We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The archaeology of knowledge

The sociology of childhood has been used increasingly as a theoretical perspective in early childhood education since the late 1980s. In Australia, those who draw on the sociology of childhood have tended to use it in similar ways to European counterparts, being guided by six major tenets identified by Prout and James (1997) that form the basis of the sociology of childhood. These include the notion that childhood is a social construction, that childhood is a variable of social analysis and is closely connected to other variables such as class and gender, and that children's relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right (p. 8). Further, children are considered as active (rather than passive) agents in their daily lives and to be competent and knowledgeable about their own lives (p. 8). Although the sociology of childhood is comparatively young, there has been little analysis of the key tenets of the position. Morss is an exception and raises some fundamental issues for consideration, which include refining the notion of the 'socially constructed child', a term that is used widely in much that written about the sociology of childhood.

The Sociology of Childhood

In the past few decades, a growing body of literature examining children’s perspectives on their own lives has developed within a variety of disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology and geography. This article provides a brief up-to-date examination of methodological and ethical issues that researchers may need to consider when designing research studies involving children; and a review of some of the methods and techniques used to elicit their views. The article aims to encourage researchers to critically reflect on these methodological issues and the techniques they choose to use, since they will have implications for the data produced.

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Research with children: methodological issues and innovative techniques

The centrality of the researcher and their position in relation to the research setting has been subject to controversy and long standing debates threaded with the narratives of insider and outsider myths. Insiders are often charged with the tendency to present their group in an unrealistically favourable light, and their work is often considered to be overshadowed by the enclosed, self-contained world of common understanding. This paper draws upon data generated by six participants from a research project, which aimed to explore and represent the everyday experiences of working-class mothers and daughters residing on a peripheral social housing estate. The paper describes how I, as an indigenous researcher, employed visual methods of data production in order to suspend my preconceptions of familiar territory, and facilitate an understanding of the unique viewpoints of mothers and daughters on the margins of contemporary Britain. The paper focuses the usefulness of the approach for making the familiar strange when the researchers own experience mirrors that of their participants.

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Making the familiar strange: can visual research methods render the familiar setting more perceptible?:

The Dynamics Of Interviewing

Photography has been commonly used as a research tool in studies of childhood/children. However images of school children in official documentation are rarely taken or chosen by children and may not reflect their real experiences. This research considered the photographs taken by year six primary school children of their school and the images they chose to represent themselves. Subsequent interviews with children revealed attitudes to school, the importance of playground relationships in the construction of gender, leading to the concept of ‘borderlands’ inhabited by some boys who adopt non-hegemonic masculinities.

'Playtime in the borderlands': Children's representations of school, gender and bullying through photographs and interviews

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how - within consensual sexual activities - young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.

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‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters

The UK government is investing approximately £21.9 billion in the refurbishment or rebuilding of all secondary schools by 2021 under the Building Schools for the Future programme. One of the requirements of the scheme is student participation; however, little guidance is offered as to the form this participation should take. This paper will describe and evaluate the methods adopted by one secondary school to engage students in the design process. The approaches include a ‘Design your School’ conference, the utilisation of the Personal, Social and Health Education curriculum and accessing student voice through school councils. The research was conducted as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Realising participatory design with children and young people: a case study of design and refurbishment in schools’.

Student participation in school design: one school's approach to student engagement in the BSF process

The 'nurture group' has been a common feature of many British primary schools since the early 1970s. The aim of these groups is to ensure that children, who might otherwise experience difficulties in participation in school life (principally due to social, emotional and behavioural difficulties,) are able to be included in mainstream education. Central to this nurturing philosophy is the design of the room (the 'nurture room') to meet the needs of this group of children. Observations of children and semi-structured interviews with staff were made in four case study schools to determine links between the design of the physical environment and the efficacy of nurturing practices. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations based on these case studies.

Michelle Newman

Papers

'Playtime in the borderlands': Children's representations of school, gender and bullying through photographs and interviews

‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters

Student participation in school design: one school's approach to student engagement in the BSF process

'We change lives in here': Environments for 'nurturing' in UK primary schools

Realising participatory design with children and young people: a case study in design and refurbishment in schools