The preference for self-direction as a resource for parents' socialisation practices. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hepburn, Alexa
• Is Part Of: Qualitative research in psychology. Volume 17:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 450
• Page End: 468
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Socialisation -- conversation analysis -- discursive psychology -- family interaction -- preference organization; Psychology -- Research -- Periodicals; Qualitative research -- Periodicals; 150.72
• DOI: 10.1080/14780887.2019.1664679
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-0887

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on practices that parents employ when they seek to forward some course of action for their child and manage children's resistance to these attempts. Combining conversation analytic tools with discursive psychological insights, it will argue that more coercive and invasive behaviour management practices can be systematically deferred in favour or actions that give children the opportunity to develop their own solutions to problem behaviour. This is analyzed in terms of preference organisation, specifically employing the notion of a dispreferred initiating action, allowing a consideration of how parents provide opportunities for, and hence prefer as a next action, self-direction. This argument will be grounded in an examination of the notion of socialisation, as a basis for proposing how it can be understood from a discursive psychological perspective. The resulting respecification of the idea of socialisation will be supported by an interrogation of the practices and structures involved when issuing a dispreferred action.