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The purpose of this paper is to examine the discursive rationalities shaping Irish child policy, with a particular focus on the rationality of “better with less” and its association with an intensified focus on the early years. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis there was a shift towards universal provision of early years services as part of the better with less agenda – the paper critically examines the assumptions which shaped this policy reform.

The paper is based on analysis of the texts of the two national child policy plans produced to date in Ireland – The Children, Their Lives 2000–2010 and Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures 2014–2020.

Ireland adopted its first national children’s strategy The Children, Their Lives in 2000, associated with an initial shift to a more technocratic, investment-oriented approach to policy making. The emphasis on economic returns is more strongly evident in the successor adopted in 2014. Informed by the “better with less” agenda Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures has a strong focus on early years provision as offering the most significant potential for returns, particularly in relation to “disadvantaged” children. This position not only objectifies children but is associated with a set of assumptions about the nature of “disadvantage” and those affected by it which ignores the wider context of unequal social, political and economic relations.

National children’s strategies have not been explicitly looked at previously as a form of governmentalization of government and there has been limited analysis to date in Ireland or elsewhere of the better with less agenda in the context of child policy, gaps which this paper seeks to address.

The canonical narratives (Bruner, 2004) of contemporary research with children include participation, agency and voice. This inclusive language has saturated research literature throughout the development of the “new” social studies of childhood (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998). Their presence was highlighted as illuminating greater understanding of the social realities of children’s lives but they mask and mute as much as they reveal. Heralded as the holy grail of emancipatory research with children, participatory methods have come to be recognized almost exclusively as the route for ethical practice and valid data. The absence of substantial, critical evaluation results in these concepts being little more than “cherished conceits” (Segal, 1999, p. 118). There has been a lack of thorough interrogation of what participation actually means and the data and social relations it produces. Participation implies collaboration and reciprocity but is counter-intuitively used to seek and promote the agentic child enshrined in neoliberalism. Children as social beings negotiate complex social relations (Richards, Clark, & Boggis, 2015) but this is often lost in research encounters which privilege the individual voice, informed by an under-interrogated definition of agency. Instead of following the neoliberal agenda we argue that recognizing the ways in which participatory methods, agency, and voice can and should promote reciprocal and relational social realities is vital to a better understanding of the worlds of children. We call not for their expulsion from research methods but for a re-evaluation of the assumptions that lie beneath and what is produced in their name.

School districts across the United States have adopted web-based student information systems (SIS) that offer parents, students, teachers and administrators immediate access to a variety of data points on each individual. In this chapter, I offer findings from in-depth interviews with school stakeholders that demonstrates how some students, typically ‘high performers’, are drawn into ‘pushed self-tracking’ (Lupton, 2016) of their academic achievement metrics, obsessively monitoring their grades and other quantified measures through digital devices, comparing their performance to other students and often generating a variety of affective states for themselves. I suggest that an SIS functions as a neoliberal technology of childhood government with these students internalising and displaying the self-governing capacities of ‘enterprise’ and ‘autonomy’ (Rose, 1996). These capacities are a product of and reinforce the metric culture of the school.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore practices of early childhood education (ECE) in four Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar. For the past years, the attention toward ECE in these countries have arisen, partially as the result of the international development agenda such as Education for All, Millennium Development Goals and the latest Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter argues the extent to which the practices of ECE in these four countries are the result of their ongoing negotiation between the global and the local values. The chapter also elaborates the gap in the extent to which neoliberalism is very dominant in the ECE. Hence, despite the rhetorical that emphasize the importance of ECE, ECE is largely dominated by private sectors. This situation might create an obstacle for children’s access and participation to ECE sectors. Hence, this chapter serves as invitation for the government to spend more budget to ECE so that ECE can be accessible to all children in the regions.

Researchers have been known to complain that practitioners do not listen to their findings or recommendations, and have emphasised the importance of evidence-based practice. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, research concerning children produced a shift leading to a new sociological paradigm of childhood. This paradigm parallels the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), produced at the same time. Both productions emphasise common themes, which in the principles of the CRC are expressed as non-discrimination, children's participation and the best interests of the child. Sociological frameworks and the CRC were brought together in the growing movement to ‘child-rights programming’ (CRP) taken up by many UN and international children's agencies since the turn of the twenty-first century.¹

In recent decades, childhood in Japan has undergone significant transformations. Government policies geared at boosting women's labor force participation, a declining fertility rate, rising costs of having children on the one hand, and increased spending on public childcare and support measures for families, on the other hand, contribute to these ongoing changes. Having only one child is becoming the norm while mothers' role in society is shifting. The traditional family structure is moving from the previously predominant male breadwinner model to more dual-earner families. Children now spend significant amounts of time in care and education institutions.

In this chapter, we analyze current configurations of early childhood in institutions and the family from a policy perspective and regarding children's predominant education and care arrangements. Drawing on various survey data sets and evidence from demographic statistics to pedagogical ethnographies, we look at how childcare policies and families reshape the organization of children's lives and outline how institutions and educators create learning experiences aligned with the values of a collectivist society. However, despite being deeply rooted in traditional child-rearing goals, many parents also subscribe to rigorous educational arrangements from early childhood onwards to prepare children for success in a competitive education system. The chapter finishes with an outlook on future directions of how policymakers and the ongoing institutionalization of childhood continue to change children's lives.

The present chapter explicates urban and rural childhoods in India. It presents childhood as a dynamic product arising out of an intersection of children's experiences in different familial–socio-cultural contexts, and children's positions within parent–child interactions and relations. These contexts and interactions tend to colour and shape the childhoods that children inhabit. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in urban and rural India, the chapter documents (1) nature of children's engagements and (2) parent–child relations, explicitly observed in parent–child interactions, provisioning warmth and care; parental control and supervision over children and children's participation in the overall fabric of family life and so forth. Forty-eight parents (24 urban and 24 rural) of children aged 7–11 years participated in the study. Qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews and home observations revealed distinctions in urban and rural Indian childhoods. Urban childhood is characterised by rights and privileges, and the centrality of academic pursuits, while rural childhood is featured with subtle induction into economic and social fabric of rural life. Although the world of ‘Indian childhood’ seemed plural, childhood playfulness and learning seemed to be the unifying themes. Geared to the fact that children have to make a living with limited means in the future, both childhoods were accelerated in preparation for future. Dwelling on the complexities in children's lives, this article appreciates diversity and multiplicity in childhoods.

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Social Sector.

The case can be used in undergraduate, graduate and executive education courses in entrepreneurship and strategic management. It is a perfect fit for executive sessions at incubation centers for not-for-profit (NPO) start-up social enterprises. The case is aimed at early-phase social entrepreneurs and those interested in the field.

Anthill Creations (hereafter referred to as Anthill) is a NPO organization engaged in building low-cost sustainable playscapes for underprivileged children. Their mission is to “Bring Back play” in the lives of millions of children of marginalized communities by building sustainable playscapes. It is an effort that contributes toward the objectives of clause 1.2 (Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, 2020), on “Early Childhood Care and Education” (ECCE) in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 of India as released on July 30, 2020. The ECCE clause emphasizes the importance of “learning through play”; and recognizes it to be central to quality early childhood pedagogy and education. Anthill has been working on the same philosophy since its inception in 2016. They have successfully built 300 playscapes across 18 states of the country and impacted the lives of more than 200,000 children. The playscapes are built using upcycled waste material, such as scrap tires, waste cable and oil drums; further, they use local resources and contextual designs and built them by mobilizing community participation. The playscape play elements provide for unstructured free play for children and encourage them to use their imagination to invent new games.

Pooja Rai – the founder and CEO of Anthill Creations, an architect by discipline started the NPO immediately after her graduation. It was her “calling” in life that pushed her to quit a corporate job in the early stages of her career and instead pursue a career in the social sector. The case details her methodical approach in pursuing her intuitive response to a social need, the way she adopts a lean start-up framework to set-up Anthill, her frustrations, personal resilience and ability to balance different stakeholder interests as she treads the difficult journey of building the awareness of inculcating play as a pedagogy in the early years of childhood development.

The case provides data on the large proportion of the marginalized population in India and the abysmal conditions of the Indian Government schools. The objectives of clause 1.2 on ECCE in NEP 2020 show the Indian Government’s good intent. And yet with the prevailing conditions, the policy’s ambitious target of universalization of ECCE by 2030 (Chanda, 2020), seems a mammoth task, even for the Indian Government.

On the other hand, Anthill as a small NPO of young dedicated individuals is invested and experimental in their approach; they have a tested model but financial dependency limits their activities. The ECCE clause is a sign of new hope for NPOs such as Anthill who want to reach out to millions of Indian children from marginalized communities. What could be a compatible, perhaps complementary or even skillful pathway to integrate Anthill’s tested model of building sustainable playscapes with the Indian Government’s good intentions of universalization of ECCE by 2030? How could Anthill “scale” for a systemic “impact”? Should not the NPOs, early childhood development researchers, funders and government authorities study collaboratively instead of the present siloed approach so as to bring about a systemic change in the thinking lenses about “play” to be an integral part of early childhood development? Rai ponders on the above questions.

To explain the importance of one’s purpose (calling) in life and how the authors can identify with it.

To explain how an intuitive response to social need can be complemented with a methodical approach to social entrepreneurship.

To discuss the importance of business model canvas from the social sector lens.

To explain the important elements in sustaining small start-up social organizations.

To discuss and evaluate the options an early-stage social enterprise can engage into “scale” for “impact.”

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The recent Childhood Immunization Initiative of the Clinton Administration was a dramatic and ambitious policy response to what we will show is a case of significant management and implementation failure. Interpreted by the Administration as a policy failure, low rates of early childhood immunization met with an aggressive and targeted policy response which ultimately diverted attention away from significant evidence of fundamental problems of service delivery, infrastructure, and parental knowledge and behavior. Analyzes and seeks to evaluate the reasons for the poor fit between the diagnosis of the problem of existing childhood immunization policy and the ultimate policy prescription of the Clinton Administration which relies almost exclusively on reducing the price of vaccines.