Increasing access to rights for young people has highlighted the fact that little is known about their thinking and understanding of rights issues. However, expanding children’s access to rights without adequate knowledge of how they understand, experience and are able to use these rights, may be detrimental to their well-being. Thus far, research has explored conceptions of rights in several populations, including school aged children and young offenders, but little attention has been focused on maltreated children – a particularly vulnerable group. The purpose of the current study was to examine conceptions of and attitudes towards children’s nurturance and self-determination rights in 10-18-year-old children with histories of maltreatment who were living in state care. Associations between rights conceptions and attitudes, and factors related to the experience of maltreatment and child welfare care (e.g. type of maltreatment, type of foster care, time in care, and number of foster care placement changes), were explored. Rights concepts were assessed by having participants generate and discuss children’s rights issues arising in three contexts: home, school and the greater community, as well as through general knowledge questions. Attitudes were assessed using the Children’s ii iii Rights Attitudes questionnaire (Peterson-Badali, Morine, Ruck & Day, 2004), a 32 item likert-scale measure of children’s endorsement of various nurturance and self-determination rights. Results indicated that, while maltreated children’s conceptions of rights did frequently vary from previous findings with non-maltreated children, there were also a number of broad-based similarities. Interestingly, while maltreatment and child welfare care variables were largely unrelated to rights conceptions and attitudes, participants’ understanding did appear to be informed by the particular concerns that emerged from their unique circumstances (e.g., the fulfillment of basic needs such as food, clothing, and education). Findings are discussed in relation to theory, research, policy, and practice.

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The impact of services to help schools to guide and support parents (and peer tutors) in the use of the Paired Reading technique for improving children's reading was evaluated. Compared to all studies previously reported in the literature taken together, the Kirklees research yielded more than double the volume of pre-post norm referenced outcome data, double the amount of control or comparison group data and triple the amount of follow-up data. Additionally, in Kirklees baseline data were compared with pre-post data to give a time series comparison. Although outcomes on reading tests were slightly less favourable than those selectively reported in the previous literature, the research suggested that an adequate level of effectiveness was possible in a large field study incorporating many schools in one Local Education Authority, representing a significant test of the generalisability and replicability of the technique. The Kirklees study also examined the influence of a number of organisational, demographic and within-subject factors as they related to outcomes. In addition a very large volume of subjective feedback from teacher, parent and child participants was collected in a systematic way, and proved extremely positive. The research also examined the inter-relationship of the various outcome measures deployed with a view to assessing their relative reliability and validity for this purpose. As very few process data were gathered it was not possible to demonstrate what proportion of participants actually utilised the Paired Reading technique in the way they were trained. It is thus difficult to partial out to what extent the positive outcomes are due to the impact of the technique and/or the service delivery support package. However, the technique and service delivery package combined are suggested by the data to be associated with improvements in children's reading skill and attitude to reading. The study provides a number of pointers to the probable success of the Paired Reading approach but conclusive evidence on this must await the findings of properly controlled studies.

Drawing on original research that I conducted in the People's Republic of China, this thesis argues for a critical approach to the study of children and television. It begins with a survey of previous literature in the area in order to locate my own study in its intellectual context. This is followed by critical reappraisals of the approaches developed by empiricist and interpretative studies, which identify their main problems and set the ground for the central theoretical argument for a critical approach. The third chapter is devoted to the exposition of the case for a critical inquiry, the gist of which is to link the micro with the macro levels of social life, and to link biography with history. In the case of this particular study, the task is to relate the situated activity of children's television viewing and parents' reaction to it, to the broader historical and cultural formations in Chinese society. The fourth chapter is an account of the evolution of children's television in China, tracing its movement from ideological indoctrination and intellectual education (from the late 1950s to the early 1980s) to the tendency towards commercialization (from the mid 1980s onwards). The following two chapters consist of the empirical core of the thesis. Chapter 5 is a general study of children's viewing activity, with particular attention being paid to tile modes through which Chinese parents attempt to execute control over their children's viewing. In the final chapter, the recent trend of commercialization of children's television is further explored by way of a case study of the craze for Transformers cartoon series and toy range in China and its relation to the rise of consumerism. The thesis concludes by indicating new lines of inquiry for future research on China opened up by this piece of work.

This study examines in detail a variety of adolescent female friendships in twentieth-century British novels, written for both the 'adult' and 'juvenile' reading public, a distinction which I argue is arbitrary, since the relationship between the two is an exceptionally close one. Scholars discussing adolescence this century have tended to ignore the experience of girls, or to reinforce patriarchal stereotypes by presenting girls in marginal and reactionary roles. Until recently, even feminist discourse on friendship has been inclined to focus on adult relationships, or to examine girls in relation to boys. Identifying these tendencies, I explore fiction set in girls' schools and colleges to determine how novelists saw this significant relationship. Girls' schools and colleges represented a significant cultural space for girls and young women to learn to value female companionship. Although most discourse on girls’ school friendships has focused on the 'crush' relationship, I was interested in determining to what extent writers valued 'ordinary' friendships, as an area of life over which girls, earlier this century, were able to exert some autonomy. The girls' school story is the obvious fictional space to celebrate adolescent female friendship in all its complexity. As a genre it has been consistently devalued by critics (perhaps partly because of the very accessibility of the schoolgirl as a cultural image) despite enjoying enduring popularity among readers of all ages, and inspiring several notable novelists to adopt its conventions for their own works, as demonstrated in this study. My approach to the texts discussed here involves a close reading of the text against an awareness of the cultural conditions in which it was produced. As I show, failure to take into account these cultural conditions can lead to misunderstanding the novels and the relationships depicted therein. This study, drawing on a wide variety of texts produced between 1909 and 1990, shows clearly that the novelists concerned were influenced to varying extents by the prevailing ideologies of their times. These ideologies often determine the importance they accord female friendship, the form it takes, and the language they use to discuss it.