Module Directory

This module offers an introduction to studying childhood issues at local and global levels. The overall aim is to enhance students' interests in children and childhood by exploring diverse issues about and approaches to childhood. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to childhood issues, looking at children and young people in the contexts of psychology, sociology, history, research, media, culture, consumption, law, children's rights, family, education, and work.

The module offers an international perspective by including cultural specificity and variation as well as global concerns about and interventions into childhood issues. The coverage of the topics is also inclusive of some groups of children and young people who might often be marginalised or have more recently emerged or been recognised in society. These include topics related to new digital media, consumer culture, gender and sexuality, delinquency, disability, and diverse forms of family aided by the technology of assisted conception.

Throughout the module, we will explore how we gain an understanding of childhood; how children and childhood are conceptualised and treated by adults and society; how children and young people themselves view and experience their lives; and what kinds of inequality and power relationships might exist in the interplay between childhood and the world.

The module will encourage students to embrace alternative views and ways of thinking, including psychosocial and psychoanalytic approaches, and to think for themselves about how we could gain a closer understanding of individual children and young people's lives and experiences by allow them to advocate for themselves.

The aims of the module are:

• To provide a foundation for working either with children or in fields relevant to childhood


• To introduce the basic knowledge and vocabulary for engaging with the extensive fields of research and wide range of topics related to children and young people 


• To offer tools for critical engagement with the materials introduced, and encourage students to work towards better informed and considered evaluation of each topic encountered


• To extend students’ knowledge of the wide range of issues surrounding children and childhood, developing students’ awareness of various discourses about childhood in particular contexts


• To encouraging student’s self-awareness about their own beliefs and preconceptions about childhood

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Gain an overview of the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. They will develop their understanding of diverse ways in which children and childhood have been studied, discussed, and treated


2. Gain an overview of the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. They will develop their understanding of diverse ways in which children and childhood have been studied, discussed, and treated


3. Acquire skills to critically assess evidence. They will become able to distinguish grounded evidence from other kinds of information, examine the significance and limitations of evidence, and discuss debates on the basis of balanced evaluation of evidence


4. Become able to use the evidence of children’s and young people’s own experiences as described in research, and gain an understanding of how children and young people themselves shape childhood as well as how childhood is constructed by adults and society


5. Become able to question what is considered normal or natural about childhood, and use variety of evidence cautiously to achieve a more holistic understanding of issues about childhood

This module will be delivered via:

• 20 x 1hr lectures
• 20 x 1hr discussion seminars