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The aim of the article is to shed light on children's perspectives of the relations between home and school. The study is based on 52 interviews with children aged 12-13 years in Sweden about their knowledge and notions of the relations between their parents and teachers, and what they perceive their own role to be in this context. The study reveals that the children's understandings are drawing on both ideas of connectedness and autonomy to different actors characterised by a vertical or horizontal frame and that generational and institutional power are important in their understanding of the relations. The results reveals the different ways in which children talk about home-school relations, namely as (1) an asymmetric vertical "keep-apart-relation" characterised by institutional power, generational power and children's autonomy and power and (2) a horizontal relation that is characterised by a symmetric power relation between the actors, i.e. they think that the parties to some extent sometimes have an equal influence in the relation. In addition, the study indicates that children adopt different strategies in relation to the adults. The children's accounts show that they reproduce and also resist the social order and structure.

This thesis presents a study on how school children in Kenya and Sweden express their views on children's rights, in particular rights related to participation, non-discrimination, and education. The overall purpose was to explore the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, its claim to be universal and its relevance for children in various school and life contexts. Group interviews were conducted with 58 children, aged 12-15 years, from four schools, two schools from each country. The interviews were introduced with an exercise of nine articles from the UN Convention which the groups were asked to discuss and rank from the most to the least important. The aim of the exercise was to make the UN articles known to the children and to open up for a conversation about rights. The theoretical framing for the study is anchored in the tradition of sociology of childhood. Analyses of empirical data were based on the cultural politics of childhood, and the concepts vulnerability and separability. Accordingly, children are viewed as sharing the common experience of being children, but also as experiencing diverse everyday lives. They are regarded as social agents, whose voices carry perspectives important to be listened to. They are also looked upon as able to form and express their views and knowledge in relation to local economical, social and political conditions. The results showed that the children talked about themes and situations that were both common and diverse. They talked more about children's needs than about children's rights. Needs for 'extended' protection were particularly expressed, i.e. the importance of stable relationships with parents and other adults and peers. The study also showed that when issues on relationships with adults, participation and decision making were discussed, the children expressed experiences of being viewed as subordinated in a way that could be referred to as their inherent and structural vulnerability. A third important result showed that values and norms related to non-discrimination were largely produced and reproduced in peer-cultures. Finally, the children connected education to economical growth, for individuals as well as for societies. The overall conclusion from the study is that children view the UN Convention as a problem solver for children in exposed situations rather than as a document for their everyday life. From a child perspective, rights hold relational qualities, manifested in relationships with adults and peers. Furthermore, the study underlines that the young right holder is a 'both-and' child: both global and local, both being and becoming, and both dependent and independent.

AbstractIn this paper, we argue for two propositions: children are socialised and guided to become competent members of school mealtime community, and children have the capacity to modify and challenge existing practices. We draw on Bakhtin's concepts of the carnivalesque laughter and grotesque realism to illustrate how children use humour to test the boundaries of what is permitted. Children's mealtime interactions foster the development of social skills to subvert and negotiate adult authority and manage unfolding interactions between children and adults. We present findings from a child‐centred perspective in a primary school in the United Kingdom.

This analysis focuses on the determinants of school enrollment and work activities of children aged 7 to 17 in the Philippines. We move beyond dichotomous measures of work to consider the amount of time children devote to work, both market work and home production. The questions of whether trade-offs exist between children's work and schooling and, if so, under what circumstances, can be more fully answered by considering the amount of time that children work. Only a few empirical studies of children's schooling and work have incorporated a time dimension, at least in part because of the demanding data requirements. The results provide considerable evidence of behavioral influences on children's time allocation that go beyond those captured when only examining participation in alternative activities.

AbstractFamily scholars have contributed a great deal to the growing literature documenting how children's transitions into elementary school serve as a critical period in their educational careers and, more broadly, in socioeconomic and demographic disparities in long‐term educational attainment. The purpose of this review is to describe how this school transition works, why it has short‐ and long‐term ramifications for educational inequality, and how it may be amenable to policy intervention. The review then elucidates how research that looks inside children—including neuroscience—may deepen and build on what is already known in meaningful ways. Throughout, the discussion focuses on children from low‐income families and children from Latin American immigrant families, two groups of children who are central to child‐ and family‐focused efforts to understand and remedy educational inequality.

This article investigates inequalities in school attainment in South Africa using community-based data collected in 2008 by the National Income Dynamics Study. Schools-based research has concluded that poor children, who are mostly African, remain disadvantaged by the continuing low performance of former African schools. In contrast, this analysis finds that most educational disadvantages of African children, including their low matriculation rates, are accounted for by household poverty and their mothers' own limited education. Thus, earlier studies may not have adjusted fully for pupils' backgrounds or the performance of former African schools may have improved since 2000. Adapted from the source document.

The role of families in the education of disabled children is one of the prominent factors influencing their educational course. Parents' aspirations for their children, their expectations and their experiences are determinant factors in the education of their disabled children. In the Greek context the role of familial environment appears reinforced since historically the majority of society has considered education as an individual responsibility of families. The scope of this study is the exploration of the experiences of a group of disabled children's parents concerning school-family collaboration in relation to the functioning of the special educational structures following discourse analysis approach. The exploration of the experiences of disabled children's families took place using semi-structured interviews. The analysis of parent's experiences follows the social model of disability, which is contrasted with the clinical model and the theory of personal tragedy. The discourse analysis approach reveals a growing number of incidents concerning the feeling of personal tragedy. The experience of personal tragedy appears more often at the level of collaboration with structures and professionals from the educational context, projecting the individual model approach of disability at the level of school-family collaboration.

AbstractWe examine how the discontinuation of schooling among left‐behind children is related to multiple dimensions of male labour migration: the accumulation of migration experience, the timing of these migration experiences in the child's life course, and the economic success of the migration. Our setting is rural southern Mozambique, an impoverished area with massive male labour out‐migration. Results show that fathers' economically successful labour migration is more beneficial for children's schooling than unsuccessful migration or non‐migration. There are large differences, however, by gender: compared with sons of non‐migrants, sons of migrant fathers (regardless of migration success) have lower rates of school discontinuation, while daughters of migrant fathers have rates of school discontinuation like those of daughters of non‐migrants. Furthermore, accumulated labour migration across the child's life course is beneficial for boys' schooling, but not girls'. Remittances sent in the past year reduce the rate of discontinuation for sons, but not daughters.

Given mounting concerns about overweight and obesity levels in Portugal among children, policy strategies regarding health education through school meals have been implemented to respond to this problem. This article analyses the evolution of health education policies on school meals since the implementation of the democratic political regime in Portugal (1974) paying attention to the rationale behind these policies. It also examines how these policies, which have changed the contents of school meals, are being received by children, staff and parents in a primary school of Lisbon. The empirical material draws on qualitative methods (focus groups with children and parents, and interviews with the school and the city council staff). It is concluded that there is a change in school meals policies wherein, discourse wise, it is promoted a holistic view of health. However, in practice, it persists a strong biomedical view of health where food is reduced to its nutritional value, overlooking other holistic aspects that are part of eating with others: social meanings, pleasure and fun, shared tastes and commensality.

AbstractTrait emotional intelligence ('trait EI' or 'trait emotional self‐efficacy') is a constellation of emotion‐related self‐perceptions and dispositions comprising the affective aspects of personality. The present study investigated the role of trait EI in children's peer relations at school. One hundred and sixty pupils (83 girls; mean age = 10.8 years) were administered the trait emotional intelligence questionnaire and were subsequently asked to nominate all classmates who fitted each of seven distinct behavioural descriptions ('co‐operative', 'disruptive', 'shy', 'aggressive', 'dependent', 'leader' and 'intimidating'). The teachers were also asked to nominate all pupils who fitted the seven descriptions. Pupils with high trait EI scores received more nominations for 'co‐operation' and 'leadership' and fewer nominations for 'disruption', 'aggression' and 'dependence'. Factor analysis of teacher nominations revealed two orthogonal factors encompassing pro social and antisocial descriptions, respectively. High trait EI pupils scored higher on the pro social factor and lower on the antisocial factor. The discussion focuses on the construct validity of trait EI and its implications for children's peer relations at school.