In the poster I intend to present parts of my forthcoming licentiate thesis, of which I have completed 25%. The background of my study is the ambition, expressed in the Swedish national curriculum, to increase children’s participation in pre-schools. An enhanced democracy, where everybody’s rights are respected, is of special importance in a complex, multicultural society where children constantly are exposed to people with backgrounds different from their own. The research project is carried out as part of a post-graduate education for teachers co-arranged by Centre of Diversity in Education in Malmö and Malmö University. A main issue in this research environment is diversity in schools. I am therefore interested in the relation between the ambition to give children possibilities for participation, and to create equal opportunities for all children, despite differences in background or disposition, to do this. The objective of my research project is to explore what happens when teachers in Swedish pre-schools (with children from 1 to 5 years old) try to enhance the possibilities for children’s participation. There are many aspects of participation, that shape the pedagogical activities. Participation can be formal as well as informal, and it also has both individual and collective dimensions. Increasing children’s participation can be seen as a way to strengthen the individual child’s influence over his or her own life and learning, and as a means for enhancing democracy and solidarity in society. In my project I also study how pre-school teachers address the relationship between individualism and solidarity in their pedagogical work with children’s participation. My tentative research questions are: How do pre-school teachers think about children’s participation? How is children’s participation encouraged by the pre-school teachers? In which ways are the pre-school children able to participate? Which factors affect the pre-school children’s possibilities for participation? The focus at the moment is at the first question, which is the part I am currently conducting fieldwork on. My project is inspired by critical theory. Therefore I take great interest in the social and historical context of the pre-school’s commission to bring up democratic citizens. In studying children’s actual participation, I find it important to relate to this context in a critical manner. Who is favoured or disfavoured by this strong emphasis on participation, and what pre-school teachers do to reduce these differences, are question which have to be addressed. An important theoretical assumption, especially since the children in my study are very young, is that there is no crucial point when children are able to start participating in decision-making. The concept of “evolving capacities”, which is stressed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is interesting since it puts light on the question about to which degree young children’s participation is possible.

The fieldwork in my research project is based on interviews and participant observations.

I am currently conducting fieldwork and therefore I do not have any precise results yet. The expected findings of the interviews with pre-school teachers I am doing at the moment, are how they think about children's participation, how they try to make it possible, why they think it is important and how they experience it in their pedagogical activities.