Children's drawings in different cultures: an analysis of five-year-old Jordanian children's drawings

Research results have shown that what a child draws is influenced by many factors, including the child’s culture and environment. The aim of this study was to analyse the drawings of five-year-old Jordanian children to determine the extent to which culture informs the content of their drawings. A total of 736 children took part in this research project (387 boys and 349 girls). Their sample drawings were categorised according to specific themes. Results revealed that children drew pictures related to nature, people, surroundings, letters, numbers, symbols, animals, and transportation. The most frequent content of the drawings related to nature (38.9%) and the least frequent were drawings depicting violence (0.32%). Drawings also showed English and Arabic numbers and mathematical shapes separately and combined on the paper. Implications and recommendations for further research are presented.     

Young children's enactments of human rights in early childhood education

This paper explores ways in which human rights become part of and affect young children's everyday practices in early childhood education and, more particularly, how very young children enact human rights in the preschool setting. The study is conducted in a Swedish preschool through observations of the everyday practices of a group of children aged between 1 and 3 years. With a child view based on human rights theory and childhood sociology, an action-based methodology for seeking children's perspective is used to analyse the observation data. Three rights areas are identified in which children frequently deal with human rights in their actions and where they enact a range of possible rights holder positions: ownership, influence and equal value. These rights areas, and the children's various enactments of the rights, are reflected against the preschool context as a co-constructor to the actions of the participants.     

Realizing children's right to participation in early childhood settings: some critical issues in a Norwegian context

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has during recent decades influenced professionals and policy‐makers in Norway as well as in other countries, resulting in changes in documents regulating early childhood institutions. Little is known, however, about the way this right is understood and realized in everyday practice. How is the concept of participation understood by professionals in the field? What issues emerge as problematic in everyday practice? Combining findings from an evaluation study and research from early childhood institutions, it is possible to unravel three problem areas. They are described under these headings: (a) Interpreting participation with a bias towards individualism? (b) Play and playful interaction – an integral part of children's right to participation? (c) Are the youngest children ‘mature’ enough? The article is rounded off by pointing to the need to pay critical attention both to what is happening on policy levels, and to theoretical perspectives influencing the professionals in the field.     

Being taught to learn together: an ethnographic study of the curriculum in two Chinese kindergartens

This paper reports the findings of a pilot study which adopted an ethnographic approach to investigate the cultural features of the Chinese kindergarten curriculum by means of ‘semi‐participant’ observations, semi‐structured interviews, daily conversations and open‐ended questionnaires in two Chinese kindergartens. The paper first introduces the debate over teaching and learning in the early years in Western contexts. It then demonstrates that the curriculum in Chinese kindergartens is mainly implemented by means of teachers' formal collective teaching. Children seem to be taught to learn; their spontaneous learning interests are welcomed but seldom developed in depth. The preference among teachers for this formal collective teaching, coupled with their perception that this teaching is required in their particular situations, creates a tension between teaching and children's learning. The shift in parents' views of education, from an over‐emphasis on children's knowledge‐based study to support for children's harmonious overall development, also contributes to this tension.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form in preschool children using parent and teacher report

Temperament is a developmentally important construct, hierarchically comprised of several lower-order dimensions subsumed under effortful control, negative affectivity, and surgency. The Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF) was developed as a brief measure of the higher-order factors of temperament to aid researchers in understanding the relation between these factors and other developmentally important constructs. In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the CBQ-VSF in preschool children (N = 277) using teachers and parents as informants. Several dimensions of temperament emerged independently of the three higher-order factors. Comparing the extracted factors to other measures of temperament revealed limited convergent and discriminant validity. Further, similar teacher and parent report factors did not correlate. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the CBQ-VSF be refined to better reflect core dimensions that comprise the higher-order factors.     

Exploring educational and social inequality through the polyphonic voices of the poor: A habitus listening guide for the analysis of family-schooling relations

ABSTRACT

The aim of this methodological article is to contribute a new form of qualitative data analysis that is relevant for the comparative study of family cultures and schooling. We describe the development of our Habitus Listening Guide linking Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction to critical narrative theory. The interpretative tool outlines (a) social-structural (b) horizontal intergenerational (c) vertical gender and (d) mythic-ritual listenings which can be used to explore the engagement of youth and their families with schooling. Such listenings reveal the dispositional positioning of schooling in family values and the complex structural and human relational effects of schooling on family members’ livelihood and wellbeing. It offers the possibility of comparing families in terms of their gendered and generational relations and the ways in which religious and mythic-ritual discourses legitimate their aspirations in the context of changing communities. The Guide offers a way of accessing and comparing subjective micro level experiences of social inequality and the contribution that schooling plays, or is expected to play, in relation to individual and/or family social mobility.     

Navigating the ambiguous policy landscape of student participation

ABSTRACT

Student participation at school is receiving heightened attention through international evidence connecting it to a range of benefits including student learning, engagement, citizenship and wellbeing, as well as to overall school improvement. Yet the notion of student participation remains an ambiguous concept, and one that challenges many deeply entrenched norms of traditional schooling.

Informed by understandings of ‘participation’ linked to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this article takes the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) as a case study to explore how student participation is currently articulated in educational policy. It reports the findings of an analysis of 142 state and federal government policy-related documents, along with qualitative interview data from nine policy personnel. The findings suggest that students are conceptualised within these policies in contradictory ways, interpretations of participation are diverse yet frequently instrumentalist, and there is little conceptual coherence across the educational policy landscape in NSW in relation to ‘student participation’. The findings are discussed in light of international interest around student participation. The analytical framework used in this analysis is proposed as a possible tool for critically examining the place and purpose of student participation at school, regardless of jurisdiction.

Abbrevations: NSW = the Australian state of New South Wales; UNCRC = United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; SRC = Student Representative Council     

Young children's perceptions of due process in schools’ disciplinary procedures

This study explored how children of lower primary school grades perceive due process in schools’ disciplinary procedures. While many studies have explored how adolescents perceive school discipline, only a few studies have examined the perceptions of primary school pupils, and no study has investigated lower primary school grades. The qualitative research design was based on semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with 70 children, aged 7 to 10, recruited from 19 public schools in Israel. In addition, we recruited a children's advisory group that participated in the research process. The findings revealed that while many of the study participants had internalised a formalistic approach to due process (i.e. meting out uniform punishments in similar cases, in accordance with a closed system of rules), others objected to this approach, providing various reasons for their concerns. Participants’ criticisms of a formalistic due process policy included lack of compassion and lack of understanding of pupils’ social, academic or other difficulties, disregard of pupils’ voice, the complex task of discerning the truth, apprehension over a uniform punitive system and low efficacy of punishments. We argue that the right to due process in schools lies at the intersection of legal and educational narratives. Even young children are able to recognise the inherent incongruity of these narratives, as they constitute a significant part of their daily routine in school. We also argue that this incongruity engenders a distorted due process, thus imparting faulty lessons about the right to due process and its justifications.     

The role of powerful pedagogical strategies in curriculum development

Despite the frenetic pace of curriculum change in England and Wales it is highly questionable to what extent classrooms have changed since the inception of the National Curriculum, as little attention has been paid to teacher development. This article describes a human-scale approach to professional and curriculum development that relies upon powerful pedagogical strategies. The characteristics and popularity of these strategies are described. The model developed in the study of Effective Teachers of Numeracy (Askew et al., 1997) is used to explain how the use of the strategies can lead to professional and curriculum development. Particular attention is paid, through the reflective accounts of teachers who have used the strategies, to the role of pupil response in accelerating change. Finally the article discusses the way in which the strategies accord with much of what is known about how teachers plan.     

“Vulnerability” in AIDS-affected states: Rethinking child rights,educational institutions,and development paradigms

The article interrogates current international development constructs of childhood, rights, vulnerability, and schooling in light of the daily experiences of two Malawian children affected by HIV/AIDS. It aims to better understand how development efforts targeted at these children function in practice, and suggests that current development discourses and frameworks may sometimes operate to make the lives of vulnerable children and communities harder and less secure. New frameworks for international HIV/AIDS development programming are needed that conceptualize the child and community as part of global educational, social, political, and economic systems that can fuel inequality as well as improve life experiences.     

The New Zealand earthquakes and the role of schools in engaging children in emotional processing of disaster experiences

The earthquakes that rocked the city of Christchurch and surrounding districts in Canterbury, New Zealand, were to take their toll on families, schools and communities. The places that had once represented safety and security for most children were literally and figuratively turned upside down. Rather than reinforce the trauma and continue to frame children as passive victims, the study reported here aimed to help children reframe their experiences through active engagement in participatory research projects. This article reports on three schools drawn from a UNESCO-funded project in which schools recorded their earthquake stories. While children were the centre of each of the school’s earthquake stories, schools engaged children to different extents in their chosen projects. These three schools exemplify different places along a continuum of children’s engagement in research on their own experiences. In one school, children, families, teachers and the principal all contributed to an illustrated book of their experiences. In another school, children created a series of mosaic panels to record the community’s story before, during and after the earthquakes. In the third school, children became documentary makers and interviewed other children about their earthquake experiences. In all cases, children found their projects positive and helpful activities, enabling them to put their experiences into a broader context. This article argues that schools have an important role to play in providing emotional processing activities which help children gain perspective and distance as part of their recovery from large-scale disaster events.     

浅谈儿童用品设计中的人机工学

近几年中国儿童用品市场每年在以12.4%的速度递增,随着人们对儿童早期教育培养日益关注,投入不断增加,这个庞大的市场份额无疑是吸引着众多的儿童用品生产者。儿童产品最核心的要素是技术,还要有创新,但在创新的同时,往往有些因素一直被现在的儿童用品生产企业所忽视。一是唯美。所谓唯美,就是产品的设计一定是美的、人性化的、童趣的。二是唯深。儿童产品从材质到零件要类型化,在类型里找到核心的东西,比如怎么超越,怎么创新。三是人机设计。要站在儿童的立场上去考虑,产品要符合儿童的生理和心理需要,特别是启智类用品,既要考虑儿童玩的天性,也不要教条化,力求做到人—机—环境的和谐完美。     

Gathering the views of children and young people to inform practice in a psychological service

This paper describes the process employed by a psychological service to gather the views of children and young people using guided discussion groups and questionnaires. Pupils in the guided discussion groups were asked to identify issues that affect them and how adults could help. This information was analysed using thematic analysis. Seven themes were identified as issues: managing feelings; friendships; behaviour; specific difficulties that can affect learning; not being accepted; bullying; and ‘other important issues’, including bereavement and family difficulties. In relation to each of these themed issues, several sub‐themes regarding how adults could help were collated. Questionnaire data was analysed using inferential statistics. The questionnaire rated the importance of help from adults in the areas of learning, friendships and feelings. Results suggested that these were equally important to primary‐aged pupils. Findings were used to contribute to the development plan and shape future practice.     

Access to local books: the effects of Read Malawi from a children's rights perspective

Children in low‐income, postcolonial countries such as Malawi have few opportunities with quality reading materials that promote independence as readers. In this study, we argue that access to locally produced text relevant to linguistic and cultural contexts is a fundamental human right for children throughout the world. Situating this study within the intersection of research on children's rights and complementary reading materials, we analyse data from a project in Malawi. We consider the ways in which a respect for children's educational rights – specifically, their rights to access information via children's books – can help them develop their biliteracy. Additionally, we examine how the Read Malawi program contributes to Malawian children's literacy development in both national and official languages. Our findings suggest not only a humanistic need for quality complementary books, but also the empirical justification for books in the hands of children; in particular, an interconnected relationship between borrowing books from school and engagement with Read Malawi was found, especially when we explore children's English proficiency. Through Read Malawi, this study exemplifies what a quality literacy intervention can do in supporting children's Chichewa and English proficiency and improving their rights to quality education.     

法国释意学派理论在儿童文学作品汉译中的应用

释意理论提出了三个评价忠实的标准——忠于作者意图、忠于译入语表达方式和忠于读者。而儿童文学这一特殊的文学形式,如果在翻译过程中不注重儿童这一读者的特殊要求时很难起到儿童文学对儿童的教育意义,文章通过实例分析来证明释意理论对儿童文学作品汉译的现实应用价值.     

Child abuse screening: Implications of the limited predictive power of abuse discriminants from a controlled family study of pediatric social illness

The predictive value of a child abuse screening instrument on unselected populations is illustrated for varying hypothesized levels of child abuse prevalence in order to demonstrate outcome of a hypothetical national screening program. At any level of application, the prediction of false positives and false negatives suggests a low practical utility for an unacceptably high social cost.     

教师话语策略在大学英语听力教学中的应用

文章分析了话语策略理论在大学英语听力反馈式教学中的应用,提出了促进学生听力水平的五种教师话语策略,并通过实例具体分析了教师话语策略在大学英语听力课堂的应用,指出话语策略在听力课堂教学的重要性.     

The Revised SEND Code of Practice 0–25: effective practice in engaging children and young people in decision‐making about interventions for social,emotional and mental health needs

A key principle upon which the Revised Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice 0–25 (2015) is based is children's involvement in decision‐making that affects them, and a significant change is the removal of the term ‘behaviour’ and an emphasis on social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs. To ensure that child involvement is a practical reality for children with SEMH needs, staff in schools benefit from a range of evidence‐informed strategies for engagement and participation. This article describes an approach to the provision of learning mentor services for children with SEMH in a primary school based on partnerships between the children and staff in establishing and measuring change. Limitations are noted and suggestions for future developments are also made.     

What young people report about the personal characteristics needed for social science research after carrying out their own investigations in an after-school club

Several arguments have been put forward about the benefits of young people carrying out their own social science research in terms of empowering their voices and their participation. Much less attention has been paid to investigating the understandings young people develop about the research process itself. Seven twelve-year olds carried out self-directed social science research into a topic of their choice. Towards the end of their six months experience, we used a questionnaire and follow-up semi-structured interviews to investigate, from a sociocultural perspective, what the young people thought about being a researcher. Thematic analysis of the interviews identified three themes and eight subthemes suggesting that they were aware of: the need to demonstrate researcher/research integrity (be thorough, truthful, orderly, and have a good understanding of research process); the need for good interpersonal skills and standards, and good self-management skills (be resilient, agentic, committed and good at time management). We discuss how first-hand social science research experience might: be relevant to several areas of schooling; give young people experience of the personal characteristics important for success; help young people to realise that they can be social science researchers, and offer advanced and novel learning experiences outside the constraints of the school curriculum.