Promoting Social Justice For Young Children

This book explores important current social justice issues that confront young children in America. A broad range of topics related to the fair treatment of young children and their families are approached with a fresh and hopeful energy. The central argument of this volume is that a fair and just society must protect the basic needs of all children so they are able to reach their full potential to learn, grow, and ultimately become productive democratic citizens. The book includes contributions from an impressive group of authors who have been consistent voices for the fair and equitable treatment of children in school and society. Each chapter examines a critical issue in child social justice with a focus on the current problem, historical importance of the issue, potential solutions, and a vision for the future. The book has been developed to reach a wide audience of professionals whose work involves children and who have grown concerned about social forces that cause child suffering and threaten the well-being or even the survival of children in the United States. Readers will come away with up to date information and a renewed commitment to being life-long advocates for children.

Anti-bias education begins with you! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers.

Migration movements have been a constant in the societies of the past, as well as in postmodern society. However, in the past ten years, the increase in political, economic, and religious conflict amongst nations; the increase of the poverty index; and many and various natural disasters have duplicated the forced displacement of millions of people across the seven continents of the planet. This situation brings important challenges in terms of the vulnerability, inequity, and discrimination that certain peoples suffer. Professionals from the fields of the social sciences, education, psychology, and international law share the fact that education represents an opportunity for children and young migrants to become members with full rights in the societies they arrive in. Empirical studies show that that the implementation of the right to education for migrants presents some challenges and dilemmas to the governments of host countries and more specifically to the education centers, NGOs, universities, and the professionals working in them, hence the need for more research on these issues of immigration, refugees, social justice, and intercultural education. The Handbook of Research on Promoting Social Justice for Immigrants and Refugees Through Active Citizenship and Intercultural Education provides visibility to issues such as the increase in migration and displacement and the difficulties in political agreements, educational contexts, and in cultural issues, stigmatization, vulnerability, social exclusion, racism, and hatred amongst host communities. This book gives possible solutions to this current complex situation and helps foster and promote sensitivity, perspective, and critical thinking for a respectful and tolerant coexistence and promotion of equity and social justice. The chapters promote cultural diversity and inclusion in classrooms by offering knowledge, strategies, and research on organizational development for educational institutions and multicultural environments. This book is essential for administrators, policymakers, leaders, teachers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the promotion of social justice in education for immigrants and refugees.

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the goal of a social justice approach for children is to ensure that children "are better served and protected by justice systems, including the security and social welfare sectors." Despite this worthy goal, the UN documents how children are rarely viewed as stakeholders in justice rules of law; child justice issues are often dealt with separate from larger justice and security issues; and when justice issues for children are addressed, it is often through a siloed, rather than a comprehensive approach. This volume actively challenges the current youth social justice paradigm through terminology and new approaches that place children and young people front and center in the social justice conversation. Through international consideration, children and young people worldwide are incorporated into the social justice conversation.

From the author of A is for Activist, here is the story of a child born at the dawn of a social movement. At first the protests were in small villages and at universities. But then they spread. People drew sustenance from other social movements in other countries. And then the unthinkable happened. The protagonist in this fictionalized children's memoir by Innosanto Nagara is a witness and a participant, fearful sometimes, brave sometimes too, and when things change, this child who is now an adult is as surprised as anyone.

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

A marked change in traditional thinking about children and childhood was promoted by the adoption by the United Nations (in 1989) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the early 90s sociologists in the United States and the UK developed Childhood Studies to promote a holistic view of children's lives, recognition of their competence and agency, and the impact and value of their everyday experiences. As a result of this impetus, different thinking has emerged about the role and recognition of children, the institutions of childhood, and the way we view and treat children in modern societies. This book focuses on research emerging from Children's Rights and Childhood Studies thinking, which has important implications for developing policies and practices to improve children's well being and rights. The author presents the implications of children's rights for six contexts of children's everyday lives: families; early childhood education; schooling; child protection services; health services; and employment.