Exploring children’s participation from Froebelian practitioners’ perspectives in Scottish context

ABSTRACT

Participation has been discussed as a multi-layered concept with varied outlooks on children’s lived experiences. Children’s participation occupies a complicated terrain in that whose participation counts and how it manifests itself within complex adult–child relations are enduring questions in the early childhood field. This qualitative study explored early years practitioners’ perspectives about children’s participation through their Froebelian lenses in the Scottish context. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (n = 14) were conducted online (May 2020–September 2020). As a result of the thematic analysis, three interrelated themes unfold practitioners’ conceptualisations of children’s participation: (i) listening to children’s perspectives, (ii) acting upon children’s perspectives and (iii) active learning and development. The study shows that Froebelian approaches open diverse intellectual spaces for practitioners to consider children’s participation, agency and competency alongside everyday pedagogical encounters. Children’s participation, which was not a common concept in Froebel’s time, is reconceptualised by the practitioners in this research and identified as a substantial but fluid concept in children’s multiple experiences, which is also acknowledged as children’s rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Early learning and childcare
• children’s participation
• Froebelian approaches
• Froebelian practitioners
• children’s rights
• participatory pedagogies

Acknowledgements

The paper is derived from Aksoy-Kumru’s PhD thesis and thus the author is grateful to their supervisors, Dr. Marlies Kustatscher and Dr. Lynn McNair for their support and critical guidance throughout the doctoral studies.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 While the term ‘kindergarten’ is intentionally kept in Froebelian discussions, the term ‘early learning and childcare’ is used throughout the paper to refer to debates and discussions related to the Scottish educational context, stating that the care and education of children are not two separate things across the Scottish early years context (Education Scotland 2022).

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by Ministry of National Education Türkiye - YLSY Scholarship Program, which supported Aksoy-Kumru’s doctoral studies.