{"title":"Artificial intelligence for children: UNICEF's policy guidance and beyond","authors":"Suyu Liu, Wenjun Ding","doi":"10.1111/chso.12915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12915","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This policy review introduces the Policy Guidance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Children, produced by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This Policy Guidance is the first international-level output to boost the development of child-centred AI and relevant policies. A main contribution of this Policy Guidance is that it outlines the foundations, requirements and specific recommendations for developing child-centred AI and surrounding policies. The shortcomings of this Policy Guidance are also introduced, especially the insufficient gender responsiveness and age sensitivity, plus relatively low representation of the developing world. Possible suggestions for future updates of the Policy Guidance and improving policies on child-centred AI are provided in this review, such as the inclusion of a broader age range of children during the consultation process. The coexistence of contributions and limitations of this Policy Guidance reflects the situation of development of child-centred AI and relevant policies, which is currently immature but promising.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"374-382"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking concepts of special educational needs and disability in the primary classroom","authors":"Paula Hamilton, Sarah Matthews","doi":"10.1111/chso.12918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12918","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the outcomes of a disability awareness programme aimed at rethinking concepts of special educational needs and disability (SEND) with children aged 8–9 years old. Designed specifically for this research study, the work was undertaken in a mainstream primary classroom in England. Although research has been undertaken in this area, it is limited and often focused on children's friendships. Drawing upon a disability studies in education lens, the study contributes to the literature through its use of interactive methods to elicit and deconstruct children's thinking. The findings suggest that many children continue to hold deficit perceptions about SEND, rooted in medical model perspectives. However, carefully designed programmes which enable children to consider first-person experiences, and encourage the deconstruction of ableist discourses, can promote more flexible understanding and progressive attitudes towards SEND in childhood.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 2","pages":"383-401"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12918","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond infantilization and adultification: The binary representations of child migrants in the United States and how they harm young migrants","authors":"Daysi Ximena Diaz-Strong, Ivόn Padilla-Rodríguez, Stephanie Torres","doi":"10.1111/chso.12919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12919","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The arrival of migrant children at the US–Mexico border has prompted vigorous debates about how to handle their admission and manage their access to resources. Portrayals of child migrants often draw on dominant conventional notions of childhood, creating binary representations that simultaneously infantilize and adultify them. This binary representation either strips children of their agency or criminalizes their actions and denies them protection. This paper exposes the inadequacies of the infantilization and adultification binary to represent and understand the experiences of child migrants, particularly youth who immigrate as teenagers, through a transdisciplinary approach. Integrating original historical analysis via archival research with contemporary social scientific analysis from qualitative research, this paper examines the longstanding binary representations of migrant children and their harmful impacts. The historical analysis shows that infantilization and adultification have defined the US response to child migrants since the mid-1960s. Making connections to the present, through the stories of two unaccompanied teenage arrivals, we show how the binary is experienced and how Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) reflects and reinforces the binary. The paper also highlights how young people, who do not fit neatly into the binary, come to subjectively feel adult, elucidating the need for an alternative narrative that embraces child migrants' agency and advocates for support and protection for all youth.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 2","pages":"423-439"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12919","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Medicalisation, development and adult power: Exploring the contributions of the medical system to child disenfranchisement in theory and society","authors":"Luke Alford","doi":"10.1111/chso.12917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12917","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The marginalisation of children globally is frequently justified by appeal to medical, developmental science. While childhood has increasingly become recognised as a social construct, this research has focused largely on education and legal structures, leaving this medicalisation unexamined. This essay closes that gap by examining the medicalisation of childhood and the contribution of the medical system to adult power. These are approached in separate sections. The first portion of this essay addresses the theoretical and rhetorical manner in which children are medicalised, using Piaget's theories as examples of a trend to over-state the universality of childhood deficiencies and assume adult competences. Latour's work on the scientific black-box is combined with Halliday's assessment of scientific language to examine how these theories are transformed from specific psychological findings, into assumed objective truths, carrying disenfranchising assumptions about children into public discourse. The essay's second part examines the practical role of the medical system in mobilising adultist discourses and disempowering children, through the operation of scientific management. This is built up from discussions of childbirth and adolescence to wider issues of medical power as it permeates educational, legislative and media spaces through Samuel's concept of biocertification. Finally, these two parts meet in highlighting the role of medicalisation in maintaining the hegemony of adult power through its veil of objectivity and expansive reach. I contend anthropological works referenced throughout the essay show that medicalised narratives of childhood are insufficient but culturally contingent and thus open to revision.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 2","pages":"402-422"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Rutting stags’ and ‘sly foxes’: Gender positioning boys and girls through social, emotional and behavioural work on the school playground","authors":"Peter Wood","doi":"10.1111/chso.12920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12920","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In recent years, there has been an increased focus on the development of children's social, emotional and behavioural skills in schools, via a swathe of classroom-based schemes and more general, relational and emotional approaches to pedagogy. With a now established but growing evidence base focusing upon the outcomes of such social, emotional and behavioural work for schools and children, calls have been made for research that makes a gender critical analysis of such work. This article is grounded in a conceptual framework that positions gender as socially constructed and performative and draws on qualitative data gathered in a series of focus group and individual interviews with primary school practitioners. The findings demonstrate how gender binary beliefs influence perceptions of the behaviours displayed by boys and girls in play-based situations as well as the social, emotional and behavioural work carried out by staff in response. The implications of these findings, in terms of the positioning of, and responses to the social, emotional and behavioural difficulties presented by boys and girls on the schoolyard are discussed and suggestions for future practice are made.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 2","pages":"440-456"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12920","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143404815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Good friends, better society: Peer effects on civic-mindedness of elementary school students","authors":"Hoyong Jung, Junghee Bae","doi":"10.1111/chso.12914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12914","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examined the effects of peers' civic-mindedness on elementary school students' civic-mindedness. Raising civic-minded and socially responsible adolescents has become a focus of attention in many countries in recent years. This study used fourth-grade elementary school panel data from the Seoul Education Longitudinal Survey 2010, identifying causality based on fixed effects and instrumental variable estimation from students' random classroom assignment. Results showed that the high civic-mindedness among classmates increased students' own civic-mindedness. Based on these findings, implications for adolescent education are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"322-342"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12914","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Being family via WeChat: Children's interpretation of long-distance family relationships","authors":"Xiaoying Han","doi":"10.1111/chso.12912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12912","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study explores how left-behind children in rural China maintain long-distance family relationships through WeChat, highlighting the significant role of social media during family separation. It underscores the importance of considering children's voices in understanding family relationships in the digital age. Drawing on online workshops and interviews with 41 participants, the research examines how Chinese left-behind children use WeChat to facilitate parental engagement and manage their emotions. It also investigates the challenges children face in online communication and their perspectives on grandparental involvement. This article argues that children's agency is situated within structural conditions shaped by a confluence of factors, including technological affordances, unique familial contexts, and socio-economic inequalities. This situatedness fosters creativity, compromises, and adaptations in ‘being family’ at a distance.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"286-303"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jennifer Green, Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett, Steven Howard, Tebeje Molla Mekonnen
{"title":"Agency and voice: Using critical theory to reposition children from refugee backgrounds when considering their transition to school in Australia","authors":"Jennifer Green, Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett, Steven Howard, Tebeje Molla Mekonnen","doi":"10.1111/chso.12913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12913","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A wide range of benefits are associated with children's positive transition to school. Applying a critical sociological lens in understanding transitions allows for cycles of sociocultural inequality to be challenged and disrupted. This is of particular importance for understanding transition experiences of children from socially demarcated groups, such as children from refugee backgrounds. This paper outlines how critical sociological theory can be used to identify settler-colonial ideology and to unpack how children are understood and positioned within their broader sociocultural context, and how this understanding can lead to a strength-based approach that recognises the rights, agency and voice of children and their families.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"304-321"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142868339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parents' views on out-of-school learning environments","authors":"Fatime Balkan-Kiyici, Elif Atabek-Yigit, Melike Yavuz-Topaloglu","doi":"10.1111/chso.12911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12911","url":null,"abstract":"<p>While there are many studies in the literature on out-of-school learning (OSL) environments, whose importance for learning is increasingly understood, studies involving parents and their views on these environments are rarely found. However, parents' contribution is extremely important and necessary for an efficient learning process. In this study, a survey was developed to determine parents' views on OSL environments. Thirty-seven parents were face-to-face interviewed regarding to their views on OSL environments. An item pool was formed based on these interviews. Then this pre-survey was administered to 702 voluntary parents. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have performed and a survey with 21 items has been obtained. The survey has three dimensions: contribution of OSL environments to children's cognitive development; contribution of OSL environments to skill development; and parents' concerns about out-of-school learning environments. According to the findings, a significant number of parents are aware of the contribution of out-of-school learning environments in terms of both cognitive and skill acquisition. Also, it is seen that the gender of the parents and the gender of their child do not make any significant difference in their views. Parents with a bachelor's degree believe that out-of-school learning environments will contribute more to their children's skill and cognitive development than parents with a primary and secondary school degree.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"267-285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12911","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142860684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Young children's perceptions and experiences of school readiness during the transition from preschool to primary school in China","authors":"Shilan Luo, Shanshan Yuan","doi":"10.1111/chso.12910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12910","url":null,"abstract":"<p>School readiness has a profound educational value for children's positive adjustment to primary school and holistic development. However, little research sufficiently addresses how young children view multifaceted components of learning, such as cognitive, affective and behavioural experiences on school readiness. A timely understanding of children's perceptions and experiences is crucial to shed light on how to promote transition and improve children's school readiness. This study investigated the perceptions and experiences of 41 children in China (5–6 years of age, 23 girls) regarding their school readiness based on Mosaic approach methods. The results indicated that young children have their own unique perceptions, emotional and behavioural experiences of school readiness. The perceptions of school readiness include four aspects of material supplies, subjects knowledge, interests and specialties and behavioural habits, which has similarities to that of adults in aspects of academic knowledge and social rules. Nevertheless, findings revealed young children view interests and strengths as important part of school readiness, reflecting their personal preferences and abilities. The emotional experiences could be considered positive or negative, with positive emotional experiences expressing children's curiosity and expectation, fulfilment and pleasure, and negative emotional experiences expressing academic burden, rules pressure and social worries, which need to be addressed. Young children's behavioural experiences with school readiness present two patterns of passive acceptance and active participation, they are eager to participate in activities and have a strong desire to explore and learn. Our findings extend beyond existing conception of school readiness, and give greater weight to children's interests and strengths, positive experiences and active participation. It is important to focus on children's intrinsic interests and strengths, accept children's ideas and choices, care for their emotional state and provide positive support.</p>","PeriodicalId":47660,"journal":{"name":"Children & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"247-266"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142860051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}