Children have a right to Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). A key place for this to occur is in schools, and teachers' comfort and competence in teaching is critical to delivering high-quality CSE. Good quality Initial Teacher Education (ITE) should provide student teachers with a strong foundation for the delivery of CSE and the creation of…

In social work with children and families, the use of the articles of the UNCRC to inform our understanding of parents and parenting is often overshadowed by the necessary focus on the UNCRC articles as they pertain to the rights of children. Yet, the UNCRC is crucial to our understanding of parenthood because it both defines the role and…

The ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly Article 12 on children's right to participate in matters affecting them, provides a rationale for including the voices of young children when seeking to better understand their lives. Early childhood educators collaborate and converse with young children in their daily…

This paper presents findings from a review of 19 national curriculum policy frameworks (NCPFs) across the globe and discusses dominant and culturally specific discourses that shape early childhood education (ECE). We combine two frameworks of developmental universality and specificity and culturally contextualised pedagogy to explore whether and…

The concept of 'pedagogic voice' emphasises the capacity of children to express their views on matters related to teaching, learning and curriculum. 'Pedagogic voice' aligns with children's rights to be listened to and the extent to which their views are fully considered and acted upon. Combined, these rights based approaches positively shape…

Research that uses innovative approaches to elicit the views of young children has grown hugely over the last 20 years. Against a backdrop of a greater acceptance of children's rights and sociological approaches to understanding children and childhood, with their combined emphasis on the competences and capacities of children, it is now accepted…

This article demonstrates how implementing a rights-based research methodology can contribute to the theory and practice of climate change research and education with young children. The argument stems from a child rights-based participatory study that sought to explore young children's own perspectives of Nature under the education right, Article…

According to Article 12 of the UNCRC, children have a legal right to have their views heard and acted upon as appropriate. In Ireland, this applies to local planning processes concerning children's localities whereby legislation was specifically enacted to recognise children as a group who were entitled to participate in the local planning…

Schools are chief among the social institutions impacted by migrant flows as key sites of integration and support for migrant children. This article focuses on micro- and meso-level interactions and their importance to experiences of belonging and socio-educational integration for migrant children. It explores outcomes from qualitative research in…

Formal consent for children's research participation legally resides with adults, and guidelines typically recommend consulting children about their participation only from 7 years of age. How can researchers support younger children's informed decision-making about their research participation, particularly in larger-scale studies without…

Background: There is a wealth of research on adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) covering a large range of topics such as obesity, speech and language, education and health-related quality of life. However, for quality of life, much of the available literature for adolescents with DS relies on parent proxy reporting. This results in more research…

This article considers how adoption may develop as viable option for permanency planning for children in care in Ireland following the Constitutional Referendum in 2012 on Children's Rights. In order to be prepared to consider how adoption can be developed as a viable alternative to long term care, we need to focus on the specific context of…

Migration across the OECD this decade is reflected in increasingly diverse societies. Although migration into Ireland remains relatively low, increasing pupil diversity is evident in the physical, pedagogical, curricular, and socio-relational aspects of schooling. While the intensity of such changes are evident in teacher pedagogy, children's…

This article presents critical commentary on the relationship between wider policy in Ireland for children, and the practice of social workers and social care workers who work with children on the ground level. An overview of the current policy context for children is achieved through a focused commentary on the literature. This operates around…

This paper analyses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 'education rights' of children in the Irish context, with a particular focus on children's/human rights education (C/HRE). C/HRE can support children and young people to understand and explore the issues which limit people's lives and consider actions to uphold their own rights and the…