Sidra munawar:

CONSIDERING SOCIOLOGY AND CHILDHOOD STUDIES

Within sociology, scholars approach the study of children in many ways. Some sociologists take a strict social constructivist approach, while others meld this approach to a prism that considers social structures that are imposed on children. Some sociologists focus on demographic change, while others continue to focus on aspects of socialization as childhoods are constructed through forces such as consumer goods, child labor, childrens rights, and public policy. All these scholars add to the research vitality and breadth of childhood studies. In addition, children and childhood studies research centers, degree programs, and courses began to be established in the 1990s, most of which have benefited from the contributions of sociologists and the theories and methods of sociology. Childhood studies gained firm ground in 1992 in the United States when members of the American Sociological Association (ASA) formed the Section on the Sociology of Children. Later, the section name was changed to the Section on the Sociology of Children and Youth to promote inclusiveness with scholars who research the lives of adolescents. In addition to including adolescents, American sociologists are also explicitly open to all methods and theories that focus on children. The agenda of the Children and Youth Section has been furthered by its members initiation and continued publication of the annual volume Sociological Studies of Children since 1986. In agreement with the ASA section name addition, the volume recently augmented the volume name with and Youthand became formalized as the annual volume of ASA Children and Youth Section. The volume was initially developed and edited by Patricia and Peter Adler and later edited by Nancy Mandell, David Kinney, and Katherine Brown Rosier. Outside the United States, the study of children by sociologists has gained considerable ground through the International Sociological Association Research Group 53 on Childhood, which was established in 1994. Two successful international journals, Childhood and Children and Society, promote scholarly research on children from many disciplines and approaches. In particular, British childhood researchers have brought considerable steam to the development of childhood studies through curriculum development. Specifically, childhood researchers wrote four introductory textbooks published by Wiley for a target class on childhood offered by the Open University in 2003. The books are Understanding Childhood by Woodhead and Montgomery (2003), Childhoods in Context by Maybin and Woodhead (2003), Childrens Cultural Worlds by Kehily and Swann (2003), and Changing Childhoods by Montgomery, Burr, and Woodhead (2003). The relationship between the discipline of sociology and childhood studies appears to be symbiotic. Even as sociologists assert that the study of children is its own field, this does not preclude the development of childhood studies across disciplinary boundaries. Sociologists capture the social position or status of children and have the methods for examining how childhood is socially constructed or situated within a given society. Sociologists can also continue to find common ground with other childhood scholars from other disciplines to develop better methods and refine theories that explain childrens lives. Advances in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies serves to strengthen the research of sociologists who focus their work on children. Likewise, sociological challenges to the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies

since the 1990s have provided useful points of critique and improvement to the study of childrens behavior and childrens lives.

Uri Bronfenbrenner
Bronfenbrenner developed the ecological systems theory. He emphasised a balance between nature (heredity) and nurture (environment). To illustrate his theory, he depicts the child as surrounded by four concentric circles, each representing a different set of factors that influence the child. The four sections, from the innermost to the outermost, are: : This represents the childs immediate family and surroundings. : The broader surroundings and influences on the childs are represented here, including the preschool, Doctors surgery and other influences on the life of the child and their family. child. Things in the exosystem include the parents workplace, the services available to the family and the support networks they are involved in.

of the cultural group the child belongs to (Berk, 1996).

Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky is not only an important theorist in cognitive development theory, but in social development theory as well particularly through his sociocultural theory. Vygotsky emphasised the importance of relationships and interactions between children and more knowledgeable peers and adults. He believed that childrens cognitive understandings were enriched and deepened when they are scaffolded by parents, teachers and peers (Berk 1996). He believed that the environment plays an important role in a childs development. Particularly in the social aspects of development. He focused on the notion that children internalise feelings, emotions and ideas and language is a key factor in the development of concepts . Albert Bandura, like Skinner and Watson before him, was a behaviourist. Behaviourists believed that learning is gradual and continuous; that development is a sequence of specific conditional behaviours. The main emphasis is on the environment not heredity. Banduras social learning theory focuses on the imitation of behaviours by children, imitating caregivers and peers, thus learning much about society and how it operates.