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There is a tendency in European education policy to emphasise more and better deliberate learning outcomes. The tendency is criticised for taking an instrumental view of education [Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Routledge,; van Manen, M. (2008). Pedagogical sensitivity and teachers practical knowing-in-action. Peking University Education Review, 6(1), 2–20. ] and threatening children's self-governed play opportunities [Pettersvold, M., & Østrem, S. (2019). Problembarna: Metoder og manualer i barnehage, skole og barnevern. Cappelen Damm akademisk]. However, self-governed play outdoors is perceived as educationally important, notably within Nordic early childhood education. This paper aims to contribute to the international debate on what constitutes good education by investigating an outdoor education culture framed within the context of Nordic early childhood education. We investigate the research question of what characterises teachers' outdoor didactics in self-governed play and growth as these appear in a Norwegian nature kindergarten? The theoretical framework builds on (1) perspectives on Bildung as playful self-formation [Løvlie, L. (2002). The promise of bildung. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(3), 467–486. ; Steinsholt, K. (2010). Vi må miste oss selv for å finne oss selv igjen. Lek, erfaring og danning hos Hans-Georg Gadamer. In K. Steinsholt, & K. P. Gurholt (Eds.), Aktive liv (pp. 101–119). Tapir Akademiske Forlag] and (2) a relational perspective on children's self-governed outdoor play as a way of integrated dwelling and growth through intimate correspondence with environments [Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, (2018). Anthropology and/as education: Anthropology, art, architecture and design. Routledge]. Data were generated through ethnographic fieldwork in a public Norwegian nature kindergarten that emphasises children's outdoor play as educationally important. Nineteen children aged 4–6 participated. The fieldwork drew on participant observation, including playing with the children and on-site conversations. Using the theoretical framework as a lens, the educational culture is conceptualised as didactic sensitivity, which entails the teachers' delicate sensitivity and responsiveness towards children and place. The teachers act professionally by creating unique, thoughtful, responsive, and situated conditions for children's autonomous growth in natural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 boosted the rights of parents of children with additional support needs (ASN) by improving access to information, instituting a Code of Practice and establishing new redress mechanisms such as the ASN Tribunal and independent mediation. More than a decade later, Scottish legislation enacted in 2016 and implemented in 2018 attempted to increase children's rights, broadly placing them on a par with those of parents and young people. This paper draws on data from an ESRC project entitled Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1). Analysis of Scottish Government policy and legislation, key informant interviews and official statistics are used to examine the extent to which the new rights are likely to be realised in practice, given the complexity of the legislation and competition between discourses of needs, broadly synonymous with the wellbeing agenda and rights. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons which may be learnt from the Scottish experience, which will be of interest to an international audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores photographs of children, taken after 1945 by the Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916–1954), as visual objects and social agents. In the summer of 1945, Bischof embarked on his first journey through war-ravaged Western Europe – specifically Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – to visually capture the lives of men, women, and children who had experienced the destruction, cruelties and trauma of World War II. Bischof’s photographic mission focused on children in particular. His ambitions drew upon the power of photography to present, represent, and perform, to make and articulate histories, to evoke emotions, and to relate to and resonate with various audiences. This very agency of photography, which has been argued by Bischof and also serves as a central hypothesis of this paper, is intensified when a photographer works with children and thus enhances and more strongly emphasises photography’s inherent and irreducible agency. The paper looks at how Bischof’s photographs, as performances, not only evoked but also disturbed and disrupted narratives of war-ravaged Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the purchase and usefulness of the notion of digital literacy. Comparing and contrasting theoretical formulations of digital literacy from the “top-down” and “bottom-up”, it reviews how the concept has been used across three research fields in Europe and Australia. An introductory section situates the ways in which digital literacy offers itself as a mean of empowerment in the tradition of the “new literacy studies” but at the same time exposes contradictions in terms of access and power. The first domain explored is media discourse, and this section of the paper examines ideas which have been circulating in Australia since the early 1990s about the need for children to become digitally literate. The second section examines how the concept of digital literacy has developed over the last decade in the domain of school policy, curriculum documents and practices in Norway; and the third section reviews transnational research to explore how the term digital literacy is used in the domain of children's and youth's out-of-school cultural digital practices. We argue that the term “digital literacy” incorporates more notions of exclusion and division than is commonly supposed, and that it exposes the contradictory politics of literacy education in new and provocative ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper highlights problems surrounding the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check that has accompanied the legislative framework for synthetic phonics in English primary schools. It investigates the inclusion of pseudowords and raises questions regarding their generation and categorization, the rationale for their inclusion and the assumption that the early ability to read pseudowords is associated with later success in reading. It draws upon evidence from comparative European orthographic studies employing pseudowords that have implications for the way English pupils learn to read. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the features of an online test framework for a receptive skills test that has been adapted, based on a British template, into different sign languages. The online test includes features that meet the needs of the different sign language versions. Features such as usability of the test, automatic saving of scores, and score reporting have been implemented. The background information of the children and the test results are saved in a secure databank. When consent has been granted, these data can be used for cross-linguistic research in the future. This will not only help us to broaden our understanding of deaf children's sign language development, but will also help us to further improve sign language testing. Furthermore, implications for research and practice will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses comparative empirical data from across Europe on gender differences in children's Internet use, and through a new interpretive framework on young people's experiences, seeks to add new findings to this growing international knowledge base. Linking feminist theory on gender and technology with theories of youth gender identity construction, four key areas are investigated. Firstly, the impact of increased Internet access and use in schools and in homes on gender equality is examined. Secondly, youth communication and content creation practices are investigated to explore whether the Internet is facilitating flexibility in gender identity and the transcendence of traditional gender roles. Thirdly, gender differences in skills and perceptions of expertise are discussed. Finally, Internet activities which demonstrate overtly gender-stereotypical masculine attributes—pornography and action/violent game playing—are discussed. We argue that gender remains a salient factor in researching the complexity of young people's Internet use and call for multiple theoretical perspectives to contribute to further research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the transition from "boyhood" to "manhood" through an examination of my father's World War II correspondence and related material. My father, born in 1925, served in the final battles of the war in Europe. During his time in the army, he wrote many letters home, and the 302 letters saved were used as the basis of this analysis. My father's transition from boyhood to manhood was conditioned by his depression-era childhood, by his experiences in basic training and battle, and by his father's sudden death in 1945. Through these experiences, my father developed a belief about what it means to be a man that was rooted in the overarching concept of responsibility - to self, to family, to values, and to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]