Explore the vast range of titles available.

This essay explores the difficult implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in one developed industrial nation, the United Kingdom, where we might expect children to enjoy a favorable situation in relation to their rights. The 2008 report of the Committee on the Rights of the Child has documented the UK’s limited success in implementing the convention. While not denying some successes, I shall summarize the funding, coordination, and other obstacles to the implementation of basic protection and provision rights as highlighted by the committee. However, from a pedagogical perspective, what is most important is

In other words, science understands that at any time a new technique, technology, or idea may make preceding data obsolete. * Insists that the effects of the personal (i.e. preference) be minimized. * Out of all of this effort should come useful (in scientific terms, reliable) data, defined as data that is likely to apply in many different circumstances.2 Uncovering bias The effort to minimize bias demands that bias first be recognized. The significance, when considering bias that may be introduced even prior to the start of a research project, is that in the practice of scientific research, the helping function of health care has sometimes been factored out of a given design. Some things are hard to measure, such as the pressure of a hand delivering massage.

This article aims to outline key factors to be considered in the development of communities of enquiry in an educational context and to establish a conceptual and theoretical framework within which much needed empirical work can be carried out. The literature surveyed considers both different types of community and different theoretical positions on how communities develop. Seven factors emerge. 1) A community depends on its members' opportunities to engage in dialogue and other modes of participation. 2) Participation in a community is sustained through the quality of relationships. 3) Perspectives and assumptions underpin the relationships of a community and may offer insights into the dynamics and operation of the community. 4) How a community operates is governed by its structure and context, including the extent to which its structure is imposed or constrained either internally or externally. 5) As a community develops, a climate for its operation also emerges-involving aspects such as tone, environment and potential conflict. 6) The purpose of an enquiry will influence this climate and there may be a need to accommodate or harmonise a multiplicity of purposes arising from the complex interrelationships, perspectives and assumptions involved. 7) A key issue for all communities is control, in relation to who has access to the community, to resources, constraints and power within it. The authors conclude by highlighting a number of tensions or dualities arising from these themes and potential implications for empirical investigations in this field and for those who may seek to build a community of educational enquiry.

The quality of the parent-child relationship is a strong predictor of outcomes for children, and its assessment is a key element of the work of health visitors. The Glasgow Parenting Support Framework emphasises the importance of relationship assessment, and a feasibility study using a semi-structured approach is being carried out in one area of the city. This paper explores how well health visitors agree in observational assessments of problems in video-recorded mother-child interactions and considers the impact of specific training in observational skills. Variable levels of agreement in judgement were demonstrated by 25 health visitors attending a training day. With little negative interaction between parent and child, agreement was high whether rates of positive interaction were high or low. Less agreement was found where high frequencies of negative behaviours were seen alongside positive behaviours. Assessment training may increase the abilities of health visitors to identify these problems, but more research is required into how this might be done most effectively.

This thesis will investigate the concept of child. Much time and study has been devoted to the subject of children in educational, psychological, sociological and historical contexts, however, there is little research on the topic of the child from a philosophical perspective - this work aims to redress this. In seeking to define what child is, it is anticipated that such a definition will impact upon how those deemed as children are perceived in society which will ultimately determine their role and involvement within that society. Initially the thesis will address the concept of person. By utilizing Kant's Practical Imperative that we should treat others as ends in themselves and not merely as a means to an end the work will assess whether, in the first instance, children are treated as persons and then will determine whether or not children actually are persons. It will be argued that person is a moral concept and does not in itself create an individual's identity. Attention will be turned to the self and the role it plays in interpreting the external, physical world that human beings inhabit. The self plays a vital part in shaping the I or one's identity which remains continuous, it will be suggested, throughout one's life from birth to death. Further, the thesis will consider how as moral agents we participate in the external, physical world. The notion of citizenhood will be explored. The citizen role will be examined in relation to children and it will be maintained that children should not be excluded from being active, participative and political citizens within society as they currently are. The work will look to the work of McCall to show that there is limited support for Piaget's developmental psychology in terms of children's reasoning abilities. It will be held that the practice of Community of Philosophical Inquiry is a positive model which promotes egalitarianism and true participation within a community which also facilitates reasoning and critical thinking in participants of all ages. Reflecting upon the work of Aries consideration will be given to the changing and evolving status children have within society. It will be seen that there is a cyclical nature in the way children have been perceived over time; it will be held that there is currently a move away from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century notion that children are innocent beings who should be sheltered and protected from the world of adults. There is, it will be suggested, a return to the medieval understanding where children and adults exist in the same spaces with the same information available to them and that consequently the divide between children and adult human beings is blurring and losing its definition currently. It will be shown that until now thinking about children has been the wrong way round. Rather than thinking of children as adults minus certain qualities, which is the way in which they are currently perceived and treated, it will be held that adults are children with certain qualities added. The thesis will conclude that through a practice such as Community of Philosophical Inquiry children will have more of an equal role in society and, indeed, the diminishing division between children and adults would facilitate children's participation.