Event Details

PhD Seminar series with Xiao Zhang of Educational Research

There are increasingly concerns regarding the crisis of care that impact the child’s social bonds. Although current studies advocate a claim that the child has abilities to make relations with others, few spotlights are given to the child’s caring performances. My study seeks to obtain data which will help to address this research gap. I borrow a lens of ethic of care, exploring children’s caring performances as they encounter peers and adults who are in distress. I conducted multiple research methods, that are verbal, visual, and art-based, with 19 early childhood practitioners as well as 77 children in public-run early years settings in China. The forms of the data I collected involves narrative transcriptions, photos, and children’s paintings. As revealed in the data, children show willingness and abilities to make caring connections with others. They proactively conduct various caring skills, both verbal and tangible, as they encounter their peers or adults in sufferings or at risks. Children also present their ethical obligations of caring who are suffering from starving. They express worry and subsequently take actions within their capabilities. Last but not least, Children show their abilities of responding to peer’s needs. They not merely voluntarily offer their privileges to satisfy other’s needs, but also engage in balancing expressed and inferred needs. The findings contribute to a claim of the child as the agent of caring. I will make a discussion on empathy that possibly plays a role in helping summon the child’s caring performances.