Researching Child-Dog Relationships and Narratives in the Classroom: Rhythms of Posthuman Childhoods [Hardcover]

This interdisciplinary book explores posthuman and psychological approaches to childhood education and wellbeing by examining animal-assisted education, using qualitative approaches to understand the nuanced mechanisms which unfold in child-dog interactions.

This interdisciplinary book explores posthuman and psychological approaches to childhood education and well-being by examining animal-assisted education, using qualitative approaches to understand the nuanced mechanisms which unfold in child-dog interactions.

Mapping the lives of children in a primary school setting and the relationships they share with their school and classroom dog, Ted, the book provides insight into everyday child-dog encounters, the importance of touch in middle childhood and how bodiment offers a corporeal and compassionate means to understand the rhythm and musicality in interspecies communication. In doing so, the book uses the unique orientation of rhythmanalysis, a posthuman critical theory, and new materialist orientation in multispecies empathic childhood flourishing in the future. Reflecting contemporary interest in child-dog companionship, picture books, childrens flourishing, and childrens well-being, the book provides a nuanced multi-disciplinary overview of the field.

Using creative methods as well as spatial, sensory, and movement theory, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and academics in the fields of cognitive psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, and primary and elementary education. Those interested in the early years will also benefit from this volume.

Introduction

 

PART I: PRELUDE

Chapter 1 Empathic ethnography: A body of evidence in fieldwork as methodological praxis

 

PART II: ENSEMBLE

Chapter 2 Ted makes it feel l