EN
The paper contains an analysis of the different approaches to the process of conceptualising childhood. In the first part of the article the authors present a universal vision of childhood based upon the universal model of human development dominant in mainstream psychology. In the subsequent part of the paper they discuss, referring to the sociocultural perspective on human development, the vision of a multitude of childhoods. They also consider the area of the policy of childhood emphasizing discourses of concern for the child (the discourse of “need”, the discourse of “rights”, the discourse of “life quality”) that have been created within it. In the final part of the article the authors focus their attention on the pedagogy of childhood, which is discussed from the angle of critical thought existing in the area of the humanities and social studies. The pedagogy of childhood is, therefore, considered a domain which shows an entanglement of the processes which construct childhood in political, economic and sociocultural contexts, and reveals the real mechanisms of the formation of discourses of childhood.