Educators' Perceptions of Facilitating Children's Participation in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

THE AIM OF THIS RESEARCH is to provide a better understanding of children's competence, vulnerability and power issues, and to promote better decision making and protection of children by educators. This means the pedagogy in early childhood education needs to be based on understanding the nature of children's participation and participatory learning. Further on it requires understanding about how the educators working in day care could aim the pedagogical process to supporting children's participation via developing practices. Research is based on a large survey conducted in the Finnish early childhood education (ECE) field and analysed through abductive content analysis. The results show that in the pedagogical process three kinds of participation supporting means could be identified: facilitating environment and atmosphere; facilitating professional skills for learning and supporting children's perspective; and facilitating ongoing participatory practices. Finally, a framework of developing participatory practices was constructed from the findings to represent the pedagogical cycle of participation.

Children’s Initiatives in the Finnish Early Childhood Education Context

“…In this study, children's participation is viewed through the participatory learning approach where children are seen as active agents of their learning and meaning makers of their social interactions (Kangas, Venninen & Ojala, 2016;Berthelsen, 2009). This relies strongly on the socio-cultural learning paradigm (Rogoff, 2008) in which children are viewed as active learners, agents of their lives and reproducers of the culture instead of being needy and helpless beings (Corsaro, 2011;Piaget, 1976).…”

“…This creates a feeling of belonging where the joy of learning emerges, and motivation and resilience are developing. (Kangas, Venninen & Ojala, 2016;Kumpulainen & al., 2014).…”

The Global Conference on Education and Research: Volume 2

“…Children can thus exercise influence on a range of topics from the rules that are applied in the nursery's everyday life, the daily program to the interior design of the facility. The question of which possibilities for participation children actually have in their everyday lives and how they perceive these possibilities is one which has not been sufficiently answered in the international discourse so far (for example Almqvist/Almqvist 2015, Bae 2010, Betz 2016, Harcourt/Einarsdottir 2011, Kangas et al 2016, Nentwig-Gensemann et al 2017, Quennerstedt 2015, Wood 2014).…”

Preschool teachers’ beliefs about child participation and its implementation in practice

“…In different countries, national standards and curricula for preschool education emphasize the importance of child agency and the attitude towards children as competent participants in learning [10][11][12]. At the same time, we observe a shortage of participation practices that expand children's opportunities in decision-making and the substitution of participation by the "game of democracy" [1,13]. A national study of the quality of education [14] using the ECERS-R showed that in Russian preschool classrooms, children had very little time for free play and the teacher-centered pedagogy prevailed.…”

“…On the other, "natural" (without using cultural tools) and literal understanding of preschoolers' ideas provokes the falsification of participation, selection of the most suitable ideas from the point of view of an adult, and creation of a pseudo-child environment that neither supports child initiative nor meets children's needs [1,17]. Besides, teachers who facilitate participation find it difficult to determine the boundaries and results of child participation; they do not know how to involve children into decision-making and interpret their statements [4,13].…”