Session Information
25 SES 13, Children’s Rights in Education: Conundrums of Freedom
Symposium
Contribution
This symposium problematises notions of freedom for children’s rights in education, with the intent of elucidating complexities surrounding principles and ideals of freedom. The concept of freedom is firstly explored metaphorically through a performance of a Thai folktale: The Freedom Bird, in which a small bird symbolically represents freedom, who is quietly and tenaciously resistant to all efforts to silence its call. Each author will then discuss research on children’s rights in education in relation to the ways of seeing and reading freedom portrayed through the story. This deconstruction of possibilities for freedom for children in education will commence by explicating the place of freedom in rights theory. From this basis, freedom for children in education will then be examined from Swedish, British and Australian perspectives.
Three empirical studies (two from Britain and one from Australia) that inquired into the actualisation of children’s rights will be drawn from to provide examples of the conundrums of freedom in children’s education. Exploration of possibilities and opportunities for freedom for children in education make visible how the workings of power impinge, block and deny children’s freedom. Through application of postmodern and critical theories the contentions of power relations and hegemonic forces are explored. Though research on children’s rights in education aims to champion freedom, the authors in this symposium highlight that this is not an easy path. There are multiple forces at play that impinge on the capacity and opportunity for freedom.
To aid navigation of the conundrums of freedom in children’s education ideas drawn from democracy in education theories are offered in hope that these lenses may enable greater scope for children’s freedom of expression, choice, decision and opinion. The symposium will conclude with the discussant responding to key themes from the papers, drawing links between studies, national perspectives, themes and findings. Further questions of freedom in education will be posed, opening discussion with symposium attendees on freedom and rights in children’s education.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.