Children perspectives on everyday life and the pedagogical work

A Danish study (Børnerådet 2011) shows, that children are rarely involved in decision making in their daycare facilities, and that they express a need to be more involved and listened to. The aim is to present and discuss methods of how to voice children's own perspectives on everyday life in daycare followed by reflections on the significance of such perspectives for pedagogical knowledge and practice. Research on how and why to engage children as participants in research and in institutional developments addresses overall interests in democratization and humanization that can be traced back to strategies for Nordic welfare developments and the Conventions on Children's Rights.

Involvement and empowering children's participation is substantiated by methods that enable children to raise and render visible their own ideas, wishes and critique related to their everyday life in daycare. The children bring up wishes and critique that touch upon their life on micro level from their point of view. This is important for the quality of pedagogical work, but it is equal important to discuss the implication and relation between micro, meso and macro level regarding children’s life and pedagogical work in daycare. Due to a European focus on effective preschool practice, many preschools and child care settings have been enrolled in educational programmes and projects aiming to develop more effective and high quality practice

We will present different approach on how to give children voice.
First a presentation where focus will be on quality in ECEC from the children’s perspectives. How do staff and politicians make sure that we include children’s different voices when taking and measuring quality in ECEC. (Sheridan og Williams (2007))

Second a presentation of Future creating workshop involving Kindergarten Children at the age of foru to five. The study is carried out as a critique and utopias action research project concerning childrens weel-being and workslife. It is designed to accommodate children's participation through graphic illustrations of young children's critique and utopias. The study is informed by a commitment to democratic participation and processes (Reason and Bradbury 2001, Gunnarsson et al. 2016) and on theory of everyday life and critical theory (Bloch 1991; Heller1984; Ahrenkiel et al. 2012)