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Author:
Abstract
The chapter presents the methods involved in teaching a “Photography Theory” course with a practical component, requiring the submission of an artistic work, as part of a course delivered at the University of the Arts in Poznań. The chapter also contains an analysis of the artwork created during the classes. Students’ projects rely on seminal texts from the field of visual studies, with particular emphasis on texts concerned with photography. The aim is for the students to deliver a project inspired by the work of a philosopher/theoretician.
By applying the theory of photography to their own artistic work, students begin to realize the role of critical literacy in understanding the phenomena of contemporary culture. The most important educational aspect of teaching how to connect theory and art is that it can develop the skill of critical thinking Therefore the term critical visual literacy is particularly applicable for describing this type of practice. The aim of such education is teaching a critical attitude toward images and the socio-cultural content they represent. The findings of the study demonstrate the importance of students-artists’ self-reflection and the role of critical literacy in laying the foundations of original artistic practice.
30 Years of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Action towards Sustainability
This book investigates and uncover paradoxes and ambivalences that are actualised when seeking to make the right choices in the best interests of the child. The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established a milestone for the 20th century. Many of these ideas still stand, but time calls for new reflections, empirical descriptions and knowledge as provided in this book.
Special attention is directed to the conceptualisation of children and childhood cultures, the missing voices of infants and fragile children, as well as transformations during times of globalisation and change. All chapters contribute to understand and discuss aspects of societal demands and cultural conditions for modern-day children age 0–18, accompanied by pointers to their future.
Contributors are: Eli Kristin Aadland, Wenche Bjorbækmo, Jorunn Spord Borgen, Gunn Helene Engelsrud, Kristin Vindhol Evensen, Eldbjørg Fossgard, Liv Torunn Grindheim, Asle Holthe, Liisa Karlsson, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonatan Leer, Ida Marie Lyså, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Czarecah Tuppil Oropilla, Susanne Højlund Pedersen, Anja Maria Pesch, Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Gro Rugseth, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Hege Wergedahl and Susanne C. Ylönen.
Special attention is directed to the conceptualisation of children and childhood cultures, the missing voices of infants and fragile children, as well as transformations during times of globalisation and change. All chapters contribute to understand and discuss aspects of societal demands and cultural conditions for modern-day children age 0–18, accompanied by pointers to their future.
Contributors are: Eli Kristin Aadland, Wenche Bjorbækmo, Jorunn Spord Borgen, Gunn Helene Engelsrud, Kristin Vindhol Evensen, Eldbjørg Fossgard, Liv Torunn Grindheim, Asle Holthe, Liisa Karlsson, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonatan Leer, Ida Marie Lyså, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Czarecah Tuppil Oropilla, Susanne Højlund Pedersen, Anja Maria Pesch, Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Gro Rugseth, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Hege Wergedahl and Susanne C. Ylönen.
30 Years of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Action towards Sustainability
This book investigates and uncover paradoxes and ambivalences that are actualised when seeking to make the right choices in the best interests of the child. The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established a milestone for the 20th century. Many of these ideas still stand, but time calls for new reflections, empirical descriptions and knowledge as provided in this book.
Special attention is directed to the conceptualisation of children and childhood cultures, the missing voices of infants and fragile children, as well as transformations during times of globalisation and change. All chapters contribute to understand and discuss aspects of societal demands and cultural conditions for modern-day children age 0–18, accompanied by pointers to their future.
Contributors are: Eli Kristin Aadland, Wenche Bjorbækmo, Jorunn Spord Borgen, Gunn Helene Engelsrud, Kristin Vindhol Evensen, Eldbjørg Fossgard, Liv Torunn Grindheim, Asle Holthe, Liisa Karlsson, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonatan Leer, Ida Marie Lyså, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Czarecah Tuppil Oropilla, Susanne Højlund Pedersen, Anja Maria Pesch, Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Gro Rugseth, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Hege Wergedahl and Susanne C. Ylönen.
Special attention is directed to the conceptualisation of children and childhood cultures, the missing voices of infants and fragile children, as well as transformations during times of globalisation and change. All chapters contribute to understand and discuss aspects of societal demands and cultural conditions for modern-day children age 0–18, accompanied by pointers to their future.
Contributors are: Eli Kristin Aadland, Wenche Bjorbækmo, Jorunn Spord Borgen, Gunn Helene Engelsrud, Kristin Vindhol Evensen, Eldbjørg Fossgard, Liv Torunn Grindheim, Asle Holthe, Liisa Karlsson, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonatan Leer, Ida Marie Lyså, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, Czarecah Tuppil Oropilla, Susanne Højlund Pedersen, Anja Maria Pesch, Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Gro Rugseth, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Hege Wergedahl and Susanne C. Ylönen.
Chapter 11 Approaching Agency in Intra-Activities
Author:
Abstract
The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that legalise children’s right to express their views, underlines that children have relevant perspectives and agency. This approach has been an enormous gift to the field of social childhood studies. In our contemporary, transforming, and rapidly changing society, the time has come to move forward with this concept and to challenge the dichotomy between agency and structure. Supporters of the ‘material turn’ claim that their way of thinking makes room for the expansion of agency as an enactment, something that someone or something has, toward agency as ‘doing’/’being’ in its intra-activity. Intra-action reformulates the traditional notion of causality and opens up a relatively large space for material–discursive forms of agency. To understand and take into account this larger space for material–discursive forms of agency, an outline of methods for tracing the actors involved in intra-activities is needed. The chapter is therefore structured around the question: How can emerging actors be traced in an intra-activity? Thus, discursive formation due to the materials involved and hegemonic ideas can be depicted. The actors are traced in an activity involving Polydron, a building toy. The research method has a participatory and explorative design, and the relevant actors emerge throughout the research process. Polydron, children, teachers, families, the economy, play, learning, and the position of mathematics in education: these all emerge as actors. Accordingly, a range of actors that intra-act in the presented activity is depicted through networks of connection and disconnection, and paves the way for a continuum of practices to emerge. Thus, the space for agency between actors and structures can be recognised and widened.
Chapter 10 ‘Childish’ beyond Age
Author:
Abstract
This chapter explores the concept of ‘aesthetic sublation’ – a performative mode of meaning making that seeks to degrade its object (; ). Here, the phenomenon of aesthetic sublation is discussed as a form of resistance. Moreover, it is related to intergenerational negotiations through cases in which the labels of ‘childish’ and ‘horrific’ or ‘nasty’ converge. The chapter offers a review of how resistance is conceptualized in, for example, childhood studies, aesthetics and research on popular culture and it asks what can be gained by reconceptualising these instances as aesthetic sublation.
Chapter 9 ‘Children at Risk’ in Public Health Policy
Abstract
This chapter investigates how the concept of ‘children at risk’ is produced as a problem within public health policy. Globally and nationally, political authorities are concerned with what they consider risk factors, connected to the population’s health and well-being. One of the most common long-term health concerns is non-communicable diseases, related to sedentary behaviour and a reduced level of physical activity. Such diseases are considered by international organisations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to be the most challenging public health concerns of our time. This chapter examines how children’s future health risk is produced and transformed in the Nordic context and investigate how the concept of ‘children at risk’ is produced as a problem in two health policy documents. The results indicate that the focus of children at risk changed in four years from kindergarten children to youth. These findings suggest various interpretations of the term ‘in the best interest of the child’, article 3, and challenge the understanding of children as active agents, article 12, in the UNs convention on the Right of the Child (). We discuss how ‘risk reduction’ tends to become ‘risk production’ through the creation of new problems, such as standardisation, variation and exclusion.
Chapter 8 Children, Food and Digital Media
Authors:
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Abstract
To research digital media use is not a simple project. Contrary to ‘traditional’ audience studies it is difficult even for well-educated grown-ups to describe their actual uses of digital media, for instance what they do, when they ‘just google’ (). It might be even more difficult for children to explain to others what they do on their ipads or smart phones and why and how they select and trust the results they do. Not least in relation to everyday routines and practices such as food. But if we want to take UNCRC’s children’s right to express themselves in all matters seriously, it is also important to understand their media practices – not least related to everyday matters such as food.
From the 1930s studies on children’s media uses have been dominated by didactical concerns and by fear of new media, often termed as ‘media panics’ (Drotner et al.). The concerns from this tradition have been radicalized in the digital revolution. Much research has focused on ‘vulnerable’ audiences that have to be protected. In contrast, audience studies from the 1970s and onwards focus on the negotiations among active audiences. This contrast is also radicalized by digital media, because they are everywhere. An important question therefore is, what methods are suitable? How can we experiment to overcome the special challenges with personal uses of individual digital devices such as smart phones and ipads? The chapter will discuss the pros and cons of different methods for different ages and contexts, giving examples of our Danish research.
Chapter 7 Children’s Food Choices during Kindergarten Meals
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to examine children’s food choices during lunch in a small case study, and how the food choices contributed to children’s dietary intake.
The case study was carried out at two kindergartens in Norway. Data was collected through individual interviewing of principals, focus-group interviewing of staff, observations of the lunchtime meal and individual registration of 40 children’s dietary intake during lunch.
The two kindergartens offered lunch predominantly as a cold meal involving open sandwiches and various types of toppings, vegetables and milk or water. The principal and the staff decided which food to put on the table, and children’s food choices were limited by the availability and accessibility of the food items available during mealtimes. The children helped themselves during lunch or expressed their food choices in various ways. The freedom of the children to choose the food they wanted, kindergarten staff’s mild influence on children’s food choices and stricter regulation of children’s food intake were all observed in the two kindergartens. Half of the children in the study experimented with various combinations of sandwich toppings on the bread, some of which could be considered part of a typical Norwegian diet, but others not. Children’s freedom to choose their own food and their experimentation with food items could all be seen as steps toward a transformation of children into independent food consumers, and as respect for children’s views in line with article 12 in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Chapter 4 Children with Severe, Multiple Disabilities
Author:
Abstract
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, being understood is a human right. This chapter focuses on children with severe, multiple disabilities and their transitions between interplay and communication, between embodiment and expressive skills, between subjectivity and objectivity, between expressivity and interpretation, and between being and becoming.
Through a literature review, I show that transitions between interplay and communication when children have severe, multiple disabilities are considered from three dominant perspectives.
Papers that describe communication as an objective technique describe technical possibilities when translating highly subjective expressions of children with severe and multiple disabilities into symbolic language. However, critical self-reviews by the authors of some of these papers indicate that their findings show that those technical communication skills are of restricted value if the relation between interplay and communication remains unproblematised.
Papers that describe the children’s communication as a result of contextual impressions, and relational and interactional stimuli show that neither disability, nor the context alone can shape the child’s potential abilities, or his or her wish to enter into interplay or to communicate. On the contrary, it seems that the quality of interplay that the participating children are already taking part in appears to be decisive when the children express their experiences to the people surrounding them.
Papers that describe expressions as causally connected to diagnostic phenotypes describe important objective features of medical diagnoses, yet, it appears that possibilities for interactions and communication are lost when movements are interpreted as results of medical conditions rather than as subjective expressions.
Chapter 14 Global Paradoxes and Provocations in Education
Abstract
Global trends in education are accompanied by both paradoxes and provocations. The paradoxes constitute inherent educational dilemmas, such as the paradox of institutional education, wherein social rules and mandatory tasks are played out as a means of imparting lessons about freedom and independence. Our argument in this chapter is that we should reconsider the ‘future’ of planned and controlled education and instead become open to the perceptions of two groups that are at the forefront of educational futures – namely, children and young people and various experts on children and childhood. They meet face to face or indirectly on a daily basis in various educational contexts, and their experiences are interdependent and often paradoxical. This chapter explores possible sustainable futures in education as articulated by children, youth and child experts and highlights several qualities that sustainable futures will require, in relation to UNCRC article 28; children’s right to education and article 29; that education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full.
Chapter 2 In the Best Interests of the Child
Abstract
The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) established a milestone for the 20th century, which is often referred to as the ‘century of the child’. Despite the UNCRC being accepted in most countries, suppression and injustices are still present in many children’s lives. To gain more insight into how to come closer to achieving equitable conditions for generations living interconnected lives in their situated local, but globally entangled, nature and cultures, this study investigated how children’s rights to protection, to be heard and to play and recreation are promoted, actualised and expended in the wake of the century of the child. We start by presenting significant voices and changes that occurred during the 20th and 21st centuries and point to paradoxes and ambivalences that researchers encounter when aiming to discover what is in the best interests of the child. Research that has enhanced our knowledge on children’s protection, participation, play and recreation revealed that children’s lives, historical voices and legal rights and changes in global and local societies, nature and research are entangled and offer both new and contradictive knowledge about children and childhood. The uncovered paradoxes and ambivalences call for transformative research designs that are problem-oriented and transdisciplinary, as we as experts, together with citizens and policymakers, seek to make the right choices in the best interests of the child.