yes / In 2012 Steven Mintz argued that the history of childhood matters, since it has context-specific implications. This paper outlines the historical construction of childhood, in general, and specifically in Ghana, and presents how childhood construction impacts on children’s participation in Ghana. The paper argues that the cultural value underpinning childhood construction in the Ghanaian context - i.e. unidirectional respect from children and young people to adults at all times - has implications for children’s participation, as it limits children and young people’s willingness to participate in decision-making forums. The paper concludes that by such cultural ideology any participatory effort that includes children, young people and adults together may be counterproductive and thus likely to fail.

yes / It is argued that “individuals do not automatically become free and responsible citizens but must be educated for citizenship” (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 2003, cited in Leisha, 2012:55). Hence adults’ promotion of young people’s civic engagement is intended to educate young people to become active citizens. This assumes a deficit, or lack of caring by young people about issues in their country or community. However, young people’s sense of belonging and motivations to participate in civic activities are different from that of adults. This paper discusses research with young people involved in two participatory initiatives in Ghana, to examine their motivations for engaging in the projects. The study found that in addition to demonstrating that they are active citizens by engaging in the projects, the young people were also motivated by other self-interest reasons. There was however a marked gender difference in their reasons for participating in the projects. It was observed that the motivations given by the young people reflected gender stereotype of masculinity and femininity. The paper concludes that by understanding what motivates young people to engage in civic activities and other decision-making forums, participatory opportunities that emphasise young people’s interests and motivations could be created in order to sustain their participation.

This thesis focuses on Kaiapoi, a small town in North Canterbury, and studies the ways young people are discursively constructed by adults and each other, and also the different ways young people experience and use the town's environment. Drawing on key informant interviews, media analysis, a youth survey and a photography activity (photovoice); the research developed a rich understanding of the different ways young people are constructed in Kaiapoi and the places young people enjoy and do not enjoy going to in the town and why.

Care has seldom been linked with memory and the natural environment. Moreover young people have been largely absent from geographical explorations of memory and memories. This research seeks, in part, to fill these gaps by examining young people's memories and memory formation within frameworks of care and the natural environment. More specifically this research provides insights into socially and economically marginalised young people's memory processes as well as the multiple emotional geographies that are created in an affective web of care, other people and the natural environment. This thesis provides an original, critical examination of a third sector charitable organisation Country Holidays for Inner City Kids (CHICKS) and their respite breaks for disadvantaged young people between 8-15 years of age. 26 young people who attended CHICKS were interviewed in addition to multiple staff members, volunteers and referral agents. Additionally exhaustive observations were carried out on 17 different respite breaks. This thesis has three research aims. Firstly it sets out to examine how care experiences shape memory formation at CHICKS. Secondly, it explores how care produces space, particularly in the natural environment. And thirdly it examines what kind of emotional geographies does care produce. First and foremost this thesis contributes into geographies of care. Furthermore, it ties care into other scholarly niches. It offers a somewhat novel conceptualisation of nature as a space of care: a therapeutic landscape that extends beyond literal connections between the physical environment and feelings of well-being. This research also contributes to the geographical research on care and memory by integrating young people in such research, as well as by suggesting that memories can become a vessel for well-being. Overall, the unique research arena makes this an original piece of work thus adding knowledge to geographies of care on affective, methodological and theoretical levels. This research demonstrates flat ontology of care, fun, geographies of love and the natural environment can open up transformative spaces where identity processes and the self can be processed and re-processed. Ultimately, this all makes it possible for memory and memories to become an intervention; a tool against adversity that allows the young person to go to a better mental and emotional place.

This research aims to establish a new way of understanding the ‘problem’ of children and young people’s participation. The problem is that the reality of participation has not lived up to its theoretical promise of enabling children and young people to meaningfully shape their environment on their own terms. With a reflexive approach, the research reformulates the relationship between the theory and reality of children and young people’s participation through investigating two case studies of participation projects in museums and galleries in the UK. In the literature review the problem of participation is situated within the policy, organisational and personal contexts; at each level of context, it is argued that there are fundamental, intractable reasons why the promise of participation cannot be realised in practice. In the case studies participation in practice is investigated in an in-depth way from a range of perspectives, focusing on the framing, practice and experience of the projects through discourse analysis of project documentation, observation of the projects in practice, and interviews with the participants. In the case studies the theoretical contradictions of participation emerge in practice; while the organisations attempt to enable the participants to engage with the project on their own terms, the top-down organisation of the project mean that controls over the participants are unintentionally created. The participants engaged with and experienced the projects in different ways and types of participants were identified in terms of how the projects were navigated. It was found that all participants were able to draw a positive experience from the projects even though there were problematic aspects. In response to the intractable problems of participation, in conclusion it is suggested that ‘spaciousness’ may be a more useful concept, focusing on enabling young people to make sense of their ambivalent experience in organisations in their own way.

National prevalence surveys indicate that lifetime and recreational drug use among all social classes have increased steadily over the last decade in Ireland (Moran et al., 2001a, Mayock, 2002, National Advisory Committee on Drugs, 2008a). Drugs research has been traditionally based on the identification, weighting and interrelatedness of risk and protective factors within a "risk prevention paradigm". This paradigm has been criticised for its lack of inclusion of individual, group and wider structural aspects, and occurs within a greater awareness of greater social discourse and societal shifts. The research papers in this portfolio of work are thematically analysed and conceptualised within the theoretical framework of cognitive and structural social capital. The descriptive research and later, more conceptual papers investigating drug use among rural youth, Travellers and cocaine use, are thereby explored in terms of the potential ‘normalisation of rural youth drug use’ within contemporary risk discourse, the assimilatory threat of increasing drug use among the ‘Traveller community’., and the emergence of the ‘recreational cocaine user’ in Irish society. The social processes of individualisation, reciprocity and trust which constitute social capital are deemed to provide potent collective frameworks for the navigation of risk in day to day ‘localised’ settings. The ‘interrelated normative frameworks’ and ‘processes of risk neutralisation’ are underpinned within a wider social capital understanding of the meaning of drug activity in associational life based on ‘interpersonal and institutional trust’ and ‘mutual resource acquisition’. Contemporary drug policies must consider the contextual constraints of the ‘risk society’, which impact on inherent individual ‘power resources’, whereby individual agency and drug taking is better understood within situational agency of ‘localised’ social, gender, ethnic and cultural capital.

Previous research has shown an increased use of IT amongst young people. This has made it problematic for parents to set boundaries for their children's use of IT. The aim for this study was to create a deeper understanding of how parents relate to boundaries of IT, and how they monitor their children's use of it. This study was a qualitative study through semi-structured interviews to enable to capture the parents' experiences. The results showed that parents have boundaries but that there is a gap between the occurrence of boundaries and causes for boundaries. The study showed that parents monitor their children's use of IT but it is unclear whether the methods they use actually give them sufficient insight and knowledge regarding their children use of IT.

This study examined the local needs of individuals accessing an adult community psychology service, using a cross sectional view of those waiting for the service. This service mapping exercise aimed to gather a better understanding of how the service was operating and the local differences in need. The results showed 163 individuals were waiting to access the service, with the majority (131) waiting for the stand-alone service. The different levels of demand resulted in varying waiting times across the service, with the stand-alone bases accruing the longest and the South-East and West areas producing the biggest relative need. Individuals waiting for the CMHT service were more likely to have two or more presenting problems than those waiting for stand-alone psychology (62.5% and 38.2% respectively). Social phobia and bipolar were more prevalent in the CMHT service, in comparison the stand-alone service had a higher percentage of individuals with depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, however the proportions differed between areas. The second part of the study explored the effect on estimated waiting times of improving access to the stand-alone service by devolving it to local CMHT areas. Waiting times varied according to the resource deployment criteria used; relative need proved the most promising. The proposed advantages and disadvantages of reconfiguration demonstrated the complex implications involved, reinforcing the need for clear rationale when considering service restructuring. In conclusion this project highlighted the need for the service to continue tracking demand and individuals’ needs and keep systematic waiting time information for all parts of the service. The results provided a useful starting point to inform future service development, whilst emphasising the necessity for longitudinal data too.

The 2004 Gender Equity Education Act (GEEA) sought to challenge gender and sexual discrimination in Taiwan by focusing on the importance of spaces of education as sites where gender and sexual identities are normalized and reproduced. This thesis explores the production of the GEEA and its subsequent implementation in two schools in Taipei City. Through reviewing geographical literature on education, children/young people, gender and sexualities, this thesis explores four research questions: (1) how the aims of the GEEA are shaped in Taiwanese policy context; (2) how the GEEA is implemented in schools; (3) how teachers shape young people's gender and sexual identities; (4) how young people's experiences of teaching practices and peer cultures affect their understandings of gender and sexual identities. Methods including discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observation are adopted to answer the above questions. The research aims to challenge the dichotomy of inward- and outward-looking approaches in geographies of education, to expand the construction of childhood and the gender model in existing geographical research in Western contexts, and to further the conceptualisation of different forms of heterosexuality. Consequently, based on empirical findings, the thesis argues that the objective of the GEEA, which is to enable the performance of diverse gender and sexual identities in educational spaces, has not been achieved yet because of the contradictory practices evident within school spaces. In conclusion, the thesis relates the research findings to some of the key debates within contemporary geographical literatures by highlighting the importance of combing inward- and outward-looking approaches to study education, the complex nature of young people's gender identities formation, and the age-dependent form of heterosexuality. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the crucial role of education spaces in shaping young people's identities in an East Asian context.

The aim of this study was to assess the physical activity, attitudes towards physical education, and health related fitness at two points, one year apart (Phase One and Phase Two). Three hundred and ninety four secondary school pupils of mixed ethnicities from National Curriculum school years 7, 8 and 9 (mean age ± S.D. = 12.9 ± 0.81 years) participated in phase one of the study. Two hundred and sixty seven pupils (from the original 394 participants) from National Curriculum school years 8, 9 and 10 (mean age ± S.D. = 13.7 ± 0.79 years) took part in phase two one year later. Physical activity was measured using the four by one-day physical activity recall questionnaire (Cale, 1993). Attitude was measured using the Pre-Adolescent Attitude towards Physical Education Questionnaire (PAAPEQ) (Shropshire, 1997). Five components of health related fitness were measured in a randomly selected sub-sample (35%) of the overall sample: body composition (measured using skinfold measures and body mass index); cardiovascular endurance (measured using the twenty metre multistage fitness test, Brewer et al., 1988); flexibility (measured using the sit and reach test); muscular strength (measured using hand grip dynamometry); and muscular endurance (measured using situps). Results of repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant decrease in energy expenditure between phase one and phase two (p<0.01) and young people’s energy expenditure was higher during weekends (especially Saturdays) than during school days (p<0.01). Young Asians were found to expend less energy than white and black pupils (p<0.01) and boys expended more energy than girls (p<0.01). No main effect according to school year was found (p>0.05) although a significant ‘time’ by ‘days’ of the week interaction was revealed; pupils in Year 8 were more active on school days than those in Years 7 and 9 (p<0.05). Non-parametric analyses conducted on time spent in moderate physical activity (MPA) and vigorous physical activity (VPA) indicated that: MPA and VPA decreased between phases one and two; Asians consistently spent less time in MPA than white and black pupils (p<0.01); boys engaged in more MPA and VPA than girls (p<0.01). However, the difference in mean reported time for boys and girls decreased between phases one and two. Percentages of the whole sample meeting optimal activity guidelines and percentages classified as active or moderately active decreased between measurements for the whole sample. With regard to attitudes towards PE, results from MANOVA revealed a significant ‘school year’ x ‘ethnicity’ x ‘gender’ interaction (p<0.05). Attitudes of black males became more positive with age whereas the attitudes of other groups followed an age related decline. Significant main effects were found according to school year (p<0.01) and ethnicity (p<0.05). Attitude towards PE became less favourable with school year. Asian pupils had more positive overall attitudes than white and black pupils but univariate analysis revealed that Asian pupils had a less positive attitude towards their PE teacher (p<0.05). Furthermore, Pearson’s product moment correlations indicated weak yet significant positive relationships between total attitude towards PE and energy expenditure (p<0.01), time spent in moderate activity (p<0.05) and time spent in vigorous activity (p<0.01). Results of repeated measures ANOVA conducted on health related fitness data revealed that, for all groups, body fat (p<0.05) and muscular endurance (p<0.01) increased between phases one and two. In both phases, significant positive relationships were found between muscular endurance and energy expenditure (p<0.01) and vigorous activity (p<0.05 and p<0.01 for phases one and two respectively). Therefore, young people who were more active had greater levels of muscular endurance. No further consistent findings were made. Findings indicate that generally young people’s physical activity decreases with age and that girls are less active than boys although as young people age the physical activity gap between the genderes narrows. Findings also lend support to the idea that cultural differences may influence physical activity levels and attitudes towards PE. Furthermore, associations between physical activity and attitude towards PE exist and therefore, attitude may be used to predict physical activity behaviour. Ethnicity, age, and attitude towards PE should be considered in the development of future interventions to increase young people’s physical activity levels. However, as the current study did not reveal strong associations between physical activity and health related fitness, further research is required in the area.