Special Interest Group
The aim of Children and Childhoods SIG is to explicate, develop, and enhance understandings of children and young people and their childhoods. This includes: how childhoods are shaped socially, historically and culturally, and how the ‘relational child’ experiences the educational institutions and forces that mediate their life. It concerns children as objects and / or subjects for study, and the spaces and places in which childhood occurs, particularly formal and informal education. A strength of the SIG is that it enables interrogation of the boundaries and transitions in children’s lives, including from early years to childhood, childhood to adolescence, adolescence and beyond, and how these are shaped and informed by education.
The SIG will create a forum for academics, practitioners, and students to engage critically in debates of the contested nature of childhood; for example, as a socio-biological construction, a hybrid of interdisciplinary subjectivities, or from the standpoint of the agentic, relational child. Importantly the SIG will bring together colleagues with wide-ranging interests to contribute to knowledge development and exchange, not least around the burgeoning research into the nature and meanings of children’s well-being and resilience. At the same time the SIG will seek to establish dialogue with and between other BERA SIGs, including Early Childhood Education and Care, Youth Studies and Informal Education, Social Justice, and Sexualities, in order to draw together and share the respective assemblages of knowledge and understanding within BERA about the complexity and diversity of children’s lives.
This is a timely opportunity to establish a Children and Childhoods SIG. Childhood studies has emerged as a critical intervention in the field of education and developed interdisciplinary knowledge about children and young people’s everyday and everynight experiences. The aims of the SIG are, therefore, to:
Lecturer at The Open University
Dr Chrissy Mangafa, Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University Dr Chrissy Mangafa is a Lecturer in Education at Anglia Ruskin University. She teaches across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, with a focus on Primary. She received her...
University Lecturer at University of Bath
I am a member of the Learning, Pedagogy and Diversity Research Cluster. Originally trained as a teacher, I taught in pre-prep, primary and middle schools. After studying ‘The Ethnography of Educational Settings’ as part of my Masters degree,...
Reader in Education for Social Justice at University of Wolverhampton
Dr Zeta Williams-Brown is a Reader in Education for Social Justice and works for the Education Observatory at the University of Wolverhampton. Her previous role was a Lecturer in Childhood, Family and Community Studies at the same university....
Lessons for policy, practice & promoting life chances in the early years
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Continue readingBERA invites expressions of interest from those who would like to act as a convenor for the BERA Children and Childhoods SIG. The aim of Children and Childhoods SIG is to explicate, develop, and...
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In December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...
Continue readingSince the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, children across the world have experienced significant changes to their lives. Save the Children (2020, p. 4) report that an estimated 99 per cent of...
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