Critical Inquiry With Children as an Unlearning Process: A South Korean Case of Critical Inquiry Centering Learning From Children

Abstract

Critical inquiries with children have been increasingly conducted in various educational settings. However, valuing children’s way of knowing while keeping inquiries critical remains an ongoing issue. This study aims to understand what can be learned about the design, conduct, and interpretation of critical inquiry from children’s engagement. I present a case of critical inquiries that I conducted with five fifth-grade migrant Joseonjok children in an after-school class in South Korea. By documenting the moments when the children’s engagement in critical inquiries raised methodological dilemmas, as well as the moments that allowed me to learn, this study provides concrete examples of how children instilled unexpected complexity into the critical inquiries and how the inquiries continued to change over time. The findings suggest critical inquiry with children can be a process of unlearning in which teachers and researchers acknowledge that what they believed they knew could be wrong and reconstruct their knowledge about children and children’s way of knowing by learning from them.