Changing Societies, Changing Childhood: Studying the Impact of Globalization on Child Development

Abstract

Although children are significantly affected by globalization in many ways, there has been little study of its impact on their development. Understanding the effects of the political, economic, and cultural changes associated with globalization requires diverse research strategies designed to (a) provide an impact analysis of the effects of changes associated with globalization on local social ecologies (e.g., families, schools, neighborhoods, health‐care system) and on children's everyday experience; (b) examine how globalization influences the knowledge, skills, and forms of learning required of children as cultures are affected by worldwide influences; and (c) explore children's interpretations of these changes for themselves and their future. The specific research strategies suitable to these goals include large‐scale social indicators analysis (which can sometimes be drawn from national or international datasets), behavioral studies, document content analyses, ethnographic methods and other approaches to assess specific social practices affecting children, carefully designed child interviews, and coordinated multimethod programs of research that examine the impact of cultural change on children from institutional, societal, and individual perspectives. This article profiles a number of key research challenges and opportunities entailed in the effort to understand how development is shaped, and reshaped, by broader cultural currents.

Values-based Physical Education for the intermediate schooling phase in a diverse South African context

“…Thompson stated that sociocultural factors, global factors and political factors further complicate the processes of helping learners to develop positive values. 1 In most countries today, the responsibility for developing values is assigned to schools in formal teaching settings. Values-based education (VBE) implies that learners are educated about the aspects determining their behaviour.…”

“…Values-based education (VBE) implies that learners are educated about the aspects determining their behaviour. 1 The unique challenge to educators is how to make values come alive so that learners choose to live them. Khalifa, Gooden and Davis argued that if values are not deliberately taught it has no effect.…”

Growing up in a changing world. A case study among Baka children (southeastern Cameroon)

“…Coherent with the reduced attention devoted to childhood in anthropology during several generations of researchers (Delalande 2009;Hirschfeld 2002), most of the studies that have assessed the impacts of changes among local societies have focused mostly on adulthood. However, as children are an integral part of their society and culture, they are facing the different changes occurring within their society (Thompson 2012). Moreover, as children are also "adults---to---be", what children live today largely shapes what they would be in the coming years, and more specifically, how their knowledge and practices -their culture -might evolve through time (Lenclud 2003).…”

Children’s ethnobiological knowledge: an introduction

“…In a context of global change drastically impeding the resilience of traditional livelihoods, the emic point of view of children who, for long, have been only considered as research subjects, is increasingly taken into consideration, assuming the implications of children's creativity and agency in the future development of their societies (Buhler---Niederberger & van Krieken 2008;Corsaro 2003;Cole & Durham 2008;Morelli 2015Morelli , 2017Thompson 2012). However, grabbing children's aspirations and motivations regarding the fate of their fragilized culture requires beforehand a better understanding of their knowledge and related modalities of transmission.…”