Global Studies of Childhood

Introduction

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-1
ABSTRACT Not available

Ethnography, Multiplicity and the Global Childhoods Project: reflections on establishing an interdisciplinary, transnational, multi-sited research collaboration

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Ethnography, Multiplicity and the Global Childhoods Project: reflections on establishing an interdisciplinary, transnational, multi-sited research collaboration
Author: NICOLA YELLAND; SUE SALTMARSH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 2-11
ABSTRACT This article offers a description and rationale of the Global Childhoods Project, initiated by a group of researchers from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia. This transnational and interdisciplinary network embarked on a collaborative research endeavour concerned with investigating questions of childhoods and globalization in the Asia-Pacific region. A central premise of the group is that researching global childhoods is best conducted by local researchers with knowledge of their own culture and contexts. This article considers the ways in which such collaboration offers opportunities to productively explore the possibilities and dilemmas associated with collaborative interdisciplinary, transnational, multi-sited ethnographic research. While all the researchers taking part in what we termed the Global Childhoods Project are established scholars and experienced researchers, the group quickly realized that the multiplicity of cultures, languages, perspectives and research backgrounds that furnished us with such potentially rich ground for collaborative work also presented us with a number of unanticipated conundrums and challenges.

Views from Somewhere: situated knowledges and partial perspectives in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Views from Somewhere: situated knowledges and partial perspectives in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom
Author: MINDY BLAISE; VIVIENNE W.M. LEUNG; CHUNRONG SUN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 12-25
ABSTRACT This article demonstrates an engaged situated methodology by drawing from an exploratory study of literacy activities in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom. Bringing together feminist understandings of situated knowledges and Asian critical cultural studies ideas about 'Asia as method', the authors recognize that all aspects of knowledge production are situated individually and globally. The authors work with their different positionalities by dialoguing across partial viewpoints. This strategy of inter-referencing begins to blur hierarchical and binary thinking about insider/outsider perspectives and Western/Chinese pedagogies. Working with dialoguing and inter-referencing across partial perspectives, the authors enact de-colonizing and de-imperializing methodologies to develop new reflexive and transformative knowledge practices.

Young Children's Living and Learning Experiences under the Biliterate and Trilingual Education Policy in Hong Kong

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Young Children's Living and Learning Experiences under the Biliterate and Trilingual Education Policy in Hong Kong
Author: I-FANG ; CHAO-LING TSENG
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 26-39
ABSTRACT Seeking to understand contemporary Asian childhoods and children's learning in different lifeworlds (both learning and living experiences), this article highlights Hong Kong as an example to understand children's early literacy learning under the biliterate and trilingual education policy in Hong Kong. Through looking at the portraits of children's lifeworlds in relation to the learning of biliteracies and trilingualism, we reflect upon the provocative notions of 'best pedagogical practice' as well as considering globalization and Westernization in the socio-cultural and political contexts of Hong Kong. Through the discussions, layers of opportunities are created for teachers to reconceptualize the effects of dominant socio-cultural production of studenthood and the ways in which children's multiple and varied childhoods are adding dimensions of learning.

Making use of Old and New: Korean early childhood education in the global context

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Making use of Old and New: Korean early childhood education in the global context
Author: EUNHYE PARK; JEEHYUN LEE; HONG-JU JUN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 40-52
ABSTRACT This article focuses on Korean early childhood education in the global and postcolonial context. Special attention is paid to Western and traditional beliefs and practices of childhood education projected by the postings on the walls of an early childhood institution in Korea. Three major features found on the walls of the early childhood institution - that is, collective postings, socially appropriate practices, and rules for self-regulation - are interpreted in terms of the layers of educational practices that consist of Korean early childhood education. This article discusses how Korean early childhood education 'consumes' the outside influences in order to increase its educational competitiveness in the global context, while maintaining traditional educational practices.

Becoming Literate in Taiwan: kindergarten experiences as the first part of a long literacy journey

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Becoming Literate in Taiwan: kindergarten experiences as the first part of a long literacy journey
Author: YI-HUNG LIAO; CHIN-CHI LAI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 53-71
ABSTRACT The lifeworlds of children incorporate home, school and community locations. They are different environments and each has different contexts and goals. In Taiwan, while school is more focused on an overt exchange of teaching and learning, home is more informal and generally characterized by unstructured contexts and parents' attention that encourages and enhances their children's learning with practical knowledge. Consequently, while literacy is taught in school via a well-planned curriculum, at home it is expected to happen via everyday communications and family activities that promote a close parent-child relationship. This ethnographic study was designed to consider emerging literacy practices in two main venues of kindergarten children's life (school and home) to get a greater understanding of how early literacy is evident in Taiwan. In addition, patterns and practices of children's literacy learning in both urban and suburban areas of Taiwan are scrutinized and analyzed to provide a rationale for early literacy learning and teaching in a time of governmental mandates and global literacy efforts.

Media Literacy in the Lifeworlds of Malaysian Children

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Media Literacy in the Lifeworlds of Malaysian Children
Author: SHANTHI BALRAJ BABOO
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 72-85
ABSTRACT Many children grow up in contemporary Malaysia with an array of new media. These include television, video games, mobile phones, computers, Internet, tablets, iPads and iPods. In using these new media technologies, children are able to produce texts and images that shape their childhood experiences and their views of the world. This article presents some selected findings and snapshots of the media lifeworlds of children aged 10 in Malaysia. This article is concerned with media literacy and puts a focus on the use, forms of engagement and ways that children are able to make sense of media technologies in their lives. The study reveals that children participate in many different media activities in their homes. However, the multimodal competencies, user experiences and meaning-making actions that the children construct are not engaged with in productive ways in their schooling literacies. It is argued that media literacy should be more widely acknowledged within home and school settings.

Enhancing Scientific Literacy in Thailand

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:01:52 GMT

Title: Enhancing Scientific Literacy in Thailand
Author: CHOKCHAI YUENYONG
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2013 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 86-98
ABSTRACT Globally, literacy in science has become a fundamental focus of public education. The term 'scientific literacy', however, attracts a diversity of views. A common theme in the literature is that it relates to being able to critique scientific discussions. The large-scale evaluation of students' scientific literacy was assessed in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Thailand participated in the PISA scheme every three years from 2000 to 2009. The results indicate that Thailand's performance decreased over the period and were below average. This has led to an increased focus on improving performance and scores and a desire to improve science education and science teaching for enhancing scientific literacy in Thailand. Science educators in universities, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST), the Ministry of Education and others have organized various projects and research to improve scientific literacy. Research projects have focused on developing teachers' quality in science teaching and have gone on to consider the nature of science, contexts of science, socio-scientific issues and the relation between science, technology and society. The article will discuss the strategies that have been embarked upon to enhance scientific literacy in Thailand.

Editorial

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Sue Saltmarsh; Nicola Yelland
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 245-246
ABSTRACT Not available

'Community' and 'Democratic Practice' in Early Childhood Education and Care: a critique and possibility through the optic of Roberto Esposito

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: 'Community' and 'Democratic Practice' in Early Childhood Education and Care: a critique and possibility through the optic of Roberto Esposito
Author: ZSUZSA MILLEI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 247-259
ABSTRACT 'Community' is a pervasive concept around the globe in early childhood education and care that remains mostly unchallenged. The notion of 'community' is widely utilised in theories and practices to describe the context and the social world of young children and their carers and educators. It is also a familiar term used in relation to curriculum and pedagogical frameworks and practices. Another concept that appears increasingly in the literature and in practical considerations is the possibility for early childhood settings to be places of 'democratic practice'. Democratic practice is hoped to prevent autocracy, to ensure pluralism and cater for diversity, and to enable collaborative knowledge production. However, community and 'democratic practice' are not without contention. This article considers the nexus and the contention between concepts of 'community' and 'democratic practice'. With Roberto Esposito's notion of communitas, it offers a possible theorisation of community that enables community to serve as a backdrop to 'democratic political practice' in early childhood education and care.

Measuring Teacher Quality: listening to young children in Singapore

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Measuring Teacher Quality: listening to young children in Singapore
Author: DEBORAH HARCOURT
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 260-275
ABSTRACT Early childhood research and policy are focusing increasingly on issues of 'quality' in early childhood education. Much of the focus, however, has been on adult-generated notions of quality, with little attention being devoted to children's own views of their experience in early childhood settings. Conducted in the context of early childhood education in Singapore, this research seeks to contribute children's own insights into their experience in two early childhood classrooms in Singapore. Informed by the sociology of childhood conceptualisation of child competence, the research methodology draws upon contemporary approaches to researching with children. The findings of this study were generated by beginning with the understanding that young children have the competence to articulate their ideas using a range of symbolic literacies. They formed views and constructed theories about their preschool experiences, in particular about teachers, and give a clear indication of what constitutes good quality in this domain. This study calls for those engaged with children, particularly teachers, to act upon the contributions offered by this group of children to the understanding of quality.

Looking into Early Childhood Education and Development Spaces: visual ethnography's contribution to thinking about quality

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Looking into Early Childhood Education and Development Spaces: visual ethnography's contribution to thinking about quality
Author: AILIE CLEGHORN; LARRY PROCHNER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 276-285
ABSTRACT Discussions about what constitutes a quality early childhood (EC) environment rarely focus on visual or spatial aspects, except to provide background information for talking about EC practice and children's development in the preschool years. There is a need to look beyond the usual quality indicators, which tend to focus on poverty and children's developmental potential so that context and cultural dimensions are often omitted in the discussion. This article thus explores the contribution of visual ethnography for thinking more about, or rethinking, some of the prevailing notions of quality in early childhood education (ECE). To do so, culture is seen as central to the discussion. This includes the organisation of space and the use of materials in EC settings. The idea in this article is to present images that stand in contrast to some of the current globalising discourse about what is good for the world's children. In so doing, the authors thread together seemingly disparate ideas stemming from the centrality of culture and space theory, to the organisation of space, to the use of materials and to transitions in ECE.

Asian Childhoods: exploring the lifeworlds of students in contemporary Hong Kong

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Asian Childhoods: exploring the lifeworlds of students in contemporary Hong Kong
Author: NICOLA YELLAND; SANDY MUSPRATT; CHRISTINE CHAN YEE ON; CAJA GILBERT
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 286-301
ABSTRACT In this article, the authors discuss the findings of two surveys that were conducted with 10-year-old primary students and their parents in Hong Kong. They sought to gather empirical data about how the students spend their time in out-of-school contexts in order to interrogate the view that Asian students often spend much of their time studying, with little leisure time. The authors were concerned that there was an absence of empirical data on this topic. Increasingly, there is a recognition that Asian students perform well in high-stakes international tests, and a widely held view is that this is because they dedicate so much time to intensive academic study in contrast to their ‘Western’ counterparts. The social and cultural capital derived from doing well in school systems is an established feature of many global contexts. In the competitive environment that characterises education in Hong Kong, progression through the system is based solely on examination scores, and justified on the basis that this is both equitable and allows the best students to thrive. Tutorial schools that train attendees in the art of testing are multimillion-dollar industries – but who are the clients? In this article, the authors reveal that at 10 years of age, the out-of-school lives of the students surveyed contain many and varied activities. They attend school and, in out-of-school contexts, complete homework, participate in activities that both incorporate new media (for example, television and computers) and others (for example, indoor and outdoor play), and do not.

Parenting the ‘Millennium Child’: choice, responsibility and playing it safe in uncertain times

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Parenting the ‘Millennium Child’: choice, responsibility and playing it safe in uncertain times
Author: JENNY BARR; MARIAN DE SOUZA; CATHIE HARRISON; BRENDAN HYDE; HELEN VAN VLIET; SUE SALTMARSH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 302-318
ABSTRACT This article considers a range of issues confronting parents of children growing up in the new millennium. The authors frame their discussion with concerns raised by scholars in a diverse range of fields that notions of risk, uncertainty and anxiety play a critical role in what parents today understand as comprising their parental responsibilities. A review of literature in the areas of education, media and technology, health and well-being, and family and work leads the authors to argue that parenting in the new millennium is broadly constituted within normalising discourses of consumer choice, individual responsibility and risk management strategies that combine innovation, entrepreneurialism and embracing challenges, on the one hand, with ‘playing it safe’ and protecting perceived childhood vulnerabilities, on the other. Here, the authors read the persistence in the media and popular culture of nostalgic appeals to childhood innocence as being under intensified threat as a technique of governmentality, through which a population governs itself. However, the authors also consider how the research literature highlights complexities and ambiguities associated with rapid technological and social changes, and the impact of these on contemporary parenting practices. The authors conclude that the seeming discursive dichotomies of parenting that embraces and confronts change, while simultaneously preventing and ameliorating risks both real and imagined, make parenting the ‘millennium child’ a complicated and contradictory task.

Managing Mothers to Build Their Child's Worth: the economic positioning of the maternal role

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Managing Mothers to Build Their Child's Worth: the economic positioning of the maternal role
Author: MARGARET STUART
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 319-330
ABSTRACT Using discursive analysis, the author uncovers the societal interest over the past century related to the body and mind of the child. Using the concept of 'biopolitics' - of national risk management to the body politic - the author plots some changes in Western states' interests in the mother and child dyad. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the author argues, a eugenics discourse constructed maternal health as an issue of national hygiene. Over the twentieth century, the position of mothers has been reduced, their role increasingly viewed as necessary to the workforce and their children seen as needing 'education'. Today, there is interest, with the support of 'qualified' early childhood teachers, in managing the mother-child relationship to build children's neurological and social skills in order for them to be able to contribute as future workers to the economic wealth of the state.

Childhood Spaces in a Changing World: exploring the intersection between children and new surveillance technologies

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:05:18 GMT

Title: Childhood Spaces in a Changing World: exploring the intersection between children and new surveillance technologies
Author: TONYA ROONEY
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Pages: 331-342
ABSTRACT Children are at the forefront of the rapidly changing technological landscape, living in a world where both physical and virtual spaces are an intertwined part of daily experience. As an example of a child's changing relationship with new technologies, this article explores the increasing presence of surveillance technologies in the day-to-day spaces children inhabit. It suggests that childhood experience needs to be understood in the context of fluid and interdependent relations with others and the worlds around them, including their relationships with new technologies in the surrounding environment. At the same time, it is important to retain a view of the child that is more complex than what is simply gleaned through their relationship with new technologies, even as this becomes a prominent mode of interaction with others and the world around them.

Editorial

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Keri Facer; Rachel Holmes ; Nick Lee
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 170-175
ABSTRACT Not available

Echoes of the Past in Imaginings of the Future: the problems and possibilities of working with young people in contemporary South Africa

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: Echoes of the Past in Imaginings of the Future: the problems and possibilities of working with young people in contemporary South Africa
Author: JILL BRADBURY; JUDE CLARK
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 176-189
ABSTRACT This article presents an exploration of how past and future are articulated in the construction of youth identities in the context of South Africa, with a particular focus on the possibilities for change in discourses of nationality and gender. The authors' selective focus on these two dimensions of identity is not only informed by theoretical interests, but is also driven by their implication in the critical social problems of xenophobia and gender-based violence in contemporary South Africa. The authors present two illustrative empirical examples that have emerged from (and reflexively inform) their domain of practice in working with young people, providing for some exploratory theoretical trajectories and pedagogical possibilities: (1) 'national' identity and dialogues of difference, and (2) gendered identities and constructions of sexual violence. Young people are quite evidently actively engaged in crafting their own fluid and hybrid identities, suggesting imaginative new ways to be in the world, energising us and provoking an orientation towards future possibilities. However, this articulation does not escape the past, which echoes in the reassertion of rigid categories of identity, such as gender and nationality. The authors not only consider the possibilities for creating 'better childhoods, better futures', but also explore the constraints on their conscientisation work.

'Better Childhoods' as Immigration Narrative (Not) Told through Food

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: 'Better Childhoods' as Immigration Narrative (Not) Told through Food
Author: IDA FADZILLAH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 190-200
ABSTRACT This article explores the complex relationship between the American Dream and the lived experience of a group of Spanish-speaking immigrant families residing in one small city in the American South. The author focuses specifically on the women's narratives of migration and success as manifested in their children's increasing ill health, and demonstrates that, while they had a deep desire to give their children a 'better childhood' than was possible in Mexico, this better childhood was not reflected in these women's narratives about the food and eating habits of their American lives. The women spoke eloquently and clearly about their children's declining health through obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. These mothers compared in detail the healthier foods and food habits children were exposed to in Mexico with their current American food practices, with special mention of the school cafeteria offerings. Though these women held varying levels of economic wealth, they spoke uniformly of their worry about their children's current health. Interestingly, what is significant in their narratives is what the American Dream has made accessible: full-time jobs for both parents, free or reduced-cost school meals, abundant and affordable fast-food restaurants, and cheap soft drinks and microwave meals. All these new possibilities have negatively influenced their children's access to healthy food options, and illustrate an interesting paradox of migration and economic success, in which seeking a better life for one's children could lead to a decline in their health.

Time and Space as a Resource for Meaning-Making by Children and Young People in Home and Community Settings

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: Time and Space as a Resource for Meaning-Making by Children and Young People in Home and Community Settings
Author: KATE PAHL
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 201-216
ABSTRACT This study provides a close analysis of young people's multimodal texts produced in out-of-school contexts as part of a research project called 'Writing in the Home and in the Street', funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Connected Communities programme. The study was carried out with three young people in a library and home setting. All of the young people in the study were girls aged between 12 and 13 years. Two were from white working-class backgrounds and one was from a British Asian background. They shared a heritage of grandparents who worked in the steel industry. The methods were ethnographic and collaborative, with an emphasis on joint analysis of texts. The article shows how spaces of experience and time scales as lived and perceived by young people are glimpsed within their textual productions. Drawing on a multimodal textual analysis together with ethnographic insights from the longitudinal data set, the author considers how time and space shaped these texts and placed them both in relation to past and future trajectories, as well as evoking actual as well as possible locations.

Parental Emigration and Conceptions of Better Futures in Ecuador

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: Parental Emigration and Conceptions of Better Futures in Ecuador
Author: HEATHER RAE-ESPINOZA
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 217-229
ABSTRACT Ideas about best practices for children's futures shape global and local, lay and expert, and personal and clinical discussions. Debates can evolve around sociocultural and political dividing lines. In Ecuador, transnational families and non-émigré families espouse contrasting ideas on whether parental emigration constitutes a better life for children or not. Through data from ethnographic interviews over three years of fieldwork, this article details the differing local cultural expectations of how to provide 'better childhoods'. The two perspectives contrast on the effects of parental emigration on children. However, these local cultural expectations share similar underlying concerns regarding discipline, education, kinship roles and family devotion. A long-standing cultural logic permeates these ideologies of children's needs as traditional perspectives combine with globalized experiences in a culture of migration. Conceptions of 'better' childhoods can be enriched through understanding how people negotiate local cultural knowledge with global experiences.

Pursuing Better Childhoods and Futures through Curriculum: utopian visions in the development of Australia's Early Years Learning Framework

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT

Title: Pursuing Better Childhoods and Futures through Curriculum: utopian visions in the development of Australia's Early Years Learning Framework
Author: JENNIFER SUMSION; SUSAN GRIESHABER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 230-244
ABSTRACT In recent years, globalised curriculum discourses have given rise to local curriculum texts that convey and produce particularised imaginings and narratives, as well as hopes for, and expectations of, young children, their childhoods and their futures. In this article, the authors employ concepts from utopian studies and Deleuzeguattarian concepts of assemblage, rhizomes and lines (supple, rigid and lines of flight) to undertake a preliminary and partial rhizomatic mapping of utopian visions of better childhoods and futures evident in the development of the Early Years Learning Framework, Australia's first national curriculum for early childhood settings. Drawing on the perspective of policy makers, News Corporation, the public, politicians, academics and practitioners who shaped the development of the Framework, the authors seek alternatives to the well-rehearsed dichotomies that so often characterise and confine curriculum politics and debates, and ways of exploring spaces between the possible and not (yet) possible.

Learning about Emotion: cultural and family contexts of emotion socialization

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Learning about Emotion: cultural and family contexts of emotion socialization
Author: Katherine M. Kitzmann
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 82-84
ABSTRACT Not available

Emotion Socialization and Attachment in Russian Children's Homes

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Emotion Socialization and Attachment in Russian Children's Homes
Author: RACHAEL STRYKER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 85-96
ABSTRACT This article examines trends in emotion socialization in Russian children's homes (detdoma) between 1996 and 2002, with a focus on attachment socialization. It examines the shift between different emotion socialization practices such as 'toughening attachment' (purposively non-responsive childcare in institutions) and 'trading children for childhood' (the framing of inter-country adoption as the exchange of Russian children to Western adoptive parents for the children's chance at economic success and emotional development). It argues that two central features shaped detdoma workers' attachment socialization of children in the 1990s: the perceived need to 1) socialize children's attachment in an attempt to establish economic and emotional security for children in uncertain times after the fall of the Soviet Union; and 2) shape children's understandings of attachment within transnational contexts as child migration to the West increased over the course of the decade. Investigating attachment socialization within Russian children's homes immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrates the role of cultural norms, economic transition, and political ideologies in shaping emotion socialization over time. It also highlights how economic and political transition impact taken-for-granted assumptions within child development literature about what constitutes attachment and child love, family or kinship, and domesticity - particularly, parent-child interaction models of emotion socialization.

A Case for Using Indigenous Children's Literature for Emotion Socialization in Schools

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: A Case for Using Indigenous Children's Literature for Emotion Socialization in Schools
Author: BARBARA McNEIL
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 97-105
ABSTRACT Building on the work of developmental theorists, this article argues that school is a significant cultural site for emotion socialization and that the use of cultural texts such as children's picture books can play an important role in helping young children to identify and express emotions, and learn about their relational context. The author takes the perspective that teaching and learning about emotions are never neutral; they are complex, dialectical and are freighted by history, relations of power and influenced by factors such as race, class, gender, and language. As a way of countering social devaluation, exclusion and omission, the article makes a case for using children's texts that feature the cultural and family contexts of indigenous groups such as the Métis of Canada. It shows how culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate picture books that are rich with emotion-related themes and vocabulary can be used in schools to teach about the cultural and family contexts of emotion socialization.

Socialization of Turkish Children's Emotions: do different emotions elicit different responses?

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Socialization of Turkish Children's Emotions: do different emotions elicit different responses?
Author: FEYZA CORAPCI; NAZAN AKSAN; BILGE YAGMURLU
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 106-116
ABSTRACT This study addressed mothers' specific responses to children's expressions of sadness and anger. The first goal was to determine whether children's sadness and anger expressions elicited different maternal responses. The role of maternal education and child gender was also examined in sadness and anger socialization. Finally, the relations of sadness and anger socialization responses to children's adjustment were examined and the moderating role of children's emotionality in this relation was explored. Data on emotion socialization were obtained from 140 Turkish mothers of preschoolers based on their responses to hypothetical vignettes. Results showed that mothers were more likely to encourage the expression of sadness compared to anger. More educated mothers were less likely to punish and minimize their children's sadness but reported higher distress responses than less educated mothers. Sadness and anger socialization did not differ by child gender. Finally, low levels of emotional support to child anger were related to aggressive behaviors, but only among children with high emotional dysregulation.

Choreographies of Emotion: sociological stories behind bedtime, fairy tales and children's books

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Choreographies of Emotion: sociological stories behind bedtime, fairy tales and children's books
Author: ROSALINA PISCO COSTA
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 117-128
ABSTRACT This article casts a sociological gaze on the ordinary and seemingly unimportant daily moment of bedtime, and the bedtime practices involving parents and children. As modern-day parents often accuse themselves of being 'under pressure' and having 'time scarcity' when trying to balance work and family demands, children's bedtime is more and more perceived as a family ritual that stops the accelerated pace of everyday life and allows for the parent-child relationship construction and enhancement. Drawing on both middle-class men's and women's accounts collected through qualitative episodic interviews, this article explores bedtime practices between parents and small children as arenas of emotion socialization. Findings suggest that children's bedtime tends to be valued as an expression of child centrality in contemporary family; nonetheless, the circumstances surrounding this moment as a 'time for emotion' are quite different and socially constructed vis-à-vis parents' participation in the labour market, gender dynamics and family configuration. These data unveil the ways in which children's bedtime is indexical of those shifting family forms and the multiple contexts within which they are embedded, and at the same time they call for a deeper dialogue between psychology and sociology when trying to understand those choreographies of emotion.

Parents' Beliefs about Emotions and Children's Self-construals in African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian Families

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Parents' Beliefs about Emotions and Children's Self-construals in African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian Families
Author: PA HER; JULIE C. DUNSMORE; REBECCA L STELTER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 129-143
ABSTRACT The authors investigated interrelations among parents' emotion-related beliefs and discourse and children's independent and interdependent self-construals within three ethnic groups in the United States. One hundred and thirteen nine to 10-year-old African American (AA), European American (EA), and Lumbee American Indian (LA) parent-child dyads participated. Parents self-reported beliefs about the value and danger of emotions. Dyads played a game involving discussion of family memories. Conversations were coded for emotion-related terms and for language use related to independence/interdependence. Children's self-descriptions were coded for independence and interdependence. A strength of the study was the use of both between-group and within-group analyses. LA children used more interdependent language than did AA or EA children. For all children, parents' belief that emotions can be dangerous was associated with less emphasis on both independence and interdependence in self-construals. For LA children, parents' stronger belief that negative emotions are valuable and greater use of negative emotion terms was associated with children's language use suggesting greater independence and less interdependence. Results suggest the importance of cultural context in emotion socialization processes.

Childrearing and the Shaping of Children's Emotional Experiences and Expressions in Two Argentinian Communities

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Childrearing and the Shaping of Children's Emotional Experiences and Expressions in Two Argentinian Communities
Author: CAROLINA REMORINI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 144-157
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the role of children's social environment in shaping children's emotional expressions. It is based on the findings of an ongoing research study interrogating childrearing practices in two rural populations representing two contrasting ecological contexts in Argentina: Mbya Guarani indigenous communities located in the northeast rainforest (Misiones Province) and creole communities from Molinos (Salta Province), in the highlands and semiarid areas of Argentinean northwest. The focus of this article is on the ways in which adults interpret and respond to children's crying as one manifestation of emotional behavior. This article attempts a comparative analysis of representations, attitudes and behaviors regarding children's crying. It is stressed how discourses of childhood validate some expressions of emotion and restrict and pathologize others. On one hand, parents from both populations not only differ in their tolerance of children's crying but also differ in their evaluation of the difficulties of rearing 'weeping' children. On the other hand, in both populations excessive senseless crying represents a risk for children's health as it is considered a symptom of several illnesses. Based on these considerations, at the end of this article each population's ethnotheories of children's appropriate emotional behavior is analyzed, and the implications of these ethnotheories for emotion socialization.

Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: a preliminary report on interviewing mothers from five nations about their socialization of children's emotions

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:06 GMT

Title: Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: a preliminary report on interviewing mothers from five nations about their socialization of children's emotions
Author: GISELA TROMMSDORFF; PAMELA M. COLE; TOBIAS HEIKAMP
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 158-169
ABSTRACT Parental intuitive theories comprise values, goals, expectations, and cultural beliefs about the nature of parenting and its function for children's development of competence. This article introduces a research design to study mothers' intuitive theories about their socialization of children's emotions, as a means of understanding the cultural meaning of children's emotional development. The intention is not to present a traditional empirical report, but to provide a heuristic for future research. The authors illustrate the basic assumptions, methods, and approach to data analysis used in the research design, using a five-nation cross-cultural study as an example of this methodology. For purposes of illustration, examples of mothers' responses during interviews are included, about their intuitive theories of emotion socialization - that is, their attributions about child behavior, views about their parenting roles and socialization practices, and the salience of particular emotions relative to cultural models of independence and interdependence. This approach provides a more sophisticated sense of cultural similarities and variations within and between nations than has been available in prior research. The importance of parents' intuitive theories for the investigation of the cultural meaning of emotion socialization and future study directions are discussed.

Editorial. Bridging Theory and Practice: partnerships and collaboration in childhood education

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Editorial. Bridging Theory and Practice: partnerships and collaboration in childhood education
Author: Esther Y.M. Chan
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-3
ABSTRACT Not available

Challenging the Notions of Partnership and Collaboration in Early Education: a critical perspective from a whanau class in New Zealand

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Challenging the Notions of Partnership and Collaboration in Early Education: a critical perspective from a whanau class in New Zealand
Author: FLEUR HARRIS; BALJIT KAUR
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 4-13
ABSTRACT In the 1970s, New Zealand's Maori leaders and academics successfully sought the revitalisation of culture and language through education. A Maori immersion education system emerged exemplifying school-community partnership and collaboration, and in the milieu of expansion, the whanau class emerged as an education option for children. In this context, families of children aged between 5 and 12 years are placed together in one class and the language of instruction is usually bilingual - Maori and English. A case study of such a class is presented in this article and illustrates how education measurement, underpinned by Western ideologies, can construct Maori children as deficient learners, and undermine the partnership and collaboration foundation of the whanau class. However, this study also demonstrates how alternative measurement systems that take account of Maori children's bilingual and bicultural learning can construct them as capable learners, with the implication that this must inform educators and Maori for successful partnership in the education of Maori children.

Partnerships in Early Childhood Education and Care: empowering parents or empowering practitioners

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Partnerships in Early Childhood Education and Care: empowering parents or empowering practitioners
Author: ELIZABETH ROUSE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 14-25
ABSTRACT Research acknowledges that outcomes for young children are enhanced when effective partnerships are developed between educators and families. The Australian Early Years Learning Framework provides direction for the professional practice of early childhood educators by acknowledging the importance of educators working in partnership with families. In the Victorian state-based early years framework, family-centred practice has been included as the practice model. Family-centred practice has as its core a philosophy of professionals supporting the empowerment of parents as active decision makers for their child. The early childhood education and care sector in Australia, however, is made up of a workforce which is largely perceived as being undervalued as a profession. This raises questions as to the capacity of these educators to support the empowerment of parents when they themselves are coming from a position of disempowerment due to their professional status. This article reports on findings from a small-scale study of childhood educators working in a long day-care setting which aimed to identify perceptions of the partnerships that exist between themselves and parents. In the course of the investigation, it became evident that some of educators felt disempowered in the relationships that exist with some families.

Child-Centred, Family-Centred, Decentred: positioning children as rights-holders in early childhood program collaborations

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Child-Centred, Family-Centred, Decentred: positioning children as rights-holders in early childhood program collaborations
Author: FRANCES PRESS; SANDIE WONG; JENNIFER SUMSION
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 26-37
ABSTRACT Although the policy context in Australia is conducive to professional collaborations in early years services, understandings of collaboration are highly variable across the domains of research literature, policy and practice. Inconsistent and possibly incompatible approaches to working with children and families, as well as significant philosophical and professional differences, may be disguised by common terminology adopted under the rubric of collaborative practice. A potential blind spot concerns the positioning of the child, whose perspectives, needs and desires are easily subsumed by the intentions of the adults around them, either as professionals or family members. With reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and drawing on extant literature and data from two Australian research projects examining integrated and collaborative practices in early childhood programs, this article interrogates the positioning of the child in interprofessional and transprofessional collaborations, and examines the potential of the early childhood educator to sharpen the focus on children.

School-University Partnership: challenges and visions in the new decade

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: School-University Partnership: challenges and visions in the new decade
Author: SHARON S.N. NG; ESTHER Y.M. CHAN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 38-56
ABSTRACT Over the past decade, higher education has undergone drastic changes all over the world because of globalisation and the changing economy. The traditional view of university as a place for one-off training is now considered outdated. Instead, the strong focus on lifelong learning urges teachers, educators and academics to reconceptualise and transform education. In this new era, successful schools adopt outreach strategies and seek support from external agencies such as universities for their development. Institutions of higher education provide consultation or work with partner schools for collaborative sharing, reflection, research and growth. Hence, school-university partnerships have become important for professional development and educational reform. With the growth of school-university collaborations, there is mounting interest in empirical research on the variety and value of these initiatives. This article reviews the school-university partnerships in Hong Kong in light of the trends and development in the international context. The studies reviewed showed that school-university partnerships involving teacher training programmes focus on understanding the views of participants in school-university partnership with an aim to build appropriate teacher training and professional development features into the teacher education programmes. These studies have theoretically contributed to the construction of culturally relevant teacher education programmes. After all, new project initiatives have contributed to substantial changes in school leadership, teachers' professional development and school-based curriculum development which would benefit children's learning. The authors argue that the development of an appropriate mode of collaboration remains a challenge for successful school-university partnerships. They have a vision to move beyond the existing research focus to explore ways to build school-university collaborations. Gaps in the research base and relevant questions that have not been addressed are discussed.

School-Based Teacher Development and Instructional Improvement in University-School Partnership Projects: case studies from Hong Kong

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: School-Based Teacher Development and Instructional Improvement in University-School Partnership Projects: case studies from Hong Kong
Author: JOHN CHI-KIN LEE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 57-69
ABSTRACT This article draws upon the experiences of a five-year government-funded university-school partnership project known as the Partnership for Improvement of Learning and Teaching (PILT) (2004-09), aimed at supporting teachers through improving their teaching quality and enhancing their professional growth in key learning areas - particularly mathematics, education and personal, social and humanities education - and initial experience of another completed project, the School Improvement Project for Early Childhood Education (SIP-ECE). The article first describes the rationale and operation of the PILT and SIP-ECE, respectively, and then explores the application of a 4-P (problem clarification, planning, programme action and progress evaluation) action learning approach to the improvement of subject teaching practice. This is followed, through case studies, by an exploration of teachers' own perceptions and university partners' perceptions of professional development and instructional improvement through the project. The final part of the article refers to Western concepts of professional development and university-school partnership, and suggests ways forward for school-based teacher development and instructional improvement in Hong Kong.

Teachers' Perceptions of Collaboration and Partnership Regarding Children with Special Educational Needs in a Mexican Bilingual Elementary School

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Teachers' Perceptions of Collaboration and Partnership Regarding Children with Special Educational Needs in a Mexican Bilingual Elementary School
Author: MARTHA ARMIDA FABELA-CÁRDENAS; LAURA ROBLES-TREVIÑO
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 70-75
ABSTRACT Mexico, like many other countries in the world, has subscribed to a UNESCO policy for the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream education. Thus, at least since 1994, public and private mainstream schools have included children with special educational needs. In this study, the authors intend to explore the issues in the Mexican context in order to identify teachers' attitudes, perceptions and concerns about their practice, their preparation and their skills to help children with special educational needs in their classrooms. Among the dimensions the authors are trying to investigate are those opinions and experiences expressed by classroom teachers in relation to the collaboration and support they receive from all the stakeholders in the process of educating children with special needs. The study uses the techniques and procedures of Q methodology since it is seen as a method that is particularly compatible with a social-constructionist research paradigm which allows the participants to express their own opinions and to produce an individual configuration of their own beliefs and attitudes.

Exploring Cross-cultural Communication and Collaboration in an International Early Years Setting

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: Exploring Cross-cultural Communication and Collaboration in an International Early Years Setting
Author: MICHELLE BRINN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 76-80
ABSTRACT The influence of social constructivism in early years care and education has highlighted the need for greater levels of dialogue and meaningful collaboration between professionals, families and communities. However, the term 'collaboration' can be interpreted along a wide spectrum of meaning. This discussion explores two different attempts to engage in cross-cultural collaboration within a large international school in Bangkok. It notes that certain educational discourses impede dialogic collaboration. Deconstructing these discourses at an individual level can produce greater understanding between disparate parties but may not promote sustained dialogic change. However, the cooperative exploration of working practices and their subsequent replacement with new rules and traditions may achieve something more akin to dialogic collaboration. It is concluded that differing interpretations of collaboration demand different responses from individuals and institutions. Furthermore, whilst definitions of collaboration from either end of the spectrum may enhance understanding and working practices between disparate parties, it may be that only dialogic collaboration has the ability to initiate truly egalitarian change.

OBITUARY Margaret Wong Ngai-Chun

Tue, 8 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Title: OBITUARY Margaret Wong Ngai-Chun
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2012 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 81-81
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial. Childhood in Literature, Media and Popular Culture

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Editorial. Childhood in Literature, Media and Popular Culture
Author: Ummni Khan; Sue Saltmarsh
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 267-270
ABSTRACT Not available

The Case of Children's Literature: colonial or anti-colonial?

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: The Case of Children's Literature: colonial or anti-colonial?
Author: CLARE BRADFORD
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 271-279
ABSTRACT Since Jacqueline Rose published The Case of Peter Pan in 1984, scholars in the field of children's literature have taken up a rhetorical stance which treats child readers as colonised, and children's books as a colonising site. This article takes issue with Rose's rhetoric of colonisation and its deployment by scholars, arguing that it is tainted by logical and ethical flaws. Rather, children's literature can be a site of decolonisation which revisions the hierarchies of value promoted through colonisation and its aftermath by adopting what Bill Ashcroft refers to as tactics of interpolation. To illustrate how decolonising strategies work in children's texts, the article considers several alphabet books by Indigenous author-illustrators from Canada and Australia, arguing that these texts for very young children interpolate colonial discourses by valorising minority languages and by attributing to English words meanings produced within Indigenous cultures.

'What Will Sophie Mol Think?': thinking critically about the figure of the white child in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: 'What Will Sophie Mol Think?': thinking critically about the figure of the white child in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things
Author: LUCY HOPKINS
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 280-290
ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which discourses of whiteness and childhood intersect in Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things to position the Indian children in the novel in inferior relation to the figure of the white child. Drawing the novel into discussions of the ideal of the universal child that shapes hegemonic educational and international development responses to children, the author suggests that the discursive dominance of such a child figure is radically disempowering for the child who is not contained within its boundaries. In The God of Small Things the Indian twins' experiences of ontology are consistently rendered invalid and inauthentic by the spectre of the white child, who appears as their British cousin, Sophie Mol. The author argues that the figuration of the child in this novel highlights the ways in which the universalism of the white child can work to exclude childhoods that exist outside this normative position. At the same time as it draws out the politics of exclusion, the novel can be seen to posit an alternative way of performing/enacting childhood subjectivity, which allows for multiplicity and the privileging of difference.

The Visual Poetics of Play: childhood in three Canadian graphic novels

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: The Visual Poetics of Play: childhood in three Canadian graphic novels
Author: CHERYL COWDY
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 291-301
ABSTRACT This article explores the ideological work of play as it is represented in three contemporary graphic narratives - Kean Soo's Jellaby and Jellaby: monster in the city, and Mariko & Jillian Tamaki's Skim, analyzing the relationship these texts create between urban spaces and the 'innovative' spaces of the panel and page. The author is interested in the various ways the graphic novel can be read as a 'leisure genre' (to borrow a term coined by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner) that creates a dynamic, interactive ecology, encouraging protagonists and readers to participate in a ludic, pediarchic poetics of play. The content and the formal properties of these texts posit 'play' dynamically in relationship to 'flow' as a subject of the texts' critique, but also as an activity occurring in the liminal spaces in and between panels. The novels address readers as clever, sophisticated accomplices in the meaning-making process. Play is represented as subversive of adult authoritarianism and narrative domination, thwarting the co-optation and commodification of play in the cultures of young people.

Prostituted Girls and the Grown-up Gaze

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Prostituted Girls and the Grown-up Gaze
Author: UMMNI KHAN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 302-313
ABSTRACT This article examines the representation of under-age girls in the sex trade through a comparative analysis of the social scientific monograph Gangs and Girls: understanding juvenile prostitution and the fictional novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. Through a semiotic examination of the book covers, and a discursive deconstruction of the fairy-tale conventions of the textual content, the author considers how the 'grown up gaze' is both gratified and sometimes challenged. She further demonstrate that ironically, the fictional account in Lullabies offers a more nuanced consideration of the socio-economic factors that contribute to the abuse and sexual exploitation of children than the expert account in Gangs. The article concludes by suggesting 'grown ups' must be cognizant of the voyeuristic tendencies and the political pitfalls of adult renderings of girl prostitutes.

Economy's Gaze: childhood, motherhood and 'exemplary ordinariness' in popular parenting magazines

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Economy's Gaze: childhood, motherhood and 'exemplary ordinariness' in popular parenting magazines
Author: SUE SALTMARSH; ANNA NORTH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 314-320
ABSTRACT Images of children and representations of childhood experience are ubiquitous in contemporary popular culture. Books, films, television shows, advertisements, magazines, posters, computer games, websites - to name but a few examples - construct and reiterate multiple ways through which childhood is to be understood and undergone, regulated and recuperated, managed and maintained. In this article, the authors consider how one textual form, that of popular magazines, constructs childhood as an economic category ideally characterised by what they term 'exemplary ordinariness'. The article analyses magazine cover images from Australia, the United States and Canada, and argues that images and written text together oblige parents to ensure that normative childhood experience is secured through exemplary parenting practices. Further, the authors argue that parents - and in particular, mothers - are incited to performatively produce their own exemplary ordinariness through attention to their own personal beauty, individual accomplishment and parenting practices. Their argument is informed by visual and cultural theories, and underpinned by the view that economic discourse formulates a gaze to which both childhood and parenthood are subjected. This is not to imply a reification of 'the economy', but rather it is to acknowledge the constitutive force of economic discourse and to interrogate its prominence in the images, rhetorics and practices of everyday life.

The Spirit of Australia: learning about Australian childhoods in Qantas commercials

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: The Spirit of Australia: learning about Australian childhoods in Qantas commercials
Author: CHRISTOPHER DREW
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 321-331
ABSTRACT For over a decade the Qantas Spirit of Australia advertising campaign has worked to incite pride and nostalgia in Australian consumers. Its widespread success has led to four renewed television commercials, strategically released to coincide with key (inter)national sporting events, including the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2004 Rugby World Cup. All four Spirit commercials feature children singing Peter Allen's I Still Call Australia Home in picturesque global and national landscapes. As a result of the Spirit campaign's widespread success, Peter Allen's song has become almost synonymous with the Qantas brand. The iconic Spirit commercials are exemplary in (re)affirming the public consciousness towards Australian childhood identity. Exploring national issues of freedom, race, youth and adventure, the commercials are situated among diverse social signs that attempt to typify Australian children. Influenced by post-structural theoretical frames, the author analyses the 'social' semiotic dimensions of these advertisements. His intention is to contribute to understandings of the discursive constitution of Australian childhoods in advertising. The unique iconic status of the Spirit campaign, he argues, lies in its capacity to be commensurate with, and (re)affirm, Australia's public perceptions of self and community.

'Jesus! A Geriatric - That's All I Need!': learning to come of age with/in popular Australian film

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: 'Jesus! A Geriatric - That's All I Need!': learning to come of age with/in popular Australian film
Author: KRISTINA GOTTSCHALL
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 332-342
ABSTRACT Popular film texts are powerful means by which Western societies construct, maintain, protect and challenge concepts of childhood and youth-hood. As a context where audiences learn about the self, their culture, and their place within it, popular film is understood here as pedagogic, that is, as a space where key lessons about the formation of subjecthood might take place, and at what costs. This article takes into account scholarship on popular culture as pedagogy, challenging narrow notions of popular film as a simple transmission of knowledge. Focused on how pedagogies might be at work, this article explores the use of humour, repetition, otherness, becoming and sentimentality within a selection of Australian films, and how they orientate audiences towards knowing the youth subject in particular ways. Questions of generation and how it is constructed as a commonsense battle between 'young' and 'old' are considered through the coming-of-age films, The Rage in Placid Lake (2003), Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger (2008), Crackers (1998) and Spider & Rose (1994).

Parents, Children and the Porous Boundaries of the Sexual Family in Law and Popular Culture

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Parents, Children and the Porous Boundaries of the Sexual Family in Law and Popular Culture
Author: DAVID GURNHAM
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 343-353
ABSTRACT This article focuses on a perceived ideological overlap between popular cultural and judicial treatments of sex and conjugality that contributes to a discursive construction of parenthood and parenting. The author perceives that in both legal and popular cultural texts, there is a sense in which notions of 'natural' childhood are discursively constituted as being put at risk by those who reproduce outside of dominant sexual norms, and that signs of normative sexuality (typically in the form of heterosexual coupling) may be treated as a sign of safety. These ideas are rooted in ancient associations between fertility, sexuality and femininity that can also be traced in the historical development of the English language. With the help of commentators such as Martha Fineman, the article situates parents and children within a discourse of family which prioritises conjugality, with consequences for the ways in which the internal and external boundaries of families are delineated.

Luring Lolita: the age of consent and the burden of responsibility for online luring

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Luring Lolita: the age of consent and the burden of responsibility for online luring
Author: ANDREA SLANE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 354-364
ABSTRACT This article argues that sexual exploitation is the underlying harm that online luring offences should address, but that social anxieties about youth online sexuality have obscured this underlying harm. Through analyzing North American Internet safety materials and Canadian luring case law, the author finds that on the one hand risks of luring are generalized and on the other limited only to victims under the age of consent. The result is that very often older youth are made responsible for their own victimization, while younger ones are assumed to be victimized and hence denied avenues to sexual expression. By neglecting to analyze online interactions for the dynamics of exploitation, we do a disservice to older youths who are exploited while denying sexual autonomy to youth under the age of consent.

Writing Identity: gendered values and user content creation in SNS interaction among Estonian and Swedish tweens

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Writing Identity: gendered values and user content creation in SNS interaction among Estonian and Swedish tweens
Author: PATRIK HERNWALL; ANDRA SIIBAK
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 365-376
ABSTRACT Tweens (10-14-year-olds) in Estonia and Sweden were interviewed about their experience and understanding of gender construction on social networking sites (SNS). The interviews indicate that peer culture is the most important dimension and a source of inspiration for the young when writing their identity online. Gendered norms and values are prominent in these activities, especially in the manipulated images being produced by the tweens. The latter practice is most explicit among the girls, especially when it comes to Photoshopping. The findings suggest that both girls and boys are well aware of what images are acceptable to publish as well as how to act and pose in front of the camera.

Social Orphans and Care at a Distance: popular representations of childhood in Ukrainian transnational families

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Social Orphans and Care at a Distance: popular representations of childhood in Ukrainian transnational families
Author: ALEXANDER TYMCZUK
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 377-387
ABSTRACT International labour migration creates new relational, emotional and social challenges for migrating parents and the children staying behind. In Ukraine, children who grow up in a transnational household are not only a concern for the individual family, however, but also a phenomenon that is thoroughly discussed in the public sphere. In this article the author analyses Ukrainian media, as well as popular and individual 'texts' on transnational childhood and child care at a distance, and argues that there are two diverging models of care that underlie personal narrative texts and public texts: care as fulfilment of a child's material needs, and care that necessitates physical closeness and constant face-to-face interaction. He also identifies diverging perspectives in the various texts on what are considered adequate alternative carers, and on what the relational and social consequences are of the separation of migrating parents from their children.

Children of Sudan: the fight for a future

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: Children of Sudan: the fight for a future
Author: STEPHANIE PEARSON
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 388-392
ABSTRACT Throughout generations Sudan has been plagued with the violence of war, the rampant spread of disease, and the violation of human rights. At the heart of this conflict lie the children of Sudan who suffer the consequences in profound ways. This article explores various issues that children in Sudan face and discusses the key initiatives, of which the provision of education is one that is regarded as being essential to the survival of future generations. In January 2011 the Sudanese people of southern Sudan voted to claim independence from their northern counterpart. This article also examines future implications and the hopes for this new nation and Southern Sudanese children.

BOOK REVIEW Surviving Teenage Motherhood: myths and realities (Helen Stapleton), reviewed by Lesley Hoggart

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:03:39 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW Surviving Teenage Motherhood: myths and realities (Helen Stapleton), reviewed by Lesley Hoggart
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 393-394
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial. Changing Global Childhoods: the impact on children's independent mobility

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Editorial. Changing Global Childhoods: the impact on children's independent mobility
Author: Karen Malone
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 161-166
ABSTRACT Not available

Child Independent Mobility in South Africa: the case of Cape Town and its hinterland

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Child Independent Mobility in South Africa: the case of Cape Town and its hinterland
Author: ROGER BEHRENS; PATRICK MUCHAKA
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 167-184
ABSTRACT This article reports upon research conducted amongst schoolchildren aged 7-15 years, and their parents, aimed at exploring independent child mobility in the context of Cape Town and selected towns and rural settlements within its hinterland. The findings of two surveys are discussed. The first was conducted in 2010 and 2011 as part of an international collaborative study on child mobility. The second was conducted in 2010 to assess the prospects of school travel planning practices in the local context. The key findings of the surveys are discussed in terms of how independently mobile children are, how this varies, and how it has changed. It was found that independent mobility varied considerably between wealthy and poor households, and across age and gender. Children from poorer households were heavily reliant on walking (88% share of school trips), and were independently mobile at a relatively young age (67% of seven-year-olds were allowed to travel from school alone). Children from wealthier households appear to have experienced a rapid decline in independent mobility over the past three decades (no seven-year-olds were allowed to travel from school alone), and were heavily reliant on the car (87% share of school trips).

Children's Independent Mobility and Perceptions of Outdoor Environments in Dar Es Salaam City, Tanzania

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Children's Independent Mobility and Perceptions of Outdoor Environments in Dar Es Salaam City, Tanzania
Author: HANNIBAL BWIRE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 185-206
ABSTRACT This article discusses children's independent mobility (CIM) in Dar es Salaam City. Children's independent mobility refers to the freedom of those under 18 years old to move around in public outdoor environments without adult accompaniment. A number of studies have shown that the neighbourhood environment can be extremely important in enabling children to attain recommended levels of physical activity; the more time children are able to spend in a public outdoor environment the more they are likely to be physically active. Such studies have influenced how researchers measure children mobility, safety, development and well-being. Studies of CIM and related subjects are very important in Africa. Local conditions in support of walking and cycling are poor, which impacts on children's access to education. The study reported here involved the collection of quantitative and qualitative data through the administration of questionnaires completed by both school children aged 7-15 years old, and their parents or guardians. The main focus of this article is on the difference age and gender have on children's independent mobility, children's independent mobility after school hours and during the weekend, and on parents' perception of public outdoor environments. The article concludes with a summary of study findings and policies aimed at improving children's independent mobility and safety and security in public outdoor environments.

Childhood in the Suburbs and the Australian Dream: how has it impacted children's independent mobility?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Childhood in the Suburbs and the Australian Dream: how has it impacted children's independent mobility?
Author: JULIE RUDNER; KAREN MALONE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 207-225
ABSTRACT This article presents the research results from a study conducted in New South Wales, Australia about primary school children's independent mobility (CIM), their concerns, and the concerns of their parents. These results are compared with a similar study conducted in 1992. Data were collected using written questionnaires, one for children and one for their parents, distributed via three primary schools. The key findings indicate that school travel has not substantially changed over the past 18 years, although there has been a slight mode shift from walking to school bus travel. Children would like to engage in active transport and have more freedom to do other activities on their own; however, parents restricted CIM based on age, and concerns about traffic and strangers. Although there were localised differences in the survey results, it is hard to determine what influence these factors had on CIM.

Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: children's independent mobility in four diverse sites in Japan

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Danger from Traffic to Fear of Monkeys: children's independent mobility in four diverse sites in Japan
Author: RIELA PROVI DRIANDA; ISAMI KINOSHITA
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 226-242
ABSTRACT The study reported on in this article was based on a study of children's independent mobility in four different areas in Japan. Interviews were given to the head principals of the sampled schools, and the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) members, and questionnaires were sent to a total of 530 children aged 7-15 years and their parents. These were conducted in order to obtain information regarding the possibilities for children to engage in independent mobility within a variety of community settings. The findings showed that many young children in Japan are allowed by their parents to travel to and from school alone. The older the children were the more they were granted many varied licenses and freedoms for independent mobility. However, a change in children's attitudes toward the home-school journey was identified in this study. While it is a common norm in Japan that children should go to school on foot or by public transportation, the findings showed that some children have started to rely on private cars as the main transportation to travel to and return from school. In particular this was evident with children who live in small towns and rural areas. This study reveals that in a diverse geographical environment, the extent to which Japanese children can engage in independent mobility is varied. Overall, for children living in the capital city of Tokyo it appears they have more freedom to engage in independent mobility than their counterparts in suburban, small town and rural areas.

Global Perspectives on Children's Independent Mobility: a socio-cultural comparison and theoretical discussion of children's lives in four countries in Asia and Africa

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: Global Perspectives on Children's Independent Mobility: a socio-cultural comparison and theoretical discussion of children's lives in four countries in Asia and Africa
Author: KAREN MALONE; JULIE RUDNER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 243-259
ABSTRACT The article provides a comparative analysis of children's independent mobility in four countries - South Africa, Tanzania, Japan and Australia. The authors discuss key findings across the four study sites and illustrate the contextually bound nuances connected to the data at the community level. The data illustrate that while Japanese children have the most independence generally, Japanese children who live in a small town outside of a main city centre have significantly lower mobility than their city counterparts, and levels of car use for driving children to school are similar to levels in Australia. The results also reveal that while children in South Africa generally look to be more independent, have fewer restrictions and are accompanied less by parents than children in Australia (which appears to have the highest rate of accompaniment), the community-wide data illustrate that children living in the high-income city communities have the least amount of independence of all sites in the four countries, with travel to school by car as high as 87%. Additionally, the research illustrates that age is not a clear determinant of a growing increase in independence and mobility in communities. An inspection of the data reveals possibilities for considering the heterogeneous perspective of childhood where the intersection of children's locales and how children traverse them is as significant as the aggregated data that provide universal notions of the childhood experience. The final discussions provide some opportunities to consider Prout's introduction of a life course approach for reconceptualising children and childhood, which he believes allows for a multiplicity and complexity of childhoods. This concept is seen to be helpful when considering how to include global perspectives in children's independent mobility without universalising children's life experience.

The Vulnerability and Resilience of Street Children

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Street Children
Author: NELLY ALI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 260-264
ABSTRACT This article discusses the importance, when assessing resilience, of understanding the context of the street child's home life before they start the transitional period of moving to the street. It will suggest that the presumption in the literature that street children are somehow different and less vulnerable than home children is not empirically or theoretically justified. It does this by reviewing the academic literature available on the topic of street children and resilience. It is important that this discussion takes place for reasons that range from understanding the correct support street children need in different stages of their move to the street, to realising that if it is in fact the case that children who migrate to the street are more resilient than those who stay at home, then greater support is needed for the children who do not make this move.

BOOK REVIEW Children and Their Urban Environment (Freeman & Tranter), reviewed by Liisa Horelli

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:55:30 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW Children and Their Urban Environment (Freeman & Tranter), reviewed by Liisa Horelli
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Pages: 265-266
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial. Children on the Move: the impact of involuntary and voluntary migration on the lives of children

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Editorial. Children on the Move: the impact of involuntary and voluntary migration on the lives of children
Author: Ada Lai; Rupert Maclean
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 87-91
ABSTRACT Not available

Schooling and Refugees: engaging with the complex trajectories of globalisation

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Schooling and Refugees: engaging with the complex trajectories of globalisation
Author: RAVINDER SIDHU; SANDRA TAYLOR; PAM CHRISTIE
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 92-103
ABSTRACT This article examines the complexities associated with educating a mobile and politically marginalised population, refugee students, in the state of Queensland, Australia. Historically, schools have been national institutions concerned with social reproduction and citizenship formation with a focus on spatially fixed populations. While education authorities in much of the developed world now acknowledge the need to prepare students for a more interconnected world of work and opportunity, they have largely failed to provide systemic support for one category of children on the move - refugees. This article begins with a discussion of forced migration and its links with 'globalisation'. It then present the authors' research findings about the educational challenges confronting individual refugee youth and schools in Queensland. This is followed with a summary of good practice in refugee education. The article concludes with a discussion of how nation-states might play a more active role in facilitating transitions to citizenship for refugee youth.

Rice, Slippers, Bananas and Caneball: children's narratives of internal displacement and forced migration from Burma

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Rice, Slippers, Bananas and Caneball: children's narratives of internal displacement and forced migration from Burma
Author: SU-ANN OH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 104-119
ABSTRACT This article provides an account of internal displacement and forced migration from the viewpoint of children living in a refugee camp in Thailand. Using photographs they created and narratives they related, the children represented concepts of structural violence, poverty, food security, school, peer relationships and play and articulated how these were woven into their lived experience. The study reveals how the children constantly make sense of everyday life in a refugee camp with reference to the lives they led in Burma. This draws our attention to the way in which the emotional and cognitive connections they make structure their experience and adds to an understanding of children's perspectives of displacement that goes beyond quantitative indicators.

Resisting Bare Life: children’s reproduction of quotidian culture in a Sri Lankan camp

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Resisting Bare Life: children’s reproduction of quotidian culture in a Sri Lankan camp
Author: RAJESHWARI ASOKARAJ
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 120-128
ABSTRACT This article explores how children reproduce the culture of everyday life in the context of living in an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Using qualitative research with internally displaced children and the adults working with them (doctors, teachers and NGO workers), it explores the children's everyday social reality around the themes of family, peers, popular culture, and religious practices. In discussing this reproduction of the culture of everyday life, rooted within Tamil, and South Indian cultural practices, the author shows that children and adults resist their reduction to bare life.

Stories of Belonging: Ukrainian immigrant children's experiences of Portugal

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Stories of Belonging: Ukrainian immigrant children's experiences of Portugal
Author: ANTONINA TERESHCHENKO; HELENA C. ARAÚJO
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 129-139
ABSTRACT This article is situated within the literature examining the experiences of inclusion and exclusion by immigrant pupils in relation to the educational and social environment in the receiving country. It draws on data from a small, exploratory qualitative research study conducted in a supplementary school context in Portugal to explore how Ukrainian immigrant children (aged 12-16) negotiate their sense of belonging in Portugal. Specifically, the ways in which the young immigrants relate to and construct the locations such as 'home', i.e. a country of origin, and a 'host' country, i.e. Portugal, are considered; which resources they draw on in the process of their identity construction, as well as which places become particularly significant in the process of their identity formation. There is a particular focus on how Ukrainian children experience in-/exclusion and relationships in the mainstream Portuguese school.

New Schooling and New Identities: Chinese immigrant students' perspectives

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: New Schooling and New Identities: Chinese immigrant students' perspectives
Author: CELESTE Y.M. YUEN; ROSALIND WU
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 140-151
ABSTRACT Given the traditional emphasis on academic achievement in a Confucius-heritage society, schooling has been one of the key elements of new Chinese learners in Hong Kong in their construction of self-identity. This article addresses the identity issues of two young Mainland Chinese immigrant students and one cross-boundary student (CBS), a resident of Shenzhen who is attending a Hong Kong school on a daily basis. They are in their first, second or third year of schooling in Hong Kong. By using a narrative approach, the educational experiences and family backgrounds of the three students are highlighted and analysed. All three students reveal a keen sense of aspiration and are actively involved in the appraisal of their own personal identity. Positive educational experiences and parental support are two predominant factors that affect their general perceptions of their new schooling and self-identity in Hong Kong. Whether they identify themselves as Hong Kong people or Mainlanders, is subject to their parents' views, their own expectations and personal understanding of the meaning of citizenship.

Model Minority and Learning Disabilities: double jeopardy for Asian immigrant children in the USA

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: Model Minority and Learning Disabilities: double jeopardy for Asian immigrant children in the USA
Author: KIM FONG POON-McBRAYER
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 152-158
ABSTRACT There exists a scarcity of discourse in the education of ethnic Asian students with disabilities in the USA, due to their historical under-representation in the disability population and the 'model minority' thesis. This colloquium aims to examine the ramifications of the model minority label with regard to equitable access and schooling for Asian immigrant students with learning disabilities. The colloquium briefly analyzes the political and social impact of the model minority thesis, before exploring how the model minority label has negatively influenced the opportunities of post-1965 Asian immigrant children with learning disabilities for equitable education, in the hope of bringing greater awareness of the needs of these children. Here, it is argued that the model minority label and learning disabilities have invisibly marginalized and deprived Asian immigrant and Asian American students of equitable education.

BOOK REVIEW Childhood and Consumer Culture (David Buckingham & Vebjrg Tingstad, Eds), reviewed by Keith Cranwell

Thu, 7 Jul 2011 11:19:11 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW Childhood and Consumer Culture (David Buckingham & Vebjrg Tingstad, Eds), reviewed by Keith Cranwell
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Pages: 159-160
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Nicola Yelland; Sue Saltmarsh
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-3
ABSTRACT This first edition of Global Studies of Childhood represents the initial steps in our goal to provide a context for dissemination of research about the multiplicity of ideas, images, issues and concerns regarding childhoods internationally. Childhood studies has been an established field of multidisciplinary study for some time. It focuses on enquiries and investigations into the everyday lifeworlds of children, giving space to their voices and interrogations about all aspect of their lives. The discourse of childhood that is promoted in the journal is one in which children are understood as agentive social subjects whose views and experiences merit serious attention from the research community, rather than being viewed as 'less capable or as yet undeveloped' others, in comparison to adults. We understand children's lives and circumstances, and the discourses through which the category of childhood is continually re/produced, regulated, contested and reconfigured, as constituting an important range of sites for research inquiry, professional preparation and political activism.

Taking a Step Away from Modernity: reconsidering the new sociology of childhood

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Taking a Step Away from Modernity: reconsidering the new sociology of childhood
Author: ALAN PROUT
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 4-14
ABSTRACT This article explores the conditions under which the sociology of childhood was created, suggests some of the problems encountered in this effort and points to some possible remedies. It is argued that the construction of a sociology of childhood entailed a double task. First, space had to be created for childhood within sociological discourse. Second, the increasing complexity and ambiguity of childhood as a contemporary, destabilized phenomenon had to be confronted. It is argued that, whilst a space for childhood has been created, this was accomplished largely in terms of modernist sociology, a discourse that was increasingly unable to deal adequately with the destabilized world of late modernity. An important aspect of this problem is apparent in the reproduction within the sociology of childhood of the dichotomized oppositions that characterize modernist sociology. Three of these oppositions (agency and structure, nature and culture, being and becoming) are explored. It is suggested that moving the sociology of childhood beyond the grip of such modernist thinking entails developing a strategy for 'including the excluded middle'. Inter alia this may necessitate greater attention to the interdisciplinarity and the hybridity of childhood; being symmetrical about how childhoods are constructed; attending to the networks, flows and mediations of its production, and the co-construction of generational relations.

The Politics of Life: governing childhood

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: The Politics of Life: governing childhood
Author: KAREN WELLS
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 15-25
ABSTRACT This article uses Foucault's analysis of bio-politics to explore continuities between child-saving and child rights and the connection of both to the racial governing of childhood. It shows how the birth of the modern idea of childhood coincided with shifts in governance from sovereignty to bio-politics, or a politics of life. This shift was the ground on which new practices of philanthropic concern acted on the child to produce new ideas about the child's special capacities and vulnerabilities. These novel practices of governance generated new forms of resistance and new sites of struggle. One strand of these new forms of resistance was the assertion of rights to health, welfare and life. It is in the context of struggles over these new kinds of rights, rather than an older conception of political rights, that the shift to the figure of the rights-bearing child should be understood. The shift from sovereignty to bio-politics was also central to the production of sex/sexuality and race as the truth of the modern subject, and the child appeared as a key figure in these new discursive constructions.

Bus Ride to the Future: cultural imaginaries of Australian childhood in the education landscape

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Bus Ride to the Future: cultural imaginaries of Australian childhood in the education landscape
Author: SUE SALTMARSH
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 26-35
ABSTRACT In Australia, as in many other parts of the world, representations of childhood are ubiquitous in what Nikolas Rose refers to as ‘the public habitat of images’. In the education landscape – a term used here to refer to the extensive range of policy-related, pedagogic and promotional sites associated with educational provision, participation and purchase – depictions of children feature prominently, and function as an important means by which dominant discourses of childhood are produced, circulated and maintained. In this article, I analyse images and text from a recent Australian government advertising campaign regarding the proposed national curriculum, in order to explore how familiar images, activities and ideals associated with schooling are implicated in cultural imaginaries of Australian childhood. I consider how notions of order, accomplishment and aspiration function to inscribe and reiterate gendered and racialised discourses through which imagined futures of individual and national prosperity are installed as normative ideals.

Investigating Learning, Participation and Becoming in Early Childhood Practices with a Relational Materialist Approach

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Investigating Learning, Participation and Becoming in Early Childhood Practices with a Relational Materialist Approach
Author: HILLEVI LENZ TAGUCHI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 36-50
ABSTRACT Schooling is a significant feature of social experience for children in many countries around the world. However, despite the massive technological, social, economic, environmental and political changes that have occurred during the past few decades, pedagogic approaches in many educational systems appear to have changed relatively little over time. There has been much criticism of traditional schooling practices which have remained constant and unchanging in these times of unprecedented changes. Scholars of education have posed questions about the relevance of long-standing practices to children who live in global economies in the twenty-first century, querying why such practices continue to be replicated without due consideration of the diversity of cultural and social conditions that exist in these new situations, and asking whether alternative pedagogic models and schooling practices might be more relevant to the lives of millennial children living globalized lives. In this article I both welcome and critique two increasingly popular pedagogic approaches - the learning study approach and the Reggio Emilia approach - that have been taken up in schools and classrooms in a range of countries, arguing that these two approaches reproduce dominant binaries associated with modern liberal humanist education. Finally, I consider how a relational materialist approach might offer an alternative approach that attends more seriously to the interdependencies, responsibilities and potentialities that characterize global childhoods.

What's Participation Got to Do with It? Visual Methodologies in 'Girl-Method' to Address Gender-Based Violence in the Time of AIDS

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: What's Participation Got to Do with It? Visual Methodologies in 'Girl-Method' to Address Gender-Based Violence in the Time of AIDS
Author: CLAUDIA MITCHELL
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 51-59
ABSTRACT This article uses a retrospective approach to looking at participatory visual work with girls, in relation to addressing gender violence in and around schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a variety of work focusing on the visual, including Jo Spence's innovative work from the 1990s ('What can a woman do with a camera?'), this article seeks to extend and elaborate the idea of feminist visual methodologies in order to uncover the critical issue of girls' safety and security. Participatory work with girls, the article argues, as part of what is referred to here as 'girl-method', can be an effective way to reveal the perspectives of girls. At the same time, the use of the visual (and in particular, visual artefacts such as photos, videos, drawings, and digital archiving) invites researchers and communities (including the girls themselves) to re-visit the data and in so doing to explore it further. The article concludes with a call for new and longer-term increased levels of participation when it comes to working with girls, by highlighting the use of the participatory digital archive as a feminist visual tool.

Artful Practices: identities at work in play

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Artful Practices: identities at work in play
Author: MARK VICARS
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 60-71
ABSTRACT This article considers the connectivity between arts-based pedagogies, multimodality, popular culture, learning and identity work within the semiotic domains of communities of play. Drawing on the artful practices of two Year 5 boys of Vietnamese and Sudanese cultural heritage, it reflects on how cultural artefacts were put to work in identity play during a seven-week drawing class in an urban Australian primary classroom. The article proposes how the technology of play in childhood is increasingly situated and connected to artefacts of identity. The troublesome presence of play challenges the axiomatic, regulatory norms of pedagogical practices in educational domains, and by drawing on the production of multimodal texts as a narrativizing practice the author endeavours to understand how arts-based pedagogies that utilize young people's cultural capital can create teachable moments and have a positive effect on engagement, participation and achievement in learning.

A Culture of Protection: the establishment of a sex offenders' register in Hong Kong

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: A Culture of Protection: the establishment of a sex offenders' register in Hong Kong
Author: ANNIE HAU-NUNG CHAN
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 72-78
ABSTRACT Child sex abuse is an issue that raises much social concern, and in some societies a sex offenders' register is used as a key measure to combat this problem. Drawing heavily upon a discourse of child protection, the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong has recently suggested that such a mechanism should be implemented in Hong Kong. This article examines how the protection of children has in this case overridden the interests of other social groups and processes, whilst not necessarily reducing risks faced by children. What this proposal would achieve, however, is a false sense of control and security for both parents and policy makers. An effective response to child sexual abuse must include community education and rehabilitation provision for offenders, and must avoid over-reliance on 'protection-oriented' measures such as a sex offenders' register.

Concerns of Childhood in India

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: Concerns of Childhood in India
Author: RAJANI M. KONANTAMBIGI
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 79-83
ABSTRACT This article points out some concerns that pertain to facilitating the development of children in context and the geopolitical issues that surround children as the State , community and parental agencies strive to care and rear children. State schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan suffer from the ills of managing country-wide programmes - poor infrastructure support facilities and personnel, lack of adequate monitoring mechanisms, inability to connect to the local realities including beliefs and aspirations of the people and the inability to get the various government departments together to move in tandem; not to forget the rampant corruption in the systems. Rays of hope are the NGOs, some of them at the national level that have made some inroads in the sectors of child protection, health and education. There is the rural/urban divide in the sectors of health, nutrition and education where private entry does not necessarily mean that they are child and parent friendly, they could be inadequate, exploitative and hostile to children and parents, without the knowledge of the latter. This is especially so of the private education sector. With the onslaught of the media, parents struggle to socialise the children as best as they can.

BOOK REVIEW

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:04:36 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Global Studies of Childhood
Year: 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Pages: 84-86
ABSTRACT Not available