Whose adventure is it anyway? Redefining adventure through the ethical entanglements of autoethnography
by Victoria Jefferies
Fascinated by the ladybird larva’s pattern and the way it moved, Harry and Jack [pseudonyms] watched it for over five minutes. The angles, the direction, the way it followed the curve of the tyre were all intriguing.
“Argh, it’s fallen in a spider’s web! What we gonna do?”
The larva was clearly trapped in the web woven in between the tyre and its neighbour. Harry and Jack’s ethical dilemma increased when a small spider emerged and began to wrap the larva in gossamer thread. Harry didn’t want the larva to die because it was so beautiful. Jack didn’t speak, utterly transfixed by the sight unfolding before his eyes.
This moment was the product of idleness; two boys drifting around the playground. I was on the verge of intervening to guide them to more ‘productive’ play but I held back a few seconds more. It was then that the boys noticed a bug and I avoided eradicating an adventure, instead allowing slow pedagogy to take precedence (Clark, 2023). Acting on my educator’s agency would have seemed ethical – a normal course of events when two children aren’t engaged. Trusting in the self-sufficiency of my own expertise and judgement, however, would have accidentally killed the adventure in its tracks (Scarfe, 2009).
Adventure is an intangible, fluid social concept and is generally assumed to be synonymous with risk, danger and only present in outdoor learning. I take a different, more nuanced view: adventure is daring and hedonistic, involving challenge, adversity and, crucially, uncertainty, which can occur both inside and outside. Redefining education as adventure can be transformative and hopeful, forming resilient, imaginative and curious lifelong learners (Whitehead, 1933). It therefore becomes an act of resistance (Albin-Clark and Archer, 2023) pushing back against normative discourses which form an ‘adventure-less’ policy landscape.
Adventure has its roots in the curiosity nourished by many of the pioneers of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). While it remains important to bewilder the influences of singular western individuals (Osgood et al, 2024), recognising, as they did, play’s rhizomatic and non-hierarchical nature helps educators to resist measurement and formalisation agendas.
In Harry and Jack’s encounter with the more-than-human world, they had critical agency over their own learning. Their line of enquiry was in fact a ‘trajectory of growth’ (Ingold, 2021) leading them to an assemblage (Kraftl et al, 2024) full of enchantment, beauty and mystery (Bennett, 2001). Time stood still, ultimate flow was achieved (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) as the boys were mesmerised by potential outcomes. The story was allowed to unfold as a common world was co-created (Malone and Crinall, 2023).
Their ethical dilemma was apparent – save the larva or allow the spider to eat? – but this was only one of the ethical entanglements that presented themselves. The organic observations undertaken during this research meant that I had no idea where it was going to take me; an ‘embodied reflexivity’ was necessary (Beattie, 2022: 162). The asymmetry of power was impossible to ignore. In an attempt to share my research, I wrote a story about “Victoria’s adventures” and asked children if they’d like to be in my book. In fact, heeding and listening to children’s voices in this way meant I included one vignette simply because the child asked if it could go into my storybook.
These stories clash with the ‘official story’ which is presented as factual statements (Moss, 2018). This narrative masquerades as truth, silencing both children and educators. Since my own process of becoming an ECEC educator informs my pedagogical vision, I value children as becomings not beings (Murris, 2013). Their stories overlap, intertwine and knot with mine and therein lies the key ethical grey area of autoethnography (Sparkes, 2024). Where does their story start and mine begin? Whose adventure is education anyway?
Initially training and teaching as a secondary school MFL teacher, Victoria Jefferies became an ECEC educator following raising her own two young children and becoming fascinated by their development. Her experience thus far has included multiple leadership positions in the PVI sector and she is currently completing my MA in Early Years Education. Her main research interests are the pedagogy of adventure and practitioner voice.
References
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WHITEHEAD, A., 1933. Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press, 1967