Co-Conveners: Iveta Silova, Olena Fimyar, Zsuzsa Millei, Olena Aydarova
We would like to invite participants who are interested in critically examining (post)Soviet schooling and childhood through methodologies of collective biography (Davies & Gannon, 2006), and autoethnography (Ellis, 2004; Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2010; Holman Jones, 2005) to join us in ‘Memories of (Post)Soviet Schooling and Childhood’ project.
Our first meeting will be a one-hour long webinar on February 10, 2014, which will be followed by a pre-conference workshop at the CIES on March 10, 2014. This is a part of the larger project which will create spaces for collaboration, dialogue, and critical conversations on this topic through subsequent collaborative activities.
In the first webinar, will begin exploring ways of using collective biography and autoethnography to examine (post)Soviet schooling and childhood, as well as the potential substance of this collaborative research project. In particular, we encourage the participation of individuals, scholars, educators, activists who had first-hand experiences with (post)socialist institutions as insiders (see below for details). Throughout the webinar and a workshop at the CIES conference in Toronto, participants will evoke and explore - collectively or individually - their own memories of Soviet/socialist schooling and childhood. In this project we understand memory both as a methodological tool and as an object of research (Keightley, 2010). By using artifacts (photographs of school buildings, classrooms, individual teachers & students, diaries, movies and other documents), we will explore the following themes / topics, which we propose as a starting point for our conversations:
places and spaces of Soviet/socialist schooling and childhood;
cultural politics of childhood
relationships and their organization (hierarchies - real or assumed)
forms of knowledge
subject positions and ways of being
ideologies and/or belief systems (conceptions of good student, and good teacher, and good education)
pedagogical or disciplinary practices
other related strands
The project will follow research traditions that challenge the canons of positivism and empiricism, emove the distance between the researcher and the researched (Davies & Gannon, 2006; Ellis, 2004), and erase the boundaries between the personal and the political (Holman Jones, 2005).
Participants
We are inviting participants who share some/all of the following experiences:
Being born, having grown up, and having attended or worked in educational institutions in the Soviet/socialist state (including attending kindergarten and/or school) during the period of 1970-1990s.
Having experienced the transition from Soviet/socialist to the (post)Soviet/socialist childhood and/or schooling.
Meeting times:
Webinar – February 10, 2014, 3 pm New York Time (please, adjust the timing according to your time zone). Those interested in taking part in the webinar and/or the pre-conference workshop should sign up using the link below:
During this webinar we will explore answers to the following questions:
What views, perspectives, and insights on (post)socialist schooling and education have been omitted from previous explorations of these areas?
How could a collective biography project address this gap?
How do your memories and recollections speak to this gap?
What benefits does this approach afford? What might be its pitfalls and how could they be addressed?
Readings:
In preparation for the webinar, we request that participants read the following materials, which will be emailed to you by co-conveners right after you sign up for participation in the webinar:
Autoethnograhy:
Charon-Cadrona, E. (2013). Socialism and education in Cuba and Soviet Uzbekistan. Globalization, Societies and Education, 11 (2), 296-313
Holman Jones, S. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 763-791). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Collective biography:
Davies, B., & Gannon, S. (2006). The practices of collective biography. In Doing Collective Biography. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Memory:
Keightley, E. (2010) Remembering research: memory and methodology in the social sciences. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13(1), 55–70.
CIES Pre-Conference Workshop
We will continue the conversations started during the webinar at the CIES pre-conference workshop “Memories of (Post)Soviet Education and Childhood,” which will take place on Monday, March 10, 2014 1:00-5:00 pm in Sheraton Downtown/Willow Center. Those who are interested in participating should register for the workshop at the time of their conference registration or on site.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Iveta Silova, Olena Fimyar, Zsuzsa Millei, Olena Aydarova
Co-Conveners, ‘Memories of (Post)Soviet Schooling and Childhood’ project
