Empowering Young Children

This go-to guide for educators helping children who have experienced trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) provides accessible information paired with practical, adaptable strategies.

Children's Empowerment in Play is an accessible insight into the vital place of play in children’s development. The book focuses on three main themes of participation, voice and ownership, and explores ways to positively and naturally develop play in early years settings. Drawing on primary research and presenting in-depth case studies of children in a range of play scenarios, Canning offers a framework for understanding play and its relationship with children’s empowerment, and highlights play patterns and the ways in which practitioners can identify these. Chapters also cover: The research context for empowerment in play The significance of play and empowerment in the lives of children The power play can have, and indicators of empowering behaviour Observing empowerment in play and the challenges of celebrating it Written for all those working with young children and students on early childhood courses, this book will transform how you understand and engage with children’s experiences and learning.

The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent: Empowering Young Children’s Rights and Meaningful Participation is a practical guide for researchers who want to engage young children in rights-based, participatory research. This book presents the Narrative Approach, an original and innovative method to help children understand their participation in research. This approach moves away from traditional paper-based consent to tailor the informed consent process to the specific needs of young children. Through the Informing Story, which employs a combination of interaction, information and narrative, this method enables children to comprehend concepts through storytelling. Researchers are stepped through the development of an Informing Story so that they can deliver accurate information to young children about what their participation in research is likely to involve. To further inform practice, the book documents the implementation of the Narrative Approach in four case studies demonstrating the variety of settings in which the method can be applied. The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent addresses the rights of young children to be properly researched, expands opportunities for their active and engaged research participation, and creates a unique conceptual ethical space within which meaningful informed consent can occur. This book will be an invaluable tool for novice and experienced researchers and is applicable to a wide range of education and non-education contexts.

This essential guidebook offers creative, exciting ways for teachers to implement and support deep, authentic and transformative learning in early childhood. Each standalone chapter identifies a key focus for empowering children, exploring the research behind the habit, how it stimulates deep learning and the ways in which it can help address implicit hierarchies and disrupt oppression. Chapters feature hands-on activities, ideas for lessons and events that teachers can try, alongside techniques to involve parents and families, bringing this important work beyond the classroom walls.

Digitalisation is transforming education as well as social and economic life, with implications for childhood. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with its immense potential to shape children’s early development, learning and well-being, can play a major role in addressing the opportunities and risks that digitalisation brings to young children.

Let Them Shine is a collection of inspiring personal stories of empowerment of young children from award-winning Los Angeles principal Michael Alan Haggood, EdD. This book will help educators nurture the light in each child. Organized around twelve traits, Dr. Haggood highlights the crucial role educators play in children's lives and how their actions often have lifelong effects on the children in their care. After all, "No child can learn from you if they feel you are not interested in them." Woven into each narrative are teaching and learning strategies for parents and teachers. Readers will be asked to reflect on their own experiences as each chapter challenges them with thoughtful questions to ponder and answer to make positive, intentional changes. This book is perfect for book study groups or book clubs. All stories accurately portray adversity and are ultimately inspirational.

This text aims to help professionals empower children so that they can contribute to the decisions which affect them as individuals and as a group; at unit, local and national levels. The manual helps to ensure success by providing a training tool for both professionals and young people. The manual examines: the importance of empowerment to children and young people; the benefits of empowerment to children and professionals alike; the barriers to empowerment; and the need for workers and organizations to understand their own intentions before embarking on moves towards promoting children and young people's involvement in decision-making.