This paper focuses on human rights education (HRE) for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Norway. HRE intends for children to become rights-conscious subjects grounded in situations which are familiar to the child. The National ECEC curriculum, commonly known as the Framework Plan, formally place HRE in the learning area Local Community and Society (Ministry of Education and Research, 2017). This learning area resembles the school subject of social studies. To convey HRE to children, the teachers can use learning materials which are specifically produced for the ECEC by non-governmental organisations (NGO).

Research on HRE for the ECEC have been conducted on the three prepositions within HRE, education about-through-for human rights. The researchers report on the presence of education about and through human rights (Phillips, 2016; Hidle, 2021; Quennerstedt, 2019). Whereas education for human rights, intended to teach children competencies to act for or in line with human rights, becomes conflated with democratic, participatory skills without a proper awareness of the legalities behind such skills. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of education about human rights that is transmitted through the learning materials. 

The research question guiding the analysis asks: which subject-positions do NGOs’ learning materials offer children and what precedence do these positions give for HRE in ECEC? I analysed the NGO produced learning materials available for the ECEC. I focused on the subject-positions appear in the learning materials, which I argue guide the potential rights-consciousness that children can receive. I inductively chose to focus on subject-positions because this points to intentions about children as a present and future rights-conscious subjects.

The article uses a theoretical framework consisting of discursive theoretical, subject-didactical, and human rights perspectives. 

Discourse types both constrain and make people agentic (cf: Fairclough, 2015, 69). Discourse types within the discourse of human rights set up subject-positions for children, by occupying these a child becomes a rights-subject in the sense of doing and having human rights. The rights-subject gains rights-consciousness based on what human rights knowledge he or she learns, which must be in line with the intended learning outcomes of a subject teaching HRE – a matter for subject didactics.

Children’s best interests shall be a foundational consideration in decisions affecting a child (the Constitution, 2014, §104), including educational decisions (CtRC, 2013, para 23), such as curriculum planning and producing learning material. Article 3 emphasises a child’s best interests as the primary consideration in decisions involving children, which must also be seen in line with other CRC articles. Article 3 has received criticism for its vagueness (CtRC, 2009; Sutherland, 2016), resulting in questions on what grounds children’s best interests should be based. Hence, I combine these perspectives which opens up a fruitful discussion on rights-consciousness offered via subject-positions.

I connect the CRC Article 3 with the subject-didactical term “meaning for life”. This combination allows for seeing what might be meaningful, and in the interests of a child from both a legal and subject-didactical perspective.The term “meaning for life” refers to the knowledge and abilities necessary for people to act and make decisions in various situations to exist in the here and now and in the future, dealing with a long line of existential issues (Gagel, 1983, in Tønnessen and Tønnessen 2007, 20-21). 

I analysed three learning materials produced for the ECEC by NGOs. They were collected in April 2021 and had to deal explicitly with human rights, meant to be used in the ECEC, and be connected to the Framework Plan. I have excluded learning materials produced for the school. I analysed materials from Save the Children, UNICEF, and SOS Children’s Villages. Save the Children Norway developed an interactive online platform named Rights Castle, which consists of six rooms. A teacher’s guide was available for downloading supplements to the platform. The Norwegian office of UNICEF created the Children’s Rights Card, a physical material consisting of 15 cards that include a teacher’s guide. Also, teachers can download a PowerPoint file with 45 slides, 15 of which are the same as the cards from the physical material. SOS Children’s Villages Norway designed the Sunflower Children, a three-part material consisting of a start package, an annually theme-based package and an app named “The Sunflower Children”. The material uses the two famous Norwegian children’s book characters, Karsten and Petra, to convey children’s rights. I have used Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse these learning materials. I combined Fairclough´s approach and Kress and van Leeuwen´s approach because these materials are multimodal and include various semiotic modes.

I have divided the findings into three categories. The first is the context in the learning materials which presents societies that are compliant and non-compliant to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a dichotomous world that is presented. The second finding is the discourse of the child as an activist and the subject position of children being activists for their rights. Here children receive the responsibility to correct adults´ global and inconsiderate mistakes which are all breaches of children´s rights. The third finding is a discourse of the actionist. The subject position here is a child as an actionist for the othered child. The actionist child must be in solidarity with those children living in poor countries or have fled because of war by partaking in solidarity actions. These positions give way for an activistic and actionist approach to HRE and because no competing material exist, these approaches guide HRE in certain theoretical and practical directions and might legitimises these over other possible practices.

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