Abstract
School Age Care is a setting that is little researched and the research that has been conducted has not often sought the perspectives of older children. This article describes a participatory and ethnographic research project that sought a deeper insight into older children’s experiences of an Australian School Age Care setting, seeking their views about how to successfully program for other children their age. Older children in School Age Care are commonly spoken of as rebellious, bored, disruptive and unsuited to School Age Care. The Foucauldian theories underpinning the research challenged the normative developmental discourses that circulate School Age Care. The research shows that older children have access to these developmental and maturational discourses. The participants actively engaged with language, architecture and resources in the School Age Care setting to actively construct themselves as a more mature, distinct category of child. The findings suggest that School Age Care practitioners should be aware of how developmental discourses are both enacted by children and reinforced through programming design and consider the impacts of segregating routines and practices on children’s play and leisure. While this research does not ‘solve’ the question of older children in School Age Care, it unsettles dominant understandings, therefore inviting practitioners to imagine new programming approaches that might improve School Age Care for older children.
Introducing the older child in School Age Care
There is a rarely questioned truth in Australian School Age Care (SAC), that the oldest children who receive care in such settings are especially difficult to care for (Hurst, 2015). In the few available SAC texts, older children (those aged around 9 to 12 years) are often described as ‘too old’, rebellious, unsuited to and uninterested in the programmes provided (Kennedy and Stonehouse, 2004; Longobardi, 2001). In Australian SAC, older children are a minority and approximately half as likely to attend SAC as children aged 5 to 8 years. While a minority, there were still 105,600 older Australian children per day in SAC in 2014 (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2015). As a SAC practitioner and researcher, I have often questioned the assumption that older children are inherently problematic, and wondered whether there are other more successful ways to understand and work with this age group. This article introduces a recent research project conducted in an Australian SAC setting that investigated what is important to older children in providing SAC. This participatory and ethnographic research project sought to unsettle dominant discourses about older children in SAC first by seeking a deeper understanding of the experiences of older children, and second by theorising the research setting post-structurally.
SAC is an important institution that provides care, education and leisure for primary school aged children (age 5 to 12 years) in the hours before and after school and during school vacations. The number and proportion of children using SAC has increased steadily over the last two decades. Attendances have grown from approximately 85,800 Australian children attending SAC in 1993 to 398,730 in 2015 (ABS, 1994; Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2016). Despite its importance, SAC is rarely the subject of research (Cartmel and Grieshaber, 2014; Cartmel and Hayes, 2016; Simoncini et al., 2015). It is therefore not as well understood as other institutions like schools and early childhood education and care settings.
Australian SAC is commonly provided at, or close to, primary schools. It can be delivered by a range of providers including schools, corporate entities, local governments and community organisations (Cartmel and Grieshaber, 2014). Australia is not the only country to provide SAC. There are similar services in locations including the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany and Switzerland. The purpose assigned to SAC can differ across locations. While in Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe, SAC is broadly conceptualised as a child-directed care and leisure setting, in locations like Canada and the United States, it can also be purposed with providing educational support (Hurst, 2017).
Given the limited amount of SAC research, it is unsurprising that there is even less dedicated specifically to programming for older children. There have only been two other research projects focused on older children in Australian SAC. Gifford (1991) employed surveys and observations to report that only 8% of older boys and 11% of older girls want to attend SAC. Children cited boredom, influence over programming decisions and the presence of younger children as negative aspects of SAC. Parents also had mixed views with 52.3% believing that SAC was only ‘somewhat suitable’ for older children. However, it is important to acknowledge that the study is 26 years old and models of SAC delivery have likely changed. In another small, participatory project Hurst (2015) drew attention to the minority status of older children and its implications for programming. While the sample was small and findings not generalisable, the research demonstrated that many older children in the project were poorly served by programming strategies that privileged children aged 5 to 8 years. These participants experienced SAC settings dominated by resources and activities that lacked challenge and were more suited to much younger children.
Programming for this age group is addressed briefly in a range of research and professional development publications that reflect a variety of theoretical positionings. Kennedy and Stonehouse (2004) and Elliott (1998), both regard programming as a function of development, arguing for programming that reflects older children’s advanced physical and cognitive capabilities. Other researchers surveyed children to identify their preferred activities. Maheux (1998) believed that older Canadian children enjoy sports, excursions and computers. Audain et al. (2006) propose that Scottish children prefer sports, meals, pool, darts, air hockey and active games. However, the predetermined activity choices in these studies raise questions about how accurately their data represents children’s opinions.
The varied sources cited thus far provide some hints but nothing conclusive about how to provide SAC for older children. Few of these sources provide a deeper, theoretical exploration of why suggested activities might be important to older children beyond attending to their assumed maturity. The research described in the remainder of this article approaches the question differently. It draws on Foucauldian theories of power and knowledge, a theoretical paradigm little applied in SAC research, and certainly that relating to older children.
Conceptualising School Age Care post-structurally
Historically, developmental concepts of childhood are a dominant way of conceptualising children and pedagogy in Australian SAC (Hurst, 2017). They belong to the modernist school of theories that aim to reveal universal laws, in particular those that govern child development and establish developmental norms against which children can be measured (Rose, 1985). When conceptualised developmentally, SAC is an organised, regulated space where older children are presumed to respond predictably to practitioners’ programming strategies. Successful programming is expected to result in docile, engaged children whereas unsuccessful programming can be deemed a consequence of failed practitioner, parent or child (Burman, 2008; Cannella, 2008). Despite its aspirations, developmental approaches to programming have so far failed to find a universal ‘answer’ to the question of how to program for older children.
This research drew on a different knowledge tradition, one founded on the theories of Michel Foucault. Foucault (Cited in Gordon, 1994) asserts that it is the task of researchers to trouble that which is taken for granted. With this research, I wanted to question the taken for granted assumption in Australian SAC that because of their age, older children are inherently problematic, something that did not align with my own experiences. Foucault’s (1980) assertion that truth is not universal but instead contextual and a product of politics, discourse and the application of power resonated with my emerging knowledge of the research topic. It provided possibilities for understanding the contradictory ways in which older children are conceptualised. Despite their problematic reputation in SAC, 9 to 12 year olds are conceptualised as generally benign in other disciplines (Hurst, 2017). Foucault’s theories allowed me to contemplate that the truth of the difficult older child might emerge from the histories, politics and applications of power unique to SAC in Australia.
Under a Foucauldian conception, the relationship between children and SAC practices become more complex. The speech and actions of adult and child would be governed by the perception of surveillance in relation to multiple, normative discourses that circulate cultures and social institutions, (Foucault, 1977). In SAC, it is reasonable to expect that governing discourses will include developmental norms, which are pervasive in their influence on children’s institutions (Cannella, 2008) and also other discourses of gender and professionalism that are well documented in their influence in young children’s settings (MacNaughton, 2000; Osgood, 2006). Practitioners’ programming and their interactions with children and each other emerge from internalised desires to reproduce shared understandings of professionalism and what is deemed appropriate for different age and gender categories. Rather than docile and predictable, children’s engagement with curriculum practices become applications of power that are multiple and complex. While they might act on similar, internalised norms, children’s engagement with pedagogies might be expected to shift in relation to changes in a range of complexities like physical settings, peers, practitioners, audience, weather and events outside the SAC setting.
Power, discourse and surveillance do more than influence conduct; they also produce knowledge (Foucault, 1980). When seen through a Foucauldian lens, SAC becomes a site where child and adult participate in the production of social categories like professional, adult, child, older child, younger child, boy and girl. The knowledge they produce is not a simple reproduction of existing categories and roles. The individualised and contextual nature of their engagement with dominant discourses means that categories are continually renegotiated and reiterated. The post-structural theorization presented in this article allows me to see SAC differently as a space where unique social categories are formed and adult and child are complicit in the production of social truths about themselves and others.
Method
In order to capture the complex power and social relations that are a feature of Foucault’s theory, this research adopted a qualitative methodology. This study employed a combination of participatory and ethnographic methods at a single research site, Banksia Gully, a SAC service in the outer, Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. A small sample of 10 children aged 10 to 12 years who attend SAC was chosen on the basis that it would produce rich data from a small population (Patton, 2002). Participants were each assigned a pseudonym to make identification less likely. Banksia Gully was selected on the basis that of the available services, it seemed most representative of a ‘typical’ Australian SAC service and therefore more representative of the general population (Patton, 2002). However, it is important to acknowledge the subjective nature of this judgement and also the limitations it places on any claims to producing generalisable knowledge.
The research took place for over 6 months. The participatory component was informed by the Mosaic Approach (Clark and Moss, 2001) and also Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which asserts that children have the right to form and express a view about matters of importance to them (United Nations, 1989). It was approached as a form of research
During the project work, I also functioned as an ethnographer, recording observations about participants’ experiences of Banksia Gully. Many observations focused on critical events relating to the research topic. Some were isolated events that seemed indicative of a particular failure or success in programming for older children. Such events often felt like a rupture in the normally smooth operation of Banksia Gully (Mannion, 2007). Fujii (2015) describes this as
After completing their projects, each participant engaged in an individual, semistructured interview. Questioning was guided by each participant’s project and observational data, but allowed flexibility to follow any unexpected topics that emerged (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). The questioning aimed to give meaning to the participants’ projects and insight into the motivation behind different elements (Clark, 2011; Dockett et al., 2011; Lundy et al., 2011).
The combination of project work, ethnography and interviews was well suited to this research and its theoretical positioning. Project work gave participants the opportunity to form views about the research question that were then explored during their interview. Ethnography deepened understandings of the research setting and allowed individually targeted interview questions that provided a more critical interrogation of the participants’ accounts. Importantly, the combined methods successfully provided insights into the operations of power in SAC and its role in the production of truths about older children.
Drawing on developmental knowledge to construct the category of older child
This project produced a number of important findings with implications for how to provide SAC for older children. Drawing on the developmental theories that dominate SAC and Western cultures, the behaviours and leisure needs of older children are frequently understood as logical consequences of biology. Theorising post-structurally provides a different understanding. A central finding of this research is that the older children in this project engaged actively with developmental discourses to construct themselves as members of a separate, more mature category of child. This section provides examples of some of the different ways that participants were active in constructing themselves as ‘older’.
Foucault (1980) proposes that individuals have an active relationship with truths. People can recirculate, redefine or resist truths. In the case of developmental theories, institutions and practitioners can enact childhood theories through their planning and practices (MacNaughton, 2005). Children also engage with these theories through institutional practices and conduct themselves in relation to expectations and desires created by these theories and their associated norms.
The project participants actively constructed the category of older child through engaging with developmental concepts. The participants indicated that they were aware of developmental categories, knowledge and standards. They used concepts of maturity and physical and cognitive development to position themselves and younger children at different points along a developmental trajectory.
All participants spoke about themselves as developing subjects. One important way they did this was using the concept of maturity.
In this exchange, Sky, aged 10 to 11 years, explains how she conceptualises maturity as a progression linked to age. She draws upon the idea that as an older child, she is more adult-like and capable of more sophisticated thought. Sky’s belief that older children ‘see things differently’ resembles Piaget’s theories of cognitive development. Piaget regards children as subjects whose cognitive functioning becomes increasingly sophisticated as they age (Berk, 2013). Sky alludes to a belief that she is able to see complexity in the world in a way that younger children cannot. Piaget believed also that cognitive development is not gradual, but instead children progress through stages, and cannot make the leap to the next stage unless they are developmentally ready to do so (Halpenny and Pettersen, 2013). This notion of staged development as a series of leaps is reflected in Sky’s statement. Sky does not seem to consider that a child’s cognition could be partially developed. If you are capable of complex thinking, then you have made the leap to older child. If you have not, then you are still a younger child.
Although Sky used cognitive measures to define maturity, Kevin, aged 10 to 11 years, draws more on physical development.
Kevin’s alignment of maturity with the physical is founded on a desire for strength and power. Adults possess the most of these attributes, making adult the most desired subject position. Strength and power are important in how male children understand development and increasing age. Sport is one way to exhibit strength and therefore is an important way for boys to measure development and masculinity (Swain, 2003). Kevin was a keen and skilled basketball player and often spoke about a desire to play professionally as an adult. Succeeding at sport also provides a measure of physical prowess that helps older children to distinguish themselves from younger children. There is also social status attached to being skilful at sport, particularly for males (Swain, 2003). Kevin’s statement is one example of how the participants’ constructions of older childhood frequently intersected with other discourses, in particular gender. Although Kevin and many of the other boys defined maturity through the physical, the girls often did so through social and cognitive dimensions.
The participants were also able to access developmental knowledge through a number of social and cultural institutions. One particularly important institution was Australia’s media classification ratings system, which uses developmental measures of age and maturity to prescribe guidelines for parents when selecting visual media. ‘G’ classified media are regarded as safe enough to be consumed by all children, regardless of age. Other classifications impose age and maturity restrictions and recommend the guidance and supervision of mature adults (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012).
The media classification system is embedded in Australian cultural life and likely plays an important role in distributing knowledge about age and development. Children are active participants in the classification system. For children with sufficient financial capital, seeing the latest Disney or Pixar films is a common recreational activity in Australia. Films and video games were a regular component of the programme at Banksia Gully. The participants were aware of movie classifications and used it as one criterion for assessing media content. For many, being able to consume more adult-rated material served as marker of their growing maturity. Media classifications provided a governing framework that participants deployed to distinguish younger from older child. G-rated films were mostly described as best for younger children, and participants often complained about the lack of parental guidance (PG)-rated material at SAC.
When speaking about media, participants sometimes enacted their greater maturity by drawing on contemporary Western discourses that construct young children as vulnerable (Cannella, 2008). They argued that younger children might be scared or unable to understand mature content. Participants sometimes argued that younger children could be protected by denying them access to ‘mature’ content, while older children should have privileged, unsupervised access to these materials. In this way, these participants assume the adult role of protector.
In this section, I have described how participants constructed themselves and others using language. The following section details other ways of categorising that go beyond the spoken word.
Discourse and architecture constructing the category of older child
The participants also constructed themselves as older and separate through engagement with architecture. Physical space plays a role in categorising children. The architectural structures of institutional facilities like schools facilitate the distribution of power and the truths they create (Foucault, 1977, 1994). Architecture is also shaped by those same discourses (Murdoch, 2006). An aspect of Banksia Gully that had particular significance for the participants was the ‘5/6 room’, a separate room set aside for older children. Most commonly it was used as a space where older children ate meals, conversed and joked separate from younger children. The discourse of older and younger children as separate categories circulated in and around the 5/6 room. It was evident in the naming of the space as the 5/6 room, which reinforced the discourse that older children are different to other school age children and have unique leisure needs.
Institutional spaces and the discourses that circulate them can also act on the bodies of subjects who inhabit them (Murdoch, 2006). This application of power on children’s bodies was visible in and around the 5/6 room. During meals, older children were rarely outside the 5/6 room. Even after meals, when older children vacated the room younger children stayed out. There was no door isolating the room or a marked boundary. The empty room evidenced how children are active in the production of truths about older and younger children. Younger children complied with service rules and positioned themselves outside the room, separating themselves from their older peers. It demonstrates that truth governs people’s use of their bodies, influencing how they carry and position themselves (Foucault, 1994). Power over children’s bodies was observable during times when older children were in the 5/6 room. Younger children often clustered at the entrance to the room, toeing an invisible line and looking in. Their status as younger required them to organise themselves neatly at the entrance in a way that marked shared understandings of the boundary between the two spaces.
The older participants also engaged in social acts that further marked the distinction between older and younger child. These social acts can be understood as examples of ‘category maintenance work’ (Davies, 2003: 31). Davies uses the term to describe the ways that children in early childhood settings discipline each other to preserve their gender categories. Category maintenance alerts non-normative subjects to their transgressions while also reinforcing the correctness of normative subjects. In the instances described here, the participants engaged in multiple types of aged category maintenance work.
Occasionally, younger children would try to enter the 5/6 room. In these instances, Penny, Kevin, Stephen, Klay and Seamus responded quickly, demanding assertively that younger child leave. Breaches of the boundaries seemed to be a matter of gravity. When younger children refused to comply, participants appealed to the authority of adult practitioners and co-opt them into reinforcing the boundary. These incursions were not always physical. The act of young children gathering at the entrance could result in the loud, verbal sanctioning.
There was a contrast in how practitioners and older children spoke about the 5/6 room. Practitioners referred to it as a ‘privilege’. The participants instead regarded it as a right tied to their greater maturity. In justifying their access to the room, they would draw on developmental discourses.
Kevin states that a 5/6 room is necessary because older children might engage in ‘inappropriate’ conversations that may put younger children at risk. In doing so, Kevin positions himself as a more mature subject who is better able and more entitled to cope with more adult subject matter. Children are able to make sense of themselves through developmental theories (Hauge, 2009). They are aware of their increasing age, the anticipated changes in their development and some of the behaviours that are associated with particular stages of development. In this instance, Kevin likely recognises himself as a subject approaching adolescence and therefore somebody who engages in practices commonly associated with adolescence. He positions himself as a moral threat, therefore aligning himself with the common discourse that adolescents, or in this case, near adolescents represent a moral threat to younger children (Wyn and White, 1997). He argues that the activities of near adolescents, like him, are a risk from which younger children need to be protected.
Penny suggests similarly, that older children are a singular group with shared interests different to those of younger children.
In this exchange, Penny states that children’s leisure interests are a function of age. Categorising and universalising children according to age is one way that Western cultures enact developmental theories (Cannella, 2008). It is therefore unsurprising that Penny desires a separate space populated with activities and games labelled as suitable for older children. The participants were sensitive to age coding and aligned themselves with visual media, sports equipment and board games aimed at older children. They also applied their own age coding to resources like broad and fine tipped markers, even if they were not specifically labelled as ‘younger’ or ‘older’.
Implications for practice in SAC
In Australian SAC, children are commonly conceptualised through a developmental lens with programming strategies often founded on developmental assumptions about their needs and capacities (Hurst, 2017). This research suggests that children might have a different relationship with development. The older children in this study were aware of developmental truths about different age categories and engaged with them in ways that governed both speech and action. It influenced how they spoke of themselves and younger children, the activities and materials they desired and rejected and also how they constructed themselves as a more mature category of child, distinct from the 5 to 9 year olds with who they share their SAC. The purpose of this research was to gain insight into what is important to older children in SAC. It seems clear that for these 10 participants being recognised and categorised as older was of great importance. This suggests that age is a key element of older children’s identities.
I have grappled with this finding and its implications for how to programme SAC for older children. As a piece of post-structural research, I do not presume to have produced a single ‘answer’ that can be applied to all older children in all SAC settings. One question contemplated often during this research was whether older children need their own spaces in SAC, separate from those for younger children. In discussions I have had with other practitioners, separate spaces are often discussed as a possible ‘answer’ to the problem of older children. All 10 participants identified having their own space as important. Separate spaces are also common practice in Swedish SAC (Boström et al., 2015; Haglund and Anderson, 2009).
I am now less sure of the equity of separate spaces for older children. Other forms of segregation in society are considered problematic. It seems unthinkable that many people would advocate for segregated spaces on the basis of race, class or gender, yet the organisation of children by age is rarely questioned. I am beginning to think that separate spaces for older children might be similarly problematic. Implicit in the practice of separate spaces for older children is the discourse unique to SAC that I have spent much of this research questioning; that older children are near adolescent and problematic. In arguing for separate spaces, would I reinforce the same socially constructed truths that are troubled in this research? In questioning whether separate spaces are problematic, the intent is not to argue against their use. Following Foucault’s (1980) assertion that applications of power can have both positive and negative effects, it is instead argued that separate spaces cannot be considered universally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They should instead be considered on the basis of the multiple complexities that make each SAC setting unique.
Similarly, I also wonder about the age coding of visual media, games and equipment. The participants demonstrated sensitivity that governed their engagement with these resources. Older children are commonly considered disinterested in the activities provided at SAC (Gifford, 1991; Kennedy and Stonehouse, 2004). It is worth considering whether sensitivity to age coding governs older children’s engagement with SAC more broadly. Acknowledging my emerging discomfort with age-based segregation, SAC practitioners could consider age coding of resources and choose those more likely to align with older children’s understandings of themselves as more mature and capable. This consideration of age coding should include seeking children’s opinions about their resources. As described in this paper, older children engage in their own age coding that does not appear on boxes and packaging and may not be obvious to outsider adults.
This research described in this article was only a small project. As such the findings need to be considered on that basis as limited in their generalisability and transferability. While the findings can only apply to the 10 children who participated, there may be resonances with practitioners’ own experiences of working with older children in this unique setting. Undertaking this project also highlighted the paucity of research relating to SAC. Adopting a Foucauldian stance made possible new understandings, which highlights also the need for research from other theoretical disciplines. More research into SAC would provide valuable knowledge about this under-researched setting. In conclusion, I return to the matter of age coding. In Australia, older children are half as likely to attend SAC as younger children. While this may be partly due to age coded resources and spaces, it raises the question of whether SAC itself is age coded as ‘younger’. More research into how SAC is conceptualised by older children would provide insight into this possibility.
Footnotes
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The University of Melbourne and the Australian Government through an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship.
