Children and Childhood in Shona Proverbs

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Godwin Makaudze
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Child Behaviour ◽  
Critical Stage ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Integral Component ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
Children And Childhood

Childhood is not a neatly definable concept as it differs among cultures. Among the Shona, a child and childhood are defined in terms of age, marital status, behaviour and also relations to other members in society. The Shona, like other ethnic groups, have a plethora of ways through which their worldview is fashioned and conveyed, and these include songs, folktales, riddles and proverbs, among others. In this article, Shona proverbs are analysed in terms of how they present Shona people’s perception and conceptualisation of childhood. Afrocentricity is used to analyse the content of proverbs selected from the anthologies Tsumo Chimbo neMadimikira (Zvarevashe 1984) and Tsumo-Shumo (Hamutyinei and Planger 1987). Among its findings, the article observes that Shona childhood falls into two main categories: early childhood and mid-cum-adult childhood. Children are perceived as an integral component of any Shona marriage, and society is ambivalent regarding who is more important between the boy and girl child. Also, early childhood is perceived as a very precarious and critical stage that can either make or break a child, thus warranting responsible shepherding from parents and society. Child behaviour is also believed to be largely modelled after that of parents and so it is important that parents behave responsibly so as to positively influence their children. It also emerges that it is quite common for children to disappoint their parents, but that should not lead the parents into despair. While all stages show that childhood is considered a position laden with responsibilities, which should be carried out for the good of all, the mid-cum-adult childhood stage is viewed as one where one should start moving towards or even exercise total independence and self-reliance. Overall, it emerges that the Shona people’s perception and conceptualisation of children and childhood have a lot of positives that can be drawn from for the good of today’s humanity.

scholarly journals The LupusQoL and Associations with Demographics and Clinical Measurements in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (11) ◽  
pp. 2273-2279 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHLEEN McELHONE ◽  
MADHURA CASTELINO ◽  
JANICE ABBOTT ◽  
IAN N. BRUCE ◽  
YASMEEN AHMAD ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Disease Activity ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Lupus Erythematosus ◽  
Disease Duration ◽  
Damage Index ◽  
Group Index ◽  
Systemic Lupus ◽  
Clinical Measurements

Objective.Having developed and validated a disease-specific health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measure for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the LupusQoL, we determined its relationship to demographic and clinical measurements in a group of patients with SLE.Methods.A group of 322 outpatients completed the LupusQoL. Demographic (age, sex, marital status, ethnicity) and clinical variables (disease duration, disease activity, damage) were recorded. Associations between the 8 LupusQoL domains and age, disease duration, disease activity, and damage were explored using Spearman’s correlation coefficients. Differences in LupusQoL scores were examined for sex and marital status using the Mann-Whitney U test. Ethnic groups were compared using ANOVA.Results.All domains of LupusQoL were impaired, with fatigue (56.3) being the worst affected and body image (80.0) the least. The correlations between the LupusQoL domain scores and age (r = −0.01 to −0.22) and disease duration (r = 0 to 0.16) were absent or weak. Similarly, there were no significant differences in the LupusQoL scores regarding sex, marital status, or the 3 main ethnic groups (Black-Caribbean, Asian, White). Although there were statistically significant correlations between the scores of the LupusQoL domains and some scores of the British Isles Lupus Assessment Group index (r = −0.22 to 0.09) and the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics/American College of Rheumatology Damage Index (r = −0.29 to 0.21), these were weak.Conclusion.HRQOL was impaired in this cohort of outpatients with SLE as assessed by the validated lupus-specific LupusQoL. There were no clinically important associations between the 8 domains of the LupusQoL and clinical or demographic variables in this group of patients. Thus, the LupusQoL is a relatively independent outcome measure in patients with SLE.

Abstract P149: Retention of Participants in Longitudinal Research: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Circulation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 137 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandi Shrager
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
African American ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Health Status ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Minority Participants

Background: Retention of participants is a critical component of ensuring the scientific goals of longitudinal research studies. Differential rates of attrition for ethnic minority participants can be particularly problematic in the fields of health and cardiovascular research, where ethnic minorities are shown to have disproportionately higher rates of both cardiovascular disease and risk factors for heart disease such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. The ability to explore the underlying causes of these differences is adversely affected when attrition in a study occurs at a higher rate among the ethnic minority subject participants. Understanding and preventing the causes of subject drop-out to improve retention among all ethnic groups is therefore a vital endeavor of any longitudinal research or cohort study. Methods: We analyzed data on ten-year retention rates of Caucasian, Chinese, Hispanic, and African-American participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). 6814 participants were recruited into the study in 2000, and 5,865 participants were still alive for the fifth in-person examination ten years later. Of these, 4651 participants returned for this examination. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between retention in the study, race/ethnicity and various baseline demographic characteristics, including age, gender, marital status, income, employment, education, language, place of birth, health insurance status and overall health status as measured by a 10-year predicted cardiovascular disease rate. Results: Racial differences in retention were observed, with Chinese, African-American, and Hispanic participants having 30-40% lower odds of being retained than Caucasian participants. However, after adjusting for demographic variables, these differences were primarily explained by indicators of socioeconomic status. Higher income, higher education, employment status, availability of health insurance and health status were significantly associated with ten-year retention in the study across all racial/ethnic groups. Marital status, gender, age, and birthplace (US vs non-US) were not associated with retention. Conclusions: Although minority participants were retained at lower rates in MESA, this can be primarily explained by differences in socioeconomic status and health status. Individuals with higher SES indicators may have life circumstances making participation in an examination taking much of a full day more plausible. Future studies should consider how these findings may inform developing support services or incentives which make follow-up participation in clinical research more persuasive for these individuals.

Disrupting the paradigm: “Children need to learn how to learn”

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Beverley Clark ◽  
Hilda Hughson
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Know How ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Te Whāriki

The views that early childhood teachers have of children and childhood are informed by the rhetoric and theories of early childhood, their cultures, life stories, philosophies, and ongoing practices as teachers. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Whāriki, the legislated national curriculum for early childhood education, further guides early childhood teachers’ practice and frames teachers’ image of the young child. This article confronts and critiques a short phrase that is an addition to the revised Te Whāriki curriculum document, specifically the phrase that children “need to learn how to learn”. This phrase implies that young children do not know how to learn. The implication in this utterance belies the intense drive that children have to learn, to play, to explore, and to understand as they grow in strength in their sense of self within their whānau and communities. We care about the image that this presents to student teachers, to teachers. We challenge whether the notion that children need to learn how to learn is the image that early childhood teachers hold, or want to hold, of children. We argue that this phrase and image of the child as needing to learn how to learn is a loose thread in the whāriki that potentially undermines and is counter to the more dominant concept within Te Whāriki of the competent child.

scholarly journals Childcare Food Provision Recommendations Vary across Australia: Jurisdictional Comparison and Nutrition Expert Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (18) ◽  
pp. 6793
Author(s):  
Alison Spence ◽  
Penelope Love ◽  
Rebecca Byrne ◽  
Amy Wakem ◽  
Louisa Matwiejczyk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Food Group ◽  
Dietary Guidelines ◽  
National Guidelines ◽  
Critical Stage ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Childhood Nutrition ◽  
Food Provision ◽  
Early Childhood Nutrition

Early childhood is a critical stage for nutrition promotion, and childcare settings have the potential for wide-reaching impact on food intake. There are currently no Australian national guidelines for childcare food provision, and the comparability of existing guidelines across jurisdictions is unknown. This project aimed to map and compare childcare food provision guidelines and to explore perspectives amongst early childhood nutrition experts for alignment of jurisdictional childcare food provision guidelines with the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADG). A desktop review was conducted and formed the basis of an online survey. A national convenience sample of childhood nutrition experts was surveyed. Existing guideline recommendations for food group serving quantities were similar across jurisdictions but contained many minor differences. Of the 49 survey respondents, most (84–100%) agreed with aligning food group provision recommendations to provide at least 50% of the recommended ADG serves for children. Most (94%) agreed that discretionary foods should be offered less than once per month or never. Jurisdictional childcare food provision guidelines do not currently align, raising challenges for national accreditation and the provision of support and resources for services across jurisdictions. Childhood nutrition experts support national alignment of food provision guidelines with the ADG.

scholarly journals WHEN MATTER IN THE CLASSROOM MATTERS: ENCOUNTERS WITH RACE IN PEDAGOGICAL CONVERSATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4.2) ◽  
pp. 808-825
Author(s):  
Kathleen Kummen
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
First Year ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Material Feminism ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
University Setting

This article considers how mattering and meaning are mutually constituted in the production of knowledge (Barad, 2007). Drawing on a research project with first year early childhood education (ECE) students in a university setting, I argue that material-feminism, as understood through the work of Barad (2007, 2008), offers a lens through which pedagogical practices can be re-conceptualized as more than anthropocentric endeavours. The research project explores the processes that occurred when a group of ECE students and I engaged with and in pedagogical narrations over one academic term as we attempted to make visible and disrupt the hegemonic images we held of both children and childhood. In the doing of pedagogical narrations, artefacts were produced that were not merely representations of our collaborative thinking. Rather, the artefacts that emerged-in between the material, the discursive and the participants, were themselves agentic; they invited us to shift our gaze and our conversation, and thereby new meanings and realities were produced. I provide one example that discusses how the presence of the artefacts invited “race” into a conversation of childhood in a way that reverberated in our thinking, feeling, and being. The article concludes by considering the pedagogical implications for learning, for both children and those learning to work with children, when matter comes to matter in the classroom.

scholarly journals TWO CONCEPTIONS OF CHILDHOOD IN EUROPEAN AND RUSSIAN POETRY OF XVIII–XIX C.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-17
Author(s):  
Herman U. Philippovsky ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Russian Poetry ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Songs Of Experience

G. R. Derzhavin with his famous Ode on the birth of a future Emperor 1779 became in the Russian poetry of a new epoch the pioneer of Childhood and children theme. The poet except the rossoist topic of Childhood as clear headsprings innovatively revealed a different concept of Childhood as a School (educational) in the episode of fairies gifts who give a child – a future tsar both exceptional abilities and knowledge. Derzhavin outstripped an English poet W. Blake who also touched upon the topic of Childhood and children in his poetic cycles of 1789–1794. The article also discusses the motif of Childhood and children on the material of English (W. Blake and W. Wordsworth) and Russian (N. A. Neckrasov) poetry of the XX c. W. Blake’s cycles («The songs of virginity» (1789) and «The songs of experience» (1794) as well as W. Wordsworth’s cycles «Preludes» and his «Ode.News on immortality coming from early childhood memories» (1803–1807) give the images of children and childhood in the context of nature as a leading principle of Romanticism: a child with his initial natural piety as a real headspring of a man – a pure angel but a sage already. In the Russian poetry of the XIX c. N. A. Neckrasov as well as W.Blake and W. Wordsworth in England turned to the images and motifs of children and Childhood through his whole literary biography («Childhood», «On the Volga. Valezhnikov’s childhood», «A schoolboy» and so on).

scholarly journals Pagan characters in the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic texts of spell

Rhema ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 36-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Prosyannikova ◽  
K. Skorik
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
Mind Set

The article examines the question of pagan evidences in the texts of Anglo-Saxon and Slavic spells. Spell as a genre of magical folklore has its own peculiarities, due to the syncretism of the pagan mind-set as a reflection of ancient people's perception of the ancient world by an ancient person that caused the emergence of spells in the culture of various ethnic groups. In the course of the development of this genre, the changes in the representation of the characters took place under the influence of Christianization, that was reflected in the texts of the spells.

scholarly journals Young children’s citizenship membership and participation: comparing discourses in early childhood curricula of Australia, New Zealand and the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
LG Phillips ◽  
Jenny Ritchie ◽  
JK Adair
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Children And Childhood

© 2018, © 2018 British Association for International and Comparative Education. Recognition of young children as citizens is relatively new in sociology, with translation emerging into education. Discourses of children and childhood shape ideas of young children as citizens and national discourses of citizenship frame what civic participation can be. The authors analysed national early childhood education curricula frameworks of Australia, New Zealand and the United States to understand how discourses authorise constructions of children as citizens and opportunities for young children’s civic participation. They sought to locate how children are positioned as citizens and what opportunities there are for young children’s citizenship participation in national early childhood curricula documents of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Illustrative examples of children’s citizenship membership and participation from the three nations’ early childhood curricula were critically read to locate how prevalent discourses of children, childhood and citizenship in each nation define children as citizens and shape possibilities for citizenship participation for young children.

scholarly journals The presence of early childhood caries among the members of different ethnic groups of the South Backa District

2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (12) ◽  
pp. 1046-1051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Tusek ◽  
Momir Carevic ◽  
Jasmina Tusek
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Preschool Children ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Early Childhood Caries ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
Rapid Progression ◽  
The South ◽  
Carious Lesions ◽  
Form Type ◽  
Childhood Caries

Background/Aim. Early childhood caries (ECC) is a special form of caries in primary dentition that affect teeth after eruption, with rapid progression, later symptomatology and numerous complications. The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of ECC among different ethnic groups of preschool children in the South Backa District. Methods. The survey was performed as a crosssectional analytical study on the sample of preschool children of both sexes and different ethnic groups in the South Backa District. The diagnosis and the clinical form of ECC was defined by dental check-ups according to the modified Wyne's criteria: the initial form (type 1) shows carious lesions without disturbing the surface structure of the tooth enamel, the moderate form (type 2) shows carious lesions affecting one or two teeth or their surfaces, the middle form (type 3) shows carious lesions affecting more than two teeth or their surfaces, the severe form (type 4) shows the presence of two and more gangrenous roots in the maxilla intercanini sector, and the severe form with complications (type 5) shows the presence of two and more gangrenous roots in the maxilla intercanini sector with the presence of fistula and/or abscess of tooth root apex. Epidemiological data on the different ethnic groups were obtained by interviewing the parents of the examined children. The tests on significant statistical differences was performed by the variance analysis and ?2 test. Results. The prevalence of ECC in children oped 41.32 ? 8.57 months, of the South Backa District was 30.5%. The highest disease frequency was found in Roma children (50.0%) as well as in children of Ruthenian nationality (43.8%), than in children of Slovakia nationality (37.8%), Serbian (26.1%), Hungerian (25.4%) and other nationalities (27.4%). The frequency of types 1, 3, 4, and 5 ECC was twice as high as in children who do not speak Serbian language. Conclusion. The frequency of ECC occurrence is different among ethnic groups. The highest frequency of ECC is present among the members of ethnic groups whose native language is not Serbian.

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