Children’s perspectives about belonging in educational settings in five European countries

ABSTRACT

The article addresses children’s perspectives of belonging in early childhood education settings in five European countries. Children’s belonging is understood to be dynamic processes that are formed through multiple relations. Twenty children aged 4–8 with diverse backgrounds participated in the study: two boys and two girls from each country. Data were constructed through walking interviews, during which the individual children walked around the ECE settings with the researcher, taking photos and conversing at the same time. Yuval-Davises’ [2011. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: SAGE] three facets of belonging were utilised as a theoretical lens to analyse the data and to shed light on the findings. The findings illustrate how belonging, from the participating children’s perspectives, is strongly related to friendship, being surrounded by caring adults and being a member of the ECE community.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• early childhood education
• children’s perspectives
• politics of belonging
• ethics
• research with children

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this study, the concept of educator is used to refer teachers, nurses, qualified staff, etc., who work in educational settings in the five countries.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NordForsk: [Grant Number Politics of belonging: Promoting children's inclus, Project number 85644].