Conference
Theme
and Working
Themes
ISCHE
29 Children and Youth at risk
Approaches in the history of
education
Conference Theme
Childhood
and youth have been beset with risks at all times and in all geographic
and cultural environments. However, what is specifically perceived, discussed,
described and investigated as a risk has been subject to considerable
change over time. This shows in its specific effects on educational practices,
institutions, theories, and political measures. The focus of this conference
will be a look at the historical development, shaping, and construction
of risk elements in childhood and youth and their pedagogical implications
and effects.
This issue can be viewed from multiple perspectives and investigated in
its individual, group-specific or social dimensions. It can be approached
and explored from different angles. There are the restrictions, controls,
dangers and constraints affecting children in their physical, psychological
and social development, among them ideas and conceptions of education
struggling for moral and social dominance at the individual and societywide
level, or the dangers and threats posed by children and youths themselves.
Proposals
are invited which explore the issue of children and youth at risk in the
history of education at the institutional and organisational level, that
of practice and interaction, concrete experience and Lebenswelt,
or the conceptual and discursive level. For example:
• educational programmes, measures, and institutions targeting specific
groups (disabled children, orphans, unmarried mothers, underage prostitutes,
street children, young thieves and beggars etc.)
• conventions on childrens' rights, legal protection for children
and youths, educational programmes combating 'indecency and impropriety'
• the impact of migration and war in childhood and youth
• risk factors in the context of class, gender, religion, ´race´,
ethnicity, and ability/ disability
• punitive and regulatory practices in the day-to-day functioning
of institutions (families, schools, monasteries, orphanages etc.)
• pedagogical control over the bodies and sexualities of children
and youths as an expression of physical and social conflicts
• production and consumption by children and youths as a pedagogical
problem
• the construction of childhood and youth as an at-risk segment of
life (e.g. from a religious, cultural or social perspective)
• pedagogical, political, medical or legal discourses on neglect,
danger, youth crime, institutionalised education and reintegration
• risk elements in childhood and youth as the foci of different theoretical,
methodological and historiographic approaches.
Working Themes
The conference aims to focus on the following aspects. Proposals for papers
should address one or more of them:
1. Institutional and organisational aspects
2. Practices and interaction
3. Concrete life experience and Lebenswelt
4. Concepts, constructs and discourses
5. New approaches and historiographical challenges.