Lost in Translation: an Experiment with Memes for Research Translation in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ecec) Contexts

What is it about?

Visual resources informing teachers and families about best practices for infant transitions from home to early childhood settings drawn from research are almost non-existent. Those that do exist are largely text-based and orient towards transitions to school. Yet early transitions are on the rise across global and national contexts, bringing with them a new set of pedagogical and emotional demands for teachers and parents alike. In this paper, we share the outcomes of an experiment translating research from an International Study of the Social and Emotional Experiences of Early Transitions (ISSEET) into visual genres for this audience, paying particular attention to memes. Garnering early years sector feedback strong negative responses to the use of memes - indicating that they were ‘lost in translation’. We explore this phenomenon, and why it might be so. We draw on the Bakhtinian concept of genre to interpret the relationships between form and content in the translation of the memes Reflecting on the posssible Bakhtinan genre indicated that memes untraditional form and content may be at tension with the sectors current battles for legitimacy, leading to moral as well as ethical implications of fractious research findings.

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