Supporting Indigenous Children's Development


Book Description

This book challenges and offers an alternative to the imposition of best practices on communities by outside specialists. It tells of an unexpected partnership initiated by an Aboriginal tribal council with the University of Victoria's School of Child and Youth Care. The partnership produced a new approach to professional education, in which community leaders are co-constructors of the curriculum. Word of this "generative curriculum" has spread and now over sixty communities have participated in the First Nations Partnerships Program. The authors show how this innovative program has strengthened community capacity to design, deliver, and evaluate culturally appropriate programs to support young children's development.




Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8


Book Description

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.




Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.




Child and Youth Care


Book Description

Critical and postmodern perspectives have been largely underexplored in the field of child and youth care. This book addresses the gap, showcasing cutting-edge approaches to policy, pedagogy, and practice from diverse perspectives and professional settings. The authors of Child and Youth Care challenge deep-seated assumptions about child and youth care by reinterpreting core concepts such as ethics and outcomes and raising questions about underlying goals and premises. Can the ends of practice be separated from the means? For whose benefit are interventions designed? By recognizing a range of social and political influences on children and youth, this volume bears witness to exciting developments in child and youth care. Chapters in Part 1 redefine the field by offering new theoretical frameworks which, in turn, raise questions about the underlying goal of care and its place in current political agendas. For instance, what unspoken understandings of child, youth, or family well-being are being privileged? To answer these questions, chapters in Part 2 explore underdeveloped issues such as gender, the experiences of girls, and the involvement of fathers, while those in Parts 3 and 4 question beliefs about northern communities, homeless youth, early childhood programs, and young offenders. By focusing on approaches that recognize a range of social and political influences on children and youth, this volume bears witness to new and exciting developments in child and youth care. Alan Pence is UNESCO Chair for Early Childhood Education, Care and Development, and a professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria. Jennifer White is an associate professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria. Contributors: Brooke Alsbury, Mackenzie Dean, Sandrina de Finney, B. Denise Hodgins, Mark L. Kelly, Kathleen Kummen, J.N. Little, Alan Pence, Elicia Loiselle, Jonathan Morris, Janet Newbury, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Lorinda Stoneman, and Jennifer White.




Early Years Education and Care in Canada


Book Description

This ground-breaking collected volume features multiple voices from the field that, together, offer an extensive and balanced examination of the contemporary, historical, and philosophical influences that shape early childhood education and care in Canada today. Showcasing uniquely Canadian narratives, perspectives, and histories, the text provides a superb foundation in the key topics and approaches of the field, including Indigenous ways of knowing, holistic education, play, the nature of childhood, developmental approaches, and the impact of educational philosophers and theorists such as Rousseau and Dewey. The authors discuss current and reimagined themes such as children’s rights, diversity and inclusion, multimodality, ecology, and Indigenous education in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Featuring chapters by academics from across Canada that explore the field’s history and future, as well as guiding questions to support reader engagement, Early Years Education and Care in Canada is a fundamental resource for students, academics, practitioners, and policymakers in early childhood education and care.




Possible Selves


Book Description

The concept of possible selves, first brought to life only a short time ago by Hazel Markus and Paula Nurious (1986) has grown into an exciting stream of research. Scholars have examined possible selves with regard to a host of adolescent outcomes, including academic achievement, school persistence, career expectations, self-esteem, delinquency, identity development and altruistic behaviours. This book represents a sample of the current research being conducted in the area of possible selves. The contributors to the book were chosen to represent a variety of perspectives, and to collectively illustrate some of the different ways that possible selves are being conceptualised, empirically examined and used in interventions.




Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools


Book Description

Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools examines the cultural, social, and political terrain of Indigenous education by providing accounts of Indigenous students and educators creatively navigating the colonial dynamics within public schools. Through a series of survivance stories, the book surveys a range of educational issues, including implementation of Native-themed curriculum, teachers’ attempts to support Native students in their classrooms, and efforts to claim physical and cultural space in a school district, among others. As a collective, these stories highlight the ways that colonization continues to shape Native students’ experiences in schools. By documenting the nuanced intelligence, courage, artfulness, and survivance of Native students, families, and educators, the book counters deficit framings of Indigenous students. The goal is also to develop educators’ anticolonial literacy so that teachers can counter colonialism and better support Indigenous students in public schools.




Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools


Book Description

Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools examines the cultural, social, and political terrain of Indigenous education by providing accounts of Indigenous students and educators creatively navigating the colonial dynamics within public schools. Through a series of survivance stories, the book surveys a range of educational issues, including implementation of Native-themed curriculum, teachers’ attempts to support Native students in their classrooms, and efforts to claim physical and cultural space in a school district, among others. As a collective, these stories highlight the ways that colonization continues to shape Native students’ experiences in schools. By documenting the nuanced intelligence, courage, artfulness, and survivance of Native students, families, and educators, the book counters deficit framings of Indigenous students. The goal is also to develop educators’ anticolonial literacy so that teachers can counter colonialism and better support Indigenous students in public schools.




Promising Practices in Supporting Success for Indigenous Students


Book Description

Indigenous peoples are diverse, within and across nations. However, the Indigenous peoples have experienced colonisation processes that have undermined Indigenous young people’s access to their identity, language and culture.




Indigenous Development in the Andes


Book Description

As indigenous peoples in Latin America have achieved greater prominence and power, international agencies have attempted to incorporate the agendas of indigenous movements into development policymaking and project implementation. Transnational networks and policies centered on ethnically aware development paradigms have emerged with the goal of supporting indigenous cultures while enabling indigenous peoples to access the ostensible benefits of economic globalization and institutionalized participation. Focused on Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous Development in the Andes is a nuanced examination of the complexities involved in designing and executing “culturally appropriate” development agendas. Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe illuminate a web of relations among indigenous villagers, social movement leaders, government officials, NGO workers, and staff of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. The authors argue that this reconfiguration of development policy and practice permits Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous groups to renegotiate their relationship to development as subjects who contribute and participate. Yet it also recasts indigenous peoples and their cultures as objects of intervention and largely fails to address fundamental concerns of indigenous movements, including racism, national inequalities, and international dependencies. Andean indigenous peoples are less marginalized, but they face ongoing dilemmas of identity and agency as their fields of action cross national boundaries and overlap with powerful institutions. Focusing on the encounters of indigenous peoples with international development as they negotiate issues related to land, water, professionalization, and gender, Indigenous Development in the Andes offers a comprehensive analysis of the diverse consequences of neoliberal development, and it underscores crucial questions about globalization, governance, cultural identity, and social movements.