Researching children’s rights in education: sociology of childhood encountering educational theory

Abstract

This paper aims to explore and develop a theoretical approach for children’s rights research in education formed through an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey’s educational theory. The interest is mainly methodological, in the sense that the primary ambition of the investigation is to suggest a fruitful and useful theoretical base for formulating research problems and undertaking research in children’s rights in education. The paper argues that, particularly in educational settings, research into children’s rights can and must be attributed to children both as full-status humans in a socio-politically contextual present, and as continually growing and changing, immature and dependent humans. From the theoretical encounter suggested in the paper, the much-used distinction of the child as either ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ can be reconsidered, and another point of departure for the study of children’s rights issues in education can be discerned.

Keywords:

• children’s rights
• sociology of childhood
• Dewey
• growth
• being
• becoming

Introduction

Both the image of the child and the view of childhood have changed profoundly in recent decades. Approaching child issues from a human rights perspective is part of the shifting perception of the child, supported by the worldwide implementation process of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989). Research conducted over the past 20 years into children’s rights has widened and qualified knowledge about what rights for children are about in various areas of society. Much research has engaged with children’s right to participation in society and its institutions. Participation may be said to refer to children’s civil rights to freedom of speech and information, and to their political rights to take part in public will formation and to influence the exercise of power (Quennerstedt 2010). The research undertaken has identified important questions and opened up new areas for examination. Educational researchers have also engaged in research from a rights perspective and examined rights issues in educational settings.

Education is established as a human right in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in other human rights instruments (for example, UN 1948; Council of Europe 1950). The right to have access to and receive education is a central rights aspect of education, but equally important elements of education as a right are the aims of education and the role of education to respect and further develop children’s and young people’s ability to enjoy and enact rights. In short, education is not only a human right in itself, but is also an important vehicle for a wider and fuller achievement of human rights (Grover 2002). Within these broad frames, researchers have asked increasingly complex questions concerning what rights mean in relation to education. Also in educational research, the participation theme is extensively addressed in terms of children’s influence and ‘voice’ in school (Lundy 2005; Naughton, Hughes, and Smith 2007). Interest has here, for example, been directed to how children of different ages understand their right to influence in school and how teachers perceive of and understand what children’s right to influence/voice means in education. Another aspect that has been given attention in educational rights research is a possible tension between the rights of parents and the rights of children with regard to education; who holds the right to education – the child, the parent or the state (for example, Lundy 2005; Marples 2005; Quennerstedt 2009). Research has also elucidated how traditions and cultures in education are sometimes in opposition with children’s rights thinking. The power structures in educational settings are often hierarchical, giving adults control over time, space, bodies and activities (Alderson 1999). This imbalance of power is often combined with a view of learning where children are perceived as passive recipients of adult knowledge, leading to further priority for adults’ ideas about what should be learned and how, with the consequence that children’s views on their own education are downgraded or even ignored (Lansdown 2001; Qvarsell 2005).

However, in recent years, researchers within the field of children’s rights have begun to review the research undertaken, and as a result have raised specific concerns. Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde (2009) examined how understandings of children’s rights have been constructed in academic work across disciplines on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The authors identified three recurrent themes in the academic children’s rights discourse. First, there is a clear preoccupation in research with the competent child and his/her right to participation. Second, a possible children’s rights–parents’ rights dichotomy has attracted considerable research interest. These two themes are confirmed in another review study focusing on educational children’s rights research in education by Quennerstedt (2011).

The third theme that Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde (2009) identify is that children’s rights research has engaged in an international consensus building around children’s rights. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been viewed as a standard-setting instrument, and a vast amount of implementation research has been undertaken based on that standard. While Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde (2009) acknowledge the contributions of implementation research, they also point to some troublesome consequences. According to the authors, the focus on standard-setting, implementation and monitoring suggests that children’s rights are not under discussion and a sense of consensus on the meaning of children’s rights is constructed. Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde (2009, 528) argue that, in research, ‘[c]hildren’s rights are presented as the new norm in policy and practice without questioning or problematizing this new norm’. The problem, according to the authors, is that children’s rights research lacks critique. The authors call for more critical research and would like the research field of children’s rights to become a more contested terrain.

Quennerstedt’s (2011) review of children’s rights research in education identified a range of themes that have attracted the interest of educational researchers as related to children’s rights in education. However, for our purpose, her conclusion that few of the studies reviewed presented any explicit theoretical ground or framework for the investigation is particularly significant. Quennerstedt argues that a relatively low level of theorising is problematic for the research field and that the research would benefit from advanced theorising ambitions.

We believe that Reynaert and colleagues and Quennerstedt point to important concerns, which are essential for children’s rights research to deal with. As we see it, questioning consensus and taking a more critical standpoint is closely related to adopting a theoretically oriented approach. In children’s rights research, theory needs to replace consensus, and research has to depart from theoretically informed problems rather than the consensus of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The aim with this paper is to contribute to such a movement in research into children’s rights in the field of education by exploring a theoretical stance that combines sociological and educational theory. More specifically, our ambition is to elaborate on a theoretical approach formed in an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey’s educational theory. In the paper we will first draw out what we believe are the most important contributions from the sociology of childhood to children’s rights research in education. Thereafter we will discuss a point of concern in the sociology of childhood from an educational viewpoint: the ‘being–becoming’ dichotomy. Finally, we will suggest a way to add educational thinking and to deal with the mentioned concern by elaborating on how Dewey’s educational theorising provides an alternative understanding of education and the child as a right holder. We believe that this encounter between the sociology of childhood and Dewey’s educational thinking may offer possibilities to combine a particular (morally and philosophically oriented) view of the child and childhood with a particular (morally and philosophically oriented) view of education. In this way, we hope to contribute to the search for more theoretically and critically oriented approaches in the study of children’s rights in education.

Background and contextualisation

Sociological theory has been an important element in the changing perceptions of the child and childhood within the various scientific disciplines. The (new) sociology of childhood, sometimes referred to as the new social studies of childhood, emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a reaction against prevailing views of the child in developmental psychology and traditional socialisation theory (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; Corsaro 2005; Prout 2011). The theorising in childhood sociology has come to support groundbreaking new thinking about children and childhood. In social research into children and childhood, the influence of the sociology of childhood is extensive – to use the words of Kampmann (2003, 79), childhood sociology has gone from being a ‘marginalised provocateur to mainstream knowledge supplier’.¹ We would argue that this theorising can even be described as a catalyst in the changing perspectives of the child and childhood. The appearance and expansion of the sociology of childhood was simultaneous with the growing worldwide interest in children’s human rights (Freeman 1998; Qvortrup, Corsaro, and Honig 2009). Advocating human rights for children and new social theorising about children were consequently parts of the same movement in which children’s status as human beings and children’s place in society were reconsidered.

Several scholars (Freeman 1998; Mayall 2000, 2003; Alanen 2010) have pointed out that the two fields – the sociology of childhood and children’s rights – can complement each other. Freeman argues that sociology of childhood research and research into children’s rights have overlapping interests and, to some extent, visions. Mayall stresses that the implementation of children’s rights requires an understanding of the social conditions of childhood. Some examples of how a children’s rights perspective has been merged with sociological thinking are James and James’ (2004) discussion of how the global debate about children’s rights is shaping a powerful discourse affecting the local production of childhood and Lee’s (2005) analysis of how, for some commentators, equal rights for children seem to collide with traditional views of the role of parents, leading to concerns that rights for children may threaten and dissolve close relationships between children and parents. However, as Alanen concludes in a recent paper: ‘despite the common ground and interests, little dialogue and collaboration has taken place between the two disciplines of childhood sociology and children’s rights’ (2010, 6).

We agree with Alanen and other scholars that the theorising in childhood sociology is very valuable to children’s rights research and that it provides an important base for the study of children’s rights in education. As educational researchers, however, we realise that educational thinking is not at the heart of the sociology of childhood. The view of formal educational institutions may even be somewhat sceptical within the childhood sociology; schools are sometimes portrayed as sites of societal reproduction, shaped by traditions and hierarchies that advance adult power and control (James and James 2004). For a researcher interested in rights issues in education, this approach to education may turn out to be insufficient, and also a bit unsettling. While not rejecting that education includes societal reproduction, a deeply held conviction in educational academic thinking is often that education is more than reproduction – for example, that educational processes are reconstructive to their character, rather than reproductive (Dewey 1938) – which is a decisive difference. For this reason an educational researcher may be hesitant to utilise childhood sociological theorising in analyses of children’s rights matters in the context of education – which we believe would be unfortunate.

To approach children’s rights issues in education from a perspective that takes interest in and values the processes of education, the sociological perspective accordingly needs to be considered from a perspective of education, and combined with educational thinking and theorising.

Reading the sociology of childhood from a children’s rights perspective: important insights and contributions

The understanding in educational contexts of what constitutes a child, what childhood is, and how education is related to the growing child has for a long time been dominated by the ideas offered by developmental psychology and socialisation theory (Mayall 2002; Naughton, Hughes, and Smith 2007). Alderson (1999) argues that children’s rights thinking does not really accord with the basic assumptions upon which these theories are built, and that views of childhood and the child need to be reconsidered if children are to be seen and respected as rights holders. The sociology of childhood has played a significant role in such a reformulation of childhood and the child, both by criticising the dominant views and by offering an alternative perspective.

Childhood sociologists James, Jenks, and Prout (1998) argue that particularly developmental psychology has come to uphold a status of conventional wisdom surrounding the child that informs both contemporary analytical thought and an everyday understanding of childhood. According to James and colleagues, developmental psychology departs from two basic assumptions: that children are natural rather than social phenomena and that this naturalness includes an inevitable process of maturation. Sociologists of childhood criticise developmental psychology for directing its main interest to the cognitive development of the child, clearly defined in stages of growth ordered with a certain temporality and hierarchy along a predefined path, and point to the tendency to see children as objects rather than subjects. Children are then viewed as objects of the process of natural development towards an idealised, fixed end (McDonald 2009) – they are adults in the making. What is important to note from a perspective of rights is that, according to sociologists of childhood, this objectification and future orientation relates to competence, which is seen to arrive along with maturity (Corsaro 2005). Competence is tied to adult ‘operative intelligence’, and children who have not yet developed this thinking are regarded as lacking in competence. Throughout history, an acknowledgement of rights has been associated with competence and a rational mind. Large groups of adults – for example, women, coloured adults and disabled adults – have been denied rights on the grounds that they do not possess the competence and rationality that is necessary to have and exercise rights. For children this is still the case, and Naughton, Hughes, and Smith 2007 raise the question of whether a dominant developmental psychological perspective of the child preserves the perceived relation between competence and rights.

In contrast to the focus on natural cognitive maturation found in developmental psychology, the idea of the developing child in socialisation theory centres on the social context. Sociologists of childhood argue that traditional socialisation theory recognises society as a powerful determinant of individual behaviour (Qvortrup et al. 1994; James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; James and James 2004) and view the process of socialisation, which delineates the process through which people adapt to and internalise social norms, as a process where children become social (Prout 2011). Objections within childhood sociology are that even though socialisation theory turns away from a perception of the child as a natural and universal phenomenon and highlights the importance of societal influence, it nevertheless sees the child as something initially apart from society (Corsaro 2005). The child must for this reason be shaped and trained in order to eventually become a competent and contributing member of society. Hence, in conformity with developmental psychology, socialisation theory also focuses on the future in its overconcentration of the outcomes of socialisation. Sociologists of childhood thereby argue that also in this body of theorising the child takes the form of an incompetent becoming, and the same questions regarding the relation between rights and competence surface.

The view shared by developmental psychology and traditional socialisation theory of the child as a ‘not-yet’ is accordingly contested by sociologists of childhood, who argue that children are competent human beings in their own right here and now. From this normative standpoint, the sociologists of childhood maintain that the dominant view of the child ultimately justifies the child’s lower status compared with adults; it permeates adults’ interactions with children and legitimises the exertion of adult power over children (Mayall 2002; James and James 2004). Children’s perceived incompetence and irrationality then become reasons for treating them differently to adults (Lee 2005). This is highly valid in relation to rights, in that most adults are more careful to respect the rights of other adults than those of children. The strong rejection in sociology of childhood of the futuristic orientation of the view of the child and the contrasting argument that the child should be seen as a ‘being’ rather than a ‘becoming’ (for example, James, Jenks, and Prout 1998) are important in the context of rights for children. In this, the sociology of childhood provides theoretical arguments for the claim that children do not lack anything that is needed to uphold rights. The very idea that competence and rationality are pre-conditions for having rights can then be questioned and criticised. Relevant questions here include: Why is competence so highly valued in relation to rights? If children are competent in ways adults are not, why is children’s competence not given value as a base for rights? Thus, it is not competence per se that is seen as a condition for being acknowledged rights, but a certain competence, specifically adult competence.

Sociologists of childhood have further shown how perceptions of the child as a natural phenomenon work to de-politicise childhood (for example, Mayall 2000, 2002). Childhood becomes a place governed by biologically determined development that is unaffected by policy and inhabited by pre-people. Mayall (2000) underlines that, on the contrary, childhood is a political issue. Ideas about what children need, how they develop and what kind of input is appropriate from adults have all derived from adult social, economic and cultural structures and deliberations, and are indeed political. Childhood can consequently not be understood separately from society and politics. Buhler-Niederberger (2010, 158) maintains that ‘being “outside society” means being “outside sociology”, which leads to few sociological questions being asked about such an excluded group’. Placing childhood and children within the political and the social thus provides a significantly better base for raising questions about children’s human rights than regarding childhood as something outside the realm of human intervention and construction. The exclusion of children from rights entitlements can then be analysed as deriving from human society, rather than from human nature.

In the alternative view of the child and childhood offered by the sociology of childhood, two important aspects can be highlighted in relation to children’s rights in education. First, childhood does not exist in a finite and universal form and cannot be described as such. Instead, perceptions of the child and childhood are always situated within a social, political, historical and moral context. A central tenet of childhood sociology is therefore that childhood is a social construction and has to be discussed as such. One consequence of such a standpoint is recognising the extent to which the view of children and childhood varies, where children have to be regarded and studied as a social group with power-laden relations to other social groups, and childhood has to be examined as a social phenomenon, constructed within a particular society and time (Qvortrup et al. 1994; Mayall 2000; James and James 2004). Also, by placing childhood in a political, social and historical context, childhood sociology has drawn attention to the political element in childhood. This is an important contribution, since it opens up for sociological analysis and criticism, constituting a basic condition for discussing rights for children as contextual political and societal issues in a certain society.

The second important aspect of the sociology of childhood’s reformulation of the child and childhood is that children must be regarded as active, creative social agents who are both shaped by and shape their circumstances and the surrounding society (for example, James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; James and James 2004). Mayall (2003) emphasises that children participate in social relations and have knowledge and views that are derived from experiences of relationships, milieus and events. Corsaro (2005) maintains that from the moment they enter the world children act on it, and their actions affect both children’s and adults’ everyday world. The sociology of childhood accordingly holds as entirely central that children have social, moral and political competence and are to be regarded as participants and contributors to society. From a rights perspective, what seems particularly important in this accentuation of children’s agency is that children are recognised as persons, essentially indistinguishable from other people in being active subjects.

A point of concern within the sociology of childhood from the perspective of education

So far we have argued that sociology of childhood offers a theoretical gaze that can be of great value in academic discussions about children’s human rights. We have pointed out important elements that would support and provide tools for deeper analyses of children’s rights issues in education. In our reading of the sociology of childhood from the perspectives of education and rights, however, we have found the distinction between the child as ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ troublesome. We will now turn to this issue.

A central tenet of childhood sociology has been to argue for a changed view of the child: from seeing the child as a ‘becoming’ to regarding the child as a ‘being’ (for example, James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; Lee 2005, Prout 2011). A crucial gain from this agency-oriented understanding of the child is that the child is released from the result of development or socialisation in terms of a mature adult agent, and is instead allowed to be studied as an active participant here and now. As discussed earlier, this line of reasoning is important from a children’s rights perspective, since it helps to theoretically justify that children have the same human status as adults. Rights have traditionally been tied to the status of human ‘being’, and when children were redefined by childhood sociologists as ‘beings’ the argument for full human rights for children followed easily. However, education is by definition a process of alteration and reconstruction, in the sense of continually changing understandings of the world and of the things and people in it, including oneself. The very point of education is to learn, and to thereby construct the world in new ways and become something that you were not. In the context of education, and for our purpose, we find it problematic to dispose of the idea of children as ‘becomings’, since this ties rights strictly to the human status of ‘being’. Education is a setting where becoming is central, and the study of the rights of children in education must acknowledge that children are ‘becomings’ as much as ‘beings’. The theoretical framing to children’s rights studies in the context of education needs to reflect such an approach.

There are also calls within the sociology of childhood and childhood studies to place the dichotomisation between the child as ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ on the agenda for further discussion. Drawing on post-structural critique, the separation of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ has been problematised in relation to agency as a social rather than individual attribute, making the case that agency in the individual person is derived from discursive patterns of dependence.

An early critic of the separation in childhood sociology between the child as ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ is Lee (1998, 2005). Drawing on post-structural views he argues that the dichotomy rests on an essentialist perspective of agency, connecting to the ideal of the independent individual, in which agency is seen to reside within a person as a contextually independent possession. Lee’s point is that despite the sociology of childhood’s social constructionist base, the agency claimed for children as ‘beings’ has taken an essentialist form that works to delineate children as independent individuals. According to Lee, the reason for this is that:

The use of an essentialist model of agency has opened a door into sociology through which children can pass. Once, children were granted entry only as bearers of their own future adulthood or as elements of adult social institutions (James and Prout 1990). Now they can be admitted in their own right. Their admission is conditional, however. They must be understood as being in possession of an independence rooted in their casual and/or interpretative agency. To enter the world of sociology, unaccompanied by an adult, the image of children must be ‘matured’. (Lee 1998, 460)

Lee argues that in pronouncing the child as ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’, the sociology of childhood has relocated ‘the complete’ to childhood, thereby coming to accept the privilege of the mature and the finished. Another example of how a perception of children’s agency is seen to include both the individual and her social surrounding is found in feminist post-structural childhood studies, where children’s agency in gendering processes have been analysed as ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘becoming’ gender/ed (Renold 2005).

Also, Prout (2011) discusses the separation between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. According to Prout, when it first emerged the primary task of the sociology of childhood was to create a space for childhood within sociology. Lee’s (1998) conclusion, outlined above, echoes in Prout’s assertion that this could only be accomplished by accepting the modernist ordering of the social world and establishing childhood sociology within the oppositional dichotomies of modernist sociology. Prout continues that, taken on their own, the opposites of the dualisms in sociology of childhood have commendable features, the ‘being’–‘becoming’ dichotomy being one. It is when they are insisted upon as mutually exclusive and when they are defined as having no connection to the other that it becomes problematic. Understanding the poles in the dualisms as theoretical categories in such a way can ‘… direct the attention away from the mediations and connections between the oppositions they erect. In this sense they exclude all that lies beneath and between them …’ (Prout 2011, 8). Prout argues that the sociology of childhood must move away from dichotomies such as seeing the child as either a ‘being’ or a ‘becoming’ and that such a move needs to investigate the relations between the oppositions.

We agree with the post-structural critique that agency should not be tied to the mature and the individual, and that agency lies as much in social processes of becoming (and doing, cf. Renold 2005). In combination with our view of education as a process of reconstructive becoming, and that rights for children needs to be seen as embedded in such processes, we come to the conclusion that sociology of childhood needs to be complemented as theoretical ground for studying children’s rights in education. To upgrade the value of becoming and dependence, and to understand this matter in closer relation to education, we need more elaborated theoretical tools. To find that, we turn to John Dewey and suggest that his concept of growth and his view of education as growth provide us with theoretical arguments with which to address the ‘being’–‘becoming’ separation.

Education as growth – advancing immaturity and dependence

Dewey’s philosophy of education takes its point of departure in a rejection of classical metaphysics and a general opposition towards dualisms (Garrison and Watson 2005). Dewey argues that in a dualistic philosophy, people tend to think ‘in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of either-ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities’ (Dewey 1938, 5). In his writings, Dewey does not look for ways to unite what is separated; instead, he persistently rejects these separations as pre-given divisions. In this way, Dewey does not take dualisms as given metaphysical starting points, but rather regards them as certain reconstructions for a certain purpose at a certain time and argues for viewing them in terms of a process of interacting, or rather transacting, features.

Dewey was an early advocator for a view of the child that is in many ways similar to the child perspective of our days. Even though Dewey does not draw attention to children as a distinct societal group in risk of being marginalised to the same extent as childhood sociologists, he does not perceive childhood as a prelude to adulthood. Rather, he views children as active social agents constructing learning experiences within a social field such as, for example, formal education. In order to add a theoretical view of education and to address the issue of ‘being’–‘becoming’, we primarily turn to Dewey’s (1916) classical work Democracy and Education and his concept of growth.

Dewey criticises the idea of development as an unfolding, and takes on the task of re-understanding the meaning of growth. That a basic feature of children’s lives is growth is something no one would deny, but Dewey emphasises that growth is just as important in adult life as it is in the life of a child. Dewey claims that a false idea of growth is prevalent, in which growth is viewed as a ‘movement towards a fixed goal. Growth is regarded as having an end, instead of being an end’ (1916, 50). He says that the falsity of such a presumption becomes apparent when we understand that it sets up a static end as the ideal or standard:

The fulfillment of growing is taken to mean an accomplished growth: that is to say, an Ungrowth, something which is no longer growing. The futility of the assumption is seen in the fact that every adult resents the imputation of having no further possibilities of growth. (Dewey 1916, 42)

Education is consequently not a preparation for some idealised future, the unfolding of latent potentialities, or as a re-capitulation of the past, where the adult is pre-given as the standard for the child. Instead, education ‘is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience’ (Dewey 1916, 76), in terms of an ever-present process of possibility for growth, as an end in itself.

Drawing on Dewey, the suggested approach in this paper maintains that life is a continual process of growth from childhood through adulthood. Neither adulthood nor childhood is to be regarded as a finished ‘product’ – rather, change is the constant. Dewey applies this standpoint to education, and claims that the consequences are significant. If life is a continual process of growth where growth is not a means to an end but the end in itself, for education this means that ‘the educational process has no end beyond itself’, it is a process ‘of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming’ (Dewey 1916, 50). This implies that the main objective for education must be a process of physical, moral and intellectual growth through the continual reconstruction of experience, hence supplying the conditions that insure further growth (Dewey 1938).

The primary condition for growth, according to Dewey, is immaturity. When elaborating on the meaning of immaturity, he points at the tendency to view immaturity as a lack, which in turn makes growth something that closes the gap between the immature and the mature. With such a view, Dewey argues, childhood is regarded comparatively instead of intrinsically, and when childhood is compared with adulthood attention is directed to what the child has not, and will not have until she is an adult. Interpreted in this way, immaturity is a negative quality; a lack and a void. Dewey instead maintains that immaturity must be seen as a positive quality, since it constitutes the possibility for growth. Immaturity, accordingly, denotes the ability and potential of growth.

Dewey further identifies two main traits of immaturity: dependence and plasticity. Dependence is seen by Dewey as a power rather than as a weakness. Dependence does indeed include an element of helplessness and reliance on others, but this is not regarded as something negative. First, Dewey points out that the human child is helpless mainly in terms of physical ability; with regard to social ability the child is extremely capable from the first moment. Second, Dewey emphasises interdependence as the most important element of dependence because it is the companion of growth – we only grow together with others. There are clear similarities between Dewey’s view of dependence as a precondition for human social interaction and growth and Lee’s and Renold’s argument for a post-structural view of human agency as emanating from networks of materials, bodies, persons and discursive patterns of dependence. All three underline that dependence does not point away from human status and agency, but that interdependence between persons is ultimately a human power.

The other essential aspect of immaturity is plasticity, by which Dewey means the potential for change that is present in all actions rather than as a passive adaptability through external pressure. Dewey (1916) criticises the private nature of immaturity, where an immature child passively conforms to a fixed environment. Instead, Dewey asserts that plasticity is the flexible, varied and active capacity to alter present actions and modify subsequent activities from previous experience.

It is essentially the ability to learn from experience; the power to retain from one experience something which is of avail in coping with the difficulties of a later situation. This means the power to modify actions on the basis on the results of prior experiences, the power to develop dispositions. (Dewey 1916, 44)

Dewey argues that this ability to learn from experience, and thus learning to learn, is distinctive for the human being, and that this power is at its height in childhood and youth. Accordingly, ‘growth is not something done to them [children]; it is something they do’ (Dewey 1916, 42). Dewey holds as entirely central that children take an active part in their own growth, which is in line with one of childhood sociology’s most important standpoints.

It is pertinent, however, to point out that Dewey’s theory of education as growth is about educational processes in a general sense. In his arguments Dewey rejects the idea of finality of education as maturity or preparation for an ideal future. Instead, he maintains that there can be no end to education. In this way he establishes continuities between childhood and adulthood, which helps us deal with the separation of being and becoming as the starting point for research.

However, Dewey also makes a distinction between broader educational processes described as growth and schooling as a more formal kind of education. Schools are seen as a specific type of education, which creates certain conditions for growth. Formal education is then important in complex societies as a way to fulfil the educational goals of both the individual and of society (Dewey 1916, 1938).

In this vein, Dewey argues that education should not stop when children leave school. Instead school has the important role to ‘insure the continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure growth’ (1916, 51). For formal education, this involves that schooling should offer opportunities for children’s active, continual development, and the desire to go on learning (Dewey 1938). In order to do this, according to Dewey (1938), education needs to be based on growth in terms of re-organisation and re-construction of experience potentially leading to an enlarged world. This suggests that the process and the goal of education cannot be separated, which according to Dewey is one of the most important concerns of formal schooling.

To sum up Dewey’s elaboration of growth and its conditions, growth is the very characteristic of life, and immaturity is the primary condition for growth. The possibility of growth therefore depends on the need for others and the capacity of plasticity. In Dewey’s view, immaturity and dependence are accordingly advanced as important and desirable characteristics of the child that make growth possible.

If we return to our concern about the separation between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, we would argue that the standpoint taken in sociology of childhood is that children are to be regarded as complete beings in the present. By this relocating of being from adulthood to childhood, children are made legitimate human rights holders in line with traditional views of human rights as preconditioned by competence and full human status. However, at the same time the privilege of the mature and the finished is upheld (Lee 1998), and interest and attention is turned away from children’s becoming.

With Dewey, our suggested approach takes another stand in this matter. By claiming that life is a process of continual growth, and for which immaturity is the condition, the privileging of maturity and being as human attributes can be rejected, and immaturity and becoming can be regarded as equally important human characteristics. With Dewey we can overcome perceptions of formal education as a place where the child is passively supposed to move towards a fixed goal – the finished mature product of adulthood (cf. Lee 1998). If we conceive of education as growth, the potentiality of education and schooling may be more thoroughly addressed – in our case, the potentiality of schools to be sites where children and young people grow as human rights holders. Then, as Lehmann-Rommel (2000) maintains, education can be regarded as a communicative and transformative process that does not necessarily work against children and their rights as humans. Hence, rights can and must be attributed to humans as continually growing and changing; something particularly significant for children. In this way, the metaphysical distinction of ‘being’ versus ‘becoming’ as the given starting point from which to consider and explore children’s rights in education can be both questioned and reconsidered.

Discussion and conclusions

The purpose of this paper was to contribute to the theorising of children’s rights research in education by elaborating a theoretical approach that combines the insights from sociology of childhood with educational theorising. We have argued that the sociology of childhood provides an important theoretical base for the study of children’s rights issues. Vital contributions are the dismissal of a futuristic view of the child as a not-yet in the present, the possibility of questioning the perceived tie between rights and competence, bringing the child into the political, claiming that childhood is a social construction and arguing that children are active agents that contribute to the shaping of relations and society as socially, morally and politically competent persons. We have also identified the privileging of the child as ‘being’ made in sociology of childhood as a concern when applied to educational contexts. In order to deal with this concern by upgrading the child as also ‘becoming’, to qualify our understanding of processes of becoming and to relate becoming closer to education, we have suggested that Dewey’s ideas of education as growth is useful. Drawing on Dewey, a standpoint that advances immaturity and inter-dependence as desirable human powers can be taken, and education can be approached as a process in which children grow through the reconstruction of experience. By utilising a theoretical base that combines the insights from sociology of childhood and Dewey’s thinking, we suggest that two factors are accomplished in relation to children’s rights research: (1) the starting point for engaging in the study of children’s rights in education can be redefined; and (2) the potentiality of education for rights can be centred in analyses of children’s rights.

To elaborate factor (1) further, our suggested approach follows Dewey’s rejection of either/or philosophies, which consequently means that we oppose a pre-given metaphysical separation of the child as ‘being’ or as ‘becoming’. In this sense we differ somewhat from Prout (2011), who argues for paying attention to the gap, or excluded middle, in-between the dualism of ‘being’ versus ‘becoming’. From our point of view Prout upholds the dichotomy; his basic criticism being that opposites often result in the exclusion of the other, which conceals the close connection between them. The point we wish to make is that the metaphysical structure of children as ‘beings’ or ‘becomings’ should be avoided altogether. In our case, the ‘being’–‘becoming’ distinction should not be employed as a point of departure when studying children’s rights issues in education. An encounter between Dewey’s philosophy of education and the theorising within childhood sociology offers a starting point for the study of children’s human rights where immature, dependant and growing children are viewed as full-status holders of a complete range of human rights. Status and rights are then disconnected from individual completeness and competence, and further viewed as embedded in a specific social, political and historical context. Children as rights subjects are seen as agents in inter-dependent social networks, in which they both act on their rights and grow in capacity to understand and act on rights. The socio-political surrounding of the child and her immaturity and dependence on others together constitute her powers as a growing human rights subject.

Turning to factor (2), we believe that such a point of departure, first, invites new questions. Education is an arena where children’s civil, political and social human rights are to be met and respected. A number of studies have addressed how well (or poorly) children’s human rights are respected in educational settings; for example, regarding respect for children’s physical person, their convictions and culture, and their right to take part in decision-making in educational settings. This research has often approached the matter as a gap between the given norms of the Convention and ‘reality’ (Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde 2009), which in turn may be explained by traditional ways of viewing the child as ‘becoming’. We believe that issues of respecting the child as a human rights holder in education can be approached from new angles if children’s dependence and growth are given attention in the way we suggest. For example, what does dependence and immaturity mean for children’s right to have their political rights respected through being asked for their opinions and invited into decision-making, if these are seen as powers that constitute human potential for growth?

Second, we believe that the theoretical stance we have suggested allows the potentiality of education to be analysed in relation to children’s human rights. When the context is education, we want to emphasise that children’s rights involve more than the matter of respecting children. We believe that viewing the right holding child as an immature, dependent and growing agent in socio-political networks, bears an incentive to turn research attention to the opportunities education give to the child to grow as a holder of human rights. In comparison with other societal arenas for the realisation of children’s rights, education is quite a different setting. The uniqueness of education is precisely that it is responsible for offering the child education, or, to use Dewey’s vocabulary, education should offer possibilities for growth. The study of education from a children’s rights perspective should therefore take this dimension seriously and place it at the centre of attention. Questions about what it is to grow as holder of rights and what characterises an education that maximises possibilities for the child to grow as a rights subject need to be posed. Such question about the role of education for children’s and young people’s growth as rights holders has not been given enough attention in the research so far undertaken. We accordingly want to stress that researchers need to analyse educative activities in early childhood settings and in schools from a rights perspective. This means analysing teaching methods and subject content, relations between children and adults in education and between children, and how educational settings provide children with opportunities to practise human rights and to grow in knowledge and self-confidence.

Research into children’s rights in education needs sociological theory, pointing out the socially constructed and political character of childhood and clarifying children’s active involvement and contributions in their own lives and to society. To raise educational questions from a rights perspective, however, children’s rights researchers also need educational theorising. By bringing together the sociology of childhood and Dewey’s educational thinking, we hope to have contributed to the theorising of children’s rights research in education and to have inspired further discussion and studies in this field.

Notes

1. Our translation from Danish.