Children's Perspectives Research Articles

Uses and gratifications of a tablet computer for children: an analysis of online customer reviews

PurposeThe number of children using and owning mobile devices has grown significantly in the last decade. By applying a uses and gratifications approach, this paper aims to explore what customers of a tablet computer for children report about the use and expectations of these devices from an information behavior perspective.Design/methodology/approachFor this study, 1,185 online customer reviews published for two different versions of the Amazon Fire Tablet Kids Edition on the German Amazon website between June 16, 2019, and June 15, 2020, were analyzed. A content analysis of the reviews was conducted using different inductive coding methods.FindingsFindings indicate that customers describe different aspects of children's use and families' expectations of tablets within their reviews. The expressed gratifications mostly relate to the aim of entertainment. Intentional information seeking activities were hardly mentioned within the reviews, but many customers emphasize learning as an important activity with the devices. Overall, the customer reviews reveal a mix of gratifications that differ from reported motivations for adults' tablet use.Research limitations/implicationsThe possibility of manipulated online customer reviews must be considered. It should also be viewed critically that the children's perspectives are only indirectly included in the data.Originality/valueFamilies' expectations of tablets as a device for children have not been a focus of research to date. This study uses an innovative research design by applying a uses and gratifications approach to online customer reviews for children's tablets. The findings add to previous research on children's use and families' expectations of tablets and contribute to our understanding of children's information behavior in connection with mobile devices.

The effect of physical activity on quality of life and parenting stress in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A randomized controlled trial

BackgroundPoorer quality of life (QoL) is commonly observed in children with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Parents of children with ADHD also perceived elevated levels of parenting stress. Previous research has documented the positive effects of physical activity (PA) on managing ADHD symptoms. It is critical to implement ADHD management with broader functioning from both children's and parents' perspectives. ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine whether PA would exert an influence on the QoL of children with ADHD and parenting stress of their parents. MethodsForty-three children with ADHD (6–12 years) were randomly assigned to the PA intervention and waitlist control groups. Children in the intervention group participated in a 12-week PA program. Parent-reported QoL and parenting stress were assessed before and immediately after the intervention. Analysis of covariance with a mixed factorial design of 2 (time: before vs. after intervention) × 2 (group: PA intervention vs. waitlist control) was conducted to examine changes in QoL and parenting stress over the 12 weeks. ResultsCompared to the control group, parents of children in the intervention group reported significant reduced overall parenting stress (p = .021, η2 = 0.142) and child domain of parenting stress (p = .024, η2 = 0.138) after the intervention. No significant improvement in QoL was documented in either group. ConclusionsThe participation of PA intervention positively impacts parenting stress perceived by parents of children with ADHD, which provides further evidence of the family-wide benefits of the PA intervention.

Navigating asthma-the immigrant child in a tug-of-war: A constructivist grounded theory.

Avoidable hospitalisation rates for Indian immigrant children with asthma is high in New Zealand and other Western countries. Understanding how children and their carers manage asthma may lead to a reduction in hospitalisation rates. The topic of asthma and Indian immigrant children's perspectives has not been investigated. Most studies on the topic focus on the experiences of family carers and health professionals. Practice cannot be advanced in the child's best interests unless the child's asthma experiences are explored. The following research addressed this gap by upholding Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, thereby giving Indian immigrant children a voice in describing their asthma experiences. Constructivist grounded theory. Intensive interviews were conducted with ten family carers and nine children (eight to 17 years old). Child-sensitive data collection techniques such as drawing, and photography were used to facilitate interviewing children younger than 14 years. The COREQ guidelines guided the reporting of this study. The theory, navigating asthma: the immigrant child in a tug-of-war, is the resulting grounded theory with the tug-of-war being the basic social process. This theory comprises three main categories: being fearful, seeking support and clashing cultures. The data reflected two types of tug-of-war: one between two cultures, the native Indian and the host New Zealand culture and another between family carers' and children's preferences. Acculturation and sociocultural factors may significantly influence the asthma experiences of Indian immigrants. The theory may assist healthcare practitioners to better comprehend Indian immigrants' asthma experiences within their wider sociocultural context. Our research indicates the need for healthcare practitioners to work in partnership with Indian immigrant families to implement culturally safe asthma management strategies.

Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century ed. by Gülay Yılmaz and Fruma Zachs

Reviewed by: Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century ed. by Gülay Yılmaz and Fruma Zachs Nazan Maksudyan Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century. Edited By Gülay Yılmaz and Fruma Zachs. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. xxii + 408 pp. Cloth £90.00. Gülay Yılmaz and Fruma Zachs's edited volume is a welcome contribution to the field of history of children and youth in the Ottoman Empire. Opening with a foreword by Suraiya Faroqhi, the editors' introduction as well as a comparative introductory article by Colin Heywood, the volume is then divided into five main parts: Concepts of Childhood; Family Interrelationships; Children Outside Family Circles; Children's Bodies; and Children and Education. Within Part 1, two chapters canvass underlying concepts. Cahit Telci's essay problematizes the age difference across regions in the conscription of unmarried adolescent boys based on peasant militia registers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Eleni Gara's chapter then discusses the childhood and boyhood memoirs of Panagis Skouzes, set in late eighteenth-century Athens, together with providing a broader methodological overview of life narratives as sources. Part 2 opens with an essay by İrfan Kökdaş, which focuses on the correlation between wealth and the surviving number of children in its investigation of the historical roots of the nineteenth-century demographic transition in Ottoman lands. Then Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik delineates the imagined ideal relationship between a child and a father in early modern Istanbul through an advice manual. Finally, Nicoleta Roman provides a comparative analysis of legal [End Page 458] regulations concerning juvenile delinquency, as well as a discussion of changing attitudes toward children and youth in post-Ottoman Romania. The third part goes beyond family settings and starts with Fırat Yaşa's chapter on child slaves in seventeenth-century Crimea. Yahya Araz's chapter then elaborates upon the highly interesting issues of gendered labor mobility between the provinces and Istanbul, government efforts to control and standardize this migration pattern, and the relationship of the girls with their host families. Mahmoud Yazbak's essay completes this part: well-known for his significant and pioneering works on Muslim orphans in Ottoman Palestine, Yazbak describes the social status of Muslim orphans and regulations with regard to guardianship according to Islamic law. Part 4 opens with an essay by Gülay Yılmaz, whose contribution addresses the recorded physical descriptions of the boys in two child levy registers from 1493–94 and 1604. Didem Yavuz Velipaşaoğlu deals with the architectural characteristics of an imperial factory by shedding light upon accommodations, living standards, sanitary conditions, and recreational facilities for its child workers. Nazan Çiçek eloquently examines the persistence of beating children as an esteemed child-raising practice in the Turkish-speaking Muslim community by bringing to light children's voices (and screams). The final part brings together three chapters on education. Elma Korić provides a panorama of educational institutions for Muslim children and youth, also bringing to light hiring and enrollment criteria, curricula, bonds between teachers and students, and educational techniques. Ruth Lamdan relies on sermons, books of ethics, and extensive legal literature to analyze concepts of childhood, education (institutions and theories), and the religious obligation of society and the family to educate children. Fruma Zach's final chapter in the volume highlights the transformative role of education for the family and nation, as well as its emancipatory aspect for the lives of women and children. The prominence of the early modern era (with nine chapters) in the volume's chronological focus is worth stressing, as the research on Ottoman children to date has been confined mostly to the nineteenth century. By the same token, wide geographic coverage of the book, going beyond the Balkans and Anatolia to Wallachia, Crimea, Palestine, and Egypt, has the added value of facilitating comparisons. From a critical perspective, the volume offers more content on "childhood," which is often a discourse among adults, than research on actual "children," bringing to the fore children's perspectives, experiences, and voices. In my Orphans and Destitute Children in the Ottoman Empire (Syracuse...

Children's Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain ed. by Siân Pooley and Jonathan Taylor

Reviewed by: Children's Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain ed. by Siân Pooley and Jonathan Taylor Lorraine McEvoy Children's Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain. Edited by Siân Pooley and Jonathan Taylor. London: University of London Press, 2021. xvi + 285 pp. Cloth £40.00. Also distributed by the University of Chicago Press, Cloth $55.00. Siân Pooley and Jonathan Taylor's thoughtfully edited collection is the result of a workshop on "Children's Experiences of Welfare" that was held at the University of Oxford in 2020. Delivering on the title's promise to place children's perspectives front and center, Children's Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain brings together ten chapters, each of which clearly contributes to the overall argument that "the young were integral to the making, interpretation, delivery and impact of welfare services, and that their involvement has left a distinctive imprint on the shape of welfare in modern Britain" (1). The chapters, which deal with a wide range of case studies (the first four begin in the nineteenth century and the remaining six in the twentieth), locate children's experiences through a multiplicity of sources created by children themselves and by welfare providers. A strength of the collection is the diverse modes of welfare provision considered—including institutions, family and peer networks, schools, hospitals, emigration programs, and more—and the success with which the chapters situate their findings within broader contexts and historiographical debates. [End Page 446] Pooley and Taylor's introduction makes a convincing argument for the relevance of the volume, clearly delineating the insights and innovations it provides into histories of welfare, childhood, and modern Britain. The volume is guided by "three conceptual foundations": an approach to children's encounters with welfare that, "[r]ather than telling the story of a single institution or policy . . . seeks to understand the experience of mobility, instability, uncertainty—and sometimes power—that emerged from being the nexus of multiple inconsistent investments"; a contention that the significance of human relationships to welfare can be better understood by examining children's experiences; and the assertion that individual experiences and qualitative, longitudinal evidence should be used alongside more quantitative and adult provider–determined measures of progress and impact (2–3). The chapters are arranged chronologically in order to challenge familiar accounts of welfare history that tell tales of linear progress and to argue that "children became less able to shape the expanded mid-twentieth-century welfare services from which they were assumed to benefit" (21). Notwithstanding the range of subjects, the collection is pleasantly cohesive due to editorial clarity of purpose and the way chapters cross-reference each other, interweaving common themes to enrich conceptualizations of children as more than passive recipients and to highlight their roles in shaping welfare provision. The focus on children's voices, which are woven throughout the collection, is compelling, and the volume is a welcome addition to discussions concerning children's agency. The collected chapters present a "spectrum of everyday responses to welfare provision" and highlight the various ways that children exercised agency through resistance, expression, rebellion, compliance, negotiation, play and even silence (13). While Gordon Lynch's chapter on postwar child migrants to Australia highlights instances where children's agency was constrained, Rebecca Swartz illustrates how "young people lived on a continuum between powerful and powerless" (48) as part of the Children's Friends Societies colonial emigration schemes, and Laura Tisdall explores how students understood their own agency, or lack thereof, in their relationships with adults and educational hierarchies. Chapters by Gillian Lamb on the backgrounds of children who experienced institutional welfare, Pooley on working-class children's letters in local newspaper columns, Taylor on children's views of postwar Britain and its welfare services, and Valerie Wright on children's play in Glasgow's high-rise estates in the 1960s and 1970s challenge national government-centered narratives and highlight the importance of local authorities, social, familial and communal networks in children's experiences and perceptions of welfare. At the same [End Page 447] time, Caroline Rusterholz emphasizes the benefits of age-based analyses, arguing that controversies restricted younger teenagers' access to sexual welfare services, thus complicating the "common...

The psychological process and emotional cognition of children's tourism experiences in Chinese family culture.

The family cultural environment affects children's cognitive development and socialization processes, and different family cultural environments lead to differences in children's tourism experiences. The current research on children's tourism experiences demands a shift from the families' perspective to that of children's perspective. In response to this, grounded on the cognitive development theory, this paper, from the perspective of children's memorable parent-child tourism experience, uses 321 children's drawings to project the tourism elements, people, activities, scenes, and colors that children perceive from travel, reveals the main cognitive contents of children's parent-child tourism experiences. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the influence of family cultural background on children's tourism experiences through interviews with children. Our results show that with the growth of age, children's perception of elements changes from the macro level to the micro level, and the contents they perceive change from concrete to abstract. In addition, children have an acute perception of people and are impressed by novel activities during travel. They adapt well to changes in travel scenes and prefer bright and vibrant colors during trips. Therefore, we recommend the design of appropriate tourism products that combine the characteristics of children's experiences when offering parent-child travel programs, as well as upgrading the market of parent-child tourism experiences through novel activities.

Perspectives and feelings of refugee children from Syria and Iraq about places and relations as they resettle in Australia.

Refugee children's experiences are situated in specific places where they interact with significant people. They are not usually asked about their perspectives although they are social agents with distinctive perspectives and feelings about relationships and events. We investigated the perspectives of refugee children on their experiences of places and relations as they resettled in Australia after their families fled from violence in Syria and Iraq and transitioned through Middle Eastern countries. One hundred-and-nine children chose to work with a computer program in either English or Arabic. They sorted feelings associated with home, school, and where they lived before and rated being nurtured at home. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed five subgroups of children with distinctive patterns in their sorting of eight feelings for three places. Three subgroups had patterns of positive feelings about home and school. Two smaller subgroups had mixed, ambivalent feelings about either school or home. One subgroup was strongly positive, and two others were negative about before settlement. Subgroups identified on their sortings of feelings differed in their experiences of being nurtured, with positive feelings of places related to higher ratings of being nurtured at home. The study points to the importance of children's perspectives and feelings in how they interpret experiences with people and places and argues against assuming that refugee children are homogeneous in their experiences or perspectives.

Children's perspectives on the wicked problem of child poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand: a wearable camera study.

Child poverty is a wicked problem and a key determinant of health, but research on child poverty has relied largely on self-report methods and reports from parents or caregivers. In this study we aimed to assess aspects of child poverty using data collected by children using wearable cameras. The Kids'Cam Project recruited 168 randomly selected children aged 11-13 from 16 randomly selected schools in the Wellington Region of Aotearoa New Zealand. Each child wore a wearable camera for four consecutive days, recording an image every seven seconds. We used negative binomial regression models to compare measures of household resources, harms, behaviours and built environment characteristics between children living in low socio-economic deprivation households (n=52) and children living in high socio-economic deprivation households (n=26). Compared with children living in conditions of low socio-economic deprivation, children living in conditions of high socio-economic deprivation captured significantly fewer types of fruit (RR=0.46), vegetables (RR=0.25), educational materials (RR = 0.49) and physical activity equipment (RR = 0.66) on camera. However, they lived in homes with more structural deficiencies (RR=4.50) and mould (no mould was observed in low socio-economic deprivation households). They were also less likely to live in households with fixed heating (RR=0.27) and home computers (RR=0.45), and more likely to consume non-core food outside home (RR=1.94). The children in this study show that children in poverty face disadvantages across many aspects of their lives. Comprehensive policies are urgently needed to address the complex problem of child poverty.

Child protection investigations by private consultants or municipally employed social workers: What are the differences for children?

Summary In Sweden, a practice has developed where the social services have started to hire private consultants in child protection investigations. This article analyses and compares the handling of child protection investigations carried out by private consultants and municipally employed social workers with regard to the reasons for the reports, the investigations, the assessments, and the decisions taken about interventions. The concepts funnel and filtering and children's participation are used in the analysis. The study has a mixed-methods design, where qualitative and quantitative data and analysis are combined and integrated. Data consists of 120 case files regarding the social service's handling of investigations as well as interviews with managers of social service departments. Findings The results show several differences in the handling of child protection investigations carried out by social workers and private consultants in the municipalities studied. The private consultants worked to a greater extent with investigations that were initiated due to concerns about violence. Investigations conducted by consultants contained less information and specifically concerning children's perspective. These children also received interventions to a lesser extent than children assessed by the municipal social workers. Application The study indicates that from a child’s perspective, it matters whether a municipally employed social worker or a private consultant performs an investigation. Consultants generally work temporarily in a workplace, and it may therefore be more difficult to establish a trusting relationship with the children, which can be a barrier to children's participation and the implementation of a child’s perspective.

Understanding and Supporting Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the Primary School Classroom: Perspectives of Children with ADHD and their Teachers

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are more at risk for academic underachievement compared to their typically developing peers. Understanding their greatest strengths and challenges at school, and how these can be supported, is vital in order to develop focused classroom interventions. Ten primary school pupils with ADHD (aged 6–11 years) and their teachers (N = 6) took part in semi-structured interviews that focused on (1) ADHD knowledge, (2) the child’s strengths and challenges at school, and (3) strategies in place to support challenges. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview transcripts and three key themes were identified; classroom-general versus individual-specific strategies, heterogeneity of strategies, and the role of peers. Implications relating to educational practice and future research are discussed.

Hearing the Voice of the Child in Safeguarding Processes: Exploring Different Voices and Competing Narratives

AbstractThis paper presents the findings of research about children's participation in child protection processes. Research was undertaken with young people who had recent involvement with safeguarding professionals. The study explored children's lived experience and perspectives and found that children feel capable of making a contribution, however, they are frustrated by experiences of exclusion and inequality and the limitations of their ability to influence process and outcomes.The study further explored the perspectives of practitioners. Whilst professional commitment to child‐centred practice and effective safeguarding is unequivocal, the discourse of participation is characterised by ‘yes, but’. Insights emerged from the different voices and competing narratives of the central protagonists in the child protection process: children, social workers, chairs of case conferences and advocates. This paper examines how the child's right to involvement in safeguarding processes is understood and contributes to the evolving discourse about the importance of children's participation.

Development and Validation of a Health-Related Quality-of-Life Measure in Older Children and Adolescents with Early-Onset Scoliosis

The 24-question Early-Onset Scoliosis Questionnaire (EOSQ-24) is a proxy measure assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among patients with early-onset scoliosis (EOS). There exists an increasing need to assess HRQoL through a child's own perspective, particularly for older children and adolescents with EOS. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a self-reported questionnaire, the Early-Onset Scoliosis Self-Report Questionnaire (EOSQ-SELF), to assess HRQoL in older children and adolescents with EOS. A literature review, an expert focus group, and patient interviews were used to generate a preliminary survey of appropriate domains and question items. This survey was provided to English-speaking patients with EOS who were 8 to 18 years of age and capable of answering survey questions. Content validity was assessed for clarity and relevance of questions. Confirmatory factors analysis was performed to reduce the number of items and determine domains that fit items. Reliability was evaluated by measuring the internal consistency of items and test-retest reliability. Construct validity was evaluated by convergent, discriminant, and known-group validity. The literature review, expert focus group, and patient interviews identified 59 questions in 14 domains. Psychometric analysis reduced these to 30 questions across 12 domains: General Health, Pain/Discomfort, Pulmonary Function, Transfer, Physical Function/Daily Living, Participation, Fatigue/Energy Level, Sleep, Appearance, Relationships, Emotion, and Satisfaction. The final questionnaire was found to have good content and construct validity and adequate reliability. The EOSQ-SELF is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring self-reported HRQoL among older children and adolescents with EOS (ages 8 to 18 years). This will serve as an important research outcome measure and enhance clinical care by providing a better understanding of HRQoL for these patients. Diagnostic Level II . See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Children's and adolescents’ conversations with mothers about offenders’ and victims’ responsibility for harm in their experiences of being hurt by a peer

AbstractThis study investigated mothers’ and children's constructions of meaning about responsibility for harm in conversations about two experiences when children were hurt by a peer and felt they had either contributed or not contributed to the situation. The sample included 105 Canadian mothers (75% White) and their children (53 girls, 52 boys) across three age groups (M ages = 6.92, 11.14, 15.89 years). Overall, mothers and children emphasized different aspects of responsibility; mothers made more evaluations of acts and discussed the avoidability of harm whereas children referred more to hurtful acts, consequences, reasons, and subsequent responses. Discussions of the child's and peer's responsibility were responsive to the child's perspective on events. The child's responsibility for self‐protection was particularly emphasized by mothers and when the child felt they had not contributed to the situation. Children more often mitigated their responsibility as compared to their mothers, and older children referred more to their own and their peer's responsibility for harm. Findings illuminate how conversations with mothers may inform children's judgments of their own and others’ roles in peer conflict.

Residential care as an alternative care option: A review of literature within a global context

AbstractWhile there is unequivocal agreement on the need to support families and to avoid all unnecessary separation, there are ongoing debates across policy and practitioner communities nationally and internationally, around the place of residential care within the range of alternative care services which should be available to children who need them. This paper presents the findings of a review of evidence looking at the function, quality and outcomes of residential care based on 111 papers identified for inclusion using systematic searches. The review identifies definitional ambiguity in the use of the terms ‘residential’ and ‘institutional’ care in the literature, which, alongside the different cultural, social and economic contexts, makes generalizing challenging. However, we found insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that residential care is inherently unsuitable. We identify research gaps in the literature, including in relation to quality, children's perspectives and factors that impact upon the suitability of residential care for different children, before discussing implications of the findings for research, policy and practice.

Children's version of the systemic clinical outcome and routine evaluation (C‐SCORE): Exploring the psychometric qualities in the Portuguese context

AbstractCurrent literature presents a gap in family functioning assessment instruments directed to children. The Child Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation (C‐SCORE) is a self‐report instrument, based on the original SCORE‐15, that measures different aspects of family functioning from the child's perspective. This study aims to explore the psychometric qualities of the Portuguese version of C‐SCORE using a sample of 119 children, aged 8–11 years, recruited from public (state) schools located in North Portugal. Results showed good internal consistency for the total scale and were consistent with the original factorial structure. Correlation analyses using the Perception Scale of Parenting Communication – Children (COMPA‐C) provided support for convergent validity. This study represents the first psychometric evaluation of the C‐SCORE using a sample of Portuguese children, with exploratory results suggesting that this version presents acceptable psychometric qualities, and may be especially useful to assess family functioning from the child's view.

Mapping review of interventions to reduce the use of restrictive practices in children and young people's institutional settings: The CONTRAST study.

Restrictive practices are often used harmfully with children in institutional settings. Interventions to reduce their use do not appear to have been mapped systematically. Using environmental scanning, we conducted a broad-scope mapping review of English language academic databases, websites and social media, using systematic methods. Included records (N= 121) were mostly from the United States and contained details of 82 different interventions. Children's participation was limited. Reporting quality was inconsistent, which undermined claims of effectiveness. Overall, despite a multitude of interventions, evidence is limited. Leaders should consider the evidence, including children's perspectives, before introducing poorly understood interventions into children's settings.

Reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on children’s rights to, in and through education

ABSTRACT Emergency legislation introduced internationally since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic saw the closure of all levels of educational settings and a shift to remote teaching. Drawing lessons from an independent child rights impact assessment (CRIA) in Scotland, United Kingdom, this paper reviews the impact of COVID-19 measures on children and young people’s rights to, and experiences of, education during the current crisis. Findings highlight that while measures sought to preserve the best interests of children and their basic rights to safety, a distinct lack of consultation on the impacts of the measures undermined the interdependency and indivisibility of children’s human rights. Three human rights principles – participation and inclusion, non-discrimination, and mutual accountability of family and the State – were identified as being particularly significant in this assessment. Looking forward, findings point to the need for extending the range of perspectives involved in child rights impact assessments in times of crisis – where human rights are at even greater risk of being breached – and the significance of a children's rights-based perspective for re-imagining education altogether.

Reflections of Adult Children of Mothers with Intellectual Disability.

This multiple case study explores the phenomena of being raised by parents with intellectual disabilities from the adult child's perspective. Autoethnographic data was collected from the author and 4 non-disabled adults who were raised by mothers who had intellectual disabilities. The significance of the parent's disability, parent/child relationship and the social factors that either hindered or facilitated the family are discussed. This study found that the majority of the families were at risk of losing custody of their children and that extended family or support services protected the family unit and provided valuable support to the children. It was common for the participants to have additional responsibilities growing up. All of the adult children achieved typical adult outcomes. The adult children interviewed typically did not define their maternal relationships in terms of disability or limitations and all maintained a strong relationship with their mothers.

Children's Experience and Practice of Belonging: The Realities of Integration among De Facto Stateless Vietnamese Children in Cambodia

AbstractVietnamese populations currently residing in Cambodia can be broadly divided into two categories: long-term settlers who have lived in Cambodia for generations and more recent economic migrants. This article focuses on the former group, as it is their children and their children's children who are at high risk of statelessness, unlike the latter who are mostly citizens of Vietnam. Without birth certificates, these children live precarious lives in Cambodia, often in the shadows of ethnic discrimination, poverty, and violence. By using various qualitative research methods, and by emphasizing children's perspectives, the author puts forth the argument that theorizations of integration and assimilation developed in the migration literature are useful for understanding the context in which de facto stateless children in Cambodia negotiate “place belonging.”

Perspectives of Children and Youth With Disabilities and Special Needs Regarding Their Experiences in Inclusive Education: A Meta-Aggregative Review

Inclusive education is important to achieve high-quality education for all; however, there is an important gap in the literature surrounding inclusive education, namely representation of the perspectives of children and youth with disabilities and special needs. In this study, we used a meta-aggregative approach to qualitative evidence synthesis to bring together systematically the perspectives of these children and youth regarding their experiences in inclusive education, and to generate recommendations for action. After selecting and critically appraising the methodological quality of eligible qualitative studies, we extracted the findings from the results sections of 27 studies involving children and youth with various diagnoses and special needs. We aggregated the findings to develop 19 categories, which we further synthesized into six overarching statements pertaining to: (i) teachers’ and education workers’ support and attitudes; (ii) implementation of support and accommodations; (iii) need for safe and accommodating physical environment; (iv) preparation for high school transitions; (v) friendships and peer interactions; and (vi) participants’ own views of themselves. Implications of our findings include: (i) a need for strong leadership at the school level to support implementation of inclusive education; (ii) a need for leadership from government agencies and schools to provide opportunities for teachers to train and collaborate with other professionals; and (iii) a need for flexibility in curriculum and instruction, for which educators require training and experience. Most importantly, our findings show that children and youth with disabilities and special needs, when provided opportunities, demonstrate profound personal understandings of their strengths and needs, their conditions and how these impact their lives, leading to insightful information that can enhance inclusive education practice and policy.