The purpose of this essay is for you to critically consider your own life history experience growing up – in particular reflecting on your early years of life within the period from birth – eight years old. In reflecting on your early years, consider your family/cultural practices, beliefs and ideologies, the adult child relationships (power relations) that dominated your childhood experiences, opportunities or lack there of for agency and voice, and consideration of rights. You should incorporate some of the key theoretical concepts relating to such as gender, sexuality, identity, family, culture, ethnicity, class, environment, education, health, religion and language.
Pick main themes as mentioned above that represent your childhood. You also need to comment on the positioning of child / image of child in relation to your childhood experience AND the experience of contemporary childhood (children growing up today. You need to incorporate 5 photographs from your past (i.e. Kinder photographs, a picture or map of your house/street memories), stories from other family members, draw on news, music and other popular cultural icons from that period to put your story into context. You must compare your own childhood with that of contemporary childhoods meaning WHY JUSTIFY.
Literature around children today and compare on your childhood. YOU MUST include media/artefacts that show and support the comparison between the two generational experiences. Carefully integrate relevant into your reflection of experience, comparison, analysis such as Dominant framework, Socialisation theory, New sociology of childhood: Poststructuralist theories, Structural approach, agency approach. It requires you to present a reflective essay, NOT a biography, thoughtfully integrating literature (to support your critical discussion) from THESE readings: Wyness, M. (2019). Childhood and society, Sorin, R. (2005). Changing images of childhood, Malone K. (2018) In: Children in the Anthropocene, Corsaro, W. A. (2017) Social theories of childhood AND Robinson, K.H & Jones Diaz, C. (2016) Diversity and difference in childhood. As well as theoretical concepts relating to childhood, language, sexuality, environment, family/ cultural practices, diversity and difference, Beliefs and ideologies of culture, parenting, social class, religion, gender, adult-child relationships around power, Opportunities for agency and voice or lack thereof, Any rights?
REQUIREMENTS ARE:
1. Write a reflective essay using analytical writing to discuss and reflect your own childhood.
2. Go beyond a descriptive story of your life. 3-4 key themes and focus on your childhood for the essay.
3. The research should focus on issues relating to the construction of childhood influenced by child rearing, families, ’race’, racism, ethnicity, languages, gender, religion, children’s health, etc. You are to consider how these issues influenced your experiences of childhood and their impact on children growing up in contemporary 2022 Australia society today.
4. Engage in the literature and analyse the issues relevant to childhood.
5. Be sure to go beyond a descriptive story of your life, but rather to engage in the literature and analyse the issues relevant to childhood, similarities and differences between your childhood and the childhoods of today reflect on how you currently position children (your own or those you work with in a professional capacity) or intend to position children in the future.
6. Headings are not necessary.
7. APA style referencing 7th you MUST be consistent with this edition in your in-text citations and your reference list.
8. Use a range of different forms of media or artefacts to illustrate your reflection, experience, analysis (DO NOT include links to YouTube videos or any clips).
9. Use a range of scholarly sources to support your reflections and analysis – literature should be published within 10 years newspaper or journal articles.
10. MUST compare your childhood experience with contemporary.
STRUCTURE:
1. Essay title: that reflects your essay focus.
2. Introduction: should be an introduction of you and an outline of what you intend to discuss in your essay.
3. Body: reflective discussion NOT a biography; but a well-developed paragraphs; supported by literature/evidence; make reference to your illustrations in your discussion.
4. Conclusion: should summarise the key points of your essay discussion; does not have to be exhaustive (one paragraph is sufficient); should not introduce any new information or evidence in your concluding paragraph. The conclusion should also not be a summary of what you did in your essay.
5. Reference list: include ALL references cited in your essay; references for images etc. can be included in a separate list of images with appropriate referencing/acknowledge (APA style). Surname of the author and year only.
6. Layout should be formal language like in an essay.
