Dr Tran N. Templeton
Assistant Professor of Early Childhood & Faculty Co-Director of the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center, Columbia University, United States
Email: ttn2114@tc.columbia.edu
Profile
Tran's research and teaching draw out a politics of the child in asking, which children are afforded which rights, which protections, and which childhoods? Through image-based visual research with young children ages 2 to 5, as well as examinations of how adults in schools conceptualize very young children and their capacities, Tran juxtaposes children's versions of themselves against adults’ renditions of children. Her concern is with how adults mis-recognize, and therefore misrepresent, children, especially young children and disabled children, whose ways of knowing and relating far exceed adults’ capacities to understand them. Her body of work proposes that enlarging our adult visions of children has significant implications for the ways that curriculum, schooling, and research are enacted, especially as we account for the historical, social, and political conditions wherein childhoods play out.