Children and Value – Education in Neo-liberal Times

This special issue arises from an international conference, Researching Children, Global Childhoods and Education, at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) in 2011. The goal of the conference was to advance theories and methodological practices that cultivate children’s agency in research and educational practices. Many topics were raised -- including child poverty, migration, the growing significance of technologies, consumerism and marketization, the speeding up of children’s lives, child labour and children’s role as carers, shifting gender roles and family dynamics and the greater acknowledgement of children’s rights to provision, protection and participation. As the organizers of the conference, we identified a recurring theme: the changing value of children in education. There was a shared concern within this network of international scholars that education policy and investment in children’s education is being shaped by a vision that is narrowing children’s experience of learning and measuring quality in education through an economically instrumentalist lens.