Young children's enactments of human rights in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

This paper explores ways in which human rights become part of and affect young children's everyday practices in early childhood education and, more particularly, how very young children enact human rights in the preschool setting. The study is conducted in a Swedish preschool through observations of the everyday practices of a group of children aged between 1 and 3 years. With a child view based on human rights theory and childhood sociology, an action-based methodology for seeking children's perspective is used to analyse the observation data. Three rights areas are identified in which children frequently deal with human rights in their actions and where they enact a range of possible rights holder positions: ownership, influence and equal value. These rights areas, and the children's various enactments of the rights, are reflected against the preschool context as a co-constructor to the actions of the participants.

KEYWORDS:

• children's rights
• early childhood education
• human rights
• children's perspectives

Introduction

Young children do not know about human rights and have no conception of this abstract set of principles. Nor are they aware that as human beings they are entitled to enjoy and exercise human rights. But young children live their lives in societies, institutions and families that are – more or less – guided by human rights norms. In these settings, children act and their actions are met with a response. They also experience the actions of others. Thus, from a very early age children, albeit to varying degrees, encounter the norms that are inherent in human rights thinking. In practices that are guided by human rights, children will learn what it means to act in accordance with, or in opposition to, human rights norms.

This paper explores the ways in which human rights become part of and affect young children's everyday practices in early childhood education and, more particularly, how very young children enact their human rights in the preschool setting. The focus is accordingly on the children and their actions. The study is conducted in a Swedish preschool through observations of the everyday practices of a group of children between the ages of 1 and 3 years. In the study, the children's actions provide first-hand information about how they relate to the human rights norms guiding these practices. The specific research question is: How do children aged 1–3 enact their human rights in the preschool setting?

Previous children's rights research in early childhood education

In many countries early childhood education has an explicit responsibility to provide an environment in which human values and dignity are respected. In such an environment, and through their interactions with the children, educators are expected to communicate attitudes and behaviour that reflect human rights. Against this background, early childhood education has been studied as an arena for young children's human rights. Based on the idea that children's rights can be described as including rights to ‘protection’, ‘provision’ and ‘participation’ (Quennerstedt 2010), rights-oriented research in educational settings has mainly studied how children's right to participation is dealt with (Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie, and Vandevelde 2009; Quennerstedt 2011). Here, participation mainly refers to the right to say what you think, be listened to and have your views taken into account. Studies investigating rights themes other than the right to participation in preschool are few and far between, although Purdue et al. (2011) and Herczog (2012) do discuss the right of all children to receive preschool education.

Research examining children's right to participation has been conducted at both societal and preschool levels. Theobald and Danby's (2011) examination of the meaning of the concept of participation in policy shows a strong support for children's right to participation in Australian early childhood education policy. However, their study also shows that few institutional and organisational changes have been made to reflect the commitment stated in the policy.

Several researchers have investigated the participation theme in practice and in this context have focused on preschool professionals. For example, Bae (2010) and Hudson (2012) examine how teachers interpret and view children's participation. Bae's study shows that teachers tend to understand participation in terms of individual self-determination and choice, rather than cooperation. Bae further finds that teachers rarely position play as connected to the right to participation, and that teachers almost never mention or refer to children under the age of three in discussions about participation. Some of the teachers in Bae's study even state that participation issues are not relevant for very young children due to their immaturity. Hudson's participation research centres on teachers' views of children's involvement in decision-making and the inconsistencies and tensions around this. For instance, when talking about children's right to participate in decision-making teachers are highly supportive, but in practice such commitment is difficult to detect. Also, teachers tend to regard taking part in decisions as something that develops as children get older.

Mac Naughton, Hughes, and Smith (2007) and Dunphy (2012) argue that professionals' knowledge about and attitude to children's participation in early childhood education and their ability to practise this participation is the key to real change. According to these authors, children's right to participation has to become an integral part of teachers' professionalism, which requires new ways of thinking and a new definition of the knowledge on which professional preschool educators base their work.

In short, rights research in early childhood education has centred on children's right to participation and there is now a significant body of knowledge on this theme. However, there is a need to widen the lens and approach early childhood education as a site for children's rights in new ways. It can be noted that rights-oriented research on children under the age of three is very limited and that few studies have investigated children's everyday practices and lives from a rights perspective. In studies examining preschool practice, the focus has been on the understanding of educators rather than that of the children. We are therefore only beginning to learn about the meaning and consequences of teachers' attitudes to and thinking about children's rights in early childhood education. This paper aims to contribute to the existing knowledge about rights in the lives and experiences of young children.

Theoretical framing

An important theoretical base for this research is human rights theory. Human rights thinking has evolved successively over time and has expanded both the scope and the subjects of rights (Bobbio 1996). The first rights – civil rights – served to guarantee personal freedom and to recognise the individual as sovereign. The right to political participation – political rights – came about after the establishment of the initial civil rights. Later economic security, social welfare, education and health care were also declared as socio-economic human rights (UN 1948). However, the emergence and expansion of human rights for children has had another trajectory. Hart and Pavlovic (1991) argue that children rights were acknowledged in a reverse order: pronouncements of children's social rights to welfare, education and health were made well before claims for children's equal value and freedom (civil rights) or political influence (political rights) surfaced. Starting from a platform of children's right to protection, other rights for children were gradually claimed and acknowledged during the twentieth century: first socio-economic human rights and later civil and political rights (UN 1989; Quennerstedt 2009). In this paper, rights theory provides an approach and a vocabulary that defines rights for children as human rights. The rights against which the data have been analysed are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The human rights.

The human rights
Civil rights Right to life and security Right to personal integrity Right to ownership Right to equal value and non-discrimination Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion	Political rights Right to freedom of expression Right to freedom of assembly Right to freedom of association Right to take part in the conduct of affairs	Socio-economic rights Right to education Right to the highest attainable health Right to economic security (work/welfare) Right to own culture

Childhood sociology theorising also informs this research. Childhood sociologists (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; James and James 2004) highlight how previous views of children tend to objectify the child: the child is understood as an object for natural development (psychological perspective) or socialisation (sociological perspective), thereby directing the interest towards what the child will become. The sociology of childhood rejects such futuristic conceptions of the child and contrasts with the argument that children are active, creative social subjects who are shaped by and shape their circumstances and the surrounding society (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; James and James 2004; Quennerstedt and Quennerstedt 2014). The sociology of childhood theoretically strengthens the claim that children are legitimate humans and holders of human rights.

Childhood sociologists have further shown how perceptions of the child as a naturally developing phenomenon depoliticise childhood. The idea that children are ‘nature’ rather than ‘culture’ and that childhood is a natural (rather than culture infused) phase in life places children outside political and social power structures (Bühler-Niederberger 2010). According to the sociology of childhood, perceptions of the child and childhood are always situated in a social, political, historical and moral context and have to be discussed as such (Mayall 2000). This opens up for sociological analysis and criticism and constitutes a basic condition for discussing rights for children as contextually situated.

Human rights theory and childhood sociology together form the view of children and childhood that guides this research.

Towards an action-based methodology for seeking children's perspectives

This study examines how children aged 1–3 years respond to human rights norms by enacting rights in the preschool setting. The ambition is to represent children's perspectives rather than an adult perspective. A substantial body of research has aimed to represent the perspectives of children by listening to children's voices. This research has made children's perspectives more widely available and has included children in the production of knowledge. Methods for adapting the collection of data to children's preferred communicative modes have also been developed, as have methods for shifting the balance of power in research in favour of the participating children (Harcourt and Quennerstedt 2014). The insights gained in these contexts have guided the design of this study.

However, the idea of listening to children's voices has been criticised. One problem that has been pointed out is that the idea of ‘voice’ has not moved beyond privileging verbal communication. Modes of communication other than speech have rarely been employed in this context. The various methods that have been developed mainly support the production of verbal data. For instance, children's drawings or photographs are often used to facilitate verbal discussions between the child and the researcher, rather than constituting main data (Warming 2011; Raittila 2012). Verbal language consequently continues to be the dominant way of collecting data in research on children's perspectives. This means that the ‘voice of the child’ mainly represents children who are able to verbally formulate their views. Children who primarily communicate in ways other than words are not represented to the same extent.

A second problem relates to a tendency in voice-oriented research to romanticise the child's words by regarding them as innocent and authentic (Eldén 2012; Mazzei and Jackson 2012). Here, the voice of the child is seen to speak for itself, with the role of the researcher being to liberate the authentic voice from whatever constrains it. This approach is strongly criticised from a post-structural and sociological viewpoint for placing autonomy, rationality and intention within the child and simultaneously ignoring the significance of context, social structures and discourses in the production of the voice (Komulainen 2007; Spyrou 2011; Eldén 2012; Mazzei and Jackson 2012). These critics argue that sociological analysis and deconstruction are needed. By recognising that voices are always socially co-constructed and discursively embedded, the analytical gaze turns to the question of how voices are affected by the cultural contexts of their production.

In a recent Finnish study, children are represented in a way that deals with the above-mentioned criticism (Kalliala 2014). In her study, Kalliala examines how children below the age of three are more or less competent in their early childhood education setting. Here, the children's actions observed by the researcher are regarded as first-hand information. Further, the analysis is highly context sensitive, in that ‘the voices’ of children are not seen to speak for themselves but are instead understood as relating to the surrounding environment. Larkins (2014) also puts children's actions at the centre of attention in her examination of how children exercise agency through their actions. Larkins' analysis shows how children enact themselves as citizens in various practices.

This view of children's actions and the significance of context is evident in the methodological approach developed by Wickman and Östman (2002), Quennerstedt, Öhman, and Öhman (2011) and used in an early childhood education context by Klaar and Öhman (2012). These authors focus on children's actions in ongoing activities. Their approach presents a way of dealing with the dualisms that have troubled social science research – body/mind, individual/social and structure/agency – and that have tended to place human meaning-making in the mind, separate from human action and thus unobservable. Quennerstedt, Öhman, and Öhman (2011) maintain that meaning emerges in people's encounters with each other and with the environment and that meaning-making is observable. The authors further emphasise that meaning-making is always situated in a particular socio-cultural context, which affects the meanings that arise. The context should thus not be simply regarded as a surrounding environment, but as a participant in the meaning-making process.

This paper draws on the methodological approach described above. The three basic starting points in the analysis are: (i) that children's meaning-making (or voice) is observable in their actions, (ii) that children's actions provide first-hand information about their experiences in preschool and (iii) that the preschool context is a co-constructor of the children's actions.

Data collection and analysis

In order to examine how children enact their human rights in the preschool, 18 children in a Swedish preschool group were observed in everyday preschool practice for a total of three weeks (60 hours of observation time). The youngest child was 12 months old and the oldest 2 years and 9 months. A wide variety of common situations were observed and included children's free play indoors and outdoors, teacher-led assemblies or activities indoors and outdoors, excursions outside the preschool area and mealtimes. The researcher alternated between observing passively with no interaction with the children and actively observing with interaction, for example by taking part in a play situation, assisting the children with something or engaging in conversation. The observations focused on situations and interactions where the children's actions could be reflected against a human right.

The observation notes were transcribed and situations displaying aspects of rights were identified. Thereafter, the rights theoretical framework was applied to the action and context in order to articulate which human right or aspect of a human right stood out in the situation. A situation can involve more than one right and be interpreted from different rights-related angles. However, in the study it was often possible to identify one right or aspect of a right as the principal or most visible right in a situation. When the principle right in a situation had been identified, the next step was to formulate what function the children's actions had in relation to this right. The final analytical step was to articulate the rights-holder positions that were enacted through the children's actions. Table 2 presents the analysis chart (an example situation is provided).

Table 2. Analysis chart.

The actions and their context	Which human right is identified?	What is the function of the actions?	What rights holder/s are enacted?
Otto (2.5) and Selma (2.5) are sweeping water from a puddle with brooms. They are having great fun and laughing together. Then Selma drops her broom and tries to take Otto's from him. He does not want that and clutches his broom, refusing to let go	Ownership	Selma – to become owner of Otto's broom Otto – to retain ownership of the broom	A person who can take over ownership A person who can assert ownership

Ethical considerations

This research reflects the changing views on what constitutes sound research ethics in research involving children. First, research ethics is seen to include the entire research practice, rather than dealing with potential risks (Graham and Fitzgerald 2010; Harcourt and Quennerstedt 2014). This means that all parts of the research undergo ethical consideration and that ethical reflection continues throughout the research process. The ambition of this study to represent children in the production of knowledge is itself ethically informed, in that the exclusion of children's contributions to research is seen as unethical. In the design of the research the length of the period of observation was considered from an ethical viewpoint, so that the children had time to approach the researcher and contribute in their own ways and at their own pace.

Informed consent from parents was retrieved and children who did not have parental consent were not observed. Consent from young children to be involved in research is a difficult area (Harcourt and Conroy 2011). As formal consent was not considered possible, the researcher instead paid close attention to how the children responded to her presence. If a child signalled unease or did not seem to appreciate the presence of the researcher, the researcher removed herself from the scene. If the children invited the researcher into their play she joined in when appropriate.

Findings

The question posed in this paper is: How do children aged 1–3 years enact their human rights in the preschool setting? In the following, three rights areas are presented in which children were found to frequently deal with human rights in their actions and where they enacted a range of possible rights-holder positions. These areas are ownership, influence and equal value. Each rights theme is contextualised and the functions of children's actions in relation to each right are formulated and illustrated by means of observation transcripts. The enacted rights holders have also been clarified.

Ownership

The civil human right to ownership was pronounced early on in the history of rights. Despite ownership being held as entirely central by most people, it is almost never discussed in relation to children. The observations made in this study show that ownership issues are common in children's interactions and that many children often engage in ownership disputes. When young children start preschool they have probably already come across the phenomenon of ownership, for example in their interactions with their parents and siblings at home. In the preschool, ownership is complicated by the fact that most of the items on the premises belong to the preschool and not to any one person. Young children are therefore faced with a complex structure in the sense that they are temporary owners of items that are permanently owned by an institution, that is, the preschool. This means that children's actions in the preschool in relation to the right to ownership are framed in a particular way. The observations show that children work very hard to understand the complex principles of ownership in the preschool and how to act in relation to ownership in this particular setting.

There is no mention of ownership issues in the curriculum for the Swedish preschool. Nevertheless, the children meet teachers who consistently work with the rules of temporary ownership that apply in preschool, the most basic rule being ‘if you have it you own it, but when you leave it, it becomes open to a new owner’. This is a principle of ownership that deviates from the definition of ownership outside the institutional setting, where ownership is not lost when an item is put down. There is a further complication in that some the items in the preschool are not common property, such as a comfort blanket or a cuddly toy that a child brings with him or her from home. On the few occasions in which such items were picked up by another child in the studied preschool the teachers intervened and justified this by saying ‘it is x's blanket’. The children accepted this and there were no disputes over personal items.

The following three situations represent typical ownership disputes in the preschool:

Alice (1.8–1 year 8 months) is walking around with a doll's pram. Amira (1.9) comes along and tries to take the pram from Alice. Alice looks annoyed and walks away. Amira follows, she tries to push Alice aside to get hold of the pram. Alice runs away with the pram, but Amira still follows her.

Tyra (1.0) sits beside Klara (1.8) on the sofa. They are calm. Tyra has a pillow in her hands, but drops it on the floor. Klara climbs down and takes the pillow. Tyra stretches her arms out and says ‘a, a, a’. Klara walks away with the pillow, glancing backwards as she moves away. Tyra does not say anything more.

Alice (1.8) sits in a big drawer together with Max (2.5). They are happy. Max walks away and Amira (1.9) comes along. With some effort Amira manages to climb into the drawer and sit down opposite Alice, where Max had been sitting. Alice is not happy about that and leaves the drawer. Amira then moves to the spot where Alice had been sitting. Alice returns, reclaims the spot she has just left and tries to push Amira away.

The children claim temporary ownership of toys, other items and places. The transcripts exemplify the two most typical ownership interactions:

• Becoming the temporary owner of something that does not belong to you.

• Maintaining ownership of something that you are the temporary owner of.

Both these actions are equally possible for most children and by and large the children act with certainty – there is rarely any doubt or hesitation in the children's actions, regardless of which action is in focus.

However, there are differences between the children when it comes to the kind and frequency of their ownership interactions. Some children often attempt to claim ownership and interact intensely with other children and teachers for this. Some children rarely take anything from other children but may have things taken from them, which means that they either need to claim continued ownership or relinquish it. Alternatively, a child may try to claim ownership in one situation and in another accept another's ownership. Selma's actions in the following two transcripts exemplify this:

Otto (2.5) is sweeping the courtyard. Selma (2.5) comes along and snatches the broom from Otto's hands and says ‘mine!’ ‘No, mine!’ says Otto. A tug of war starts, until a teacher intervenes and supports Otto's ownership. Selma gets very angry.

Malte (2.4) has been playing with toy aeroplanes while sitting at a table. He walks away from the table and Selma (2.5) sits down and starts playing with the ‘planes. Malte returns and says angrily ‘I had that!’ Malte continues: ‘you can't sit here’ and points to another chair. Selma says nothing, leaves the ‘planes and the place and goes to sit on another chair.

In the first situation Selma tries to claim ownership of the broom and does not accept Otto's ownership or his protests. In the second situation, she also tries to claim ownership but meekly accepts Malte's continued ownership of the ‘planes and the seat when he returns’.

To sum up, ownership is an ever-present and complicated rights issue in the preschool context. In their daily interactions at preschool, very young children have to deal with the complex norms surrounding ownership as well as the demands of other children and adults. In this context, children enact a range of possible rights-holder positions in relation to the right to ownership. Children's enactments of ownership are often unstable and their actions are formed by one or a combination of the following possible rights-holder positions:

• ownership by taking an object that no one is using;

• ownership by taking things from others;

• asserting ownership loudly and physically if necessary;

• relinquishing ownership without objection when things are taken from you and

• being responsive to others' ownership.

Influence

Political human rights are often described as the last group of rights to be acknowledged to children. Children's influence has been studied in relation to the preschool, often in terms of ‘participation’. However, as argued earlier, research on children's participation has rarely addressed children under the age of three and has focused more on teachers' thinking and perceptions than children's everyday practices. The observations in this study show that influence is a highly present rights issue for very young children in the preschool and that the children observed in this study enact political human rights.

In both their talk and their actions the teachers express an interest in and commitment to children's influence. They have jointly discussed and planned how to work with influence in everyday practice and find it important to listen to what the children have to say. This is also reflected in the Swedish national curriculum, which dedicates an entire section to the responsibility of the preschool to give children real influence.

The following transcripts show three situations in which children act to exert influence.

The teachers are gathering the children for the daily assembly. Tobias (2.0) comes up to me, rubs his stomach and points to the sink. I can't see anything special there, and look at a teacher for help. ‘We will soon be having fruit’ she says and grabs the bowl of fruit. Tobias bursts into tears, crying in despair. No-one really takes any notice of him because the teachers are busy gathering the children in the assembly room. Eventually Tobias joins the group but continues to cry loudly. The uneasiness spreads to more children and the teachers have to work hard to keep the children interested in the assembly theme. Tobias calms down after a while, but sobs all the way through the assembly. At the end the teacher says ‘You were so hungry, don't you want some fruit now?’ When I discuss this situation with the teacher later in the day she says that what he wanted was his bottle, which he usually receives at that time. They had all forgotten about it.

The children are playing outside. Alice (1.8) comes up to me and takes my hand. She starts pulling me towards the swings and stops at the gate. I ask her if she wants to swing, she nods and hums. I open the gate and she runs to one of the swings.

It is lunchtime. All the children except Max (2.5) are sitting down to eat. Max does not want to come to the table, he rubs his eyes, moans and looks tired. One of the teachers tries to lift him up, but he wriggles out of her grasp and walks away. After a while a teacher asks Max if he wants to come now and says that she will put some food on his plate. ‘Nooo’ says Max, who circles the table but does not come too close. Max then is asked to choose whether he wants to eat or sleep. He wants to sleep, and the teacher tucks him into his pram. He soon returns because he does not have his comfort blanket and dummy. These are given to him and he climbs back into the pram.

In all the above situations a first function of the children's actions is to take initiatives to affect the situation in a way that suits them. Tobias has not been given his bottle and does not wait quietly for it but acts to get it. Alice wants to swing and her initiative is clear and confident. Max is too tired to eat and even though he cannot articulate what he wants his actions initiate a change in the continuing events.

A second function of the children's actions is to communicate will. As can be seen in all the three transcripts, the main mode of communication is bodily expression. Tobias rubs his stomach and points, Alice grabs the researcher's hand and pulls her to the swings and Max walks around the table. However, all three children also communicate with sounds: Tobias cries and sobs, Alice hums and Max moans. Verbal communication is almost absent, Max's ‘no’ is the only word spoken by any of the children in these three situations, although what they want is clearly communicated in other ways.

A third function of the children's actions is to assert will when it is unnoticed, ignored or denied. Tobias acts with intensity when his initiative and communication go unnoticed by the adults. When he is misunderstood or forgotten by the teacher he objects loudly and lengthily. Max's resistance to the teacher's physical and verbal attempts to get him to come to the table is not loud, but persistent.

Many of the children in the group act confidently to influence the situation, whereas others are much more reserved:

Otto (2.5) walks around the outdoor play area. He goes up to the gate to the swings, grabs it and shakes it a little. After a while he stops shaking it and moves to an area with trees and bushes, where he walks around for a while. He goes up to the fence a few times and looks at the swings. He climbs onto some stones and then tries to climb a tree. He doesn't succeed and gives up. Some other children have started swinging. Otto sees this and walks back to the gate and shakes it. He says nothing.

Otto also takes the initiative and communicates his will, but the signals are weak and are not picked up by the teachers. Otto's actions in this situation do not have an assertive function. He does not protest and gives up the idea of swinging and climbing the tree when he is ignored.

Influence, that is, the political human right to be heard and taken into account, is a common rights issue in everyday preschool practice. Most children's enactment of influence is characterised by resolution – the children take action to make their opinions known and have them taken into account. However, some children's enactment of influence is hesitant and insecure. The possible rights-holding positions enacted in relation to the political human right to influence are:

• influence by confidently taking initiatives, communicating and asserting will and

• influence by hesitantly taking initiatives and communicating will.

Equal value

The right to equal treatment and equal value is a basic human right. The Swedish national curriculum for the preschool states that equal value is a fundamental principle that everyone who works in the preschool must commit to. In the interviews some of the preschool teachers said that all children are of equal worth, but did not report any joint discussions (as in the case of influence) about how to work with the right to equal value in everyday practice. The observations show that children's interactions with others include situations in which issues of equal value surface and where children enact different rights-holding positions.

A phenomenon in the preschool practice that is closely connected to equal value is that of taking turns. Taking turns is a principle-based rule for organising situations in which several children want the same thing. In order to guarantee equal value and treatment the rule needs to be followed; something that the teachers in this group worked hard on. The following transcripts show three situations involving taking turns:

Malte (2.4) goes to the gate to the swings. He wants to swing but they are all occupied. The teacher says he has to wait for his turn and that it will soon be his turn. Malte waits without objecting for quite some time and eventually it is his turn.

Otto (2.5) walks up to the gate to the swings and shakes it to show that he wants to swing. Amira (1.9) arrives and tries to push Otto away. She pushes him several times. Otto leaves.

Three children are in the art room to make hand-prints on paper. Otto (2.5) and another child are playing on the floor while waiting for their turn. After a while Otto gets up and looks with interest at the printing. ‘It will soon be your turn’ the teacher says. Otto continues playing on the floor until the first child has finished. Otto immediately stands up and says ‘it's my turn’. The teacher confirms this and Otto repeats ‘it's my turn’.

The principle of taking turns surfaces more frequently in certain parts of the preschool, for example, the gate to the swings. The first two situations indicate the various actions that are open to the children when waiting to swing. Malte's respect for the turn-taking principle can be articulated as recognition of both other children's and his own equal access to the swings. Amira's actions serve to privilege her own access to the swings. In the art room Otto shows that he knows and respects the principle of taking turns but walks away when he is subjected to Amira's negative actions. He does not walk away because he does not recognise the principle, but for other reasons.

The very young children in this preschool both meet and have to deal with abstract principles of interaction deriving from ideas about equal value and treatment. In turn-taking situations, the children respond to the equal value norm in different ways. In doing this they enact the right to equal value from rights-holding positions that:

• recognise their own equal value;

• recognise the equal value of others and

• privilege their own value.

Discussion

This paper has explored the meaning of children's human rights in early childhood education by examining how young children's actions in everyday preschool practices can be understood in relation to rights. The specific question addressed is: How do children aged 1–3 years enact their human rights in the preschool setting? First-hand information was collected by observing children's actions in ongoing practice, which meant that the children's actions could be interpreted within the specific contextual framing. Three identified rights areas in preschool practice have been identified: ownership, influence and equal value. In these areas the children enact more than one way of holding and exercising rights.

The ways in which children enact the right to influence can be described as common to the children in the group, but varies depending on how confidently a child takes the initiative, communicates will and asserts this. With regard to ownership and equal value the picture is more disparate, in that the children enact different ways of being a rights holder.

The framing of the three identified rights areas is different. The right to ownership is entirely absent from governing documents such as the curriculum and from the teachers' discussions – nowhere is ownership mentioned as something significant for early childhood education. The right to influence is given substantial attention in the curriculum and in societal debate and the teachers in this group describe the discussions they have had about how to work with influence. The right to equal value is emphasised in the curriculum but is not very obvious in the teachers' talk about preschool practice. Despite these differences, the observations clearly show that all three areas are highly relevant and common rights aspects in everyday preschool practice. Children aged 1–3 years encounter these rights issues and have to deal with them in their interactions with other children and with adults in the preschool. They sometimes do this by enacting a rights-holder position that aligns with the norms enshrined in the human rights, but not always. It is also apparent that even though the teachers do not talk about ownership or equal value as something they actively work with, they do engage intensely with the children's learning in such matters. Considerable effort is put into solving ownership disputes by being consistent and repeating the basic message. A lot of time is also spent on the issue of taking turns and talking to the children about this principle.

In the light of the different framing discussed above, it is interesting to consider why these specific rights surface so frequently in the preschool setting. The theoretical base for this paper emphasises (i) that even though human rights are universally valid for all humans, the particular meaning of rights is always situated in a specific context and (ii) that the context is a co-constructor of the participants' actions. Against this background, it is the preschool context itself that provides the specific surroundings in which these rights issues emerge as significant. The ownership principles that the children struggle to understand are different from those outside the preschool. The equal value principle of taking turns is probably less important in the home environment than in the preschool setting. It is thus the institutional context – where many children are gathered in a limited space and with things that have to be shared – that forms the incentive to work with the right to ownership in this particular way and to work with equal value issues by taking turns.

Another important issue that surfaced in the analysis was that the social structures of dominance and subordination were visible in the children's interactions. Romanticising and naturalising views of young children and childhood may lead us to assume that power structures do not apply to practices involving very young children. This study shows that older and tougher children often oppress or diminish younger or more cautious children. Such actions can be seen in relation to the right to ownership and the right to equal value, where children may enact rights-holder positions that disregard the value and dignity of others. In view of these findings, it seems clear that early childhood educators working with young children's human rights need to acknowledge that societal structures are indeed present in the preschool setting and affect how children act. It is also clear that dominance cannot simply be explained in terms of individual development. Our knowledge about how rights in the preschool relate to power structures among young children is very limited and more research in this area is needed.

To conclude, the everyday preschool practices of children between the ages of 1 and 3 years include a number of human rights issues. The identification and elaboration of some of these issues in this paper will hopefully contribute to the knowledge and awareness of early childhood practitioners and researchers of what human rights for young children in preschool can be about.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant no 721–2008–4621.