Evaluating a method for eliciting children's voice about educational support with children with speech,language and communication needs

This article reports the development and evaluation of a toolkit‐based approach to eliciting children's experiences of educational support, where the children in question experience speech and communication needs. The ‘Your Voice Your Choice’ approach was evaluated using a cross‐case analysis methodology, which represents a novel approach to critical examination of the effectiveness of such resources. We explored seven case studies within a critical realist framework. We found that the toolkit was effective at supporting most (although not all) of the children with speech and communication needs to explore their school learning and support experiences through a scaffolded emotion‐based ‘dialogue’, which was corroborated by observations and other data sources. The toolkit facilitated access to children's voice as they revealed how they felt across a number of relational, learning and support areas, which could be used by services to focus provision and consider how to better support children's social and emotional needs.     

The mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings: a study of the transformation of children's services and professional work

This paper is concerned with the way we understand and investigate the relationship between human functioning and social setting. The central argument draws on the work of Bernstein and Vygotsky. A novel approach to the study of the mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings is developed and an empirical example of its application is presented and discussed. The research reported here is drawn from a four‐year ESRC‐TLRP‐funded study of professional learning in and for interagency working in children's services in England.     

Reading gender: a feminist,queer approach to children's literature and children's discursive agency

Children's literature helps young people make sense of gender. However, while books offer children the imaginative ability to create their own worlds, normative gender can manifest in characters and stories. The study described in this article draws upon ‘disruptive’ storytimes with 114 preschool children, interviews with 20 parents and staff, and observations at 20 preschools. Employing a feminist, queer approach, I develop two derivative books that switch a boy-hero for a girl and vice versa. These books are read to children in educational settings. This method interrogates gendered characters and stories’ attachments to such concepts as love, acceptance, bodily agency, and adventure. Results show how children interact with these characters and stories and how they use categorisation and narrative construction to make sense of gender. I focus on the gender discourses at play and moments of childhood discursive agency. Themes include literature, doing and being, positioning, bodies, and feminist tales.     

The effect of the Horsham Greenpower Goblin Challenge on children's attitudes towards science,engineering and technology

This research examines the effects of the Horsham Greenpower Goblin Challenge (HGGC), a hands-on science, engineering and technology (SET) project, on the attitudes of Year 5, primary-school children towards SET. The data collection centred on pre- and post-HGGC questionnaires using Likert scales and picture/word images of scientists and engineers. It was found that the HGGC did not significantly alter children's attitudes to SET and did not dispel previous negative images and attitudes. It was concluded that a greater understanding and acknowledgement of children's existing attitudes was required when designing initiatives aimed at dispelling negative and promoting positive images of SET.     

The children's centre teacher role: developing practice in the private,voluntary and independent sector

This study assessed the impact of the role of the teacher in two children's centres in England and identified some of the supporting and limiting factors that influenced outcomes. The teachers worked across several settings in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector, with the aim of enhancing early years practice and practitioner confidence. A conceptual framework was devised to model the impact of the teacher role based on Leithwood and Levin (2005 Leithwood K, Levin B. 2005. Assessing school leader and leadership programme effects on pupil learning. DfES Research Report 662. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR662.pdf (accessed December 2006) [Google Scholar]). Teachers were found to bring vital professional knowledge and experience to the role and delivered their methods through a range of leadership styles as identified in the literature. Teachers were successful in developing practice and staff confidence in settings; this also impacted positively on outcomes for children. However, success was dependent on a number of moderating factors, including sector‐related factors such as the qualifications of staff. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Railways,rebellions and Rage Against The Machine: adolescents' interests and meaning‐making in the creation of multimodal identity texts

This paper draws on a Canadian qualitative case study grounded in multiliteracies theory to describe the meaning‐making processes of four students aged 13‐14 years as they created history projects. Students were invited to explore curriculum content in self‐chosen ways and to produce presentations in a range of formats. The data we present and discuss were collected through participant observation and in‐situ interviews with four students who selected digital formats. We examine these data using multiliteracies concepts: specifically multimodality and identity texts. We argue that multimodal literacy practices have potential to bridge gaps between students' in‐school and out‐of‐school lives and underscore the importance of allowing students to draw on their out‐of‐school identities and interests to guide explorations of curriculum content.     

Child guidance,dynamic psychology and the psychopathologisation of child-rearing culture (c. 1920-1940): a transnational perspective

ABSTRACT

The historiography of child guidance has focused primarily on the United States, where it first developed before travelling across the English-speaking world. The rapid expansion of child guidance in the interwar years was enabled by private philanthropy, which provided fellowships to foreign professionals to study in the United States. This article focuses upon the transnational transfer of child guidance, the dynamic psychology on which it was based, and the accompanying psychopathologisation of child-rearing culture to a non-English speaking country, the Netherlands. First, it discusses the development of child guidance and the reception of dynamic psychology in the United States and Britain. Next, it analyses the transfer to the Netherlands. It turns out that the Dutch did not copy the American model, but adapted it to fit their conditions and created a more diverse child guidance landscape, in which educational psychology played a less important role than child psychiatry.