Whose Childhood Is It?: The Roles of Children, Adults and Policy Makers

Whose Childhood Is It?: The Roles of Children, Adults and Policy Makers

by Richard Eke (Editor)

Synopsis

This is an important textbook that promotes thoughtful engagement with key issues and theories that inform an understanding of childhood development. The purpose of this book is to promote a thoughtful engagement with key issues and theories that inform our understanding of childhood. Readers of this book will enjoy, and be provoked by, a sophisticated analysis of the role and function of childhood in twenty-first century Britain. They will find themselves supported in discovering a discourse for early childhood which they will want to use as a springboard for further enquiry and exploration.There are two intertwined themes that permeate this text: children's sense of self and adult's temporal and cultural fabrications of childhood, and the articulation of these with policy and provision for young children and young children and representation: how they are represented, the sense they make of such representations and their own representational activity. The book intends to turn readers away from our collective tendency to simplify the experiences of young children and replace this with a fuller, more complex, more troubling and more realistic understanding of the social dynamic that constitutes childhood today.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 214
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 31 May 2009

ISBN 10: 0826499813
ISBN 13: 9780826499813

Media Reviews
'The text provides a clear and provocative introduction to a number of themes and issues that are central to the contemporary study of early childhood...The inclusion of activities, case studies and questions ensure that complex ideas are addressed in a lively and engaging way.'

Professor Trisha Maynard, Swansea University --Sanford Lakoff
'This book offers an insightful and provocative analysis of the factors that shape contemporary childhoods and the role that children themselves play in this process. The authors challenge restrictive policy-making that is driven by economic and political concerns and instead emphasise the need to respect the voices and agency of children, as expressed through multimedia, multimodal meaning-making practices.

This is a book that will be of great value to students and early years educators and will enable them to engage critically with some of the key issues currently informing early childhood policy and practice.'

Professor Jackie Marsh, Sheffield University --Sanford Lakoff
Author Bio
Richard Eke is Joint Head of Academic Development in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of the West of England Bristol. Helen Butcher is Leader in Early Childhood Provision and Developments at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Mandy Lee is a Senior Lecturer in Education specialising in children's engagement with contemporary media, at the University of the West of England, Bristol.