Effects of contemporary education reforms: The making of global childhoods or globalized childhood?

Contemporary mainstream construction of a ‘normal’ childhood in the 21st century at both global and local levels often promotes a singular image of the child that reflects selected characteristics of white middle-upper class from the western sphere of the world (Dahlberg and Moss 2005). Such a hegemonic construction of what a ‘good’ childhood should look like has worked to shape the formations of some ‘best’ and ‘appropriate’ pedagogical practices in schools for all children universally regardless of cultural, historical, and class differences. Hence, in this paper, we seek to understand students’ views of learning, schooling and society and what they feel that they need in order to become a ‘normal’ child in the school system in the 21st century.