Narrative play is a way of communicating with children using imaginative stories and narratives to share and make sense of life events. This book describes using narrative play therapeutically with children who have lived in multiple families, children who have problems with social understanding and children who have learning difficulties. Ann Cattanach explains how children's stories and narratives, whether they are about real or imagined events, can be interpreted as indicators of their experiences, their ideas, and a dimension of who they are. She demonstrates this with examples of children's stories from her clinical experience, and provides narrative play techniques and sample scripts both for therapists and for parents whose circumstances require a therapeutic parenting approach. This book is essential reading for play therapists, social workers and other professionals working with children, as well as parents and carers of children who are experiencing social and/or learning difficulties.

The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent: Empowering Young Children’s Rights and Meaningful Participation is a practical guide for researchers who want to engage young children in rights-based, participatory research. This book presents the Narrative Approach, an original and innovative method to help children understand their participation in research. This approach moves away from traditional paper-based consent to tailor the informed consent process to the specific needs of young children. Through the Informing Story, which employs a combination of interaction, information and narrative, this method enables children to comprehend concepts through storytelling. Researchers are stepped through the development of an Informing Story so that they can deliver accurate information to young children about what their participation in research is likely to involve. To further inform practice, the book documents the implementation of the Narrative Approach in four case studies demonstrating the variety of settings in which the method can be applied. The Narrative Approach to Informed Consent addresses the rights of young children to be properly researched, expands opportunities for their active and engaged research participation, and creates a unique conceptual ethical space within which meaningful informed consent can occur. This book will be an invaluable tool for novice and experienced researchers and is applicable to a wide range of education and non-education contexts.

Narrative Play Therapy is a highly effective play-based psychological intervention that enables therapists to help children communicate difficult experiences and complex emotions through co-constructed stories. This is the definitive guide to the approach, offering both a coherent theoretical outline and a clear explanation of its practical applications. Beginning with detailed accounts of the theory and history that has shaped the approach, this book provides necessary background knowledge for the successful application of Narrative Play Therapy. It looks at different client circumstances, including children experiencing adoption, parental separation or abuse, and demonstrates how the approach can be used in practice to support each client group therapeutically. The professional expertise of leading practitioners in the field is brought together to present a comprehensive framework for Narrative Play Therapy drawn from theory, understanding and practice. This is an essential resource for students of play therapy, play therapy practitioners, and all other professionals working with children therapeutically.

The existence of orphans is as inevitable to most African cities and the world as it is death. These orphans are caused by the death of one or both parents due to various reasons, including the scourge of HIV and AIDS. Being orphans, most of them are vulnerable to difficult lives because they have nobody to fend for them and take care of their lives. They lack adequate food, living expenses, school fees, and care since their current guardians are also in adverse economic situations. In such situations, orphans end up living a life of hopelessness and trauma, which makes them deeply remember their dead parents and the care they received from them before death. Following the vulnerable situation of most orphans, this book, through a study done in the Tanzanian context, challenges churches to extend their counseling and caring ministries to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). It purports that the use of narrative approach is the most effective way to enter into the world of vulnerable children in order to provide pastoral counseling to them. This approach helps pastoral counselors to use life stories, proverbs, biblical narratives, plays, arts, songs, riddles, poems, symbols, and images as healing and coping mechanisms for OVC. Therefore, this book is helpful not only to churches and their ministry to orphans and vulnerable children, but also to those who care for orphans in their homes. Moreover, it will be helpful to children who live in adverse conditions worldwide to find ways to cope with their situations through the stories of children used inside this book.

The Handbook of Research Methods in Early Childhood Education brings together in one source research techniques that researchers can use to collect data for studies that contribute to the knowledge in early childhood education. To conduct valid and reliable studies, researchers need to be knowledgeable about numerous research methodologies. The Handbook primarily addresses the researchers, scholars, and graduate or advanced undergraduate students who are preparing to conduct research in early childhood education. It provides them with the intellectual resources that will help them join the cadre of early childhood education researchers and scholars. The purpose of the Handbook is to prepare and guide researchers to achieve a high level of competence and sophistication, to avoid past mistakes, and to benefit from the best researchers in the field. This Handbook is also useful to university professors who conduct research and prepare student researchers in early childhood education. It aims to improve the researchers’ conceptual and methodological abilities in early childhood education. Thus, the Handbook can be used as a guide that focuses on important contemporary research methodologies in early childhood education and describes them to offer researchers the necessary information to use these methodologies appropriately. This Handbook is designed to be used by students of early childhood education at all levels of professional development as well as mature scholars who want to conduct research in areas needing more in-depth study. It is hoped that this Handbook of Research Methods in Early Childhood Education will serve the needs of many in the research community. Scholars seeking the current state of research knowledge in various areas should find this volume useful. Similarly, practitioners who are trying to seek knowledge of research and its practical implications should find this volume helpful as well. This Handbook with its individual chapters presents several research methodologies to address a variety of hypotheses or research questions that will contribute to the knowledge of the field in early childhood education.

Narrative Therapies with Children and their Families introduces and develops the concepts and principles of narrative approaches to therapeutic work and demonstrates how narrative based approaches to practice provide a powerful and client friendly framework for engaging and working with troubled children and their families. Using clinical examples, each chapter develops a methodology around narrative practice and gives practical advice on working with narrative therapy in a variety of settings. Covering a broad range of difficult and sensitive topics, including trauma, abuse and youth offending, this book succeeds in illustrating the wide application of these principles in the context of the particular issues and challenges presented when working with children and families. This practical, practice based book will be welcomed by any professionals in the field of child, adolescent and family mental health who want to explore the benefits of employing narrative based approaches in their work.

Showcasing approaches as creative and playful as young clients themselves, the book presents therapy as a dialogue of discovery. Through transcripts and compelling case examples, contributors illuminate how drama, art, play, and humor can be used effectively to engage with children of different ages, and to honor their idiosyncratic language, knowledge, and perspective.

Narrative and Dramatic Approaches to Children’s Life Story with Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Families outlines narrative and dramatic approaches to improve vulnerable family relationships. It provides a model which offers new ways for parents to practise communicating with their children and develop positive relationships. The book focuses on the Theatre of Attachment model - a highly innovative approach which draws from a strong theoretical base to demonstrate the importance of narrative and dramatic play for sharing the children’s life history in the family home with their adoptive, foster or kinship parents. An emphasis is on having fun ways to work through complex feelings and divided loyalties, so as to secure attachment. This practice model aims to raise children’s self-esteem and communication skills and to combat the profound effects of abuse, neglect on trauma on children’s development. This book will be of great interest for academics, post-graduate students, universities and Training bodies, service providers and practitioners involved in social work and creative therapies, child psychologists, child psychotherapists and public and private adoption and foster care agencies.

This book brings together narrative approaches and brain injury rehabilitation, in a manner that fosters an understanding of the natural fit between the two. We live our lives by narratives and stories, and brain injury can affect those narratives at many levels, with far-reaching effects. Understanding held narratives is as important as understanding the functional profile of the injury. This book explores ways to create a space for personal stories to emerge and change, whilst balancing theory with practical application. Despite the emphasis of this book on the compatibility of narrative approaches to supporting people following brain injury, it also illustrates the potential for contributing to significant change in the current narratives of brain injury. This book takes a philosophically different approach to many current neuro-rehabilitation topics, and has the potential to make a big impact. It also challenges the reader to question their own position, but does so in an engaging manner which makes it difficult to put down.

′This Handbook offers diverse perspectives from scholars across the globe who help us see play in new ways. At the same time the basic nature of play gives a context for us to learn new theoretical frameworks and methods. A real gem!′ - Beth Graue, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA Play and learning scholarship has developed considerably over the last decade, as has the recognition of its importance to children’s learning and development. Containing chapters from highly respected researchers, whose work has been critical to building knowledge and expertise in the field, this Handbook focuses on examining historical, current and future research issues in play and learning scholarship. Organized into three sections which consider: theoretical and philosophical perspectives on play and learning play in pedagogy, curriculum and assessment play contexts. The Handbook′s breadth, clarity and rigor will make it essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students, as well as professionals with interest in this dynamic and changing field. Liz Brooker is Reader in Early Childhood in the Faculty of Children and Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London. Mindy Blaise is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Susan Edwards is Associate Professor in Curriculum and Pedagogy at Australian Catholic University. This handbook′s International Advisory Board included: Jo Aliwood, The University of Newcastle, Australia Pat Broadhead, Leeds Metropolitan University, Australia Stig Brostrom, Aarhus University, Denmark Hasina Ebrahim, University of the Free State, South Africa Beth Graue, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA Amita Gupta, The City College of New York, CUNY, USA Marjatta Kalliala, University of Helsinki, Finland Rebecca Kantor, University of Colorado Denver, USA Colette Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Ellen Sandseter, Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education, Norway