Children’s possibility to participate in everyday life is a fundamental right, mentioned in The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which is a part of Swedish law (Act on Convention on the Rights of the Child, 2018). In Sweden many children in the age of 6-12 years take part in the school-age educare (SAE) which is an activity taking place before and after school, as well as during holidays. SAE has a unique position within the Swedish school system as the activities are conducted within the framework of the school based on school law and curriculum, but also have a clear anchoring in everything that can be associated with leisure and social activities. SAE is an important part of the school´s activity (Cronqvist, 2021) where the education is affected by relationships and well-being in general, based on children´s needs, interest and experience (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2022). For the SAE-centre to be able to assert high quality in teaching, Hjalmarsson (2013) is addressing the problems surrounding the children's opportunities to participate in and design their own activities in relation to the adults' endeavour to offer the children a variety of activities. There seems to be a tension within SAE, on the one hand, meeting children’s needs and interests and, on the other hand, conducting activities based on a curriculum aimed at children's development and learning, which could indicate that teachers organize specific activities for teaching purposes. However, Pálsdóttir (2014) claims that social learning does not seem to be the subject of educators' planning but takes place informally in the activities. Jonsson and Lillvist (2019) believe that the everyday practice when teachers in SAE must deal with many children at the same time means that there is no time for reflection, and the activities are allowed to run on. There are thus limits to the extent to which children's interests and needs can be met, and many times the solution can lie in children being allowed to play freely. Haglund (2015) advocates children's influence in the activities based on the democratic mission on which the school lean towards, which would be another challenge based on the conclusions drawn by Jonsson and Lillvist (2019). It is not enough just to plan and reflect on the activities that the teachers organize, but the children's perspectives, thoughts, opinions and needs have to be asked for and involved in the planning. The problem that is relevant to how children's perspectives can be made visible and add quality in SAE is how an individualistic approach can be accommodated within leisure activities, which are traditionally group-oriented and focused on relationships between children (Lager, 2016). Throughout, there is a gap in research where more knowledge is needed about how children's perspectives can be taken advantage of in leisure activities to increase their participation and thereby create quality. The current project aims to reduce this gap.

The project aims to pay attention to children's perspective on the leisure activities they participate in and, based on their lived experiences, identify and define a concrete development area to increase children's participation in SAE, implement an action and then follow up and reflect on the experiences of the action. If time allows, possible adjustments can be made in the activities based on the reflections. The purpose has been formulated based on the needs that representatives of the school have identified, and the implementation has been jointly discussed. The teachers experience difficulties when taking advantage of the children's perspective in the daily activities and want to expand their opportunities to be involved.

The project is conducted as action research in various stages and is generally based on phenomenology. The specific approach is Reflective Life World Research (RLR) which strives to, despite contextual variations, find the essence of the current phenomenon through the lived experiences of the participants (Dahlberg et al., 2008). The participating children are approximately 40 aged 8-10 years from two different SAE-departments at a school in Sweden. The project is pursued by the vice principal and two teachers at the current school in corporation with a lecturer, a PhD-student and a senior lecturer from a nearby university. In all steps collaboration will take place, but from obvious reasons step 1 and 5 will be moderated by the school-staff. The project will be carried out in six steps and will be implemented in line with the different phases identified within action research (Zeichner & Noffke, 2001). Reflection will be prominent in the process. The six steps: 1) the children react emotionally and express their feelings about the SAE through a simple survey with emojis. 2) some of the children will be selected for interviews in purpose to learn about their lived experiences in relation to participation in the SAE. 3) data will be analysed phenomenologically to get knowledge of themes/essential meanings concerning children’s participation in the SAE. 4) the result will be reflected and different possible actions to strengthen children’s participation is discussed. Decision of implementation is made. 5) the action is carried out. 6) the action is followed up through common reflections. Different proposals of adjustments and changes are discussed and possibly implemented. The analysis work is carried out in different stages with an open reflective attitude towards the phenomenon's character traits and an effort to “bridle” (Dahlberg et al., 2008) one's own preconceptions. In the first step, data is read, repeatedly to get familiar with it. Individual words, sentences or paragraphs are marked when they express something about the meaning of the phenomenon (van Manen, 2014). Notes are made in the margin about those meaning units. In the second step, patterns are searched for, called clusters, which are based on the marked meaning units. In the patterns, a structure is sought for what is superior and subordinate in terms of meaning. In the third step, an attempt is made to formulate the abstract essential meaning of the phenomenon based on which character traits are stable despite various contextual variations.

The tentative results show that the participant children express participation in the SAE as a phenomenon affected by organizational aspects such as time and place, but also interpersonal interactions. The children’s possibilities to get their voice heard depends on how they manage to handle these aspects and interactions. For example, the daily gathering at the SAE is a moment for information from the staff but also an opportunity for the children to speak out. Some of the participant children express that the possibility to express their opinion during the gathering is limited by time and the number of participants, and therefore they find other ways to negotiate participation. Furthermore, some of the participant children's express feelings of satisfaction and security when the staff in the SAE organize and decide what, how and when things happen in the SAE. This adult governance contributes to a feeling of belonging. Though, concurrently, some of the children express that their feeling of belonging to the peer group is limited by organizational aspects as grouping. This conclusion will eventually be reversed after completed analysis.

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