This book analyzes children's agency as interactional achievement in formal and informal contexts of education and illuminates how agency can be encouraged and supported in these educational contexts. Taking a sociological approach, the author deals with children as social agents rather than learners and considers structures of interaction which encourage and support agency, rather than teaching. The book draws from field research conducted over more than twenty years in a variety of Italian and international contexts. This book is unique in providing a theoretical reflection on the social structures that can support children’s agency, as well as a large amount of examples which show how these structures and agency work.

As Ragnar Rommetveit put it forty years ago, dialogue is “the architecture of intersubjectivity”: a tool not only for maintaining yet also constantly transforming our life-worlds. The volume advances and empirically illustrates the role of talk-in-interaction in displaying, ratifying, creating yet also defying the crucial dimensions of the world we live in. This process is particularly noticeable in children’s primary social worlds, i.e. home and school where they are socialized to becoming competent members of the communities they (will) live in. Drawing on fifty years of research on children's socialization through language and social interaction, the volume provides new multidisciplinary insights and updated empirical data on the process through which cultures, identities, and knowledge are brought into being through the everyday dialogues that animate children’s life at home and school. The volume addresses a specialized readership and its interdisciplinary framework ensures that it will be of great interest to scholars from different academic fields, such as social and developmental psychology, anthropology, education, developmental linguistics, sociolinguistics and developmental pragmatics.

This edited volume presents the results of a European research project – ‘CHILD-UP’ (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation), which analyses the hybrid integration of children with migration backgrounds into schools across Europe. Using qualitative data and theoretical foundations obtained through interviews and focus groups, the book ultimately centres the perspectives and experiences of both the children and the professionals working with them. In doing so, it explores the complex position migrant children occupy in host societies, their exercise of agency, challenges and inspirational local practices that support hybrid integration and innovative educational planning. It also analyses the facilitation of conversations concerning children’s personal experiences and social relations, second language learning and language mediation, based on video- and audio-recordings of school activities. The book will be of relevance to researchers, academics, scholars, and faculty in the fields of sociology of education, child development, migration and multicultural studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This volume addresses the conditions allowing the transformation of specific children’s rights into capabilities in settings as different as children’s parliaments, organized leisure activities, contexts of vulnerability, children in care. It addresses theoretical questions linked to children’s agency and reflexivity, education, the life cycle perspective, child participation, evolving capabilities and citizenship. The volume highlights important issues that have to be taken into account for the implementation of human rights and the development of peoples’ capabilities. The focus on children’s capabilities along a rights-based approach is an inspiring perspective that researchers and practitioners in the field of human rights would like to deepen.

Children learn in contexts, and the spaces, places and people they come into contact with have a deep influence on their development. Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of development places the child at the centre of this complex network, and his influence has been extensive in early childhood education. This book presents an introduction to Bronfenbrenner’s model of development, drawing on practice-based research to identify and animate key elements of his model’s impact. It illustrates how his model can help bring quality to early learning environments and incorporates it into daily work with young children. As well as providing a glossary of key terms, Introducing Bronfenbrenner covers areas such as: a bioecological perspective on educational transition; early education as a dynamic process; nurturing children’s learning and development; reflecting the bioecological in early years practice. Using a variety of vignettes, practical examples of good practice and case studies, Introducing Bronfenbrenner is an essential guide to his work. It will be of interest to professionals working with children in early childhood settings and to undergraduate students training to become early childhood professionals.

Promoting Children's Rights in European Schools explores how facilitators, teachers and educators can adopt and use a dialogic methodology to solicit children's active participation in classroom communication. The book draws on a research project, funded by the European Commission (Erasmus +, Key-action 3, innovative education), coordinated by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, with the partnership of the University of Suffolk, UK, and the University of Jena, Germany. The author team bring together the analysis of activities in 48 classes involving at least 1000 children across England, Germany and Italy. These activities have been analysed in relation to the sociocultural context of the involved schools and children, a facilitative methodology and the use of visual materials in the classroom, and engaging children in active participation and the production of their own narratives. Each chapter looks at reflection on practice, outcomes, and reaction to facilitation of both teachers and children, drawing out the complex comparative lessons within and between classrooms across the three countries.

This book introduces the use of facilitation to support children’s agency in the classroom as authors of knowledge. The authors draw on research undertaken in two Year Three classrooms, in which children were invited to share photographs in a workshop to facilitate the sharing and creation of narratives. Motivated by the idea that elevating children’s status to constructors of knowledge is essential for a pedagogy of authentic listening, understandings of childhood are challenged in relation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the tension between self-determination and the protection of children. The book will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners in the areas of education, early childhood studies, sociology of childhood, social work, children’s rights and educational management.