Child Writers and Their Perceptions of Agency in Author Schools

This article presents results from a larger study of so-called author schools for children in Denmark. The focus is to explore children’s articulations of “freedom” or being “free” when writing stories and poetry in these author schools, which are free-time fiction-writing activities taught and mentored by professional adult authors. In an analysis of selected excerpts of empirical material, the article connects children’s notions of freedom to theoretical conceptualizations of agency from both childhood studies and rhetoric. The empirical method is explorative and ethnographic, guided by the following research questions: What characterizes children’s experiences of being “free” as writers in the context of Danish author schools, and how can these experiences be understood and conceptualized in terms of agency? To address these questions, the article elaborates on four aspects of children’s perceived agency: (a) kinship as a foundation for agency, (b) agency as relational dynamics in the instructional context, (c) agency as the significance of individual choice of expression, and (d) agency as the drive toward affecting a possible reader. This study is anchored in children’s literature research through the interest in children as authors, their production of texts, and the specific context around these texts. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, it contributes with empirically grounded knowledge about children’s perspectives on “freedom” and agency in writing within the context of author schools for children. Second, it discusses how and why an interdisciplinary theoretical approach to agency is necessary for understanding and generating this knowledge about child authors and their perspectives.