Promoting Children’s Participation in Education: Developing a Culture of Participation

There has recently been a growing emphasis on listening to children’s voices in different professional contexts, for example, legal, medical, social and educational. This can be said to having its root in the participatory rights of children, as dictated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC,1989), commonly referred to as the children’s rights movement. Drawing inspiration from this movement, the present research aimed at examining children’s perceptions of their school experience. Twelve five- six year old children from a state funded primary school (Key Stage 1) in south-east England formed the sample for the study. To explore their understanding of the school experience, three qualitative participatory research methods: children’s drawings, (adapted from Armstrong, 2007); children’s pair interviews (adapted from Evans and Fuller, 1998) and finally; photographic/video evidence of different areas of the class/setting, taken/videoed by children themselves (Burke, 2005 and Punch, 2002), were used. Findings from all three methods explicitly suggest that children liked coming to school and enjoyed doing a range of activities with their teacher(s) and friends. It is also evident that they wanted to spend more time outside. These findings are discussed considering children’s participation from a social-cultural context and how there is a need to develop a culture of participation, a culture that truly encourages children to participate in decisions affecting all spheres of their lives, including education. References are also made to participation from a pedagogical position and how its implementation intersects with the cultural beliefs and values of a given society.