The Lives of Children and Professional Practice
OsloMet is a university with about 20 000 students and 2 100 employees. The study programs
offer education in all three cycles for future professionals within education, health and welfare fields.
As professionals and researchers staff and students meet with children and young people as pupils,
patients, clients, users etc.
An ambition for the interdisciplinary research group CHILDLIFE, is to develop theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and empirical knowledge that may embrace the child within as well as across various institutional, social and cultural contexts.
Since 2019, Childlife has had the status of Excellent Academic Environment at the Faculty of Education and International studies.
Awarded research group
In the autumn of 2013 a grant was awarded to the research group «The Lives of Children and Professional Practice» – as an interdisciplinary team designated as a particularly strong research group by Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. The central aim of the group is investigating key relationships involved in the everyday lives of children from birth to the age of 18 years. Central among these are interactions with different professional practitioners such as kindergarten teachers, primary and lower secondary school teachers, child welfare officers, social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and public health nurses. We are concerned with how social processes such as migration, urbanisation, altered family patterns, increased educational and qualification requirements and various forms of child welfare legislation, influence, and are influenced, by children in the course of their and their families’ everyday lives. Attention will further be given to how materiality and material design influence possibilities for children’s participation in urban spaces and residencies, as well as in professional arenas such as kindergartens, schools, child welfare offices and health centres.
Conferences
In 2019 we successfully arranged our first international conference. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic
the follow up in 2021 had to be postponed to 2022.The Covid-19 pandemic may still affect the
conference organization, but our primary aim is to meet with you all in Oslo in September 2022.
You can read more about this under the Conferences tab.
Head of Research Group
More about the research group
The group’s research portfolio includes studies of girls and boys having diverse ethnic, cultural, social, age-specific backgrounds, as well as differing functional abilities. Intersectionality is a central concept in our investigations and analyses of these and related forms of social diversity. Individual researchers in the group and in interdisciplinary projects are currently investigating childhood experiences. In addition will the group investigate both general cultural and professional understandings of what are troubling or positive health and developmental issues in the lives of children.
Projects
For several years and in various constellations, group members have been cooperating in developing and implementing a variety of studies, network activities and other research-related activities. As a robust research community, we are constantly adding to our project portfolio and networking with other researchers at our own university as well as national and international researchers.
Using our research project portfolio and network as a solid foundation, we are constantly involved in applying for funding from a number of external research organizations and institutions.