A new theoretical and pedagogic framework, PhotoSoundscapes, for deep listening with young children from migrant backgrounds

This presentation proposes a new theoretical and pedagogic framework, PhotoSoundscapes, for deep listening with young children from migrant backgrounds. Listening to newly arrived, often invisible, young migrant children and their families in early childhood education and care (ECEC) continues to be a most ‘pressing issue’ (Tobin, 2020, p.10). Case studies with three, three- to four-year-old children whose parents have recently migrated to the UK were created at home and in an English nursery. This new theoretical and pedagogic ‘layered listening framework’ draws upon the research process, with child-led photography and thematic analysis to synthesise and blur a novel application of sociocultural theory and visual concepts in early childhood, documentary photography, visual sociology and art. It comprises: intuitive and wise photography (Norris Webb, 2014); ambiguity (Franklin, 2020); photographing democratically (Eggleston, 2019) and ‘elastic spaces’ (Ghirri, 2017). Findings showed young children’s lively curation of their photography’s dynamic, democratic, participatory and expressive capabilities to render visible their unique perspectives. Reimagined ECEC calls for listening that attends to time for children to revisit, touch and reframe their photography, in novel and distinctive ways, connected to their families. Such possibilities challenge dominant discourses of trauma, vulnerability and deficit perspectives of diversity in culturally sensitive ECEC.