Children's Conceptions of Participation and Influence in Pre-School: A Perspective on Pedagogical Quality

Abstract

The United Nations Convention and the Swedish curriculum for pre-school clearly state the right of children to express their views in all matters of concern to them. It is imperative, therefore, that an evaluation of the quality of early childhood education includes the voices of children. Without these, an essential part of how children experience quality within various childcare settings as well as an overall understanding of quality in early childhood education is missing. In a study carried out in a small community in Sweden, the quality of various pre-school settings was evaluated both by an external evaluator and by self-evaluations. From the results of the external evaluations, three pre-school units evaluated to be of low quality and three of good quality were selected for in-depth studies. Thirty-nine 5 year-old children from these pre-school units were interviewed about their conceptions of decision-making and how they experienced the opportunities for them to exercise influence in their pre-school setting. The results show that it is vital for the children to participate in decision-making and the meanings given by the children to the concept ‘to decide’, have been grouped into five qualitatively different categories.