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Being a child in American society can be problematic. In "Rethinking Childhood," 20 contributors from such disciplines as anthropology, government, education, and religion provide a multidisciplinary view of childhood by listening and understanding the ways children shape their own futures.
What type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, polluted and devoid of nature? Or walkable, welcoming, and green? As the climate crisis and urbanisation escalate, cities urgently need to become more inclusive and sustainable. This book reveals how seeing cities through the eyes of children strengthens the case for planning and transportation policies that work for people of all ages, and for the planet. It shows how urban designers and city planners can incorporate child friendly insights and ideas into their masterplans, public spaces and streetscapes. Healthier children mean happier families, stronger communities, greener neighbourhoods, and an economy focused on the long-term. Make cities better for everyone.
Rethinking Early Childhood Education is alive with the conviction that teaching young children involves values and vision. This anthology collects inspiring stories about social justice teaching with young children. Included here is outstanding writing from childcare teachers, early-grade public school teachers, scholars, and parents.Early childhood is when we develop our core dispositions -- the habits of thinking that shape how we live. This book shows how educators can nurture empathy, an ecological consciousness, curiosity, collaboration, and activism in young children. It invites readers to rethink early childhood education, reminding them that it is inseparable from social justice and ecological education.An outstanding resource for childcare providers, early-grade teachers, as well as teacher education and staff development programs.
Rethinking Early Literacies honors the identities of young children as they read, write, speak, and play across various spaces, in and out of pre/school. Despite narrow curricular mandates and policies, the book highlights the language resources and tools that children cultivate from families, communities, and peers. The chapters feature children’s linguistic flexibility with multiple languages, creative appropriation of popular culture, participation in community literacy practices, and social negotiation in the context of play. Throughout the book, the authors critically reframe what it means to be literate in contemporary society, specifically discussing the role of educators in theorizing and rethinking language ideologies for practice. Issues influencing early childhood education in trans/national contexts are forefronted (e.g. racism, immigration rights, readiness) throughout the book, with a call to support and sustain communities of color.
Rethinking Children's Rights explores attitudes towards and experiences of children's rights. Phil Jones and Sue Welch draw on a wide range of thought, research and practice from different fields and countries to debate, challenge and re-appraise long held beliefs, attitudes and ways of working and living with children. This second edition contains updated references to legislation and research underpinning children's rights, reflecting on recent scholarship and on the current world context. New research and examples are discussed around: - online protection and privacy - evaluating UK progress and the children's rights review by the United Nations - recent insights on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) - new debates about the construction and development of children's rights - new debates about the relationships between social exclusion and children's rights Recent developments in the definition of rights are considered from a variety of perspectives and in relation to different arenas of children's lives. This second edition brings an increased focus on exploring the notion of disjunction between the rhetoric of policy and legislation and the enacted and perceived experiences of children's rights. Themes discussed include power relations between adults and children, the child's voice, intercultural perspectives, social justice, gender and disability. Examples of research, activities, interviews with researchers and guidance on further reading make this an essential text for those studying childhood.
This book offers a new approach for theorising and undertaking childhood research. It combines insights from childhood and generational studies with object-oriented ontologies, new materialisms, critical race and gender theories to address a range of key, intractable challenges facing children and young people. Bringing together traditional social-scientific research methods with techniques from digital media studies, archaeology, environmental nanoscience and the visual arts, After Childhood: Re-thinking Environment, Materiality and Media in Children's Lives presents a way of doing childhood research that sees children move in and out of focus. In doing so, children and their experiences are not completely displaced; rather, new perspectives on concerns facing children around the world are unravelled which dominant approaches to childhood studies have not yet fully addressed. The book draws on the author’s detailed case studies from his research in historical and geographical contexts. Examples range from British children’s engagement with plastics, energy and other matter, to the positioning of diverse Brazilian young people in environmental and resource challenges, and from archaeological evidence about childhoods in the USA and Europe to the global circulation of children’s toys through digital media. The book will appeal to human geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, education studies scholars and others working in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, as well as to anyone looking for a range of novel, interdisciplinary frames for thinking about childhood.
How do we understand children and young people's lives in ways that do not rely on nostalgic romantic ideals or demonising prejudices? Can the geographical concepts of space, place and spatiality enhance our understanding of childhood and how children experience their lives as social actors? This book draws on a rich and growing academic literature concerned with the spatiality of childhood and the spaces and places in which children live, learn, work, and play. It examines changing ways of seeing space, place and environment and how these can promote rethinking about children's lives across local and global scales. In common with other texts in the “New Childhoods” series, it asks for a reappraisal of modernity's assumptions about childhood and for a move towards full participation of children and young people in matters that concern us all. Combining critical discussion of theory with examples drawn from research, Rethinking Children's Spaces and Places offers readers a language to facilitate rethinking and catalyse active responses to the challenges of 21st-century childhoods.
In Writing Through Childhood, Shelley dares us to rethink our beliefs about how we design writing workshops, use writer's notebooks, choose appropriate genres, and teach spelling.
This book challenges traditional conceptions of readiness in early childhood education by sharing concrete examples of practice, policy and histories that rethink readiness. This book seeks to reimagine possible new educational worlds for young children.
