This article explores how selfies and shelfies on the digital platforms Instagram and TikTok contribute to the dynamics of intermediation for Australian teen readers by presenting two contrasting case studies. The first features Australian Bookstagrammer @BookBookOwl whose social media accounts feature aspirational content in which identity…

"Washday at the Pa" ('pa' is used colloquially by Pakeha to refer to a Maori settlement) is the title of an old schoolbook, a picture reading book for younger schoolchildren, which was produced in 1964 by the state education system in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1964, written and photographed by Ans Westra, who later became one of the most…

This paper examines the cultural construction of disability detailed within school reading schemes. The study by the employment of proto-text analysis followed the "reading journeys" that a four- and five-year-old child experienced during the course of one academic year. The study examined 61 reading books that contained 2199…

This article concentrates on visual sources relating to secondary education, and asks how a collection of photographs can be understood and interpreted as part of the institutional and collective memory of one Finnish girls' school. The photographs were published in the anniversary books of the school. They construct an entirety, where public…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of personalized books on parents' and children's engagement during shared book reading. Seven native English parents and their children aged between 12 and 33 months were observed at home when sharing a book made specifically for the child (i.e. a personalized book), a comparable book with no…

In this paper we describe a method for exploring young children's views of illness causality in social context. Studies of children's conceptualisation of illness have predominantly focused on the nature of children's knowledge rather than locating that knowledge within socio-cultural contexts. Adopting a socio-constructivist perspective we sought…

Beginning in March 2012, my public scholarship with deported and returning young adults originated from an ethnographic and oral history framework based upon participant research action methodology (Seidman 2006). In collaboration with the Asamblea Popular de Familias Migrantes (APOFAM), I began to meet with groups of returning and deported young…

Children have long been "objects of inquiry", that is, research has been "done" on children. Research into starting school is but one example, where children have been observed, tested and assessed at various points, as a means of evaluating their adjustment to the school environment. The Starting School Research Project aims…