This study explored the experiences of early childhood educators who sought to increase young children’s participation with the purpose of identifying how children’s participation can be made sustainable in early childhood settings. Increasing interest in young children’s participation rights as a result of the UNCRC, General Comment 7 and the new sociology of childhood, has led to a growing expectation that early childhood educators will enact participation rights in practice. There is a limited body of research on both young children’s participation and on the sustainability of early childhood practices. Of the available literature, the majority is framed within a modernist paradigm that fails to acknowledge the multiple and contradictory nature of early childhood practice. / This study used Foucauldian discourse analysis and selected poststructuralist understandings of power, knowledge and truth to explore how socially constructed understandings of young children and of early childhood educators influence participation practices and their sustainability. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with four early childhood educators across three settings. The analysis of interviews showed particular discourses of childhood informing early childhood practices and creating and maintaining regimes of truth. It highlighted the need to recognise that early childhood educators work within and through multiple and conflicting discourses, each offering a particular subjectivity. The analysis also illuminates the micro-practices of power that limit the possibilities for children’s participation and illustrate the ‘danger’ of assimilating children’s participation into existing early childhood practices without critically reflecting on that process. The study raised the question of whether—rather than how—children’s participation should be sustained if it is operating within a singular dominant discourse. The study’s selected poststructuraist approach enabled it to fill a gap in the existing research, and has implications for practice, policy and training and provides direction for future research in the area of children’s participation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/269914 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Kotsanas, Cassandra Marie |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Restricted Access: Abstract and Citation Only Available |
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