Due to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, children’s rights have become an important topic in the field of educational studies. This paper aims to map some current discussions and tensions relating to children’s rights in educational research, focusing particularly on two major debates. The first relates to the distinction that can be made between on the one hand an ‘essentialist understanding’ of children’s rights and education (children’s rights ‘from above’ or a ‘top-down’ approach) and on the other hand a ‘contextualized orientation’ of children’s rights and education (children’s rights ‘from below’ or a ‘bottom-up’ approach). We will show the dominance of the former in educational research. The second relates to the ‘double character’ traditionally characterizing educational practices. Although children’s rights based educational practices are dominantly seen as emancipating and empowering children, they sometimes seems to operate (whether or not unintended) in a very controlling way. Both these tensions will be discussed making use of themes that are crucial in the debate on children’s rights and education, i.e. the agency of children, the relation between children and adults (parents in particular) and the role of social institutions implementing children’s rights.