http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9853 Working with Children and Families: Professional, Legal and Ethical Issues examines ethics in the light of professionalism and legal issues. Each chapter begins with reflection points and students are encouraged to use these points to help monitor their own learning process. Each topic is accompanied by mini case studies or stories to help ground reading in experience or daily practice. 2012-02-13T22:05:58.754Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9964 Many current debates in Australia regarding the policy, politics and practicalities of childcare provision are embedded in dominant discourses of maternalism. This article places these debates within some historical contexts, emphasising the long history of these debates and the enduring centrality of maternalism - where the most revered of roles and relationships a woman can have is that of mother and one-on-one carer for her young child. In this article, the author discusses some of the historical points at which maternalism came to dominate early childhood education and care. The author considers Froebel, and the women who spread his word, nation building and the rise of psychology, making links between these and current debates in Australia. 2012-02-09T00:50:04.049Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9104 A broad body of research considers children and childhood as a ‘substance’ (Foucault, 1994) that different discourses objectify in varying ways, for example, that children are innocent or children are going through phases. We accept these discourses as telling about children’s true nature. I approach the child here rather as a ‘form’ that can vary according to what knowledge was created about this ‘form’ and which knowledge was accepted as true. Following up on an earlier study that examined the shifting conceptualizations of ‘the child’ in Western Australia, I embarked on new research that investigates the ways in which ‘the child’ was thought about in Hungary under state socialism. I chose Hungary because these sites represent two political regimes: socialist/communist and liberal/capitalist, and as such offer different institutional structures for early childhood education. Through the utilization of the constitutions of ‘the child’ I outline from the Hungarian study, I aim to de-stabilize some of the taken-for-granted constitutions of ‘the child’ that are embedded in the recent field of early childhood education in Australia. Another aim of this paper is to report on the initial findings of the Hungarian study. Due to the complexity of the work at hand, I narrowed the focus in this paper to a particular education program document, the Educational program for kindergartens from 1971. The analysis first explores a brief history and the shifting nature of state engagement with early education in Hungary to create a historical and political context for the analysis. Then I move into discussing some of the intellectual traditions by centering on the nature of education this document outlines. This way of proceeding with the analysis enables the creation of a space in which constitutions of ‘the child’ could be identified. By conceptualizing the state as the constructor of educational paths and the interpreter of ‘the child’, I aim to answer the following questions: What conceptualizations of early education this document outlines in Hungary during the socialist period? How these conceptualizations of education constituted ‘the child’ as their subject? The overall question of this paper is: In what ways are constitutions of ‘the child’ in socialist/communist Hungary and in liberal/capitalist Australia today different or similar? This study involves historical refocusing and a conceptual retooling. It also uses an alternative method of history writing, that is, genealogy in a Foucauldian sense. 2012-01-30T05:24:23.689Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1036 Sport is an important part of Australian culture and is highly valued by many children. Approximately 50 per cent of Australian children participate in organised sport. The most popular sports for boys are soccer, swimming and Australian Rules and the most popular for girls are netball, swimming and tennis. It is well established that children's early experiences in sport can have a lasting influence on their enjoyment and participation in a range of physical activities throughout their lives. Similarly, involvement in sport has many benefits for children including improved physical, cognitive, emotional and social development. However, it is unwise to assume all children will have positive sporting experiences. This article focuses on those factors that can impact on the likelihood of a rewarding and enjoyable sporting experience for children. 2011-10-26T06:40:05.647Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1453 The Australian project, "Support at Home for Early Language and Literacies (SHELLS)", is an early literacy intervention for families of young children between birth and three years of age. SHELLS began in 1997. Content is based on the interests of participants, current knowledge about children's literacy learning in the years prior to school entry, and growing acceptance of the importance of learning in the first three years of life. 2010-04-27T06:52:28.531Z ]]>