First published in 1987. Several of the chapters in this book were presented at a symposium held at the British Educational Research Association Conference in Bristol in September 1986. This volume’s title is a deliberate echo of the title of the Plowden Report (CACE, 1967). It is now twenty years since Plowden was published and the chapters in this collection constitute an attempt to present a new perspective on one of the central assumptions which underpinned the Report – on the ‘nature of ‘children’. Within the book there are two themes of particular importance. The first is focussed on how children themselves are perceived, bearing in mind new developments in child psychology and in sociological studies of children’s perspectives and behaviour in schools. The second concerns the implications which such developments may have for teaching and learning processes in classrooms.