This study explores the ‘sex-map’, a didactic object developed in Sweden. The analysis focuses on teacher guidelines and an animated movie for classroom use and how the sex-map becomes a method for emphasizing students as actors in defining sexuality. Building on Mol’s notion of ontonorms, the emphasis is on ways in which the ontology of young sexuality is associated with arguments about what is ‘good’ in and for sex education. The sex-map incorporates ideal students’ experiences, discoveries, and positive feelings. Via students, a critique is mounted against one-path sexuality, underscoring the importance of ‘good’ non-hierarchical sexuality as exemplary sex education.

I rapporten presenteras ett utvecklingsprojekt för att stärka studentuppsatsers forskningsförankring, inom ramen för en lärarutbildning, fritidshemspedagogik samt i relation till huvudområdet barn- och ungdomsvetenskap. Utmaningar gällande att förankra uppsatsämnen och uppsatsskrivande i aktuell forskning inom kursen Självständigt arbete i grundlärarprogrammet med inriktning mot arbete i fritidshem identifieras. I korthet skisseras dessa utmaningar i förhållande till lärarutbildningens komplexa innehåll och organisation och fler- och tvärvetenskaplig utbildning. Rapporten beskriver arbetet med en vägledning till studenter och handledare som ska visa på möjligheter och krav inom kursen och området fritidshemspedagogik, vilket ska ge stöd i formulering av uppsatsämnen samt för genomförande av studier. 

Denna artikel behandlar barns ledarskap. Syftet är att uppmärksamma relationer mellan barn och ledarskap och att vidga vokabulären kring barns ledarskap. Inledningsvis behandlas betydelser av barns ledarskap utifrån forskning som fokuserat på förekomsten av informellt ledarskap inom institutioner som förskola och skola. Här noteras att forskningen ger en begränsad förståelse av barns ledarskap och detta aktualiserar behov av teoretiskt utvecklande studier på området. Föreliggande artikel introducerar variationsrika exempel på barns ledarskap och därigenom öppnas möjligheter till att förstå fenomenet som ett aktuellt, svårgripbart och omtvistat fenomen. I artikeln uppmärksammas betydelser av formellt ledarskap inom idrottsorganisationer jämte populärkulturens Baby-bossen och Tonårsbossen. Dessa exempel låter utkristallisera två typer av ledarskap, det ekonomiska respektive det demokratiska. Artikeln aktualiserar avslutningsvis möjligheter till en empiriskt grundad förståelse som låter oss teoretisera barns ledarskap och ledarskap-för-barn i olika sammanhang utifrån diskussioner om agency inom barndomssociologin.

This article deals with children’s leadership. The aim is to draw attention to relations between childrenand leadership and to broaden the vocabulary about children’s leadership. Initially, descriptions of children’sleadership in research is discussed. It is noted that research provides a limited understandingof children’s leadership and this necessitates theoretical development. This article introduces examplesof children’s leadership and shows that the phenomenon could be understood as challenging and sometimescontroversial. It draws attention to the importance of formal leadership in sports organizations,to popular imaginaries including The Boss Baby and the Teenage Boss, as well as to controversial leadershipprograms in the education system. Two types of leadership, economic and democratic leadership,are identified through the examples in focus. Finally, the article highlights the possibilities of empiricallybased understandings that allow us to scrutinize children’s leadership and leadership-for-children indifferent contexts based on discussions about childhood and children’s agency.

Corporations approach parents, globally, for example through direct marketing. This paper highlights a specific marketing practice – called the baby box – offering becoming parents “freebies” for their children, including diapers, pacifiers, toys, and detergents. In Sweden, baby boxes are distributed by companies such as the diaper brand Libero and by pharmacies. Parents-to-be announce their interest and receive products that are handy when caring for a new-born. The box is a starting point in a relation to companies in the child care business, meant to stimulate consumption. Having accepted a baby box, various companies follow up with advertising. The composition of the baby boxes says something about how companies in the childcare business imagine what parents and new borns need and want. Thereby, boxes expose ideas about what parents and infants are. As baby boxes are distributed to expecting parents, before or early in their parenthood, they have the potential to orientate them and generate a sense of meaning in relation to their child(ren). This paper approaches the constitution of parenthood and children, scrutinizing the meanings of the baby box, as materialized educational policies. The paper thus aims to provide insights regarding marketing practices and notions of children and parenthood in consumer culture. Developing the notion of market intimacy, we argue that corporations associate infants with specific products and brands, which are made relevant in the unfolding of future temporalities. Taken together, we suggest that the baby boxes create a platform for corporations to become a part of the co-constitution of parenthood, family, and childhood. Our arguments are based on an analysis of: boxes and their contents, distribution (including ethnographic encounters in stores), and “unboxing” events, presented on YouTube.

This paper distinguishes children’s leadership from generic and often implicit ideal types of leadership, which are centered around adultist myths and assumptions. Thinking with children, or about the child/boy/girl/”x” as leader, provides an invitation to conceptual development and generates interdisciplinary challenges (connecting the disparate fields of childhood studies and leadership studies). Discussing some well-known examples of children’s leadership, I address potentially powerful impacts of gender, “authority” and generation, and how these dimensions challenge traditional theories of leadership.

The paper draws on bricolage methodology and proceeds through explorations of disparate examples from popular culture and social media, highlighting how girls and boys enact leadership and are depicted as leaders. Children’s leadership, in its multifaceted manifestations, suggest the possibility and actuality of the child leader, reminding us, at the same time, that a/the child is rooted in wider structures of social life, including institutions and schools, NGOs and various organizations that focus on children’s leisure time.

Children turn into efficient indicators to leadership scholars of the need to examine social undercurrents – for example: to explore how children and others in a wider sense become “Heroes” as they turn into (recognized) leaders, rather than relying on assumptions that middle-aged men in the corporate world just happen to be both. A critical question is how children’s leadership can be understood; taking complexity and multiplicity into account (e.g. the importance of gender-age-race-class-…), and being attentive to simultaneous demonstrations of similarities and differences relating to adult/generic leadership. Any input from childhood studies? In childhood studies there is no (empirical or theoretical) focus on leadership, as one current literature review suggests. The established and often discussed concept of agency, however, offer theoretical possibilities in developing our understanding of relational prerequisites and the different effects of leadership. Consequently, the vocabulary of this paper involves concepts from childhood studies and leadership studies, for empirical and theoretical explorations of children’s leadership and the child as leader.