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This paper undertakes a critical analysis of a planned change, the Safe Learning Model (SLM), devised over time by Concern Worldwide, and implemented in 100 primary or elementary schools in a rural district of Sierra Leone. We situate the documentation pertaining to the SLM (micro) within its wider national (meso) and international (macro) context of influential policy texts. We undertake a mixed methods analysis of these macro, meso and micro documents, interrogated through the prism of various change paradigms (scientific management, progressivism, critical theory, teacher professionalism and social movement) and in doing establish where these various document clusters, their explicit and implicit influences, may be located along the arc of change paradigms, thus surfacing their ideological assumptions, intent and influences. The paper concludes that in seeking to improve the quality of teaching, learning, and living in this instance, scientific management casts long shadows. The power, perspectives and financial influence of international agencies dominate change discourses whereby 'learning crises' require urgent responses in the form of testing and measuring that prevail over more expansive pedagogical capacity building. Consequently, perpetuating a 'weighing the pig' mindset downplays or ignores the ecology of teaching and learning, particularly the centrality of teachers, as professionals and role models, more likely to be compliant than transformative.

In spite of widespread initiatives to improve access to education for girls, substantive concerns remain. While there is a rich and growing body of literature on gendered experiences of school in majority world contexts, absent is a focus on how this intersects with children's out of school lives. Further, research with children in rural communities is limited, including those who are in the earlier years of their schooling. This paper addresses these gaps, focusing on gendered dynamics in the everyday lives of children in five rural communities in Northern Sierra Leone. Drawing on Bourdieu, it explores the dialectical interplay between gendered and generational structures, understood as the gendered habitus, in a wider context of structural poverty, uneven and fragile post-colonial restructuring and development. This sets the groundwork for children's gendered dis/positioning, and ultimately capacity to engage with schooling.

The concept of 'pedagogic voice' emphasises the capacity of children to express their views on matters related to teaching, learning and curriculum. 'Pedagogic voice' aligns with children's rights to be listened to and the extent to which their views are fully considered and acted upon. Combined, these rights based approaches positively shape children's learning experiences. This paper draws on quantitative and qualitative data from the longitudinal mixed methods cohort study Children's School Lives to explore children's voice. Grounded in the sociology of pedagogic voice literature and building upon research on children's participatory rights, the paper explores children's experiences of being heard and actively participating in decision-making processes in diverse primary school settings in Ireland. It analyses children's voice by looking at their capacity to influence their own learning, contrasting their experiences and perspectives, to those of their teachers. Findings illustrate the interplay between children's and teachers' narratives regarding children's voice and their pedagogical encounters to explore the impact on teaching and learning processes, highlighting structural challenges to the realisation of children's voice in primary classrooms in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of dangers and safety in children's lives has become a matter of increasing concern. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion in this field and elaborate on children's experiences of risks and dangers in the context of chronic poverty. Drawing on the post‐humanism approach, we argue that children's conceptions of risks and dangers emerge through their active and mutual exchange with other human and non‐human beings such as rivers, trees, animals and insects, however, these perceptions should be carefully placed within the local socio‐economic context of poverty and social hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debt bondage is one of the most widespread forms of unfree labour today. The majority of the existing studies focuses on bonded labourers as a homogenous group rather than examining group dynamics within the population of bonded labourers. This paper tries to overcome these limitations and examines experiences of women bonded labourers from the Sahariya tribe in India. It argues that gendered norms intersect with other patterns of structural violence creating a situation where women are doubly exploited but also opening new (limited) agentic spaces for these women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's time allocation plays an important role in their well-being, education and future chances in life. This paper examines children's time use in rural Sierra Leone in the context of dynamics of power. It analyses the ways in which children co-construct their patterns of time use and create their own temporal spaces within the boundaries of existing expectations and norms. Drawing on rich qualitative data we argue that children's routines are shaped by an interplay of various dimensions and expressions of power that create and re-create gender, generation and other social orders in a particular society. This power interplay creates polyphonic temporal spaces where school, work and play time overlap each other.The analysis of this polyphony of time use has demonstrated that children's time allocation goes beyond simple one dimensional task distribution and includes a complex network of activities that may take place simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the generationing of education and development in five villages in Northern Sierra Leone. Understood as 'fields' governed by power dynamics, we consider how the interactive 'fields' of generation, education and development coalesce, re/structuring adult and child 'being' and 'doing'. We explore the tensions that arise between transformation and preservation in the field in light of wider social, cultural and economic change, and the negotiation of the generational contract in contexts of high risk and inter-dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]