This article addresses the issue of children's spiritual, relational and emotional encounters with the primary school environment, with reference to concepts and theories from both education studies and human geography. Drawing on mixed-method qualitative research in two case study institutions, the article examines pupils' photographed "special…

This article provides a synthesis of current research and theories of spiritual development in forced displacement from a human rights perspective. Spirituality, understood as a cognitive-cultural construct, has shown positive impact on children's development through both collective and individual processes and across ecological domains of the…

Children's vulnerability asks for people taking up responsibility for children. In this contribution, three different ways of thinking on foundations of (ethical and spiritual) responsibility for children are discussed, namely, a liberalist, a social-constructivist and a naturalist paradigm. The author argues that cultural and natural elements are…

After an overview of the British context in 2005 and its ambivalent attitude to Church schools, this article explores the issues of potential religious abuse, alongside a preferred holistic Christian discipleship. The final section explains how Church schools can operate in a way that encourages Christian nurture and prevent religious abuse. The…

The article attempts to outline the beginning of a wider interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between a number of fields that appear initially incongruent and unconnected, but which, on closer examination, are integrally related. Taking totalitarianism as a conceptual core, the article begins by defining some of the historical and…

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is accepted in nearly all countries in the world although the idea of children's rights is still much discussed. The author distinguishes two perspectives for interpreting the children's rights' convention correlated with different child images. On the one hand there is the "caretaker…

Many reports have highlighted the vulnerability of children's rights during times of conflict, and emergency education has come into being as a way of ensuring that children's educational needs are met in crisis situations. But how far can emergency education provide meaningful values education? The first section of this article examines the…

In spite of the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants parents the right to an education in conformity with their own religious convictions, this paper argues that parents should have no such rights. It also tries to demonstrate that religious and cultural minorities have no rights to establish faith schools and that it is a…

"Every Child Matters" is a major change programme aimed at integrating all services for children and young people in England. It seeks to enable a new holistic approach to their care and so improve a number of outcomes for children, thus improving their overall well-being. "Every Child Matters" seeks to address the rights of…

This paper considers whether there are aspects of spiritual pedagogy specific to the education of children who are sick and asks how these concerns are to be addressed. The context of the enquiry is England and Wales where the promotion of the spiritual development of children is a legislative requirement. The focus of the study is on sick…

How might a concern with children's spirituality "touch down" within the different spaces, discourses and performances within a school? This article is concerned with the affordances of children's rights discourse in relation to young people's participation, deliberation, and ethical work upon the self, within one primary school in…

Drawing from the research on children of war in Bogota, Beirut and Bosnia, this paper serves as a framework for dialogue about the criminalization of children by armed conflict and other forms of violence. Furthermore, it addresses the aching question of how best to care for these children so that they have every chance to become illuminated and…