In 1989, two remarkable frameworks came into being that would come to have a significant impact on children’s lives. The first was the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The second was when the computer scientist Tim Berners Lee invented a system for organising and accessing information on the internet, the World Wide Web.  Both frameworks changed children’s lives significantly, one intentionally, the other unintentionally. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was designed for children, without children (Freeman, 2020). The World Wide Web was created for adults by adults, without children in mind, but now “one in three internet users is a child” (Livingstone, Carr & Byrne, 2016). Thirty-five years on, the debate on children’s rights in relation to the digital and education, should be more dynamic and questioning than ever, as artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies bring new considerations, challenges, and opportunities to the discussion.

Today’s children are born in an era of technology. They have never experienced a world without the digital, and they bring a newness, a natality, with their participation in the digital that no other generation has brought to education. It is crucial for adults to seriously consider the new opportunities emerging from children’s lived experiences in the digital age (Third et al, 2019). Taking into consideration the unique aspects of the new generation’s digital experiences, teachers need to shift away from viewing knowledge as linear (Graham and Fitzgerald, 2010) and their role as the primary source of information. Education for the digital needs to be an earnest participatory dialogue between the teacher and the children. The significance and complexity of the digital in children’s lives finds acknowledgement in the recent UNCRC General Comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. It recognises the value of the views of children in informing policy and practice. It highlights the urgency of analysing the digital environment from a child’s perspective, through the lens of children’s rights, within a local context, to gather valuable information and understanding.

This paper explores how children’s rights education in relation to the digital environment can be conceived, by listening to children’s views through the lens of children’s rights, in a world of ever-changing, adult-centric, digital technology. The main research questions of the paper are:

1)      How are intergenerational relationships formed, and informed, in educating for the digital environment?

2)      How are the rôles of educators and learners negotiated in children’s rights education?

3)      How can education respect and develop the views of the younger child in learning for participation in the digital environment?

4)      What supports are needed from adults in children’s rights education?

The answers to these questions can provide a systematic approach for children’s rights education to open entry points for digital environment education that address the complexities of the digital divide and digital literacy between the generations. This research listens to the views of younger children. It gives due weight to the opinions and expressions of ten-year-old urban primary school children, at risk of educational disadvantage, in Ireland. Its framework is founded on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), following the Lundy Model of Child Participation (2007). As Lundy states there, can be no “watering down” of listening to children and giving their views due weight. This research dives deep into the experiences of younger children of the digital environment and examines how the UNCRC can provide a lexicon to express their views, appropriate to an educational setting.

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative Participatory Action Research (PAR) study conducted in an urban primary school in Ireland. Participants included twenty-two ten-year-old boys. It was conducted in-person over a period of ten months in 2023. The findings are part of a broader project exploring the experiences of the digital divide among children considered at risk of educational disadvantage and the rôle of digital and rights education in their empowerment. The study employs Stringer’s Interacting Spiral Model (Stringer, 2007), with its three action cycles: looking, thinking, and acting. The look, think and act cycles mirror the tripartite nature of Article 13, UNCRC, to seek, receive and impart information. The action cycles provided the children with opportunities to learn about their rights, build their communication capacities and, as a result, contribute to the study more confidently: Action Cycle 1: A visit to the Ombudsman for Children’s Office in Ireland to learn about their children’s rights with a particular focus on communication rights. Action 2: A classroom action with six lesson-type interventions structured around specific concepts linked to articles within the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The children reflected upon and designed the content for the interventions, for the purpose of enabling a specially designed character, to learn about communicating online using their knowledge of children’s rights. An adaptation of the Willows & Hyders (1998), study as further developed by Dobbs, Smith & Taylor (2006), with its indirect questioning approach, is used to encourage more open engagement. This helps to uncover what the children feel they should know and be educated about to go online. Action 3: A child-led presentation of the education process they developed with the character, along with their suggestions for children’s rights and the digital, presented to the Ombudsman for Children, on his return visit to their school. Their content and ideas, in their own words, were authentically represented in an animated digital presentation. A Mosaic Approach (Clarke & Moss, 2017) of data collection was used including observations, focus groups, children’s artefacts, and recordings of group activities. Participating adults were guided to facilitate, but not influence, the unfolding conversations, respecting the right of every child to express their views and for those views to be given due weight (Article 12, UNCRC), using the Lundy Model of Child Participation (Lundy, 2007). A thematic inductive analysis approach is employed with the assistance of MAXQDA software.

This research demonstrates a need for a shift in the intergenerational learning paradigm of education for the digital environment. Preliminary findings suggest the teacher can no longer be the sole source of knowledge, however, they have crucial rôle to play as listener, facilitator, and advisor in children’s education for digital participation. The research proposes the key to making this intergenerational paradigm shift is to employ a rights-based approach following the Lundy Model of Child Participation (2007), using a third-party questioning method. In casting the children as the teachers of a new imaginary alien classmate, they were empowered to share their own opinions and suggestions about digital participation without fear of judgement or ridicule. In seeking to impart information they revealed an in-depth knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of the internet and what they would like to learn, using their own extensive digital vocabulary. The children showed their opinions and ideas were relevant, deserved to be given due weight, and could contribute positively to their education for the digital environment. At the start, they were unaware that children's rights existed, but once they were introduced to the UNCRC, they became activated and interested in expressing their views about their rights and the online environment, effortlessly assimilating the language of the UNCRC in their dialogue. They proposed that Article 42 “Everyone should know about the UNCRC” should be more prominent in education and that children should get to learn about their rights, particularly in relation to the digital world. To quote one of the child researchers “they could have done more with their rights” if they knew them earlier. Every aspect of digital participation for children today touches on and affects children’s rights.

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