This Nordic child is often considered competent: as a family member, a pupil, a consumer or a citizen. Looking more in-depth, one finds that the idea of the competent child is intimately linked to the modern project and to ideas of children as rational "beings"; children in their own right. This book is the result of an intense debate within the NordBarn research network, funded by the Nordic Research Academy for five years. The contributors are researchers from Denmark, Finland Iceland, Norway and Sweden, representing several discipline, such as pedagogics, social work, ethnology and media studies. The book consists of four parts focusing on child policies and child participation, school and day care, market and consumption, and finally an attempt to rethink the concept of becoming-child in the new millennium.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

While few could dispute the need for Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) for children and young people, this book explores the problems inherent in this educational practice. Despite good intentions, the author highlights how ESE can in fact contribute to a (re)production of harmful norms and possible subjectivities by categorizing various groups as ‘threats’ to the environment. The author analyzes how these categorizations are entangled in historical discourses on social class, nationality and race, thus resulting in double gestures of inclusion and exclusion. Even as sustainability and environmental engagement becomes a treasured identity for the affluent, the author highlights that despite the best of intentions, the discourse of ESE can reinforce positions of suborder and superiority, which could even impede real change in the long run. This illuminating book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainability education. Foreword by Thomas S. Popkewitz

Readers’ comments: A Fabulous, Important Book. Jesper Juul provides parents with such an amazing and absolutely vital approach to raising children that it rings true on every page. Some of what he suggests we as parents do is difficult, but all of it is right on about how we can raise confident, healthy, whole humans, right from the start. I was thrilled to have discovered a book that allowed me to see different possibilities with child raising. Anyone with a child will gain immensely from reading this book, seeing themselves in his numerous examples, and learning how to move on from there. I am grateful for this book and highly recommend it. No Parent Should Be Without It. With tremendous wisdom and a warm, pragmatic eye, Mr. Juul helps us redefine the ways we look at a child's behavior and our relationship to our children and ultimately, each other. This is a book that doesn't offer easy answers or 'tricks' to help in the raising of your child. This is a book that helps you see with a child's eye, hear with a child's ear, and feel with a child's heart in ways that feel so natural and obvious, you will wonder why you haven't thought of them before. It is a book that offers day-to-day skills along with the thinking that helps generate them. This groundbreaking book should be on the shelf of all parents everywhere. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you have children - read this book! This is an amazing book that will surely turn upside down any thoughts you ever had about raising children. Even though you may not agree with all the views in this book, there is so much food for thought and new ideas that you will return to this book again and again for interesting and mind blowing advice.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

From both an international perspective and through combining theory, practice and reflection, this book examines critically how listening to young children in early childhood services is understood and practiced.

This astute book initiates a broad discussion from a variety of different disciplines about how we place children nationally, globally and within development discourses. Unlike other books of its kind, it does not seek to dwell solely on the abiding complexities of local comparisons. Rather, it elaborates larger concerns about the changing nature of childhood, young people’s experiences, their citizenship and the embodiment of their political identities as they are embedded in the processes of national development and globalization. In particular, this book concentrates on three main issues: nation building and developing children, child participation and activism in the context of development, and globalization and children’s live in the context of what has been called "the end of development." These are relatively broad research perspectives that find focus in what the authors term "reproducing and developing children" as a key issue of national and global concern. They further argue that understanding children and reproduction is key to understanding globalization.