Centre for Open Education
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY
NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET
(For Open Universities Australia students)

Office Use Only
**

Unit Code
SGY290
Unit Name
“Generations: Childhood, Adulthood, Old Age’’
COE USE ONLY
Date Received
Assignment No.
3

Assignment Title
Research Essay

Due Date
10/12/2012

Contact Info
Phone: 0447 141 912
Email:lesleyrielly@hotmail.com

Word Count
(If Applicable)
1,500
Turnitin No.
(If Applicable)

ACADEMIC HONESTY DECLARATION (this is very important please read carefully):
By placing my name in this document I declare that:
This assessment is my own work, based on my personal study and/or research;
I have acknowledged all material and sources used in the preparation of this assessment, including any material generated in the course of my employment;
If this assessment was based on collaborative preparatory work, as approved by the teachers of the unit, I have not submitted substantially the same final version of any material as another student;
Neither the assessment, nor substantial parts of it, have been previously submitted for assessment in this or any other institution;
I have not copied in part, or in whole, or otherwise plagiarised the work of other students;
I have read and I understand the criteria used for assessment;
The assessment is within the word and page limits specified in the unit outline;
The use of any material in this assessment does not infringe the intellectual property / copyright of a third party;
I understand that this assessment may undergo electronic detection for plagiarism, and a copy of the assessment may be retained in a database and used to make comparisons with other assessments in future. Work retained in a database is anonymous and will not be able to be matched to an individual student;
I take full responsibility for the correct submission of this assessment in the appropriate place with the correct cover sheet attached and I have retained a duplicate copy of this assessment.
This declaration is a summary of the University policy on plagiarism. For the policy in full, please refer to http://www.mq.edu.au/academichonesty or the Student Information in the Handbook.

In contemporary research on childhood, children are no longer treated as passive objects of investigation; increasingly their voices and their views are being taken into account. Find two such pieces of research. Summarize them briefly and then state (a) why you found the research interesting and (b) what you have learned about children’s lives in contemporary Australia.

In contemporary Australia it seems that childhood and children are no longer considered or treated as passive objects of investigations as they once were and they are even said to be less dependent upon adults. It has been pointed out that they are in fact competent, social people that attempt to make sense and contribute to their own life and the environment in which they live. But is this the case?
Researchers have revealed that it is vital for children throughout childhood and into adulthood to be allowed to contribute to and have a say in what occurs in their lives. The information and the contemporary research that was examined on childhood for the purpose of this essay is summarized and then what was found to be interesting about the research is explained, as well as, what knowledge was acquired in regards to the lives of children in contemporary Australia.

Overtime, many changes have occurred and new directions have been taken when it comes to the study and research of childhood (Prout & James 2002). For a long time throughout history and until fairly recently in fact, childhood was never considered a primary focus of any academic research (Prout & James 2002). This is noted as far back as medieval times where the idea of childhood, according to Aries (cited in Prout & James 2002, p.16), was simply non-existent. The seventeenth century seen changes and a general shift in attitudes towards