A global childhoods research collective: Conceptualising global childhoods through reflections and imperatives from Australia,Ethiopia,New Zealand and Sweden

Abstract

We believe that researching global childhoods offers a comprehensive understanding of children’s lives, experiences, and challenges worldwide. We regard global childhoods as an interdisciplinary field which combines insights from humanities and social sciences (e.g. education, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, media studies, social work, law) and the sciences (e.g. health sciences, psychology, architecture, engineering, computer science) to explore the diverse ways that childhoods are understood and lived. By examining global childhoods in research investigations, we can uncover the varying impact of globalisation, conflict, trauma, mobilities and social inequalities on young lives. This knowledge is crucial for developing inclusive policies, educational practices, and curricula that support children’s rights and well-being globally. Moreover, it fosters cultural awareness and empathy, preparing students to navigate and contribute positively to our increasingly interconnected world. Researching global childhoods is not just about generating greater understandings about children’s lives; it’s about shaping a future that recognises and values the diversity and potential of every child.

Keywords

collective everyday lifeworlds globalisation global childhoods

Introduction

In this paper we introduce and share the collected thoughts, ideas and imperatives regarding global childhoods from six global scholars grounded in the discipline of education. We have been collaborating online and have met in Sweden twice over the past 2.5 years to explore the potential for collaborations, and now come together for the purpose of this conceptual paper in a Global Childhoods Research Collective. We aim to synthesise our thoughts to gain deeper and more critical insights into the salient issues for each of the four geo-political locations. We all have varying research interests and scholarly backgrounds within our discipline but share a common interest in studying global childhoods.

In coming together as an international Global Childhoods Research Collective of scholars we are academics leading different global childhood centres, hubs and research groups located at Kotebe University of Education in Ethiopia, the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University of Melbourne in Australia. As individual scholars we all have different voices, perspectives, expertise and focal points. However, in this collective paper as scholars of global childhoods we do not seek consensus but rather come together to create a critical mass of global childhoods scholars to explore shared interests, values and visions. In this paper we map out the salient topics of relevance that have come to the fore for us all in our fields of study. We are, supported by the conviction that it is necessary to discuss, engage in dialogue, negotiate, and renegotiate ideas to move our thinking forward and furthering the research on global childhoods. Not aiming to achieve consensus, rather we are open for highlighting ‘dissensus’ (Ranciere, 2010) and dialoguing our differences and varied scholarly interpretations, while open to include new voices and conversations in our dialogues.

The purpose of this article is to begin the process of re/conceptualising global childhoods scholarship (Abebe et al., 2023), to continue to deconstruct grand narratives and offer alternative visions for global childhoods that foreground contemporary issues impacting on the lives of children globally. We regard this work as an ongoing and necessary process to keep the theoretical notions, concepts and frameworks relevant and updated. We shun the destructive fossilisation of ideas and simplified binaries that keep reoccurring (East-West, children-adult, male-female, affluent-poor, and developed-developing).

We find the portmanteau term simplexity (Dervin, 2016) useful for our work. We conceptualise simplexity as denoting the combination of simple and complex ideas and issues that capture the oscillation and movement on a continuum. One way of activating simplexity is by interpreting and re-interpreting the concepts in our different everyday working languages – Amharic, English, and Swedish – orally before we create and construct our dialogues in our common working language; that is English.

To move between and compare contexts open for the necessity to engage in ‘critical languaging’ (Dervin & Jacobsson, 2021). Departing from Cassin’s (2004) discussion of untranslatability as a myth, analysing and negotiating the meaning of words in different languages is part of the process. We must engage and interpret languages as part of geopolitical contextualisations. In the collective we are making use of the multilingual composition of the group for activating critical languaging in our thinking and writing.

The structure of the paper is as follows: The participants of a Global Childhoods Research collective will present ideas about how global childhoods is conceptualised, and relevant, to their specific research locations by sharing what they believe to be the salient issues for discussion. They do this in response to twin questions:

What are global childhoods?

Why is there a need to study global childhoods?

The conclusion of the article then acts as a collective dialogue between participants to summarise the salient issues from each rendering and finally, we synthesise what we regard as examples of the substantial issues from the four locations shared as collective themes that we hope to open up dialogue of future research and scholarly writing in and about global childhoods.

Perspectives from Australia: Children’s lifeworlds in contemporary times (Nicola Yelland)

Here, I conceptualise global childhoods as a means to situate the lifeworlds of children in contemporary times. The concept of lifeworlds is located in social research and can work as a framework for examining how people and groups experience the world across the ecologies of their experiences. We pluralise the term to lifeworlds from the original (singular) meaning from Husserl (1970) and later Habermas (1987). Both regarded the lifeworld as a context in which taken-for-granted beliefs, attitudes, competencies and practices are practiced. Husserl’s focus was on consciousness. Habermas was interested in socially and culturally linguistic meanings. Additionally, the work of Certeau (1988/2002) is relevant here since he was concerned with the interactions of everyday life, with government policy, institutions and systems. de Certeau paid attention to the ways in which everyday life required individuals to negotiate – often in creative or subversive ways – with institutions that structure their social worlds. He suggested this produced new ways of being and doing that in turn have the potential to reconfigure both institutions and cultural practices. If learning involves belonging, transformation and engagement with materials and ideas (e.g. Yelland et al., 2008), then understanding how students succeed at learning necessitates knowing what they think about their experiences of schooling, how their school-based activities connect with their everyday lifeworlds, and what they understand their educational and cultural futures to be within the current policy milieu is important. Our work has focussed on the lifeworlds of children growing up in conditions of rapid globalisation, technological advancement and social transformation that characterise global childhoods.

I regard any study of childhood as being contextualised and relational at a local level. With the advent of globalisation, new technologies, and multimodal meaning making, we all now have access to cultures and knowledge on a global scale. This enables us to have different and greater insights into the complexities of our own everyday lives. With a global perspective, it is my view that we will be able to understand children’s lifeworlds more deeply, and this will help us to ensure that we can create educational opportunities in which all children can reach their full potential as capable citizens of the now (Rinaldi, 2007).

Contemporary children and their families have become increasingly mobile and interconnected so that their everyday lifeworlds extend beyond their local communities and they have global reach with its commensurate access to information, broader communities and a wide range of opportunities. This means that in the everyday lives that children and families encounter these factors extend their range of possibilities to access new ideas and cultures which were not possible in previous eras. The research literature (e.g. Yelland et al., 2021) suggests that while this is evident it also requires us to rethink the nature of childhoods and ask: Who is the child? Who are children? What role do children play in shaping culture, society, and their own lifeworlds? What are the defining characteristics of childhoods? In what ways are children making a difference to society? (p. xxvi)

Traditional ways of studying the development of children with a universal approach and predetermined parameters and benchmarks for learning and development are not enabling all children to reach their full potential. These approaches take the view that if children do not meet particular standards determined by educational systems, they are deemed to be in deficit and need ‘fixing’ to bring them up to standard.

An alternative approach to studying childhoods originated in the new sociology of childhood (Prout and James, 1997) which views childhood as a social construction, and considers their social and cultural milieu in the active construction of their own identities, in their own unique contexts. The field of childhood studies draws on these ideas and focuses on social constructions of childhood and children’s agency (Spyrou, 2018).

In a similar way, reconceptualist practices in early childhood education have critiqued developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) and suggested alternative views of children and childhoods. Australian work (e.g. Iorio & Yelland, 2021) incorporates postfoundational approaches and call for a more optimistic view of young children, which includes a consideration of their funds of knowledge (Gonzales et al., 2005) building on them, with authentic experiences to extend their curiosity, interests and experiences in schools. Early childhood curriculum in Australia (Australian Government Department of Education [AGDE], 2022) challenges educators to go beyond traditional approaches to “find new ways of working fairly and justly and to do this by: ‘Drawing on a range of perspectives and theories (that) can challenge traditional ways of seeing children, teaching and learning and encourage(ing) educators as individuals and with colleagues. . .’” (p. 12). Yet, enacting such ‘new ways of working’ is very much constrained by a view of children as being in deficit, without agency to contribute to their own meaning making and knowledge building. It fails to recognise the importance of diversity and cultural impact on childhoods.

Here, I contend that in studying local childhood experiences and connecting them globally, we will be better placed to understand the cultural differences and similarities that we can learn and benefit from. Culture is not static. As we grow, we evolve, modify and extend our knowledge base to learn and consequently in schools, as in society more broadly, we need to recognise diversity and adapt and grow - not standardise it!

This work concurs with views stated in Yelland et al. (2021):

Our aim is to explore children’s lives and circumstances, and the discourses through which the category of childhood is continually re/produced, regulated, contested and reconfigured. We regard this endeavour as being important and inclusive of a range of sites of research inquiry, professional examination, and political activism. (p. xxxv)

We know that the impact of globalisation on children’s lives is complex. It has not been positive for many. Local economies, commerce, agriculture and education have produced lifeworlds that were not previously imagined, such as: new types of industries and personal opportunities for vulnerable communities which have included the use of new technologies to access education and connects families separated geographically. However, for other communities the global flows of capital, knowledge and people have impacted on the quality of their lives in different, and more specific ways, as families are separated due to the global mobility of labour, and as communities and natural environments are placed under threat. Additionally, when global capitalism regards children as commodities, they are used for profit and in being occupied in this way in turn reduces their educational opportunities and can result in increased poverty, racism, sexual exploitation, geopolitical unrest, and the destruction of vital environmental tracts (Smith et al., 2016).

To date our aims in studying global childhoods (e.g. Yelland et al., 2021) has been to achieve deeper insights into the lifeworlds of children locally and globally and then to extend these conceptualisations to reflect on the ways this work might contribute to educational and social theory. We have done this in various ways with different data collection techniques. For example, we have surveyed a large number of children to find out what they do in their in-school and out of school time; we have created classroom ethnographies of their schooling experiences; we have asked them to document how they feel about school, their views of what constitutes educational success and their sense of belonging to their school communities. We have also documented their out of school lifeworlds in video ethnographies. We have done this in three global cities not to compare their experiences, but to document their lifeworlds so that we have a holistic view of the entanglements of the ways in which the in and out of school experiences come together in an educational experience in a global context.

Conceptualising global childhoods encourages a worldview of childhoods that is not universal, but regards children as capable, agentic and unique. We might reflect on how our individual and collective efforts can be used to focus on the ways children’s and communities’ own values and knowledge systems – their funds of knowledge – can be incorporated in our early childhood learning ecologies.

Perspectives from New Zealand: Children’s rights and child’s voice (Marek Tesar)

Global childhoods is a concept that refers to the diverse experiences of childhoods across different cultures, countries, and socioeconomic backgrounds worldwide. Like other studies of childhoods, it accepts that we do not have a universal experience shaped solely by biological and developmental stages, but that childhoods are also deeply influenced by social, economic, political, and cultural factors. Thinking about global childhoods considers how globalisation (i.e. flow of information, goods, services, and people across borders) impacts the lives and rights of children around the world; and how the local experiences of children shape the global conceptions. The intersection of local childhoods and global children (or global childhoods and local children) is absolutely critical.

Key aspects of global childhoods include cultural diversity, which is focussed on recognising that notions of childhoods vary greatly, affecting how children are raised, and educated, and what is expected of them at different ages, as evidenced in archives (Sparrman et al., 2024). Similarly, the economic factors underline the understanding of how poverty, wealth, and economic policies impact children’s access to education, healthcare, and opportunities for play and leisure and impact the idea of how children are growing up and learning. This occurs within political and social contexts – childhoods are impacted by war, forced migration, but also any kind of social policies that impact children’s safety, family structures, and overall children’s citizenship (Tesar et al., 2021). However, it is children’s rights, and advocating for the protection and promotion of children’s rights as outlined in international agreements like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), which defines that every child has the right to survival, development, protection, and participation; and listening to children (Baldini et al., 2024).

Within such a framework, the study of global childhoods in New Zealand is transdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as anthropology, sociology, education, and psychology – but also engineering, health, architecture and creative arts. The aim is to build a comprehensive understanding and platform of what it means to grow up in New Zealand, and especially in superdiverse Auckland, where nearly 50% of children were born overseas (Chan, 2020). This kind of thinking aims to highlight inequalities, promote children’s rights and child’s voice, and work towards a world where all children can enjoy a safe, healthy, and fulfilling childhood.

The interplay between the global and the local in childhood studies presents a rich field of inquiry that is both complex and multifaceted. This duality is especially pronounced when viewed from the perspective of New Zealand, a country with a unique cultural heritage and a strong commitment to biculturalism, primarily between the indigenous Māori population and descendants of European settlers (Stewart et al., 2017). The exploration of childhoods from a global-local nexus in New Zealand offers insights into how global trends and local cultures intersect, influence, and reshape each other in the lives of children and the academic field that studies them. New Zealand’s approach to childhood studies is deeply rooted in its bicultural foundation and the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and in the Pacific. This local context emphasises the importance of acknowledging and integrating Māori perspectives, values, and practices in understanding and nurturing childhoods. The Māori concept of ‘whānau’ (extended family) and the traditional communal approach to raising children highlight the significance of collective responsibility and interconnectedness in the local cultural narrative of childhood. The local context also includes New Zealand’s geographical isolation and its diverse natural environment, which play a crucial role in shaping childhood experiences. Outdoor play, interaction with nature, and environmental education are integral to how local childhoods are understood and experienced in New Zealand, reflecting ideas that prioritises sustainability and environmental stewardship: relations with people, places and things. Global childhoods are not seen in opposition with these ideas, but rather interwoven together into one, within a particular temporal positionality (Riberio et al., 2023).

A critical global approach to childhood studies in New Zealand involves questioning and challenging the dominance of Western paradigms and advocating for the inclusion of diverse cultural perspectives (Adriany & Tesar, 2022). This includes recognising the rights of indigenous children and ensuring that global narratives on childhoods are inclusive and respectful of local identities and values. New Zealand’s perspective on childhood and childhood studies contributes to the global discourse by offering a model of how bicultural principles and indigenous knowledge can enrich our understanding of childhood (Bertoli et al., 2023). It challenges the global community to consider the importance of cultural sensitivity, the value of diverse upbringing practices, and the need for policies that are adaptable to local contexts. Furthermore, New Zealand’s commitment to environmental education and sustainability in the context of childhoods reflects a growing global concern for the future of the planet. It underscores the role of childhood and education in a future of childhoods, where we wish to foster a generation that is not only aware of global challenges but also equipped with the values and skills to address them, and where child’s voice and children’s rights are not only recognised, but followed and heralded.

Perspectives from Sweden: Movement, interculturality and exceptionalism in education (Andreas Jacobsson & Anette Hellman)

As an overarching notion, global childhoods capture a variety of issues: globalisation, migration, national cultures, identities, diversity, transnational families, decoloniality, and interculturality. All these concepts are utterly complex. Depending on the combination of concepts that is activated in a specific study, global childhoods will entail something slightly different. This is what makes the notion so interesting and challenging.

The global in global childhoods is at a first glance perfectly simple to comprehend – as a research focus on childhoods from different parts of the world – however scratching the surface uncovers an elusive theoretical notion. As with other forms of globality, the global in relation to childhoods cannot be taken for granted, rather it should be a starting point for ongoing scholarly dialogues, including different geopolitical perspectives. The two concepts ‘global’ (what is global?) and ‘childhoods’ (what is a child?) have been debated for a long time (Cregan and Cuthbert, 2014) and need continuous re-figuring.

Global(isation) is a term that relate to the movement of people, material goods, financial assets, and mediated representations. Philosopher Thomas Nail (2019) has proposed that we are currently living in the ‘age of motion’. Nail (2015) highlights movement and migration as foundational for contemporary societies. Nail describes ‘the migrant’ as a core concept capturing intra-cultural and international movement, as well as the movement of ideas and positive or negative sentiments about migrants. However, Nail criticises the frequently reproduced dichotomy between movement and non-movement found in most discourses on migration. He states that in ‘a movement-oriented philosophy there is no social stasis, only regimes of social circulation’. (2015: 8). This critique opens for a potential re-thinking of the relation between global and local as less analytically productive concepts when they are understood as separate distinctive categories. This issue will not be solved by applying the portmanteau term ‘glocal’ as proposed by Robertson (1992), or non-essentialism and fluidity for that matter. Rather, what is global in ‘global childhoods’ requires a case-by-case geopolitical contextualisation, since the ‘regimes of social circulation’ will always be ideological.

Our argument is that we need to contextualise and view ‘global childhoods’ as local childhoods in global times (Hellman and Garvis, 2022). At a first glance the concepts, context and the local also seem self-explanatory. In trying to delineate the concepts it becomes obvious that there are no given contexts, and no clear boundaries defining the local. As anthropologist Geertz (2008) has shown, to decide what the appropriate context is, is to control knowledge. Starting from the position that contexts are not given but activated and negotiated, it might be fruitful to rethink ‘researching the local’ as a process of education about context and knowledge (rather than a move from context to knowledge). Consequently, research is an edifying process for all participants. To conceptualise ‘researching the local’ as an ongoing ‘conversation’ does not mean that researchers abandon the ambition of generalising, or producing knowledge that differs from and may be contradictory to other types of knowledge that emerges.

Turning our attention to global childhoods in Sweden the issue of Swedish/Nordic exceptionalism immediately becomes apparent. The discourses on education and teacher education in Sweden is regularly highlighting the Swedish context as being characterised by so-called Swedish democratic values, and therefore being exceptional. From the perspective of (early childhood) teacher education and research, the notion of global childhoods is regularly interpreted in terms of interculturality and multilingualism as being of (sole) relevance for specific groups of children, families, and teachers, living and working in multicultural areas. Instead of regarding interculturality and multilingualism as a matter of concern for everyone who is living in the multicultural and globalised society, imagined and actual boundaries are regularly established. There is then clearly an ideological process of otherisation permeating the discourses on global childhoods and the structures of education in Sweden. Student teachers and teachers accordingly regard themselves as representatives of a specifically Swedish cohort of teachers (Abraham and Margrain, 2022). In this context global is synonymous with what is considered as other people, other languages, and other places that are being included in the Swedish society and in Swedish education. Regardless of how nuanced the theoretical framework on interculturality is and how consistently cultures and languages are considered as fluid and non-essential (in theory; Mikander et al., 2018), in (educational) practice their functions are still mostly solid and fixed.

Multilingualism and interculturality are regularly discussed as interconnected notions in Swedish (early childhood) teacher education (e.g. Hermansson et al., 2022). This creates several problems for research, teacher education and teaching, for example the language/s that children speak will fill the function of being an additional aspect for marking otherness. From a critical languaging perspective the notions of multilingualism, interculturality and global childhoods therefore runs the risk of being considered as an educational problem rather than an asset for individual children. By conflating the notions in Swedish there is also an apparent risk that nuances and complexities with both multilingualism and interculturality will be concealed and the understanding of cultural and linguistic diversity in education will stay simple and banal.

To conclude, the reasoning in this section move towards an understanding of the notion of Global

Childhoods as dependent on a constant awareness of a tension between equality and inequality, and/or equity and inequity. This includes problematising the understanding of the etymology of the notion of global childhoods in specific contexts. In other words, to approach global childhoods as a productive theoretical notion we must uncover the social imaginaries of childhoods in different contexts. Qualitative field research is always situated in ‘the local’ and must be implemented as a conversation, a reflexive and edifying process for all participants, to yield context as well as knowledge.

In our discussion we have not mentioned children’s agency or children’s perspectives. We will therefore end by proposing that the next step in refiguring global childhoods will be to address the question: How can we incorporate a child’s perspective on global childhoods in different geographical locations?

Perspective from Ethiopia: Navigating cultural perceptions, global influences, and the role of education (Eyueil Abate & Kassahun Weldemariam)

Childhood in Ethiopia unfolds within a rich fabric of cultural traditions, communal values, and emerging global influences, shaping perceptions and practices in profound ways. Despite a universal recognition of childhood as a distinct phase of human development, its conceptualisation in Ethiopia is often overshadowed by traditional views and societal norms. The term ‘childhood’ might be regarded as one of the most misrepresented notions though there are a variety of legal frameworks addressing what it entails. For instance, the national child policy defines a child as an individual under the age of 18, aligning with international standards. The Ethiopian criminal code provides a more nuanced view, treating individuals under 18 differently in legal contexts and specifying 13 years as the age of criminal responsibility. Such discrepancies highlight the complexities in defining childhood within the Ethiopian legal landscape where the boundaries are blurred in varied contexts or situations.

A notable concern in Ethiopia is the prevailing perception of children as inherently dependent beings, a view perpetuated by cultural norms and linguistic expressions that undermine children’s agency and autonomy. Traditional Amharic idiomatic expressions reflect deep-seated assumptions about children’s abilities and roles. For example: ‘የልጅ ነገር አንዱ ብስል አንዱ ጥሬ’ (‘If you want a job done well, don’t trust a child - do it yourself’, approximate translation) conveys the idea that when someone inexperienced (like a child) is given a responsibility for a task, there is a concern that the outcome may not be satisfactory. This sentiment of caution underscores the need for careful supervision or taking on the responsibility personally to ensure quality.

Similarly, the expression ‘ልጅ ያቦካው ለራት አይበቃም’ (‘A child’s effort won’t meet the need’, approximate translation) illustrates a pragmatic view of children’s abilities, where their contributions are appreciated but not fully relied upon for important tasks within a family. It reflects a cultural recognition of children’s limited experience and capabilities in handling responsibilities, emphasising the importance of adult supervision and intervention to meet necessary standards.

Another expression is ‘ለልጅ ከሳቁለት ለውሻ ከሮጡለት’ (‘If you joke with a child, you lose control; if you run from a dog, it will chase you’, approximate translation). This expression asserts the importance of maintaining authority and setting boundaries with children. It suggests that being playful with children can lead them to be spoiled, hence adults will lose control and respect, much like showing fear to a dog can provoke it to chase and potentially harm you. The expression reflects a belief in the necessity of establishing clear authority and control to ensure what is regarded as ‘proper behaviour’ and ‘development’ in children. In a majority of Ethiopian communities, traditional child-rearing practices emphasise discipline, respect for elders, and adherence to social norms.

Moreover, the expression ‘ለልጅ ጥርስህን ለዝንብ ቁስልህን አታሳይ’ (‘Do not show your teeth (smile) to a child or your wound to a fly – both can take their advantage’, approximate translation) reflects deep-seated beliefs about children and their interactions with adults. It advises caution when dealing with children, suggesting that displaying too much friendliness or leniency can lead to children taking advantage of the situation. The comparison to showing a wound to a fly implies that such openness can invite exploitation or misbehaviour. In line with the earlier three expressions, it underscores the importance of maintaining authority and control in adult-child interactions. In other words, children are viewed as opportunistic and if given too much freedom, they will exploit the situation to their advantage, needing firm boundaries and guidance.

The aforementioned examples of traditional expressions suggest that children are regarded as incomplete beings who are constantly in need of adult supervision and control, rather than as capable individuals with agency. However, this traditional view as conveyed in the expressions above, albeit dominant, is not entirely representative of childhood in the country as a whole. In some regions, children are entrusted with responsibilities and actively participate in decision-making processes related to their development, recognising the potential and the importance of their early experiences. In some urban areas and in communities like the Awramba community, children are actively involved in community life and decision-making, challenging the notion of childhood as merely a period of dependency.

Another important feature is Ethiopia’s traditional communal ethos. In Ethiopia, the local community plays a pivotal role in child-rearing, fostering a sense of collective responsibility and support. This communal approach is increasingly challenged by globalisation and Western influences that prioritise individualism and often tend to view traditional practices as ‘outdated’. Modernisation and increased access to education have brought significant benefits, including greater awareness of children’s rights and positive policy changes, as noted by researchers such as Pankhurst et al. (2016) These changes have empowered many children to question violations of their rights and to seek better conditions.

To navigate these challenges in Ethiopia and beyond, it is essential to foster dialogue and collaboration among researchers and practitioners, locally and globally. Therefore, the collaboration with other scholars to grapple with the notion of childhood in Ethiopia provides a window into the complex interplay between localised understandings and global narratives about childhood. The idiomatic expressions embody what can be understood as critical languaging in which language reflects and constructs power dynamics, roles, and expectations for children. These linguistic practices reveal the simplexity of childhood, where seemingly straightforward cultural norms are, in fact, layered with social, historical, and legal implications. By examining the Ethiopian context, it becomes evident that local cultural idioms both challenge and contribute to the broader discourse on global childhoods, highlighting how children’s agency and autonomy are negotiated within intersecting global and local frameworks. This perspective underscores the importance of embracing diverse cultural expressions in constructing a more inclusive understanding of global childhoods worldwide.

We draw upon our lived experiences and research engagement within Ethiopia’s educational landscape, which has afforded us a nuanced understanding of the cultural and structural forces shaping childhood in the country. By situating our analysis in this context, we aim to bridge localised perspectives with global debates, enriching the concept of global childhoods through the lens of Ethiopia’s unique cultural and linguistic practices. This approach reflects our commitment to presenting a multifaceted narrative that challenges reductive views of childhood and foregrounds the role of critical languaging in shaping developmental trajectories and societal roles for children.

Education, therefore, emerges not just as a means of imparting knowledge and skills, but as a catalyst for critical engagement and empowerment. It should empower children to articulate their voices, participate in decision-making processes, and shape their own futures. This transformative approach to childhood and education is essential for fostering a society where children are respected, valued, and supported in realising their full potential. As we navigate the complexities of childhood across diverse cultural contexts, our intention is not to provide definitive answers but to provoke thought and dialogue. We advocate for meaningful change that transcends tokenistic gestures, aiming instead for substantive shifts in policies and practices that uphold children’s rights and agency.

Synthesising the dialogues

Where do these narratives from the participants in the Global Childhoods Research Collective, lead us? The dialogue has been moving between different geopolitical contexts, highlighting distinctions and nuances regarding the terms and notions that we use in our everyday work, making us aware of the simplexity and critical awareness emanating from practicing critical languaging together. In exploring and reimagining local cultures to reflect global childhoods, Yelland (Australia) situates the lifeworlds of children in Australia in contemporary times. She argues that with globalisation and the increasing mobility of populations, comes complexities and phenomena that are worthy of study in order to understand the ways in which we can support multicultural populations within defined nation states. Implicit in this is that in studying global childhoods, we are better positioned to generate practical designs that will support more equitable learning ecologies and outcomes for all children.

Tesar (New Zealand) contends that the diverse experiences of childhoods across different countries, cultures and socio-economic conditions are not universal, thereby problematising a taken for granted conceptualisation of globalisation. In accordance with Yelland he states that within global childhoods there are various notions of childhoods that local experiences are shaped by, and in turn shape, everyday experiences of globalisation and the ways in which children’s rights are constructed and applied to how they can live their lives. However, for Tesar this means that studies of global childhoods need to be interdisciplinary and consider the nature of the reciprocity between the local and the global factors that influence and impact on childhoods. His reading of New Zealand is that the dimensions associated with bicultural, superdiverse and indigenous childhoods call for a critical childhood studies approach in which taken for granted assumptions need to always be questioned and challenged, and all children’s rights and children’s voices always to be taken seriously.

Jacobsson and Hellman (Sweden) also recognise the impact of globalisation on the movement of ideas, goods and the migration of people. Working in Sweden, they call for a critical consideration of identities and diversity to take an intercultural approach to the study of global childhoods. There is a recognition that global childhoods are constantly changing and that they reflect the social imaginaries of societies. Jacobsson and Hellman suggest that taking a global approach to this work will enrich the understanding about the changing nature of childhoods and asserts that contexts should not be taken for granted, rather they require to be negotiated. This idea was developed from the insight in the dialogues that the notion of interculturality in Swedish to a high extent reproduces common sense. They ask us to reconsider what is local, global and glocal and how the interplay between these terms and the sites they reflect influence our thinking about childhoods and the lifeworlds of children.

In the Ethiopian perspective, Abate and Weldemeriam explore the concept of childhood in Ethiopia and provide examples of not only the blurring of boundaries of conceptions of childhood but also cite traditional idioms that represent a view of childhood as a stage of life that needs to be controlled by adults. Dialoguing the idioms amongst the group the underlying tension of defining global come to the fore. One way to move forward from this impasse they argue for extending, or reconceptualising, existing notions of childhood to broaden such traditional and comparative understandings with a consideration of children’s rights and viewing children as capable. They suggest a pathway that involves a consideration of local conditions and the recognition of social, economic and locational factors that all impact on the lives of children. In studying global childhoods we will be able to engage with critical ideas of agency in different contexts.

From these dialogues the emerging themes from the participants of this global childhoods research collective emerge

The impact of globalisation has not been neutral. It has encouraged migration and made access to new technologies that have amplified the importance of the role of education/schooling in enabling all children to realise their full potential. We believe that there is a need to go beyond instrumental approaches to education/schooling to embrace emancipatory approaches that will assist in the transformation of education – towards the empowerment of children in different geopolitical contexts.

We need to situate the lifeworlds of children in contemporary times and conditions, acknowledging the varying cultural, social and economic conditions reflected in the different geographic locations we inhabit, and connect them with global issues. These childhoods do not occur in a vacuum, and they are relational.

In recognising that children’s lives are contextual and relational and shaped by both local and global conditions and factors and the ways in which they intersect, we do not advocate universal meta-narratives about global childhoods. This requires us to challenge the dominant discourses of children as incomplete adults who need to be shaped by adults on whom they are dependent. We view children as capable citizens of the now with agency to co-contribute to the decisions about their lives.

The multi/bicultural and superdiverse dimensions of each location emphasise the need to recognise diversity and Indigenous worldviews which have been previously subjugated by colonisation and incorporate them in all future discussions. This is made more relevant with interdisciplinary approaches to studying phenomena.

The study of Global Childhoods needs to be transdisciplinary and translinguistic in its core to encompass all the nuances and complexities inherent in the diverse experiences and contexts of children worldwide.

We share this first step in a process and now seek to extend the dialogues with colleagues around the globe, and to invite them to join in the conversations and debates about present and future of Global Childhoods.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethics approval

N/A

Data availability statement

N/A

ORCID iDs

Andreas Jacobsson

Marek Tesar

Nicola Yelland

Author biographies

Andreas Jacobsson is a senior lecturer in Child and Youth Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Jacobsson is co-director of the Global childhoods research group at University of Gothenburg. Jacobsson’s research interests include global childhoods, early childhood education and media literacy, early childhood education and interculturality, interculturality and audiovisual media, interculturality and philosophy.

Anette Hellman is a professor of Education at the Faculty of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg. Her research interests include issues related to critical childhood studies, international perspectives on ECEC and social justice in education. Hellman is director of the international global childhoods research group at the university of Gothenburg.

Eyueil Abate is an Assistant Professor at Kotebe University of Education. He is currently serving as the Director of the Institute of Lifelong Learning. He received his PhD from Addis Ababa University in Curriculum Design and Development. He has extensive experience on general education, teacher education, and education for marginalized group of children (refugees, IDPs, and Migrants). He has published peer reviewed journal article and book chapters. His research interest includes general education, teacher education, education for children in crisis and education in emergencies, education and migration, educational resilience, teachers’ wellbeing and retention, as well as parenting and education.

Kassahun Weldemariam is a senior lecturer in the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular, and Professional Studies at the Faculty of Education, University of Gothenburg. His research primarily focuses on Education for Sustainable Development, spanning from preschool to higher education. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics including sustainability, early literacy and numeracy, bilingualism, biliteracy, professionalism, play, curriculum, and teacher training. His doctoral dissertation examines the anthropocentric tendencies in environmental sustainability research within early childhood education and explores post-anthropocentric perspectives for addressing global environmental challenges.

Marek Tesar is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. He previously served as Head of School, Associate Dean, and Director of the Centre for Global Childhoods at the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. His scholarship focuses on the philosophy of education, early childhood education, and childhood studies. He holds leadership roles in two major learned societies in his field: he chairs the Steering Committee of Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) and is a Fellow and Past President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). He also edits two seminal journals in his field—Educational Philosophy and Theory (Taylor & Francis) and Policy Futures in Education (Sage).

Nicola Yelland is a Professor of Early Childhood Studies and Director of the Global Childhoods Research Hub in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research focusses on transformative curriculum and pedagogies and her recent projects have included an Australian Research Council project entitled Global Childhoods: Lifeworlds and Educational success in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

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