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This research analyses childhood career development learning through a qualitative career assessment. To help children to make meaning of the career influences, culturally sensitive procedures were used. A case-study design has been carried out, using techniques such as mapping, family portrait, role-playing and self-portrait to unveil the process of 5-year old children's career development learning. The findings illustrate the process of meaning making of the children's system of influences in low-income contexts. They show the life themes that shape the construction of identities. The conclusion highlights the usefulness of qualitative career assessment in enhancing career development learning. The use of culturally sensitive procedures allows children to raise critical awareness about the factors that influence their career construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Greek Roma mothers' aspirations and expectations regarding the education of their children, analysing responses regarding three core issues: the value they ascribe to education, their educational aspirations, and their perceived resources for supporting their children's education. The analysis is based on 27 in-depth interviews with Greek Roma mothers of 3–6 or 9–11 years-old children living in the broader Athens metropolitan area. The Super and Harkness' theoretical framework of developmental niche guided the study. Thematic analysis according to Braun and Clark was employed for data analysis. Consistent with previous research, this study showed that Greek Roma mothers recognised the importance of school attendance and the positive effect it could have on their children's lives in terms of upward social mobility and improvement in their standard of living. Their educational aspirations were high, and the role of poverty was a major factor in shaping attitudes towards schooling. Understanding their values and beliefs provides a more thorough perspective on designing social-educational interventions with the use of more culturally appropriate approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the gender dynamics of living in child-headed households (CHHs) in a rural area in Swaziland that experiences high levels of drought, poverty and HIV and AIDS. Using a qualitative research methodology, the study examined ways in which children in CHHs meet their daily family needs and address their vulnerabilities according to their gender, focusing on the experiences of the children. The study sample consisted of 10 households, with 5 boy and 5 girl-headed households from the chiefdoms within the area. A semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct interviews in the respondents’ own homes. The study focused on the gendered coping strategies used by the children to sustain their household welfare. Three factors were examined: leadership, food provision and education. The findings show that birth order conferred headship or leadership to the eldest sibling irrespective of their gender. Variations in the performance of the three factors, which were influenced by the gender of the household head, were observed. Generally, the children acted in accordance with their socio-cultural norms demanded in fulfilling the role of leadership and food provision. Boy-headed households become disadvantaged because of the boys’ reluctance to take tasks which would contravene traditional Swazi notions of masculinity. This was exacerbated by societal expectations of the independence of boys. Hegemonic masculinity puts boys at a disadvantage when societal expectations require them to enact their masculinity through independence, rather than by drawing on the support of their neighbours/family/social networks. However, girls conformed to traditional Swazi norms. Societal compassion with the vulnerability of girls produced sustainable social arrangements and fostered resilience in girl-headed households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although measurement is widely misused in education, it is indispensable in addressing the problems of injustice in global educational opportunity. Considering how the case can be made for legitimate use of measurement in normative analysis and argument, we explore ways in which metrics have featured in the formulation of theories of justice, with particular attention to resourcist and capabilities approaches. We then consider three means of addressing global inequality and defend a reconstruction of the public sphere in which objective measures of justice, deliberatively constructed, could supersede prevalent assumptions about measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in low-fee private (LFP) primary schooling serving relatively poor clients is becoming well-documented. However much of this literature focuses on urban areas whose dense populations are favourable to market growth and competition. This paper goes some way to filling a gap in the literature on whether LFP schools are serving the needs of the poor in rural areas, taking the case of one Nigerian state. It contrasts the situation in rural areas with that of urban Ilorin, where private schools cater to over half of all enrolled children. The paper shows that private schooling is currently inaccessible to the poor, with only 3.3% of children in the poorest 40% of the population attending them, and only 13% of enrolled children in rural areas. The key message is that redoubled efforts are needed to improve government schools as providers of last resort to those bypassed by the market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents public media's national--local model for providing high-quality educational transmedia to America's children as part of the US Department of Education's Ready to Learn (RTL) program. Using connected, multiplatform content as an innovative way to help narrow the academic achievement gap for underserved children, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and local public media stations coordinated efforts to overcome access issues and better reach children from low-income families. This required strong local partnerships and new approaches to implementing content in diverse learning settings. Topics explored in this paper include: (1) RTL's mission to serve all children, (2) narrowing the achievement gap through transmedia, (3) highlights of new PBS KIDS math content funded by RTL, (4) making digital content accessible to low-income families, (5) public media's national-local service model, and (6) community engagement examples from Ohio and Washington. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores early childhood experience in Scotland in terms of how readily the aspirations of policy convert to day-to-day practices. Ambitions to improve the lives of children and families have been high on the political agenda. Policy may be understood as a tool that aims to influence childhood experience in positive ways. If this is to be so, then the processes that effect change and their limitations need to be understood better, as do the underpinning values and assumptions. The workforce is at the heart of the endeavour to put policy aspirations into action: they are considered to be agents of change. In exploring such issues this paper draws on a policy-based functional analysis of the children's workforce [Dunlop, A.-W., L. Seagraves, S. Henderson, J. Henry, J. Martlew, and J. Fee. 2011.A Policy-Based Functional Analysis of the Children's Workforce. For Scottish Government: Children and Young People Social Care Directorate, Workforce and Capacity Issues Division] and on policy developments since. The paper therefore discusses Scottish policy aspirations for young children and their families, the contribution of the workforce to achieving those aspirations and asks if staff competence in itself is sufficient to ensure policy delivery for all in a climate where child poverty continues to contribute to unequal lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study articulated their own reservations about the medicalisation of children’s behaviour and revealed a number of strategies for interrupting the process towards diagnosis. These interruptions, analysed using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterriorialisation, took place along linguistic, visual and affective planes and were successful in encouraging teachers and head teachers to see alternatives to the medical route. The findings have implications for existing practice in the response to, and support for, behavioural problems and for teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A recent systematic review of studies in the developing world has critically examined linkages from familial HIV/AIDS and associated factors such as poverty and child mental health to negative child educational outcomes. In line with several recommendations in the review, the current study modelled relationships between familial HIV/AIDS, poverty, child internalising problems, gender and four educational outcomes: non-enrolment at school, non-attendance, deficits in grade progression and concentration problems. Path analyses reveal no direct associations between familial HIV/AIDS and any of the educational outcomes. Instead, HIV/AIDS-orphanhood or caregiver HIV/AIDS-sickness impacted indirectly on educational outcomes via the poverty and internalising problems that they occasioned. This has implications for evidence-based policy inferences. For instance, by addressing such intervening variables generally, rather than by seeking to target families affected by HIV/AIDS, interventions could avoid exacerbating stigmatisation, while having a more direct and stronger impact on children's educational outcomes. This analytic approach also suggests that future research should seek to identify causal paths, and may include other intervening variables related to poverty (such as child housework and caring responsibilities) or to child mental health (such as stigma and abuse), that are linked to both familial HIV/AIDS and educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that poverty reinforced by poor education, low industrial skills and fluctuating employment more than well-remembered bigotry hindered Catholic advance. Delayed marriage and families broken by death, often reflecting wide age differences between spouses or by desertion, reinforced deprivation. To uplift the tramping masses, influential clergy and laity promoted a conservative ideology of religious respectability and social cultivation. A seemingly restless flock became a disciplined, cohesive body. A British Ultramontane identity of parish devotional and recreational organisations, improved education, missions and elaborate churches enriched communal pride. Nationalism, radicalism and proselytism were contained. Only after working class enfranchisement, the 1918 Scottish Education Act, the rise of Labour and decline of the old Catholic aristocracy did significant advance begin. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The number of children losing one or both parents to HIV/AIDS has continued to rise in the past decade, with most of them being school-aged children. This study reviews global literature on the effects of HIV/AIDS (e.g., parental HIV-related illness or death) on children's schooling. Systematic review procedures generated 23 studies for examination. Existing studies show educational disadvantages among children affected by AIDS in various educational outcomes, including school enrollment and attendance, school behavior and performance, school completion, and educational attainment. A number of individual and contextual factors potentially moderate or mediate the effect of HIV/AIDS on children's education. These factors include gender of child, pattern of parental loss (maternal vs. paternal vs. dual), living arrangement (relationship with caregivers, gender of the household head), and household poverty. Current literature indicates limitations in number and scope of existing studies and in educational outcome measurements. There is a lack of studies with longitudinal design and data collection from multiple sources (e.g., students, teachers, caregivers), and a lack of studies on the relationship between psychosocial well-being of children affected by AIDS and their educational outcomes. Future studies need to employ more rigorous methodology and incorporate both individual and contextual factors for children affected by AIDS in various regions. More efforts are needed to design and implement culturally appropriate and context-specific approaches to improve the educational outcomes of children affected by AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to explore the structural conditions and social formations that mediate access to quality education amongst low income children in KwaZulu-Natal. Structural violence can lead to injustices to children such as the experience of hunger, disease, poverty and poor quality of education. A total of 117 students (male = 59; female = 58; age range 8 to 18 years) were drawn from three high schools, five primary schools and a special school in a district of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study captured the voices of participants through individual interviews and focus group interviews. Data were analyzed thematically. Systemic structural conditions in society such as poverty, lack of resources in schools, poor infrastructure in communities, poorly trained teachers, lack of accountability created barriers to educational access for children from poor backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little information about, and understanding of, how children from families living in poverty experience school, as opposed to children from better-off families. This paper is based on the views of children aged 5-11 in schools across Northern Ireland, UK. It argues that family poverty impacts on every aspect of a child's experience of school from the earliest years of primary school and, therefore, that policy interventions to improve educational outcomes are unlikely to be effective unless they are accompanied by far broader social policy initiatives to reduce poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the premise that children in poverty are disadvantaged in their potential to learn by the extent and quality of their social networks and educational relationships. The research examines the quality and sustainability of educational relationships between children and adults in out-of-school activities. We build a theoretical argument to suggest that children with a greater number of successful, formal and informal educational relationships stand a better chance of success in terms of on-going learning and rewarding employment. The study probes how children act as agents in developing and maintaining educational relationships with adults and the constraints on the use of their own agency in negotiating more formal educational settings. It explores educational relationships out of school and compares and contrasts the educational relationships experienced by children in poverty with a matched sample of those in more affluent circumstances. In doing so, it illuminates the nature and scope of educational relationships in supporting children's engagement with learning; identify perceived gaps in their experiences and capture their explanations of the cause. Learning how to develop and sustain relationships, how to work with others, make use of, and build on other's expertise are vital in improving life chances and these are the skills much demanded by employers. This research contributes to the understanding of the relationships that support the learning of children in poverty and of the barriers that obstruct their development in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Children's Defense Fund's (CDF) research on the impact of children's poverty on the value of their paid work later life and on economy. CDF used four separate methods in the research. The first three methods take an indirect approach based on children's years of education. These methods provide an incomplete picture because they trace only one pathway of effects from child poverty to economic output. The three methods, therefore, do not capture all the ways child poverty can hamper the economy. Childhood poverty also may lead to lower wages and productivity during adulthood by subtly lowering an individual's basic skills and ability to learn on the job. Beyond its effect on hourly wages and productivity, moreover, child poverty is likely to affect the economy further by causing unemployment, involuntary part-time employment, or work hours lost due to teenage parenthood, ill health, or death at an early age. The fourth method used considers the total effect on future worker output. This method reflects every child poverty effect on employment and productivity, not just reduced hourly pay due to lost years of schooling. Like previous methods, these estimated effects are not due to single-parent families, race, or mother's education. Most of the estimated impacts on future worker output would be substantially higher if education's effects on unemployment, underemployment, and labor force nonparticipation were taken into account, along with additional effects of poverty on productivity, employment, ill health, and mortality that are not captured by years of schooling.

Sure Start is a major Government initiative whose main aim is to ensure that children living in poverty start school ready to flourish. It was setup as a result of that part of the Government's 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review, which focused on services for young children. Sure Start is a large and ambitious program, with an initial three-year budget of 450 million pounds for Great Britain. Sure Start is an area-based initiative. That is, districts are chosen for Sure Start based on indicators of deprivation, and then within each of those districts a local partnership is formed to decide the actual catchment area for the program, usually including around 750 children under the age of four. The planning process for local Sure Start program is based on nationally established objectives and targets set out in the Sure Start Public Service Agreement. The targets are a mix of outcome measures incidence of low birth weight, improvements in language development, reduction in re-registration on child protection registers and input measures visiting every family, strategy for dealing with post-natal depression, availability of high-quality play and early learning opportunities.

The author focuses on the environment of interactive learning and online learning, discussing the importance and role of technology and electronic learning in the enhancement of the human condition. The author adds on the education system in the Great Britain's children education under poverty but with the rise in the Higher Education participation. Great Britain has made a rapid expansion in the assessment of the education and knowledge.