The free and constrained child view: In this view, the child is seen either as innately good (free) or innately evil (constrained). The notion that the child is free stems from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of negative education. In this view, the child’s is seen as innocent and needing protection from harmful influences in the outside world. A decision to home school one’s children may be informed by such a view. In contrast, the child’s positioning as evil or constrained stems from the idea that sin is hereditary: children are born with original sin and are disposed to behave in a sinful manner unless their will can be broken.

The environmentalist view: According to this view, children’s experiences, especially sensory or reflective experiences, lead them to develop ideas or gain knowledge. John Locke is one early philosopher commonly associated with this view. He proposed that the child’s mind is a tabula rasa or blank slate which is to be inscribed with knowledge.In contemporary educational policy and practice, this view is also reflected in the push to make young children ready to learn (Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 2007). It suggests that children are incomplete. Many structured preschool programs are informed by such principles.

The conditioned child view:This view reflects behaviourist principles of learning. Behaviourists sought to understand the ways in which human behaviour can be predicted and controlled, primarily by creating a relationship between two stimuli. For instance, a child might be conditioned to respond to specific situations in certain ways primarily through positive or negative reinforcement (a reward or punishment). The child is seen as a passive or incomplete learner needing to be trained.

The child and the species view: Stemming from unfoldment theory and recapitulation theory, this view acknowledges that children are born complete and capable of higher order thinking, but believes that they need guidance from adults to focus their thinking.According to unfoldment theory, this guidance allows development to unfold naturally to reveal their full powers of reasoning. Recapitulation theory similarly suggests that children progress toward higher abilities.

The loss of innocence view: Based on psychodynamic theories, this perspective states that our behaviour may happen for reasons we cannot understand. Sexuality, rationality, irrationality, and fantasy contribute to the complexity of childhood.

The ages of man view: This view is based on the work of developmental psychologists such as Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg who believed that children progress through a series of set, predictable developmental stages, achieving pre-determined milestones at each specific age. The child’s development is seen as biologically determined.

An upbringing fit for society view: Based in part on the ideas of John Dewey, this view suggests that children’s education and care is to prepare them to become citizens. For example, activities emphasizing cooperation and responsibility are seen as teaching children to be active citizens in a democratic society.

The agentic child view: This perspective emphasizes that children have specific rights, including the right to participate in society and to effect change. The child is not acted upon or trained by others, but rather engages with others in building knowledge and understanding.

The child from a non-Western perspective view: This view acknowledges that the conventional images of children and childhood have an ethnocentric, Western bias. Majority-world and Indigenous images of the child help us see diverse worldviews and ways of seeing children.