Fiona Westbrook
Biographic Data
| ID | 4642625 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fiona Westbrook |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fiona |
| FAMILY NAME | Westbrook |
| SIGNATURE | WESTBROOK F |
| AFFILIATIONS | RMIT University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0744-6721 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
‘Outside the tent’
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers increasingly use social networks to advocate for their professional recognition through their political dialogues within these platforms. Yet, their strategies for gaining and being appreciated as legitimised professional signals a paradox. In deploying what Bakhtin terms authoritative discourse, language that demands acceptance as a dominant, hierarchical, profaned truth, teachers simultaneously constrain…
Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes”
Through a series of visual provocations from Star Wars’ Episode III – Revenge of the Sith , this article contemplates the allure and danger of a singular truth. Anakin Skywalker’s transition from Jedi to Sith Lord, Darth Vader, amplifies and breaks down notions of truth and lies, posing seductive simplicities and paradoxical tensions. These come to the fore in the battle which marks Anakin’s final transition from Jedi to Sith, with his former Mas…
These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For”
The authors are collaborators on Sylvester Tonga’s doctoral documentary, filmed with the weavers and farmers who sustain these agricultural traditions in Leimatu’a, his village of origin in the Vava’u Islands of Tonga. An archipelago of fifty-one atolls, Vava’u lies 300 kilometres north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa. Using screengrabs and photographs made by the production crew with the Leimatu’a contributors, they consider how Sylvester’s cultu…
Crisis inciting carnivalesque
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers have expressed being silenced, indicating their responses to everyday issues of political concern may be hidden. This voicelessness underscores the importance of examining strategies and spaces that incite ECE teachers to vocalise their political dialogues. The pandemic, as a crisis event, within Victoria, Australia, during 2020 offers an unrivalled viewing of such entreaties. Posing unique and unusual dan…
TikTok Videos, Carnivalesque Provocations for Teachers
This article explores how TikTok videos, situated in a postdigital space and means of engagement, visibilise divergent responses to right-wing, populist political governments with anti-liberal, anti-socialist policies, offering video-based provocations for teachers. Even traditionally left-wing havens are shifting to right-wing populism, seemingly exemplified by the Aotearoa Coalition Government, implicating the prevalence of this phenomena. Due …
Opening up and closing down teachers’ political dialogues
This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed…
(In)visible perceptions of objects (‘things’) during early transitions
Objects in early childhood education (ECEC) experiences have begun to receive a great deal more attention than ever before. Although much of this attention has emerged recently from new materialism, in this paper we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological concern with the (in)visibility of ‘things’ to illuminate the presence of objects within infant transitions. Drawing on notions of écart and reversibility, we explore the relational perceptions…
How to Analyse Emojis, gif s, Embedded Images, Videos, and url s
This article offers a means of analysing social networking, visual dialogues of emojis, gif s (images in the Graphics Interchange Format), embedded images, videos, and url s (Uniform Resource Locators). Doing so addresses these often overlooked and undervalued forms of visual communication, suggesting a unique means of gaining insights into their use within online interactions. Utilising a Bakhtinian methodology, the author extracts excerpts from…
Chronotopic thresholds
Notes1 "Bobok" first appeared in February 1873, in Dostoevsky's own newspaper column Diary of a Writer. The class used the translation by Constance Garnett in The Short Stories of Dostoevsky, edited by William Phillips (The Dial Press, New York, 1946): pp. 505–25.2 ". . . we can say outright that the menippea essentially sets the tone for Dostoevsky's entire creative output. We would hardly be mistaken in saying that 'Bobok,' in all its depth and…
One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum
Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Māori after years of a right-wing government. With the ‘refresh’ of New Zealand’s national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki under the Fifth National Government we sought to investigate the location of these discourses in Te Whāriki. Borrowing …
Lost in Translation
Early transitions are on the rise across global and national contexts. However, resources informing teachers and families about best practices concerning infants, especially infant transitions from home to early childhood settings, are almost non-existent. In this article, the authors share the outcomes of an experiment that translated research from an International Study of the Social and Emotional Experiences of Early Transitions ( isseet ) pro…
Web-Conference Lecturing
covid -19 is an omnipresent feature of 2020, both globally and within Australia. For university students, a consequence of this has been the shift from on-campus to online delivery. Exploring these visual realities for lecturers and students, this article engages in Bakhtinian dialogism; a dialogic interaction that is born between peoples searching for meaning (Bakhtin, 1986). To do so, the authors engaged with and responded to students’ survey d…
Infantilisations
Infantilisations is the fourth article in a collective writing project that includes ‘Infantologies’, ‘Infantasies’, ‘Infanticides’, and Infantologies II-Songs of the Cradle. It is a notion and paper directed to the treatment of others as infants, essentially a hierarchical relation of power that supports a functional and routine psychological dependence either by one individual to another or group, or as an institutional ideology that ‘talks dow…
Opening up and closing down teachers’ political dialogues
This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed…
Infantilisations
Infantilisations is the fourth article in a collective writing project that includes ‘Infantologies’, ‘Infantasies’, ‘Infanticides’, and Infantologies II-Songs of the Cradle. It is a notion and paper directed to the treatment of others as infants, essentially a hierarchical relation of power that supports a functional and routine psychological dependence either by one individual to another or group, or as an institutional ideology that ‘talks dow…
Chronotopic thresholds
Notes1 "Bobok" first appeared in February 1873, in Dostoevsky's own newspaper column Diary of a Writer. The class used the translation by Constance Garnett in The Short Stories of Dostoevsky, edited by William Phillips (The Dial Press, New York, 1946): pp. 505–25.2 ". . . we can say outright that the menippea essentially sets the tone for Dostoevsky's entire creative output. We would hardly be mistaken in saying that 'Bobok,' in all its depth and…
One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum
Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Māori after years of a right-wing government. With the ‘refresh’ of New Zealand’s national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki under the Fifth National Government we sought to investigate the location of these discourses in Te Whāriki. Borrowing …
Lost in Translation
Early transitions are on the rise across global and national contexts. However, resources informing teachers and families about best practices concerning infants, especially infant transitions from home to early childhood settings, are almost non-existent. In this article, the authors share the outcomes of an experiment that translated research from an International Study of the Social and Emotional Experiences of Early Transitions ( isseet ) pro…
Web-Conference Lecturing
covid -19 is an omnipresent feature of 2020, both globally and within Australia. For university students, a consequence of this has been the shift from on-campus to online delivery. Exploring these visual realities for lecturers and students, this article engages in Bakhtinian dialogism; a dialogic interaction that is born between peoples searching for meaning (Bakhtin, 1986). To do so, the authors engaged with and responded to students’ survey d…
Infantilisations
Infantilisations is the fourth article in a collective writing project that includes ‘Infantologies’, ‘Infantasies’, ‘Infanticides’, and Infantologies II-Songs of the Cradle. It is a notion and paper directed to the treatment of others as infants, essentially a hierarchical relation of power that supports a functional and routine psychological dependence either by one individual to another or group, or as an institutional ideology that ‘talks dow…
(In)visible perceptions of objects (‘things’) during early transitions
Objects in early childhood education (ECEC) experiences have begun to receive a great deal more attention than ever before. Although much of this attention has emerged recently from new materialism, in this paper we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological concern with the (in)visibility of ‘things’ to illuminate the presence of objects within infant transitions. Drawing on notions of écart and reversibility, we explore the relational perceptions…
How to Analyse Emojis, gif s, Embedded Images, Videos, and url s
This article offers a means of analysing social networking, visual dialogues of emojis, gif s (images in the Graphics Interchange Format), embedded images, videos, and url s (Uniform Resource Locators). Doing so addresses these often overlooked and undervalued forms of visual communication, suggesting a unique means of gaining insights into their use within online interactions. Utilising a Bakhtinian methodology, the author extracts excerpts from…
Chronotopic thresholds
Notes1 "Bobok" first appeared in February 1873, in Dostoevsky's own newspaper column Diary of a Writer. The class used the translation by Constance Garnett in The Short Stories of Dostoevsky, edited by William Phillips (The Dial Press, New York, 1946): pp. 505–25.2 ". . . we can say outright that the menippea essentially sets the tone for Dostoevsky's entire creative output. We would hardly be mistaken in saying that 'Bobok,' in all its depth and…
Crisis inciting carnivalesque
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers have expressed being silenced, indicating their responses to everyday issues of political concern may be hidden. This voicelessness underscores the importance of examining strategies and spaces that incite ECE teachers to vocalise their political dialogues. The pandemic, as a crisis event, within Victoria, Australia, during 2020 offers an unrivalled viewing of such entreaties. Posing unique and unusual dan…
TikTok Videos, Carnivalesque Provocations for Teachers
This article explores how TikTok videos, situated in a postdigital space and means of engagement, visibilise divergent responses to right-wing, populist political governments with anti-liberal, anti-socialist policies, offering video-based provocations for teachers. Even traditionally left-wing havens are shifting to right-wing populism, seemingly exemplified by the Aotearoa Coalition Government, implicating the prevalence of this phenomena. Due …
Opening up and closing down teachers’ political dialogues
This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed…
Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes”
Through a series of visual provocations from Star Wars’ Episode III – Revenge of the Sith , this article contemplates the allure and danger of a singular truth. Anakin Skywalker’s transition from Jedi to Sith Lord, Darth Vader, amplifies and breaks down notions of truth and lies, posing seductive simplicities and paradoxical tensions. These come to the fore in the battle which marks Anakin’s final transition from Jedi to Sith, with his former Mas…
These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For”
The authors are collaborators on Sylvester Tonga’s doctoral documentary, filmed with the weavers and farmers who sustain these agricultural traditions in Leimatu’a, his village of origin in the Vava’u Islands of Tonga. An archipelago of fifty-one atolls, Vava’u lies 300 kilometres north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa. Using screengrabs and photographs made by the production crew with the Leimatu’a contributors, they consider how Sylvester’s cultu…
‘Outside the tent’
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers increasingly use social networks to advocate for their professional recognition through their political dialogues within these platforms. Yet, their strategies for gaining and being appreciated as legitimised professional signals a paradox. In deploying what Bakhtin terms authoritative discourse, language that demands acceptance as a dominant, hierarchical, profaned truth, teachers simultaneously constrain…
Sociology (10 works) · Pedagogy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Dialogic (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Art (4 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (4 works)