Child Well-Being and Social Progress: Moving Beyond Health, Safety, and Standards

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together the work of 5 scholars working from children’s rights-based perspectives, with experiences in both Global South and North American contexts to explore how “social progress” goes beyond policies of protection and provision of children, families and early childhood programs to include nuanced interpretation of child well-being. The panel explores issues of child well-being related to environmental factors, poverty and disability, developmentally appropriate practice(s), relationships-based care, cultural safety and teacher preparation. While drawing from contrasting contexts, authors agree that complicating rather than simplifying children’s well-being is critical to social progress and that such progress is nonlinear and complex.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Early Education and Child Development

Chair

• Sonya Gaches, The University of Arizona

Papers

• Un-reading Risk: Maternal Factors in Childhood Disability in Kenya - Kagendo Mutua, The University of Alabama; Mwarumba Mwavita, Oklahoma State University

• Cultural Safety: Applications and Implications for Indigenous Children's Rights Education - Natasha Blanchet-Cohen, Concordia University

• Framings of Child Well-Being in Infant and Toddler Projects - Beth Blue Swadener, Arizona State University

• "The Lessons Really Are the Student's ..." - Sonya Gaches, The University of Arizona

• Conceptualizing Well-Being in the Implementation of Universal Pre-Kindergarten: An Examination of Teachers' Perspectives - Lacey Elizabeth Peters, Hunter College - CUNY

Discussant

• Marianne N. Bloch, University of Wisconsin - Madison