Childhood and Education in the United States and Russia


Book Description

This book considers the place of education in childhood, and provides a cross-country and cross-cultural perspective on the importance of education in childhood - comparing experiences in the US and Russia. It conceptualizes the discussion in sociological theory, particularly theories pertaining to the sociology of education.




Primary and Secondary Education During Covid-19


Book Description

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.




Two Worlds of Childhood


Book Description




Vygotsky’s Theory in Early Childhood Education and Research


Book Description

Drawing upon in-depth analyses of Lev Vygotsky’s theories of early childhood and investigating the ways in which his ideas are reflected in contemporary educational settings, this book brings into sharp relief the numerous opportunities for preschool learning and development afforded by Vygotskian approaches. Discussion of recent developments in the understanding and implementation of Vygotsky’s ideas in Western and Russian contexts facilitates comparison, and provides readers with fresh impetus to integrate elements into their own practice. Chapters are clearly structured and address the multitude of aspects touched upon by Vygotsky, including cognitive development, communication and interaction, play, literacy and the quality of preschool settings. Providing a comprehensive exploration of current stances on Vygotsky's ideas in diverse cultural-historical contexts, Vygotsky's Theory in Early Childhood Education and Research will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, educators and politicians involved in early years education.




Small Comrades


Book Description

Small Comrades is a fascinating examination of Soviet conceptions of childhood and the resulting policies directed toward children. Working on the assumption that cultural representations and self-representations are not entirely separable, this book probes how the Soviet regime's representations structured teachers' observations of their pupils and often adults' recollections of their childhood. The book draws on work that has been done on Soviet schooling, and focuses specifically on the development of curricula and institutions, but it also examines the wider context of the relationship between the family and the state, and to the Bolshevik vision of the "children of October"




American Girls in Red Russia


Book Description

If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.




International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Care


Book Description

The first volume in this Early Childhood Education and Care in the 21st Century: International Teaching, Family and Policy Perspectives miniseries provides a snapshot of early childhood education and care from 19 different countries around the world. The intention is to provide a description for the policy and provision for young children and their families in each of the unique contemporary contexts. The selection of countries includes every continent in the world to provide variety across cultures, socio-economic status, location, population and other unique factors. Some chapters also share the development and history of early childhood in their country, including economic and political transitions that lead to changes in early childhood provision and policy. The book provides essential takeaways for early childhood educators, researchers, early childhood organisations, policy makers and those interested to know more about early childhood education within an international perspective.




Russia's Abandoned Children


Book Description

Fujimura takes us across history and into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. Readers come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to address abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves. Researcher Fujimura takes us across history, into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. We also come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to affect abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves.




Chekhov's Children


Book Description

Anton Chekhov's representations of children have generally remained on the periphery of scholarly attention. Yet his stories about children, which focus on communication and the emergence of personhood, also illuminate the process by which the author forged his own language of expression and occupy a uniquely important place within his work. Chekhov's Children explores these stories – dating from Chekhov's early writings in the 1880s – as a distinct body of work unified by the theme of maturation and by the creation of a literary model of childhood. Nadya Peterson describes the evolution of Chekhov's model and its connection with the prevalent views on children in the literature, education, medicine, and psychology of his time. As with his later writing, Chekhov's portrayals of young protagonists exhibit complexity, diversity, and a broad reach across the writer's cultural and literary landscape, dealing with such themes as the distinctiveness of a child's perspective, the relationship between the worlds of children and adults, the nature of child development, socialization, gender differences, and sexuality. While reconstructing a particular literary model of childhood, this book brings to light a body of discourse on children, childhood development, and education prominent in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Chekhov's Children accords this topic the significance it deserves by placing Chekhov's model of childhood within the broad context of his time and reassessing established notions about the child's place in the author's oeuvre.




U.S. Education Reform and National Security


Book Description

The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.