OMEP Policy Forum: UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has Become Policy in Many Countries

Children’s Agency: Opportunities and Constraints Abstract Children’s agency accords with the principles emphasised by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations in Convention on the rights of the child. UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Geneva. Retrieved from, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx, 1989). This study focuses on children’s opportunities for agency in first grade of a Finnish primary school. The research explored how children’s agency was evident in photographs taken by 16 children on their school experiences and discussions with the researcher about the photographs. A phenomenological approach was used in the analyses to identify four themes in the data: the social order of school; teacher’s pedagogical tools; break times; and learning new skills. In the school context, the children’s agency seemed to require continuous balancing between the children’s freedom and adults’ power and authority. Pedagogically, the results imply that the adults who work with children can listen closely to children’s voices in order to strengthen opportunities in classrooms and to support children’s sense of personal agency. The study challenges teachers to consider how classroom practices may divide or categorise some children and how these practice may reduce children’s participation, contribution and agency.

Embedding Young Children’s Participation Rights into Research: How the Interactive Narrative Approach Enhances Meaningful Participation Abstract This research explored how young children’s research participation can be enhanced when an interactive narrative approach is embedded within research to enhance children’s consent to participation and their understanding of the research process. The context for this research was a 1-h, science outreach programme delivered into Australian playgroups. An interactive digital story was devised to inform nine children (aged 3–4 years) about the purposes of the research. Across a period of 11–16 weeks and across three occasions, an informing story about the research was used with the children to elicit their descriptions and explanations about their research role. Data gathered from semi-structured interviews with parents and audio- and video-recorded conversations with children also aided in the analyses to understand how children perceived their role as a research participant. Through cross-case analysis, six aspects of meaningful research participation were identified from children’s and parents’ responses: engagement, journeying, authenticity, consequence, ownership, and identity. The research extends current knowledge about young children’s rights to understand their participatory role in research and about the considerations that can be put in place to ensure participation is personally meaningful to children.

Children’s Right to Participate: How Can Teachers Extend Child-Initiated Learning Sequences? Abstract Children’s participation is valued in early childhood education but how this is achieved in pedagogy is less obvious. The methodology of conversation analysis is used in this paper to show how specific interactional practices afford opportunities for children to initiate, explore, and assert their own perspectives in everyday activities. The analyses illustrate how teachers’ practices can encourage child participation through the ways in which teachers respond to and extend child-initiated sequences of learning. Data are drawn from research projects conducted in New Zealand and Australia that explore how teachers construct learning opportunities for children within talk-in-interactions. Three data excerpts of teachers and children, aged from 4 to 6 years, are analysed. The analyses of video-taped interactions reveal that teachers’ contributions to (or silences) in interactions and unfolding talk can create particular trajectories of action in early learning environments. Evidence provided by these analyses can inform professional learning for teachers to illustrate how teachers’ interactions with children can support children’s rights to participation in early childhood education.

Spatially Democratic Pedagogy: Children’s Design and Co-Creation of Classroom Space Abstract Young children’s participation has been specifically foregrounded as a pedagogical element within education policy in Wales. However, there is currently little evidence that this policy concerned with participation has been enacted. This research describes an intervention, Spatially Democratic Pedagogy, as a pedagogical approach to foster young children’s participation, through design and co-creation of their classroom space. A group of six children, aged 4–5 years, alongside their teacher, were supported through a design-based intervention to enact, document and analyse this process. The research draws upon social understandings of space, as well as Froebel’s ideas about construction of communal gardens. Findings illustrate notable differences in the roles and relationships that formed between the teacher and the children when using Spatially Democratic Pedagogy. Children were teachers, planners, architects, negotiators and problem-solvers, as they participated in co-construction of their space. The argument is made that it is the process of design and co-creation that becomes the mediator for pedagogical change and acts as the driver for children’s participation. The co-construction of space is an important element to support young children’s participation in early years classrooms.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: “Where are we at in recognising children’s rights in early childhood, three decades on …?”

A Critical Realist Reflection on the Use of Social Media as Third Space for Rights Education in Early Childhood Abstract The promotion and advancement of Rights Education in Early Childhood ought to be supported through the development of spaces that allow for interdisciplinary discourses among different stakeholders. The project #ChildRightsChat emerged from interactions between the authors to use a digital space to promote the advancement of an interdisciplinary and global discussion about children’s rights. A primary aim was to facilitate adult learning about the protection and promotion of children’s rights in practice. Chats in Twitter, through structured and moderated interactions, were designed to share knowledge and experiences around specific topics. The present paper presents the authors’ reflections, as moderators of #ChildRightsChat, through a critical realist analysis. The findings explore how social media can be understood as a learning environment in ‘third space’, with respect to the nature of interactions that occurred, the context as a learning space, and the voices heard in the chat. The implications of social media to include global perspectives for the advancement of rights-based practice in early childhood education and care are considered.

Indigenous Children’s Linguistic Rights in the 21st Century: Intentions and Tensions in Practice Abstract This paper presents a framework for what we consider are essential elements for realising the linguistic rights of Indigenous children in the twenty-first century. The global impacts of colonisation on various Indigenous communities have resulted in loss of cultural practices, knowledge and loss of languages. This framework points to ways forward for addressing Indigenous children’s rights to reclaim their languages in early childhood. The linguistic rights of Indigenous children are at the intersection of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in this, the International Year of Indigenous Languages. The enshrined rights of Indigenous children to an education in their own culture and language is a right yet to be realised in nations who are signatories to the Convention and the Declaration. Examples are presented of Indigenous language programmes in early childhood settings in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sápmi and the USA to highlight the significant roles of policy, Elders, communities, teacher education and the role of early childhood education in supporting children and families to reclaim endangered Indigenous languages.

Physical Environments of Early Childhood Education Centres: Facilitating and Inhibiting Factors Supporting Children’s Participation Abstract A normative demand placed on early childhood centres by political actors and education theorists is that they should promote participation by children. Numerous publications have set out recommendations for early childhood teachers on how to promote participation in their day-to-day activities. The present study considers the role of the environment in facilitating children’s participation through a visual environmental analysis, using photographs from two group environments in two different centres across three countries (Germany, New Zealand, and the USA). The analyses distinguished between environmental features of: transparency, structure, flexibility and responsivity, accessibility of materials, functional diversity, and representations of children in the environment. The findings demonstrate that a systematic approach to the analysis of physical environments can provide greater understanding about how environments may facilitate or constrain young children’s participation in early childhood centres. This study contributes to the methodological development for this field of analyses in early childhood education.

Quality of Early Childhood Education in Private and Government Preschools of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Abstract The present study assesses the quality of preschools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and examines differences in quality between government and private preschools. Thirty-seven preschools (16 government and 21 private) and 37 preschool teachers from Addis Ababa participated in this study. Data were collected using the Global Guidelines Assessment (GGA) Scale which contains 76 items across five areas of practice: Environment and Physical Space, Curriculum Content and Pedagogy, Early Childhood Education Educators and Caregivers, Partnership with Families and Communities, and Young Children with Special Needs. Items are rated on a 5-point scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Specific analyses also considered if preschools were meeting adequate quality standards. Both private and government preschools had less than ‘adequate’ quality. Private preschools had relatively better quality compared with government preschools. The GGA is an important measurement tool to measure quality in ECE services that can inform policy and advocacy efforts to deliver higher quality early childhood education in the Ethiopian context. Preschools in Ethiopia could use the GGA scale, as a self-evaluation tool, to identify how and where to focus their efforts in order to deliver quality early education to children and families.