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This article examines the community attachments of children living in stigmatised non-profit housing estates in Denmark. Drawing on childhood studies' emphasis on children's agency, the analysis explores how children shape their place attachments within urban landscapes. Methods include ethnographic fieldwork in two neighbourhoods, walk-along interviews and photo-elicitation. The findings reveal how architectural, material, and symbolic aspects of a neighbourhood may afford children's pluri-ethnic social relations and attachment practices to a local community, based on acts of care in everyday interactions. While these practices are common, the analysis also explores how the territorial stigma racialises children's social spaces and catalyses differentiations, both internally and beyond their neighbourhood. Thus, the study deepens our understanding of children's ambiguous perceptions of and reactions to growing up in stigmatised communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performing the analyses of selected ways of perceiving children and childhood is deemed to be important and prosocial within the framework of social sciences. In the process of the changing understanding of the terms "child" and "childhood" as well as promoting the treatment of children as full-fledged members of the community, the process of informing, convincing, and shaping social behaviours is of considerable importance. The results of the analyses of the outcome of research involving children (childhood studies) contribute to inducing changes, e.g. when it comes to the treatment of children or modifying/changing the process of their education and upbringing; notably, establishing who a child is as well as highlighting the distinct features of childhood, and how these features influence the shaping of public opinion. It may contribute to a gradual overcoming of the stereotypes in the perception of children and childhood. Children are equal members of society, and their views on the present are worth knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the Special Issue on Adaptation and Childhood invites researchers to consider the critical opportunities that thinking with and about childhood can offer the field of adaptation studies. Rather than marking the limits of what is possible, this introduction invites scholars to approach the real and conceptualized child and the challenges they pose to adaptation studies theory and criticism as a site of theoretical and methodological possibility. We begin by examining how the field of children's literature has navigated the problems posed by conceptualizing the child as audience and explore how such theorizations could aid adaptation studies in navigating its own relationship to audiences. Drawing again on work from key theorists in the field of children's literary criticism, this introduction concludes by arguing for the child as a key ally in reclaiming adaptation's 'might'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While children's books have proved fertile ground for the theorization of adaptation as process and product, adaptation studies has proved remarkably reluctant to explore the relationship between adaptation studies and childhood itself. This paper takes this hesitancy as its central focus, combining recent metacritical studies of adaptation and its theorization (Elliott 2018; 2020) with theory from the fields of children's literature and childhood studies in order to demonstrate how adaptation studies has operated under what I will describe as the 'anxiety of infantilization'. This paper will explore how this anxiety of infantilization manifests by engaging the work of three prominent scholars in the field—Deborah Cartmell, Thomas Leitch, and Kyle Meikle—and analysing the discourses of childhood that underpin their discussions of the relationship between adaptation and childhood. It will be my contention that existing discussions of the child and adaptation studies remain enmeshed in what Marah Gubar labels as 'difference' and 'deficit' models of childhood (2013; 2016), and that if we are ever to get out from under our anxiety of infantilization, we must find a way to Gubar's third model: 'kinship' (ibid.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores learning about environments with a focus on starting with trees. The paper examines children and young people's perceptions of and engagement with trees, as part of a large grant that sought to examine the dis/benefits of trees for children's lives and learning. In this paper, we attempt to move beyond notions of ‘education for sustainability’ in that we start with knowledges generated with trees. We are concerned that current educational discourses tend to incorporate extractivist perspectives. They also focus on humans rather than the inseparability of the natural world from the human experience as a starting point for research. The paper is based on a large‐scale, transdisciplinary, UK‐based project, rooted in in‐depth, co‐produced research with a total of 545 children and young people, across multiple primary and secondary schools in England and Scotland. The paper begins and exemplifies a new conversation about what starting with trees might enable for studies of education and childhood. We propose the concepts of dwelling, skilling and belonging as a novel framework for ‘starting with trees’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience as a concept continues to be mobilised as children and young people navigate the climate crisis and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, social isolation, and school closures. In this paper, we explore Rose and Lentzos (2017) position on ‘the polyvalence of resilient strategies’ (p. 44) to analyse the complex concerns that resilience in education is mobilised to address. We examine the emergent discourse of resilience used in the Australian Government’s Natural Disaster Resilience Education (NDRE) program, an initiative developed in the aftermath of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements following the Black Summer bushfires (2019–2020) to support children in understanding their role during a national emergency or disaster. This paper explores ‘territories of resilience’ (Rose & Lentzos, 2017) to understand how children and young people are increasingly expected to develop resilience in response to the intensification of natural disasters by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Based on 35 comic strip dialogues with marginalized children in Italy, Norway and Slovenia, as well as three individual interviews with Italian practitioners, this article introduces a methodological approach that offers a ‘back door’ for exploring social problems embedded in the everyday lives of children. The analysis demonstrates the importance of adopting an everyday life perspective as an analytical strategy in conversations with children in marginalized life situations. This means shifting the focus away from solely examining risk factors and instead promoting a contextual understanding of risk, with an emphasis on amplifying the diverse voices of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thinking at the nexus of epistemic injustice, childhood studies, transgender studies, and gender and racial justice in literacy education, this article illustrates how curricular engagement with questions of age, gender, race, and power can simultaneously complicate and flatten knowledge about power relations. Drawing from a yearlong ethnography inquiring into how students and teachers read, wrote, and talked about gender and sexual diversity at a Midwestern U.S. high school, this article presents two illustrative ethnographic cases from a co-taught sophomore humanities course (grade 10) combining English language arts and social studies, cases featuring students writing about the child as an epistemic figure. The implications of this argument suggest the importance of educators questioning rather than naturalizing ageist power relations through their pedagogical techniques and curricular representations, which in turn can challenge or reify broader age-based epistemic injustices undergirding anti-trans and racist legislation and policy in and beyond the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, James Joshua Coleman and Jon Wargo interrogate the (queer) child as a concept and specter that haunts civic life in the United States. Whereas scholars across a range of fields and standpoints have questioned the value of LGBTQ+ inclusion in public school curricula, and society more broadly, together Coleman and Wargo wonder at the capacity of civics education to include queer (as opposed to LGBTQ+) citizens within the cis‐straight nation‐state. To explore this possibility, they read across two bills: (1) H.R. 9197 (Stop the Sexualization of Children Act), and (2) Illinois House Bill 246 (Inclusive Curriculum Law). In so doing, they highlight how the (Queer) Child operates as an organizing binary logic within these bills and examine how hermeneutical injustice impedes the formation of a truly queer civics education. Specifically, Coleman and Wargo demonstrate how hermeneutical injustice limits the nature of inclusion for LGBTQ+ citizens, both for exclusionary, anti‐LGBTQ+ policy and for seemingly inclusive legislation. Pointing to scenes that demonstrate hermeneutical justice and queer survivance, they conclude by suggesting the construction of a queer civics education that stands outside the binary logics of the cis‐straight nation‐state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article begins with a discussion of the contribution of childhood studies to our understanding of children's ethics, taking into account feminist inputs to the debate over the ethics of care and the ethics of justice. Then, based on two qualitative studies carried out in Chile with children between 10 and 13 years of age, the article shows the emphasis the children place on reciprocal care between parents and children. This concern for reciprocity is accompanied by notions of justice and rights in how they evaluate the parent–child relationship. The data reveal the complex ways in which the ethics of care and of justice interlock in the children's discourses. The article concludes by tracing the links between these results and the conditions of productive and reproductive work in contemporary Chile as reflected in the children's discourses, and it shows how children have begun to internalise a focus on children's rights in reflecting on their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After a first publication at the end of the 18th century, the periodical press for children begins to take shape in Spain in the 1840s, reaching more than seventy titles published by the end of the century. Often described as conservative because of its austerity and the density of its texts, it suffers in the historiography from comparisons with the press of the following century and with the editorial paths of neighbouring nations. Nevertheless, it is in many ways a valuable source for cultural history, since it reveals the gradual demarcation of childhood as a specific editorial market and a specific public. The children’s periodical press is also part of a wider literary and intellectual world, which must be taken into account. Finally, through its socially situated position, it offers a fascinating receptacle of representations and mentalities, where a shared class identity is beginning to emerge, within texts and images.

Within this commentary, I contest dominant views and practices regarding im/maturity within Children’s Nursing that are rooted in refuted age-based conceptions of child development. I highlight how these operate as forms of epistemological oppression that perpetuate the exclusion of young people’s voices and experiences in research, policymaking and practice development that affects them. These dominant approaches breach their participation rights and can generate significant distress and trauma. To counter these oppressive views and practices, I discuss an inclusive participatory framework that is centered on the recognition of young people as human agents, acknowledging their voices as forms of agential expression and action. I argue that all research, policymaking and practice development that affects young people should be informed by their aspirations and concerns expressed through respectful – not tokenistic - youth engagement initiatives. I argue for an urgently-needed restructuring of Children’s Nursing theory and practice.

This paper explores the involvement of children as co-researchers, tackling core issues in epistemology, methodology, and ethics. It represents a shift in childhood studies, moving away from adult-centered views to recognize children as active agents with valuable insights into their own lives. By conducting a detailed literature review and theoretical analysis, the study highlights the importance of participatory methods that adapt to children’s developmental levels, enabling them to meaningfully contribute across various stages of research, from data collection to analysis and tool selection. This approach underscores the necessity of child-friendly research designs, emphasizing child agency and methodological flexibility. Ultimately, the study finds that engaging children as co-researchers enhances the quality and authenticity of research on childhood. However, achieving this requires addressing power dynamics, ensuring ethical integrity, and tailoring methodologies to respect children’s autonomy. The paper recommends establishing standardized ethical guidelines centered on child participation and suggests participatory frameworks that foster genuine involvement, ensuring research is both rigorous and respectful of children’s unique perspectives.IMPACT STATEMENTThis paper emphasizes the transformative impact of involving children as co-researchers, fundamentally reshaping how childhood studies approach the perspectives and experiences of young participants. By integrating children as active contributors, the study enhances the authenticity, relevance, and ethical integrity of research, offering a model that respects children’s agency and developmental needs. The findings encourage a re-evaluation of research practices, advocating for child-centered ethical guidelines and participatory frameworks that prioritize children’s autonomy and well-being. This approach not only improves research quality but also aligns with broader movements toward inclusivity and empowerment in social sciences, promoting a more equitable, respectful, and impactful understanding of childhood.

This paper proposes a rethinking of the temporal conditions of childhood by centring the affective experiences of fourteen young activists who continuously inhabit the past by working at a collective memory museum in Colombia. It questions notions of time as linear, progressive, chronological, and universal and instead presents alternative ways of being in time. I discuss young activists’ struggles to imagine mundane futures while constantly comparing themselves with the experiences of the victims of the armed conflict. I then discuss how the museum, as an institutional site of remembrance, sanitises and dictates how the young museum workers ought to remember, making them feel inadequate when their emotions do not align with the museum’s mission. The young activists demonstrate how their transitions into adulthood are determined by simultaneously inhabiting multiple temporalities and defying adult expectations on how to remember. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnography is often considered as a suitable methodological approach to explore childhoods, nevertheless, there is limited reflection on ethics in the field in the Global South educational settings, such as China. Previous China-based fieldwork studies suggest complex field relationships as a major ethical challenge. Although the issue is especially prominent in research that contests "normative" Chinese childhoods, it hasn't been sufficiently discussed due to a culture of silence surrounding researchers' emotions and positionality. This paper uses emotional reflexivity as a lens to revisit two Chinese female researchers' experiences of fieldwork, respectively, with left-behind children and disabled children in Chinese primary schools. The analysis examines how we identified ourselves and negotiated complex relationships with school members and unpacks experiences of "sameness" and "otherness" and the vulnerability and creditability impacted by our fluid identities. The paper adds insights into ethical considerations of school-based ethnographic research with diverse children in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives about children whose parents have migrated exhibit a common global trend, with these children and their families being widely pathologised, creating a stereotyped image of this group. Hence, it is timely and necessary to interrogate the category construction of left-behind children and the politics surrounding the knowledge produced. This article explores the global construction and widespread stigmatisation of left-behind children through the lens of a postcolonial critique and criticises the hegemonic notion of childhood promoted primarily by the Global North. It then explores the indigenous category of 'liushou children' for left-behind children in China – revealing its cultural expectations and Indigenous construction. Although the pathologisation of such children occurs in both global and indigenous dimensions, the understanding and causation of such pathologisation differs since diverse actors often present different understandings of this phenomenon, which refract different expectations, moral and value judgements, or political motivations. Therefore, this article calls for research on the lives of these children in the context of global economic and social structural shifts and how these are reshaped in local and national dimensions. In so doing, it provides insights into ongoing debates on the politics and ethics of knowledge production in childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the Chilean literary award Premio Medalla Colibrí had a children's jury for the first time. This article has been written by four researchers, two adults and two children, who participated in this process and then studied the experience. We did interviews with different people involved and an analysis based on the notion of wonder. Here, we present some reflections on the criteria used by the children's jury and some findings that surprised us during the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates recent scholarship related to children and metaphors of childhood within a global context. It attends to the importance of childist criticism, located primarily in Europe and the United States, in the growth of study of children in the New Testament in recent decades, while attending to parallel work on the role of children in the New Testament, particularly in relation to contextualized readings, in the global South. Specific attention is given to the use of language in defining children and childhood both within and outside the biblical context; overviews of biblical childhood; and the roles and representations of children in New Testament texts. The essay concludes by looking forward to future opportunities for research and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on children's perspective on their outdoor play environment. The research took place in settings with designated disadvantaged status—in the backyards of Przedmieście Oławskie—a small district of a large city of Wrocław, Poland. The research aimed to reveal dimensions of children's perception and understanding of studied backyards. Multimethod qualitative research procedure was used: the ethnographic research strategy with elements of mosaic approach were combined. Around 70 children aged 3–10 years were observed in their natural play environment and 23 of them were engaged in guided-tours and meetings in backyards. The results of this research show multidimensionality of children's experiences of their play environment. The study underlines the importance of considering children's experience as competent social agents while planning outdoor play environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on critical childhood studies and childism, this paper analyses children's participation in family law cases in Denmark. Spurred particularly by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, together with a general shift in the view on children, several jurisdictions, including Denmark, have implemented legislative reform in the last decades to accommodate children's participation rights. Even though such legal participation rights have increased, research in the family law field indicates that children's perspectives are often undermined or excluded. An analysis of qualitative data (workshops, observations, and interviews) establishes how the positioning of children and children's perspectives (as well as how "listening to children" is enacted) can be crucial to understanding the mechanisms that either subsidize or undermine children's perspectives in family law cases. The paper argues further that "listening emergent" to children can offer a path to deconstructing the norms and structures that undermine and exclude children's views—and thus offer a childist contribution to childhood research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiography of modern Hebrew culture views early twentieth-century Russia largely through the lens of canonical literature. However, Hebrew played a role in many other aspects of Jewish society, prominent among them children's literature. By examining readers' letters published in four Hebrew children's magazines, this article explores the spread and meaning of the language for different sectors of Russian Jewry. It claims that Hebrew played a role in Jewish modernization for those who did not identify with Zionism and even those who claimed to reject modernism entirely. To better understand East European Jewish life through the prism of multifaceted Hebrew culture, this article studies publications of varied ideological positions—Zionist, nonpartisan nationalist, and Orthodox—to provide a more comprehensive picture of Jewish perception of Hebrew. It shows how, despite their disparities, the four publications employed similar strategies when addressing young readers, directing them to a desired worldview and mobilizing them to social activity. The readers' letters in these magazines reveal the experience of learning, reading, and speaking the renewed language in the context of family life, social pressure, and gender dynamics. They provide essential information about methods, habits, and patterns of using Hebrew inside and outside the classroom. In addition, the letters shed light on the interaction between children and adults—parents, teachers, and newspaper editors—against the backdrop of the vibrant ideological discourse of the era. On balance, the current research offers a contribution to the study of revitalized Hebrew culture as well as the social history of modern European Jewry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an interdisciplinary study of the figure of the child in Ingmar Bergman's Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) (1978), using theoretical perspectives from childhood studies within a cinema studies framing. By analysing the shifting roles of mother and daughter in this seldom-discussed film, the article demonstrates the on-screen child figure's capacity to challenge society's deep-rooted ideas of 'child' and 'adult', respectively, thereby exposing the inconstant nature of age categories. Drawing on contemporary childhood studies, I argue, using Autumn Sonata as an example, that the child figure in cinema bears a subversive potential for questioning power relations between generations as well as defying a chrononormative notion of time and age. This reading contributes to a deepened awareness of the function of the on-screen child figure, not least transferable to Bergman's cinematic work. It also sheds light on the mutable connections between fictional children and central conceptions of childhood in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reviewed book offers an innovative study of British Indian middle-class families, drawing upon the voices of children and parents, and establishing an original dialogue between childhood studies, family studies, and leisure studies to theorize children's leisure from a fresh perspective. The great originality of the work is concentrated in the approach to these issues also from the point of view of children. To understand them only as followers of their parents' instructions is to deny their agency. In this sense, the book, apart from being a quality work in itself, serves as an invitation to reconsider academic productions in the field of education and physical education when it comes to leisure. It prompts a reevaluation of existing academic literature and invites authors to critically examine their approaches to studying leisure within the context of education and physical education.

The article discusses the research aimed at revealing the meanings that children give to their daily participation in the digital community. For several decades, the immersion of children in the online world has been evoking different opinions of adults – from those very enthusiastic to those highly alarmist. However, it seems to be essential to listen to the voice of the children themselves. This creates an opportunity to rise above the level of assessing the impact of media on children and to reach the space that hide a repertoire of colorful experiences related to the presence of children in the online world. For this purpose, children aged 8–10 took part in the focus interviews. The research material was collected and analyzed according to Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s six-stage analytical framework. One of the most important conclusions is that online activity fills children’s everyday life to a large extent and their online presence is naturally intertwined with being offline. Children perceive the internet as a source of many opportunities and declare that they feel safe, as they are aware of the rules that must be followed in it. The Internet provides them space where they can be together and engage in many activities. Children appreciate the value of face-to-face contacts, which they find different from those mediated by technology.

This paper reflects on the postmodern shift in childhood studies and its impact on education. As scholars interrogate the modern notion of childhood, the discourse of postmodernism has entered the realm of childhood studies, yielding various new perspectives on childhood. The key characteristics of the postmodern shift in childhood studies include: 1) the rejection of essentialism regarding childhood and the recognition of the diversity inherent in it; 2) the deconstruction of binary oppositions and the advocacy for the heterogeneous nature of childhood and the concept of "becoming-child"; 3) the dissolution of the modern subject associated with childhood and the reconstruction of the postmodern subject. Postmodern childhood studies will bring some positive impacts to the field of education, such as focusing on the differences among children rather than abstracting them into a unified map, removing adultism from education, and emphasizing the construction of new forms of child subjectivity in education. However, at the same time, it will also bring many challenges to education, such as questioning the essence of childhood and good education, shaking the foundation of educational existence brought by the dissolution of childhood, and the loss of educational significance due to the fluid and changing construction of child subjectivity. This underscores the importance of acknowledging that as education embraces the discourse of postmodern childhood, both its promises and perils will permeate the educational domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's ability to be social beings and change agents is a recent development in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. Scholars of Childhood Studies have been calling for a move beyond the situation where children claim their rights into a situation where children fully participate in shaping the world in which both children and adults are co-creators of the future they want. This is known as representation in the form of negotiating power, participation, and re-imagining citizenship. This study seeks to read 1 Samuel 17 in light of childist representation. The muting of children's voices and agency in the Old Testament texts will be challenged because children are also fully human beings. This study will therefore draw insights from the scholars of Childhood Studies and childism to re-read an Old Testament text. This study will employ the childist biblical approach to read 1 Samuel 17. Childist biblical approach questions the way in which children are presented in biblical texts. Therefore, David will be presented as a child who claimed his agency by participating in the efforts of defeating war and empire. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article displays intersections between Childhood Studies and biblical studies. It draws from scholars of Childhood Studies to re-read an Old Testament text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Sociology of Education & Socialization / Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung & Sozialisation is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This conversation develops ideas about the overlap between childhood studies and adoption studies at the intersection of transnational and transracial adoption, particularly of Korean children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education for Life / Yaşadıkça Eğitim Dergisi is the property of Istanbul Kultur Universitesi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)