Rethinking Children's Rights: Attitudes in Contemporary Society

Description

Rethinking Children's Rights explores attitudes towards and experiences of children's rights. Phil Jones and Sue Welch draw on a wide range of thought, research and practice from different fields and countries to debate, challenge and re-appraise long held beliefs, attitudes and ways of working and living with children. This second edition contains updated references to legislation and research underpinning children's rights, reflecting on recent scholarship and on the current world context. New research and examples are discussed around: - online protection and privacy - evaluating UK progress and the children's rights review by the United Nations - recent insights on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) - new debates about the construction and development of children's rights - new debates about the relationships between social exclusion and children's rights Recent developments in the definition of rights are considered from a variety of perspectives and in relation to different arenas of children's lives. This second edition brings an increased focus on exploring the notion of disjunction between the rhetoric of policy and legislation and the enacted and perceived experiences of children's rights. Themes discussed include power relations between adults and children, the child's voice, intercultural perspectives, social justice, gender and disability. Examples of research, activities, interviews with researchers and guidance on further reading make this an essential text for those studying childhood.

Phil Jones is Professor of Children's Rights and Wellbeing at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK. He has published a number of books and articles including Exploring Education and Childhood: From Current Certainties to New Visions (2015) and Rethinking Childhood (2009) and has recently completed research for the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England on Children's Rights in Education. Sue Welch was formerly a Principal Lecturer and Course Leader in Childhood Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK and has lectured at the University of York St John, UK. She is co-editor and contributor to Childhood: Services and Provision for Children (2008).

Welch and Jones have produced a much-needed book that highlights for practitioners the cultural, legal and political challenges - as well as opportunities - for promoting children's rights, by taking an open-eyed look at the necessity of understanding these rights within local context and culture. This book provides a roadmap of investigative questions that researchers and practitioners alike can use in navigating the complex and compelling domain of children's rights. -- Felisa Tibbitts, Director, Human Rights Education Associates (HREA), USA (of the first edition) Ideal for those studying childhood at undergraduate and graduate level ... [Rethinking Children's Rights] explores attitudes towards, and experiences of, children's rights, highlighting the cultural, legal and political changes for practitioners ... Recommended reading. * Book of the Month, Early Years Educator (of the first edition) * The authors do an excellent job of moving beyond explaining children's rights in a narrow legalistic sense to describing what a children's right's perspective can offer. * Children and Young People Now, 27th July (of the first edition) * The book is written in an interactive and easy-to-read style that would be accessible to anyone who works with children and is interested in learning more about children's rights...From a teaching perspective, one of the most useful features of the book is the inclusion in each chapter of text boxes listing activities that would be excellent starting points for class discussions, paper topics or essay exam questions...The book would be an appropriate text in advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars in a range of disciplines, including education, sociology, public policy, public health and child development...Overall, this book reads as an accessible, engaging tutorial in altering one's thinking and approach to interacting with children from a rights-based perspective. Readers are likely to be left with a better understanding of the controversies and dilemmas that arise when attempting to move from the concept of children's rights to implementing in practice children's rights in diverse domains within a society and in diverse societies around the world. -- Jennifer E. Lansford * Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development (of the first edition) * I was particularly impressed by the summaries of key research that the authors provide; this gives the reader a consistency of writing style, rather than the usual method of extended extracts from research that sometimes jars with the flow of the book...The strength of the book, and it is a considerable one, is that it is accessible and invites the reader to really challenge and explore the complexity of children's rights. The more students who engage in this book, the more informed and nuanced advocates of children's rights these students would become. -- Tom Cockburn * British Journal of Educational Studies (of the first edition) * It is a gentle, persuasive and informative introduction to children's rights. Its approach is broadly Socratic. It is ideal as an introduction to the subject. I would hope that it is a book that will be read and studied, discussed and re-examined by young people and by those 'in charge' of them. Readers of this journal will appreciate the easy style of the book, the many examples given of theory, practice and research, and the clear presentation and insights it offers to those who teach the subject (and/or preach it)...What I like about this book in particular is that it offers a roadmap - I suppose now a sat nav - to navigate towards the progress in raising the status of children that readers of this journal seek. And for those of us who are teachers, at whatever level it offers activities for those we guide, and is consumer-friendly. It also highlights the research which students should read, giving them enough to whet appetites, whilst hoping they will seek out more. In short, thoroughly recommended as a straightforward introduction. I can see it being adopted in many courses. -- Michael Freeman * The International Journal of Children's Rights (of the first edition) * Essential reading as much for old timers looking for fresh interpretations of problems wrestled with in the past as for newcomers to the topic... The book is divided into three sections. The first provides an introduction to children's rights, establishing the case for a 'rethink' and covering definitions and a short history of children's rights. The second provides a useful review of recent research and scholarship and the third considers in more detail the implications for children's lives in terms of rights and the 'child's voice', decision making, family life and, finally, the rights issues that arise for those working with children. -- Caroline Roaf, Support for Learning * British Journal of Learning Support (of the first edition) * This is a clearly written introductory text to Children's Rights. It provides a very sound basis for undergraduate engagement with some dominant themes and tensions of rights. Each chapter is carefully constructed and scaffolded to support the navigation of different ideas and social constructions of rights. * Rebecca Webb, Lecturer in Early Years and Primary Education, University of Sussex, UK *