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A box of childhood: small stories at theroots of a careerCathy Nutbrown aa School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Version of record first published: 16 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Cathy Nutbrown (2011): A box of childhood: small stories at the roots of acareer, International Journal of Early Years Education, 19:3-4, 233-248

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A box of childhood: small stories at the roots of a career

Cathy Nutbrown*

School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

(Received 1 May 2010; accepted 1 July 2011)

This paper emerges from a view that the growing body of self-reflectivequalitative research designs elsewhere in education is insufficiently representedin early childhood enquiry. Research of this sort has a rich capacity to informcritical understanding with experiential data that reveal the remarkable within thequotidian; more specifically, it has the potential to give some access to the ‘smallsecret stuff’ of childhood that ! though often observed in literary work ! isfrequently obscured in social science report. Our own experiences ! not least ofthe world of children from which we are all graduates ! are no less overshadowedin most of our critical accounts. In this paper the exploration of my ownchildhood provides a ground for an autoethnographic enquiry realised throughnine short stories. The paper first describes the visual/sensory ethnographicprocess, which gave life to the accounts before presenting the stories themselves.It then argues the usefulness of reflexivity and autoethnography in earlychildhood education research, and a conclusion urges further reflective enquiryfrom the early childhood education community.

Keywords: sensory ethnography; visual ethnography; autoethnography; reflex-ive ethnography; stories; self; childhood

Introduction: objects and memories

I think that I always wanted to be a teacher . . . I have spent my adult life working inearly childhood education; first as a nursery teacher and later in a University,teaching and researching in the field of early childhood education. From time totime, I wonder about how I found my way to this career, and what is was that fuelledmy deep interest in young children’s learning, and where my beliefs about childhoodmight be rooted.

I bought a wooden box from IKEA which housed nine drawers and started to putthem together but gave up ! too much nailing and banging. Someone did it for me.The assembled drawers sat around for a few days ! like a new trophy ! in mykitchen, while I thought about painting the fronts of each drawer ! decorating themmaybe. I wondered what they were for. And then I had a strangely beguiling idea. Abox of childhood ! a bit like the ‘self-boxes’ I had encountered once as an externalexaminer to an ‘education and psychotherapy’ module of a doctorate programme !but different. These nine drawers would, I decided, include objects or symbols ofsomething that was important in my childhood and which bore some relation orhinted some sort of connection to my beliefs and practices and ethos in educationtoday. What do I think? Where did it come from? What are my values? How were

*Email: c.e.nutbrown@sheffield.ac.uk

International Journal of Early Years Education

Vol. 19, Nos. 3!4, September!December 2011, 233!248

ISSN 0966-9760 print/ISSN 1469-8463 online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis

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they nurtured? Why do I teach what I teach? How I teach? Why do I research what Iresearch?

So I bought a new note book, brown cover and brown paper pages, and on thefirst page I drew a plan of what would go in the box ! initially I used just one or twowords for each drawer ! bible, doll, skipping rope, piano and dogs ! later thesebecame more embellished notes: ‘collection of small balls of wool and a half knittedbobble hat in stripes ! off the needles’; ‘the really huge doll from Woolworths’(Figure 1). And so I began to start to build the fragments of stories ! small storieswhich lie somewhere in the roots of my life and work in education and whosesignificance were hitherto unexplored.

It was not long before I changed my mind about what should be in the drawers.There were only nine and I could only have one ‘thing’ in each drawer. When Isay ‘thing’ I mean one idea, one memory; though I decided that I could put morethan one thing in the drawer as long as together they represented one experience,or event, or memory. Odd, these rules I was creating for myself. ‘Puppies’ werelisted at one point but they gave way to ‘The Orange’ ! a story I was told by MrsPolmeor on my first day at school. So my second set of choices saw other changes,and the cry corner and the white china bowl pushed out the ‘skipping rope’(Figure 2). It’s interesting ! the things that get left out in the end. The OrangeStory got left out too, in the end, in favour of fresh smelling bread and the breadshop at the bottom of the cobbled hill where my gran lived. I didn’t remember theOrange Story ! I just remember my mother reminding me one day that the story Iwas told on my first day at school was about an orange (so in a way that was herstory, not mine). I don’t recall the story. I want as far as possible these stories to befrom my own memories, and this is not necessarily easy for remembering forourselves, is a case of ‘defending ourselves against the encroachments of others’ onour memories (Haug 1987, 36) and, as Mitchell and Weber (1999) note, ourmemories are often mediated by others and:

Figure 1. Plan 1: first thoughts.

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. . . what we remember as adults about our childhood is often mediated by what we aretold about ourselves as children: Here we are thinking of how children ask parents overand over again ‘Tell me again about the time . . .’ (27)

So, the Orange Story lost out to the Bread Story ! because that one was mine. Mytask to assemble objects that tell my stories was not easy. I’m pleased there are onlynine drawers ! I don’t really remember much before I was eight years old. And I’minterested to learn ! as I gather artefacts to fill these drawers. In most cases I don’thave the real things so photos, facsimiles and symbolic equivalents will have to do.I’m interested in the reasons for my choices ! why these came to mind and what theymight mean to me. All these things were part of my life in some way before I wasabout eight years old. But though that may be interesting in itself ! what I’m reallyinterested in here is why I recall these particular life fragments (Brogden 2006;Tierney 2010) and if they have left me with something that I have brought into myadult life and my career in education and furthermore, if there is anything in thisexploration that can informs research practices and methodologies which seek betterto understand aspects of work with young children.

The autoethnographic process

At heart is the issue of identity; bound up in the autoethnographic process is theexploration of identity, by asking questions such as: Who am I? Who was I then?What am I about? Where do my beliefs and values come from? Pahl and Rowsell(2010, 8) suggest that:

Identities are the seas of stuff and of experiences. These experiences are intertwinedwith material culture . . . In visits to homes Kate found that people told stories that wereoften linked to artefacts, and these artefacts themselves told stories of loss,displacement and migration . . . When people move across borders, objects remainpowerful in their memories, which are evoked in their stories.

Figure 2. Plan 2: developing ideas.

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At the beginning of my own autoethnographic process I painted the drawers andcovered the outside with old newspaper cuttings and photos taken during mychildhood, some relating to objects in the drawers (Figure 3) began to fill the drawerswith the things I had finally decided should be in them. It was quite hard to findsymbolic equivalents (Yalom 1989) for some ! so I trawled eBay, and antique shopsto find just the right artefacts. I borrowed old photos from my mother, found a bookfrom my childhood in her attic cupboard, and gradually my collection came together:a funny array of oddments (Figure 4), which together prompted nine short stories. Ascollected, handled, pondered and arranged the objects I turned my stories over in myhead. And when this sensory stage was set and I could begin to write the stories, tounpick (or pick up) the stories this odd little collection of objects gave rise to.

The stories

Sunday school treat

Whit Monday ! that was how it was called. Never Pentecost, not to the children atleast, not even Whitsuntide, but Whit Monday. The religious significance of thetiming of the event escaped us children, we simply enjoyed wearing new clothes(often white) and our newly whitened plimsolls, to walk around the town (it wascalled ‘Marching’ but I never really saw anyone marching ! we sort of walkedbehind the band . . . through the streets. The younger men carried huge embroideredbanners ! two carried the long poles and others carried tapes, which kept the bannersfrom flapping ! so that everyone could read the texts; there’s a photo in my mother’salbum of one of the banners being carried through the streets. It reached the roofs ofthe two story houses that line the narrow street, and reads ‘Primitive MethodistEbenezer Sabbath School. Established 1833’. The boys had smaller flags ! set onlengths of thick dowelling ! in bright colours ‘Suffer the little children’, ‘Jesus loveslittle children’, ‘God bless our Sunday School’, ‘Jesus saves’, ‘Joy’, ‘Hallelujah’,‘For God so loved the world’ . . . Most of the girls held hands and rang the bells

Figure 3. The box of childhood.

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attached to the tape which formed a moving ‘pen’ to keep us herded safely in ourrows as we ‘marched’.

And then out to Man’s Head ! the cliff side above Porthmeor beach ! to eatsaffron buns and run the races . . . The old people sat down at trestle tables ! on thechairs brought out that morning from the Sunday School ! to a Faith Tea. The tablecovered in which cloths with blue cups and saucers and tea plates. I remember thechink of the teaspoons. There were sandwiches, I think, but mostly saffron cake,cream and jam scones, sweet cakes ! things like that. All set out and served to theolder ones by bossy women who wouldn’t let the children sit at the table ‘you’ve hadyour bun!’ . . . and behaved like they had baked everything themselves (perhaps theyhad!). Tea was poured from huge teapots into the blue china cups. And the townband, seated now, played throughout the afternoon. So we did everything to thesound of hymns ! we ran the three legged race to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ andthe old people ate their tea to the tune of ‘Nearer my God to Thee’.

Everyone was there, newborn babies, the elderly . . . everyone ! and people allhad their jobs . . . and we didn’t go home until the sun started to set . . . . They don’thave the tea and races at Man’s Head any more ! ‘Health and Safety’ have long sinceput pay to children running races at the side of an unprotected cliff edge! And soonthe marching through the street may have to stop too, something to do with crowdcontrol, or policing or the worry that if the Chapel is allowed to march then otherorganisations can claim a right to march too . . . so local traditions fade . . . But mymemory is clear and though the photos are mostly in black and white, my memory isin full colour.

Wool

Auntie Gracie was my grandmother’s sister, my father’s aunt. She was lovely ! Ithink everyone loved Gracie ! she was the only sister (of five I think ! Ethel,Frances, Mary, Lizzie and Gracie) who didn’t marry. I always remember her beingquite old (though I doubt that she was more than 50), with grey hair swept up in abun and held with a slide at the back, and I was about eight years old when she died(I remember choosing a china perfume bottle as a memory token). I used to visit her.

Figure 4. Collection of objects that filled the drawers of the box of childhood.

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Her front door was at the top of a long run of granite steps, above her brother John’sfisherman’s cellar. And sometimes there was a distinct smell of pitch from the netsand crab pots stored there. I can’t recall much about begin with her but that I enjoyedher company . . . and she knitted and so always has lots of small balls of wool leftover from her knitting. They were all colours and I would often return from herhouse with a little bag containing several small balls of coloured wool ! she keptthem in a big cloth bag on a shelf at the top of her cellar steps. I don’t remember everknitting with her ! it was my Auntie Martha (my mum’s sister) who taught me toknit, around about the same time, dolls clothes, using Auntie Gracie’s tiny balls ofwool.

St. Ives

Some of my childhood happened because of the people, but there is an aspect of mychildhood that is as it is because of where I was a child . . . (perhaps that’s the case formany children). As a child the beach and the sea were a taken for granted part of mylife ! the idea of living where there was no sand or sea or coastline never occurred tome. My collection of objects which represent my seaside childhood include aminiature bucket and spade, a fishing line (for the rock pools), a model of the life-boat and the sound of the salvation army band marching down the ‘prom’ to theopen-air service on the harbour slipway on Sunday evenings. My seaside summersalso included many days huddled in a blanket because it was so cold, or squeezed !with several other family members into a tiny beach hut which we rented for theweeks of August. It was summer so we went to the beach ! ‘rain or shine’!

The tanker, Torrey Canyon ran into the rocks off Lands End. It broke in two andspewed oil into the sea. It didn’t take long for the oil to reach the St. Ives coastline.

I still remember the stench of the oil and the detergent . . . no one really knewwhat to do to stop the ruin of the sea, and the beaches and the marine life. I rememberthe planes bombing the wreck ! and the soldiers ! many saturated in oil themselves,who were drafted into the town as part of the clear up operation . . . I volunteered towash some of the oil soaked seabirds . . . I was told I was too young . . . That summerthe beaches were pretty empty ! fewer people came to stay in the town ! that didn’tbother me ! I hated it when the place was crowded, but the rocks were covered inpatches of oil ! and if you dug too far down into the sand you could find lumps of oilmixed in with the sand where the bulldozers had tried to bury it . . . that bothered me.

Bread

My Mum’s parents lived in a lovely house ! on three floors ! at the top of BunkersHill ! opposite the Sunday School. It wasn’t a hill so such as a gentle, cobbledincline, with about 20 houses, tall and narrow ! many with pretty pots of flowersoutside. The bakers’ was at the bottom of Bunkers Hill and on Saturdays I wasallowed to go and get the loaf of bread ! ‘white sandwich please’ I would say ! Ididn’t need to, they knew me and they knew the bread my grandparents had eachSaturday, but saying it seemed important to me. Inside the tiny shop (with the bakeryat the back) the smells of freshly baked bread and saffron cakes were heady. I huggedthe loaf ! wrapped in tissue paper ! close as I walked over the cobbles back up thehill, and could feel the warmth against my body. I could never resist picking at the

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corner of the crust, and eating the warm doughy bread and somehow thought theywould never notice that a corner of their loaf was missing. No one ever mentioned it.

Cry corner

I cried quite a lot ! and had temper tantrums ! I would lie on the floor and kick andscream. I can’t remember why ! but I do remember the frustration of not beingunderstood. So my parents came up with this idea that I could cry as much as Iwanted as long as I did it in a particular corner in the house. The room was one usedfor most things ! there was a table, the black and white television, an armchair ! ithad a patterned greeny carpet ! with swirls. I remember looking down and crying Itraced the swirls with my eyes. The walls were plaster, painted a very pale grey.Cold. I hated the ‘cry corner’ as they called it. They would rush me to the corner assoon as tears started and give me a small white china bowl. It was to catch the tears.Standing, facing the cold grey walls, holding the bowl, I hated them and the cornerand the bowl ! why didn’t I ever drop it, smash it? A few times, in adult hood, mymother has said to me ‘Do you remember the cry corner?’ said with a smile.Remember it? No problem ! what I’d like to do is forget it! I think they thought theyhad come up with a really effective strategy to stop me crying ! but what I rememberis the feeling of being completely misunderstood and utterly humiliated. About ayear ago my mother started to tell my daughter about the cry corner. ‘Do youremember the cry corner?’ she asked me. ‘How could I forget it! I hated it!’ Shelaughed.

Buttons

There was a button tin. I think it was at my gran’s house ! but I’m not sure. It offeredendless entertainment . . . I’d find the ones that were like treasure, gold, or shiny orwith a diamond or ruby set inside. I’d find the things that didn’t belong there, atiepin, an earring, a safety pin, a sixpence . . . I would look for all the red buttons !see how many green ones I could find that matched, buttons with two holes, buttonswith four holes ! buttons covered in fabric . . . endless sorting and organising . . . Iwould make pictures with the buttons ! all the blue for the sky, green ones for thegrass, flowers (from flower shaped buttons) and a house ours, of brown buttons !with windows, and a dog in the garden . . . A temporary mosaic. I wonder whathappened to the button tin. Whose was it? And who was it that knew I could besolitarily content for hours, given a tin buttons?

Book

The inscription in red biro in my mother’s handwriting shows that the book wasgiven to me when I was three, a Christmas present. In my childhood the book washuge ! but I remember being mildly disappointed when, a few years ago, I pulled itout of an attic cupboard at my parents’ house. It smelled musty and was muchsmaller than I remember . . . there were 48 stories in the book but my favourite wasthe one about Ukelele, a little girl who lived in a straw hut on a beautiful island. Sheplayed on the beach all day with her doll ! a simple doll made of wood. One day alarge boat came and one of the men from the boat gave Ukelele a doll ! china withfinely stitched clothes. Ukelele liked the doll but found that she couldn’t play with

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her on the beach as she did her old doll because sand got in her hair and the searuined her clothes. Soon the old doll was re-established as the favourite (Figure 5).

Dentist

I had six back teeth out when I was eight years old, ‘baby teeth’ because of decay. Iwas put to sleep using a stinking gas mask. When I woke up ! the pain wasexcruciating. I thought my aching teeth were still there. I screamed ! to the utterembarrassment of my mother who told me that if I stopped crying I could chooseanything I wanted from Woolworths. I chose a doll ! standing about three feet high !with ginger ringlets, a red cotton dress, socks, shoes and white knickers. Sometimes Itook off the red dress and she wore some of my clothes. My mum recalled to merecently how she couldn’t quite believe that I chose ‘such a thing’, but she was trueto her word, grateful that my tears of pain and shock subsided.

Piano teacher

I wasn’t sure I wanted to write this story, but it belongs here. I had several musicteachers, and loved music, singing, playing, listening ! I still do. Four of my fivemusic teachers were heroes, wonderful teachers and talented musicians. Theyencouraged and challenged me, helped me to perform in ways I never believed Icould. But the other didn’t do any of those things. He was a fine musician and, for awhile, he was my piano teacher ! I didn’t practice much but quite liked the lessons. Imanaged to pass grades 1 and 2 and the theory exams too. And I took grade 3 ! andpassed ! not well ! 117 marks (100 was the pass mark I think with 150 distinction) !see I remember the mark to this day. Pleased when he gave me my results, I neverknew how to deal with his comment that he ‘only entered you so that you might failand your parents might be persuaded not to send you for lessons anymore’.

There are other stories of course. But these here are the ones I’m up for sharing.In selecting which of my stories to tell, there is an element of Goffman’s (1959)notion of ‘front’. These are small and simple stories that I am content to make public,and which do not affront any ‘front’ I wish to maintain as professor, mother anddaughter. To continue with Goffman’s terms relating to face-to-face ‘performance’of the self, the stories told here are open to ‘misinterpretation’ but I maintain‘expressive control’. When individuals draw self-consciously on something ofthemselves they make the familiar strange in the act of remaking ‘versions’ of theirstory. Were you to have asked my mother, or Auntie Gracie, or the dentist, or thepiano teacher you may well have been told different stories. Indeed I cannot escapethe ethical issue that lies at the heart of any personal-made-public because, as Erben(1993, 47) acknowledges:

It is a very rare autobiography that does not contain within its pages many, shorter orlonger, biographies of other people who figure, in different times and places, in thesubject’s life. (Erben 1993, 47)

But these stories are mine, and in order to tell them I have undertaken a role ofprotector too, of those who feature in my stories, adopting an ethic of care (Ellis2007; Israel and Hay 2006; Noddings 2003) in my approach to writing the stories. Ihave adhered also to ethical scrutiny as required by my University alongside my an

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ethical/moral position of being responsible towards those who, as Erben puts it‘figure’ in my stories; an issue which has to be acknowledged and to whichindividual autoethnographers must ultimately find their own (re)solutions (Israel andHay 2006; Lee 1993). Such (re)solutions differ; as studies of, for example, elitesport, autobiographical research and academic departments attest (Harrison and StinaLyon 1993; Hurdley 2010; Mellick and Fleming 2010).

I chose these stories because I want to use them to explore something of what liesat the root of an academic career in early childhood education and, perhaps moreimportantly, to argue that research in this field needs to push out from the saf(er)boundaries of established methodologies and seek out the small stuff of childhood, inorder better to disrupt the crafted gaze (Holmes 2009) and differently influencepolicy, practice and research which involve young children’s learning towards amore democratic and respectful response to children.

I say this because I believe that in knowing ourselves as adults who work withyoung children, that we can better know and empathise with the children we teachand with our students at University level as they reflect on their work with young

Figure 5. Page from the Ukelele story.

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children. For example, sometimes ! in thinking back to times in our own childhoodswhen we felt uncertain, puzzled, hurt, excited, betrayed, confused, loved, educatorsof young children might better stand (as if) in the shoes of the young children theyserve. We can use our own childhoods to enhance our understanding of today’syoung children because we can allow ourselves to probe at the feelings andexperiences which were our own, and give ourselves permission to consider thosethings which often remain hidden ! sometimes because they are too ‘mundane’ andsometimes because they are too private or difficult to hold out in the open ! and soare often not really understood. They are, in a sense ‘a means by which those truthswhich cannot otherwise be told, are uncovered’ (Clough 2002, 8).

Autoethnography and the reflexive self?

‘What is autoethnography?’ you might ask. My brief answer: research, writing, story,and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social andpolitical. (Ellis 2004, xix)

The question as to what form of methodology this paper takes depends upon thestance of the reader. For my part, I have drawn on Denzin’s (1989) view of‘biographical method’ which reaches into and takes from a range of methodologicalapproaches and stances, ranging from autobiography to self-story or personalexperience story ! with life-story and case history somewhere in between. There is asense here in which I have ‘othered’ my younger self, in telling her stories, and indoing so here am blending my own observations (and memories) with my own self-report (Denzin and Lincoln 2005). There is a fuzziness here, of course, but:

. . . there is no clear window into the inner life of an individual. Any gaze is alwaysfiltered through the lenses of language. Gender, social class, race, and ethnicity. Thereare no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of ! andbetween ! the observer and the observed. (Denzin and Lincoln 2005, 21)

Pink’s (2007, 2009) work on visual and sensory ethnography and Hurdley’s (2007)notion of autophotography have also informed the making of this text because,though the words are dominant here, the objects and photographs that reminded meof the stories were fundamental to their composition. There are traces too, of‘Memory Work’ an approach to identity projects becoming popular in some fields ofsocial enquiry (Lury 1998; Thompson and Holland 2005). Coffey (1999) argues that‘texts are authored and peopled by a participating self. From this perspective the selfshould be present and emerging in the text’ (127). By extension the autoethnographictext is as one with the identity of the writer; it is a ‘project of self’ (Giddens 1991),but also a project of others ! for by looking reflexively at ones own stories own ifbetter able to understand (imagine even) the hidden stories of other young children.

I also have taken from Reed-Danahay’s (1997) definition of authoethnography inthat I see it as:

. . . a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context. It is both methodand text . . . (9)

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The methodological basis in this paper centres around the weave of our everydaylives and the place of small stories (Bamberg 2004; Georgakopoulou 2006) whosetelling might ! for one reason or another ! inhibited. It also, importantly, represents areflexive stance; turning back to my younger self provides an opportunity, self-consciously to ask questions, give account, wonder, push and prod, in ways whichwould be to ‘other’ the story teller if these stories were rooted in someone else’s past.

Reflexive approaches to research are not an easy option, neither are the processesneat and tidy; Gabb (2010), for example, cautions against ‘the tendency to tidy upand sanitize the ‘‘messiness’’ of everyday experience in order to produce academicknowledge’ (462). Digging into the personal stories of childhood as part of a researchprocess can cause a ‘disarray’, because the processes do not fit neatly into oftenaccepted methodological parameters. Some personal stories of academics are deeplyemotional and open to vulnerability (Pelias 2004), but not all stories in this genre ofautoethnography and self-reflexive approaches are those of deep struggle and heartsearching ! some are very ordinary (and it is these which might even prove mostinteresting). However, whatever the nature of the story, this approach gives rise to anumber of metho-ethical challenges which have to be addressed (Nutbrown 2011b).But I suggest that, in the field of early childhood education, it is worth giving a littlethought to alternative approaches to research and report (to help us better understandthose dimly lit corners of childhood which often evade us. As Eisner (1997) suggests,we ‘report the temperature even when we are interested in the heat . . . New forms ofdata representation signify our growing interest in inventing ways to represent theheat’ (7).

Autoethnographic studies are often used to highlight issues which mightotherwise remain hidden. As Brogden puts it:

Engaging complexity through bricolage is one way of inviting another into writing asresearch and requires engagement of writer and reader. Autoethnography is another.(Brogden 2010, 310)

Stories of aspects of people’s lives can be fore-fronted through an autoethnographyin a way that other methodological approaches do not afford (see, e.g. Brogden 2008;Miller 2008; Toynton 2006). The use of the writer’s own story to bring into focus, anissue of importance can be a powerful tool, even though it is open to the charge ofself-indulgence (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007; Sparkes 2002). As Davies (2008)acknowledges, ‘ . . . this turning back, or self-examination, both individual andcollective, clearly can lead to a form of self-absorption’ (5). There are occasionswhen the life experience of the writer is the only way to bring out and critique achallenging issue. Autoethnography has been used to raise the voices of hithertosilent or marginalised minorities: colonised communities, gay men, abused childrenand stories of the difficult parts of lives such as divorce, death and miscarriage(Brogden 2006; Harding 2005; Hill 2009; Norman 2001; Ronai 1995; Toynton 2006;Villenas, 1996). In this sense when Walford (2004) makes the case against his ownautoethnography ‘counting’ as research he is probably right, as it is written, his ownaccount does not (for me) ‘count’ as autoethnographic research because it seems tome, he has missed the point about the political power of autoethnography in givingvoice to stories which represent the otherwise silent or silenced. The topic of his1000 word autoethnography was one of a powerful University academic who, bynature of his institutional role, did not lack opportunity otherwise to speak. For me,

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there is still much work to do to understand the experiences of childhoods in earlyeducation, because despite some success in including children’s views in research,children’s voices are by no means the ‘loudest’ in educational research reports. Andit is this that motivates me to expose some of my own childhood memories. I cangive an account of episodes in my childhood and prod and poke at their salience inways which would not be possible with the childhood stories of others (for thatwould be too intrusive). The reflexive process is in my hands. There is a danger thatany impact, authenticity and interest or meaning that these stories hold could bediminished because they are ‘mine’, rather than told to me by an anonymous researchparticipant. Yet it is precisely because they are my own stories and not told to me byanonymous participants, that I can (re)own them almost half a century later and seewhat they tell me about the ‘me’ I now am. Further, because these are my stories, Iam free (as free as my bravery permits) to treat them as I wish. To take any meaningI may wish to take or to ignore (or both), as I see fit. It is only the privacy of mychildhood self which risks violation and I have been careful to protect her as best Ican. In this way the charge of self-indulgence that Walford (2004) makes is mitigatedbecause the autoethnographic act can be used to explore understandings which mightoffer something broader. And, as Sparkes (2002) argues, this is not ‘self-indulgent’but ‘something more’. Tierney (2010) argues that understanding the specific contextof one life is paramount to the understanding of larger economic and socialconditions:

A good life history should be provocative and enable the reader to think about theissues raised in the text rather than try to answer them as if one’s life can besummarised in an essentialist fashion. (Tierney 2010, 130)

Hammersley (2000) views the issue of relevance as key in research in that thetopic should be both important and make a contribution to existing knowledge; it isthe responsibility of the autoethnographic writer as much as any other researcher toensure that her/his research does these things whilst also creating a text which asksthe reader to do some work ! to bring something of their own selves to the reading(Clough 2002; Sparkes 2002). This is the case here, there is a sense in which myfragments of story stand testimony to the ordinary stories that others might tell,stories that everyone holds from their own childhoods (the small stuff of our earlyyears). In this respect, the specific informs the global (Tierney 2010; Young 2008).The reader has to decide the matter of relevance, and it is not a case of ‘take it as youfind it’ but rather a case of ‘find in these stories what you must’. In a reflectiveanalysis of critical ethnographic texts, Foley (2002) considers his perspective onmore personalised writing, concluding that:

No matter how epistemologically reflexive and systematic our fieldwork is, we muststill speak as mere mortals from various historical, culture-bound standpoints; we muststill make limited, historically situated knowledge claims. By claiming to be less ratherthan more, perhaps we can tell stories that ordinary people will actually find morebelievable and useful. (Foley 2002, 487)

The autoethnographic text should not be autocratic, but rather it should bedemocratic; distanced from Van Maanen’s (1998) view that ‘informants speak,ethnographers write’ (137) and in this sense the autoethnographic text is alwayspolitical (Denzin 2000; Holman Jones 2005) and draws participation from the reader.

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Reflection on autoethnographic fragments

Now if you were to choose nine scenes from your childhood, what would they be?And which nine objects would you choose to represent these scenes? There’ssomething important about having the artefacts in front of me while I write. And, fora reason I can’t explain, I didn’t begin writing the paper until all the pieces wereassembled in each drawer and the outside suitably decorated with cuttings from oldnewspapers and a selection of family photos. The artefacts are props for my stories.Are they important? No. Not really. Were there a fire I wouldn’t run to rescue them.They are not the real things, you see, they are Yalom’s (1989) ‘symbolicequivalents’. Does that matter? No. Not really. The case of the ‘disappearing object’(Pahl, Pollard, and Rafiq 2009) could for me, be solved by something which replacedit, represented it for a while, time enough for me to write this odd little personalmuseum cabinet into words; to make my data into a collection of short stories.

As well as the political motivation of making explicit and visible those aspects oflife which often remain invisible, autoethnographic writing is often used to make thefamiliar strange (Clough 2002; Kaomea 2003; Shklovsky 1965), to bring into focusthose taken-for-granted (mundane even) happenings of everydayness. What I amarguing here is that stories of childhoods often come to the fore if they are traumatic,controversial, difficult and shocking. Yet for all of these hard-to-tell stories, there isan infinite number of ordinary stories, hum-drum tales of the not-very-much. And itis these ordinary fragments of young lives that are important too. So, I am suggestinghere that as well as those more ‘thorny’ narratives, we need also opportunities toconsider those ‘lesser’ tales. These are tales with no immediate or obvious point, likemost of my nine stories in this paper. What they have, ‘en suite’, allowed me do is toexplore what it might be from childhood that I have brought to my work as anacademic in the field of early childhood education and, further, to suggest a way inwhich those who work with young children might learn from the ‘ordinary’ inchildren’s young lives.

When I look over my nine short stories I find themes of belonging and inclusion(in space and place and relationships and faith). I find an importance in the smallthings: wool, buttons, a loaf of bread. And then I find something about(dis)respecting young children ! the Dentist, and the Piano Teacher are occasionswhere I was shocked by insensitivity to my physical and emotional well-being. Is itcoincidence, I wonder, that some of my early work included a focus on how earlychildhood educators might respect young children (Nutbrown 1997) or that my focuson the unfettered enjoyment of the Arts also found a place in my research (Nutbrown2011c; Nutbrown and Jones 2005).

Traces of what I brought to (my version of) being an academic from mychildhood can be found in traces of my work. If I unpack it all, I can see the roots ofmy career in focusing on inclusion (Nutbrown and Clough 2004, 2006, 2009),curriculum, (Nutbrown 2011a), assessment (Nutbrown 1997), children’s rights(Nutbrown 1996), parental involvement (Nutbrown, Hannon, and Morgan 2005)and the importance of the Arts (Nutbrown 2011c; Nutbrown and Jones 2005). To adegree I can see in my own roots the truth of Fulghm’s (1986) notion that ‘Wisdomwas not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile atSunday school’ (4).

What this probing highlights for me ! as a fundamental root of my own career issomething about the development of a respect for children’s voices (Nutbrown and

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Clough 2009; Nutbrown and Hannon 2003) and a proper valuing of the people whowork with them, and my view that young children need ‘well educated educators’:

Children need well educated educators who engage in professional and sensitivereflection, who think about their work and who respond to new ideas and newexperiences drawn from reflection on their practice and relevant research. (Nutbrown2011a, 177)

There is a sense in which the stories here are not stories of a particular person but of‘all of us’ (Poulous 2008), in that there are many, many ‘ordinary’ fragments ofchildhood in our memories. Putting me aside, I want to end this paper with a plea thatacademics working in the field of early childhood education consider what might begained by breaking out of the confines of more traditional (and safer) qualitativeresearch; pushing the methodological boundaries of research in the field to includeautoethnographic writing alongside other methodological approaches, so thatordinary stories of the small stuff of childhoods become more familiar. Then theremay be a chance that the ordinary lives of young children are better understood, notthrough ‘spying on our children’ (Enright 1948) but through an honest and reflexivetelling of ordinary tales of our younger selves.

Dedication

I like to dedicate this piece to Dr Penny Munn ! Editor of International Journal ofEarly Years Education ! who thoughtfully encouraged its revision and publicationshortly before her death earlier this year. IJEYE authors owe much to her editorship;her legacy will endure . . . she will be sadly missed.

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