In her research article "State your defense!": Children negotiate analytic frames in the context of deliberative dialogue," Hauver offers important contributions to the field of elementary civic education that illuminate how young people apply various analytical frames to make collective decisions. First, I highlight significant…

Culture has an important impact on attachment. This commentary highlights three aspects about culture and attachment in middle childhood: (1) the need to have a more sophisticated consideration of the implication of cultural values, (2) the need to incorporate the role of societal or political ecological contexts, and (3) the need to solve the…

This article comprises some critical reflections on the teaching of a second year undergraduate module called "Children's Cultural Worlds" in which students are required to engage with original studies which are then used to stimulate self-reflection and engagement with wider issues relating to our understanding of children's place in…

Tao, Oliver, and Venville's paper addresses a debate between two hypotheses of children's development of conceptual understandings of the Earth. The authors aim to investigate whether culture influences students' conceptions of the Earth. However, one questionable assumption shared among conception and conceptual change studies is that researchers…

This commentary on articles by Masten, Fantuzzo, Herbers, and Voight (and their colleagues) summarizes the findings of each study and discusses their respective contributions. The author of this comment relates his own experiences in conducting similar research with homeless and other low-income youths and reports lessons he has learned that can…

Young people sandwiched between childhood and adulthood often rebel when adults treat them like children rather than with the respect that acknowledges their intelligence and potential. Research and theory supporting the view of "infantilizing" adolescents has proliferated. The extent to which modern cultures infantilize youth is evident in…

Notions of "being" and "becoming" are intrinsic to childhood research. Whilst the "being" child is seen as a social actor actively constructing "childhood," the "becoming" child is seen as an "adult in the making," lacking competencies of the "adult" that he or she will "become." However, I argue that both approaches are in themselves…

Some philosophers of education have recently argued that educators can more or less ignore children's global self-esteem without failing them educationally in any important way. This paper draws on an attachment theoretic account of self-esteem to argue that this view is mistaken. I argue that understanding self-esteem's origins in attachment…

This paper argues the case for meditation with children. It seeks to define what meditation is, why it is important and how it can be practised with children. Meditation provides a good starting point for learning and creativity. It builds upon a long tradition of meditative practice in religious and humanistic settings and research gives evidence…

In the UK, the discourse of innocence currently prevails as a major way of understanding children. This article argues that the strength of this discourse lies in its prevalence, its resistance to challenges and the ways in which it connects ideas of innocence and vulnerability. The moral quality of the discourse of innocence works in conjunction…

This article, which formed the opening keynote address of the Fifth International Conference on Children's Spirituality, addresses the place of children in the globalized social economy. It begins by arguing that current attitudes in the West towards children are conditioned by several contradictions in consumerism. Children, no longer as…

Students who learn how children lived in other eras may be less pessimistic about the present and the future. (Author)

Advises child psychiatrists to use personality disorder diagnoses sparingly; to be aware of the constraints on adaptability of normal variations of temperament; and to positively diagnose those rare pathological impairments of personality brought about by minimal cerebral dysfunction, schizoid traits, and traits of excessive shyness. (RH)

Reviews the eight studies in this special section. Notes that the studies: (1) make a convincing case for stability across generations; (2) propose parenting practices as a mechanism that accounts for these stabilities; and (3) examine social interactional and biological variables as possible explanations for the effect of parenting practices.…

Argues that any comprehensive theory of peer socialization requires attention to these five constraints: (1) characteristics of the influence source; (2) characteristics of the children being socialized; (3) age constraints on peer influences; (4) paradigm considerations; and (5) domain relevance. (SD)