Arguments that children’s rights research is under-theorised remain in the literature (Quennerstedt 2011, 2013), and this is specifically the case for children’s participation rights. Tobin (2013) argues that inattention to the conceptual foundations of children’s rights constitutes intellectual irresponsibility because it neglects a fundamental part of the human rights idea which jeopardises its legitimacy. Quennerstedt (2013) argues that one of the major challenges facing children’s rights research is increasing its theorisation and this requires particular theorising from different fields including education and law.

Hanson and Peleg (2020) respond to criticism of the children’s rights field lacking theorisation by challenging such claims, arguing that children’s rights theories are in fact abundant when considering that they can be both implicitly and explicitly posed under different guises for different purposes. These include normative or explanatory purposes which are either sophisticated or straightforward, borrowed from other disciplines, or developed from within the children’s rights framework. Indeed, a number of scholars have rehearsed the ‘will’ and ‘interest’ theories of rights with regard to children (MacCormick, 1976; Eekelaar, 2017), and concluded, based on this zero-sum conceptualisation of rights, that neither quite bequeaths children any rights on their own standing because they are not adults (see, for example, Geisinger, 2019). Others have conceptualised children’s rights on their own footing; Hanson and Peleg (2020) cite a number of theories within the children’s rights field: children’s evolving capacities; recognition theory; the four general principles (cf. Hanson and Lundy, 2017); the best interests of the child; autonomy; and the subject of this article – participation. 

Participation rights have been conceptualised as voice, space, audience and influence (Lundy, 2007), and as a ladder (Hart, 1992). Nonetheless, what children’s participation rights are still in need of, is a coherent, comprehensive, and convincing theoretical bedrock that advances understanding of not only children’s voices and expressions, but also, I argue, their silences, what remains unspoken, and the reasons that may underpin such silences. This paper draws on an empirical study examining young people’s experiences and uses of silence in education to address the oversight in the children’s rights discipline of voices that are unspoken and thus unheard, to address such under-theorisation of participation rights as a package of rights. By applying Miranda Fricker’s (2007) epistemic injustice framework which is based in epistemology and ethics, to young people’s participation rights, this paper advances a new theorisation of children’s participation rights to explore students’ and teachers’ uses and experiences of silence as a feature of young people’s participation rights at school. 

Whilst the findings of this empirical study have been reported elsewhere, this paper further applies Fricker’s concepts of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, to explain some of the reasons for adults’ disquiet around children’s participation rights more broadly. Fricker’s concept of testimonial injustice explains how prejudice about a social group results in deflated attributions of credibility to their views and opinions. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a social group struggles to make sense of their social experiences because of insufficient interpretive resources in the collective social imagination. By applying these concepts to children, I highlight the role of silence in conceptualising children’s right to be heard and to freedom of expression. I present a framework of participation, informed by the specific experience of children based on empirical research, in order to bolster the theoretical underpinnings of children’s participation rights.

This study adopted a children’s rights-based methodology (Lundy and McEvoy, 2012) to examine how students and teachers understood, used, and experienced silence in relationships with others at school. This study took place with students in year 11, and their teachers, at a secondary school in the UK in recognition of their evolving capacities as they were approaching their 15th birthday. In total, 42 young people and 27 teachers participated in the study. Participants were recruited using purposive selection and each gave their informed, written consent. The methods employed were twofold: conceptual group discussions and semi-structured interviews. A total of 42 young people participated in nine conceptual discussions which established deliberative, democratic dialogue driven by young people’s own ideas and thinking (Cassidy, 2017) about power and silence. These were followed by interviews of up to three students or teachers respectively. Overall, 35 students engaged in 15 interview sessions, and 20 teachers engaged in 18 interview sessions. Conceptual discussions with young people were based on the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) (Cassidy et al, 2019), founded on the pedagogical approach established by Philosophy for Children (Lipman, 2003). The form used in this study is termed conceptual discussions because their use was not to pursue philosophical inquiry per se, but to build young people’s capacity to explore the abstract content around power and silence. Three classes of young people from year 11 participated in conceptual discussions and addressed the questions: i) What is knowledge? ii) What is power? and iii) What is silence? These conceptual discussion groups were seated in a circle, and I presented them with a stimulus at the beginning of each session; two stimuli were video clips; one stimulus was an orchestral performance. My role was to facilitate young people’s responses; once the question for each session was shared, young people developed their own positions in response to the question, and considered arguments for and against their respective positions. Subsequent semi-structured interviews offered young people the chance to continue conversations that occurred in conceptual discussions, and to voice thoughts and ideas that occurred to them after the conceptual discussions. Teachers participated in semi-structured interviews because this was crucial to understanding the role of silence in student teacher relationships. All data was audio-recorded and transcribed, and subsequently coded inductively using NVivo. Data was analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2012).

The findings of the empirical study upon which this paper is based are published elsewhere. In this paper, I suggest that children’s participation rights, and the theorisation of children’s participation rights, benefit from epistemic theorisation because instead of adjudicating children's capacity with regard to their rights, the question becomes about the prejudices and stereotypes held against children by adults. This theorisation of children's rights makes a contribution to the field by advancing a theoretical basis for children's participation rights based in epistemology, and highlights the role of respect in relationships with children and young people.

Braun, V., and Clarke, V. (2012) ‘Thematic Analysis’ in H. Cooper (Ed) APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology: Vol. 2, Research Designs, American Psychological Association Cassidy, C. (2017) Philosophy with Children: A Rights-Based Approach to Deliberative Participation, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 25: 320-334 Cassidy, C., Conrad, S-J., and de Figueriroa-Rigo, M. J. (2019) Research with Children: a philosophical, rights-based approach, International Journal of Research and Method in Education, DOI:10.1080/1743727X.2018.1563063 Eekelaar, J. (2017) ‘The Interests of the Child and the Child’s Wishes: The Role of Dynamic Self-Determinism’ in U. Kilkelly and L. Lundy (eds) Children’s Rights, Abingdon: Routledge, pp129-150 Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford University Press Geisinger, J. (2019) Children, Rights and Powers, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 27: 251-265 Hanson, K. and Lundy, L. (2017) ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin? A critical analysis and alternative conceptualisation of the so-called “General Principles” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child’ International Journal of Children’s Rights, 25(2) 285-306 Hanson, K. and Peleg, N. (2020) Waiting for Children’s Rights Theory, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 28(1): 15-35 Hart, R. (1992) Children’s Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship: Innocenti Essay No. 4, Florence: UNICEF Lipman, M. (2003) Thinking in Education, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press Lundy, L. (2007) Voice is Not Enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, British Educational Research Journal, 33(6): 927-942 Lundy, L., and McEvoy, L. (2012) Children’s rights and research processes: Assisting children to (in)formed views, Childhood, 19(1) 129-144 MacCormick, N. (1976) Children’s Rights: A Test-Case for Theories of Right, Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 62(3): 305-317 Quennerstedt, A. (2011) The Construction of Children’s Rights in Education – a research synthesis, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 19, 661-678 Quennerstedt, A. (2013) Children’s rights research moving into the future – challenges on the way forward, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 21, 233-247 Tobin, J. (2013) Justifying Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 21, 395- 441