The aim of this article is to understand how Montessori education, according to Maria Montessori, will enable 6--12-year-olds to meet future challenges and to care for and contribute to the wellbeing of society and the planet as a whole. This article reports on a qualitative content analysis of four books written by Maria Montessori. The analysis…

Israeli teachers who teach Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seeking children find themselves struggling to accommodate these children against the background of a polarized environment. The strategies teachers employ to cope with this tension are shaped by the broader socio-political context and the hostilities directed toward African asylum seekers in…

In this essay, Joanna Dreby, Sarah Gallo, Florencia Silveira, and Melissa Adams-Corral use a transnational frame to explore the meanings of US citizenship for binational children and its importance to experiences of belonging. Drawing on interviews with children ages six to fourteen living with their Mexican-born parents in rural Puebla, their…

This paper synthesises recent educational research to explore the integration experiences of newcomer students in the United States of America. The authors examine the barriers and sources of support that are perceived to either hamper or facilitate the social and academic integration and psychological well-being of these students, and in so…

This article discusses findings from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study exploring non-disabled children's ideas about disability. This represents the first in-depth sociological investigation of children's ideas about disabled people as members of wider society. Data are presented from focus group discussions with children aged…

In our increasingly diverse schools, teachers have a responsibility and an opportunity to help students see themselves and others through the lens of literature. There are few resources available to help teachers make decisions about what literature to choose and how to use that literature in relation to disability in the classroom. This article…

This paper explores societal perceptions of a child's disability and bilingualism through the author's observations and reflections. Drawing from the observations of the child in different public schools in the United States, the author shares how the child has been viewed differently and similarly by school personnel. By reflecting on different…

Based on the analysis of 312 children's neighbourhood drawings and narratives, this article discusses children's socialization in six public housing neighbourhoods in Portugal, through children's personal accounts of their lives. It then examines their perspectives on disorder and violence. Most complained about living in their neighbourhoods,…

Conventional wisdom sees education as a primary vehicle through which all people can graduate out of poverty. Education as an instrument of societal change is capable of facilitating a wide range of human rights. However, in many developing countries the education gap seems to be growing within schools in urban, rural and remote areas. The key…

In this paper, the author explores how children with impairments can act as self-monitoring, autonomous individuals in their play in a community playground. In addition, the notion of children with impairments as creative agents in their play is examined. The evidence presented in this paper is derived from the views and perspectives of children…

This essay offers an extensive rehabilitation and reappraisal of the concept of childhood innocence as a means of testing the boundaries of some prevailing constructions of childhood. It excavates in detail some of the lost histories of innocence in order to show that these are more diverse and more complex than established and pejorative…

Children and adolescents evaluated group inclusion and exclusion in the context of generic and group-specific norms involving morality and social conventions. Participants ("N" = 381), aged 9.5 and 13.5 years, judged an in-group member's decision to deviate from the norms of the group, whom to include, and whether their personal…

This study examines civic identity (i.e., civic values and responsibility to community and to people) in middle childhood, a previously unexplored developmental period in the civic engagement literature, and how adults and socialization processes in the home and school contexts are associated with children's civic outcomes. Middle childhood is a…

We introduce a simple empirical model that assumes a positive stigma (or norm) towards child labor that is common in some developing countries. We then illustrate our positive stigma model using data from Guatemala. Controlling for several child- and household-level characteristics, we use two instruments for measuring stigma: a child's indigenous…

In this article, the author discusses her research on children's perspectives of interracial and interethnic friendships in a multiethnic school and highlights children's voices on these intergroup friendships. Schools are important spaces in which social and cultural competencies necessary to the formation of intergroup friendships may be…