Emphasising the voices and rights of children, international expert Anne Smith examines the latest thinking on children’s learning and development. Contemporary theories and research about children and childhood are explained, using observations from children’s everyday experiences and debates about policy. A sociocultural perspective presents development as driven by a child’s learning, supported by opportunities for reciprocal social interaction across diverse cultural contexts.

This fully revised and updated edition of a fundamental New Zealand psychology text examines how and why children develop and how they are influenced by the people and events in their lives. Discussed are theories of development and learning, the importance of early experience, intelligence and assessment, and the family. The development of social behavior, gender roles, language, and thinking are also covered. The question of mainstreaming--the integration of children with special educational needs into regular preschools and classrooms--is also debated. There is a strong emphasis on local conditions and the New Zealand historical and social context. This new edition addresses the important issue of giving children themselves a voice, in order to better understand their development and to involve them in decisions about their lives.

Nationally and globally, childhood has become a crucial topic of sociopolitical debates and policy initiatives. Understanding Childhood offers a fresh look at how childhood has changed in recent years. It reveals how children's needs and experiences have achieved a new visibility in wider social and political discourse. Despite the privileges afforded to children in the West, the typical childhood experience there is no longer seen as an ideal model for other parts of the globe. Recent reports and policy concerns suggest that growing up in the West may be marked by the commercialization of childhood, which can lead to unhappiness, poor health, loss of innocence, and a general lack of well-being. The contributors here introduce readers to the cross-disciplinary field of childhood studies and offer an exciting and unique exploration of childhood as a concept, in the process engaging with a range of contemporary issues that shape our ideas of childhood both as an ideal and as a lived experience. Exploring childhood from a variety of research perspectives and traditions, Understanding Childhood also serves as a powerful introduction to careers in childhood service.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Children′s books play a vital role in education, and this book helps you to choose books that have the most to offer young children. Each chapter reflects on a different theme or genre and their role in educational settings, and recommends ten ′must reads′ within each one. The themes covered include: - books for babies - literature for the very young - narrative fiction - books in translation - poetry - picture books - graphic texts. Early years professionals, childcare professionals and teachers working from nursery to Key Stage 3 will find this book a fascinating and useful resource.

View the culture of childhood through a whole new lens. Identify age-based bias and expand your outlook on and understanding of early childhood as a culture. Examine various elements of childhood culture: language, belief economics, arts, and social structure to understand children's dispositions of questioning, engagement, and cooperation. Emily Plank specializes in play-based education, diversity and culture in early childhood education, and outdoor learning. In 2011, the Iowa Association for the Education of Young Children identified Emily as one of seven emerging leaders. She earned her bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University. She and her family currently reside in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Taking an accessible and cross-linguistic approach, Understanding Child Language Acquisition introduces readers to the most important research on child language acquisition over the last fifty years, as well as to some of the most influential theories in the field. Rather than just describing what children can do at different ages Rowland explains why these research findings are important and what they tell us about how children acquire language. Key features include: Cross-linguistic analysis of how language acquisition differs between languages A chapter on how multilingual children acquire several languages at once Exercises to test comprehension Chapters organised around key questions that summarise the critical issues posed by researchers in the field, with summaries at the end Further reading suggestions to broaden understanding of the subject With its particular focus on outlining key similarities and differences across languages and what this cross-linguistic variation means for our ideas about language acquisition, Understanding Child Language Acquisition forms a comprehensive introduction to the subject for students of linguistics, psychology and speech and language therapy. Students and instructors will benefit from the comprehensive companion website that includes a students’ section featuring interactive comprehension exercises, extension activities, chapter recaps and answers to the exercises within the book. Material for instructors includes sample essay questions, answers to the extension activities for students and a Powerpoint including all the figures from the book. www.routledge.com/cw/rowland

A practical distillation of cutting-edge developmental research for mental health professionals. The field commonly known as "infant mental health" integrates current research from developmental psychology, genetics, and neuroscience to form a model of prevention, intervention, and treatment well beyond infancy. This book presents the core concepts of this vibrant field and applies them to common childhood problems, from attention deficits to anxiety and sleep disorders. Readers will find a friendly guide that distills this developmental science into key ideas and clinical scenarios that practitioners can make sense of and use in their day-to-day work. Part I offers an overview of the major areas of research and theory, providing a pragmatic knowledge base to comfortably integrate the principles of this expansive field in clinical practice. It reviews the newest science, exploring the way relationships change the brain, breakthrough attachment theory, epigenetics, the polyvagal theory of emotional development, the role of stress response systems, and many other illuminating concepts. Part II then guides the reader through the remarkable applications of these concepts in clinical work. Chapters address how to take a textured early developmental history, navigate the complexity of postpartum depression, address the impact of trauma and loss on children's emotional and behavioral problems, treat sleep problems through an infant mental health lens, and synthesize tools from the science of the developing mind in the treatment of specific problems of regulation of emotion, behavior, and attention. Fundamental knowledge of the science of early brain development is deeply relevant to mental health care throughout a client's lifespan. In an era when new research is illuminating so much, mental health practitioners have much to gain by learning this leading-edge discipline's essential applications. This book makes those applications, and their robust benefits in work with clients, readily available to any professional.

Creativity is a key theme in early childhood studies at the moment & is increasingly highlighted in all manner of early childhood academic courses. This book will form the link between creativity & literacy with concrete examples of children's meaning making, as well as offering a protocol for students to follow.