Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemChildren aged nine to twelve years in Outside School Hours Care in Australia( 2013)Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) Services provide care, leisure and education for children aged five to twelve years in the hours before and after school and during vacation times. The number of children using OSHC in Australia has grown significantly over the last ten years. This thesis is a qualitative research project into the experiences of nine older children aged nine to twelve years attending OSHC at one of three research sites in Melbourne, Australia. In OSHC, older children are a minority group that practitioners have long regarded as more challenging than those aged 5 to 8 years. How practitioners currently understand older children appears to be greatly influenced by developmental theory. This study investigated the experiences of the nine participants using poststructural theories of knowledge, power, discourse and binary oppositions in order to provide new knowledge of how older children participate in and experience OSHC. The analysis provided evidence of how developmental discourses operate in OSHC and how older children and practitioners use them differently. Older children use the discourse to advantage themselves and position themselves as superior to younger children. Practitioners, in enacting the discourse, sometimes privilege younger children at the expense of the minority older child. The analysis showed that what is considered ‘true’ about older children can vary depending on the perspective of who is creating the truth, and that these truths can have power effects. The study also documents how binaries are used to create knowledge about older children and younger children and that the knowledge these binaries create differs depending on whose perspective is adopted. This project also chose to adopt postmodern views of children by positioning the participants as co-researchers rather than research subjects, with the power to influence research method and implementation. The participants embraced this level of involvement in the project and demonstrated themselves to be capable decision makers and researchers. Their involvement in this way contributed to data that more closely represented their own opinions, experiences and understandings of OSHC. In applying poststructural theories to the question of older children in OSHC, this study has provided new knowledge about a question that has concerned practitioners for many years. It provides knowledge that will add to that already afforded by developmental theory and represents an opportunity for practitioners to develop new approaches to working more equitably with older children.