Children as daily border crossers – children’s transitional practices as their contribution to the everyday accomplishment of ECEC Systems

Abstract Self-Organized Symposium: Research and Policies on ECEC-Systems and Programmes do commonly ask for the effects of such adult strategies for children, but merely forget to highlight children’s active participation in it. On the contrary, the symposium focuses ECEC systems and programmes from the ‘vantage point of children’. Three papers from two respective ethnographic research projects are presented. The first two papers presenting the ongoing Luxembourgian research project “CHILD”. It ask how the heterogeneous Luxembourgian field of ECEC unfolds in a plurality of individual care arrangements which are shaped through an interplay of policies, familial and ECEC-institutional practices and children’s daily participation on both. The third paper is asking how children are constructing the daily practices of German kindergartens as an educational setting. By that, the three papers show how a strong notion on children as actors of ECEC bring into light the collective and individuated ‘hidden curriculums’ of ECEC Systems and Programmes. Abstract Presentation: The heterogeneous Luxembourgian field of ECEC unfolds in a plurality of individual care arrangements which are commonly shaped by several horizontal transitions during the course of a child’s day and, therefore, create distinct spaces of practice and actor ship. The Luxembourgian CHILD-Study focuses those daily border crossings of 2-4 year olds as their own unique tasks in the daily accomplishment of their 'day-care-childhoods'. The analyses transforms Dencik’s research on children’s ‘dual socialisation’ into a practice-theoretical frame on both, children’s active contribution to their daily care arrangements and the multiple processes of positioning they are involved i. Practice-Theory (Schatzki), children as actors and their interpretive reproduction of institutional orders (Corsaro), transitions as practices (Brooker) and Work-Border-Theory (Campbell Clark). Actor-centred childhood sociology (Corsaro), Practice-analytical ethnography (Lofland), field research, mainly participant (camera-)observation of contrastive daily schedules, settings and practices of 12-15 children and their care-arrangements, here focusing on departing/arriving-scenes. Ethnographic research is dialogical in principle, based on an ongoing establishment of trustful partnerships with all participants and an awareness of symbolic power in adult-child-relationships. The paper focuses the border crossing practices of children in ECEC as the localised interconnections (Schatzki) of the ECEC-Policies, familial care strategies and organisational routines. Border-Work-Theory is used as a heuristic to highlight how children are actively involved in socio-material practices of setting up and crossing borders and therefore are active participants of several individual and collective ‘borderlands’ in ECEC. The research findings inform ECEC policy and practice about ‘collective’ and ‘individualised’ informal learning processes of children in ECEC.