What conceptualisations of the child might explain the communicative and rhetorical significance of their selection as targets in acts of terror? It is argued that the child as an embodiment of modernity’s enthralment to the future’s promises of progress or redemption puts them on this front line. As an alternative to modernity’s futurism, Surrealism presents us with a conceptualisation of the child that anticipates contemporary ideas of ‘queerness’. The recognition of the child’s transgressive attitude to the credo of modernity can be a way of resisting increasingly instrumentalised ways of thinking about children.
Transition between primary and secondary school represents an important milestone in young people's development. While most young people look forward to this transition, it is a source of anxiety for many. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 2218 children in 73 schools in Wales, this study aimed to understand the extent to which 10-11 year old children worried about and/or looked forward to their imminent transition to secondary school, the things they worried about and/or looked forward to, and how feelings about transition differed by socioeconomic status, as well as by emotional and behavioural difficulties. About a third of children reported being quite or very worried about transition to secondary school, while approximately two-thirds reported looking forward to it quite a bit or very much. These items were only moderately correlated, with many children both looking forward to and worrying about transition, or neither. Major sources of worry about transition centred around bullying and impact on existing friendships, while forming new friendships or joining existing friends in their new school were key things children looked forward to. Children from poorer backgrounds, attending poorer schools and reporting more emotional difficulties were significantly more likely to report worries about transition. Children from poorer families, and children reporting more emotional difficulties and behavioural difficulties, were less likely to look forward to transition. Interventions to support children in transition to secondary school need to be sensitive to the needs of children from poorer backgrounds and children with mental health difficulties.
Graham F Moore, Lianna Angel, RACHEL M. A. BROWN et al.
The purpose of this study is to illuminate how participatory methods over time in a research project with disabled children may contribute to an empowerment process. Findings indicate that appropriate use of participatory methods over time may contribute to an empowerment process with disabled children. Based on the UNCRC article 12, this paper calls for seizing the great potential that lies in building on disabled children’s inner strength and efforts to increase their own power in research processes.
Christina Strandholdt Andersen, Ole Petter Askheim, Anne‐Stine Dolva
The aim is to analyze how girls from a multi-ethnic area, not doing sports, reason about their well-being during leisure time, and how they think about physical activities, social relations, and their near future. The results say that they mainly regard leisure time as a moment for rest. They have close relations in primary groups but weaker secondary relations. They reveal stereotypical opinions about gender divisions in sports. Physical activity is unwanted and tiresome, if not part of playing.
Abstract Social practice theory (SPT) investigates how meanings (socially available understandings/attitudes) work together with competences and materials / resources to develop shared (social) practices. SPT was used as a theoretical and analytical framework in a study which investigated ‘successful’ professional practices when working with parents with learning difficulties where there are concerns about child neglect. The research took place in three local authorities (LAs) in England that were recommended as sites of ‘successful’ practice. With the parents’ agreement, 38 professionals who worked with the eight participating families were asked about their ideas about parents with learning difficulties and neglect, their understanding of ‘successful’ practice, their experience and knowledge of working with this group of parents, how they worked with the parent and other professionals involved with the parent, as well as the resources available to them. Detailed case studies of the support provided to eight mothers were developed. It was found that the professionals shared a range of attitudes and understandings, including awareness of the many barriers faced by this disadvantaged group of parents, and that the neglect was typically linked to lack of understanding/knowledge about the child’s needs which could in many cases be mitigated through provision of support. The meanings they shared promoted an empowering, relationship-based, multi-agency approach to parents which recognised their need for support while also focusing on the needs and welfare of the children. This positive approach accords with the call for longer-term/recurrent support to be available for parents with learning difficulties alongside the development of a social model of child protection that rethinks how best to safeguard vulnerable children.
A growing movement of illegally adopted individuals request remedies and reparations for the human rights violations that they and their biological families had suffered. This article explores a number of measures that the stakeholders in the receiving countries can use in an effort to repair the human rights violations caused by illegal intercountry adoptions, borrowing ideas from transitional justice. In order to effectively redress the harm inflicted upon victims of illegal adoptions, a policy on remedies should combine instruments of retributive justice, aimed at holding wrongdoers accountable, with measures of restorative justice that focus on the victims’ needs and interests.
Silence is traditionally understood as a power deficit; yet, it creates spaces in which power works unobtrusively. In this article, I report the findings of a qualitative study examining silence in school relationships. Based on nine conceptual discussions and 33 interviews with teachers and students in a secondary school in the UK, I assert that uses of silence in relationships between students and teachers revolve around two conceptions of power: a stronghold of respect and a refuge for dignity.
This paper deals with the unpredictable outbreak of the pandemic, explaining its impact on the education system, and with structural flexibility as a way to face unpredictability, based on the generalisability and coordination of manifestations of agency. The pandemic has enhanced a narrative of the child as a medium of learning, which undermines children's agency. The example of the research project CHILD-UP (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading policies of Participation) is used to show how children's agency and structural flexibility in classroom interactions can be supported and analysed.
This article questions how we might continue to envision an open and inviting engagement between the terrains of childhood studies and queer theory. Matters of childhood innocence in particular are problematised throughout. The paper builds on the offerings of queer of colour scholarship and women of colour feminism, endeavouring to contribute to an emergent childhood studies that is informed by queer and feminist understandings that uphold the materiality and lived experience of the child, both in theory and in practice.
This article examines how children in super-diverse schools draw on cultural repertoires to construct ethno-cultural similarities and differences. Based on 47 interviews, we show how, first, children talk about diversity as a commonplace aspect of daily life. Second, we describe how cosmopolitan arguments are used to make sense of diversity. The third repertoire focusses on ‘otherness’ and emphasizes the ‘cultural frictions’ that would stem out of diversity. Finally, we describe how some children share a strong belief in group disadvantages.
