Children, Structure and Agency

Children, Structure and Agency PDF

Author: G.K. Lieten

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-05-01

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1135857164

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The child labour debate, the Child Rights Convention and the target of universal primary education in the Millennium Development Goals have drawn increasing attention to children in developing countries. Alongside, a debate has waged on the need for child participation and the appropriateness of spreading allegedly western norms of childhood. This book aims to uncover the daily life of children in selected areas in Vietnam, India, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Bolivia against the background of those debates. Children, Structure and Agency takes a close look at the activities, the aspirations and the deliberations of hundreds of poor children in the age category from 9 to 14, on the basis of a dawn-to-sunset observation over a couple of days. By empowering children to make people listen to them, children can play a more an active role in their community. The book addresses the issue of such child agency and the structural constraints to that agency. This text would be of interest to child-centred development aid organisations and scholars dealing with issues of child participation, child rights, child labour and education.

Structure and Agency in Young People’s Lives

Structure and Agency in Young People’s Lives PDF

Author: Magda Nico

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-12

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1000367746

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Structure and Agency in Young People’s Lives brings together different takes on the possible combinations of agency and structure in the life course, thus rejecting the notion that young individuals are the single masters of their lives, but also the view that their social destinies are completely out of their hands. ‘How did I get here?’ This is a question young people have always asked themselves and is often asked by youth researchers. There is no easy and single answer. The lives that are told, on one hand, and their interpretation, on the other, may have the underlying idea of 'own doing' or the idea of 'social determinism' or, more accurately and frequently, a combination of the two. This collection constitutes a comprehensive map on how to make sense of youth’s biographies and trajectories, it questions and reshapes the discussion on the role and responsibility of youth studies in the understanding of how people juggle opportunities and constraints, and contributes to escaping what Furlong and Cartmel identified as the "epistemological fallacy of late modernity", in which young people find themselves responsible for collective failures or inevitabilities. It can thus interest students, researchers and professors, youth workers and all of those who work for and with young people.

Children, Structure and Agency

Children, Structure and Agency PDF

Author: G.K. Lieten

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-05

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1135857172

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This book examines children living in adverse conditions in Vietnam, India, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Here Lieten addresses the idea of children as self-conscious actors, highlighting issues of child agency, the structural constraints to that agency, and the consequences that this may have for child-centred development work.

The Agency of Children

The Agency of Children PDF

Author: David Oswell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0521843669

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Uses the idea of children's agency to survey the main issues in childhood studies.

Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood

Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood PDF

Author: Florian Esser

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1317524411

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By regarding children as actors and conducting empirical research on children’s agency, Childhood Studies have gained significant influence on a wide range of different academic disciplines. This has made agency one of the key concepts of Childhood Studies, with articles on the subject featured in handbooks and encyclopaedias. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood is the first collection devoted to the central concept of agency in Childhood Studies. With contributions from experts in the field, the chapters cover theoretical, practical, historical, transnational and institutional dimensions of agency, rekindling discussion and introducing fundamental and contemporary sociological perspectives to the field of research. Particular attention is paid to connecting agency in the social sciences with Childhood Studies, considering both the theoretical foundations and the practice of research into agency. Empirical case studies are also explored, which focus upon child protection, schools and childcare at a variety of institutions worldwide. This book is an essential reference for students and scholars of Childhood Studies, and is also relevant to Sociology, Social Work, Education, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Geography. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation

The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation PDF

Author: Madeleine Leonard

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2015-12-01

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1473952719

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Outlining sociology’s distinctive contribution to childhood studies and our understanding of contemporary children and childhood, The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation provides a thought provoking and comprehensive account of the connections between the macro worlds of childhood and the micro worlds of children’s everyday lives. Examining children’s involvement in areas such as the labour market, family life, education, play and leisure, the book provides an effective balance between understanding childhood as a structural phenomenon, and recognising children as meaning makers actively involved in constructing, co-constructing and reconstructing their everyday lives. Through the concept of ′generagency′ Madeleine Leonard offers a model for examining and illuminating how structure and agency are activated within interdependent relationships influenced by generational positioning. This framework provides a conceptual tool for thinking about the continuities, challenges and changes that impact on how childhood is lived and experienced.

Children as Agents in Their Worlds

Children as Agents in Their Worlds PDF

Author: Sheila Greene

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-09

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1317233425

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Are children the passive recipients of influence from their parents and from society? Is their development determined by their genes and their neurons, or do they have the capacity to think about and influence their own lives and the world around them? How does their interaction with their social and material worlds support or hinder agency? Are children agents, and what do we mean by agency? Children as Agents in Their Worlds aims to answer these questions through a critical psychological and relational approach, while referencing and critiquing a wide range of perspectives from other disciplines including sociology, anthropology and education. Greene and Nixon review the pioneering work of scholars of childhood studies and current post-human theories of agency and offer a developmental perspective on the emergence of the sense of agency and the exercise of agency in children. They discuss key themes including agency in families, agency within the school context and with peers, and children as agents in the wider public sphere. They explore agency and diversity, examining sex, age, genetic inheritance and contextual sources of difference, such as social class and geographical location. Offering a stronger theoretical base for research and policy, through a synthesis of both psychological and relational theories, Children as Agents in Their Worlds will be essential reading for students and professionals in developmental psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as education, childhood studies, children’s rights and related fields.

Facilitating Children's Agency in the Interaction

Facilitating Children's Agency in the Interaction PDF

Author: Claudio Baraldi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-10-26

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3031099788

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This book analyzes children's agency as interactional achievement in formal and informal contexts of education and illuminates how agency can be encouraged and supported in these educational contexts. Taking a sociological approach, the author deals with children as social agents rather than learners and considers structures of interaction which encourage and support agency, rather than teaching. The book draws from field research conducted over more than twenty years in a variety of Italian and international contexts. This book is unique in providing a theoretical reflection on the social structures that can support children’s agency, as well as a large amount of examples which show how these structures and agency work.

Parenting Matters

Parenting Matters PDF

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-11-21

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0309388570

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Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Handbook of Child Psychology, Child Psychology in Practice

Handbook of Child Psychology, Child Psychology in Practice PDF

Author: William Damon

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2007-07-30

Total Pages: 1105

ISBN-13: 0470050551

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Part of the authoritative four-volume reference that spans the entire field of child development and has set the standard against which all other scholarly references are compared. Updated and revised to reflect the new developments in the field, the Handbook of Child Psychology, Sixth Edition contains new chapters on such topics as spirituality, social understanding, and non-verbal communication. Volume 4: Child Psychology in Practice, edited by K. Ann Renninger, Swarthmore College, and Irving E. Sigel, Educational Testing Service, covers child psychology in clinical and educational practice. New topics addressed include educational assessment and evaluation, character education, learning disabilities, mental retardation, media and popular culture, children's health and parenting.