The status and agency of children in school textbooks, 1970–2012: a cross-national analysis

ABSTRACT

Via a cross-national and longitudinal analysis, this study seeks to understand whether and to what extent school textbooks portray children as entities with status and agency. Our core argument is that in a world in which individuals are imagined as central to national progress, the extension of individual personhood and citizenship to children is associated with their increased status and enhanced agency. Using 495 textbooks from 76 countries, we analyse trends from 1970 to 2012 as well as textbook-, country-, and global-level characteristics that explain changes in mentions of children’s status and agency. Trends indicate higher average levels of mentions of children’s status and agency over time. Findings from multivariate analyses suggest that children are more likely to be portrayed as rights bearers and capable actors in more democratic regimes and in countries more linked to world society. A rights affirming global environment also positively relates to mentions of children.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• rights
• agency
• textbooks
• cross-national

Acknowledgments

We appreciate comments on drafts of this paper from members of the Stanford Comparative Workshop, in particular John W. Meyer and Patricia Bromley, as well as Julia C. Lerch, Jeremy David Jimenez, Astrid deRidder, Colette Chabbott, and the journal editors and reviewers. For sharing data with us, we wish to thank Colin J. Beck, Patricia Bromley, Robert V. Clark, Kathleen M. Fallon, Benedikt Goderis, Brian Gran, Melanie Hughes, Minzee Kim, Liam Swiss, and Mila Versteeg. Xiaoyu Feng and Tracy Tang are to be thanked for their excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While a measure of a subset of INGOs in a domain that is relevant to the dependent variables, such as children’s rights INGOs, would be ideal, such a measure is not complete for the countries and period covered in our study (see Boyle and Kim 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [20060003].