The authors discuss their application of John W. Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) and the role it plays in the analysis of a pioneering local public policy in the United Kingdom (UK). The aim of this policy, instituted in 2009 and initiated by a group of Bristol's mothers, was to reclaim children's right to play, mainly for their own…

This paper examines some aspects of the work of Margaret McMillan (1860-1931), who is best known for her advocacy of child welfare and nursery education in the first decades of the twentieth century, but who was also closely involved in early socialist movements and, to a lesser extent, the campaign for women's suffrage. The particular focus is on…

Do early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals make good advocates? Canadian advocates have fought for better child care policies since the mid-1940s. What has happened to this advocacy with the recent increased professionalization of the ECEC sector? How does increased professionalization limit, innovate or expand advocacy strategies?…

This project offers a close look into the meaning-making practices of the Bulgarian socialist state with regard to the conception and enactment of childhood. Held for the first time in 1979, on occasion of the UN declared "International Year of the Child", the International Children's Assembly "Banner of Peace" emerges as a…

Drawing on imagery from promotional literature produced between 1930 and 1960 by the National Children's Home, a British child welfare charity, this article focuses upon constructions of childhood and child development in the context of residential care for children. It suggests that photographs and their related captions are rich sources through…

This dissertation explores the milieu in which children of Imperial Berlin were raised. When contemporaries in the rapidly expanding capital of the Second German Empire (1871-1918) looked at children, this milieu darkened. The city, they argued, threatened children's growing bodies, and such institutions as the home, the clinic, and the school…

In the setting up of kindergarten systems in colonial New Zealand over the late nineteenth century, kindergarten founders such as Miss Mary Richmond in Wellington developed global links with kindergarten movements in a number of countries including England. This article examines the nature and significance of two key global interconnected networks…

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, legal and sociopolitical sectors began to view children as a social group of their own, and European countries passed laws for the protection of children and introduced compulsory school attendance. This paper asserts that measures like these led to a far-reaching new definition of childhood on a…

This speech presents an overview of issues and trends in the provision of foster care and adoption services in Canada. The number of children "in care" in Canada (in foster homes, institutions, or adoptive homes) appears to have peaked around 1969 and declined thereafter. Information on contraceptives and the availaibility of abortions…

Due to urbanization and the information explosion, children today grow up under entirely different conditions than they did only 70 to 80 years ago. Now, families have less opportunity than before to communicate their culture to their children. Rather, the images children see on television programs intended for adults influence the picture they…

Describes the context for early childhood education and care in South Africa. Focuses on the principles directing program and service delivery, the development of a training framework, the role of lobbying and advocacy networks, strategies for improving the quality and increasing quantity of provision, and the role of non-governmental…

Discusses the problems faced by street and working children in Brazil, problems often exacerbated by the educational system. Describes how grass-roots activism led to enactment of an exceptional progressive law protecting children's rights. Examines the failure of technical rationality as the foundation of mainstream educational planning. (SV)

This article reports on some of the important issues in seven general content areas (infancy, family, women, society, health, education, and children's rights) which were raised at the June, 1978, Athens International Symposium on The Child in the World of Tomorrow. Problems of both developed and developing countries are addressed. The notes on…