The critical work of memory and the nostalgic return of innocence: how emergent teachers represent childhood

ABSTRACT

This article examines how participants enrolled in teacher education and childhood studies courses represented their understandings of childhood through a selection of artefacts discussed in focus groups at four sites: Montréal, New York City, Ottawa, and Toronto. To situate our inquiry, we theorise nostalgia in relationship to the construction of childhood innocence, with a focus on children’s everyday objects and playthings in upholding this ideal. We further trace the construction of innocence to discourses of social exclusion and defences against difficulty. While participants used their artefacts to represent personal memories and social contexts that disrupted an idealised category of childhood, they also returned to a nostalgic trope of innocence, which was particularly pronounced in their understandings of childhood under COVID-19. We advocate for the creation of time and space for prospective and practicing teachers to mourn the idealisation of innocence and to examine the unequal conditions of vulnerability that both children and teachers live.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood
• nostalgia
• melancholia
• teachers
• teacher education
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the research assistants on this project: Amanda Dunbar, Emilie Hill-Smith, Christina Jane, Lauren Jervis, Dragana Mirkovic, Katherine Pauls, Van Ahn Tran, Ellie VanBerkel, Farah Virani-Murji, and Cindy Wiltshire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under Grant #430-2018-00689.