the social world is transacted, the identities of its participants are affirmed or denied, and its cultures are transmitted, renewed and modified” (Goodwin and Heritage 1990, p.  283). Interaction is “the very bedrock of social life” (Heritage and Clayman 2010, p. 7). CA does not recognize that interactions depend on more complex communication systems and are based on their structures. Nevertheless, since SST has not been constructed to be used in field research on interaction systems, CA can provide some concepts useful for analyzing these systems. First, its concept of “turn-taking organisation” (Sacks et al. 1974) makes clear that actions play an important role in communication. In this context, actions can be observed as organized sequences of turns of talk in the interaction system. On the one hand, specific actions (turns) refer to previous actions (turns) and thus create constraints for them. On the other hand, specific actions (turns) promote further actions (turns) and thus create constraints for them. CA also shows how pauses and overlaps can influence the connections between turns. Finally, CA shows how specific actions are shaped, that is, it shows the “turn design” (Heritage and Clayman 2010), which evidences how the action reproduces the social structure guiding the interaction system (e.g., the design of an evaluation shows the structure of education).

4  Technical Aspects of Video Recording Video recording enables second-order observations of interactions as communication systems for all aspects of communication, including verbal and non-verbal actions (e.g., facial expressions, gestures). Moreover, it enables the research to consider the spatial context (e.g., a room or outdoor environment) in which the interaction system takes place and its elements (e.g., the furniture, the participants’ clothing).

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Recently, several studies in CA have insisted on the importance of “multimodality” in research based on video records (Mondada 2011, 2016), including research on facilitation (Mondada 2015). Scholars claim that communication is produced as a mix of different channels, including gaze, body movements, and object manipulation, rather than being primarily based on verbal utterances. At first sight, this approach seems to be consistent with research on communication systems; however, for decades, CA has been based on audio recordings of verbal or paraverbal communications, which have produced many important results that remain relevant for any research in CA.  Claims of multimodality situate these results as inappropriate and based on the false concept of interaction based on verbal communication. This book’s analysis of video records is not based on multimodality. In the next chapters, I argue that an interaction system is primarily based on verbal communications (which often produce narratives), and that children’s agency is shown by the verbal production of knowledge rather than by gestures or gazes. This does not mean that it is useless to observe non-­ verbal communication and the spatial context. To be sure, non-verbal communication and spatial contexts can be relevant—sometimes very relevant—in select cases (e.g., intimate communications or surgical operations). However, in other cases, they are much less relevant than verbal communication. The excerpts shown in the next chapters include descriptions of non-verbal communication and spatial contexts when they are useful for analyzing the facilitated interaction and its production of children’s agency. Video recording is far from a perfect technique for observing interaction systems. It only allows for incomplete second-order observation, since it is impossible to record all the details of an interaction unless a camera is placed in front of each participant. Video recording has also been criticized for producing artificial data, since behavior can be conditioned by an awareness of being recorded. Apart from the fact that interviews and focus groups create much more artificial conditions than video recording, the critique of video recording is complicated by two key ideas. First, children tend to forget that a camera is present after a few minutes and instead focus on the activity in which they are involved. The likelihood that a child being filmed will forget they are being filmed probably depends on how frequently they have been filmed since their early life. Nursery schools based on the Reggio approach, for instance, have always recorded interactions involving children for pedagogical reasons. Second,

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professionals may try to do their best when they are aware that they are being filmed; this is useful for researchers interested in observing the best role performances of teachers or facilitators, rather than their supposed “everyday” behavior. Meanwhile, video recording enables speakers to be clearly identified. This is an advantage for research, but it is also considered an ethical problem. Video recording can reveal sensitive data about participants, including their ages, physical traits, genders, skin colors, modes of dress, ability levels, and health conditions. For this reason, information sheets and consent forms must be accurate and detail how the participants’ sensitive data will be used. Such strict regulations may sound paradoxical in an age in which personal data are frequently shared on the Internet, but suspicions and fears that data will be misused are particularly high when children are involved. Children should always be involved in giving consent to be filmed, but they cannot contradict their parents’ refusal to consent to them being filmed. Such rules concern researchers in SC in situations in which children’s autonomous choice is not permitted (i.e., children’s agency is violated). It is important to recognize that ethical requirements for research can limit the use of video cameras to observe participants. For this reason, audio recording may sometimes be used instead of video recording for second-order observation—this is another good reason to reject an extreme approach to multimodality. Despite audio recording’s obvious limitations in observing non-verbal communication and spatial arrangements, it offers researchers the opportunity to understand and analyze interaction systems since verbal communication is not compromised when there are only a few participants and it is easy to distinguish their voices. An important advantage of video recording is that it makes it possible to reflect on data after they have been recorded, which gives more time for second-order observation. This advantage increases when recordings are transcribed. Different conventions exist for transcribing recordings, but the most important one is likely the CA method of transcription, which is very detailed and seeks to simulate oral communication (see Psathas and Anderson 1990). While this approach can yield very interesting insights about the interaction, CA transcriptions are often difficult for non-­ specialized readers to understand. For instance, CA numbers lines rather than turns and uses several symbols that stress all details of oral communication. This approach to transcription is useful for very detailed analyses of the linguistic aspects of conversations, but it may have limited applications

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in studies focused on the structures of communication. For this reason, this book recognizes the usefulness of some conventions elaborated by CA, but uses a very simplified version of its method of transcription adapted to my aim of analyzing interactions as structured communication systems.

5  Sources of the Analysis of Children’s Agency Chapters 6–10 analyze transcriptions of video records of interaction systems based on the facilitation and involving children. The presented data are from ten research projects conducted in Italian and international settings, which cover 23  years of research on the facilitation of children’s agency. Each project collected data, at least in part, by filming classrooms or groups of children and adolescents; most also used other methods, such as interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires, but this book does not consider the data collected through these methods. The quantity and variety of collected and transcribed video recordings are huge, indeed too huge for a book. Thus, in writing this book, I faced the problem of selecting transcriptions that reflected the variety of the facilitated interactions and productions of children’s agency while accounting for differences across ages and organizations. Ultimately, I selected those cases that most clearly exemplified facilitated interactions, rather than those that, taken together, would give equal space to the kinds of data collected in each project. Accordingly, some research projects are more represented than others; in particular, more recent research projects clearly designed to investigate the facilitation system were prioritized. Several transcriptions selected for this book have already been published in international  journals or edited collections (see the references at the end of each project below), because they are particularly clear examples of facilitated interactions. However, this book includes these transcriptions in its complex analyses of the facilitation system and does not repeat their use in other publications. The ten, Italian and international research projects engaged in this book are described below. Research Project 1 (1999)  This study concerned nursery schools in Pesaro, a city on the east coast of central Italy. The study investigated how educators facilitated interactions involving children aged 4–5  years in nursery schools. The analysis was based on video records of 115 hours of activities showing the facilitative methods adopted in these schools and the creative

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ways in which these methods were adopted, including the use of narratives to support children’s agency (some data from this project were published in Baraldi 2019b).  Research Project 2 (2004)  This study concerned international camps for adolescents organized by the Monte Sole Peace School, which is located in a historical park in a mountainous area near Bologna, Italy where 800 people, mostly women and children, were slaughtered by German Nazi troops in 1944. The study investigated two types of international workshops. First, the Four-Voice Camp aimed to encourage dialogue and conflict management between two delegations of adolescents who were asked to pretend they were trapped in violent conflicts in their countries. German and Italian delegations participated in these camps as witnesses of a past violent conflict that was peacefully solved. The investigated camp involved delegations of adolescents from Italy, Germany, and Kosovo (both Serbians and Albanians). Each of the four delegations included ten adolescents and two facilitators, called “teamers.” Second, the European Citizenship Camp focused on the issue of European citizenship and human rights and involved delegations from France, Poland, Italy, and Germany. This camp specifically sought to promote dialogic reflection on the peaceful values on which European citizenship is based. The analysis was based on video records of 52 hours of meetings in the two camps, facilitated by the teamers and the organizing staff, in which adolescents reflected on their experiences of the activities (Baraldi 2014b, 2019a; Baraldi and Farini 2011).  Research Project 3 (2004)  The first phase of this study concerned two experimental types of workshops characterized by the organized facilitation of videography and photography in six classes in primary and lower secondary schools. The analysis was based on video records of 30 hours of facilitated workshops. The second phase included facilitated workshops in 11 classes in nine primary and lower secondary schools in five locations of the EmiliaRomagna region in Italy. The analysis was based on video records of 60 hours of workshops (Baraldi 2008, 2012; Baraldi and Iervese 2010).  Research Project 4 (2007)  This study involved an international organization, CISV, which organizes exchanges among children and adolescents from all over the world. Founded in 1951, CISV organizes international camps based on peace education in 70 countries to prepare children and adolescents to become active in peace building and develop international

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friendships. In these international camps, a staff of facilitators plans and implements a set of interactive, cooperative activities and games to help children from different countries establish effective relationships and work together. Facilitation aims to develop interpersonal trust and strengthen dialogue between children. The study, organized in collaboration with CISV International, involved eight camps with children and adolescents in Italy. The analysis was based on video records of 400 hours of activities (Baraldi 2016; Baraldi and Blasi 2009; Baraldi and Braglia 2009; Baraldi and Iervese 2010; Bonilauri and Rossi 2009; Iervese and Rossi 2009; Farini 2009).  Research Project 5 (2007)  This study concerned facilitation in eight lower secondary classrooms in Modena, a city in northern Italy. The workshops were facilitated by two cultural mediators and were designed to explore new approaches to facilitation in multicultural classrooms dealing with diversity and intercultural communication. The mediators were asked to facilitate dialogue and children’s agency. Activities involved delivering graphic representations of the students’ seating arrangements and friendships and the mediators’ personal stories of migration. The analysis was based on video records of 32 hours of interactions between the mediators and the students and between the students during the assigned activities (Baraldi 2019a; Baraldi and Iervese, 2010; Baraldi and Rossi 2011).  Research Project 6 (2009–10)  This study concerned several types of initiatives designed to enhance peace and citizenship in schools in EmiliaRomagna, a region in the center of northern Italy. The study sought to investigate these activities and initiatives to reflect on institutional initiatives and how they may be oriented toward peace. In particular, the study zoomed in on workshops focused on peace. The analysis was based on video records of 17 hours of workshops showing different ways of facilitating dialogue or educating children (Baraldi 2014b, 2019a).  Research Project 7 (2011)  This small study concerned some interactions filmed in four infant schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and included in a research project promoted by Reggio Children, a company based on the Reggio approach and focused on training teachers and conducting pedagogical research. The Reggio Children research project was based on case studies designed to uncover how schools may foster the construction of migrant children’s linguistic, communicative, relational, and cognitive

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competencies. The analysis was based on video records of three hours of interactions involving two migrant children in two infant schools. The analysis focused on the ways in which teachers (and other children) facilitated the migrant children’s production of speech, despite their poor proficiency in Italian (Baraldi 2015, 2019b).  Research Project 8 (2012)  This study concerned a facilitation methodology based on narratives and reflection (namely, the methodology of narration and reflection or MNR) implemented in primary and secondary schools by an association of teachers in the city of Genova, which is located on the northwestern coast of Italy. MNR involves facilitating dialogue and children’s agency in classroom workshops. In these workshops, emblematic narratives concerning other children are presented; small groups of children autonomously explore these narratives; and, finally, facilitators enhance this exploration by encouraging students to reflect on their understandings of circulating narratives and supporting their related points of view. The analysis of this methodology was based on video records of 36 hours of workshops in six classes across six schools (Baraldi 2014a, b, 2019a; Baraldi and Iervese 2014).  Research Project 9 (2015–18)  This study concerned the use of photography in classrooms. The first phase was based on funding from a local foundation. In the second phase, the research developed through an Erasmus+ project, the Shared Memories and Dialogues Project (SHARMED), funded by the European Commission (under Key Action 3, innovative education) and coordinated by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in partnership with the University of Jena (Germany) and the University of Suffolk (England). The SHARMED project was designed to promote and explore the facilitation of dialogue and children’s agency in multicultural classrooms. The research concerned the production of narratives based on children’s photographs about their memories and the ways in which these narratives were constructed in classroom interactions. The project involved children aged 8–13  years from both migrant and non-migrant backgrounds from selected schools in Italy, Germany, and England. The project included 72 classroom meetings held in 48 classrooms in selected areas of these three countries. The analysis was based on video records of 70 hours of these meetings (Baraldi 2021a, b; Baraldi and Ballestri 2021; Baraldi et al. 2022; Farini 2021; Iervese et al. 2022). 

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Research Project 10 (2019–22)  This study was based on the European Horizon 2020 project, “Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation” (CHILD-UP). The research project sought to analyze the ways in which children’s agency is facilitated in dialogic interventions in schools and paid particular attention to the participation of children with migrant backgrounds. This study unfolded in selected areas of seven European countries (Italy, Belgium, England, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Sweden) and included children and adolescents aged 5–16 years. The study involved the filming of facilitated activities related to second language learning, intercultural education, and relational issues. The analysis presented in this book is based on video records of 66 meetings in 32 classes across 22 schools in Italy.  An analysis of the data collected in the research projects described above gives rise to two important questions. First: what is the link between a child’s agency and their age? The above research projects involved participants aged 4–17 years. While agency is relevant at any age, its communicative production may differ with differently aged children. This question concerns continuity and the differences in the ways in which agency is produced in facilitation systems involving differently aged children. Second: how do the dynamics of specific organizations impact facilitation? For instance, a school and a CISV village are very different organizations; in particular, CISV workshops are organized in residential villages, in which formal evaluation is not provided and the aim is to encourage experiential learning rather than transmit knowledge. Even different schools and classroom workshops can be differently organized. This question seeks to uncover whether different kinds of organizations differently affect the facilitation of children’s agency. In this context, the way in which facilitation is organized (e.g., training methods and types of experience) can also be relevant. We may even ask a third question: how do different materials facilitate dialogue and children’s agency? For instance, facilitation is based on the use of photographs in Project 10, roleplay in Project 4, and written texts in Project 8. In general, tools and materials may range from drawings to photographs, texts to scripts, video clips to films, and digital platforms to digital devices. While this third question is interesting, it remains beyond the scope of this book.

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6   Video Recording and Facilitation During the COVID-19 Pandemic Project 10 took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it necessary to revise and adapt the facilitation and research to prevent the spread of the virus. This adaptation involved dealing with difficulties in facilitating classroom workshops related to the use of masks and social distancing. More specifically, the study took place within the following dynamics at various moments: (1) researchers and facilitators in the class, (2) researchers and facilitators on a digital platform and adolescents in the class, and (3) all participants on a digital platform in different locations. When facilitation took place within the classroom, the use of masks prevented the collection of some important details related to facial expressions and, by making it harder to understand who was speaking and what they were saying, made it more challenging to understand communication. Meanwhile, when digital platforms were used, it was hard to observe non-verbal communication (e.g., eye contact, smiles) when children turned their cameras off. The lack of eye contact made it impossible for facilitators to rely on gazes, smiles, or even hesitations to engage children in ways that could enhance their agency. Another pandemic-related limitation emerged in the workshops based on children using their bodies as a form of agency; because body-based games and dramatizations cannot be conducted over digital platforms, children’s agency could not be enhanced in this way in this setting. However, the use of digital platforms also positively affected filming and facilitation. First, recording students on a digital platform is more discrete than recording them by filming them in person with a camera. Second, digital platforms gave children more confidence and a sense that they were not under as much pressure to perform as they were in school, which enhanced rich personal expressions, especially when they were at home. Third, the chat function available during video calls proved an interesting way to collect information and share views, especially from children who hesitated to express themselves orally. Fourth, in “mixed” conditions (i.e., when children were in the classroom and researchers and facilitators were online), facilitators sometimes asked children to express their opinions by moving in front of the camera and speaking directly to the facilitator; although this approach may compromise dialogue among children, it enhances the speaking child’s positioning as an agent, which can amplify the child’s sense of personal responsibility. Facilitators were able to

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encourage children’s personal expressions through several activities (e.g., drawing) either proposed by the facilitators themselves or by the children. Despite the difficulties involved in teaching and learning during the pandemic, the use of digital platforms has provided children with a chance to be active in the production of their personal points of view about their social relations and to share these views with facilitators, researchers, and classmates. The use of digital platforms is certainly controversial—it is not the best way of researching facilitated interactions and cannot replace in-­ person interactions; however, it can offer facilitators and researchers some flexibility in emergency situations.

7  Conclusions This chapter has shown how, despite its limitations, video recording can enable the second-order observation of facilitated interactions, including children’s agency and facilitators’ actions that enhance and support children’s agency. At present, this is the best methodology available for researching interactions as communication systems, even in the pandemic era. In the following chapters, selected excerpts from the ten research projects outlined above evidence five dimensions of facilitation: (1) the general form of facilitation (Chap. 6); (2) children’s initiatives in facilitated interactions (Chap. 7); (3) facilitation of hybrid narratives of personal cultural trajectories and language barriers (Chap. 8); (4) facilitation that involves conflict mediation (Chap. 9); and (5) failures in facilitation (Chap. 10). The analyses presented in Chaps. 6–10 focus on two intertwined aspects of the facilitation system. First, all facilitated interactions are analyzed as sequences of actions/turns of facilitators and children. My analyses observe (1) facilitators’ actions that encourage, enhance, and support children’s agency or fail to do so, (2) children’s agency as shown (or not shown) in the facilitated interaction, and (3) the ways in which children’s agency affects (or does not affect) facilitated interactions. My analyses clarify how a facilitation system is evidenced by the alternating actions of facilitators and children and how it can produce children’s agency, which manifests as children’s actions. Second, several facilitated interactions are analyzed as producing narratives and rights related to producing narratives. Two aspects are particularly relevant for considering how these rights are constructed (Norrick 2007). On the one hand, each participant can contribute to constructing and negotiating a narrative in the facilitated interaction as a teller,

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co-­teller, listener, or elicitor of new narratives. On the other hand, narratives can comprise and elicit different comments from different participants; in particular, each narrative can be followed by responding narratives that refer to it and this enhances the production of interlaced stories. The below analyses of facilitation highlight the rights associated with the construction and interlacement of narratives and the corresponding rights and responsibilities related to producing knowledge (i.e., epistemic authority). Children’s agency can be observed here when children elicit narratives or contribute to their development in ways that either connect with or disconnect from previously produced narratives. The second-order observation of facilitated interactions can clarify the structure of the facilitation system as comprising empirical, naturally-­ occurring processes. The ways in which alternating turns are produced and actions and narratives are interlaced reveal whether and how dialogic forms of communication are produced in the facilitation system. Notes on the Transcriptions Most of the recorded and transcribed data are in Italian. In international books or papers, interactions produced in languages other than English present the problem of transcribing both the original language and the English translation. In principle, using only the English version is a dubious practice, but proposing transcriptions in both languages makes it more difficult to follow the transcription for international readers. In this book, when original data are in Italian, only the English translation is transcribed. Despite the limitation of presenting only the English translation, this choice provides readers with a more accessible text. Several turns in original Italian recordings are not grammatically or syntactically correct and the English translations try to reproduce this condition. Data taken when English was the lingua franca (Projects 2 and 4) are also far from grammatically correct. In the transcribed excerpts, actions/turns are numbered and the relevant actions/turns described in the comments are spotlighted in bold. Pauses are indicated with (.) when shorter than half second, with (..) between half a second and one second, and with the number of seconds in round brackets when they are one second or longer. Overlappings are indicated with aligned square brackets. Important non-verbal actions are included in double round brackets. Soft laughing is indicated with “hh”. Emphasis is indicated by underlined text, and very loud utterances by capital letters. Unintelligible audio is indicated with (?).

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References Atkinson, Coffey & Delamont (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of Ethnography. London: Sage. Baraldi, C. (2008). Promoting self-expression in classrooms interactions. Childhood, 15(2), 239-257. Baraldi, C. (2012). Intercultural education and communication in second language interactions. Intercultural Education, 23(4), 297-311. Baraldi, C. (2014a). Children’s participation in communication systems: a theoretical perspective to shape research. In M.N. Warehime (Ed.), Soul of society: a focus on the leaves of children and youth. Sociological studies on children and youth (pp. 63-92). Bingley: Emerald. Baraldi, C. (2014b). Formulations in dialogic facilitation of classroom interactions. Language and Dialogue, 4(2), 234-260. Baraldi, C. (2015). Promotion of Migrant Children’s Epistemic Status and Authority in Early School Life. International Journal of Early Childhood, 47(1), p. 5-25. Baraldi, C. (2016). Ad hoc interpreting in international educational settings. Interpreting, 18(1), 89-119. Baraldi, C. (2019a). Using formulations to manage conflicts in classroom interactions. Language and Dialogue, 9(2), 193-216. Baraldi, C. (2019b). Practices/1, Italy: Facilitating participation in early childhood education. In F. Farini & A. Scollan (Eds.), Children’s Self-Determination in the Context of Early Childhood Education and Services: Discourses, Policies and Practices (pp. 23-36). Dordrecht: Springer. Baraldi, C. (2021a). Facilitating children’s elicitation of interlaced narratives in classroom interactions. In L. Caronia (Ed.), Language and Social Interaction at Home and School (pp. 317-350). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baraldi, C. (2021b). Conflicts in the classroom. In C. Baraldi, E. Joslyn & F. Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp. 133-149). London: Bloomsbury. Baraldi, C. & Ballestri, C. (2021). Improving pedagogical work: Evaluation. In C.  Baraldi, E.  Joslyn & F.  Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp. 153-172). London: Bloomsbury. Baraldi, C. & Blasi, R. (2009). Activities 5: Interpreting as mediation? In C. Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 217-240). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baraldi, C. & Braglia, A. (2009). Activities 4: Adolescents’ coordination. In C. Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 199-216). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baraldi, C. & Farini, F. (2011). Dialogic Mediation in International Groups of Adolescents. Language and Dialogue, 1(2), 207-232.

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Baraldi, C., Farini, F. & Scollan, A. (2022). Facilitating narratives of cultural identity in the classroom. In R. Race (Ed.), Evolving Dialogues in Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Baraldi, C. & Iervese, V. (2010). Dialogic mediation in conflict resolution education. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 27(4), 423-445. Baraldi, C., & Iervese, V. (2014). Observing children’s capabilities as agency. In D.  Stoecklin & J.M.  Bonvin (Eds.), Children’s rights and the Capability Approach. Challenges and prospects (pp. 43-65). Dordrecht: Springer. Baraldi, C. & Rossi, E. (2011). Promotion of participation and mediation in multicultural classrooms. Irish Educational Studies, 30(3), 383-401. Bonilauri, M. & Rossi, E. (2009). Activities 1: Promoting participation. In C. Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 127-154). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Christensen, P. (2004). Children’s participation in ethnographic research;: issues of power and representation. Children & Society, 18(2), 165-176. Corsaro W. (2003). We are Friends, right? Inside Kids’ Culture. Washington (DC): Joseph Henry Press. Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1992). Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farini, F. (2009). Activities 2: Coordinating reflection. In C.  Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 155-172). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Farini F. (2021). Meanings and methods of pedagogical innovation. In C. Baraldi, E. Joslyn & F. Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp.  67-88). London: Bloomsbury. von Foerster, H. (1984). Observing Systems. Seaside (Ca): Intersystems Publications. Freeman, M. & Mathison, S. (2009). Researching Children’s Experiences. New York: Guilford Press. Gallacher, L., & Gallagher, M. (2008). Methodological immaturity in childhood research?: Thinking through ‘participatory methods’. Childhood, 15(4), 499–516. von Glasersfeld, E. (1995). Radical Constructivism. A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: The Falmer Press. Goodwin, C. & Heritage, J. (1990). Conversation Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 283-307. Heritage, J. & Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in action. Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Horgan, D. (2017). Child participatory research methods: Attempts to go ‘deeper’. Childhood, 24(2), 245-259.

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Iervese, V., Baraldi, C. & Ballestri, C. (2022). Photo-based facilitation of Migrant Children’s Remembered Narratives within Classroom Interactions. In C.  Cambre, E.  Barromi-Perlman & D.  Herman (Eds.), Visual Pedagogies. Concepts, Cases, Practices. Boston: Brill. Iervese, V. & Rossi, E. (2009). Activities 3. Conflict management. In C. Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 173-198). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lang, M. & Shelley, B. (2021). Children as researchers: Wild things and the dialogic imagination. Childhood, 28(3), 427-443. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press (Original work published 1984). Mayall, B. (2000). Conversations with children: Working with generational issues. In P. Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research with Children. Perspectives and Practices (pp. 120-135). London: Falmer Press. Mondada, L. (2011). Understanding as an embodied, situated and sequential achievement in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 542-552. Mondada, L. (2015). The facilitator’s task of formulating citizens’ proposals in political meetings: Orchestrating multiple embodied orientations to recipients. Gesprächsforschung - Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 1(62). Mondada, L. (2016). Challenges of multimodality. Language and the body in social interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20(3), 336-366. Montreuil, M., Bogossian, A., Laberge-Perrault, E. & Racine, E. (2021). A Review of Approaches, Strategies and Ethical Considerations in Participatory Research With Children. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 1-15. Norrick, N. (2007). Conversational storytelling. In D.  Herman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (p.  127-141). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Psathas, G., & Anderson, T. (1990). The “pratices” of transcription in conversation analysis. Semiotica, 78(1/2), 75-99. Punch, S. (2002). Research with Children: The Same or Different from Research with Adults? Childhood, 9(3), 321-341. Qvortrup, J., Bardy, M., Sgritta, G., & Wintersberger, H. (1994). Childhood matters: Social theory , practice and politics. Averbury: Adelshot. Sacks, H., Shegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematic for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696-735. Schegloff, E. (1987). Between micro and macro: Contexts and other connections. In J. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Münch & N. Smelser (Eds.), The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 206-233). Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 6

Ways of Facilitating Children’ Agency

Facilitative actions

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_6

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1   Facilitative Actions and Children’s Agency This chapter concerns the basic dialogic form of the facilitation system (Chap. 4) designed to produce children’s agency as an epistemic authority about their points of view, their experiences, and their emotions in schools and other educational organizations. The chapter shows that the fulfillment of the function of facilitation—encouraging, enhancing, supporting, and commenting on children’s agency—is based on some recurrent facilitative actions. The following analysis focuses on the reflexive coordination of facilitated interactions based on facilitative actions. The most frequent and important facilitative actions, which can be combined in the same turn of talk or produced in different turns of talk, are: (1) questions and invitations that encourage children’s agency and production of narratives; (2) minimal responses and repetitions that confirm and enhance children’s agency and production of narratives; (3) formulations of children’s previous contributions, providing perspective-taking, and supporting children’s agency and production of narratives; (4) comments on and appreciations of children’s contributions; and (5) personal stories that facilitators share to connect with children about their contributions. Formulations are particularly relevant in the facilitation system (Baraldi 2014a, b, 2019; Farini 2021). Formulations have two functions. The first function is that they focus on previous children’s contributions, showing facilitators’ attention and interest in their content. This function is achieved through two forms of formulations. One focuses on the “gist” of children’s contributions by “making something explicit that was previously implicit” or by “making inference about its presuppositions or implications” (Heritage 1985, p. 104). Gist formulations can summarize, make explicit, or develop the gist of the children’s contributions and frequently follow children’s answers to facilitators’ questions. The second form of formulation creates additional significance (Heritage and Watson 1980) for the previous contributions, providing “some unexplicated version” of them (Heritage and Watson 1979, p.  134) and thus “articulating the unsaid” (Bolden 2010) in children’s contributions—such facilitator comments are called upshot formulations. The second function of formulations, which is most evident in gist formulations, is supporting children’s new contributions by providing an orientation to them and by inviting children to either confirm or reject the formulation. The function of formulations in the facilitation system is thus both retrospective—they focus

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on previous contributions—and prospective—they support new contributions. Formulations realize reflexive coordination by focusing on previous actions and by supporting new actions. Formulations support children’s agency by upgrading their epistemic authority. The facilitation system is “hybrid” since it includes different designs of actions. However, some actions can be more frequent and important than others either in different phases of the same facilitated interaction or in different facilitated interactions. Moreover, the hybrid facilitation system is not the simple result of different facilitative actions, since only children’s agency can show if facilitation is realized. The hybrid facilitation system is thus produced by the intertwinement of facilitative actions and children’s agency. This chapter does not aim to provide a complete analysis of all possible facilitative actions and productions of children’s agency. First, such a complete analysis would require an incredible quantity of research in the global society. Second, such a complete analysis is impossible—research is a never-ending project. Instead, this chapter has a much more modest objective: to provide a synthesis of the most important facilitative actions and their effects on the production of children’s agency in the facilitation system as observed in more than twenty years of research. Although the excerpts shown in this chapter do not represent the full complexity of the facilitation system, they show that facilitation can be realized in different ways and adapted to different organizations.

2   Facilitation as Encouragement Questions and explicit invitations to talk and produce narratives are ways of encouraging children’s agency. Open questions offer children a wide range of options for action, encouraging them to develop narratives. Meanwhile, focused questions encourage children to clarify their contributions and narratives. Both open and focused questions can upgrade children’s epistemic authority. The combination of open and focused questions can be particularly effective for encouraging children’s agency. The use of explicit invitations as feedback on children’s initiatives is analyzed in Chap. 7. Excerpt 6.1 (Project 9, Italian primary school) shows the facilitator’s questions and their effects on F’s agency. In Turn 1, the facilitator’s open question explores why F chose to bring a particular photograph to the workshop. Because F shows some hesitation in her reply, the facilitator

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poses a follow-up focused question (Turn 3) that addresses a more specific aspect of her narrative to enhance it. Following F’s affirmative reply, the facilitator poses new focused questions to explore her feelings (Turns 5, 9, and 14). These questions have different effects; only Turn 5 encourages F to expand her narrative after a long pause during which the facilitator stays silent. The focused question in Turn 18, followed by an open question (Turn 20), shifts the narrative and encourages F to expand her own narrative, which incites her to make a new unpredictable contribution. Finally, the facilitator asks F a series of focused questions to clarify specific aspects of her narrative (Turns 24, 26, 28, 30, and 34). F only expands her narrative in response to the focused question in Turn 30. Excerpt 6.1 shows that encouragement through questions is not isolated in the facilitated interaction. Instead, it is combined with minimal responses (Turns 22 and 32) that enhance F’s expanded narratives and formulations that specify her narrative (Turns 7 and 16). Excerpt 6.1 and how was that you chose to bring us just this picture eh because I mean this picture gift that your uncle did to your aunt is one thing that you too liked? 04 F yes 05 FAC because you like flowers? 06 F ((nods)) and (5.0) I took the picture because it was the day of Saint Valentine 07 FAC which is the day of lovers 08 F ((nods)) 09 FAC and are you in love? 10 F [no 11 Some [hh 12 FAC no? 13 F no 14 FAC Well your parents (.) you have haven’t you? A feeling of love for your parents 15 F ((nods)) yes 16 FAC But you did not make any gift to them 17 F yes [e: 18 FAC      [Did you make a gift to them? 19 F ((nods)) 20 FAC What gift did you make to them? 21 F E: we bought some dresses 22 FAC mh

01 FAC 02 F 03 FAC

(continued)

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Excerpt 6.1  (continued) 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F

And we wrote a big poster with written (..) mh we love you Ah but we love why? In- who did you and then? eh my cousins Your cousins? ((nods)) And are they children of this uncle and of your aunt Yes Ah and do you live together? ((nods)) yes I understand And I also live with my g- grandmother Who lives with you? Yes, and (.) ((she shakes her head)) °that’s it°

Excerpt 6.2 (Project 2) shows other questions that encourage adolescents’ narratives of their future (with English as the lingua franca). The facilitator asks a series of focused questions about the youths’ frustration over lost opportunities (Turn 1). The turn closure seems to invite a negative reply (“Was there some moments like that? No? No moment?”). However, F1 responds positively and expands on her point of view. The facilitator asks a new focused question (Turn 5), which is followed by an expanded narrative and two open questions (Turns 11 and 19) that enhance new narratives (especially in Turn 20, in which agency emerges with the production of a long narrative). The facilitator’s questions open a space for the adolescents’ personal expressions, upgrading their epistemic authority. Here, encouragements are supported by invitations to take the floor (Turns 3, 7, and 17), minimal acknowledgments of adolescents’ contributions (Turns 7, 11, and 14), and a minimal signal of active listening (Turn 9). Excerpt 6.2 01 FAC

02 F1 03 FAC 04 F1

anybody felt that he or she would have had those possibilities (.) want to answer yes, but knows that he couldn’t (.) he or she couldn’t? So (.) was there a moment or some moments that you would have answered yes but you felt (.) you felt that you couldn’t answer yes (.) so you felt in a way frustrated (.) was there some moments like that? No? No moment? yeah. F1 I’m frustrating, the question can you (.) do you know how is future? (continued)

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Excerpt 6.2  (continued) positive for the future? ya (.) positive future for my children (.) I can’t (.) but I’m frustrated because I can’t answer yes. 07 FAC thanks F1 08 M ((raises his hand)) 09 FAC mh 10 M FAC, also me (.) I’m very optimistic for the future, I’m not very safe for my children’s future. 11 FAC ah (.) ah (.) ok (.) what about the others? 12 F2 my children can live fifty years until I die. 13 Adol. ((laughing)) 14 FAC Ok 15 F3 also I (.) I’m very sad for the future of my children. 16 F2 I have a problem 17 FAC yes F2. 18 F2 I actually don’t know nothing about the organization (.) I think that the organization that’s mine is like Monte Sole. I don’t know nothing about organization (.) I don’t know nothing about political (.) about government, but it’s interesting that I would like to imagine to be something like (.) something same like this character (.) president of youth organization. 19 FAC and you felt what? 20 F2 because I felt that I’m helping other people, I can make something better in future (.) you asked us. Do you believe in better future? You asked us the question and I moved. My character, or what I wanna be is something to help people and have a better future (.) not for me but for all who come to my organization.

05 FAC 06 F1

Excerpts 6.1 and 6.2 show that questions play an important function in encouraging children’s agency as expressions of points of view, proposals, and expanded narratives. Children’s agency is shown when they choose actions and produce narratives that evidence the intensification of their epistemic authority.

3  Minimal Facilitation Minimal responses confirm and enhance children’s agency by inviting children to continue to express their points of view and their narratives (continuers) and acknowledge and repeat their actions. Continuers and, more explicitly repetitions, show facilitators’ active listening to children’s contributions to interaction and narratives. Acknowledgments show that facilitators recognize children’s authorship of knowledge. Continuers and

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acknowledgments can be combined to show both active listening and recognition. Minimal facilitation can enhance fluid interactions and children’s agency, leaving the floor to children and thus emphasizing the importance of their autonomous production of knowledge. However, its success depends on children’s interests and collaboration. Minimal responses can be combined with questions (as we have seen in Sect. 2), formulations, and appreciation of children’s contributions. In Excerpt 6.3 (Project 4), children are invited to decide the plot of a short drama. FFeng, an English facilitator, proposes an organization of space that can guarantee children’s equal participation (Turn 1). The following interaction is facilitated through several minimal responses to the children’s contributions, above all continuers and acknowledgments (Turns 3, 7, 9, 12, 18, 25, 27, 29, and 31) and one repetition (Turn 34). Some acknowledgments are combined with invitations to talk (Turns 27, 29, and 31) and appreciations (Turns 5, 27, and 39). They are also combined with formulations making explicit (Turn 14) and developing (Turn 16) the child’s contributions and questions (Turns 5, 27, and 41). In this interaction, children’s agency is shown by collaborative decision-making. Some children help Mfra, a French child, overcome language barriers (Turns 32–38). An Ecuadorian child (Mecu) tries to formulate Mfra’s proposal, producing a multilingual turn by using the French word for “door” (porte) (Turn 33). FFeng’s final question (Turn 41) includes Mfra’s contribution among the possible choices. Finally, a Mexican child, Fmex, proposes a personal variation of the activity (Turn 43), which is accepted by the other children. Thus, minimal facilitation, supported by some questions, appreciations, and formulations, enhances the fluid production of the plot. Excerpt 6.3 01 FFeng ok, let’s go round the circle, everyone say their idea, ok so Mecu. 02 Mecu ok like you said if (there’s) someone going to act like the lemon said “I am the lemon” and just (..) and or he or she have it (.) and someone be the (??) (the only character) and there was a- in the door there was a thing that said no kids and they work it. So they enter and they find a spider web with a (.) a spider. And (..) then that’s the problem that they got catching the spider web. 03 FFeng ok, ok 04 Mecu and 05 FFeng that’s good, at least it’s one idea. Anybody else has got some idea? 06 Mdut there were three kids and they were looking for that bottle with (.) magic water and 07 FFeng ok 08 Mdut they go to, with a bus. (continued)

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Excerpt 6.3  (continued) 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

FFeng Mecu Mdut FFeng Mdut FFeng Mdut FFeng Mdut FFeng Mdut Fmex Mdut

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Mnor Mdut Musa FFeng Mita FFeng Mnor FFeng Mnor FFeng Mfra

33 Some 34 FFeng 35 Mecu 36 FFeng 37 Mfra

38 All 39 FFeng 40 Some 41 FFeng 42 Mita 43 Fmex 44 All

ok yeah ah yeah. to a house yeah and (..) they (.) don’t allow kids so the house says “no kids allowed” yeah for the magic water’s inside the house Yeah ok, [ok        [and they have (..) And they have a lemon yeah! and they find a spider web and beyond the spider web there’s the bottle with magic water and they throw the lemon to destroy the spider web [and take [and then yeah. ok, [ok        [and when we take the magic water (.) we drink (2.0) and we can fly. ok ok ok! I like that idea OK! what’s [your idea? ((pointing at Mnor who nods))                                                            [(?) leaders ok, your idea? no ((pointing at MDut)) his:: you like that one, ok! and MFra? the: (2.0) example (..) Is indoors, one (..) carpet? No porte ((door in French))? Door one door, door. yeah one door on (?) ((he takes the symbol of “No kids allowed”)) why not (..) no (..) yeah, when: the porte ((door)) uhm il est (?) in (?) the porte eh: mis (it is (?) in (?) the door eh: put) on door and: (the people) and no kid and they (give) yes and when: ticket, bus ticket and no no kid and and no (?) ((laughter))! ((laughter)) ok well it’s good, good, good start. I like the house idea so, ok? (.) do we want to go with Mdut’s idea? yeah! do you like? Between the two, Mfra and Mdut’s idea of the house with the no kids sign and stuff, ok so? Mdut is a yeah but the story begins with a (?) and a lemon yeah!

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Excerpt 6.4 (Project 10, Italian lower secondary school) makes clear that minimal facilitation is supported by children’s interest in conversation about children’s autonomy. The facilitator presents an initial summary of previous controversial views and poses a focused question to encourage the children to contribute (Turn 1). Next, the facilitator provides a minimal request to clarify M1’s answer, encouraging him to develop an expanded narrative (Turn 4). In the following sequence, the facilitator leaves the floor open to the children (Turns 5, 9, 11, 17, and 21), demonstrates active listening (Turn 15), and acknowledges the children’s contributions (Turns 25 and 30). Sometimes the facilitator asks the children to speak louder (Turns 13, 23, and 34) since this project took place during the pandemic and the children were wearing masks. Minimal facilitation is only combined with the facilitator’s attempted formulation (Turn 21), which a child interrupts, and her short formulation (Turn 28) making the child’s contribution explicit. Minimal facilitation is coupled with the production of children’s agency as the authoring of complex narratives. In Turns 6 and 10, M2, a migrant child, suggests that while children may ask their teacher for help with some things, autonomy is generally expected by age eleven. In several long turns (Turns 14, 18, 19, and 20), children express their views on autonomy based on their personal experiences. In Turn 26, M2 takes the floor again to express his partial disagreement with other children, narrating his experience about autonomy. In Turns 27–35, several children produce narratives interlaced with M2’s narrative about the necessity to be accompanied by parents from one place to another. In Turn 36, M2 takes the floor again and produces a complex narrative about the difference between being addicted to your parents’ control and breaking free of it. Excerpt 6.4 01 FACf […] but then maybe I still haven’t understood well well well some of you said being autonomous means eh doing things by yourself some of you say it’s nice to do things with others well with others in this case you said the parents (.) and so what is true? 02 M1 for me it is always ni an Italian mix of yes and no because (.) I am- I have been autonomous since the second (?) 03 FACf second grade? 04 M1 yes second grade (.) because my mom was at work and my dad never helped me do things like homework so I had to learn by myself (.) my grandmother went to school from time to time so already she didn’t know the multiplication tables and so I always had to learn by myself so I think that but it would have been fun if they would have helped me a little bit more (continued)

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Excerpt 6.4  (continued) 05 FACf then yes please 06 M2 eh regarding what F1 said eh I meant things like going to school alone or maybe doing some homework you usually eh ask the teacher to help you with but I hope that when you are eleven years old things like the school bag or getting dressed you know how to do them 07 FACf mh so your classmate says it depends on the things you do well there are certain things that you need to be autonomous I mean do them by yourself and others that you can be autonomous but together with someone else? Do I get it right? 08 M2 yes 09 FACf please (?) 10 M2 well how I re- I relate to what M3 said because it is true eh (.) you- being autonomous eh can have thin- well some things you can initially do them and others you can’t (.) like the school bag or getting dressed alone I think that at eleven years old we have learned to- to get dressed alone, right? I believe (.) and I believe that some things like going back to school (?) 11 FACf please 12 M3 but I somewhat agree with him I somewhat agree with F1 and somewhat agree with (?) 13 FACf yes then I have heard this but I already tell you to speak a little louder because [he agrees with everyone practically 14 M3 [I agree first- first with M3 because in any case it is true the basic things you can do them anyway eas- easily enough I do not agree very much with (M2) because an- well now (it is not that to go) home alone it takes (?) it is not that you have to be a genius (.) once you do it once twice three times then by the fourth time you already remember (?) the road and instead I also agree with F1 because it is not that- and also with M4 because it is not that you have to live alone you start doing I don’t know as they said before the school bag (.) basic things eh get dressed and then you start with things (a little) more difficult like going home alone but- I don’t eh except some days of the week I’m always alone at home and so (.) well my mother leaves me the food and I have to go back home alone otherwise sometimes she takes me: eh someone sometimes I have to go home alone and eh when I mean it doesn’t take long because sometimes I take a ride but it’s not that I accept it- accept it always sometimes I walk 15 FACf mh 16 M3 it’s not that (.) I die 17 FACf there was- you have already spoken please 18 F1 well however there are certain people who like me who in the end however spend most of the day alone who anyway for example I go to school my mother takes me to school and then I go home alone either walking or even by bus (.) I prepare some food for myself and I start doing what I have to do until seven o’clock that- when my parents arrive (.) well more or less anyway I do most of the thi- most of the things I’m quite autonomous (continued)

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Excerpt 6.4  (continued) 19 F2

20 M3

21 FACf 22 M4 23 FACf 24 M4

25 FACf 26 M2

27 M4

28 FACf 29 M4 30 FACf

in my opinion also being autonomous means (.) stopping getting used to having things done either by others or if someone eh wants to be helped by their mum some- other things (?) as if someone is anxious yes they can do a little step by step or try many times first step by step accompany them halfway a little way then leave them then gradually farther and farther away make them go by themselves (.) a bit like this step by step eh it’s right (.) it’s very right what F1 said because me too when I wanted to go alone at the beginning I didn’t know how to go there and I asked my mother “listen I’ll meet you there with the car” I g- I go to this point I’ll meet you (?) I went farther and farther away and at the end she explained to me everything how to go home which bus I should take which way I should go (.) and and yet my path was difficult because my house is very far from here and therefore we must always be careful with the cars a:nd everything because (.) we live in a somewhat ugly street okay (.) then it seems to me that now you are- sorry please eh li- like I never liked for example even as a child I have always been autonomous autonomous in the sense sorry, can you speak a little louder because outside they scream ah okay (.) as a child I didn’t- I never wanted- I always wanted to be autonomous in fact I didn’t- I didn’t like it since they accompanied me but that is already compulsory and then instead then at the middle school also last year that I got rejected then no n- last year I never let someone accompany me just because I didn’t like it a bit like when my mom says no well I’ll make your meal I who I am stubborn a lot (.) eh (.) I get nervous and say I am twelve years old in May thirteen I can do everything (.) and then and then I get stuck and and I always wanted to be autonomous because I don’t like not being autonomous okay regarding what M4 and F1 said (.) more or less I disagree with both of them (.) because if unfortunately you are a person like me eh and so you are afraid of going from F. ((place)) to C. ((place)) maybe having your mother or your father accompany you is not a bad thing (.) but for choices to make (.) like what do I know? to do or not to do a sport there I know that you have to choose by yourself I with with M3 immediately (.) okay it’s okay rightly from F. to C. if I let someone accompany me there but let’s pretend like from B. ((place)) to here (.) it wouldn’t even seem so logical to me to be accompanied because you know the road that is not like from here to Milan just to say and then (.) eh mh it’s okay to be accompanied you say it depends on the distances yes it’s okay to be accompanied but not too often and if it’s close at least try it okay (continued)

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Excerpt 6.4  (continued) 31 F2

I agree- I agree with both (M4) on one hand (?) who said M4 so if M3 says to be accompanied by your mother it is not that it’s a bad thing but if then you always do it this way you get used to that then your mum tells now you go alone (?) and therefore you get more anxious because I was used to go with mum or to do as I said before a little step by step or try it yourself the first time 32 F3 even if since I was a child I have always been very independent eh because my parents work all day and therefore I was most of the time at my grandmother’s eh (.) since the first day of school I- I came alone because my parents worked and (?) a little bit step by step anyway and a bit of autonomy is also good a little gradua- gradually but too much already is not (.) in my opinion 33 M5 (?) 34 FACf pardon louder 35 M5 I wanted to say something to F3 (.) it is not that- yes but we have to be autonomous but oh there is time it is not that we are thirty years old we are eleven twelve and then for example I don’t know like what M2 said about F. and C. I mean those are your things I mean in the sense that if you want to be accompanied- I also let myself be accompanied however for example to go to the park that is just under my house- well a few days ago I do not remember that I went there and I said “ah let’s go to the park” (?) I didn’t know what to do so I went downstairs 36 M2 I can easily say that I don’t agree with what F1said before because yes it’s true if you have a kind of thought that you let yourself be accompanied too much by your parents you get used to it but if you are one of those people who have a regulated mind who doesn’t eh get used to things easily and who in any case you know how to keep a firm hand on your conditions and choices and ehmh how do you say it? when your your (.) habits and and how do you say when (4.0) eh and your addictions there you can safely choose if- when and when not to go with your parents without having that sense of lack

In this case, children take the floor frequently and smoothly on a theme clearly interesting for them. Thus, their agency seems independent from facilitative actions; this is an effect of minimal facilitation.

4   Facilitation as Perspective-Taking and Support Gist formulations frequently follow questions; thus, a basic sequence in facilitated interactions includes a question, an answer, and a formulation (Hutchby 2005, 2007). However, gist formulations can also be produced in different sequence organizations, such as a series of facilitators’ turns, coordinated formulations, and in combination with questions in the

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same turn. Moreover, formulations can take an interrogative or dubitative form, thus stressing children’s rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge. Gist formulations, which take the perspective of children and support it, are more effective than encouraging or enhancing children’s agency. In contrast, they are less effective than minimal responses in producing fluidity and dialogue among children. Gist formulations can summarize, make explicit, or develop children’s contributions in ways that differently affect children’s agency. Excerpt 6.5 (Project 8) shows the basic sequence. It includes (1) the facilitator’s question (Turn 1) about the meaning of “self-improvement”; (2) the children’s answers, which emerge as narratives about this meaning (Turns 4 and 5); and (3) the facilitator’s development of how the school supports marginalized children and collective engagement (Turn 6). This formulation includes a prefatory “so” (a frequent way of interlacing the formulation with previous contributions; Hutchby 2007), an emphasis on children as authors of knowledge (“you’re saying”), and additional references to previous contributions (“as someone said before”). This formulation supports M3’s expanded narrative about children’s need for support (Turn 7). Excerpt 6.5 01 FAC okay, right, so we said together that self-improvement means accomplishing your own duty, being more loyal (.) growing up (.) helping others (.) do you think there’s anything else to add? 02 M1 yes 03 FAC who said yes? 04 M1 me. How can I say, helping the community to improve for example by helping to build a school for people who cannot, a school financed by everybody which can help children who cannot, with their parents who cannot have money to pay for textbooks that 05 M2 helping children who hang around, then maybe a better school 06 FAC so, you’re saying to engage in society, not only towards single persons, as someone said before I help persons who have difficulties, I don’t make fun of them, but society itself 07 M3 yes, for example what you do at school, borrowing books may be a good thing for those who cannot afford buying books, maybe someone gave them one hundred euros and rather than buying books, they buy clothes and maybe they don’t have money for buying books and maybe they can have them thanks to the school that helps them.

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Excerpt 6.6 (Project 9) shows the function of formulations as developments of an emotionally intense narrative. These formulations are combined with questions (and a few minimal responses) in a much more complex way than in Excerpt 6.5. In Turn 1, M recalls his parents’ separation. The facilitator provides two developments (Turns 2 and 4): first, the facilitator suggests that they may have separated because their love broke down and, second, the facilitator asks two open questions (Turns 6 and 8) that encourage M to articulate an expanded narrative. In Turn 9, M reveals that his father has a new fiancée and expresses worry over it. The facilitator asks a focused question about the child’s possible dislike of the new fiancée (Turn 12); M deepens his narrative and confirms that he dislikes her. In a new formulation, the facilitator develops the suggestion that M does not know the woman (Turn 14); M rejects this idea. The facilitator makes M’s rejection of this idea explicit through another formulation (Turn 16). M confirms and expands his narrative. In the next phase, the facilitator supports M’s narrative through a two-part development (Turns 18 and 20), followed by an affective state change (Aston 1987) to show the relevance of the child’s information (Turn 22) and a second development (Turn 24). Now, the narrative becomes very intimate and emotional and the facilitator supports it with other developments (Turns 28 and 30). The formulation in Turn 30 changes the topic from M’s parents to the photograph. The facilitator’s question in Turn 34, focusing on the knowledge of M’s mother about M’s use of the photograph, prepares two further developments about M’s mother’s attitude (Turn 36 and 40); M rejects both. After two minimal responses (Turns 42 and 44) designed to enhance M’s narrative, the facilitator formulates two final developments. The first one is in an interrogative form (Turn 46) and the final one (Turn 48) supports the idea that M’s mother has positive feelings toward his father, which M confirm. Excerpt 6.6 01 M

because now my parents are separated and so the thing was the love between them that was separated 02 FAC ah it’s love that separated 03 M ((nods and with a gesture indicates separation)) 04 FAC because now they don’t l- don’t l- don’t love each other anymore 05 M ((shakes his head)) 06 FAC I understand and did it happen a long time ago? (continued)

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Excerpt 6.6  (continued) 07 M ((nods)) yes e: in two thousand fifteen 08 FAC ok and how did you discover it? 09 M eh I discovered it because my father well ((makes a gesture with his hand)) because eh we ch- we changed i- home I and my brother and my fa- and my mother, and my br- my father stayed alone, for no until: that now he lives with my grandmother, and and he is alone, but he is finding another person he has and this worries me a l[ot 10 FAC                                    [I underst- ah really? 11 M yes 12 FAC why you may not like her? 13 M mh ((shaking his head)) I and my brother don’t like her at all [a 14 FAC                                                                                                [but you don’t know her yet 15 M eh actually I know her 16 FAC ah so you know who she is 17 M yes that that ac- that actually they were g- they were alright together only that sometimes when my father was taking he was losing control because he to- he was taking lots of medicines for something that I don’t [know 18 FAC                                                                                  [and they make him strange 19 M eh? [he, my mother 20 FAC       [the medicines 21 M once she threw the medicines out 22 FAC ah 23 M and he mh one day in the following days he started shouting at her, beating [her 24 FAC [because he could not find the medi[cines 25 M                                                               [eh 26 F                                                               [oh my god 27 M yes and then and my bro- and my father no I mean my mother ah she was ((makes a gesture with his hands)) she was going 28 FAC I mean she didn’t agree with this behavior 29 M no 30 FAC mh so you keep this photo                  (..) 31 M I ke- [I kept it in my mother kept it in a red box with glitters 32 FAC          [or after, yes 33 M and: th- then I took it because it reminds me that 34 FAC but your mum gave it to – does she know that you were bringing this photo? 35 M yes ((nods)) 36 FAC and so your mum cares about this photo 37 M eh actually she doesn’t ((shakes his head)) 38 FAC no? (continued)

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Excerpt 6.6  (continued) 39 M 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M

48 FAC 49 M

no be- because she can’t stand my father anymore and so she she just – as a matter of fact she put it away it from my drawers she took it off from the album yes no it’s not an album it was a photo frame eh it’s not an album a photo frame the: I don’t know the name yes a photo frame and then and then she put it away in one of my drawers in my bedroom but then did she want you to keep it? she didn’t want to throw it away but she wanted to keep it because it’s because mum says that l- she is not in love with dad but she loves him very much because after all [they hav- have they did some important things [in their life together                                    [((nods))                                                                    [together yes ((nods))

Excerpt 6.6 shows the relevance of developments, not only for perspective-­taking but also and above all for supporting intense narratives about the child’s experiences and risking rejection, thus supporting children’s agency. Intense narratives cannot be simply encouraged by questions or enhanced through minimal responses. These formulations support children’s trusting commitment in narrating and also rejecting facilitators’ formulations. In Excerpt 6.7 (Project 6), the facilitator supports M1’s personal expressions with two formulations. First, the facilitator develops the last part of M1’s utterance (Turn 1: “I like […] one of second D”), adding the keyword “girl” and stressing the relevance of this piece of information with an open appreciation (“ah very good”). Second, her development stresses the child’s hypothetical love story (Turn 6); this formulation is combined with appreciation (“what a wonderful thing”). M1 rejects the formulation and advises that the proper way to put it is not “in love” but “engaged.” This rejection does not hinder the facilitator’s further appreciation in Turns 8 (“wonderful”) and 10, where she compliments M1 for his intimate contribution to the interaction. This excerpt shows that formulations can embed positive connotations of children’s intimate narratives. In this excerpt, the child demonstrates agency by rejecting the facilitator’s formulation.

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Excerpt 6.7 01 M1 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

FACf M2 FACf class FACf M1 FACf M2 FACf

I’m M1, I like green, I like to play football, and one in second D ((seventh grade)) ah very good a girl in second D I know that very good ((laughter and comments)) what a wonderful thing so you are in love engaged wonderful (?) well you need – you need courage compliments may I give you my compliments? He confesse- I mean to confess to say things like that, I must give you my compliments. And what do you dislike M1.

Excerpt 6.8 (Project 10, Italian nursery school) shows the complex use of formulations to support children’s narratives. In Turn 1, the facilitator explains that the activity is about what you may need to live happily on an island. Children, including migrant children (F1, F3, and F4), participate very actively and consider and choose different needs; here, the children demonstrate increasing epistemic authority. Formulations make children’s contributions explicit (Turns 7, 11, 13, 15, 21, 43, and 49), summarize children’s contributions (Turns 19 and 59), and develop children’s narratives that stress their autonomous views (Turns 25, 30, and 34). Here, formulations are combined with several minimal repetitions of children’s contributions (Turns 3, 17, 23, 47, 55, and 57), a few open questions (Turns 27, 30, 41, and 45) and one focused question (Turn 51), an occasional confirmation (Turn 36), and the completion of the children’s turns (Turn 11). Excerpt 6.8 01 FACm pay attention! Well look at me everyone because now it begins the most difficult part where you need imagination. I ask you to speak one at a time, when you have ideas raise your hand, and we share them together, is that okay? The first question is this: we are pretending to be on a ship and going to this island (.) to make it a beautiful place, if you can, it must be the most beautiful place possible to live. What do you think are the first things you need to live well on this island? The first needs the things to think of first, does anyone have any ideas? (.) of the needs we might have [of the 02 M1                                                               [building houses (continued)

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Excerpt 6.8  (continued) 03 FACm for example M1 says as first needs to build houses 04 M1 or otherwise when it rains (..) you have to go to a place like the forest where it rains less 05 FACm but building houses is certainly a need, F1                     (..) 06 F1 you must have food 07 FACm F1 says let’s go find some food or you must have it somehow you must have it, F2 08 F2 we can find a treasure 09 FACm she says while we are there we could also try to find out if there is a treasure. Let’s hear in a row F3, M2 and F4 F3 10 F3 we can drink 11 FACm water?                     (..) 12 F3 Yes 13 FACm you have to make sure you can drink, M2 14 M2 a shop so we can go and buy food 15 FACm you would also put a shop among the first needs: that we have (..) F4 16 F4 Sleep 17 FACm F4 says sleeping 18 F4 ((nods)) 19 FACm so some places to sleep, we have the house M6 mentioned earlier, and in the house there will certainly be a place to sleep too, M3 20 M3 and we can (2) also eat spaghetti 21 FACm so he starts to say we have food it has already been said that we needed food, and he starts to say however food can mean so many things let’s be more precise and see what foods we want what foods we need and here it could [be 22 M4 [vegetables 23 FACm he says vegetables, you see! he [says] spaghetti, let’s go on with M5 24 M5 I would eat (??) 25 FACm I understand, so let’s do like this: the need for food is there, then you will prepare a nice menu of the island, the basic things to eat on the island, let’s go on with the first needs, M2 26 M2 in the woods it rains less but you can get lost 27 FACm mh what can you do not to get lost on the island M1? 28 M1 we can bring the compass! 29 Tf sh 30 FACm one at a time then because M2 remembered before the question of the houses and he says going into the woods you can get lost, let’s see M1 says but with the compass - it’s a remedy F1 (2.0) please (.) do you agree with: M1? (..) can you think of other ways not to get lost F1? What could be done? M5 31 M5 we can take a flashlight (continued)

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Excerpt 6.8  (continued) 32 FACm a to- then here are some st33 ? a compass 34 FACm a compass so F1, M1, M5 start thinking that on the island some tools could be useful too a torch to light up when it’s dark, a compass, let’s see F1                     (..) 35 F1 When it’s so dark, we have to turn on the flashlight (.) with the light 36 FACm exactly (.) F4 37 ? (?) 38 F4 we go to sleep 39 FACm pardon? 40 F4 we can go to sleep                     (..) 41 FACm where? 42 F4 in bed 43 FACm sure (.) when it’s time (.) we will go there. M4 44 M4 we can also turn on the flashlight when it’s dark 45 FACm yes M8 (.) you wanted to say something to build you were saying? No? F1 46 F1 we can also buy clothes and shoes 47 FACm ah F1 thinks that among the needs we have there could also be clothes and shoes 48 F1 ((nods)) 49 FACm but F1 you said something, that we could buy them (.) to buy them we need 50 M1 money! 51 FACm money, will money be needed on this island or could you live on an island even without money in your opinion? 52 ? without money 53 F1 maybe we need to look for it 54 M1 if it’s just us: no money 55 FACm if it’s just us, M6 thinks that it would be possible without money 56 M1 ((nods)) because we have - if one goes: ah: where there is where there is the forest and in front of you there are some pine trees you can take (.) some pieces of pine tree 57 FACm ok you see that according to M6 you could also live without money on the island where you go if you are alone M3 58 M3 ah (4.0) we go to bed when the light ah: there is no more light then we turn on the flashlight 59 FACm yes pay attention to the question because the question was what are the things we need to live well on the island so far you have told me food and you have also said what kind of food, houses, places to sleep, compasses and flashlights so we don’t get lost in the woods, clothes and shoes, about money F1 says if we want to buy things we will need money, but M6 says if we go alone on the island as long as we are alone we can also do without (.) F2

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Excerpts 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, and 6.8 show how versatile formulations can be in supporting children’s agency by upgrading their authority in producing points of view, expressing emotions, and authoring narratives. Formulations can summarize, make explicit, or develop children’s points of view and narratives, which always show their perspectives; however, formulations can only support children’s agency when children expand their narratives or reject formulations as developments. Formulations can embed appreciations and are combined with other facilitative actions, especially questions and minimal responses.

5   Facilitation as Commentary and Personal Storytelling Facilitators’ comments and personal stories can support children’s agency in producing narratives and are particularly effective in supporting the interlacement of different narratives. Comments are upshot formulations that articulate what is unsaid in children’s contributions. Facilitators’ personal stories show sensitivity toward children’s contributions and facilitators’ involvement; this support children’s agency—even when facilitators’ turns are long and articulated. Comments and personal stories can be combined in facilitators’ complex turns, which may sometimes also include gist formulations and appreciations. Excerpt 6.9 (Project 9, English primary school) is preceded by a child’s narrative about a wedding in Afghanistan, developed as a scary story. In Turn 1, the facilitator comments on the production of scary stories and then invites the children to tell ghost stories. Following this invitation, F1 takes the floor and tells a scary story. In Turn 3, the facilitator provides another comment (“it gets quite scary doesn’t it when you hear especially at night time, things get a bit scary at night time when the lights off, doesn’t it”) and tells a personal story, which shows that she shares the children’s feelings (“I know I get a bit scared sometimes. I have to put a cheeky light on to make me feel a bit safer, so I can see what’s going on”). This combination of comment and personal story, together with another invitation (Turn 7), supports the production of new narratives (Turns 4, 8, and 9). In Turn 10, the facilitator provides a third comment about memories (“isn’t it funny how we get these memories and these fears and you don’t know whether to believe them or not, it’s a bit scary”), followed by another personal story about her fears in early childhood. At the end of this turn, the facilitator starts to change the topic, but F2 takes the floor to add another story (Turn 11). The facilitator

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makes a final long and complex comment, then promises to resume the topic next time and expresses general appreciation for the children’s contributions, repeated thanks, a question about whether the children will bring new pictures next time, and a greeting (Turn 12). The excerpt shows that comments and personal stories can interlace children’s stories in ways that upgrade their epistemic authority and thus enhance their agency. Excerpt 6.9 01 FAC so, lots of scary stories about ghosts. Did anybody else get told stories about ghosts from their grandparents or siblings or their cousins? 02 F1 my cousin, my cousin told me when I was in my Nan’s house, and all of my cousins were there, and at night when we were all sleeping my eldest cousin told us this scary story and then when we went to sleep I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. 03 FAC yeah, it gets quite scary doesn’t it when you hear (..) especially at night time, things get a bit scary at night time when the lights off, doesn’t it. I know I get a bit scared sometimes. I have to put a cheeky light on to make me feel a bit safer, so I can see what’s going on. 04 M1 when I was at my cousin’s house, he told my brother because he lived opposite a forest, and he told my brother that there was a man called the Bear Man in the forest, when he was like little. So, then when he went outside and it was dark he started crying. And there was this other time, it was like maybe a month ago. My sister she hates Michael Jackson because the rumour of everything that he did, and then he was sitting next to the window when it was dark outside and my cousin he put the music on and he screamed, and he said like it was Michael Jackson behind her and she got so scared. 05 FAC so, she was really freaked out. 06 M1 yes and she’s like 13, so 07 FAC so, some more scary stories. 08 M2 so, basically when I was about five or six when I was sleeping in my bed and they said to me there’s a man underneath your bed. There was a phone, it was ringing and I just jumped and ran to my mum and said mummy, mummy there’s a man under my bed. And then I had to sleep with my mum because I was scared and then when I was asleep and she took me in the bed (?). 09 M3 ((smiles)) so, when I was really young my dad used to make up these, not scary ones, but about the snake who used to come to our house, he said that it was going to come for me, so I stayed next to him every single time and as I grew up I didn’t really believe him at the time. 10 FAC yeah, isn’t it funny how we get these memories and these fears and you don’t know whether to believe them or not, it’s a bit scary. Did anybody ever think there was somebody in their wardrobe? Sometimes, when I was a little girl, I used to look in my wardrobe to make sure there was nobody in there, there was never anybody in there but I used to get scared sometimes. I’ll come back and see you next week, if that’s okay. (continued)

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Excerpt 6.9  (continued) 11 F2

when I was little, my auntie, because I had like these two wardrobes next to my bed either side, it had murals on it, so my auntie said it was (?). So, when I was sleeping I used to leave the cupboards open, they faced me. So, when I go to bed I used to look at the mirrors and I would scream and go under the duvet and get my torch out and see if there’s anything there and go back to bed (?) see it again (..) my duvet. 12 FAC do you know what I think a lot of people do that sometimes, get a little bit jeebie when the light goes off. I think we can talk about this next time I come back, this is a huge area that you’re sharing, all of these kind of haunted stories, all from this picture. How did we know that we were going to start talking about hauntings and ghost stories all from a picture like this. Your memories are just so vast and the emotion of your picture that you began to tell us really shared lots of things. So, thank you so much and if you would like to bring in some pictures for next week and if you’ve taken a picture that would be great to bring that in, okay. So, thank you so much and shall we say thank you very much for sharing today, thank you, well done guys, thank you, thank you and thank you for the videotaping ((Applause)) So, who would like to bring in some pictures next week?

In Excerpt 6.10 (Project 10, Italian vocational school), the facilitator asks an adolescent to bring an object or a photo of an object and to discuss it. M talks about his tattoo, which he says represents a phase in his life in which he built important relationships. He shows the facilitator his tattoo (Turn 4) and then tells a story about it (Turns 9, 11, 13, and 15). In this phase, the facilitator enhances M’s story through minimal responses and appreciation (Turn 12). In Turn 16, the teacher completes M’s previous turn, thus supporting the youth’s narrative rather than upgrading her own epistemic authority, evidenced by M’s subsequent expansion of his narrative (Turn 17). In Turn 19, the teacher provides her first comment about M’s competencies, which increases M’s epistemic authority. However, the facilitator shows interest in M continuing his narrative (Turn 20); she encourages this continuation by asking focused questions (Turns 22 and 24) and confirms her interest by giving minimal responses (Turns 26 and 30). Then, the facilitator and the teacher collaboratively construct personal narratives about the tattoo as a piece of art and contextualize M’s experience as positive and important (Turns 32 and 34). The facilitator’s personal story continues in Turn 38, supported by the teacher (Turns 39 and 42). These personal stories upgrade the adolescent’s epistemic authority in the class. Nevertheless, the facilitator apologizes for having told a personal story while at once legitimizing it because she felt it was similar and then asks an open question (Turn 43) to encourage M to continue his story (not shown).

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Excerpt 6.10 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

FACf M FACf M FACf M FACf Tf M Some M

and M are you coming? me? (?) we do ((get close to the desk)) I have this instead, a tattoo ((shows it)) listen and show it to them ah well they have already seen this one no she hasn’t seen it yet ((comes up to look at the tattoo)) I did it when I was sixteen by myself ((laugh)) my parents have ((makes a hand gesture)) have scolded me and: nothing it represents my adolescence what I went through a little bit it represents the paths I built for myself, 12 FACf ((nods)) beautiful 13 M because I have done: tattoo 14 FACf ((nods)) 15 M I did tattoo I always went to province of Reggio Emilia and came back every weekend, and nothing I tattooed it because it was a nice memory so 16 Tf you did it 17 M eh yes but I was really anxious hh 18 Some ((laugh) 19 Tf you make me one too 20 FACf no wait wait wait I wanted to go into more detail 21 M yes 22 FACf but: this thing of tattoos, is it going to be part of your future? I mean will it have anything to do with you or was it just an experience like that? 23 M eh I hope so 24 FACf that is would you like to be a tattoo artist? 25 M yes I hope so that is my: one of my ideas 26 FACf ah 27 M also because: I spent a lot of money on it hh 28 Some ((laugh) 29 M so if I say no my ((makes a gesture with his hand)) no all kidding aside eh yes yes I like it I like it yes 30 FACf ok 31 Tf he is an artist eh FACf 32 FACf no I say that because the son of a very dear friend of mine is fifteen years old and well she had all her dreams you know every mom has ideas for her kids, “mom I found out what I want to be when I grow up (..) a tattoo artist” 33 Some ((laugh) 34 Tf my son told me this two years ago 35 FACf and anyway (?) they flunked him three times, huh (continued)

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Excerpt 6.10  (continued) 36 M

oh but that’s me! ((he’s older than his classmates too, he flunked out and changed schools)) 37 Some ((laugh out loud)) 38 FACf now he is attending a school in Milan, it’s called I don’t remember how it’s called, where he could do anything but he told his mother “yes mom I’ll finish it but then I’m going to be a tattoo artist” 39 Tf and this is a beautiful thing 40 M (?) 41 FACf sure 42 Tf it is wonderful and also difficult to do 43 FACf here tell us just a little bit- sorry for the digression but I felt an affinity, e: your pat- tell us something why a flower to represent your path? Maybe they already know, but if you just tell us a few words about your path

Excerpt 6.10 shows how personal stories and comments, combined with other facilitative actions, such as confirmations, appreciations, questions, and formulations, can upgrade the epistemic authority of children and youth, thus enhancing and supporting their agency. 5.1  Displacements The combination of questions and comments about children’s narratives can take the form of displacement. Facilitator’s displacements involve creative—often humorous—disruptions of children’s narratives. Displacements are risky actions that require a sense of humor and a readiness to react to the child’s actions. Displacements enhance joyful equal relations with children and support children’s expectations of unpredictability, thus supporting children’s agency. Excerpt 6.11 (Project 9, Italian primary school) is an example of displacement. In Turn 1, the facilitator’s open question encourages children to articulate narratives about their parents’ weddings. Initially, facilitation is achieved through invitations, questions, and formulations. However, in Turn 13, the facilitator provides a displacement asking what F1 was doing when the wedding photograph was taken. This displacement is followed by F1’s hesitation to answer. The facilitator suggests an answer (Turn 15: “you were not there”), which F1 immediately affirms as obvious. Other children in the classroom laugh at the displacement, and the facilitator adds another displacement, suggesting that F1 was at another party (Turn 19). F1 rejects this displacement, protesting that

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she had not yet been born. Another child, however, aligns with the facilitator’s displacement, suggesting that indeed F1 was at the disco. In Turn 24, the facilitator acknowledges F1’s answer with another displacing comment by showing surprise at the fact that she was not born when her parents got married (“Ah: you were not yet born I see”). Then, he invites the other children to discuss their participation in their parents’ weddings (Turn 26). M1 comments that it is not possible for anyone to attend his or her parents’ wedding (Turn 27). In Turn 28, the facilitator questions the validity of M1’s comment. This facilitative action supports children’s agency in producing narratives that may challenge expectations. Thus, in Turn 33, F2 says that she was at her parents’ wedding. The facilitator asks questions to enhance F2’s narrative. Next, he makes a comment about unpredictability and invites M1 (and, indirectly, the other children) to expect the unexpected (Turn 36). Excerpt 6.11 01 FAC some of you (..) has seen the pictures of you parents during their wedding? 02 Some ((some raise their hands)) 03 FAC ah ah there are others (.) and what what what pictures are they? Who who who wants to tell the parents’ pictures? 04 Some ((some lower their hands)) 05 FAC try to tell 06 F1 a picture about when dad and mum were were entering the car 07 FAC the day of their wedding or another day? 08 F1 no, the day of their wedding 09 FAC ah so (.) you don’t have a picture (.) of of the ceremony but of the following moment 10 F1 yes 11 FAC when the ceremony was done and they were were greeting everywhere and leaving for the honeymoon 12 F1 yes 13 FAC what were you doing?                     (..) 14 F1 I 15 FAC you were not there 16 F1 I was not there 17 FAC eh hh 18 Some hhh 19 FAC because that day you were at a party elsewhere, weren’t you? 20 ? h 21 ? no (continued)

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Excerpt 6.11  (continued) 22 23 24 25 26

F1 ? FAC ? FAC

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

M1 FAC M2 F2 M1 FAC F2 FAC F2 FAC

no, because I was not yet [born                                          [(??) to the disco ah you were not yet born I see h and is there someone who was there (.) at their parents’ wedding instead? it’s impossible no, it’s not impossible [because it can happen it can happen                                       [((says something to M1)) [((raises her hand)) [ah! were you there? yes and why were you there? eh because I was already born you see ((to M1)) it is possible because things are possible in many ways

6   Facilitation as Coordination of Reflection Reflexive coordination can enhance the coordination of reflection in the facilitation system (Chap. 4). Coordination of reflection focuses on the structure of the facilitation system, based on self-observation (focused on the production of facilitation) and self-description (focused on the meaning of the facilitation system). Excerpt 6.12 (Project 8) and Excerpt 6.13 (Project 3) exemplify coordination of reflection. Excerpt 6.12 shows the final phase of a meeting, in which the results of the meeting are summarized. Recall that coordination of reflection concerns the structure of facilitation and the dismissal of the hierarchical structure of education. F1 takes the floor to show satisfaction that the meeting helped children autonomously express their opinions (Turn 1). M1 confirms this assessment, adding a question about why the facilitators want to understand children (Turn 3), which encourages the reflection about the meaning of the facilitation system. FAC1 appreciates this contribution (Turn 4: “how nice!”), encouraging M1 to continue to contribute. M1 suggests the meaning of education (“usually adults explain things to children, right?”) and comments on the novelty of the facilitation (“But for once it’s us with our opinion explaining to others”) and its importance for children (“I liked this idea because seeing the others it was not just me but the others who also liked it”). FAC2 invites M1 to continue by stressing her “need” to know; this upgrades the child’s epistemic authority (Turn 6). While M1 simply repeats the final part of his previous turn, M2 also

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underlines his interest in facilitation, describing it as “exciting” (Turn 8). FAC2 formulates the focal point in the reflection, that is, the reason adults are interested in children’s views, and encourages the children to engage in this topic (Turn 9). Three children express their points of view and FAC2 develops the third one (Turn 13) to dismiss the hierarchical form of interaction and accept the change introduced by children. This formulation enhances three new comments about change in the structure of communication. The facilitators’ actions were promoted by the children’s reflections on the facilitation system (Turns 14–16: “adults also want to know things from us, because when they were children there were not the same things there are now and so there are many more things”; “and they want to know more to know what to do and how to help us”). Excerpt 6.12 01 F1

02 FAC 03 M1 04 FAC 05 M1

06 FAC2 07 M1 08 M2 09 FAC2 10 F2

11 M1 12 M3 13 FAC 14 M3

15 M1 16 M2

I liked it a lot first because we could express our opinions freely, without any concern about marks, as if we were people who can freely express in a group and I liked that a lot. does anyone else want to say what they think of the work we did together. I think what F1 said is true that I also liked this idea a lot and was kind of wondering why adults want to understand from children eh! How nice! eh, usually adults explain things to children, right? But for once it’s us with our opinion explaining to others. I liked this idea because seeing the others it was not just me but the others who also liked it. go on we need you to go on. because I liked this idea, because seeing the others it was not just me but many others who liked it. it was interesting, exciting. he asked a question, why adults want to know from children. Can anyone reply? in my opinion because they want to know about their feelings and opinions about this work, what we did if they have understood the meaning ofor to help us. yes because they studied and went to school, but want to know from children things they didn’t know, opinions. as far as I can gather from M3 it sounds like adults go to school and children are the teachers. what I meant is that adults also want to know things from us, because when they were children there were not the same things there are now and so there are many more things. I think so too and they want to know more to know what to do and how to help us.

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In Excerpt 6.13, the facilitator’s coordination of refection concerns the importance and positive value of personal involvement in conflicts and dialogue. Facilitation is complex; it is based on questions (Turns 2, 6, 10, and 16), minimal responses (Turns 4, 8, and 57), repetitions (Turns 6 and 15), appreciations (Turns 15, 21, and 53), and one development (Turn 57: “you’ve been able to work together, by yourselves”). In Turn 1, M2 stresses the importance of engaging in a dialogue instead of fighting. In Turn 9, F2 adds that “having a dialogue means making things clear and reasoning without wanting to be right.” In Turn 12, F4 stresses the need for perseverance and patience. In Turn 14, M3 stresses the need to put aside pride. In Turn 20, F1 says, “if you don’t look at each other then you cannot have a dialogue.” In the second phase of the interaction, the children reflect on dialogic conflict management. In Turn 52, in response a facilitator’s answer to a question, F2 emphasizes the ongoing dialogic communication in the interaction (“We are having a dialogue!”); F2 notably repeats this in Turns 54 and 56 with reference to the past activity. In Turn 58, F1 adds that the dialogue is based on the need to collectively produce knowledge and F2 concludes that dialogue includes arguing. Excerpt 6.13 01 M2 they could have a dialogue instead of fighting. It would be better. 02 FAC ah, and what’s the difference between having a dialogue and fighting? This is very important 03 M1 fighting is when two people both want to be right. 04 FAC ok. 05 M2 two or more people. 06 FAC two or more people. What else? 07 F3 maybe somebody who is not involved gets insulted only because someone else is angry. 08 FAC ah. 09 F2 having a dialogue means making things clear and reasoning without wanting to be right. 10 FAC so (..) making things clear, through reasoning? And what do you need to do this? M3? 11 M3 (?) 12 F4 you need perseverance and patience, because, I mean 13 FAC no, I mean (.) have you (.) heard (?) I didn’t hear what you said ((to M3)) 14 M3 you need to put your pride aside. 15 FAC you need to put your pride aside (.) Ah that’s interesting, but it is hard to do, in my opinion 16 F2 but it is difficult to put yourself aside! (continued)

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Excerpt 6.13  (continued) 17 FAC is it difficult to put yourself aside? 18 M2 yes, I was going to say it’s difficult to have a dialogue because sometimes when you just can’t have a dialogue (..) I mean (.) how can I explain this? Eh (..) I can’t explain it! 19 FAC let them help you. 20 F1 you must look at each other! Because if you don’t look at each other then you cannot have a dialogue. 21 FAC ah, this is a beautiful thing (..) do you agree?                  [..] 51 FAC and now what are you doing? 52 F2 we are having a dialogue!                   (..) 53 FAC you are good, see you can make it. Like you did before, when you were making the posters. 54 F2 we had a dialogue! 55 FAC pardon? 56 F2 before making them we had a dialogue. 57 FAC eh! Here, you’ve been able to work together, by yourselves. 58 F1 we’ve needed everybody’s ideas. 59 F2 even though we’ve argued too.

Excerpts 6.12 and 6.13 show the production of children’s agency as initiatives reflecting on the facilitation system. Coordination of reflection is one of the most important ways in which the facilitation system can produce children’s agency. However, reflection is complex; it requires participants to observe the structure of the facilitation system of their specific facilitated interaction. Thus, facilitated interactions do not typically produce reflection.

7  The Complex Hybrid Facilitated Interaction: An Example Excerpt 6.14 (Project 1, Italian nursery school) is a good example of a complex hybrid form of facilitated interaction that can enhance fluid communication and interlace narratives. The except concerns an activity called “circle time,” in which children are invited to contribute to communication without any constraints other than to take turns speaking. Six things are important to note about this example. First, the facilitation includes open and focused questions. Open questions encourage the children to contribute to the production of the narrative(s) in the discussion (Turns 1, 10, 20, 26, 35, and 38). Meanwhile, focused questions encourage the children to clarify their

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narratives (Turns 4, 7, 12, 14, 28, 33, and 40). In particular, Turn 33 was designed as an interrogative formulation to make the child’s previous turn explicit. Second, the facilitation includes humor (e.g., the comment that the bed F1 discusses is not a cradle, since F1 is now grown up; see Turns 6–9). Third, the facilitation includes systematic appreciations of the children’s narratives (Turns 3, 18, 19, 25, and 29). Fourth, the facilitation includes formulations making explicit (Turns 12 and 44) and, above all, developing (Turns 16, 18, 42, and 45) the children’s contributions. In Turns 42, 44, and 45, the formulations include humorous affective support in response to M2’s dream about bears. Fifth, the facilitation includes repetitions (Turns 32 and 38)—although these repetitions are relatively rare. Finally, non-verbal actions also support facilitation: in Turn 8, the teacher stresses affect by caressing F1’s head; in Turn 35, a specific gesture is used to prevent others from interrupting or overlapping to ensure equal participation. Excerpt 6.14 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Tf1 F1 Tf2 Tf1 F1 Tf1 Tf2 Tf1 Tf2 Tf1 F1 Tf1 F1 Tf1 F1 Tf2 F1 Tf1 Tf2 Tf1 M1 Tf2 Tf1 M1 TF1 Tf2

someone else would like to say something? last night I slept in my small bed with my mummy well done. You liked it, didn’t you? but in your small bed or in the big one? ((shows the bed width with her hands)) tot the cradle is it the cradle? no! she [has grown up ((caressing her head))             [by now she is a grown-up who would [like                    [we slept, my mother and I ((near F1, a child raises his hand)) she slept with you! Was there enough room for both? I slept fro- from the side of the big table and your mum? my mum slept on the side of the door aha she didn’t sleep with your dad ((shakes her hands)) sleeping with you (.) your mother gave you a nice pre[sent                                                                                         [she gave you a nice present! who wanted to say something? me! ((the child who previously raised his hand)) M1, who was not at school for a few days. Come on M1. welcome back M1. Were you ill M1? yes eh. WEL-COME-BACK so, this is M1’s turn. Tell us about you, M1 (continued)

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Excerpt 6.14  (continued) 27 M1 I was I was I was to sleep at my mum 28 Tf1 you too? 29 Tf2 you like staying with your mum in the big bed, don’t you. It’s nice, isn’t it? 30 M1 yes 31 F2 but, I in my bed 32 Tf2 you in your bed 33 Tf1 you in your mum’s big bed? 34 M1 yes                  (1.0) 35 Tf1 who would like to say something? M2 (1.0) You can take the turn 36 M2 ((he takes his turn through a specific gesture used in the school)) I I slept with mum I dreamed that the bears were bad 37 Tf1 the bears? (.) What did they do°?                  (1.0) 41 M2 they wanted to eat me to throw me in the ice 42 Tf1 they wanted? Sorry, I didn’t understand 43 M2 they wanted to eat me and throw me in [the ice 44 Tf2                                                              [they threw you in the ice to keep you cool, (.) when they ate you 45 M2 to eat me whole ((smiling)) 46 Tf1 all of them wanted to eat you 47 Tf2 like an ice-cream, they licked you ((laughing))

Excerpt 6.14 clarifies how facilitation can support children’s choices of actions and narratives regarding a complex theme—here, sleeping with their mothers, which, from a developmental perspective, is an expression of dependence. In this case, facilitation promotes interlaced narratives: the children narrate their personal experiences of sleeping with their mothers in connection to similar previous narratives and thus express a plural perspective about co-sleeping.

8  Conclusions This chapter has shown several ways of producing a hybrid facilitation system based on equal participation and positioning through personal expressions. The facilitation system includes a variety of facilitative actions that encourage, enhance, and support children’s agency. More specifically, this chapter’s review suggests that:

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• Questions encourage children’s points of view and narrative expansions. • Minimal facilitation enhances children’s interest and involvement in expressing their points of view and their own narratives. • Gist formulations support children in expanding their own narratives, expressing themselves in emotional or uncertain ways, and rejecting the facilitator’s ideas. • Comments—as well as combinations of comments and questions— support the production of unpredictable narratives. • Personal stories show sensitivity to children’s personal expressions and support children’s engagement in narratives. • The importance of children’s agency is particularly evident when reflexive coordination generates coordination of children’s reflection on the structure of the facilitation system. The combination of different facilitative actions results in a hybrid facilitation system that can be produced in any type of school or educational orgnization and associated with any age group and language proficiency. Excerpt 6.9 shows that the combination of formulations and other facilitative actions can support agency when children’s language proficiency is low. Excerpt 6.14 shows that a very complex hybrid facilitated interaction can be realized in a nursery school. Therefore, a child’s agency can be encouraged, enhanced, and supported between early childhood and adolescence regardless of their language proficiency; however, facilitators may have to overcome language barriers themselves to make this possible (Chap. 8). Finally, the transcriptions show the equal participation of boys and girls in facilitated interactions; therefore, facilitation may be able to prevent inequalities based on gender (although gender can become relevant in classroom conflicts; see Chap. 9).

References Aston, G. (1987). Ah: a corpus-based exercise in conversational analysis. In J.  Morley & A.  Partington (Eds.), Spoken Discourse. Phonetics Theory and Practice (pp. 123-137). Camerino: University of Camerino. Baraldi, C. (2014a). Children’s participation in communication systems: a theoretical perspective to shape research. In M.N. Warehime (Ed.), Soul of society: a focus on the leaves of children and youth. Sociological studies on children and youth (pp. 63-92). Bingley: Emerald.

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Baraldi, C. (2014b). Formulations in dialogic facilitation of classroom interactions. Language and Dialogue, 4(2), 234-260. Baraldi, C. (2019). Using formulations to manage conflicts in classroom interactions. Language and Dialogue, 9(2), 193-216. Bolden, G. (2010). Articulating the Unsaid Via And-Prefaced Formulations of Other’s Talk. Discourse Studies, 12(1), 5-32. Farini, F. (2021). Meanings and methods of pedagogical innovation. In C. Baraldi, E. Joslyn & F. Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp.  67-88). London: Bloomsbury. Heritage, J. (1985). Analysing news interviews: aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In T.  Van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Discourse and Dialogue (pp. 95-117). London: Academic Press. Heritage, J. & Watson, R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 123-162). New York/London: Irvington. Heritage, J. & Watson, D. (1980). Aspects of the Properties of Formulations in Natural Conversations: Some Instances Analysed. Semiotica, 30(3/4), 245-262. Hutchby, I. (2005). Children’s Talk and Social Competence. Children and Society, 19, 66–73. Hutchby, I. (2007). The discourse of child counselling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

CHAPTER 7

Facilitating Children’s Autonomous Initiatives

Initiatives

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_7

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1   Introduction This chapter deals with children’s autonomous initiatives in the facilitation system. Children’s initiatives are defined as “autonomous” when they are not encouraged by facilitators’ questions or supported by facilitators’ formulations. Autonomous initiatives show children’s explicit claims to rights and responsibilities related to knowledge production, that is, they show children upgrading their own epistemic authority (Baraldi 2021a, b). Children’s initiatives are unpredictable for facilitators and change the course of facilitated interactions previously based on facilitators’ initiatives. Unpredictability shows children’s agency by evidencing that children are choosing particular actions that can orient the facilitation system (Baraldi 2014). Put differently, children’s initiatives deviate and, in some circumstances, guide facilitation systems. Children’s agency is more evident in their unpredictable initiatives than their responses to facilitators’ actions; indeed, children’s initiatives are the clearest manifestations of their agency. This chapter also deals with facilitators’ ways of managing children’s initiatives (Baraldi 2021a). The chapter reveals that children’s initiatives condition facilitators’ actions, which can confirm and support (or hinder) children’s initiatives. The chapter concludes by reflecting on different ways of facilitating children’s initiatives.

2   Giving the Floor to Children’s Initiatives Facilitators can give the floor to children who show an intention to talk (e.g., by raising their hands). Giving the floor to children’s initiatives also gives the green light for children’s new narratives, which can either diverge or interlace with previous narratives. Facilitators can invite children to take the floor by giving minimal acknowledgments and can subsequently enhance children’s initiatives by giving minimal responses. By giving a minimal response, a facilitator can show that they are interested and willing to accept initiatives from children that may reorient the facilitation system. Such responses convey that facilitators expect children to have agency; therefore, such responses upgrade children’s epistemic authority and downgrade the facilitators’ own epistemic authority. In Excerpt 7.1 (Project 8, Italian primary school), the facilitator encourages children to contribute to solving relational problems that were previously discussed. The facilitator asks an open question supported by an explicit appreciation of the children’s previous contributions (Turn 1). However, M1 inhibits answers to the facilitator’s question (Turn 2) and M2 changes the orientation (Turn 3, “I would like to say another thing”).

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This initiative is enhanced by the facilitator (Turn 4: “go ahead go ahead”) in spite of its incoherence with her initial question. By enhancing the continuation of M2’s narrative, the facilitator accepts the risk that the system will deviate from her orientation. M2 continues to upgrade his epistemic authority with a new narrative (Turns 5, 7, and 9), supported by M3 (Turns 6 and 8). The facilitator completes M2’s previous turn, showing attention and enhancing the child’s narrative (Turn 10). After M2’s new narrative expansion, the facilitator repeats the completion of the turn (Turn 12), receiving the child’s confirmation (Turn 13). Excerpt 7.1 01 FAC I would like to say that we have said many right things, many good interesting things, but in your opinion with all these things that we have said, do you also have any suggestions so that we can find a solution in case these things happen? 02 M1 nobody knows it 03 M2 I would like to say another thing 04 FAC go ahead go ahead 05 M2 I during the break last week it happened another thing to me, it happened that (?) in the courtyard and we were playing and 06 M3 ah, yeah we too 07 M2 I and the other mates of mine 08 M3 I 09 M2 yes we were climbing a wall as we were in the slope to the courtyard 10 FAC yes on the other side 11 M2 one of our classmates went to spy on to to 12 FAC to the teacher 13 M2 to the teacher

Excerpts 7.2–7.4 (Project 9, Italy) show children’s initiatives eliciting new narratives interlaced with previous ones. These elicitations evidence children’s epistemic authority as well as their desires to tell their narratives. The facilitator encourages these initiatives by giving the floor to the children—she offers only minimal responses and sometimes asks the children questions to encourage them to clarify what they mean. Excerpt 7.2 was recorded in a lower secondary school. Excerpts 7.3–7.5 were recorded in primary schools. In Excerpt 7.2, the facilitator supports F1’s narrative about her dead grandfather (Turns 1–4) and then gives leaves the floor to F2 with an acknowledgment (Turn 5: “go ahead”). F2 elicits a new narrative about her grandfather’s death, which refers to F1’s previous narrative. F2’s elicitation is followed by the facilitator’s minimal response (“ah”), which shows his interest (Turn 7), and confirms the relevance of the child’s utterance by visibly changing his affective state (Aston 1987).

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Excerpt 7.2 01 FAC ah on the face ah (.) and he had, what features did he have, a sweet face, a face that was: hard                  (..) 02 F1 half [way 03 FAC         [did did he seem to you to be a strong man or just a man: 04 F1 no strong 05 FAC strong (2.0) go ahead 06 F2 no (.) and instead my grandfather the father of my father (.) is well he died before my parents met 07 FAC ah

In Excerpt 7.3, the facilitator leaves the floor to F with an acknowledgment (Turn 1: “please tell”). F talks of the importance of praying in the Muslim context, which was previously stressed by other children (not transcribed). The facilitator shows interest with a repetition acknowledging F’s initiative (Turn 3), confirming that he understands F; this expands the narrative. Excerpt 7.3 01 FAC please tell 02 F eh I would like to say that for the prayer prayer and on Friday is very important to us like you on Sunday 03 FAC so on friday 04 F yes on friday we eat couscous because it is there: it’s food [just 05 M                                                                                         [traditional 06 F yes traditional

In Excerpt 7.4, F says that she has something to say (Turn 1) and the facilitator gives her the floor by inviting her to share (Turn 2: “tell me”). F starts telling a story about her parents, which is interlaced with M’s previous narrative (not transcribed). The facilitator shows interest through a minimal response (Turn 4) and then asks a series of focused questions (Turns 6, 8, 10, and 12) to help unfold the narrative, which continues for a long time (not transcribed).

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Excerpt 7.4 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F

I have something to tell tell me about the previous picture of M2 yes eh I also have a picture more or less like that how would you de- define it? catastrophe what? (.) [catastrophe?                 [(??) but wasn’t it a picture in which they were together? no no, what picture was it? eh like a picture in which I was little I was on the bed and there was my mum on one side and my father on the other

3   Managing Children’s Initiatives A child’s unpredictable initiatives can interrupt other children’s actions and narratives. Such events disrupt the facilitated interaction; thus, facilitators’ actions can establish a new direction in the facilitation system. In these cases, children’s initiatives enhance a dilemma related to facilitator actions: should the facilitator continue to enhance and support the ongoing narrative or enhance new initiatives? Both actions are risky; they suppress the agency of one child to enhance the agency of another. Thus, facilitators must delicately manage these situations. Excerpts 7.5–7.10 (Project 9) show different ways in which facilitators manage children’s initiatives; for example, facilitators may manage children’s initiatives by clarifying, responding to, or ignoring them. The facilitator can first enhance a dyadic sequence with the child taking the initiative, thus acknowledging the child’s right to produce a new narrative. The child’s elicitation of a new narrative enhances the facilitator’s interest and co-telling. The child’s agency is shown by a contribution that departs from the current narrative. By creating the floor for new initiatives, facilitators also support the dialogic production of interlaced narratives. By asking children to clarify what they mean, facilitators can support new narratives from children. In Excerpt 7.5 (English primary school), M1 explains the photograph that he has presented (Turn 1). However, M2 takes the initiative to say that his father is in the photograph (Turn 2). This initiative is enhanced by the facilitator’s focused questions (Turns 3, 5, and 8), which encourage the child to clarify what he means. In Turns 10, 12, and 14, the facilitator asks other focused questions to further interlace the two narratives.

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Excerpt 7.5 01 M1

Well, this one (..) well that’s my uncle, that’s my brother ((name)) this is like a Palace legend called Speroni and this is me (..) I just look silly ((picks peers in the audience)) 02 M2 I’m pretty sure that’s my dad in the picture 03 FAC where’s your dad? 04 M2 ((comes up from his seat to point to picture)) There! 05 FAC behind him (..) behind him? How do you know that’s your dad? 06 M2 because I er (..) went there (..) a couple of (..) like one year ago 07 M1 It was the Palace-Burnley game (..) it was Palace-Burnley or it was Palace-Valencia 08 FAC so were you there the same day? 09 M2 ((nods))                   (..) 10 FAC so do you remember seeing each other? 11 M1 I think I did 12 FAC did you see each other (..) so you remember                   (..) 13 M2 only when we were leaving 14 FAC and you think that was your dad just behind him there? 15 M2 ((nods))

In Excerpt 7.6 (Italian lower secondary school), the facilitator and F1 co-tell a narrative about a Ukrainian child who is visiting F1’s home (Turns 1–7). In Turn 8, F2 takes the floor to compare the current narrative with that of “American girls” coming to Italy. In Turn 9, the facilitator shows interest, asking for more details through a focused question, thus enhancing F2’s elicitation of the new narrative. The facilitator further enhances this narrative with another focused question (Turn 11), to which F2 responds by expanding the narrative. Excerpt 7.6 01 FAC this is an interesting (.) story, you mean this Ukrainian child had come to your family? 02 F1 yes 03 FAC to have: (.) a holiday? 04 F1 yes 05 FAC or to study? 06 F1 no, no, no, well 07 FAC but how old was this boy? 08 F2 like the American girls who come here 09 FAC why? Are there American girls who come here? 10 F2 yes well American girls come to families and then to school 11 FAC then do you go to American families? 12 F2 no, some when they grow up yes

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In Excerpt 7.7 (Project 9, Italian primary school), the facilitator and M1 co-tell a narrative about food. In Turn 3, M2 interrupts the narrative with a question. After M2’s question, F immediately articulates a new narrative (Turn 5, “I remember that when I went to Russia”). This initiative attracts the facilitator’s interest; he supports it with a comment (Turn 6: “this is news”) and then enhances F’s new narrative about her travel to Russia (Turns 6–13). Next, the facilitator asks focused questions (Turns 6, 8, and 12), visibly changes his affective state (Turn 8: “ah”), and develops the narrative with a formulation about the reason for the journey (Turn 10, “And so your mom took you to see where she is from”). Excerpt 7.7 01 02 03 04 05 06

FAC M1 M2 M1 F FAC

can we imagine these ice drinks? beh ((to M1)) oh Gabri how large was the large bag of popcorn? eh I remember when I went to Russia but this is news that she went to Russia when she was a kid. Why did you go to Russia? 07 F because my my mother is from Russia 08 FAC ah so your mom is from Russia and dad? 09 F Italian 10 FAC Italian. And so your mom took you to [see where she is from 11 F                                                             [eh yes 12 FAC but did you only go when you were a kid or also now? 13 F no the last time I went there was in 2012.

Facilitators can continue to focus on an ongoing narrative by showing that they prefer to develop it over other children’s initiatives. First, facilitators can provide minimal feedback to other initiatives and support the interrupted narrative, as in Excerpts 7.8 and 7.9 (Italian primary schools), to indicate that it is more important to continue the current narrative than give space to the new initiative. Put differently, facilitators seeking to continue the current narrative can do so by recognizing initiatives without encouraging their development into new narratives and showing interest in upgrading the right of the first teller to continue the current narrative. In Excerpt 7.8, the facilitator enhances F’s narrative about her use of the computer (Turns 1–6) by asking open questions that explore F’s related interests (Turns 1 and 5). In Turn 7, M1 answers a question the facilitator addressed to F and, in Turn 9, adds a comment about playing games on the computer. The facilitator acknowledges these contributions

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(Turns 8 and 10) before asking a new focused question to F about reading books. The facilitator’s acknowledgments show his minimal interest and inhibit the development of M1’s narrative. Excerpt 7.8 01 FAC but what is so interesting on the computer? What do you find interesting for you? 02 F in that photo? 03 FAC no on the computer                   (..) 04 F the games 05 FAC are there games (.) which are played on the computer? 06 F [((nodding)) 07 M1 [yes, many 08 FAC Ah 09 M2 I play some of them too 10 FAC really? 11 M2 [yes 12 FAC [and when you read, what type of books do you like reading? 13 F fairytales, boh-. and: (.) some books that my mother buys (.) and basically I am used to reading some books

Facilitators can show their assessment of the risks of disrupting current narratives and downgrading the current tellers’ epistemic authority. In these cases, facilitators manage children’s initiatives as critical components of the interaction. Facilitators both protect the ongoing narrative (and teller) from interruptions and treat initiatives as having no narrative value. In Excerpt 7.9, the facilitator provides feedback in response to children’s initiatives to protect the ongoing narrative and the teller. The facilitator and F1 talk about cakes from the Philippines (Turns 1–7). The facilitator enhances F1’s narrative by asking focused questions (Turns 1, 3, and 5) and inviting F1 to continue to share (Turn 7). In Turn 8, F1 uses the French term “brioche” (which is also used in Italy) in the masculine (in the excerpt, the*). In Italian, “brioche” is feminine; F2 corrects F1 accordingly (Turn 9). The facilitator rejects her correction with a displacing comment (Chap. 6), saying that in the Philippines brioche is masculine; subsequently, he continues to enhance F1’s narrative by asking new focused questions (Turns 12 and 14). However, in Turns 17, 19, and 20, M1 and M2 contest the use of masculine. The facilitator sustains his previous displacing comment (Turns 21, 24, and 26). The facilitator and the children maintain their positions until the facilitator closes this aside and reinitiates the interaction with F1 by inviting F1 to share again (Turn 31).

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Excerpt 7.9 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 F2 FAC Many FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC M1 FAC M2 M1 FAC F2 F1 FAC F? FAC Many M3 FAC M2 FAC

but how are these cakes in the Philippines? good! like ours? yes are they the same? yes for example? Tell me about one of them like those the* brioche the* brioche no no in the Philippines it’s the* brioche ((laugh)) and and so you went to visit her but (.) from Italy? no us too did you live in [the Philippines too?                         [yes yes and [what is         [but isn’t it the brioche? where? I said that! but it is not called la brioche! in Italy yes, [in the Philippines how do they say? It’s masculine the* brioche                       [in the Philippines maybe not! eh let’s say it’s the same because [there are there are masculine brioches and feminine ones, no?                 [she was wrong there are masculine and feminine brioches, aren’t there? ((laugh and make noise)) so is the* brioche the masculine? The* brioche! it’s called the brioche but tell us about that day. Do you remember? Where are you in the photo?

As suggested above, facilitators can situate children’s initiatives as less relevant than ongoing narratives. Thus, facilitators highlight that the knowledge a child may produce cannot be used to interactionally construct interlaced narratives. In Excerpt 7.10 (Italian primary school), the facilitator asks why some children do not keep secrets (Turn 1). In Turn 4, F2 answers that it is difficult to keep secrets and the facilitator shows interest in understanding her point of view. In Turn 10, F3 takes the floor to say that she is able to keep secrets and that she was able to keep a secret from the first to the fifth grade

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(Turn 13). The facilitator continues to ask F1 and F2 open and focused questions, ignoring these contributions. In so doing, the facilitator demonstrates a stronger interest in continuing the conversation about the difficulty of keeping a secret than in engaging F3 about her ability to keep one. Excerpt 7.10 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

FAC M1 F1 F2 M2 FAC F2 FAC F2 F3 FAC F2 F3 FAC F1 Some FAC F2 FAC F1

why don’t you keep secrets? [((expression of ignorance)) [(??) because it is difficult because it is fun to tell them is it difficult? yes you too lik- are ((nods)) no, to tell the truth [the truth I keep them for me it’s not difficult                                  [aren’t you able to keep secrets? ((shakes her head)) in the first grade they told me a secret and I kept it until the fifth grade when was the last time you weren’t able to keep a secret? this morning [hhh [really ((says something to F2)) what secret didn’t she keep this morning? I won’t say anything

4  Child and Adolescent Leaders and Coordinators in Interactions When children lead the production of dialogue, they clearly demonstrate their agency. Facilitators can make space for children to autonomously coordinate and lead interactions. While facilitation is technically suspended in such cases, facilitators may occasionally intervene to support children’s autonomous coordination. Notably, when children lead an interaction, they may reveal their interests; this form of autonomous coordination is a development of the minimal form of facilitation described in Chap. 6.

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In Excerpt 7.11 (Project 9, Italian lower secondary school), M1 recounts his conflictual relationships with his mother (Turn 1). Initially, the facilitator develops this narrative (Turns 2 and 6) and encourages its continuation with an open question (Turn 4). In Turn 8, F takes the floor and contests M1’s negative attitude toward his mother. Until Turn 21, the facilitator gives the floor to F, only providing minimal feedback and very short formulations. In Turn 23, the facilitator supports M2’s interest in taking the floor. The children continue to autonomously coordinate the interaction until Turn 39, when the facilitator invites M1 to talk. In Turns 23 and 39, the facilitator supports the children’s initiatives without interfering with their autonomous coordination. Excerpt 7.11 01 M1

02 03 04 05 06 07 08

FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 F

09 M2 10 F

11 M2 12 F 13 FAC 14 F 15 FAC 16 F 17 FAC

eh so now I hate my mum a bit let’s say I mean I can’t bear her and above all because when he ((his grandfather)) was ill the night before he died, my mother went to the hospital to visit him and she knew she was pregnant of my brother and she didn’t tell him and so this thing annoyed you yes but in your opinion for what reason did your mum do that? eh because she believed that he could survive ah I understand so she didn’t think that he was (.) dying yes exactly and yes but anyway M5 remember that at the end, I mean telling him or not she is always your mother, I mean you haven’t to hate her because of this because this is a thing well I speaking about myself, in my opinion it is a small thing because look at some families [at least she could [there there are bigger problems problems where like children are abused and there you can say (.) I stand against my mother because she she uses a I mean but I don’t think that you mum has never [abused you.                                                                   [she could have for things that you did not do or other things I mean she used you (.) I mean she abused you in a few words [I mean there are                                                [well no but If I understood well, he was eh no, okay I say ok he is upset because he is fond of his grandfather [and your mum                                                                                                         [of course she didn’t not tell she was pregnant of your brother but let’s think of ot- I mean [a bit beyond this, I mean [the worst mh (continued)

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Excerpt 7.11  (continued) 18 F

in my view this is a small thing because listen e: to the news and the newspapers where you can read some time ago I read a newspaper where there were two parents who injected heroin to their children to make them fall asleep, I mean these are thing where you can say what mother I mean I hate her but not for a thing like that because at the end are you a believer? I am not a believer, I mean I don’t think that there is an afterlife if your parents are believers. I mean in my view you grandfather is looking at you from heaven, do you understand? I mean your grandfather somehow knows that your brother exists like with mu mum when because my last brother ((name)) who now is six years old, I mean my grandfather, who is the father of my father, has never seen him but once my mum has, I mean before being pregnant and all things, she dreamt my grandfather who who had a child in his hand and then after a while my mum got pregnant so my mum was: I mean she believed in these th- [I mean she believes in these things 19 FAC                 [ah 20 F so I mean she says even if didn’t see him, he is not here physically ((gesticulates)) 21 FAC but she [can can see him 22 F              [yes 23 FAC would you like to add? ((to M1)) [do you want to answer or?((to M2)) 24 M2                                                      [yes 25 M1 no no no 26 M2 I wanted to say that you could avoid hating your mum because (?) but somehow you are right a bit because he could have passed away with with happy 27 ? with a smile 28 M2 yes? With a smile? 29 M1 ((extends his hands)) 30 M2 knowing that that his d- daughter’s daughter was waiting a child, it se- isn’t it? ((looking at F1 and M1)) [I think it’s right 31 M3                                         [no because after that he wanted to see him 32 M?                                        [the daughter of his son 33 M3

he said ah if you show it to him then yes he is happy if you tell him but he doesn’t see it ((spreads his arms)) 34 M2 yes but he is now looking at him from above 35 M3 ok yes bu- eh ((spreads his arms)) 36 M2 he could could pass away with with a smile like my nephew will have a child                   (..) 37 ? another one 38 M2 eh okay [she will have another child 39 FAC               [would you like to add 40 M2 that it is always nice, isn’t it? (continued)

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Excerpt 7.11  (continued) 41 FAC would [would 42 M1               [at the beginning I believed that my mother telling him maybe he could try to survive but he had a lung cancer he could no more breathe because he had breathed asbestos for all his life because under: the roofs of the stables they were covered with asbestos and everything and but I have again two great-grandmothers I have all my grandparents and two are in Sardinia and those ones I don’t know what they do ((smiles)) when they do it and where they do it then I have the other ones

Excerpt 7.12 (Project 10, Italian lower secondary school) shows children greatly interested in talking about the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the facilitator’s initial formulations (Turns 5 and 7, the second not audible), the children take the floor and express their points of view. In the following long phase, the facilitator rarely gives minimal responses or tries to support the children’s interest in contributing to the interaction. Very frequently, the children’s narratives are interlaced by prefaces (e.g., “I agree/disagree with”); this shows how the children are coordinating the interaction (Turns 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 24, 30, 32, 33, 36, 44, and 45). This is an outstanding example of children’s engagement through coordinated initiatives. Excerpt 7.12 01 FACf so what do you think? 02 F1 I eh agree on what Elisa said, that is:: that we have been in lockdown and (that they have) stolen a piece of our life but I do not agree on the thing that they have taken away from us a little piece of our life because anyway (we experieced) it for one year and I in this year of lockdown (?) 03 FACf I have just completely lost the final part 04 F1 eh mh that [when 05 FACf                     [I have understood that you don’t agree because it’s not a small piece of our life 06 F1 yes because we experienced it for one year anyway and I in this year when we went back to school I had a lot of difficulties at first because I hadn’t understood many topics 07 FACf so you say (?) 08 F1 yes 09 FACf OK 10 F2 I wanted to say that I agree with F1 because me too some things eh: I could not understand them this year because in any case I have lost eh a skill that maybe I had in the past years (continued)

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Excerpt 7.12  (continued) 11 F3

I agree- like F1 the same thing as F1 that from a certain point of view that it was hard for everyone the lockdown I agree (?) on the other side that it took away a little piece of our life no because yes there are days when I had fun at the beginning and I thought yes how beautiful we are all at home but then when the cases started to increase we stayed at home for many months (?) 12 F4 eh m I am- from a certain point of view I agree with Elisa that the lockdown was (?) but on the other hand I disagree that it took away a small piece of life because it lasted one year 13 FACf because? 14 F4 it lasted one year and the school (?) at school I didn’t eh understand much (?) 15 F5 I agree with F1 because however, being in front of a screen is much more difficult to understand and to hear (.) And I also agree with F2 because in any case it didn’t take away a little piece of life it took a lot from us anyway 16 F6 I ehm agr- from one point- that on th- on the one hand I agree with F2 that it was difficult to stay staying in lockdown even for the video lessons because maybe the connection (sometimes) worked and didn’t- you couldn’t understand well (3.0) and yet17 FACf (?) 18 F6 I ehm agr- from one point- that on th- on the one hand I agree with F2 that it was difficult to stay: stay in lockdown even for the video lessons because maybe the connection (sometimes) worked and didn’t- you couldn’t understand well (3.0) and yet19 F7 I agree with F1 and eh that ehm with video lessons with a screen we could not understand very well (?) I also had COVID and therefore I was a- two more months at home and it’s not so nice with a screen seeing your mates there and you stay at home instead 20 M1 for me- from all their words I can understand that I am the only one who enjoyed staying at home for a while to disconnect from school because after four years you always do the same routine stay always at school for eight hours you hardly ever see your parents it is better to stay at home for one year with your parents and your family a::nd have fun with them 21 F8 eh the first month of the lockdown I was very happy because I woke up late I did more or less what I wanted obviously at home - that is not (?) Oh well but after the first month I started to say (.) me too I want to see my mates again I miss these things here or my grandmother the rest was so nice because my father eh was at home from work eh we spent more time together because he now he really works a lot and therefore I see him very little 22 M2 eh I agree with F8, M1, and F1 because I mean to me for– firstly (?) finally I stay with my family a little bit and I take a little break from school and then after a month I realized that I had a bit of nostalgia for my mates because I missed them 23 ((overlaps)) (continued)

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Excerpt 7.12  (continued) 24 F9

(?) more or less the same as F8 felt because (also) my parents work a lot (.) but I don’t understand his feeling of having his dad always at home because my dad (?) and therefore he went to work and my mom too and so I was at home alone with my grandmother and: my sister wasn’t there I never remember the reason why she wasn’t there I think she was sleeping all day and 25 M3 as my uncle 26 F9 and therefore I I was anyway alone with my grandmother who cannot do anything (?) She only knew how to make some pasta for me sit on the sofa and watch TV (.) I had to (.) In fact I have some of my classmates (.) have: anyway: they learnt from mum or dad to access video lessons and instead I clicked all possible and imaginable buttons of the iPad in order to be able to enter classroom 27 F1 I wanted to say a couple of things, the first is that in any case even this year I have28 FACf a little louder 29 F1 however, this year too fifth grade I had a bit of difficulty because in any case, being tall, I’m always in the back because we are in a canteen that is very large and then we are arranged in a row so when I am in the back I don’t hear many things and maybe I don’t even notice that the teacher said (?) then I miss some pieces (?) and then I wanted to say something else, that is, I agree with (?) and the others because: (.) at the beginning I was very happy because finally I can rest (.) and only then eh (0.3) I am that is, I missed them all I missed the teachers- that is, in any case I missed doing my homework because (.) it was no longer my life because I was- I’m used to finishing school even now- I go home I do my homework and then I rest and instead staying at home I watched the video lesson and and then I never knew what to do after 30 I meant that I agree with F9 and with M2 (.) because at the beginning I was a little bit that is I was- I was happy to be with my parents with my family (.) and then eh another thing that when during lessons the video lessons maybe (?) the file you can’t hear the lesson well and then I wanted to say that I always agree with F1 because my sister and I we missed school so much so we pretended playing school that there was like the bad headmaster who sent students (2.0) to punishment 31 M4 and who was the headmaster? 32 M5 no I wanted to say a couple (.) three things that (?) I totally agree with F1 because eh in any case even in my opinion it is a small piece of life because in any case yes we didn’t see the classmates face-to-face but we saw them in the video lessons and then I also wanted to say that (.) that for a month I thought as well “yeah how nice to stay at home for a while” and then (?) (continued)

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Excerpt 7.12  (continued) 33 M6

I wanted to say that I agree with F1 because: it is not that it took away a that is a large part of our life because yes obviously it is not the same to see our classmates from the video lessons or face-to-face though mh let’s say that (.) anyway we saw them and we had fun and anyway we (.) eh mh we had the chance to stay with our parents because my mom (she works at a dentist’s office) so I never see her because she works from morning to night and I only see her when I go to sleep so it’s nice to have (?) 34 F3 eh during the quarantine as I have already said I had fun in the first months but then I was sad but anyway now I still have the nostalgia of being able to hug my classmates touch our hair we did the hairstyles for example with the? and all such things and therefore also- even now that we can’t do these things anyway it’s a pain for me because I’ve always liked to be in physical contact with my classmates to do things like this 35 F4 for me the lockdown at the beginning was good the school (?) doesn’t eh I didn’t enjoy it because the video lessons were not understood you could hear everything intermittent and then anyway (?) 36 M7 I (.) agree with F4 that but the first days- that is the first- the first week here (.) I felt a p- (.) happy but then all the other months I felt very thoughtful (.) I was thinking about my school (?) but do- but then when we went back to school I didn’t expect all this (.) that (.) because- because before- I mean, yes (the last few months) we started and went to the bathroom all- they sent the whole class into the bathroom and we queued and there was one person who gave toilet paper, soap, and paper towels and already we had to put on the mask we had to put the gel (?) and after four mon - for a couple of months then (?) 37 M8 (?) all year because we were alone finally eight hours here we got tired we had only one hour of class at last for at least a year and then we were- we were always in touch - we were always in touch because I-aft- after the lesson of the teachers the teacher went away we were still there we were still there talking and playing then the teachers came back and left immediately (?) we made a video- we made video calls thous- thousand38 ? (?) 39 M9 we have always been on video call every hour every hour I was on the phone on video call 40 M? how did we do it? 41 M? hours (?) 42 FACf shh sorry 43 F6 the first the first weeks I said as well eh how nice no school for a while but then as time went by I realized that it was ugly, that is, it was very ugly because you had lessons but not being able to see the teachers really (?) eh mh then I couldn’t have so much fun with my family a few times because they were always working (continued)

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Excerpt 7.12  (continued) 44 F7

45 F8

I am—I mean I understand F1—also? F1 because eh my parents work a lot my moth- and they work together in a café and my mom works when some mornings she works from five to ten in the evening and and my dad comes back at eight (.) and before COVID my parents worked very hard and my mother would arrive at like four in the evening and I was already asleep for a long time and therefore staying three months together with my parents it was very nice I- I want to link back to something from earlier that I disagree with M1 because in any case it didn’t take a small piece of life away from us but (?) also because we are in-between childhood and adolescence and therefore we could have done many things together but instead COVID hit us in the penultimate year of school and that we will all see together and now we are forced to wear masks in the last year of school with distances and it’s bad because thinking about it when we won’t see each other again and that we spent the last year like this and we expected it to be different maybe we could all be together singing (?) (all this) is bad because we can’t do anything all together practically hug each other and (.) play on top of each other things that were normal before

Excerpts 7.13–7.15 concern camps for adolescents (Project 4). In Excerpt 7.13, a small group of adolescents must decide how a country, which is supposed to include the group itself, should be shaped for the future. In the excerpt, they must decide who can live in the country. A Canadian adolescent (Fcan) coordinates the interaction. In Turn 1, she invites discussion on what to include in the activity. A Dutch adolescent (Mdut) and a Norwegian adolescent (Fnor) propose what they would like to work on (Turn 2). Fcan supports their proposal by repeating it (Turn 3). Mdut’s expresses his opinion (Turn 4) and Fnor supports Mdut’s proposal (Turn 5). Fcan continues to support their agency through a question that invites further elaboration (Turn 6). In Turns 7–9, other adolescents suggest answers to Fcan’s question and Fcan invites them to clarify their contributions through very short and focused questions (Turns 11, 13, 16, and 20). In this way, Fcan initiates and supports a chain of reflections, promoting the other adolescents’ views on what the group can decide. Fcan’s action leads the participants to negotiate their views and to share a final decision (Turn 21). The adolescents’ dialogic coordination is based on Fcan’s questions, which invite them to provide further details or suggestions that enrich the production of knowledge.

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Excerpt 7.13 01 Fcan 02 Mdut Fnor 03 Fcan 04 Mdut 05 Fnor 06 Fcan 07 Mdut 08 Fnor 09 Mdut 10 Fnor 11 Fcan 12 Ffin 13 Fcan 14 Ffin 15 Fnor 16 Fcan 17 Fnor 18 Ffin 19 Mdut 20 Fcan 21 Fnor Ffin

ok, next thing. who lives there who lives there people and (?) rich oh yeah how many people live there? six million no! four billion yes, no ten billion. Ten billion of rich what? ten billion? no! less? less four four billion? four less ((drowning up of voices)) what about one million? one million? yes

The coordination of different perspectives can be based on personal expressions that encourage or support other personal expressions. Excerpt 7.14 concerns a Danish cultural activity. The Danish delegation—especially Mdan1, Mdan2, and Fdan1—manages the coordination. Mdan1 first coordinates the interaction (Turn 1) and Mdan2 encourages Farg1 to participate by asking for feedback (Turn 3). Questions show interest in other contributions and create a space for them. Farg2 contributes to the discussion (Turn 4) and, subsequently, Mdan1, Mdan2, and Fdan1 actively and intensively participate in the conversation by expressing their opinions without imposing them (Turns 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) and supporting other contributions. In Turn 7, Farg2 shows interest in what Mdan2 has said and asks for it to be repeated. In Turns 16, 21, and 24, Farg1 and Mind1 actively encourage others to share information: Farg1 shows interest in Mind1’s previous explanation (Turn 16) and Find1 shows interest in the Danish situation, which seems different from her country’s own conditions (Turns 21 and 24). The adolescents feel supported and express themselves. Here, the coordinators’ agency encourages the balanced distribution of the participants’ contributions.

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Excerpt 7.14 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Mdan1 Farg1 Mdan2 Farg2 Mdan2 ? Farg2 F? Mdan2

10 11 12 13

Mdan1 Mdan2 Mdan1 Fdan1

14 Mind1

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Mdan1 Farg1 Mdan1 Fdan1 Mdan2 Fdan1 Find1

22 Mdan2

23 Mdan1

24 Find1 25 Mdan2 26 Mdan1

Farg1 we have the homeless. you have homeless? (?) after crisis I suppose. (?) in Denmark, if you are a homeless, you usually have chosen by yourself. wow you could have what? chosen by yourself. we have a very high social support (..) so you can actually live from it. You can have an apart-, a sole apartment and enough for food, but some choose to ahm, some choose to ehm (?) they choose yeah, and also ehm those that are mentally ((whispering)) mentally ill, so they can’t stay by themselves. (?) when they get an apartment from the government or social service, they can’t live there, because they are used to live everywhere (?) ((noises; in the other room the kitchen staff are cleaning with the radio on)) in our country also we have homeless, but ah:m the government (is also poor) so: (?), but usually they (?) because they usually get illegal houses, like maybe (?) that they don’t have. One day the government kicked them off. (?) (3.0) Farg1 (?) homeless is in all the country or just in the capital? it’s all over. yeah, all over, but mostly in the capital. yes. Way more in the capital. There are better places to sleep there (?) Find1 I just wanted to ask about the hippies. We don’t have them in Indonesia, is there, (are there) many of the hippies in Denmark? we have some (.) Five hundred? We don’t know many hippies but they are not hippy, they are Christianiased, they live in Christiania, Christania. Soren will tell (.) please tell the story about Christinia. ahm Christiania first was a military base ((M1dan passes a photo of Christiania)) it was first a military base, but then the military went out and then was (??) for years, and then the hippies ahm some socialists entered the fence and then they came in and then got into the building ah it’s legal to get into buildings? no it’s not no

In Excerpt 7.15, a group of adolescents is building a country and deciding on its characteristics. In Turn 1, a Brazilian adolescent (Fbra) encourages her peers to participate by asking an open question. A Lebanese adolescent (Fleb) proposes a name for the country (Turn 2) and the other

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adolescents repeat it and ask for more information (Turn 3). Fleb explains her idea; her interlocutors laugh (Turn 5), but she seems to interpret their laughter as support because she goes on to propose a name for the capital (Turn 6). Her suggestion is encouraged by Fbra through a continuer (Turn 7) and Fleb tries to include the other adolescent in her proposal (Turn 8). An Ecuadorian adolescent (Mecu) asks for advice (Turn 9). In Turns 10–15, the adolescents actively consider different names for the country and its capital. The interaction emerges as question–answer pairs that form a shared project based on different points of view. In Turns 16–22, (1) Fleb suggests that religion can be important, (2) Fbra expresses perplexity, (3) Fleb affirms this perplexity, (4) Fbra affirms this perplexity, (5) Fspa denies the importance of religion, (6) Fleb affirms this denial, and (7) Fbra asserts her adversity to religious matters. Finally, the adolescents affirm Fbra’s position (Turn 23). In this negotiated interaction, Fleb’s position is abandoned and Mspa’s contribution is a turning point that supports Fbra’s dissent and therefore an alternative decision, which is confirmed in the final turn. Excerpt 7.15 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Fbra Fleb Some Fleb Some Fleb Fbra Fleb Mecu Fleb Mecu Fleb Fbra Fleb Fger Fleb Fbra Fleb Fbra Mspa Fleb Fbra Some

ok, guys do you have an idea? ice(h)-cream(h) ice cream? we can do like ice-cream, we scream, all screams for ice-cream ((laughter)) and capital could be chocolate yeah who wants to write? ((takes the markers)) and what name I have to write? ice-cream not ice-cream land? I don’t think so (..) cause when you say ‘Brazil’ you don’t say ‘Brazil land’ ya and capital city? Chocolate? (..) I don’t know. (..) Strawberry? and what we have to choose too? religion, weather. (.) Weather is cool (5.0) and also we to find a history what religion? religion? ya no religion ya, no religion for me the perfect society don’t have religion ya, ya

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In Excerpt 7.15, Fbra starts out as a coordinator but Mspa supports the decision-making process. Fleb upgrades her epistemic authority but abandons her idea about religion. Mspa’s comment enhances a change in decision-­making by supporting Fbra’s doubts. This mix of coordination and personal expressions reveals that the youths equally participate and demonstrate agency in decision-making.

5  Conclusions This chapter has shown that, on the one hand, facilitators can enhance and support children’s initiatives and new narratives and, on the other, that children and adolescents can lead and coordinate interactions. First, facilitation involves deciding how to respond to children’s initiatives: facilitators must choose how to manage initiatives. Because these choices affect which children can upgrade their epistemic authority, they impact the interaction. Such facilitator decisions are not easy—they require evaluating the importance of children’s initiatives and narratives. Second, facilitation means giving the floor to children who can coordinate and lead the interaction. Facilitators can either support children’s coordination or completely leave the floor to the children. This is the most important way in which facilitators can show children that they trust their actions and thus in which facilitators can upgrade children’s epistemic authority. In CISV programs, adolescents are expected to demonstrate autonomous coordination and leadership (Excerpts 7.13–7.15). In other cases, children only occasionally need to autonomously coordinate interactions, and whether they do this is based on their engagement in the interaction. Children’s autonomous initiatives change the way in which facilitation is produced, replacing the facilitators’ paradoxical primacy in taking initiatives. On the one hand, children’s initiatives push the minimal form of facilitation to the extreme; on the other, they push facilitation toward undesired choices and limitations in enhancing and supporting children’s agency.

References Baraldi, C. (2014). Children’s participation in communication systems: a theoretical perspective to shape research. In M.N.  Warehime (Ed.), Soul of society: a focus on the leaves of children and youth. Sociological studies on children and youth (pp. 63–92). Bingley: Emerald.

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Baraldi, C. (2021a). Facilitating children’s elicitation of interlaced narratives in classroom interactions. In L. Caronia (Ed.), Language and Social Interaction at Home and School (pp. 317–350). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baraldi, C. (2021b). Children’s initiatives in the classroom. In C. Baraldi, E. Joslyn & F. Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp. 91–112). London: Bloomsbury.

CHAPTER 8

Facilitating Children’s Agency Across Cultures and Languages

Small cultures

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_8

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1   Introduction On the one hand, the facilitation system can enhance and support hybrid narratives of cultural differences and identities (Baraldi 2018; Holliday and Amadasi 2020); on the other, it can overcome language barriers (Baraldi 2019; Baraldi and Gavioli 2015; Mason 2006, 2009). This chapter deals with ways of improving hybridization and resolving language problems in the facilitation system. First, the transcriptions under study here show the ways in which facilitation can enhance hybridity by encouraging, enhancing, and supporting narratives of personal trajectories related to experiences of migration as small cultures negotiated in the facilitation system. These narratives connect present experiences with past experiences or future plans related to migration processes. The child’s identity is constructed through the facilitation of these narratives. The facilitated construction of identity is unpredictable: facilitation can produce narratives about cultural identity and belonging, hybridity, disinterest in cultural origins, and uncertainty about personal cultural trajectories. Narratives about personal cultural trajectories can involve both the construction and rejection of cultural identities and differences. Second, this chapter shows some ways of mediating between different languages, both in nursery schools with which migrant students who do not speak Italian well (Baraldi 2015) and in international settings where English is used as the lingua franca but children do not understand and speak English well (Baraldi 2016; Baraldi and Blasi 2009). Language mediation is a specific form of facilitation.

2  Constructions of Cultural Identity Excerpts 8.1–8.3 (Project 9) show that narratives about personal trajectories can lead to the construction of clear-cut cultural identities. This is a hybrid construction, and it is produced when the facilitator respects children’s agency and therefore enables children to autonomously choose the meanings of their identities. In Excerpt 8.1 (English primary school), M stresses that he was born in the Netherlands and came to the UK due to his father’s will (Turns 1 and 3). The facilitator asks a direct open question about the child’s identity (Turn 4, “how would you describe yourself then, what’s your, who are you, where’s your place in the world, how would you describe yourself to somebody?”). M rejects his origins, linking his identity to the country where he lived the longest (Turn 5: “I would describe myself as Dutch um because I don’t really speak Tamil because I haven’t been to Sri Lanka”).

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The facilitator’s focused question (Turn 6) and change of state that confirms understanding (Turn 10) further enhance the construction of the child’s Dutch identity based on his hybrid personal trajectory. Excerpt 8.1 01 M

02 FAC 03 M 04 FAC

05 M

06 07 08 09 10 11

FAC M FAC M FAC M

um (..) my parents were from Sri Lanka because they were born in Sri Lanka and then I was born in Holland and um I came here (..) I don’t know why I came here it’s just because my dad wanted to yeah (..) so you were born in Holland yeah but my parents were in Sri Lanka ok (..) so who (..) how would you describe yourself then, what’s your, who are you, where’s your place in the world, how would you describe yourself to somebody? um (..) I would describe myself as Dutch um because I don’t really speak Tamil because I haven’t been to Sri Lanka except (..) I just went to Sri Lanka two times, that’s all so (..) and how many times have you been to Holland yeah I lived there oh, you lived there I used to live there and then I came here

Excerpt 8.2 (Italian lower secondary school) follows the presentation of a photograph of M’s second birthday in Morocco. The facilitator asks a focused question about how M feels about leaving his country (Turn 1). M’s answer suggests regret; the facilitator develops this by formulating friendship as the reason for the regret (Turn 3). After the child’s confirmation, the facilitator asks if the child had talked to his parents about his negative feelings about migration (Turn 5). M expresses a feeling of having been forced to move to Italy to reunite with family in response to his father’s migration (Turns 6–15). The facilitator supports this narrative by making it explicit (Turns 9 and 15) and developing it (Turn 11). Then, the facilitator comments on the child’s feeling (Turn 16) and enhances the child’s narrative about his relationship with his grandmother, who lived with him in Morocco, through focused questions (Turn 19). The facilitator encourages this narrative through another focused question (Turns 17 and 19) and supports it with a formulation making the reason for M’s feeling explicit (Turns 21 and 23). M’s narrative shows his lack of agency in his migration and his regret over abandoning affective relations in his country of origin, where he continues to feel he belongs.

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Excerpt 8.2 01 02 03 04 05

FAC M FAC M FAC

06 M 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14

FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M

15 FAC 16 M 17 FAC 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

M FAC M FAC M FAC M

but were you happy to leave your country or mh not much (.) [I preferred to stay in Morocco                              [why you had friends there I imagine yes and with your parents did you discuss this (.) [did you talk about it when they decided                                                                        [n -no I didn’t talk with anybody [because I told my mother that I didn’t want to go but [no? in any case we left so your dad decided yes who had a reason to come to Italy (.) for reasons of work, for reasons: eh my father had already come to Italy much earlier ok so he had known yes he was I mean we moved because at that point he had been living there and it was a family reunion ((nods)) yes but I mean to leave Morocco was a bit painful what do you miss most of Morocco? eh my grandmother your grandmother have you seen your grandmother anymore? no no I see her when I go to Morocco ah ok but you miss her because yes there she lived with you ((nods))

In Excerpt 8.3 (Italian primary school), M discloses his desire to go back to Chile, his country of origin (Turn 2), despite his parents never talking to him about it (Turns 6–10). M expresses the desire to visit what he calls “my people,” highlighting his Chilean identity (Turns 12 and 14). The facilitator formulates the term “people” as “country of origin” (Turn 15), thus mitigating the we-identity constructed in the child’s narrative; next, he asks M how he imagines his home country. The child replies that he sees his people as very cheerful (Turn 18), again affiliating himself with this we-identity, which he has constructed autonomously from his direct knowledge.

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Excerpt 8.3 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M FAC M

and would you like to go back yes and what attracts you? (..) that you would like to see [mh [I mean did anybody talk to you about Chile? Maybe your parents? mh no no? No they don’t talk to you about Chile ((shakes his head)) and so why did this will arise? because I want to see my you are curious yes and I want to see my people you mean your country of origin ((nods)) and how do you expect it? How how is it in your imagination? mh (.) very cheerful

3  Constructions of Hybrid Identity Excerpts 8.4–8.7 (Project 9, primary schools) show how facilitation can enhance and support the construction of children’s hybrid identities. These excerpts show facilitators engaging children’s narratives of their own personal trajectories based on migration to enhance and support the children’s agency in producing these narratives. Narratives of hybrid identities are produced and developed through facilitators’ co-telling. These narratives are enhanced by the facilitators’ focused and open questions and supported by the facilitators’ gist formulations, comments, and personal stories. Thus, identities are constructed in a hybrid way through co-telling and are based on hybrid personal trajectories. In Excerpt 8.4 (Italian primary school), the facilitator enhances and supports F1’s personal cultural trajectory narrative. F1 was born in Spain to parents of Cuban (her mother) and Romanian (her father) descent. The narrative of F1’s origins and interpersonal relationships is encouraged by the facilitator’s focused (Turns 1, 3, 5, 9, and 52) and open (Turns 37 and 44) questions and enhanced by few repetitions (Turns 11 and 46). Moreover, it is supported through formulations making its gist explicit (Turns 5 and 13). After collecting more details about the child’s trajectory (turns omitted), the facilitator enhances the narrative of the cultural identities of Cubans

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(Turn 41) and Romanians (Turn 44). However, in Turn 48, the facilitator shifts the focus to F1’s personal identity with an interrogative formulation (“So joyful and nice that makes a beautiful mix eh?”) and continues this shift with another formulation (Turn 50) and a question to another girl looking to confirm F1’s personal identity (Turn 52). First, the facilitator elicits a narrative about hybrid identity based on the child’s origins; next, he shifts to a narrative about her present personal identity. Excerpt 8.4 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14

FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1 FAC F1

and are you parents both Spanish? ((shaking her head)) no who is the Spanish mother? no, my mother is Cuban and my father is Romanian ah you have a Cuban mother and a Romanian father who met in Barcelona y- no they met in Romania in Romania ((nods)) and did your mother go to Romania from Cuba? no she was was born in Cuba she was born in Cuba then she went out on and she went to Romania she came to live in Romania yes [22 turns omitted] 37 FAC and about the personality? How are your parents? 38 F1 eh my mother is good (.) and also my father is good, [and 39 FAC        [but are they outgoing play-joyful? 40 F1 yes 41 FAC since they tell us that they are all joyful in Cuba 42 F1 ((nods)) 43 M1 South America 44 FAC and in Romania ho- how are you?                   (..) 45 M1 nice 46 FAC nice 47 F1 ((nodding)) yes 48 FAC so joyful and nice that makes a beautiful mix eh? 49 F1 ((nods)) 50 FAC a Spanish girl was born that 51 F1 ((smiles)) 52 FAC is your friend very joyful and nice? 53 F2 yes

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In Excerpt 8.5 (Italian primary school), the facilitator encourages M1’s narrative about the African origins of his grandparents by asking several focused questions (Turns 1–10). After several turns (omitted) in which the facilitator explores the meaning of the term “village” (introduced in Turn 6), in Turn 36, he encourages M1 to develop a narrative about his memories and explore his relationship with African life. In Turns 53 and 55, he invites M1 to reflect on his relationship with his country of origin. M1 confirms his interest in this country, but his answer does not convey a complete sense of belonging. Thus, the facilitator shifts from M1’s possible return to the country of origin to his professional future (Turn 57). The child’s ideas about his professional future (doctor or football player) show the fluid form of his personal cultural trajectory. The facilitator enhances and supports the narrative of the child’s personal experience by inviting him to relate his personal identity to his future and enhancing the narrative of a hybrid personal trajectory between “African” life and globalized professions. Excerpt 8.5 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC Many

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC

47 M1

have you met your grandfather your grandmother? yes! and do you have some photos with them? yes yes? And where did you take them? Where were they taken? in a village which is where? in Burkina Faso Burkina Faso which is a place, do you know this place? no! ((25 turns omitted)) but did you live well there? Do you have good memories? I don’t know don’t you remember? no but did you go back there? no, well not in these years but in years past (?) but do you remember something? in what sense? but do your parents tell you something that happened in the village when you were little? mh yes there was not electricity but now there is (continued)

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Excerpt 8.5 (continued) 48 F2 what wasn’t there? 49 M1 electricity 50 F3 wasn’t it there? 51 M1 there was not electricity but now there is 52 M2 why wasn’t electricity there?                    (4.0) 53 FAC and would you return to Burkina Faso? 54 M1 mh 55 FAC aren’t you interested? When you’re older? Wouldn’t you like it? 56 M1 ((nods)) 57 FAC what do you want to be when you’re older? 58 M1 either the doctor or the football player 59 FAC the doctor or the football player 60 M1 ((nods))

In Excerpt 8.6 (English primary school), F talks of her cousin, who, unlike her, is not considered Indian, but Scottish and English. F regrets that one’s place of residence seems more important than one’s place of origin. The facilitator develops F’s narrative through a formulation making her cousin’s multiple identities explicit (Turn 4). Next, she develops the view that labeling someone can abstract parts of their identity (Turn 6) and investigates the child’s interpretation of her lack of recognition of her cousin’s multiple identities with an open question (Turn 8). F asserts that skin color leads people to ignore the Indian part of her cousin’s identity. The facilitator comments on “all of the bits” of personal identity (Turn 12), thus showing her appreciation for the child’s view of multiple identities and developing a narrative about hybridity. Excerpt 8.6 01 F

um (..) people (..) because my cousin’s dad is Scottish um and her mum is half-Indian, people say that she’s not Indian, she’s Scottish and English but she is 02 FAC she is? 03 F yeah 04 FAC so, she’s Scottish, English and Indian 05 F yeah 06 FAC because she couldn’t be just half and half and then miss a bit out 07 F yeah ((nods)) (continued)

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Excerpt 8.6 (continued) 08 FAC so why do you think that happens? Why do you think we all miss out a bit of somebody? 09 F because                  (..) 10 FAC it’s tricky, isn’t it? 11 F because she’s got a different skin colour and we’re cousins and people don’t really think we’re cousins and think we are not Indians 12 FAC yeah (..) and I think all of the bits that we have that make us, us are all lovely and wonderful and it’s good to know about them (..) yeah 13 F ((nods))

In Excerpt 8.7 (English primary school), the facilitator asks open questions about F’s origins (Turn 3) and identity (Turn 5). F answers by highlighting her multiple identities (Turn 6: “I’m German, British, and African”), although she clarifies that she only speaks English. This explicit disconnection between identity and spoken language is followed by the facilitator’s focused question about the relation between language and cultural identity (Turn 7). F’s rejection of any relation (Turns 8 and 10) is made explicit by the facilitator (Turn 11) and developed by F through the connection between “blood” and identity. The facilitator comments that she agrees with F and adds a personal story about her own multiple identities (Turn 13) before asking another focused question about the social conditions of the child’s construction of identity (Turn 15). F rejects the cultural specificity of her identity, asserting that she is from all these places and thus stressing the hybridity of her personal trajectory (Turn 16). Excerpt 8.7 01 FAC ok (..) and it’s interesting (..) because you’ve got your birth certificate and you were born in Germany? 02 F yeah 03 FAC ah (..) so would you say that you’re German (..) what’s your culture, wh are you (..) what’s your first name, M.? 04 F M. (..) My first name’s S. 05 FAC your first name’s S. (..) so S., how would you describe yourself? You’re living in England but you’ve got a German birth certificate and maybe your family are from other places in the world so how would you describe yourself? Who are you? (..) What’s your (..) yeah, who are you? 06 F um, I’m German, British, and African (..) um so I’d say I do not speak the languages but I speak English 07 FAC so do you think speak thing the language makes you from that country, or? 08 F no (continued)

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Excerpt 8.7 (continued) 09 FAC so what is it then, what do you think? 10 F I think it’s the way (..) I think it’s if you know that you’re from there either you can’t speak it or not 11 FAC yeah, so it’s not the language that you speak, it’s that you know that you were born here or that you’ve lived there or that your family were like this because of where they’re from 12 F yeah (..) It’s from your blood that’s where you come from 13 FAC from your blood? Yeah (..) I er (..) I think I agree with you actually because I was born here I was born in England but my family are Irish so someone said to me but you’re English and I said well I was born in England but my family are all Irish so I think like you said my blood is Irish but I was born in England so it’s a bit of a tricky ((does hand movement)) kind of thing to explain, isn’t it? 14 F yeah ((nods)) 15 FAC yeah (..) does anyone ever ask you these things or is it just your own thinking? 16 F yeah because some people say that you’re born in Germany but your name’s English, you talk in English and you sound like an English person but I’m not and then they say you’re not from Germany because um, my name is pretty English as well, so I am from all places

4  Deconstructions of Cultural Identity Facilitation can also lead to the deconstruction of children’s cultural identity. Excerpts 8.8–8.13 (Project 9, Italian primary schools in Excerpts 8.8–8.11, secondary schools in Excerpts 8.12–8.13) show how such deconstruction is produced. Excerpt 8.8 follows a narrative about M’s holidays in Brazil, where his father lives and works. The facilitator asks M whether he would like to stay in Brazil with his father, without his mother (Turn 1). M clarifies his affective reasons for staying in Italy with his mother rather than in Brazil with his father (Turns 2–5). The facilitator challenges the child’s position by stressing some potentially appealing aspects of a new life in Brazil by using comments (Turns 6 and 8), focused questions (Turns 10, 12, 16, and 20), and a development (Turn 22). At the end of the sequence, the facilitator asks M again whether he is interested in living in Brazil (Turn 26); M repeats that he wants to stay with his mother, and the facilitator supports his choice through two further formulations (Turns 28 and 30).

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Excerpt 8.8 01 FAC

but if your dad told you now (.) we let your mum go back to M. but you stay here with me (.) that I need some company what would you tell [your dad? 02 M                                                                                                     [no [I want to stay with my mum 03 Some                                                                                                             [hhh 04 FAC you say I stay with my mum [eh? So 05 M                                              [((nods)) I don’t want to go to the building site to work it would make me anxious 06 FAC well no he goes to the building site you go to school 07 M to school [I don’t know 08 FAC              [Brazilian is easy, isn’t it? To le[arn 09 M                                                               [no I have learned it a bit 10 FAC did you learn it a little? 11 M a bit [I am able to count until ten 12 FAC           [an and like? what words did you know? 13 M hoi tuto bo 14 FAC [everything is good 15 M [how are you (.) I am able to count to ten and 16 FAC but is it true that they do everything more slowly than us? 17 M yes they don’t worry about anything 18 FAC re[ally? 19 M    [if they must pay the bill no they don’t pay it 20 FAC ah don’t they? But who told you this your dad? 21 M yes and then eh [they stay all day at the beach, play football 22 FAC                           [so when well [they have fun 23 M                                                  [without shoes yes 24 FAC ah 25 M children also go to the disco, they don’t 26 FAC well and you wouldn’t stay there? 27 M ((shakes his head)) 28 FAC I mean you don’t like these things 29 M I like them but I want to stay with my mum 30 FAC ah because mum is mum 31 M ((nods))

Excerpt 8.9 follows a narrative about M’s holidays in Albania, his family’s country of origin. The facilitator asks M about his interest in life in Albania (Turn 1). M answers that life is “almost” the same in Italy and Albania (Turn 2). The facilitator tentatively tries to make this answer explicit, but ignores the adverb “almost” (Turn 3). M clarifies that life is better in Italy (Turn 4) because there are more friends and fun (Turn 6). Thus, M rejects the facilitator’s suggestion that his construction of his personal preference may be uncertain. He is not interested in his origins because he values interpersonal relations.

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Excerpt 8.9 01 02 03 04 05 06

FAC M FAC M FAC M

but how is life in Albania? Do you feel good when you go there? well it is almost the same as this one in Italy nothing changes but in my opinion one lives better here in Italy here in Italy? I live better because well here (.) I have more friends and I have more fun

Excerpt 8.10 presents a complex deconstruction of cultural identity. In Excerpt 8.10a, the facilitator’s focused questions encourage F to explain the content of her photograph (Turn 1) and the identities of the people in the photograph (Turns 3 and 5). Next, the facilitator asks about when and where the photograph was taken (Turns 7, 9, and 11). Excerpt 8.10a 01 FAC it’s a photo in which you are dressed: explain this photo to me (..) first of all, do you think there are some similarities with those that we have already looked at? ((pointing at the photos on the desks)) 02 F ((looks at the photos)) no 03 FAC no? who are those two people? ((pointing at the photo)) 04 F my mother and my and my uncle 05 FAC your mother, your uncle and that one there is you? 06 F ((nods)) 07 FAC let’s see if I find a photo that looks like this eh? ((browses through the photos on the desk)) you’re right there aren’t any (.) but when was this photo taken? 08 F when I was: five years old 09 FAC were you five years old? 10 F yes 11 FAC and why were you in that situation? What is this, a tent? A: What was that, what place is this? 12 F Nigeria 13 FAC it’s in Nigeria 14 F ((nods))

In Excerpt 8.10b, the facilitator’s open question about the symbolic meaning of the clothes depicted in the photograph (Turn 15) encourages the continuation of F’s narrative. F rejects the idea that the clothes, which are of a similar style, symbolize a union between the people in the photograph (Turn 16: “that we are united, although that is not true because that is not my father but my uncle”). The facilitator’s minimal responses (Turns 17 and 19) encourage F to continue talking. Next, the facilitator makes F’s answer explicit (Turn 21: “Ah the idea that you have the same

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clothing the same fabric it’s union”). In Turn 26, M1 asks whether the child’s mother married her father and F clarifies the point (Turn 28: “with my uncle”); the facilitator makes this answer explicit (Turn 29). Next, the facilitator invites F to explain the situation, stressing the relevance of F’s story by suggesting that he and the other children have different experiences (Turn 32). In Turns 35–52, the facilitator enhances the continuation of the narrative through several questions and supports it with a formulation that makes her family’s migration process explicit (Turn 47). In Turns 53 and 55, the facilitator’s new formulations make the marriage narrative explicit (“the wedding between your dad and your mum took place without your dad being there”; “he took your father’s place, it wasn’t that she married your uncle”). A third formulation develops this narrative (Turn 57: “they needed a male figure”). Excerpt 8.10b 15 FAC

but for what reason was the photo taken? Because I see that you have the same special dresses: what are you telling us, what does it mean 16 F eh that we are united, although that is not true because that is not my father but my uncle 17 FAC yes 18 F eh (.) wearing clothes made from the same fabric 19 FAC yes 20 F it seems that we are one 21 FAC ah the idea that you have the same clothing the same fabric, it’s union 22 F ((nods)) 23 FAC and, and what do you remember about this photo? 24 F that it was my mother’s wedding 25 FAC my mum’s wedding 26 M with your fa[ther? 27 FAC                     [who is 28 F with my uncle 29 FAC who married your uncle 30 F yeshh 31 M2 so [with her brother with her brother 32 FAC       [explain it to us because we are not used to this and so we don’t understand it very well 33 Some ((comments)) 34 T s[h: 35 F  [my mother married my uncle but my uncle, who is my father’s brother, took my father’s place 36 M3 [why, is he ((meaning F’s father)) dead? 37 FAC [why is [what happened? 38 F              [because he could not come to the ceremony (continued)

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Excerpt 8.10b (continued) 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC F FAC

54 F 55 FAC 56 F 57 FAC 58 F

ok because he could not pay for the journey yes, because where was your dad? in Italy ah, um, you didn’t tell us you were still in Nige- Niger or Nigeria? Nigeria in Nigeria ((nods)) and your dad had already come to Italy ((nods)) and why did he come here? To look for work? yes and do you know where he lived? in ((city)) in ((city)) ok and the wedding between your dad and your mum took place without your dad being there ((nods)) but there was someone who took his place so ((points at the photo)) um, he took your father’s place, it wasn’t that she married your uncle no they needed a male figure ((nods))

Later, a focused question (Turn 75) encourages F to clarify that she was born in Italy; additionally, a formulation develops the reason for the marriage (Turn 79: “so you had to do this wedding for let’s say for the relatives that were in in Africa in Nigeria where your parents lived”). Answering the last open question, the child concludes that the cultural tradition was imposed (Turn 82: “they were obliged to do it for my grandparents”) (Excerpt 8.10c). Excerpt 8.10c 75 FAC but the importance of celebrating a wedding before coming to Italy (.) from [did your mum tell you 76 F [no no I was born in Italy then I went back to Nigeria I did the wedding and then I came back 77 FAC ah you were born in Italy 78 F ((nods)) 79 FAC and so you had to do this wedding for let’s say for the relatives that were in in Africa in Nigeria where your parents lived 80 F ((nods)) 81 FAC ((nods)) and did your mum tell you something about this ceremony? 82 F that they were obliged to do it for my grandparents

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Excerpt 8.11 (primary school) shows a conversation between the facilitator and F, a girl from a Chinese background. The first part of this conversation (transcription omitted) revealed F’s preference for Japanese food (sushi) and her complex personal trajectory rooted in Italy and China. The facilitator resumes the topic of relations with China (Turn 1) and explores F’s interest in her country of origin (Turn 3: “are you curious about going back?”). F, however, continues to express interest in Japan rather than in China (Turn 4). The facilitator presents an interrogative formulation that refers to F’s preference for sushi (Turn 5). In response, F suggests that her preference for Japan is not only based on its food, but also on other aspects of Japanese culture (Turn 8), especially manga (Turn 10). Here, the child’s deconstruction of her cultural identity is based on the construction of an alternative cultural interest. Excerpt 8.11 01 FAC but did you go back again to China after that period? 02 F no [well to to 03 FAC      [and are you curious about going back?                    (..) 04 F well actually I would like to go to Japan rather than to China 05 FAC eh because sushi eh? 06 F no it’s not [only for sushi 07 FAC                      [no? 08 F because I like very much some Japanese things 09 FAC for example? 10 F Manga

Excerpt 8.12 shows children’s uncertainty about their personal trajectories and cultural identities. It follows a narrative about M’s holidays in Romania, the birthplace of his parents. The facilitator asks M whether he is interested in living in Romania (Turn 1). M seems uncertain (Turn 2). He advises that he hasn’t considered it (Turn 4) but that his parents would like to return to their country, where they have a house (Turns 6–10). The facilitator develops M’s contribution through a formulation suggesting that M should move to his country of origin (Turn 11). However, M smiles and states that he will not leave Italy (Turn 15).

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Excerpt 8.12 01 02 03 04 05

FAC M FAC M FAC

06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

M FAC M FAC M FAC M M? FAC M

ah (.) and would you go to live there? mh boh I don’t [know                              [are you thinking about it? ((shakes his head)) not for n[ow                                            [would your parents go back there or would they pre[fer to stay here?       [no my parents go back there re[ally?    [they have a house, then: they have decided to go back yes they got a house so so you must move ((nods)) but when? eh? oh they’ll go there I’ll stay here

Excerpt 8.13 follows another narrative about holidays in Romania. The facilitator enhances F’s narrative about her grandparents’ lives in Romania by asking open and focused questions and giving only minimal responses (Turns 1–17). The facilitator’s focused question in Turn 18 enhances F’s narrative about her uncertainty over whether she would choose a traditional way of life in the town in which her grandparents live or city life in Italy (Turns 19–23). This narrative is enhanced by a minimal response (Turn 20) and supported by a development (Turn 22). In Turn 24, the facilitator asks F if she would like to return to Romania; F confirms that she would. However, when the facilitator asks F about whether her mother would like to return to Romania (Turn 31), F answers that while her mother will certainly return to Romania, she will allow her (F) to choose whether she would also like to come. The child’s future is thus undetermined. Excerpt 8.13 01 FAC and what do your grandparents do there?                   (..) 02 F eh they live in a village, [where 03 FAC                                      [small? 04 F yes yes 05 FAC mh 06 F where there are no cars, 07 FAC why? (continued)

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Excerpt 8.13 (continued) 08 F eh because it’s still a small village that is ((backward hand gesture)) 09 FAC they use: traditional me[thods 10 F                                       [yes 11 FAC for example there are carts 12 F yes ((nods)) 13 FAC I understand 14 M horses 15 FAC horses 16 M [yes 17 F [((nods)) 18 FAC and would you like to live: in a place like this?                   (..) 19 F yes and no (.) I mean on one hand yes because well it seems better [except for: 20 FAC                                                                                                        [really? 21 F but now I got used to the city 22 FAC did you? So you miss things you have in the city 23 F yes 24 FAC but did you ever get the idea to go back to Roma- to go to live in Romania? 25 F yes 26 FAC really? 27 F ((nods)) 28 M nice 29 FAC and your who is Romanian? Your mum? 30 F yes 31 FAC what does your mum tell you? 32 F that well she tells me she lets me choose (.) she tells me that: when I grow up she will go to live there [and if I want to g33 FAC                                        [ah will she go to live there? 34 F yes if I want to go with her I will go if I don’t I will stay here

5  Overcoming Language Barriers Excerpts 8.14–8.17 show how facilitation can overcome language barriers. Because facilitation can overcome language barriers, it can enhance and support children’s agency both in monolingual interactions (Excerpts 8.14 and 8.15; Project 7; Italian nursery schools) and interpreter-­mediated interactions (Excerpts 8.16 and 8.17, Project 4; CISV international camps). Excerpt 8.14 concerns a small group activity in which children make forms with different materials. Each child works autonomously, creating his or her own form with the materials. The teacher supervises the activity, encouraging the children and appreciating their work. F1, a three-year-old migrant child with very limited proficiency in the Italian language, appreciates her own drawing in broken Italian (Turn 1) and the teacher acknowledges this appreciation (Turn 2). The following long pause shows that the

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teacher withdraws from the interaction until F2 attempts to catch her attention (Turn 3). In Turns 3–8, the teacher interacts with F2 about her drawing by encouraging her participation with questions (Turns 4, 6, and 8). In Turn 9, a child positively assesses F2’s drawing, and this enhances F2’s positive assessment about F1’s increased competence (Turn 10: “F1 is becoming very good”). The teacher repeats this statement, emphasizing it and using it as a point of departure to stress the appreciation for F1’s drawing (Turn 11). F1 tries to describe her drawing, again in broken Italian, and the teacher repeats this attempt, reformulating the child’s utterance in an interrogative form (Turn 13). The teacher invites the children to mutually appreciate their epistemic authority. By focusing on F1’s improvements without stressing her linguistic disadvantage, the teacher facilitates the upgrading of F1’s epistemic authority. Excerpt 8.14 01 F1 peeeeeuatiful! pe-pe-peeeeeautiful! 02 Tf yes, it is beautiful                      (10.0) 03 F2 look! Uh! 04 Tf where did he go? 05 F2 ((laugh)) Tf 06 Tf he hid himself! (.) Let’s put it here so that we can see it. What did you do here F2? 07 F2 mmm a re—a castle 08 Tf a castle? 09 Child beautiful castle 10 F2 also F1 (.) is becoming .very good 11 Tf yes, she is becoming very good (5.0) Did F1 make beautiful forms F2? 12 F1 a leaeees! 13 Tf leaves?

In Excerpt 8.15, F, a migrant child, starts touching the teacher’s hair. The teacher argues that the child is interested in her curls. In Turns 1–6, the teacher and F1 talk about “curls.” F introduces an Arabic world (“giama”), which the teacher does not know. This linguistic difficulty enhances a collective attempt to find the meaning of the missing word, coordinated by the teacher who involves two other Arabic-speaking children (M1 and M2). The teacher enhances and supports these migrant children’s language mediation. The teacher asks M1 for help (Turn 7); however, this request enhances the contribution of M2, who simply repeats

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the word. F repeats the word again. The teacher asks for M1’s help again (Turn 10), attempting to involve him. M2 and F insist on repeating “giama,” and the teacher tries to repeat the word (Turn 15), but utters it incorrectly (Turns 16–17). In Turn 18, F consults with M1 (the turn is not understandable), who hears F say “shurya,” even though F probably intended to say “sha’r” (hair). In Turn 20, F speaks Arabic, trying to explain the meaning of her original word to her peers; however, M2 misunderstands the meaning. F attempts to explain it in Italian (Turn 24), but is unsuccessful. The teacher continues to try to involve M1, but still fails to understand the word (Turns 25–30). In Turn 31, F finds the word she was looking for and the teacher shows her understanding. The excerpt shows the teacher’s determined upgrading of her migrant students’ epistemic authority as “interpreters” and their agency in negotiating meanings. This facilitation helps F to eventually find the correct Italian word. Excerpt 8.15 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

Tf F Tf F Tf F Tf

have I got curly hair? ((talking to F)) yes, curly hair! do you like it? yes! (2.0) my mum too curls my hair!! hh does your mother curl your hair? she brin- brings me to the giama’! oh, goodness! (hh). What is it? ((talking with M1)). Try to say what it is, she brings you one? 08 M2 al-giama’! 09 F al giama’! 10 Tf and what is it? How do you say it in Italian? ((addressing M1)) 11 Child what is it? 12 Tf eh, did you hear what he said? 13 M2 [giama! 14 F [giama! 15 Tf giaba: gema’! ((laughs)) 16 M2 17 Tf gema 18 F (?) 19 M2 shurya? 20 F ana fi gama-fi gama! 21 M2 the one you make this way! ((trying to use gestures)) 22 Tf a belt? 23 F noooooo! The one to cut hair 24 Tf scissors? 25 F yes! Then, as-as my dad! As(continued)

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Excerpt 8.15 (continued) 26 Tf and- gia- and giama’? (.) What is it? Do you know? ((addressing M1)) 27 M1 yes! 28 Tf what is it? 29 M2 aaaaaaa- (.) gama’uhm aaaaa (.) that they call it (?) (.) a gama’ 30 Tf sit down here, excuse me, see, because31 M2 al-gama is –ehm-and: (.) a gama’ ehm and                    (3.0) 32 F a hairdresser! 33 Tf ahh! She takes you to the hairdresser!

Excerpts 8.14 and 8.15 show unusual forms of facilitation. While Excerpt 8.14 is based on appreciation and Excerpt 8.15 on how migrant children demonstrate agency in language mediation, both cases evidence how a teacher’s actions can upgrade migrant children’s epistemic authority. Excerpts 8.16 and 8.17 (Project 4) show that facilitation can integrate language mediation with “debriefing sessions” after complex activities, in which children are invited to reflect on what they have just done. Italian facilitators provide renditions of English contributions in Italian to support children’s understanding and agency. They provide expanded renditions as formulations developing Italian children’s contributions and supporting their agency despite their low language proficiency and hesitations. Renditions as formulations modify children’s contributions in ways that enhance their agency. In Excerpt 8.16, a Canadian facilitator (FMcan) asks a question about non-verbal communication skills (Turn 1), then he invites the facilitators to translate his question for the children. The Italian facilitator (FFita) adds an open-ended option to the rendition of this question to encourage the Italian children to contribute (Turn 2). Next, FFita develops an Italian child’s contribution through a rendition that expands and clarifies it for the other participants (Turn 6). In this rendition: (1) “la Cina” (China) is translated as “a country where you don’t know the language that they speak, for example in China”; (2) “è ovvio che ci serve” (“it is obvious that we need it”) is translated as “it’s useful to use sign language and non-­verbal communication to have an exchange with them”; (3) “e non parlano inglese” (“and they don’t

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speak English”) is translated as “if we find people that don’t speak English.” Finally, FFita stresses the rationale for using non-verbal forms of communication (“to have an exchange with them”), thus developing the meaning of Mita’s utterance. This rendition is a formulation that transforms Mita’s contribution to make it relevant for the other participants. Excerpt 8.16 01 FMcan: okay, okay, so Communicating without talking is a skill. Do you think this skill can be used in your daily life? (4) ((he indicates M1jor, who raised his hand, then stops him)) Translation, translation! 02 FFita: La comunicazione non verbale è un’abilità, pensate che questa abilità possa essere utilizzata anche nel vostro quotidiano oppure? Non-verbal communication is an ability, do you think that this ability can also be used in you daily life or? 03 FMfra: La communication non verbale c’est une aptitude, une capacité qu’on aquiert, on gagne. Est-ce que vous pensez que c’est une chose qu’on peut utiliser eh dans la vie de tous les jours? ((FMfra talks to the Norwegian children)) Norway? Norway? Norwegian guys, do you understand the question in English? ((M1nor nods)) Yes? Do you want to translate to your friends or are you ok? Because LFnor is not here. Any answer or comment on that? 04 FMcan: Mita 05 Mita: Eh ad esempio se siamo in un paese straniero come la Cina e non parlano inglese, e: è ovvio che ci serve! Eh for example if we are in a foreign country, like China, and they don’t speak English e: it is obvious that we’ll need it ((he talks to LFita)) 06 FFita: He said that if you’re abroad in a country where you don’t know the language that they speak, for example in China, and they - and if we find people that don’t speak English it’s useful to use sign language and non-verbal communication to have an exchange with them.

In Excerpt 8.17, an Italian member of the camp staff (SFita) asks the Italian children to explain the strategies they adopted during the activity they just completed (Turns 1 and 3). Mita explains his strategy (Turn 4) and SFita provides a rendition in the form of a formulation that clarifies the reasons behind how Mita acted toward the other participants (Turn 5).

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Excerpt 8.17 01 SFita:

lo scopo del gioco era fare più punti per tutti, quindi se dicevate per esempio dai giallo e poi alla fine davate blu, perdevate tutti e non è che alcuni vincevano, cioè perché facevate questo? (3.0) o comunque magari nelle negoziazioni dicevate una cosa e poi facevate tutt’altro the aim of the game was to score more points for everybody. For example, when you said give yellow and at the end you gave blue, each of you lost and it’s not as if someone won, so why did you do like this? (3.0) Also in negotiations you said something and acted in the opposite way 02 Mita: uhm uhm. 03 SFita: come mai? why?                      (2) 04 Mita: perché se ti capitava il giallo hai più probabilità di perdere o comunque guadagnare meno punti, invece tu devi spe- stavi sperando che (.) l’altra squadra cascasse, insomma metteva il giallo, e tu intanto mettevi il blu e guadagnavi più punti e loro li perdevano. because if you had yellow, you have more probabilities to lose or anyway earn fewer points. Otherwise, you hoped that the other team believed you were putting yellow, while you put blue and they lost points while you gained them. 05 SFita: okay. He said if you put yellow was a risk and so - if you put- you hope that the other ones will put yellow and (..) you will put blue so that you will gain (..) more points.

The facilitators in Excerpts 8.16 and 8.17 use formulations very differently from those in Chaps. 6 and 7 and in the first part of this chapter. Here, formulations are renditions in bilingual interactions; thus, (1) they are not ways of perspective-taking concerning children’s previous contributions, and (2) they clarify or develop these contributions to support the child’s interaction with other participants.

6  Conclusions This chapter reviews examples of the facilitation of children’s narratives about personal cultural trajectories (Holliday and Amadasi 2020). These narratives can be facilitated by explicitly linking children’s personal trajectories to migration processes and/or the construction of cultural differences. Both facilitators and children must participate in a facilitation system to construct such narratives about migration processes or cultural differences. Facilitating narratives about personal cultural trajectories can lead to the construction of clear-cut cultural identities, hybrid identities, or uncertain identities. The range of outcomes depends on the variety and complexity of the personal trajectories in the system and on the way in which narratives

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about this complexity are constructed in facilitated interactions. Narratives about personal cultural trajectories are hybrid. On the one hand, hybridity is the product of the contingent interactional construction of narrativesbased collaboration between facilitators and children. On the other hand, hybridity concerns the personal trajectories that are narrated, which show the contaminations that migration and contacts entail. This chapter has also shown how facilitation can overcome language barriers to enhance and support understanding and agency. Facilitators can break through language barriers by offering monolingual support or performing language mediation (Baraldi 2016). In both cases, support not only means offering opportunities for understanding, but also—and above all— offering children with low levels of proficiency in the dominant language opportunities to express agency. Both facilitators and peers can “interpret” a child’s contribution to the interaction by supporting or appreciating their attempts to speak or through renditions as formulations of their actions.

References Baraldi, C. (2015). Promotion of migrant children’s epistemic status and authority in early school life. International Journal of Early Childhood, 47(1), 5-25. Baraldi, C. (2016). Ad hoc interpreting in international educational settings. Interpreting, 18(1), 89-119. Baraldi, C. (2018). Facilitating the construction of cultural diversity in classroom interactions. Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 259-284. Baraldi, C. (2019). Pragmatics and agency in healthcare interpreting. In R. Tipton & L.  Desilla (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of translation and pragmatics (pp. 319-335). London/New York: Routledge. Baraldi, C. & Blasi, R. (2009). Activities 5: Interpreting as mediation? In C. Baraldi (Ed.). Dialogue in Intercultural Communities. From an educational point of view (pp. 217-240). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baraldi, C. & Gavioli, L. (2015). On professional and non-professional interpreting: the case of intercultural mediators. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 33-55. Holliday, A. & Amadasi, S. (2020). Making Sense of the Intercultural. Finding DeCentred Threads. London: Routledge. Mason, I. (2006). On mutual accessibility of contextual assumptions in dialogue interpreting. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 359-373. Mason, I. (2009). Role, positioning and discourse in face-to-face interpreting. In R. de Pedro Ricoy, I. Perez & C. Wilson (Eds.), Interpreting and Translation in Public Service Settings. Policy, Practice, Pedagogy (pp. 52–73). Manchester: St. Jerome.

CHAPTER 9

Managing Conflicts Related to Children’s Agency

Mediation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_9

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1   Introduction This chapter focuses on the ways in which facilitation can manage conflicts that arise among children. A conflict is a communication system based on participants’ mutually rejecting uttered information (what is said) or the intentions behind actions (the reason for saying something). For instance, a rejection can be based on inquiries (Maoz 2001), accusations (Stewart and Maxwell 2010), and assertive explanations (Ramsbotham 2010). Conflicts are amplified and reproduced by the convergence and coordination of conflictive positions, us/them distinctions, and constructions of negative identities. They can include phases of escalation and de-­escalation. Mutual rejection and escalations introduce problems and uncertainty about communication (Luhmann 1995). In particular, long-lasting amplified conflicts can destroy communication and possibly lead to violence. However, conflicts also open the possibility to change existing dysfunctional social structures. Facilitation is not specifically designed to help children manage relationships involving conflict. Rather, facilitation seeks to support children’s initiatives even when they fuel conflicts, in step with its greater goal of supporting children’s agency. Thus, facilitation can support conflictive positions and narratives that describe and explain conflicts and open further opportunities for conflict. However, if a facilitator becomes attentive to communication problems, s/he may be able to mediate conflictive positions. Here, it is helpful to note that “mediation” means that “a third party helps disputants resolve conflicts by enabling parties to find their own solutions” (Picard and Melchin 2007, p. 36), rejecting right/wrong distinctions and judgments (Mulchay 2001), and proposing cooperation and collaboration (Cloke 2013). For this purpose, a mediator must identify the conditions in which conflicts are amplified and reproduced; in particular, a mediator should pay attention to the ways in which conflictive positions and narratives about conflicts establish negative responsibilities and identities and, moreover, should take care to dismiss totalizing descriptions based on generalizations, simplifications, negative stereotypes, and taken-for-granted assumptions (Winslade and Monk 2008). Mediation concerns narratives about conflicts: it transforms “the adversarial narrative into an emergent, co-created, collaborative narrative” (Stewart and Maxwell 2010, p. 77). Collaborative narratives are also narratives about cooperation (Winslade and Monk 2008); accordingly, they support dialogic relationships between disputants (Bush and Folger 1994).

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Transforming conflictive narratives (Putnam 2004) involves reframing the disputants’ stories. Reframing is “the process of changing the way a thought is presented so that it maintains its fundamental meaning but is more likely to support resolution efforts” (Mayer 2000, p.  132), thus “modifying and re-presenting” one disputant’s position and story and inviting the other disputant’s response. Reframing enhances the “transformative relaying” of positions and stories from one disputant to another (Heritage and Clayman 2010), “detoxifying” the conflict by changing the way in which disputants’ positions are presented (Mayer 2000, p. 134). Reframing and transformative relaying are based on double listening, which comprises listening to conflictive narratives while constructing “surplus meaning, beyond the parties encapsulated stories about the conflict” (Winslade and Monk 2008, p. 9), thus “re-authoring a relationship story” (Winslade and Williams 2012, p. 50) as an alternative, peaceful narrative. Although facilitation does not systematically include the mediation of divergent perspectives, facilitation and conflict mediation can both enhance and support children’s agency by producing new narratives. Facilitation can include mediation if the facilitator’s actions build “working trust” (Kelman 2005) in the children’s narratives about conflicts and their management (Chap. 4), especially when the facilitator acknowledges the children’s needs and fears and responds to them. A mediating approach to facilitation cannot presuppose affective expectations, but it can create affective expectations and therefore actively support children’s personal expressions. The merging of working trust and affective expectations can enhance children’s agency in managing conflicts. This chapter shows some examples of facilitation as the mediation of children’s stories about conflicts based on attempts to build their trust.

2   From Facilitation to the Mediation of Conflict Production 2.1   The Facilitation of Conflict Production In facilitated interactions, formulations that make the gist of children’s perspectives explicit can support conflictive positions. These formulations reframe children’s perspectives—either clarifying or stressing them—to show that disagreement and alternative perspectives enrich the interaction. Thus, these formulations can initiate reframing and transformative

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relaying, but they do not evidence double listening by the facilitator or encourage alternative stories of cooperation. In sum, these formulations support children’s conflictive narratives without mediating them. Excerpts 9.1–9.4 show how facilitator formulations that make children’s contributions explicit can support the production of conflicts. These excerpts involve conflictive narratives about delicate issues, such as gender, sexual orientation, and cultural differences. These conflictive narratives seem to inhibit mediation. Excerpt 9.1 (Project 2) involves an activity on human rights; more specifically, the activity asked children to consider civil rights for LGBTQ+ people. Mger, a German adolescent, judges the “homosexual” people negatively (Turn 1). In Turn 2, the facilitator formulates this perspective and makes it explicit in an interrogative form to check her understanding (“if I got well”) and for the other adolescents (“if a child is educated in a family of homosexual people they get the same illness?”). After Mger’s confirmation, Mita interrupts the facilitator (Turn 5), who invites the Italian adolescent to continue. In Turn 10, the facilitator checks the other adolescents’ understanding and shows her interest in other contributions (“and then I’m very curious as well”), thus supporting the production of conflict. Excerpt 9.1 01 Mger when homosexual people educate a small child, this child would be with this, with this ill people, with this are 02 FAC yes, so, if I got well, it’s (..) ok, it’s that if they are educated, if a child is educated in a family of homosexual people they get the same illness? 03 Mger yes 04 FAC and 05 Mita I think the opposite 06 FAC eh? 07 Mita I think the opposite 08 FAC please, say your opinion 09 Mita if a child is grow up by maybe two men, two people that are looked different by the society, this two people may (..) ((in Italian)) insegnare è ((teaching is)) (.) teach to this child to accept all the different people from you and have no prejudice, maybe it’s better grow up with two homosexual parents than two normal parents 10 FAC did you understand what Mita said, everybody understood? (?) you understood as well? ok, and what do you think about it (..) and then I’m very curious as well (..) yes ((to Fger who has asked to speak))

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In Excerpt 9.2 (Project 5), F1 expresses a negative opinion about the behaviors of the inhabitants of a specific area (Turn 1). M1 rejects this narrative (Turn 5: “there are people who say hello, you can’t say they’re all unfriendly”). In Turn 6, the facilitator first defends F1’s right to produce knowledge through a comment (“but this is her impression, she is not judging”) before making the gist of F1’s narrative explicit (“she has been to N. and says she noticed this difference”). This formulation enhances M2’s contribution, which emphasizes F1’s position (Turn 7: “if someone from M. goes to N. they come to a bad end”). In Turns 8 and 10, the facilitator asks questions that encourage other children to voice their opinions about this conflict without opposing their positions; next, he makes a child’s alternative view, not heard in the recording, explicit (Turn 10: “She says very well”). In Turn 15, F2 states that the problem of acceptance, which is under scrutiny, depends on the differences among individuals and the facilitator makes the gist of her contribution explicit (Turn 17: “she’s saying one thing that it depends on who the people are, not on whether they’re from N. or M.”). These formulations do not hinder the children’s divergent perspectives (Turns 18 and 19). Excerpt 9.2 01 M1

in three or four buildings there are people who say hello, you can’t say they’re all unfriendly 02 FAC but this is her impression, she is not judging. She has been to N. and says she noticed this difference; in N. there is more warmth, maybe people know each other better, here in M. she says this openness is not there 03 M2 warmth between N**tans, because if someone from M. goes to N. they come to a bad end 04 FAC has anyone ever been to N.? 05 Some ((raise their hand)) 06 FAC those who have been to N., what impression did you have of N**tans? How did you get on with them? She says very well 07 M3 because there’s a difference between N. and M., if you go to buy something in N., if you take them the money another time it’s OK for them, whereas here in M. 08 Some ((laugh and try to take his turn)) 09 FAC let him finish 10 M3 in M. even if you’re a cent short they won’t give you the stuff, but in N. they will (continued)

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Excerpt 9.2 (continued) 11 M1

12 F2 13 FAC 14 M4 15 M5

16 M1 17 FAC

18 M2 19 FAC

there’s a woman from N. in the bar where I go to get my mum her cigarettes and if I’m twenty cents short he says “it doesn’t matter, you can bring them another time” but it depends on who the people are so you think (.) she’s saying one thing, that it depends on who the people are, not on whether they’re from N. or M. if it’s the first time they’ve seen you they won’t give you that’s part of the difference, that in N. they do so even if it’s the first time because anyway everyone knows everyone else and you’re always there, but in M. they only do so if you’re someone who always goes there so they say. in three or four buildings there are people who say hello, you can’t say they’re all unfriendly but this is her impression, she is not judging. She has been to N. and says she noticed this difference; in N. there is more warmth, maybe people know each other better, here in M. she says this openness is not there warmth between N**tans, because if someone from M. goes to N. they come to a bad end has anyone ever been to N.?

Excerpt 9.3 (Project 8) shows a conflict between two children about migrants (Turns 1–10). In Turn 11, the facilitator first appreciates the conflict (“F1 and F2 are discussing a very interesting topic”) and then makes its gist explicit (“I’ll: summarize a little in a louder voice”). The facilitator focuses on both perspectives, but stresses F2’s position (“F2 says”). This formulation promotes both F2’s expanded confirmation (Turn 12) and F1’s alternative perspective (Turn 13: “right but in some cases it is necessary to understand the person if s/he comes from another country”), which still rejects F2’s positioning. Excerpt 9.3 01 F1 02 F2 03 F1 04 M1 05 F1

I wanted to say one thing about what F2 said before (.) anyway there is no difference between far away countries that children make fun of anyway no (?) difference in my opinion, that is, no, it is just the fault of children who were born in a foreign country yes so, that means (2) you don’t have to tease them (.) because they are foreigners who speak another language, like we are Italians and therefore also have our own language. (continued)

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Excerpt 9.3 (continued) 06 F2

you know maybe F1, what I was saying maybe is that maybe some people just to hurt you may also strike you on where you were born. 07 F1 but, that is that has nothing to do with it (4) because I can’t tease you because you come from another country. 08 F2 this is true, but, that is, maybe (4) a person is not happy, maybe he says that, I don’t know maybe this person doesn’t like foreigners and then he teas-teases them. 09 F1 right do you mean he can insult them (?) 10 F2 this person is basically a racist 11 FAC so, F1 and F2 are discussing a very interesting topic everybody can intervene (.) I’ll: summarize a little in a louder voice what you are saying, it seems to me that the opinions are the following (2.0) sometimes you can hurt by hitting a person where you think it is eh easier to hurt one says (4.0) however F2 says to be born in another country is not one absolutely one thing that makes someone weaker. 12 F2 yes, but maybe for us it is not, but for other people it is. 13 F1 right but in some cases it is necessary to understand the person if s/he comes from another country.

In Excerpt 9.4 (Project 5), the facilitator’s initial questions (Turns 1, 3, and 5) open up a conflict about gender. Turns 6–8 show the dynamics of this conflict, which are based on accusations and counter-accusations between M1 and F1. The conflict is de-escalated by M2’s contribution, which dismisses totalizing approaches to gender (Turn 9). The facilitator’s new questions (Turns 11, 13, and 16) explore different perspectives, encouraging the reproduction of the conflict. The conflict is fueled by F1’s confirmation of the us/them distinction (Turns 17 and 19) and by M5’s sarcastic comment (Turn 18). This escalation is interrupted by F2, who criticizes the narrative of gender and introduces an alternative narrative of personal differences (Turn 20). Her narrative is developed by the facilitator’s formulation (Turn 21), which we may view as initiating mediation, since the facilitator participates in the co-construction of an alternative story and in the deconstruction of a taken-for-granted assumption. The subsequent interaction between M2 and F1 still expresses the conflict, but repositions it as an interpersonal relationship (Turns 22–23; 25–26). However, the facilitator’s new formulations (Turns 24 and 27) make F1’s contributions explicit rather than continuing the mediation initiated in Turn 21. Ultimately, M1’s comment in Turn 28 seems to suggest that the conflict’s trajectory has changed.

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Excerpt 9.4 01 02 03 04 05 06

FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M1

but do you think there are differences between males and females? yes! who says yes and who no? I say yes what differences are there? you can’t say anything to a female without her repeating it twenty-five times as soon as she sees you and if you make a mistake saying something after she laughs at you [or07 F1    [they also do that! 08 M1 (?) females are like that 09 M2 not all of them 10 M1 ok not all of them, but most of them 11 FAC who said no earlier? Then we’ll get back to what your classmate said 12 M3 (?) difference apart from physical appearance, maybe if there’s someone I like I prefer to tell a boy than a girl 13 FAC so you all agree there are differences between males and females? 14 Many yes!! 15 M4 not for me, because when boys talk to girls or viceversa there can be positive aspects and negative aspects and so the male maybe has more freedom of speech and the female, I don’t know, it’s difficult (.) but there are also positive aspects for sure 16 FAC F1 was saying (.) F1 and the other girls too, what they said, what he said, is it true or not? Also the other girls 17 F1 no it’s not true, because they are presumptuous 18 M5 thanks 19 F1 and egoists 20 F2 I don’t think we should make these distinctions between males and females, because every person has his or her character and is like that, you can’t say the girls are like this, the boys are like this, because 21 FAC she doesn’t say I feel like this because she is a girl but probably she feels this way not because she is a girl but because it’s her character right? It’s because it’s her character that makes her like this, not because she is different from me. Do you want to say something? 22 M2 I agree with F2 too but I’d like to reply to what F1 said, because when I was next to her I would ask her for something and she would never lend it to me 23 F1 it’s not true 24 FAC she says it’s not true, maybe 25 M2 no, if you ask her for a pencil, a rubber, like she says yes one time out of ten 26 F1 it’s not true 27 FAC she says it’s not true 28 M1 we have to see how you behaved

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2.2   Mediation as the Development of Conflicts Excerpt 9.4 shows that, while a facilitator can produce conflicts by presenting formulations that make the disputants’ positions explicit, the facilitator can also promote the transformation of a conflict by articulating formulations as developments that present the disputants with alternative perspectives. Developments build trust among children by (1) reframing conflicts by redefining the contents of children’s narratives, (2) modifying and re-presenting the children’s positions and narratives (transformative relaying), and (3) going beyond the children’s stories and producing alternative narratives of cooperation (double listening). Developments can be particularly useful for mediating and transforming conflicts involving emotional expressions (Chap. 6). Excerpt 9.5 (Project 6) shows a reflection on an activity in which some children took on the role of being the “mirrors” of their classmates, interpreting their personal traits. M1 was the mirror of F1. Initially, the facilitator invites the participants to ask questions (Turn 1). F1 reacts to the facilitator’s invitation by expressing her feelings of marginality in the classroom (Turn 2), but adding that she felt fine during the roleplay (Turn 6). The facilitator provides two formulations making explicit F1’s feelings (Turn 7: “calm”) and F1’s difficulties (Turn 9: “F1 says that there have been moments in which I felt different, excluded”). These formulations show the facilitator’s attentiveness to F1’s personal expression. In Turn 15, F2 asserts a sense of collective responsibility for F1’s difficulties (“I believe it’s partly our fault”), but F3 contests F2’s contribution, taking a conflictive position (Turn 16). F2 promptly reformulates her view (Turn 17: “well, I speak for myself”) and the facilitator develops and reframes this contribution as personal responsibility (Turn 18: “so it’s partly also my fault, you mean”). This formulation mediates the conflict between F2 and F3 by supporting F2’s understanding of her responsibility (Turn 19). This formulation shows double listening, as it supports F2’s contribution, on the one hand, and proposes an alternative, cooperative narrative, on the other. The facilitator relays F2’s perspective to F3’s rejection, integrating their views.

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Excerpt 9.5 01 FAC questions? (4.0) Come on F1, it’s your turn, go ahead 02 F1 yes, well, for th-, for this he has-, for what he has said, I mean at first it’s okay, when (?) (they dealt with the issue) of the classroom, some-, many times, most of the times I don’t feel included because (..) and they consider me different (?), they consider me different and (2.0) mm I mean since the second term, I still have not understood why they exclude me in that way (?) 03 FAC now do you have, is it clearer or: you still don’t understand [(.) why 04 F1                                                                [(?) (2.0) 05 FAC and (..) how did you feel while he was describing you 06 F1 fine 07 FAC calm (..) M? (..) How did you feel a bit in difficulty? 08 M1 a bit 09 FAC eh in your opinion now as M. and not as F1, if F1 says that there have been moments in which I felt different, excluded (..) in your opinion why F1. (?) this (..) this feeling (..) do you have an opinion (.) about this thing? (2.0) You as M. ((4 turns omitted)) 14 FAC go on, go on 15 F2 well, I believe that it is:: partly our fault [(..) because 16 F3                                            [no 17 F2 well, I talk for myself (?) 18 FAC okay, (??) ((overlapping voices)) so it’s partly also my fault, you mean 19 F2 yes, it’s partly my fault (..) even if at the beginning in sixth grade I had so many relations with F1, F1 then we had a some problems and we separated

In Excerpt 9.6 (Project 6), F declares a change in her usual way of acting (Turn 1) and the facilitator demonstrates understanding and empathy for her problems (Turn 2). M1 comments on this change (Turn 3: “anyway the fact that F isn’t laughing already means a lot”) and the facilitator develops his comment by recognizing and appreciating its positive content (Turn 4: “therefore, you say that this is a huge result (.) I am pleased”). This combination of formulation and appreciation reframes M1’s comment as being very positive toward F and thus relays it with F’s emotional expression to convey that M1’s action has been recognized and to develop an alternative, cooperative story.

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Excerpt 9.6 01 F

since last time I (.) have been less shy with my classmates and I have laughed less than usual I mean this time I have been much more serious while last time I was more touched 02 FAC yes because there was embarrassment because it is a thing that you don’t knoit is always this way, we are always this way, something that we don’t know (.) it’s natural, human, you already knew what [it was all about 03 M1                                                                     [anyway the fact that F isn’t laughing already means a lot 04 FAC it it means a lot that F. – eh (.) and therefore you are saying that it’s a huge result (.) I am pleased C., you have been (.) very serious today 05 M2 go on F1

3  Deconstructing Negative Identities and Proposing Alternative Narratives Excerpts 9.7a, 9.7b–9.11 show that mediation does not only include formulations as developments, but also circular questions, which help interlocutors to consider multiple interpretations (Putnam 2004), and facilitators’ personal stories. The mix of these actions can build trust and, accordingly, transform conflicts (1) by inviting children to reflect on different views and narratives about negative responsibilities, (2) by supporting the narrative deconstruction of negative identities, and (3) by enhancing and supporting alternative narratives. In these excerpts, mediation concerns relational conflicts developed in the classroom. Excerpts 9.7a and 9.7b (Project 9) are based on a video in which M1 has described the photograph of a red flower. M1 declares that red is his favorite color. The facilitator asks M1 about the meaning of his preference (turns omitted). In Excerpt 9.7a, M1 answers the facilitator’s question (Turn 1: “the blood (.) the blood”) and clarifies this answer (Turn 3: “I like to hit”). The facilitator involves M1’s classmates in a narrative involving conflict through circular questioning, first asking them if someone has been beaten up by M1. This question avoids a direct assignment of negative responsibility to M1, but enhances the general confirmation of M1’s negative behavior (Turn 8), which amplifies the conflict by creating convergence and coordination in the classroom about M1’s negative responsibility. M2 claims his own identity as a victim of M1’s actions (Turns 10 and 12), while M1 takes a provocative initiative by saying the names of those who have never been victim of his violent actions (Turn 13),

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underlining his negative identity and challenging his classmates. The facilitator ignores M1’s initiative and continues with circular questioning, asking M2’s opinion about M1’s behavior (Turn 17), thus moving the interaction from M1’s negative identity to the way in which this identity is constructed in the classroom’s communications and then to the way in which the conflict between M1 and the rest of the class developed (Turn 19). M2 stresses M1’s recurrent violent actions, supporting M1’s reiteration of his own construction of negative identity (Turn 24). Once again, the facilitator ignores M1’s initiative and continues to ask M2 for his point of view. M2 situates M1’s behavior as humorous, but M1 rejects this attribution, which weakens his self-constructed identity (Turn 29). Excerpt 9.7a 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

M1 FAC M1 FAC Some FAC M2 M? FAC M2 FAC M2 M1 M3 FAC M2 FAC M2 FAC

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

M2 M? FAC M2 M1 FAC M2

27 FAC 28 M4 29 M1

blood (.) blood ah the blood is there life in blood eh? Or is it because you like blood? no I like to hit you like to beat up ok is there anyone who got beaten up by him? yes eh? ((rises his hand)) everybody did you get you beaten up? ((nods)) and you never reacted? ((shakes his head)) well, ((names)) never got beaten up (?) but why do you think he likes to hit people? I don’t know you don’t know no you’ve never asked yourself you but you didn’t react- would you like to tell us about that time, would you? but those: [those times                [those times ah more than once yes (?) they were two, one and two ((indicates)) do you think he does enjoy it like that [or                                             [yes he wakes up and says I go to school and I hit someone ah (?) no! It’s not like that

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At this point, the facilitator addresses M1 to investigate his point of view (Turn 30). Now, M1 seems more uncertain in explaining his actions and the facilitator explores this uncertainty by making it explicit (Turn 33: “you don’t”) and by asking an open question (Turn 35). Next, the facilitator develops the narrative about the rationale behind M1’s actions (Turn 37: “when you are most nervous”), but M1 does not react. M2 defines M1’s identity as unstable by insisting that his behavior oscillates between aggression and friendship (Turns 45 and 47). M1 reacts by re-establishing his negative identity. In Turns 51–54, the facilitator develops a narrative that suggests that M1 beats people up in order to unload his emotions. This formulation suggests that M1’s behavior is a way of unloading his emotions, thus mitigating his negative identity. Excerpt 9.7b 30 FAC it’s not like that? 31 M2 I [think it is so then 32 M1  [no, for boh I don’t know (.) I mean I don’t I mean I don’t wake up and say ah today I am going to beat someone up for instance ((he looks around)) 33 FAC so, you don’t 34 M1 eh (.) well 35 FAC but is there something that makes you to behave like that? 36 M1 eh boh well 37 FAC f[or instance when you are more unsettled 38 M1 [when 39 FAC or when 40 M1 [I mean when 41 M2 [well sometimes 42 M1 go ahead go ahead 43 M2 go ahead go ahead 44 M1 go ahead 45 M2 sometimes I mean there are days when (.) boh he com- he comes to your desk and other days when 46 M1 well [you what 47 M2        [he is a good friend of yours 48 M1 wait you what (?) 49 M3 but you just told him to speak, let him 50 M2 he is very friendly like he comes close to you, he gives you some snack, he chats ((spreads his arms)) and [sometimes 51 FAC                                                [but there are moments when he needs to 52 M2 let off steam 53 FAC to let off steam physically I mean instead of listening to some music and relax he lets off steam by beating people up 54 M2 yes

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Excerpt 9.8 shows how the facilitator resumes the narrative about M1’s behavior during a new meeting. Initially, the facilitator tries to involve M1 with focused questions, but fails to do so. However, M1 takes the initiative of attributing a negative responsibility to his classmates (Turn 6: “some here wind me up”). The facilitator makes this new narrative explicit (Turn 10) and M1 confirms his negative identity, reopening the conflict with M2. The facilitator immediately interrupts this escalation by asking about M1’s position (Turns 15 and 17), which enhances M1’s interpretation of his own actions (Turn 17: “one tells me you’re a loser”) and identifies a classmate (M6) as an instigator. At this point, the facilitator suggests an alternative narrative for the conflictive position toward M1 (Turn 22: “I don’t know, he’s angry with you”) to lead him to consider more complex explanations of the conflict. However, M6 escalates a new conflict (Turns 23–28) by labeling M1 in a new negative way; in response, M1 identifies his classmates’ negative responsibilities. The facilitator continues to try to develop a conflict-based narrative, stressing its divergent interpretations; next, he proposes an alternative narrative that does not reproduce the negative identity (Turn 32: “he is probably delicate and this makes him feel he is been provoked even when maybe you didn’t want to provoke him”). Finally, the facilitator suggests that a dialogue may help solve the conflict (Turn 34: “but if he feels like that either you talk about it or it gets messy, right?”) and concludes his tentative mediation with a question about M1’s reaction to the possibility that he may have incited the issue, which leads M1 to abandon the conflictive position. Excerpt 9.8 01 FAC but do you like to talk about this?                  (..) 02 M1 yes 03 FAC eh? (..) but do you think that this can change your behavior or not? 04 M1 eh boh 05 FAC you don’t know 06 M1 ((clicks his tongue)) (..) also, I mean, some here wind me up 07 FAC wind [me up 08 M?          [mh 09 M1 for instance you 10 FAC so, there are things that wind [you up, right? 11 M1                                  [(M2) 12 M2 not all the times (continued)

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Excerpt 9.8 (continued) 13 M1 I am not saying all the times [sometimes 14 FAC                               [may I what’s that what are the things that wind you up? 15 M1 well, boh, that is for instance (.) so 16 FAC so, is there something that annoys you when you react? 17 M1 that one tells me you’re a loser 18 FAC ah 19 M1 for instance M6 [eh 20 FAC                   [well maybe one tells you that you a loser because he wants 21 M1 ((nods looking at M6)) 22 FAC I don’t know he is angry [with you 23 M6                            [excuse me so on Saturday when you kicked and punch me when we were leaving, tell me why 24 M1 (?) 25 M6 did I do anything? [((name)) ((name)) and ((name)) they were with me 26 M1                       [(??) 27 M6 you [suddenly started 28 M1         [no no no you winded me up 29 FAC so from his point of view there were [provocations (.) probably he 30 M8                                          [°(?)° ((to M6)) 31 M6                                          [not at all, I didn’t abuse him, do you remember last Saturday` ((to M8)) 32 FAC yes no, he is probably delicate and this makes him feel like he is been provoked even when maybe you didn’t want to provoke him 33 but I didn’t say anything at all [that time 34 FAC                                   [eh but if he feels like that either you talk about it or it gets messy, right? (.) because if I wind you up you what do you do? 35 M1 eh me? 36 FAC what do you do? 37 M1 I don’t do anything to adults 38 FAC ah here hh

Before Excerpts 9.9a and 9.9b (Project 9), F1 and F2 talked about their peaceful friendship and F1 addressed M1 as a person who should stop opening conflicts. In Turn 1, the facilitator asks about F1’s statement and then suggests that M1 might like conflicts. This development reframes the necessity for M1 to change the way he acts—to stop taking pleasure in arguing. Next, the facilitator asks F1 how we may be able to stop people who like conflict from fighting (Turn 3). This circular question moves the focus of the communication from the construction of M1’s negative identity to conflict management. Since F1 shows uncertainty, the facilitator

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asks her why she does not like conflict. F1’s answer suggests that conflicts destroy interpersonal relations. The facilitator develops this contribution in an interrogative form (Turn 7) and then provides a complex contribution (Turn 9) with an interrogative formulation that suggests that F1’s contribution is an interpretation rather than a fact (“because you think that”) and a development that links this interpretation to the interpersonal relation between F1 and F2. This formulation questions the “negative” side of conflict, focusing on how to manage it. An unpredictable effect of this action is that M1 takes the floor to say that affective relations need conflicts (Turn 13). Excerpt 9.9a 01 FAC what would you tell him to make him stop fighting? Because he is one who likes a fight 02 F1 eh I know hh 03 FAC and so what do you do? If one who likes a fight, how do you make him stop?                 (..) 04 F1 I don’t know                 (..) 05 F1 boh maybe not to damage a relationship 06 FAC because you think arguing ruins things (.) in a few words 07 F1 yes 08 FAC ((nods)) and instead she is one who gets offended 09 F1 ((looks at F3)) 10 F2 ((smiles)) 11 FAC [because I think 12 M1 [in my opinion without arguing a relationship doesn’t exist I mean if you like a person you argue 13 F1 boh maybe not to damage a relationship

This initiative changes the trajectory of the interaction by introducing the point of view of the accused person. The facilitator develops the gist of M1’s contribution by resuming the narrative that conflict can be pleasurable (Turn 14). Since M1 insists on the importance of conflicts in interpersonal relations, the facilitator proposes a new development concerning the absence of limitations in personal expressions (Turns 18 and 20). In Turn 22, F2 opens a conflict with M1, inviting him to consider whether personal expressions necessarily create conflict; M1 rejects this idea. F1 and F2 gaze at the facilitator (Turn 24) as if to ask for his approval, but the facilitator avoids any judgment with a circular question, asking the girls

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about their view of M1’s stance (Turns 25 and 27). Next, the facilitator states the difference between the two positions with a formulation (Turns 29 and 31) and develops M1’s preference for arguing by making a joke (Turns 33). This humoristic formulation enhances a de-escalation shown by the children’s smiles. Finally, the facilitator invites M1 to reflect on different ways of managing conflict by developing the boy’s ideas about how to make peace after arguing (Turn 36) and again stresses the different ways of interpreting interpersonal relations with a comment (Turn 38), which F4 non-verbally confirms. Excerpt 9.9b you like arguing no [it’s that      [yeshhh it’s not that it’s that in my opinion if you really love someone well you argue [I mean (?) 18 FAC [let everything out 19 M1 ((nods with a light smile)) 20 FAC without without without (.) holding anything back 21 M1 ((seems to shrug his shoulders a bit)) 22 F2 yes but you can let it all out e without arguing (.) [I mean you talk and the you put: 23 M1                                                    [it’s not true, I mean if you Never argue that means that you don’t care about that person at all 24 F1/F2 ((look at M1 showing disagreement then they look at FAC)) 25 FAC don’t you agree? 26 F2 no ((smiling)) 27 FAC what do you think? 28 F2 well if two th- I mean if one thinks one thing and the other thinks differently (.) they argue but they don’t start to fight then a they find an agreement 29 FAC they must be reasonable 30 F2 yes 31 FAC and then they find an agreement 32 F2 yes 33 FAC while he says we argue you find an agreement 34 F1/ ((smile)) F2/M1 35 F1 hh 36 FAC and then, because we love each other, we shake hands, right? Is that it? 37 M1 ((seems to nod lightly while he curves his lips not completely convinced)) 38 FAC two different ways 39 F1 ((nods)) 14 15 16 17

FAC M1 F1 M1

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Excerpts 9.10a and 9.10b (Project 9) shows a conflict that originated from a football game in the school courtyard. The referee (F1) has expelled M1. M1 tells his version of this conflict (Turn 1) and the facilitator asks him why he is angry. M1’s answer is not clear but he seems to present himself with a positive identity. The facilitator reassures M1 with a joke about his ability (Turn 4: “obviously you are too good”), but M1 claims that he is more interested in justice than his ability. The facilitator turns to F1’s narrative about why M1 was expelled and then focuses on M1’s view on rules to support the construction of the child’s positive identity from a different angle (Turn 10). M1 affirms his positive attitude toward rules and the facilitator stresses the referee’s authority in establishing rules and the consequences of rejecting them (Turn 21). However, M1 changes the topic, arguing that it is important to discharge the energy accumulated during the school day. The facilitator comments that discharging energy requires playing rather than being expelled (Turn 23), but M1 again cites his sense of justice. The facilitator recalls the importance of rules (Turn 26) and stresses the problem of deviant actions (Turn 28: “How do we do this?”). Against this objection, M2 struggles to reconcile a respect for rules and his sense of justice. The facilitator’s double listening includes the suggestion of an alternative action based on dialogue (Turn 30: “but maybe you were right, weren’t you? But (.) One says I get it now the referee makes the calls and then later when we are back in the classroom we talk about it and I explain my reasons”) and the mitigation of the meaning of M1’s action by saying that it is not easy to reflect about things “on the spot” (Turn 34). Excerpt 9.10a 01 M1 02 FAC 03 04 FAC 05 M1 06 07 08 09 10

F1 FAC F1 FAC F1

11 FAC

the-then they got together to tell me you are out and I got angry and I told them no you cannot [sunt                                [excuse me why did you get angry? eh because (?) sent-   [(?)                        [obviously you are too good so but, no no! I am nothing because M1 was playing with M4 and I was on my own doing nothing ((raises her hand)) the referee wants to share her opinion eh let’s hear to what the referee says that we told him you are out [he didn’t                                   [but was there a reason to tell him he’s out yes because each eh the first time that I told him that was a foul, he said who cares so I told him look it’s foul and then it’s foul (?) f[oul                                                                                    [ah (continued)

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Excerpt 9.10a (continued) 12 F1 13 M1 14 F1 15 16 17 18 19 20

M1 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC

21 M1 22 FAC 23 M1

24 FAC 25 M1 26 FAC 27 28 29 30

M1 FAC M1 FAC

31 32 33 34

M1 FAC M1 FAC

he says I don’t [care                   [well but so I told him e: go go to ask to M1 how to play [foul if you don’t know and the e: he turned against me                                                   [how                                                  [however in your opinion eh accepting rules (?) (.) you don’t like it? no eh to accept the rules as you were saying right? And who enforces the rules on the pitch? the referee and so if you don’t listen what happens no but because because all children are are always energetic because they spend two hours sitting to study and then they recharge their energy and I (?) for example I have very much of it usually I do many things at home so I have lots of it however (.) I understand that you needed to play it was important for you to play even if you did a I didn’t do nothing really [to                            [but is it important what you really did or what the referee saw? what the referee did eh so? How [do we do this?                [eh yes but (?) actually this happened for (?) no, but maybe you were right, weren’t you? But (.) One says I get it now the referee makes the calls and then later when we are back in the classroom we talk about it and I explain my reasons eh yes [(?)         [is it possible to do that? yes but it’s not easy on the spot

Later, the facilitator insists on mitigation (Turns 65–71), enhancing M1’s alternative narrative of negative aggressive behaviors in football games, which coheres with his self-construction of his positive identity. Next, the facilitator produces a personal story that enhances the final reflection on the conflict. The facilitator introduces his story by creating an expectation of an exceptional case (Turns 75–82) and attracting the children’s attention. In Turns 84–104, the facilitator tells a story about how he was expelled from a football game and subsequently suspended for one year. The facilitator concludes that his behavior was wrong (Turn 108), suggesting that it was based on a negative identity. This story is a testimony of the damage that can result from inadequately interpreting the meaning of a conflict.

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Excerpt 9.10b eh football is anyway very physical it’s difficult then to stay calm [then                                                                          [but no? (?) is it not difficult? difficult it’s difficult have you ever watch games where someone gets angry? Because y[es   [it makes me thing of terrorism now I am going to tell you one thing but then (.) will you forget about straightaway? If I tell you? 76 Some yes, no 77 FAC are you sure? 78 F2 tell anyway 79 FAC sure you’ll forget about it? 80 F2 [no 81 ? [yes 82 FAC and that you won’t tell that around? 83 Some yes 84 FAC so when I was (.) fourteen (..) I was playing football and I was a little nervous maybe a little bit ((pointing to M2)) I too had a lot of (.) energy to spend, right? And I was playing in defence (.) Then a forward dribbles me, and I tackle him and I fouled him? Then the referee came to me and show me and: show the red card [and me 85 M3 [what? Yellow yellow 86 FAC no, direct red 87 M4 red? 88 FAC ((nods)) 89 ? (for?) 90 M2 yes [it can be it can be 91 FAC       [as it was a foul that I shouldn’t have done so he thought 92 ? (?) 93 FAC and guess what I did 94 M1 [you kicked the referee 95 F1 [boh you were angry 96 FAC ((points to M2)) I did like he did him I got angry with the referee (?) 97 M2 like Higuain 98 FAC and do you know what the referee did? 99 F1 what did he? 100 FAC he wrote in his booklet that I had reacted and they suspended me for a year 101 Some ah! 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

FAC M? FAC M1 FAC M2 FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC

(continued)

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Excerpt 9.10b (continued) 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

F3 FAC M1 M2 FAC M2 FAC

what does it mean? that for a year I couldn’t play football [when they explode you from school [but what did he write? mh? but after that I understood that, in conclusion

In Excerpt 9.11 (Project 3), mediation concerns the way in which a group of children makes a decision. The children propose that decisions should be made based on the opinion of the majority (Turns 2, 4, 6, and 7), which excludes F2 (Turns 8 and 10). The facilitator encourages the children to reflect on this procedure by presenting formulations that make the gist of the children’s narrative explicit (Turn 11: “They say the majority wins”; Turn 17: “You decide without any fuss”) and inviting the children’s personal expressions (Turns 13, 15, and 19). Next, the facilitator narrates his personal experience (Turns 21 and 25), which successfully mediates the conflict (Turns 26–27). The result of mediation is consolidated through new questions (Turns 28 and 30) and appreciations (Turn 28: “you had a beautiful: I like this idea”; Turn 32: “His proposal is good”). These actions create the conditions for mediation, which enhances cooperation in decision-making and avoids the exclusion of F2 (Turns 33–39). Finally, the facilitator makes sure that nobody is excluded, inviting F2 and F1 to express themselves (Turns 42 and 44), and provides a final check (Turn 47). Excerpt 9.11 01 02 03 04

FAC M1 F1 M1

05 06 07 08 09 10

M2 M1 M2 F2 F1 M1

I’m interested in how you get to a decision. we just have polls. let’s do a legend! let’s reach an agreement (.) Who votes for the story? ((Only F1 raises her hand)) ((laughing at F1)) ah, ah! who votes against? ((four hands up)) ah, ah, four against one, [So                              [but I want to do the story oK, we’ll do it (.) we’ll do it oh, listen (continued)

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Excerpt 9.11 (continued) ((to F1)) they say the majority wins yes, of course, that’s what they say, “the majority wins,” and before we glued the pictures some of us didn’t want to! 13 FAC and do you think is good, that majority wins? 14 F3 I dunno 15 FAC try to [think about it 16 M1            [polls! 17 FAC you decide without any fuss (.) OK 18 M2 ((to M1)) yes, me too. Polls! 19 FAC however my question was does the majority always win? Must the majority always win? 20 Others yes! 21 FAC I remember when I was with a group of friends and we always went to the mountains together, you know. At first we had planned a series of hiking tours in the mountains. We met on Sunday mornings, we walked along the path together and then we reached the mountain hut, “how was that?”, and came back home. But once the group started to fight: let’s go this way, no, the other way So, do you know what we did? 22 F3 eh, no 23 FAC we decided to[find 24 M1                     [to find an agreement 25 FAC an agreement which was (.) one group went one way, another group went the other way, then we met at the mountain hut and everybody had done what they wanted, but everybody met at the mountain hut. Does this suggest anything to you? 26 M1 I got it she’ll do the [text                       [and then we’ll meet at the mountain hut with the text! 27 F2 28 FAC what does that mean? (..) Look, you had a beautiful: I like this idea! 29 F2 I’ll do the text, if they don’t want to do the text, I’ll do it by myself and then (.) we’ll look at it together, we’ll read it and 30 FAC ok, listen: if she says, “I’ll write the story,” and then we’ll meet at the mountain hut and we’ll read it together (.) would you help her? 31 M1 well we could do like this (.) She won’t do it alone, somebody will help her and someone else will make the poster, they’ll decorate it 32 FAC his proposal is good, but let’s listen to his too. 33 M2 let’s do it this way: who wants to do the story? 34 F3 but this way we’ll vote! 35 M2 no, no, it is not the majority (.) Are you the only one who wants to do it? So, we can do this way: she writes the story, and we’ll do the poster. 36 M1 no, no! (.) That’s what I said, but if she does the story by herself, then it won’t be a group story! 37 F2 somebody must help me, I’ll write while she checks. 38 M1 oh, for example, I’ll write, and you’ll look, follow (.) for example 39 F2 but, we need a piece of paper. 11 FAC 12 F3

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Excerpt 9.11 (continued) 40 FAC 41 F3 42 FAC

there it is, just go and get it! ((goes to the teacher’s desk to get the paper)) but wait a moment, stop (.) ((to F2)) Do you have any suggestions about this? 43 F2 no. 44 FAC ((to F1)) is this alright? 45 F1 it’s alright. 46 M1 it’s OK, come on! 47 FAC do you like this solution? 48 F2 yes, yes. 49 Others yes 50 M1 OK, OK, come on, I’ll help her!

Excerpts 9.7a, 9.7b–9.11 show that conflict mediation based on a dialogic form of communication involving formulations, circular questions, and personal stories can recognize and empower different positions. This process can prevent or mitigate narratives about negative identities and suggest alternative and more complex narratives.

4  Conclusions By supporting children’s agency, facilitation—and especially formulations that make the gist of different emerging narratives explicit—can promote divergent narratives. In order to mediate and transform conflicts, facilitators should work to produce (1) the reframing and transformative relaying of children’s conflictive positions, (2) reflection on narratives about accusations and identities, and (3) double listening and alternative narratives of cooperation. A facilitator seeking to mediate conflict can reduce the risk of constructing negative identities by suggesting alternative and more complex narratives and stressing the importance of different ways of narrating conflicts and relations. These actions can encourage interlocutors to recognize and empower different legitimate positions and can move the focus to cooperative narratives. First, alternating between different positions can hinder the construction of a dominant narrative. Second, the production of alternative narratives of cooperation can discourage judgments (e.g., the distinction between right and wrong positions, the construction of negative identities). In a facilitation system, three important types of facilitative actions can build trust in the interaction in ways that can create affective expectations and mediate conflicts; namely:

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1. Circular questions, which encourage children to reflect on actions and narratives. Circular questions allow the co-construction of more complex narratives, prevent isolation and the construction of negative identities for “deviant” children, and enhance affective expectations. 2. Formulations, which (a) develop and reframe children’s narratives; (b) bridge children’s narratives to facilitate their transformative relaying; (c) demonstrate double listening by simultaneously recognizing the gist of each conflictive narrative and the construction of alternative narratives; and (d) open up new narratives about cooperation, shifting the popular perspective with which the group interprets the conflict. 3. Facilitators’ personal stories, which (a) encourage children to become more involved in the interaction and, relatedly, express their points of view (e.g., make proposals and decisions) and (b) support the construction of affective expectations. Facilitation as mediation can prevent potentially destructive conflicts by (1) building trust based on children’s agency, (2) enhancing and supporting affective expectations, (3) preventing judgments, and (4) deconstructing negative identities. While conflict mediation will probably be incomplete and insufficient in the facilitation system, it creates the conditions in which interlocutors can make their narratives and practices of conflicts evident and show that negative identities and a lack of legitimization can negatively affect communication.

References Bush, B.R. & Folger, J. (1994). The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict through Empowerment and Recognition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cloke, K. (2013). The Dance of Opposites. Explorations in Mediation, Dialogue and Conflict Resolution Systems. Dallas: Goodmedia Press. Heritage, J. & Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in action. Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Kelman, H. (2005). Building trust among enemies: The central challenge to peacemaking efforts. In W. Krieg, K. Galler & P. Stadelmann (Eds.), Richtiges und gutes management: vom System zur Praxis (pp.  349-367). Bern: Verlag Haupt.

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Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press (Original work published 1984). Maoz, I. (2001). Participation, Control, and Dominance in Communication Between Groups in Conflict: Analysis of Dialogues Between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. Social Justice Research, 14(2), 189–208. Mayer, B. (2000). The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution. A Practitioner’s Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Mulchay, L. (2001). The possibilities and desirability of mediator neutrality  – Towards an ethic of partiality? Social & Legal Studies, 10(4), 505–527. Picard, C. & Melchin, K. (2007). Insight mediation: A learning-centered mediation model. Negotiation Journal, 23(1), 35–53. Putnam, L. (2004). Transformations and critical moments in negotiations. Negotiation Journal, 20(2), 275–295 Ramsbotham, O. (2010). Transforming Violent Conflict. Radical Disagreement, Dialogue and Survival. London: Routledge. Stewart, K.A. & Maxwell, M.M. (2010). Storied Conflict Talk. Narrative Construction in Mediation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Winslade, J. & Monk, G. (2008). Practicing Narrative Mediation: Loosening the Grip of Conflict. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Winslade, J. & Williams, M. (2012). Safe and Peaceful Schools: Addressing Conflict and Eliminating Violence. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

CHAPTER 10

Reducing and Suppressing Children’s Agency

Not me

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_10

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1   Introduction Facilitated interactions can show how facilitation can fail to create the conditions necessary for children’s agency. In particular, children’s actions can hinder facilitation, making it difficult for facilitators to continue to enhance and support children’s agency and dialogue. Sometimes, children’s actions suggest that they interpret appreciation as evaluation, repeated questions as inquisitive, and upshot formulations as only upgrading the facilitator’s epistemic authority. However, the most relevant problem in facilitated interactions is the facilitator’s display of normative expectations that reduce or suppress children’s agency (Baraldi 2012, 2018; Danby and Baker 1998; Diehl and McFarland, 2012; Farini 2018; Wyness 1999). In such cases, facilitators promote a hierarchical distribution of rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge by establishing the goals of the facilitation and encouraging children to passively align with them. This chapter shows some examples of facilitated interactions in which facilitator actions that convey normative expectations hinder children’s actions. Facilitators upgrade their own epistemic authority by using assessments that distinguish between right and wrong actions and relevant and irrelevant topics of conversation—in doing so, facilitators enhance monologues rather than dialogue. Monologues are produced under two conditions: (1) facilitators do not involve children in their communication, failing to distribute equal opportunities for participation and to support personal expression, and (2) facilitators negatively assess children’s contributions and impose their point of view. However, this chapter also provides two examples of a possible alternative, dialogic way of managing children’s actions that hinder facilitation.

2  Normative Expectations and Unequal Distribution of Participation Normative expectations can block a child’s attempt to upgrade his or her epistemic authority through a personal initiative (Chap. 7), especially when these expectations situate the child’s initiative as hindering facilitation. First, and most frequently, a facilitator can suspend a child’s agency by making clear that their normative expectations situate the child’s

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personal expressions as threats to dialogic facilitation. A facilitator can react to this presumed interference by denying children the right to express themselves; put differently, facilitators upgrade their own epistemic authority in this case by enhancing normative expectations about the child’s behavior. Thus, the facilitator’s positioning can inhibit the equal distribution of opportunities for participation and preclude children’s agency—facilitation becomes a monologue. Notably, this monologue is based on forced co-operation: facilitators fail to explore children’s diverse views, underlining that sharing is better than disagreement. Paradoxically, facilitation here simultaneously produces reproduction and the sharing of diverse points of view. In Excerpt 10.1 (Project 8), children’s initiatives are blocked and their agency impeded when they introduce a narrative about relational problems with their teachers. In Turn 1, M1 explains the difficult relational situation in the classroom. In Turn 2, the facilitator stresses that the narrated situation is normal (“let’s say that it is human that these things can happen”), thus suggesting normative expectations. Next, she moves to a shared narrative about normative teaching, but hesitates, as made clear by her repetition of “but” and use of “it seems to me” (“but but you were saying that instead it seems to me”). The facilitator’s expression of a normative expectation blocks M1’s initiative (“it is human that things happen, a teacher must be supportive”); more specifically, the teacher presents a combination of a formulation (“you were saying”) and a question (“I would like to understand if”). M2 aligns with the facilitator’s action, although his autonomous comment (“If he deserves it”) shows his reluctance to accept it (Turn 3). Excerpt 10.1 01 M1

in this classroom no ok I won’t say it, maybe someone is more silent than others, I mean he doesn’t disturb the teacher, so if the one who was silent does really bad on a test, I mean he helps him and maybe he gives him the same mark as the one who disturbed even if this did better. 02 FAC and let’s say that it is human that these things can happen, but but you were saying that, instead, it seems to me that a concept emerged, I would like to understand if it is shared, that if the teacher must help everybody, he must help the individual. 03 M2 if he deserves it.

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In Excerpt 10.2 (Project 4, camp with adolescents), a female Greek facilitator (Ffgre) supports the proposals produced by an Argentinian girl (Farg). Ffgre actively listens to these proposals through continuers (Turns 4 and 6), suggests alternatives (Turns 8 and 9), and checks the adolescents’ understanding (Turn 9). However, in Turn 9, after a long pause without any reaction from the adolescents, Ffgre’s suggestion of an “alternative way” with a normative narrative about overcoming differences and a request for feedback. This action clearly shows normative expectations of alignment; Farg aligns, although her low tone of voice suggests she does so reluctantly (Turn 10). Excerpt 10.2 01 Ffgre what’s the aim of the activity. What do you want the rest of the people to understand after we do that activity                   (4.0) 02 Farg the differences we have. The differences (?) that we showed in the other activities before 03 Ffgre mmm 04 Farg the we, we have already showed that we are different 05 Ffgre yea 06 Farg and I don’t know what others 07 Ffgre maybe we can show it in another way 08 Farg the differences we have. The differences (?) that we showed in the other activities before                   (2.0) 09 Ffgre oh maybe not just stay at the differences (..) we are different we know that, we come from different countries, but we are here altogether now, we are talking about the same thing. We are all people and maybe try to find a way to see that through our differences we can make one thing together (3.0) do you understand? 10 Farg °yea°

In Excerpt 10.3 (Project 4, camp with adolescents), Turn 1, a Dutch facilitator (FFdut) asserts her normative positioning (“I like the group more, I think it’s better”), asking the children to agree with it though a question that shows her clear preference for a positive answer (“Do you agree? Yeah?”). Although FFdut expresses the wish to involve the adolescents in the final decision (“shall we do this game?”), at the same time, she enhances normative expectations of alignment. The change of footing from “I” to “we” indicates that the facilitator’s epistemic authority dominates the collective we. In Turns 2–4, a conflict between FFdut and a

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Finnish girl (Ffin) arises: the girl expresses a different opinion, which FFdut rejects (Turn 3). In Turn 4, Ffin puts forward her idea, challenging FFdut. The conflict develops in Turns 5–13, during which FFdut attempts to clarify the meanings of the two different versions of the game based on a distinction between right and wrong, thereby persuasively asserting her normative expectations (Turns 9, 11, and 13). Ffin’s action seems blocked (Turn 10) and marginalized; Ffin is forced to adapt to the facilitator’s version of the game (Turns 12, 14, and 16). Normative resolution of the conflict is based on the facilitator’s denial of Ffin’s perspective (considered wrong) and the replication of the facilitator’s perspective (considered right). Ffin can only passively align with the facilitator’s perspective. Excerpt 10.3 01 FFdut ok. I know this game slightly different, I like this one better. I know it in drawing a peaceful place, so you just draw happy place (?) but it’s more individual, I like the group more, I think it’s better. Ehm from my experience ehm shall we do this game? Do you agree? Yeah? We’ve got two hours 02 Ffin there’s also that kind that someone cannot use colours or someone cannot use tape and like that 03 FFdut but I think that’s a different activity, do you know (?) 04 Ffin it’s almost the same 05 FFdut isn’t that game about ehm rich and poor? Some groups they can have all the materials and they can build something easily and some groups have very few materials or not so many and it’s difficult 06 Ffin it’s like one group have colours, one group can use tape and so the war is easier to make 07 FFdut why is it easier to make in this way? 08 Ffin because someone don’t have colours and they have colours and they do not have tape and another group have tape 09 FFdut but then why do they have war? They have to talk to each other right? They have to cooperate, don’t you think? I don’t know, I don’t know this part 10 Ffin ok 11 FFdut but did you do this part of this activity? Yes? Can you remember that? 12 Ffin yea, I don’t know, I think it was also the same kind 13 FFdut it isn’t the same kind, right? So I think it’s more about (..) ehm differences in general ehm rich and poor, it’s more about that and about cooperation, whereas this one isn’t about cooperation. This one is about war really 14 Ffin ah, ok ((smiling a bit)) 15 FFdut ok. Would you like to do this one? 16 Ffin yea

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In Excerpt 10.4 (Project 4, village with children), a girl from Guatemala (Fgua) participates in a way that the Slovenian facilitator (FFslo) considers unacceptable. This is shown in systematic sequences of five turns. During the first turns, FFslo asks questions (Turns 1, 7, and 17) and comments (Turn 13) on the realization of roleplay. During the second turns, Fgua responds to the facilitator’s actions, upgrading her own epistemic authority (Turns 2, 8, 14, and 18). During the third turns, the facilitator negatively assesses Fgua’s responses (Turns 3, 9, 15, and 19). During the fourth turns, Fgua explains her reasoning, once again upgrading her epistemic authority (Turns 4, 6, 10, 16, and 20). During the fifth turns, FFslo demonstrates normative closures (Turns 5, 11, and 21). Finally, Fgua reluctantly aligns with FFslo’s action; her agency has been suppressed (Turn 22). This facilitation involves asserting indisputable norms and requesting adaptation; when the facilitator’s explicit requests are not accepted by the child, the facilitator provides normative closures. Excerpt 10.4 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua FFslo Fgua

what do we use to carry Cinderella? it’s easy we use the car we use for the food it’s that we don’t want no one to be injured but we are careful, we know how to use it it’s not something you can be sure of but we tried you mean you used it? and no one was injured do: not do it again it’s dangerous but: how do you know it we tried it [we:                                                          [no more oh °ok° and: food goes on it ah no problem there is no food, they are empty hh but there will be food (.) food in a few hours but we find a lot of [these –                      [where? ehm in the [kitch–                [did you go in the kitchen, you can:nnot do it no no (.) not in the kitchen outside the kitchen hh where they were ready to carry food hh so don’t use them °ok° ((she goes away))

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In Excerpt 10.5 (Project 3), the facilitator tries to equally distribute participation (Turns 4 and 18) and listen to the children (Turn 4). However, F1’s action does not fit in with the facilitator’s expectations; in response, the facilitator shifts toward normative expectations of cooperation. He challenges F1’s perspective (Turns 2, 8, and 14) without negotiation (Turn 4: “excuse me, I was interested in what she was saying”), asserting the importance of F1’s adaptation and negatively connoting her “deviant” contributions. F1’s resistance to the facilitator’s actions is also negatively connoted (Turn 6: “you don’t let other speak,” Turn 16: “you are not interested in making a group story,” Turn 18: “this is not possible”). Excerpt 10.5 01 F1 we have decided. 02 FAC you have decided, but they haven’t in my opinion, I don’t know if they have decided. 03 F2 ((attempt to start telling the story)) 04 F1 ((interrupts F2)) In the beginning I was terrified                   (..) 05 FAC ((to F1)) excuse me, I was interested in what she was saying, please tell me 06 F1 in the beginning I was a bit terrified. Come on 07 FAC Excuse me, It seems to me that you don’t let others speak 08 F1 no, because she ((F2)) is copying! (..) She must write the same thing that she wrote ((F4))! 09 FAC well, she narrated a piece of this story, but you didn’t make up a group story, did you make individual pieces? 10 F3 well, we’ll talk about us, how we met 11 FAC but, is this the group story or the individual story? 12 F1 this is the group story. 13 FAC so, I don’t understand. Why are you saying that she copies? 14 F1 because it’s true, because she cannot say the same things. 15 FAC so, does this mean that this is not the group story? 16 F4 first, we talk about us, if she copies my work it is not nice 17 FAC ((to F1)) can I say something? It seems to me that you are not interested in making a group story, that you want to make your own story. 18 F1 I want to make up the story with her ((F4)) 19 FAC this is not possible in this game, that’s another game. I am sorry, this is not the game.

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Excerpt 10.6 (Project 4) regards an activity in which children are asked to try to stop a nation from being destroyed by a huge meteorite. Since the Italian children are not proficient in English—the lingua franca—the Italian facilitator (FFita) interprets for them. In Turn 7, FFita translates the explanation uttered by the facilitator from the Philippines (FFphi). Two Italian boys, Mita1 and Mita2, express their preference for developing the activity differently from what is expected (Turns 8 and 10). However, FFita’s develops FFphi’s instructions (Turn 11) by showing normative expectations and binding the children’s actions to the predefined organization of the activity, rather than supporting their personal expression. By enhancing normative expectations in this way, FFita prevents the children from changing the approach to developing the activity. Excerpt 10.6 01 FFphi your countries are really perfect. However, °however, there was a huge meteorite°. Everybody knows what a meteorite is? 02 CHIL yes, yes 03 FFphi from the (upper) space? 04 CHIL yes 05 FFphi ((imitating the noise of a falling meteorite)) niaw pciuf! now, they gave your country a problem, that you have to solve! ah! or else, the country will be dead 06 CHIL yes! dead! (2.0) 07 FFita c’è stato un cataclisma che ha praticamente: portato un problema nel vostro- praticamente se non volete che il vostro pianeta praticamente scompaia there was a catastrophe which created a problem in your- if you don’t want your planet to practically disappear 08 Mita1 no ma se [lo vogliamo? but if  [we want 09 FFita              [il vostro, la vostra terra, dovete risolvere il problema         [your, your planet, you must solve the problem 10 Mita2 se vogliamo (?) if we want (?) 11 FFita no, non c’è possibilità, dovete assolutamente risolvere il problema che vi è stato dato, ok? dovete parlare, discutere, poi risolvete il vostro problema qua, dite come lo avete risolto. no, there is no other possibility. You must absolutely solve the problem we gave you, ok? You must talk, discuss, then solve your problem, tell us how you solved it.

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3  Conflict Management as Imposition and Negative Assessment Chapter 9 described how facilitation can mediate conflicts. This section shows that conflict management can be based on normative expectations that impose the facilitator’s position and negatively frame children’s actions. Facilitators’ actions stress the distinction between right and wrong. Facilitators’ assessments do not show sensitivity for different perspectives and impose solutions for problems. Excerpt 10.7 (Project 4) concerns a role game that requires a confrontation between groups of children. An Italian boy (Mita) asks for clarification (Turn 2) and then opens a conflict concerning the game (Turn 4). His objection is treated as an unnecessary digression by the Italian facilitator (FFita), who invites him to respect the game’s rules (Turn 5), and above all by the Danish facilitator (Fmdan), who firmly asks the children to respect the cohesion of the group in Turns 7 (“Act as a team”), 11 (“Act as one”), 16 (“So you better start marching! Get in line guys!”), and 18 (“Move it! Left! Left! Left right! Left! Left”). These commands predicate sharing on a we-identity. Excerpt 10.7 01 FFita 02 03 04 05 06 07

Mita FFita Mita FFita FMdan FMdan

08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

? FMdan ? FMdan ? Fmdan All ? Fmdan Child Fmdan

here there is the prison. When you find/touch one of the other team you must bring him/her here, and they will draw (?) you a line. can we go in their prison? yes. If they catch you, then you go to their prison. but it is stupid this game, if one catch you then you have to try to be not caught. ((divides the red team in two lines)) we’ve got two lines. Alright?! F(?) there, Mita here. Ok guys. Listen up! You are red team! You are the red team! Act as a team! yea! don’t run around screaming (..) Red Team! yea. act as one! Alright?! So when we move we move together! yea. ok?! yea. yea! so you better start marching! Get in line guys! ((came back in line)) all ready guys?! Move it! Left! Left! Left right! Left! Left!

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In Excerpts 10.8 and 10.9, which concern second language education (Project 3), children’s actions that introduce potential conflict into the interaction are assessed negatively. This assessment is based on normative expectations of “positive” intercultural communication. Facilitators’ actions discourage children’s agency by blocking and sanctioning children’s initiatives. Before the sequence shown in Excerpt 10.8, the teacher asked the children to talk about Carnival celebrations in their home countries. In Turn 1, Tf1 defers to M1, a Romanian child, who starts talking about a festival in his country associated with an ancient struggle against the Turks (Turn 2). The class laughs in response; M1’s statement does not appear to relate to commonly shared conceptions of Carnival (Turn 3). Tf1 deals with this as a provocation directed at the Turkish children in the class and therefore as a violation of the norm of mutual respect and as a potential risk for interaction. Tf1 provides an implicit correction (Turn 4: “We are in February”), immediately followed by Tf2’s explicit correction (Turn 5: “Excuse me A., this has nothing to do with the topic. We were talking about Carnival in February”) and diversionary action (“So, is there Carnival in Romania?”). In this way, Tf2 attempts to avoid potential conflict among children. Excerpt 10.8 01 02 03 04 05

Tf1 M1 CHIL Tf2 Tf1

listen to M1 what he has to say 28th of November, the day of liberation from the Turks. ((laugh)) we are now in February sorry A., this has nothing to do with the topic. We were talking about Carnival in February. So, is there Carnival in Rumania?

In Excerpt 10.9, Tf1 asks M1, a Chinese child, a question about Chinese food. M2 and M3 show their curiosity about Chinese cuisine (Turns 3 and 4), but ask questions that Tf1 interprets as embarrassing for M1. In Turn 5, Tf1 corrects the children (“you are a bit confused”) and then diverts their attention toward a different topic, avoiding a potential conflict. The children do not challenge this diversion.

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Excerpt 10.9 01 Tf1 ((addressing M1)) in China food is presented ready to be eaten. Instead of bread 01 M1 we use rice 03 M2 is it true that they eat frogs? 04 M3 live fish too! 05 Tf1 you are a bit confused. ((addressing M3)) M1, do you remember what the eating utensils we studied in the morning class are called?

Excerpt 10.10 (Project 5) concerns a Cinderella roleplay. During the activity, a conflict escalates and makes the roleplay unmanageable, even when the facilitator tries to regulate. In Turn 1, the Turkish facilitator (Fmtur) introduces the character and the task (play Cinderella from the end to the beginning of the story). In Turns 2 and 3, an Italian boy (Mita) refuses and diverts his attention. In Turns 6, 11, 14, 17, and 19, a Finnish boy (Mfin) insists on playing the role of Cinderella. Starting from these initiatives, FMtur repeatedly tries to reduce the children’s agency by resuming his coordination throughout the interaction, in particular by stigmatizing Mfin’s proposal (Turn 7: “You are Cinderella?!”) and tentative elusions (Turns 15, 18, and 20). Thus, FMtur enhances a hierarchical structure in the interaction, but his effort is futile and counterproductive: Mfin’s exclusion allows him to escape from the activity and search for an alternative activity; as a result, he antagonizes Fmtur proposal (from Turn 29) and thus provokes its failure (Turns 36–37). This excerpt shows that normative expectations (1) can be the origin of interruptions, complicate coordination, and delay decisions and (2) can produce a multiplicity of objections and encourage children to refuse to participate. Excerpt 10.10 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

FMtur Mita Mita Fger FMtur Mfin FMtur

Cinderella backwards. Does everybody know Cinderella? I don’t like! Here is my preferred activity. ((jumps on the matresses in the room and lays down)) I will go to speak backwards? no no, I don’t know. The goal is to I’m Cinderella! ((with an astonished expression)) you are Cinderella?! Ok, if everybody knows the story of Cinderella, we are going to do (...) Cinderella played from backwards. (continued)

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Excerpt 10.10  (continued) 08 Fger

09 FMtur 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Mice Mfin CHIL FMtur Mfin FMtur Fger Mfin FMtur Mfin FMtur

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Fger FMtur Fice FMtur Fger FMtur Fger Mfin FMtur

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

CHIL FMtur Mfin FMtur FMtur Mfin FMtur Mbra

we have got (..) we have got three sisters, we have got the mother, we have got the prince (..) ok let’s start. Can everybody come here? Let’s make a circle. Yea, who wants to be the first? who wants to be Cinderella? here. ((laugh)) come on Mfin! I’m Cinderella. you want? ((pointing at Fger)) ne! no! I’m Cinderella. Mfin come on! Come on! I’m Cinderella! this story starts from backward so we are going to start with the end, the end of story is going to finish happy so we are going like that and we are going to walk (..) Don’t (..) No no no ((pointing at the participants who do not listen to and jump on mattresses)) I’m going to tell the story! There is one girl called Cinderella we need the others. ok, we need a stepmother and two sisters. I want to be the stepmother. ok. You want to be a sister? ((to Fger)) yea. ok. Cinderella is always cleaning, always doing like that and the sisters ninininini ((she blows a raspberry)) ((climbs the wallbars)) come on Mfin! ((FMtur grabs Mfin by the legs and puts him on his shoulders)) come on guys! ((laugh)) CI ((is dancing on FMtur’s shoulders)). help me god! ((grabs Mfin, but he grips to his shoulders)). noooo! come on! come on kids! ((climbs the wallbars and after few seconds Mfin climbs them again))

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4  Repression of Children’s Deviant Agency Facilitators’ actions can also assimilate children’s agency to deviance, acting to force children’s obedience to normative expectations above all when children do not show interest in the facilitated interaction. This is the most radical type of suppression of children’s agency, based on the imposition of monologue and the distinction between right and wrong actions. In Excerpt 10.11 (Project 3), Tf approaches M1 with a reprimanding voice and challenges his understanding of the situation (Turn 1). Next, she denies the validity of M1’s answer, referring to social values and redundantly restating her view, which asserts the seriousness of M1’s negative behavior (Turn 3). In Turn 5, Tf blocks M1’s attempt to explain his own view again and uses a reprimanding voice. M1 gives up on expressing his opinion and adapts to the teacher’s perspective (Turn 6). Nevertheless, Tf again invites M1 to adapt to her proposal (Turn 7: “now sit down and think it over”), qualifying her invitation in a way (“calmly”) blatantly at odds with her previous actions. M1’s attempt to express his view and emotions is once again suppressed by the teacher; the facilitator only allows M1 to express his consent. Put differently, Tf forces M1 to forsake his own perspective. In this interaction, normative expectations bind M1’s action to shared social values, precluding his personal expression. Excerpt 10.11 01 Tf M1! Do you understand what happened? 02 M1 yes. 03 Tf no. Your description leads me to think that you don’t understand. If you don’t understand how serious this situation is and how what you did is serious, it is useless to say “I had the stick in my hand, you had a stone in your hand.” This doesn’t reduce the seriousness of the facts, some of you took advantage of other children’s calm to do things that they didn’t want. This is the serious thing, isn’t it? 04 but the day after 05 M1, do you understand? 06 yes. 07 Tf well, now sit down and think it over. I was there and I heard what M. said: “I tried to defend myself, I told you many times to leave me alone, but you didn’t.” Why? I think that this is the question we must answer, calmly. The point is not that somebody has or has not got a stick in their hand, but that a classmate of yours must defend herself from you.

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In Excerpt 10.12 (Project 4), a Brazilian boy (Mbra) selects another child as the next speaker (Turn 3), after rejecting a critical comment from a US facilitator (Fmusa). By doing this, Mbra substitutes the facilitator’s right to distribute the children’s opportunities to talk. Fmusa takes the floor without hesitation (Turn 4) to contest Mbra’s response, overlapping with the unexpected contribution through which Mbra selects the next speaker. Fmusa sanctions Mbra’s action; in doing so, Fmusa expresses normative expectations about the children’s participation, thus suppressing Mbra’s agency. Excerpt 10.12 01 02 03 04 05

Mhgk Fmusa Mbra Fmusa Mbra

I think: (.) our group (.) we didn’t collaborate so didn’t you? (.) MBra? no No we: collaborate: a lot [m: M? hhh?]                                          [Mbra, do you agree with-] hey: heyis: let’s keep it ordered, ok?

In Excerpt 10.13 (Project 4), FMusa investigates Musa1’s previous statement, but the child changes the topic of conversation (Turn 2). FMusa harshly and negatively assesses Musa1’s action in Turns 3 and 5, excluding the child from the interaction, and selects Musa2 as the next speaker (Turn 7). Fmusa reacts to Musa1’s deviance from the normative expectations of his answer to the facilitator’s question. Musa1’s refusal to align with the facilitator’s expectations highlights the hierarchical form of the interaction. Excerpt 10.13 01 FMusa m:? someone didn’t respect the rule? M1usa, why did you say someone didn’t: respect the rule? 02 Musa1 hh °no: no; before° (.) ((addressing to FMusa)) shall we have JC shop be before lunchtime, tomorrow? 03 FMusa hey hey that’s odd I asked you something, mh 04 Musa1 °bu[t° 05 FMusa       [noo listen usually people asked are supposed to answer, isn’t it’s such a bad thing do not answer to a question 06 Musa1 °oh sorry° (.) well (.) [I -] °oh° 07 FMusa                        [Musa2] (..) did someone cheat?

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In Excerpt 10.14 (Project 9, Italian primary school), M1 and FAC co-­ tell a story (Turns 1–5). In Turn 6, M2 asks a question for clarification. The facilitator asks other children, who are not listening, to pay attention (Turn 7). Next, he asks M1 to repeat the question (Turn 9) and to clarify his question (Turn 11). In Turn 14, the facilitator invites M3 to wait for M1’s reformulation. In Turn 16, the facilitator himself answers M2’s reformulated question, preventing M1 from assessing whether the question is clear and situating M2’s contributions as unclear and ineffective. Excerpt 10.14 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

FAC M1 FAC M1 FAC M2 FAC FAC M2 FAC M1 M3 FAC M2 FAC M1

this person too or not? Do you remember him? ((nods)) ah I remember him very well ah ah but did that child die? no [excuse me excuse me excuse me       [((noise)) no repeat the question that I didn’t, we didn’t hear I said did that child die? no really now explain to him well I didn’t understand what he said no he wants to say [that he died                       [wait let him to say it please did that child die or that ((indicates)) person did? the child’s father died eh

In Excerpt 10.15 (Project 9, Italian primary school), the facilitator guides the interaction toward positive social relations, upgrading his own epistemic authority and suppressing the child’s initiative as a violation of the normative expectations of what the dialogue means. F1 is interrupted by M1’s initiative (Turn 3), but the facilitator asks the boy about his intention in taking the floor (Turn 4) and then asks him to gently express his view (Turn 6). In Turn 8, the facilitator confirms M1’s alignment.

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Excerpt 10.15 01 02 03 04

F1 FAC M1 FAC

and then we we went in Venice by bus yes ah yes the (road) Venice Mestre to Venice Mes. Listen did you want to tell her that she should say in another way? 05 M1 to Venice 06 FAC well tell her gently, won’t you? 07 M1 eh you should say to Venice rather than in Venice 08 FAC o-ok (.) is it okay? Perfect.

Excerpt 10.16 (Project 9, Italian primary school), shows the facilitator’s upgrading of his own epistemic authority by giving normative directions to the children. The facilitator invites the children to pay attention while giving instructions about the disposition of the class (Turn 1). In Turn 7, he tells the children to be silent and then instructs them on how they should accomplish the task and tells them to speak slowly (Turns 9 and 11). In Turn 13, he again invites the children to listen, stressing that it is impossible to work well without understanding each other. Despite the facilitator’s requests, the children do not pay attention. Excerpt 10.16 so put yourself excuse me excuse me pay attention a moment now ((overlapping voices)) how many groups are there? ((overlapping voices)) so I I need no sh be silent, be silent, be silent did you choose? yes (?) so now the work the work that you must do in groups yes in a very low voice because in this way you don’t disturb each other, it is you must look together at the photographs one by one possibly and tell why in your opinion you have chosen that picture why you like that picture 12 CHIL ((overlapping voices)) 13 FAC no no excuse me can I finish talking? Otherwise we don’t understand each other then we cannot work well (.) may I your attention for a moment? (..) so you must talk together about these pictures and basically you must tell why you like them, what you find strange, what makes you curious what you see, what is there listen to me for a moment 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

FAC CHIL FAC CHIL FAC ? FAC Some FAC ? FAC

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5  A Dialogic Approach to Dealing with Children’s Deviant Actions Children’s actions can reveal their disinterest in the facilitated interaction (Sect. 4). Can facilitators find a way to deal with this problem without repressing children’s agency? Excerpts 10.17 and 10.18 (Project 9; Italian lower secondary school), recorded during the same meeting, indicate possible ways of continuing facilitation without repressing children’s actions in a very noisy class of children who seem uninterested in their peers’ narratives. The two excerpts show an indirect way of dealing with noise by using irony to upgrade the epistemic authority of the narrating child. In Excerpt 10.17, the facilitator invites the students to observe that when they do not listen, M1 struggles to tell his story. Next, the facilitator addresses M1, saying that he (the facilitator) has problems speaking when there is noise and asks whether M1 has the same problem (Turn 1). After M1 gives an ambivalent answer (“sometimes yes, sometimes no, it depends”), the facilitator asks him how he feels (Turn 3). M1’s answer is again ambivalent; in response, the facilitator again asks M1 whether he can speak in noisy conditions (Turn 5) and then invites him to try (Turn 7), which makes some students laugh. Excerpt 10.17 01 FAC 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

however in my opinion (.) if you don’t don’t listen to him he also struggles to say it (.) no when I hear noise I struggle to speak, don’t’ you? M1 sometimes yes sometimes no, it depends FAC how are you today? M1 nor[mal FAC       [can you speak even with noise M1 yes FAC so try Some ((laugh))

In Excerpt 10.18, while M2 is talking, M3 takes the floor to confirm M2’s point of view. However, noise prevents M2 from understanding part of M2’s contribution. In Turn 4, the facilitator asks M3 if the other students are disturbing him. After M3 gives a negative answer, the facilitator asks him if his classmates can continue to talk (Turn 6), finally acknowledging his positive non-verbal answer (Turn 8).

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Excerpt 10.18 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

FAC M2 M3 FAC M3 FAC M3 FAC

and what do you remember of that experience in particular? that he scored many goals ((to M2)) exactly (?) ((noise)) are they disturbing you? no no no no can they continue to talk? ((nods)) ok

These examples show that facilitators can gently and indirectly invite some students to keep silent and respect the speaking child’s right to articulate a narrative; more specifically, these examples suggest that facilitators can do so by avoiding normative statements and impositions and using irony. This type of action probably does not stop the noise, but it can attract attention and promote reflection on the ways in which noise interferes with facilitation and other children’s rights to talk.

6  Conclusions Facilitation is far from a perfect way of enhancing and supporting children’s agency, even if a facilitator demonstrates a systematic intention to establish a dialogic form of communication. A facilitation system fails when it is based on normative expectations, which lead to a monologue. Dialogue can also be inhibited when the facilitator’s goal in establishing the dialogue frustrates the children’s expressions of their agency; often, this occurs when facilitators work to upgrade their own epistemic authority and establish normative expectations in the interaction. In this kind of interaction, the facilitator’s attempts to produce dialogue paradoxically lead to a monologue. Once a monologue has been established, it can be difficult to recover children’s agency. The mildest form of monologue is based on indirect and sometimes persuasive discouragements of children’s initiatives. This positioning deviates from facilitators’ attempts to balance different rights related to exercising agency. A more radical form of monologue is based on facilitators’ negative assessments when they interpret children who contest dialogic facilitation (e.g., by introducing what the facilitator considers an unacceptable proposal) as deviant. A monologue can intensify when children

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make noise and do not pay attention to other children’s contributions and narratives. In these cases, the taken-for-granted expectation that successful dialogue requires children’s active collaboration is disappointed. Thus, facilitative actions are stuck and they shift to enhance normative expectations. The best way to avoid shifts to normative expectations is to encourage children to be attentive and interested. In several cases, it does not seem difficult to enhance children’s agency rather than following a predefined scheme of action or activity. Abandoning normative expectations is easy if the facilitator has flexible expectations for dialogue and “appropriate” agency that are responsive to children’s rights and responsibilities in producing knowledge. If affective expectations (i.e., expectations of unpredictable personal expression) are maintained, monologues can be avoided. Chapters 6–9 show that there are alternatives to normative expectations of cooperation and normative approaches to conflict management. Children can intensely hinder facilitation by making noise, which shows that they are not attentive to and are not interested in other children’s contributions and narratives. The last two excerpts in this chapter show how the facilitator can avoid a shift to normative expectations when children make noise and refuse to pay attention; this is evidenced when the facilitator involves a child who is talking by using irony. This involvement does not solve the problem of noise, but it does allow the facilitated interaction to continue and upgrade the child’s epistemic authority by inviting them to decide whether to talk with the facilitator despite their classmates’ lack of attention. This action is coherent with the production of the facilitation system, although it is not a final solution to its problems. The final solution is finding the magic of sparking interest in children who often reject teaching and interpret facilitation as freedom from constraint. This magic of facilitation is rather unlikely in classroom contexts created by normative teaching.

References Baraldi, C. (2012). Intercultural education and communication in second language interactions. Intercultural Education, 23(4), 297–311. Baraldi, C. (2018). Facilitating the construction of cultural diversity in classroom interactions. Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 259–284. Danby, S. & Baker, C. (1998). ‘What’s the problem?’ Restoring social order in the preschool classroom. In I.  Hutchby & J.  Moran-Ellis (Eds.), Children and social competence. Arenas of action (pp. 157–186). London: FalmerPress.

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Diehl, D. & McFarland, D.A. (2012). Classroom Ordering and the Situational Imperatives of Routine and Ritual. Sociology of Education, 85(4), 326–349. Farini, F. (2018). The child, the pupil, the citizen: Outlines and perspectives of a critical theory of citizenship education. In C. Baraldi & T. Cockburn (Eds.), Theorizing Childhood. Citizenship, Rights and Participation (pp.  187–214). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Wyness, M. (1999). Children representing children: Participation and the problem of diversity in UK Youth Councils. Childhood, 16(4), 535–552.

CHAPTER 11

Conclusions: Beyond Education?

Beyond education

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6_11

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1   The Facilitation System: A Summary This book focused on two concepts: (1) children’s agency as the production of knowledge (epistemic authority) in communication systems (explained in Chap. 2) and (2) the facilitation system as a producer of children’s agency (explained in Chap. 4). These concepts were developed through analyses of facilitative actions that enhance and support (Chaps. 6–9) or fail to enhance and support (Chap. 10) children’s agency in the facilitation system. All facilitative actions converge in the production of the facilitation system; however, facilitators can only use some facilitative actions (Baraldi and Ballestri 2021) and different ways of producing the facilitation system have different effects on the production of children’s agency. The following section summarizes the facilitative actions analyzed in this book and their effects on children’s agency. 1.1   The Facilitation System as the Combination of Facilitative Actions Actions cannot change social structures. Therefore, it is misleading to say that children’s actions that show their agency can change social structures. It is also misleading to suggest that facilitators’ actions can change social structures, including the structure of facilitation. Social structures can only be changed by the facilitation system if this system is established in society or in specific systems, such as education. It is the facilitation system that can change the structure of education. Meanwhile, agency plays an important role in structural change since it is produced in the facilitation system. The list that follows details combinations of facilitative actions and children’s agency that make the facilitation system evident. It is not my intention to suggest that these actions can change social structures or that agency can change social structures. 1. Encouragements of children’s agency can be based on open questions, closed questions, and minimal invitations to take the floor to children who ask to talk. Different forms of encouragement differently affect children’s agency. The upgrading of children’s epistemic authority increases from closed questions to open questions to invitations to take the floor. Agency is shown by children’s initiatives in which they ask to talk and by children’s expanded narratives, which frequently emerge as responses to facilitators’ open questions.

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Expanded narratives express children’s agency as the elicitation of narratives. When facilitation works as conflict mediation, circular questioning can encourage children to express their points of view and tell their experiences in conflictive situations. Circular questioning can prevent labeling and the construction of negative identities by encouraging plural contributions to narratives about conflict. 2. Minimal facilitation is based on minimal responses to children’s contributions and the enhancement of children’s autonomous coordination. Minimal facilitation enhances children’s agency as the elicitation of plural and interlaced narratives, without facilitators’ co-telling. Minimal facilitation upgrades children’s epistemic authority in the most evident way by enhancing the fluid dialogic production of children’s contributions and narratives. The autonomous coordination of interactions by children is the most radical version of minimal facilitation. However, minimal facilitation requires children to be very interested in expressing points of view and narrating and to be proficient in the dominant language in the interaction. On the contrary, minimal facilitation may fail when children are disinterested or unable to contribute to the interaction and elicit narratives (Baraldi and Ballestri 2021). 3. Gist formulations can take children’s perspectives and support children’s agency. Gist formulations are very powerful ways to show attention and support. Interestingly, even when they fail to reiterate the child’s perspective correctly, they still enhance the child’s agency by giving the child the opportunity to reject the facilitator’s interpretation. Gist formulations can be followed by children’s expanded narratives, which more clearly show their autonomous production of knowledge than responding to questions. Thus, the production of agency is more evident when it is supported by gist formulations than when it is encouraged by questions. Support of expanded narratives is more evident when formulations develop previous narratives rather than when they clarify previous narratives. Formulations as developments (1) continue narratives more effectively and (2) are more risky interpretations; therefore, they can more easily elicit children’s rejections or further comments. Formulations as developments are also useful for mediating conflicts among children, while formulations that make children’s points of view explicit are more useful for clarifying the meanings of conflicts. Finally, gist formulations can be used in language mediation as a way of enhancing chil-

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dren’s points of view. However, when insistent and repeated, gist formulations can highlight some difficulties of fluidity in the facilitated interactions. 4. Comments are upshot formulations that can be provided either in specific turns or in the same turn with other actions. Comments can have different functions: they can be appreciations, they can stress specific important aspects of children’s contributions or narratives, and they can create displacements. In particular, comments as displacements show that facilitation is open to unpredictable, surprising, and unusual contributions, encouraging children to dare. Upshot formulations count on children’s personal interests in following comments with other comments or stories; they are not supportive as gist formulations. 5. Appreciations are comments that are frequently combined with formulations and other types of comments. If isolated, appreciations can be interpreted by children as selective positive evaluations, evoking child-centered teaching (Chap. 2); meanwhile, when combined with gist or upshot formulations, their effect of recalling evaluations is reduced. Appreciations do not enhance or support children’s agency; they confirm it. However, they do not significantly upgrade children’s epistemic authority. 6. Through their personal stories, facilitators can share experiences, emotions, and views with children, thus creating favorable conditions sensitive to the production of children’s agency. Personal stories involve facilitators’ personal expressions; this gives children an opportunity to appreciate the facilitator’s contribution without the facilitator directing the children to support their expression. However, as for comments, personal stories count on children’s personal interest in providing other personal stories. The combination of these facilitative actions and ways of producing children’s agency shows the hybrid form of the facilitation system and the variety of ways in which reflexive coordination can be realized. Reflexive coordination can also lead to coordination of reflection, through co-­ constructions of the meaning of the structure of facilitation. Coordination of reflection is not necessarily based on children’s initiatives—children can interpret their own initiatives as undue evaluations of facilitators’ actions. Thus, children’s contributions to reflection need encouragement and support.

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1.2   A Brief Review of “Children’s Agency” Although agency does not change social structures, its interactional production is important since children can actively contribute to the facilitation system. Children’s agency in the production of knowledge is shown by their personal expressions about their own points of view, experiences, and emotions, through telling or eliciting narratives. Below, I outline eight general elements of the production of children’s agency: 1. Encouraging a child to autonomously coordinate the interaction is the most important way of producing their agency; this can be done through a radical approach to minimal facilitation, in which the facilitator all but disappears from the interaction. 2. A child’s elicitation of narratives about personal experiences is based on his or her initiatives and narrative expansions. 3. A child’s expressions of his or her own points of view, proposals, and decisions are important in both autonomous coordination and the elicitation of narratives. 4. Rejections of a facilitator’s actions show a clear change in the trajectory of the facilitated interaction. Conflicts extend rejection to other children’s actions, amplifying its effects. 5. Narrative expansions show children’s agency as a response to questions or formulations. 6. Emotional expressions of agency are less frequent and need facilitators’ perspective-taking and support based on gist formulations. 7. The production of children’s agency is not always combined with the production of narratives; children’s initiatives and rejections do not necessarily shift narratives. 8. The production of children’s agency does not always promote dialogue between children since new narratives and previous narratives may misalign rather than interlace. 1.3   Are There Specific Forms of Facilitation? The results of Project 9 suggest the production of three forms of the facilitation system. First, the form of minimal facilitation can be employed to enhance children’s autonomous participation in the interaction by listening to their contributions and inviting them to contribute. Second, the form of multivariate facilitation that includes a variety of enhancing and

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supporting actions, provided in different turns of talk; in particular, it includes the combination of frequent questions and formulations enriched through minimal responses and a few comments and personal stories. Ultimately, this approach encourages significant co-construction based on the interlaced contributions of the facilitators and children. Third, the form of complex turn-designed facilitation that is based on a variety of supporting and enhancing actions, especially formulations, comments, personal stories, and appreciations, which are combined in single turns of talk. Comments and appreciations are much more frequent in this third form than in the second form; this evidences that the facilitators engage the children in ways that support their stories even when the facilitators’ turns are long and articulated. Notably, this form of facilitation enhances the interlacement of different narratives. These three forms of facilitation can also be produced during the same facilitated interaction/meeting. It is the combination of these three forms that produces the hybrid facilitation system. Although this differentiation may be useful, it cannot be generalized. The facilitation system is more complex than these forms can capture and this book cannot exhaustively determine all forms of facilitation. What can be said is that these forms of facilitation can be produced across ages and organizations. For instance, the most complex multivariate form of facilitation observed in Chap. 6 was recorded in a nursery school. 1.4   The Complexity of Facilitation The paradox of facilitation (Chap. 4) is clearly shown by the importance of the facilitator’s actions in encouraging, enhancing, and supporting the interactional production of children’s agency. The analyses in Chaps. 6–9 show that this paradox can be used to produce the conditions of children’s agency. The general function of the facilitation system is encouraging, enhancing, and supporting children’s agency as the production of knowledge through personal expressions. However, the facilitation system can have other, more specific functions and its complexity depends on the mix of these functions. More specifically, these functions include: . Inviting children’s autonomous initiatives and coordination. 1 2. Producing cultural hybridity based on narratives about children’s personal cultural trajectories. 3. Managing conflicts among children.

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The facilitation system can hinder or dissolve the paradox of facilitation. On the one hand, the paradox can be hindered through the production of the hybrid facilitation system, rather than only insisting, for instance, on questions and/or formulations, which promotes narrative expansions, initiatives, rejections, and conflict mediation. On the other hand, the paradox can be dissolved when children’s epistemic authority clearly prevails, that is, when children demonstrate autonomous coordination. The conditions in which the paradox can be hindered or dissolved are selective and need further investigation.

2   Facilitation and Education The central question in this book is whether the education system is compatible with the facilitation system. This question received a skeptical answer in Chap. 4 since the facilitation system cannot legitimize the conveyance of learning as the fundamental structure of the education system. This answer is confirmed by the fact that limitations of facilitation (Chap. 10) coincide with its educational drift. These limitations show how the facilitator’s conveyance of knowledge and evaluations can repress or at least discourage children’s agency. Above all, these limitations are based on facilitators labeling children’s agency as deviant when it is expressed in ways that disrupt the facilitation of narratives (e.g., initiatives or noisy behaviors). This labeling is paradoxical: it hinders children’s agency to save children’s agency. Notably, this labeling evidences the facilitator’s conveyance of knowledge and negative evaluation of its production. The educational drift of the facilitation system is also produced in other situations not included in this book for sake of brevity, such as upshot formulations that close conversations (“so to conclude” or “to sum up”) or through questions that offer children a preferred (or dispreferred) answer (“do you agree on,” “don’t you think that”). Even the facilitator’s comments and personal stories can be risky if they stand to upgrade the facilitator’s epistemic authority at the expense of the children’s epistemic authority, especially if facilitative turns are long and complex and combine personal stories and comments with questions and gist formulations. This book did not aim to detail failed facilitations; however, it does suggest that when such a failure occurs the function and structures of the facilitation system get lost and a simulated form of teaching takes the floor. This clearly suggests that there are problems involved in trying to merge facilitation and education.

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Can facilitation be considered a particular and progressive version of education or a new form of communication that is incompatible with the education system and its historical social function of transforming individual psychic systems in persons through learning? In other terms, the question is if the facilitation system can introduce structural change in the education system. Answering this question will illuminate the possible future of both education and facilitation in society. Notably, answering this question does not mean defining what is better or worse for children and society, but understanding whether or when different ways of signifying children’s actions—agency and learning—may work in the education system. In the facilitation system, learning can only be based on children’s production of knowledge, which highlights children’s agency, rather than adults’ conveyance of knowledge. Facilitation enhances and supports children’s rights and responsibilities in producing their learning through their unpredictable actions. For instance, Project 4 showed how the facilitation of international activities can help children understand the value of cosmopolitanism. Project 8 showed that the facilitated construction of children’s narratives about risky actions can inform children about how one’s individual actions may affect others’ experiences and actions. Project 9 showed that facilitation can impart the importance of dialogue and narratives in the classroom. Project 10 showed that the facilitated construction of children’s narratives about personal experiences during a COVID-19 pandemic lockdown can help children learn about the consequences of the pandemic. By renouncing the hierarchical structure of epistemic authority, the facilitation system can enable alternative narratives to existing ones, especially existing narratives in which children are considered incompetent and unreliable and consequently subjugated or excluded. Thus, the facilitation system can dissolve long-standing assumptions about children. This form of learning cannot be evaluated by teachers or facilitators; however, they can observe it as an expression of children’s production of knowledge as learning about the rights and responsibilities related to this production. Shifting “education” to “facilitation” means refusing to control learning by conveying knowledge and evaluating it. This is a radical change in the structure of interaction, which seems to be very difficult to carry out in schools. International organizations, such as CISV or Monte Sole Peace School, may be ready for this change, but they must still renounce predefined methods and boundaries of facilitation to actually realize it.

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The difficulties involved in changing structure also explain why it can be hard to identify the professional profile of facilitators. Facilitators can be teachers, they can work with teachers in schools, and they can work autonomously (e.g., in international organizations). Project 10 revealed that teachers facilitating classroom interactions often face limitations. In general, when teachers act effectively as facilitators, they need to change the organizational context of their actions (i.e., class or school), as in the case of MNR, which involves facilitating dialogue and children’s agency in classroom workshops, as analyzed in Projects 8 and 10. It is extremely difficult for teachers to promote facilitated interactions with children who are used to their teaching. Moreover, teachers and facilitators rarely seem to work together; in general, teachers rather passively support facilitators’ interventions. Teachers can be expected to learn from facilitation, but this is difficult if they do not directly experience facilitation. Autonomous facilitation requires expertise in facilitating children’s agency; the different results in Project 2, which only involved experienced facilitators, and Project 4, in which most facilitators were not experienced, show that facilitators are not systematically trained to develop such expertise. Against this background, the system of facilitation is rarely directly organized and realized by schools or teachers but instead by agencies external to schools. The association of teachers that implemented the MNR could work with several schools. However, similar associations have limited resources of time and personnel. Facilitation initiatives can be more easily implemented outside of school at the local (e.g., Monte Sole Peace School or specific NGOs), national (e.g., Save the Children), or international (e.g., CISV) levels. However, the challenge is still organizing a system of facilitation, rather than specific initiatives. At the local level, a bottom-up method may enhance networks that merge facilitation initiatives. However, this does not seem possible at the national and international levels. In general, what has not (yet?) been created is political support for the facilitation system. Existing problems in merging facilitation and education were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, which will probably last well after its conclusion. The pandemic has worsened the already very difficult organizational context for facilitation. If strongly supported, facilitation can still promote innovation in schools, including experimentation with digital platforms (as in Project 10). However, with the pandemic, facilitation can be much more easily dismissed in schools since it can be considered much less important than teaching, especially when teaching is

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menaced by interruptions and difficult conditions. International organizations may also be discouraged from implementing facilitation if they face difficulties gathering children from different, sometimes very distant, places. Thus, the simultaneous breakdown of facilitation and agency is possible, if not probable.

3  Implementing the Facilitation System Despite the difficulties underlined in Sect. 2, the overwhelming weight of education in a child’s life should discourage a simple interpretation of education as the conveyance and evaluation of learning. Rather, education could be conceived as the most important social context in which a child may exercise their agency and how to best facilitate children’s agency in the education system should be seen as a basic contemporary social problem. Recently, there have been calls in Europe to involve children in planning post-pandemic scenarios (e.g., CERV call 2021) and democratic education (e.g., Horizon Europe call 2022). This trend encourages us to consider how we may best enhance the facilitation system in the education system. Below, I outline some ways in which facilitation may be integrated into education, namely, the realization of facilitation and the formation (training) of facilitators. The European projects (Projects 9 and 10) provided final detailed guidelines and training plans to facilitate children’s agency. This section does not aim to reproduce these guidelines and training plans—this ambition is beyond the objectives of this book and, more importantly, this book aims to reflect on planning as a process as a premise of any specific plan. 3.1  Realization Knowledge of the methodology of facilitation can enhance the realization of an efficient and effective hybrid facilitation system supported by guidelines. This realization requires a moment-by-moment choice of objectives and actions during facilitated meetings or workshops. Facilitators need to give up any desires to direct the facilitated interaction and define its objectives. First, the children should appreciate the choice of objectives—this may seem obvious, but children are rarely consulted about their interests, and facilitators and teachers rarely base their decisions on children’s expressed needs or interests.

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Second, facilitation can be effective if it is based on structural flexibility in different phases, in different meetings/workshops, in different organizations, or with different participants. “Structural flexibility” means that facilitation is attuned to specific conditions and specific communication processes. Structural flexibility enhances and supports fluid communication processes based on expectations of unpredictable personal expressions. The abstract value of facilitation is a serious obstacle to structural flexibility: facilitation needs a moment-by-moment application to the interaction based on systematic adaptation to the changing conditions and communication process. Structural flexibility means paying systematic attention to hindering or dissolving the paradox of facilitation. In particular, structural flexibility means careful consideration of children’s personal expressions in “critical moments” (Putnam 2004), that is, it means being sensitive to children’s possible deviations and conflictive positioning. Structural flexibility is particularly important in delicate situations in which children’s emotions are expressed in the facilitated interaction. Emotions are the most delicate— and infrequent—way of producing agency in the facilitation system. While points of view and narratives about experiences can be rather easily enhanced and supported, emotions require facilitators to build trust and respond to affect and therefore require the facilitator to flexibly welcome any form of agency. Guidelines for facilitators should clearly emphasize and delineate structural flexibility; additionally, delineations of structural flexibility should include examples of facilitated interactions. 3.2  Training Facilitator training can be based on methodological guidelines for using materials, coordinating meetings, and evaluating their outcomes. The use of video records and transcribed materials is the first pillar of effective training. The method of selecting materials must be adapted to the type of training (e.g., general facilitation, conflict mediation through facilitation, intercultural forms of facilitation) and participants (e.g., teachers, professional facilitators, students learning facilitation). The use of materials can be based on a wide corpus of recorded facilitated interactions, which makes training sufficiently complex and generalizable. The use of materials must cohere with the facilitation system. Training must include both (1) the autonomous coordination of small groups responsible for analyzing sequences of facilitated interactions to propose

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possible developments and (2) the trainer’s facilitation of presentations and explanations of the groups’ choices when confronted with the facilitators’ choices in the analyzed interactions. This method affirms the need for a facilitation system to be structurally flexible, that is, to be able to identify its own problems and potential. Group work, presentations, and discussions can be repeated several times until there is no time left or the training has been completed. Thus, training is based on facilitation and involves giving space to small groups to allow them to autonomously coordinate themselves, on the one hand, and avoiding instructions or teaching correct solutions, on the other. Facilitation can enhance and support trainees’ agency in finding their own ways of interpreting facilitated interactions. Here, training is not based on the paradox of teaching facilitation, that is, to teach what is not teaching, but on the facilitation of agency, dialogue, and new and unpredictable narratives. Through this type of training, trainers can discover interesting new aspects of facilitation. Finally, evaluating training outcomes does not mean testing the trainees’ knowledge or satisfaction, but instead asking them for feedback on the ways in which reflexive coordination and the coordination of reflection were realized during the training. This feedback cannot be based on questionnaires or interviews; it requires a meta-reflexive procedure that invites the participants to coordinate their reflections on the facilitation of the training. This feedback roots the trainees’ learning in their production of knowledge, rather than in the facilitators’ conveyance of knowledge.

4   Future Lines of Research As Chap. 1 states, research is a never-ending story. However, it is always possible to sketch a direction for its development. The research presented in this book could be developed along eight lines. 1. This research could be extended to different national settings. The attempt to extend it to six countries (beyond Italy) during Project 10, which took place in Europe, partially failed for two reasons: several research partners choose to investigate regular teaching interactions that promised to support children’s agency but evidenced serious gaps between intentions and practices, and in some countries, the pandemic prevented the planned recording of several interactions; thus, a comparative research program on facilitation is still on the table.

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2. This research could be extended beyond education to analyze forms of facilitation in communities and political settings. A new European project, which started at the beginning of 2022, took a step in this direction by exploring facilitation in “policy labs”—facilitated ­workshops based on equal participation in which members of local administrations and stakeholders, including migrant adolescents and local organizations, discuss and implement new policies to support migrant adolescents. 3. Future studies may further explore facilitation as conflict mediation. This area has received little scholarly attention. Facilitators urgently need to understand how facilitation can improve effective conflict mediation. 4. Future studies may further explore facilitation as the production of emotions. This way of producing agency is much less frequently explored than the facilitation of agency as the production of points of view and narratives about experiences. When the emotional side of agency, as the production of knowledge, is shown, facilitators seem to seriously struggle to deal with it; thus, it is important to understand how to effectively facilitate emotional expressions. 5. Future studies may further explore facilitation in conditions in which children demonstrate low or very low proficiency in the dominant language in the interaction. Language barriers are one of the most important obstacles in facilitation; poor understanding is the basic aspect that undermines facilitation. Therefore, scholars would do well to determine how to facilitate interactions in which children are not able to understand and/or express themselves. 6. Future studies may further explore the facilitation of personal cultural trajectories and hybrid identities. It does not seem easy to involve many migrant children in interactions and to focus on cultural issues without labeling these children. Finding effective ways to facilitate migrant children’s agency in a “multicultural” classroom or group is another important challenge for facilitation. 7. Future studies may further explore the use of digital platforms to enhance creative methods of facilitation. After the breakdown in in-­ person sociality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this has become one of the most important issues for facilitation and thus for research on facilitation. The combination of agency and the use of digital platforms is an important and difficult challenge not only for media studies (Chap. 2), but also for childhood studies.

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All future research projects should focus on creative ways of enhancing and realizing facilitation. Researchers and facilitators can work together to create new approaches to facilitation and research. It is particularly important to continue to explore the potential of the facilitation system for situating children as agents with different functions in different situations. 8. Finally, ambitious scholars may contribute to this field by studying facilitation beyond childhood, as a more general method that can be experimented with in any form of participated planning or decision-­ making, such as organizational meetings (e.g., Baraldi 2013). This research program should focus on conceptualizing facilitation beyond standardized recommendations, such as those provided by the International Association of Facilitators (see https://www.iaf-­ world.org/site).

5   The Relevance of Agency Several recent studies show that SC is shifting its focus from a critique of the education system to a critique of the concept of children’s agency, which it figures as rooted in “neoliberal” values of choice and autonomy (Chap. 1). The positive side of the proposed distinction is the “relational” concept of children’s agency. The concept of relation is rather freely interpreted, since the priority is disrupting neoliberalism through critical theory, rather than rigorously defining children’s agency through relations. There was a time, in the 1960s, when choice and autonomy were narrated as positive values against the negative value of liberalism, which was accused to hide the oppression of privileged people, especially white heterosexual men. Today, prevailing critical approaches suggest it is more relevant to analyze social relations that involve children, whatever they mean, rather than the construction of communicative conditions in which children can autonomously choose their actions. This book proposes the alternative view that by encouraging, enhancing, and supporting children’s agency, a system of facilitation can show how society can be attentive to personal rights and responsibilities related to knowledge production during what is generally considered “the age of learning.” The growing interest in life-long learning—a concept still rooted in ideologies of education based on the child—entraps people in long-term projects that assume the learner’s subordination to conveyance

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and evaluation and that situate learners as competitors who must outdo each other to increase their returns on their education. We must change our perspective and take seriously our personal responsibilities in producing knowledge and thus in introducing structural flexibility in society. The worldwide disaster of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that top-down decisions do not work in any political system. Against the risk of social rebellion based on narratives of freedom, generalizing “agency” as a mix of rights and responsibilities produced in dialogic communication systems may yield revolutionary responses to the problems of democracy. Generalizing agency in dialogic communication systems is not just a Western problem, and it is not just a neoliberal trend.

References Baraldi, C. (2013). Forms of decision-making: gatekeeping and dialogic coordination in CISC organizational meetings. Journal of Business Communication, 50(4), 339-361. Baraldi. C. & Ballestri, C. (2021). Improving pedagogical work: Evaluation. In C. Baraldi, E. Joslyn & F. Farini (Eds.), Promoting Children’s Rights in European Schools: Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitative Pedagogy (pp. 153-172). London: Bloomsbury. Putnam, L. (2004). Transformations and critical moments in negotiations. Negotiation Journal, 20(2), 275-295.

Index

A Agency, 2–6, 8–18, 21–25, 245, 254–255 constraints of children’s agency, 10, 14–15, 21–24 repression of deviant agency, 233–237 tactical agency, 14–17, 22 thin agency, 14–16, 22 Alanen, Leena, 8–10, 21 C Chain of actions, 17–19, 23, 80, 98 Change, 2–4, 10, 14–16, 20–25, 27, 49–51, 57–58, 68–75, 84–85, 150, 169, 242, 245, 248, 249 Child-centered education, 47–52, 57, 58, 71, 86, 244 Children’s initiatives, 22, 72, 75, 143, 150, 151, 153, 155–157, 169, 196, 210, 238, 242, 244–247 children’s coordination, 169, 243–247

Comments (facilitative), 80, 116, 134–140, 145, 146, 175, 242–244 Communication, 2–4, 17, 18, 55 classroom, 52–54, 85 system(s), 17–27, 49, 57, 68–79, 82, 83, 87, 242, 255 Conflict management, 72, 77–79, 229, 239 conflict mediation, 6, 79, 109, 196–198, 203–218, 243, 247, 251–253 conflict production, 197–203 Conversation Analysis, 18, 99–100 Conveyance, 42–46, 49, 50, 52, 56–57, 70, 76–78, 85–86, 247, 248, 250, 252, 254–255 Coordination of reflection, 83, 140, 143, 146, 244 Culture(s), 54–55, 68, 84, 172 cultural differences, 53–54, 84, 172, 192, 198 cultural identity, 54–56, 83, 172–177, 180–187 small culture(s), 83–84, 172

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Baraldi, Facilitating Children’s Agency in the Interaction, Studies in Childhood and Youth, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09978-6

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D Dialogue, 48, 79–81, 238, 239, 245, 248, 249, 252 dialogic system, 79–81 empowerment, 80 equality, 45, 76, 77, 80, 86, 138, 145, 169, 222 sensitivity, 80 Displacements, 138–140, 244 E Early childhood, 49, 68, 146 Education system, 2–5, 18–21, 25–27, 40–57, 69–72, 74–78, 81, 85–87, 98, 247, 248, 250, 254 Essentialism, 12, 54–56 Evaluation, 41–44, 76, 86, 100, 107, 247, 250, 255 Expectations, 20–21, 25–26, 42, 44, 53, 76–79, 83, 138, 139, 251 affective expectations, 70–71, 76–78, 197, 217–218, 239 normative expectations, 21–23, 222–231, 233, 234, 238, 239 F Facilitated interaction, 74–76, 78, 82, 85, 86, 109–110, 116–117, 126, 143, 146, 150, 153, 193, 197, 222, 239, 244–246, 249–252 Facilitation, 51, 72–77, 80, 82–85, 116, 169, 238, 239, 245–246 and education, 247–250 as encouragement, 117–120 form(s) of, 158, 245–246, 251, 253 hybrid, 117, 143–146, 246, 247, 250 minimal facilitation, 120–130

as support, 126–134 system, 76–87, 116–117, 145, 146, 150, 153, 172, 238, 239, 242–244, 250–252 Facilitative actions, 75, 80–82, 116–117, 134, 138, 139, 145, 146, 217, 239, 244 Formulation(s), 116–117, 126–134, 138, 146, 192, 197, 198, 203, 217, 218, 222, 243–247 G Gender, 24, 45–47, 102, 146, 198 Giddens, Anthony, 2, 8–9, 70, 77, 78 H Heritage, John, 18, 21, 99–100, 116, 197 Holliday, Adrian, 55, 83, 84 Hybridity, 83–84, 109, 172, 175–180, 193, 246, 253 I Inequality, 13–17, 24, 44, 86, 146, 222–229 Interaction system, 18–19, 25, 41, 52, 68, 71, 74, 85, 96–102 Intercultural communication, 53–55, 83–84, 230 Intercultural education, 54, 56, 83 J James, Allison, 8–13, 40, 45, 68

 INDEX 

L Language barriers, 55–57, 187–192, 253 Language mediation, 55, 84, 85, 172, 190, 193, 243 Language use, 44, 48, 55, 79, 97 Learning, 3, 20, 25, 42–47, 69–72, 76–77, 85–86, 247, 248, 250–252, 254 Luhmann, Niklas, 9, 17–23, 98, 196 M Marginalization, 13–16, 24, 40, 55, 86 Media system, 25–26 Methodology, 96–100, 109 Minimal responses, 14, 116, 120, 121, 127, 130, 134, 150, 243, 246 N Narratives, 75, 83–85, 109, 110, 172, 177, 192, 193, 242–246 alternative narratives, 203, 205, 217, 248 metanarratives, 8, 21–26, 49, 54–55, 70, 74, 75, 86 ontological narratives, 75 Negative assessments, 229–233 O Oswell, David, 8–13, 42, 50–51 P Pandemic, 3, 5, 57–58, 70, 75, 108–109, 123, 161, 248, 249, 252–254

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Participation, 9–12, 14, 16–19, 21, 22, 24–26, 41–43, 47–53, 57–58, 72 Persons, 3, 20, 21, 23, 40–41, 45, 52, 53, 57, 69–72, 76, 77, 83, 86, 248 personal cultural trajectories, 83–84, 192, 193 personal expressions, 2–3, 23–25, 53, 68–80, 83–86, 108, 109, 166, 169, 197, 222, 223, 239, 244–246, 250–251 personal (facilitative) storytelling, 134–140 Perspective-taking (facilitative), 80, 126–134, 192, 245 Positioning, 2, 19–21, 23, 40, 43, 51–53, 69–72, 74–78, 83, 97, 98, 108, 145, 223, 238, 251 Prout, Alan, 8–9, 17, 40 R Reflexive coordination, 81–83, 116, 117, 140, 146, 244, 252 Role(s), 19–21, 45, 51–53, 69–72, 74–78, 86, 102 S Second order observation, 96–100, 109–110 Social constructionism, 12–13 Socialization, 9, 14, 16, 21, 22, 41, 45, 46, 52 Social systems theory (SST), 2, 17, 18, 41, 100 Sociology of childhood (SC), 2, 8–16, 40

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Structure(s), 2–4, 8–10, 14, 16, 19–26, 40–47, 50–58, 71, 75–77, 79–81, 85, 98–100, 146, 196, 242, 244, 245, 247–249 T Teaching interaction, 40–44, 46–58, 252 Training, 251–252 Transformative relaying, reframing, 197, 198, 203, 217 Trust, 77–79, 130, 169, 197, 203–205, 217–218, 251

U Unpredictability, 8–9, 22–26, 45, 52–57, 71–72, 74–81, 83, 85, 86, 99, 138, 139, 146, 150, 153, 239, 244, 248, 251, 252 V Video recording, 4, 97–103, 108–109 W Winslade, John, 19, 21, 72, 79, 196–197