Session Information
25 SES 05, Children's Rights: Regional Perspectives (Part 2)
Paper Session continued from 25 SES 04
Contribution
The past few years have witnessed a rapid increase in the popularity of so-called free schools in Poland. Inspired by schools such as Sadbury Valley or Summerhill, these centres are usually set up by parents who, dissatisfied with the state of mainstream educational institutions, exercise their legal right to withdraw their children from them and to take responsibility for their education. Formally home-schooled, in practice the children function within a school-like environment. Some of the schools identify themselves as (partly) democratic (as exemplified by their membership in the European Democratic Education Community) and claim to have founded their practice on the basis of the principles of a conscious, voluntary nature of learning and of egalitarian relationships between children and adults. The proposed presentation will draw on findings from an extensive research project currently being carried out in a number of such schools throughout Poland. The project has sought to address three primary questions concerning, first, the origin and the context of the emergence of democratic schools; second, their daily functioning; and third, their role in the Polish education system overall. In my presentation I will focus specifically on children’s involvement in the processes of decision making on issues that concern them, as one of the most highlighted features of the democratic schools, taking into consideration three dimensions:
1. The practice of decision making: What can children decide on? What do decision making processes look like? How are decisions that impact the whole group taken? Are all children equally able to participate in the decision making process?
2. Children’s views on decision making: Do children feel that they have a say in what happens at school and that their voice is taken seriously?
3. Educators’ view on decision making: Why is children’s decision making highlighted? What theories and perspectives are evoked to support children’s participation in decision making processes?
My aim is to situate the practices and discourses of children’s decision making developed in democratic free schools within the contexts of current debates on children’s participation rights (in particular in the framework of the UNCRC), democratic education and children’s citizenship (e.g. Apple, Beane, 2007; Fielding, Moss 2011; Lister, 2007; Louis, 2005; Mac Naughton 2008; Moss 2014; Rehfeld, 2010; Trafford, 2014). Contemporary educational research and practice draws a connection between the enactment of democratic values in everyday life in schools perceived as democratic fora for debate and negotiation, and citizens’ conscious participation in democratic societies (e.g. Dahlberg, Moss, Pence, 2007; Dewey, 1988; Einarsdottir, 2014, Jørgensten, 2005; Wagner, 2006). Since such perspectives are rarely evoked by educators in the schools involved in the study, the overall objective of the presentation will therefore be to explore the meanings attached to children’s involvement in decision making in order to reconstruct the ways in which this practice is theorised in free schools.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Apple, M. W., & Beane, J. A. (Eds.). (2007). Democratic Schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Clark, A. (2010). Transforming children's spaces: children‘s and adults’ participation in designing learning environments. London; New York: Routledge. Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. R. (2007). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: languages of evaluation (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1988). Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey. The Later Works, 1925-1953 (Vol. 14). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Einarsdottir, J., Purola, A.-M., Johansson, E. M., Broström, S., & Emilson, A. (2015). Democracy, caring and competence: values perspectives in ECEC curricula in the Nordic countries. International Journal of Early Years Education, 23(1), 97–114. Fielding, M., & Moss, P. (2011). Radical education and the common school: a democratic alternative. London ; New York: Routledge. Jørgensten, P. S. (2005). Children’s participation in a democratic learning environment. In J. MacBeath & L. Moos (Eds.), Democratic Learning: The challenge to school effectiveness. RoutledgeFalmer. Lister, R. (2007). Why Citizenship: Where, When and How Children? Theoretical Inquires in Law, 8, 693–718. Louis, K. S. (2005). Democratic values, democratic schools. In J. MacBeath & L. Moos (Eds.), Democratic Learning: The challenge to school effectiveness. London and New York. Mac Naughton, G., Hughes, P., & Smith, K. (Eds.). (2008). Young Children as Active Citizens. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Moss, P. (2014). Transformative change and real utopias in early childhood education: a story of democracy, experimentation and potentiality. New York, NY: Routledge. Rehfeld, A. (2010). The Child as Democratic Citizen. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 633(1), 141–166. Trafford, B. (2014). Democratic Schools: Towards a Definition. In The SAGE Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy. London: Sage. Wagner, J. T. (2006). An Outsider's Perspective. Childhoods and Early Education in the Nordic Countries. In J. Einarsdottir & J. T. Wagner (Eds.), Nordic Childhoods and Early Education. Greenwich, Conn: IAP-Information Age Pub.
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