Children’s Accounts of the Transition from Preschool to Elementary School

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Children’s digitally mediated perezhivanie/enchantment in backyard excursions to “nature”

We examine children’s digitally mediated excursions to “nature” in their backyards when Covid-19 prevented environmental excursions. The data consists of young children’s accounts of their backyard excursions recorded on digital devices and posted online to Seesaw. We use sociocultural theory to analyse the co-agency of child and the digital device, the unit of analysis being “a child-using-a-digital-device”. To theorise experience, we deploy Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie and Bennett’s notion of enchantment. The analysis of posts to Seesaw revealed children’s experience of vivid, emotionally engaging moments with “nature”, and evidence of an ethic of care. We conclude that emotionally engaging pedagogies based on perezhivanie/enchantment are important in addressing current environmental crises.

‘She Made You Feel like There’s Hope’: Gaining a Better Understanding of How Children Negotiate Their Relationships with Social Workers from Their Own Accounts

Recent years have seen a re-emergence of international interest in relationship-based social work. This article uses children’s accounts of their relationships with social workers to build on previous research to promote children’s safety and well-being. Interviews were undertaken with 111 children aged six- to eighteen-years old across ten different local authorities in England, as part of the evaluation of Munro, Turnell and Murphy’s Signs of Safety pilots within the Department for Education’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme. The interviews reveal four key findings: that children look for care and reciprocity in their relationships with social workers and this can be achieved through listening and small acts of kindness; that they are adept at recognising aspects of social workers’ verbal and non-verbal communications which indicate to the child whether they are listening and interested in them; that there are times in which children are particularly vulnerable especially if parents are resistant to engagement or children’s trust is broken; and that children actively use their agency to control their communication and engagement. The article concludes by highlighting children’s relational resilience and the importance of ensuring opportunities for children to develop new relationships with social workers when previous relationships have broken down.

Children’s accounts of labelling and stigmatization in private schools in Delhi, India and the Right to Education Act

India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 compels private schools to reserve a proportion of their seats for free for disadvantaged children. Although controversial, it is idealized as an equity measure for inclusion in and through education. This small-scale study, feeding into a larger research project, details children’s accounts of their everyday lived experiences at private schools in Delhi. Children reported labelling students by teachers as ‘naughty’ or academically ‘weak’ or ‘incapable’ as a pervasive practice. These ‘designated identities’ (Sfard & Prusak, 2005) were reinforced by teachers and through peer interactions. They were internalized by participants about their peers and affected how they interacted with them. Peers who were labelled were reported to be stigmatized. Surprisingly, neither caste nor gender were mentioned as explicitly marking participant experiences. The paper also discusses the participatory methods employed in the study as a further contribution to the literature on private schooling. Data are from participatory ‘draw-and-talk’ sessions conducted with 16 children in 2015-16 from marginalized backgrounds, accessing six different private schools in one catchment area, half of whom secured a free private school seat. Participants were from amongst the first cohorts eligible for the free seats provision.

A Cry for Care But not Justice: Embodied Vulnerabilities and the Moral Economy of Child Welfare

This study explores the pivotal role of the body for political recognition and rights claims in child welfare “moral” interventions. I examine how the bodily figures in child welfare assessments, linking these manifestations to the concept of the moral economy of care. A sample of assessment reports from a Swedish municipality, all addressing violations of children’s bodies or integrity, are used as empirical material. I show how the psychosomatically suffering child is being best “heard” as vulnerable. I also argue that such a moral economy of care silences children’s accounts of gendered and racial injustices. Furthermore, racialized moral divides are indicated when assessments of different child bodies are considered. A concluding remark points to a need for a child welfare moral economy of social justice that responds to structural intersecting injustices in childhoods, including to those of a racialized child welfare and its individualized and symptom-oriented services.

Poisoning children: A reflection on the social constraints of children’s agency and narratives of sexual abuse

Drawing inspiration from a story of abuses, involving 16 children in 1997–1998, this article deals with the social constraints on children’s participation in institutional interactions, in particular for what concerns their accounts of abuse. The article explores the problem of the truthfulness of children’s accounts through the lenses of an approach combining a theory of narratives, the concept of children’s agency and the analysis of interactions. It analyses the institutional context in which the children’s narratives were constructed and validated, drawing some conclusions about the ways in which institutions may deal with children’s agency.

A child’s perspective of bidirectional impacts of mental illness in families: “It’s like a cold it goes from one of us to the next”

Objective: Investigations into the influence of mental illness in families concentrates on how a parent’s mental illness has an effect on their child, but we now know over two thirds of children with a mental health issue also have a parent with a mental illness. This study examines experiences of these children.Methods: Thirty-eight children were interviewed, including two sibling groups. Interview transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis with a number of themes identified.Results: It was clear from children’s accounts that family life presents some unique challenges because of co-existing mental illness. These included social challenges; school issues; and family interactions. Children also postulated ideas on the support that they considered helpful for comparable children and families. The latter included coping strategies, experiences of professionals and support that they would have liked.Conclusions: The voices of these children indicate that interventions should not be considered in isolation and that it is important to focus on bidirectional influences of mental illness. Understanding the perceptions and interpreted realities of children in these families will facilitate more successful outcomes for the whole family. Providing a family-focused, bidirectional approach, is an important initial phase in helping children manage where mental illness is a ubiquitous feature for multiple family members.