Schooling the Child

<p>What is a child?<br>How is the concept of childhood defined?<br>This book aims to explore these perennial and complex questions by looking at the way in which society constructs and understands childhood. The authors focus in particular on the school a key location within which social and cultural notions of childhood are defined and performed.<br>The book is divided into three major parts:<br><strong>Part 1</strong> frames the accepted notions of childhood and schooling and introduces ethnomethodological analysis as a tool to rethink current versions of the child.<br><strong>Part 2</strong> focuses on how school students become members of a category within the institution of the classroom. The authors explore this idea through transcripts of talk between teachers and students and amongst students themselves in two classroom studies.<br><strong>Part 3</strong> looks at the materials of education concentrating specifically on children's texts. The authors examine how such texts portray a notion of the child within the story and also assume a notion of the child as reader of the story.<br>This important book shows how much is at stake for children in accepting adults' deep-seated notions of childhood. It will be of great interest to educational researchers and policy makers sociologists of childhood teachers and student teachers.</p>