Understanding Children and Childhood

Understanding Children and Childhood
Author: Anne B. Smith
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2013-11-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1927131766

Emphasising the voices and rights of children, international expert Anne Smith examines the latest thinking on children’s learning and development. Contemporary theories and research about children and childhood are explained, using observations from children’s everyday experiences and debates about policy. A sociocultural perspective presents development as driven by a child’s learning, supported by opportunities for reciprocal social interaction across diverse cultural contexts.

Understanding childhood

Understanding childhood
Author: Mary Jane Kehily
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1447305809

Nationally and globally, childhood has become a crucial topic of sociopolitical debates and policy initiatives. Understanding Childhood offers a fresh look at how childhood has changed in recent years. It reveals how children's needs and experiences have achieved a new visibility in wider social and political discourse. Despite the privileges afforded to children in the West, the typical childhood experience there is no longer seen as an ideal model for other parts of the globe. Recent reports and policy concerns suggest that growing up in the West may be marked by the commercialization of childhood, which can lead to unhappiness, poor health, loss of innocence, and a general lack of well-being. The contributors here introduce readers to the cross-disciplinary field of childhood studies and offer an exciting and unique exploration of childhood as a concept, in the process engaging with a range of contemporary issues that shape our ideas of childhood both as an ideal and as a lived experience. Exploring childhood from a variety of research perspectives and traditions, Understanding Childhood also serves as a powerful introduction to careers in childhood service.

Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood

Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood
Author: Olivera Petrovich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018-09-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317380746

It is commonly assumed that young children only begin to think about God as a result of some educational or cultural influence, perhaps provided by their parents. Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood asks if there is anything about God that children can know independently of any specific cultural input; does their knowledge of God simply come from their everyday encounters with the surrounding world? Whilst children’s theoretical reasoning in biology, physics and psychology has received considerable attention in recent developmental research, the same could not be said about their religious or theological understanding. Olivera Petrovich explores children’s religious concepts, from a natural-theological perspective. Using supporting evidence from a series of studies with children and adults living in as diverse cultures as the UK and Japan, Petrovich explains how young children begin to construct their everyday scientific and metaphysical theories by relying on their own already advanced causal understanding. The unique contribution that this volume makes to the developmental psychology of religion is its contention that religion or theology constitutes one of the core domains of human cognition rather than being a by-product of other core domains and specific cultural inputs. Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood is essential reading for students and researchers in cognitive-developmental psychology, religious studies, education and cognitive anthropology.

Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8

Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2015-07-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309324882

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Primary Understanding

Primary Understanding
Author: Kieran Egan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0415672430

Beginning with descriptions of the ways in which children make sense of their experience and the world, such as fantasy, stories and games, Egan constructs his argument that constituting this foundational layer are sets of cultural sense-making capacities, reflected in oral cultures throughout the world. Egan sees education as the acquisition of these sets of sense-making capacities, available in our culture, and his goal is to conceptualize primary education in a way that over comes the dichotomy between progressivisim and traditionalism, attending both the needs of the individual child and the accumulation of knowledge.

Parenting Matters

Parenting Matters
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2016-11-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309388570

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.

Self-Understanding in Childhood and Adolescence

Self-Understanding in Childhood and Adolescence
Author: William Damon
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1991-10-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521424998

Reports data from several cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of children's and adolescent's self conceptions and presents new methods for interviewing children about themselves and for analyzing their responses for developmental level and schematic orientation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Understanding Childhood Obesity

Understanding Childhood Obesity
Author: J. Clinton Smith
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2009-10-20
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1496801776

Almost fourteen percent of American children over age six and twelve percent of adolescents are obese, more than double the rate of thirty years ago. Although there are countless diet and weight loss books on the market, few of them explain in jargon-free terms the basic factors, the body processes that can lead to childhood obesity, and the research currently underway to combat this growing health risk. In Understanding Childhood Obesity, Dr. J. Clinton Smith has created a comprehensive guide covering nearly every field of obesity research. He explores causes and methods of control, the body's physical and chemical make-up, prevention strategies, new treatments and behavior modifications, and future research possibilities. Smith closely examines the genetic and environmental factors that can lead to childhood obesity. For parents, he answers the all-important question of whether an obese child needs help, and he outlines traditional diet and exercise treatments as well as aggressive medical and surgical techniques. He also introduces readers to the “continuous care and problem-solving model” that has proved valuable in pediatric treatment clinics. Featured are: An explanation of how obesity is identified by using a child's height and weight. A frank discussion of the health consequences of obesity. A review of how the body breaks down food for energy and how and why the body stores energy. An examination of the powerful environmental factors affecting childhood weight gain. A thorough gathering of the treatments and research, and a view of exciting new discoveries in genetics and body chemistry.

Understanding Trauma

Understanding Trauma
Author: Laurence J. Kirmayer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2007-01-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1139462261

This book analyzes the individual and collective experience of and response to trauma from a wide range of perspectives including basic neuroscience, clinical science, and cultural anthropology. Each perspective presents critical and creative challenges to the other. The first section reviews the effects of early life stress on the development of neural systems and vulnerability to persistent effects of trauma. The second section of the book reviews a wide range of clinical approaches to the treatment of the effects of trauma. The final section of the book presents cultural analyses of personal, social, and political responses to massive trauma and genocidal events in a variety of societies. This work goes well beyond the neurobiological models of conditioned fear and clinical syndrome of post-traumatic stress disorder to examine how massive traumatic events affect the whole fabric of a society, calling forth collective responses of resilience and moral transformation.

Understanding Children's Development

Understanding Children's Development
Author: Anne B. Smith
Publisher: Bridget Williams Books
Total Pages: 369
Release: 1998
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 090891296X

This fully revised and updated edition of a fundamental New Zealand psychology text examines how and why children develop and how they are influenced by the people and events in their lives. Discussed are theories of development and learning, the importance of early experience, intelligence and assessment, and the family. The development of social behavior, gender roles, language, and thinking are also covered. The question of mainstreaming--the integration of children with special educational needs into regular preschools and classrooms--is also debated. There is a strong emphasis on local conditions and the New Zealand historical and social context. This new edition addresses the important issue of giving children themselves a voice, in order to better understand their development and to involve them in decisions about their lives.