This book explores how concepts and values of contemporary democracy are variously understood and applied in diverse cultural contexts, with a focus on children and childhood and diversity. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches relevant to early childhood education, it discusses young children's engagement and voice. The book identifies existing practices, strengths, theories and considerations in democracy in early childhood education and childhood, highlighting the democratic participation of children in cultural contexts. Further, it illustrates how democracy can be evident in early childhood practices and interactions across a range of curriculum contexts and perspectives, and considers ways of advancing and sustaining practices with positive transformational opportunities to benefit children and wider ecological systems.It offers readers insights into what democracy and citizenship look like in lived experience, and the issues affecting practice and encouraging reflection and advocacy.

The background for this study is the last decades emphasised ethical considerations in child research. We have found ethics to be more and more acknowledged and regulations to be strengthened. Based on this, the aim of the study is to review the ethical issues in child research to find out how ethical considerations are dealt with in this respect. Four important journals, representing three important editors were selected. Through reading 707 abstracts from volumes 2016 and 2017, empirical studies focusing on children under the age of 8 were found in 95 articles and were further analysed regarding ethical issues. The result shows that regardless of requirements in journal guidelines, about one third of the articles lack any ethical reflection. Further, it is also shown that just over half of the articles merely stated compliance with regulations and standards, and just a few of articles presented a deeper reflection on the ethical considerations including occurring dilemmas. The shift towards stronger ethical regulations is discussed as if it might encourage the tendency of just doing what is necessary according to laws and when doing so, the risk of ethical drift is elaborated.

Denna vänbok tillägnas vår kollega Héctor Pérez Prieto. Boken består av olika berättelser med anknytning till Héctors forskning och tillsammans formar bidragen en ny berättelse om hans forskarliv, en slags livsberättelse.

Författarna är akademiska vänner som vid olika tidpunkter och på olika platser samarbetat med Héctor som handledare, student, doktorand och kollega.  

This article focuses on a new form of governing that targets a selected group of teachers. Specifically, it analyses how the Swedish so-called advanced teacher reform is enacted at the local level and discusses its implications for teachers’ professionalism. The methodological approach enables a local analysis in a broader international policy context. Using characteristic elements from curriculum theory to analyse the relationship between different levels and elaborating on the linguistic turn of curriculum theory, three concepts are central in the analysis: enactment, linguistic criteria and professionalism. Empirically, the study draws on material from a two-year application process in a medium-sized municipality. The result demonstrates that the local enactment process is clearly influenced by transnational policy trends and that less allowance is made for teachers’ own experience-based knowledge in the second studied year. The linguistic analysis shows how the applicants using the ‘right concepts’ were selected to become ‘advanced teachers’. As complex and qualitative aspects disappeared from the agenda, this type of governing, with its standardized use of language, may reduce schools’ educational potential. Changes like this raise new questions about how schools can maintain and develop democratic and professional values whilst being exposed to new policy trends.