The Journey of Becoming Involved in Urban Spaces by Children with Diverse Mobility

Participation is a word frequently espoused in the literature of childhood and urban studies. It has also been made sacrosanct through the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other rights-based policy and programming. Despite this importance, what it means and how it is experienced in the everyday lives of children with diverse abilities is not well understood. This chapter provides insight into the everyday experiences of participation by ten children 9-12 years of age, who have diverse personal mobility from various physical conditions that affect muscle and movement differently, including: Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, and Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases. The children participants live in the outer suburbs and inner regions of south-east Queensland, Australia. The chapter discusses a new way of understanding and theorising participation as a journey of becoming involved. This knowledge emerged through the children’s body-space-time routines (body ballets) and their descriptions of inhabiting urban space. This chapter also establishes how body-space-context interplays shape the experiences of becoming and being involved in everyday life, as well as the preconceptions of body embed in space which divide and constrain children and families actualisation of full and genuine participation.

(Re)examining the relationship between children's subjective wellbeing and their perceptions of participation rights

In recent years wellbeing has been linked increasingly with children’s rights, often characterised as central to their realisation. Indeed it has been suggested that the two concepts are so intertwined that their pairing has become something of a mantra in the literature on childhood. This paper seeks to explore the nature of the relationship between wellbeing and participation rights, using a recently developed ‘rights-based’ measure of children’s participation in school and community, the Children’s Participation Rights Questionnaire (CPRQ), and an established measure of subjective wellbeing – KIDSCREEN-10. The data for the study came from the Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) which is an annual online survey of Primary 7 children carried out in Northern Ireland. In 2013 approximately 3,800 children (51% girls; 49% boys) from 212 schools participated in KLT. The findings showed a statistically significant positive correlation between children’s overall scores on the KIDSCREEN-10 subjective wellbeing measure and their perceptions that their participation rights are respected in school and community settings. Further, the results indicated that it is the social relations/autonomy questions on KIDSCREEN-10 which are most strongly related to children’s perceptions that their participation rights are respected. Exploration of the findings by gender showed that there were no significant differences in overall wellbeing; however girls had higher scores than boys on the social relations/autonomy domain of KIDSCREEN-10. Girls were also more positive than boys about their participation in school and community. In light of the findings from this study, it is suggested that what lies at the heart of the relationship between child wellbeing and children’s participation rights is the social/relational aspects of both participation and wellbeing.

Já li muita coisa, então, eu posso inventar mais! A leitura literária e o desenvolvimento do pensamento criativo na infância

This study investigates the contributions of reading literature for the development of creative thinking in childhood. Its relevance consists in exploring practices that contemplate the creative thinking development in apprentices at school space and understanding the literature like a significant way to promote the creative thinking. The study is connected to the qualitaty strand. The exploratory observation and the intervention were adopted as research techniques. The field diary and the audio and video recording of the reading sections were adopted as methodological instruments. The research was conducted in the application s college from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, in a 1th grade class, with 18 students between 6 and 7 years old. During the intervention, 8 readind class happened, with varied strategies and literary genres. The reading sessions were conducted through the principles of scaffolding, defended by Graves and Graves (1995). The corpus is made of speaks episodes, whose encoding semantics allowed the grouping into two central categories: divergent thinking and coauthoring of literary reader. It was taken as a theoretical framework the studies of Amarilha (2011; 2006; 2001; 1991; 1993; 1994), Alencar (2001), Coelho (2000; 1997), Culler (1999), De Masi (2005), Gallo (2000), Guilford (1977), Iser (1996), Jouve (2002), Kneller (1978), Martínez (1997), Smith (2003), Stierle (1979), Vigotski (2009; 1998), Wechsler; Nakano (2003; 2002). The analysis points to the formation of creative individuals in the classroom, through the reading of literature. Reposition the literary education front of the new social demands. Resizes the function of school in children s development, considering the children s skill in exploring, testing hypotheses and making use of their creative thinking, in climate of freedom mental. It signals, in this way, the teacher like a mediator, promoting a favorable to the development of creative thinking environment, a stimulating atmosphere, which enhances the expression of creative thinking in community

Bruxismo na infância: um sinal de alerta para odontopediatras e pediatras

OBJETIVO: Apresentar uma revisão de literatura sobre o bruxismo na infância, abordando os fatores etiológicos, as características clínicas, os sinais e sintomas, a importância do diagnóstico por parte dos pediatras e odontopediatras e o tratamento multidisciplinar desta condição parafuncional. FONTES DE DADOS: Foram selecionados os artigos mais relevantes sobre o tema publicados desde 1907 até 2007, com pesquisa realizada no Medline, na Bibliografia Brasileira de Odontologia (BBO) e em livros de Odontologia. SÍNTESE DOS DADOS: O bruxismo é definido como um hábito não funcional do sistema mastigatório, caracterizado pelo ato de ranger ou apertar os dentes, podendo ocorrer durante o dia e durante o sono. A etiologia é multifatorial e a literatura sugere vários fatores associados: dentário, fisiológico, psicológico e neurológico. As forças exercidas pelo bruxismo podem provocar distúrbios em diferentes graus nos dentes e nos tecidos de suporte, na musculatura e na articulação têmporo-mandibular. O sinal mais comum é o desgaste nas faces incisais dos dentes anteriores e oclusais nos posteriores, além de mobilidade e hipersensibilidade dentárias, fratura de cúspides e restaurações e hipertonicidade dos músculos mastigatórios. CONCLUSÃO: O conhecimento dos fatores etiológicos e das características clínicas do bruxismo na infância é fundamental para que o diagnóstico seja precoce, permitindo que pediatras, odontopediatras e psicólogos possam estabelecer um tratamento multidisciplinar e favoreçam o desenvolvimento integral da criança para a promoção de saúde e bem-estar individual.

Management of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in UK primary care: a survey of general practitioners

Background: Compared to existing literature on childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), little published adult data are available, particularly outside of the United States. Using General Practitioner (GP) questionnaires from the United Kingdom, this study aimed to examine a number of issues related to ADHD in adults, across three cohorts of patients, adults who received ADHD drug treatment in childhood/adolescence but stopped prior to adulthood; adults who received ADHD drug treatment in childhood/adolescence and continued treatment into adulthood and adults who started ADHD drug treatment in adulthood.Methods: Patients with a diagnosis of ADHD and prescribed methylphenidate, dexamfetamine or atomoxetine were identified using data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN). Dates when these drugs started and stopped were used to classify patients into the three cohorts. From each cohort, 50 patients were randomly selected and questionnaires were sent via THIN to their GPs.GPs returned completed questionnaires to THIN who forwarded anonymised copies to the researchers. Datasets were analysed using descriptive statistics.Results: Overall response rate was 89% (133/150). GPs stated that in 19 cases, the patient did not meet the criteria of that group; the number of valid questionnaires returned was 114 (76%). The following broad trends were observed: 1) GPs were not aware of the reason for treatment cessation in 43% of cases, 2) patient choice was the most common reason for discontinuation (56%), 3) 7% of patients who stopped pharmacological treatment subsequently reported experiencing ADHD symptoms, 4) 58% of patients who started pharmacological treatment for ADHD in adulthood received pharmacological treatment for other mental health conditions prior to the ADHD being diagnosed.Conclusion: This study presents some key findings relating to ADHD; GPs were often not aware of the reason for patients stopping ADHD treatment in childhood or adolescence. Patient choice was identified as the most common reason for treatment cessation. For patients who started pharmacological treatment in adulthood, many patients received pharmacological treatment for comorbidities before a diagnosis of ADHD was made.

A narrativa para a infância e o desenvolvimento de competências das diferentes áreas curriculares do 2º ano do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

O presente Relatório do Projeto de Investigação, desenvolvido no âmbito do Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, descreve e reflete sobre uma intervenção pedagógica em contexto de estágio numa turma do 2º ano de escolaridade do 1º ciclo do Ensino Básico, assente numa abordagem interdisciplinar dos conteúdos, tendo como indutor a Narrativa para a Infância, usando estratégias que envolveram ativamente os alunos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. A metodologia considerada mais adequada ao estudo empírico posiciona-se na abordagem da investigação-ação, sendo uma investigação que se insere numa perspetiva qualitativa. Assim, o método de recolha de informação baseia-se na intervenção no contexto, sendo complementado pelas entrevistas à professora cooperante e aos alunos, pela observação participante, pelas notas de campo e pela análise documental. Através deste estudo, é possível inferir que a Literatura para a Infância, nomeadamente a narrativa, é, de facto, um recurso válido no desenvolvimento de sequências didáticas tendo como base uma abordagem interdisciplinar, suscitando a motivação e o envolvimento dos alunos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, tendo sido possível promover as aprendizagens inerentes às diversas áreas curriculares.

Investigating early childhood education for sustainability : insights from history and literature

Seemingly straightforward tasks often have a way of becoming complex. This was the case for our guest editorial team charged with creating Early Childhood Australia’s Best of Sustainability publication drawn from the the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood and Every Child. The complexities we encountered ranged from the varied terminologies and understandings of constructs such as education for sustainable development, environmental education and education for sustainability, through to the fundamental lack of published research on which to draw as the basis for a special issue. It is timely to explore these complexities as we face the global challenges of The Critical Decade (DCCEE, 2011) including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and food security. At a local level, the early childhood field in Australia is seeking to interpret sustainability with systemic support from the National Quality Standards(NQS) (ACECQA, 2011), while elsewhere environmental/sustainability education is encouraged through national curricula documents (for example, Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008; Swedish National Agency for Education,2010; Ministry of Education of Korea, 2011). Both The Critical Decade and the NQS provide imperatives to drive early childhood education’s engagement with sustainability. In other words, sustainability in early childhood education is no longer optional, but essential (Elliott, 2010). While some twenty years of advocacy has led to this somewhat subdued celebratory position, in this publication we do recognise the historical contexts that have led to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), as we (Elliott & Davis) phrase it, becoming almost ‘mainstream not marginal’ (Davis, 1999)— a stitching together of the isolated ‘patches of green’, first identified a decade ago by Elliott (NSW EPA, 2003). Here we weave together, through these articles, a story of the evolving history of ECEfS from our particular perspective. In so doing, we also acknowledge that there are other perspectives or ‘paths’ for this field as identified by Edwards and Cutter-McKenzie in their concluding paper to this compilation.

Gender, childhood and children’s literature: the CIRCL approach

This paper explores the unique approach to childhood and children’s literature of the research and teaching of the ‘Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL)’. CIRCL follows in its work the arguments of UK critical theorist Jacqueline Rose in her seminal 1984 book The case of Peter Pan or the impossibility of children’s fiction. Rose’s work has been widely and routinely referenced in Children’s Literature studies particularly, but CIRCL interprets her arguments as having quite different implications than those usually assumed. Rose is generally attributed with having pointed out that ‘childhood’ is not one, homogenous category, but that childhood is divided by gender, race, and ethnic, political and religious (and so on) identities. But for CIRCL this is only a first step in Rose’s arguments and certainly one not unique to her work anyway: the perception of various cultural and historical childhoods is widely held. Instead, my paper explores how Rose’s arguments are centrally about how ‘childhood’ itself cannot be maintained in the face of division, a division, moreover, which operates inevitably at every level, and which derives from Rose’s interpretation of psychoanalysis as formulated by Sigmund Freud, which Rose derives in turn from her readings of the interpretations of Freud by French analyst Jacques Lacan and French critical theorist Jacques Derrida. Finally, my paper argues how Rose’s position is about any ‘identity’, including gender and that this allies her work closely to that of the famous gender theorist Judith Butler, whose arguments are often (mis) understood in the same ways as those of Rose.

Children’s literature: sexual identity, gender and childhood

On the twenty-third of May 2015, Ireland became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote. This event reversed a large part, if not all, of Ireland’s reputation for a Catholic-led conservatism concerning sexual and gender identities. I argue in this article that we can see a parallel-in-miniature to this momentous shift in something of a reversal of children’s literature’s views in this respect too, and I will concentrate on exploring what is at stake in the ways that childhood, sexual and gender identities are constructed in some recent children’s literature criticism in the light of these shifts. My interest is to consider: what is the ever-burgeoning interest in the gay, queer, cross-dressing, transsexual or transgender child precisely about? I ask this question on the grounds of not assuming that this interest in these identities arises necessarily simply out of a self-evident, progressive, liberatory impulse, and, alongside this, I also do not assume that ‘identities’ are essential, self-organised traits awaiting revelation and liberation.