engleski

Children as a Minority Group Within Early Childhood Education Contexts: Research implications

This paper takes an intercultural standpoint to reflect on the implications and potential of researching children’s perspectives on their educational realities. If the notion of ‘minority’, in the sense of structural determination, is defined as subordination caused by lack of positions of power, it is not unusual that within gender studies women are discussed as minorities. Similarly, in the last thirty years within social sciences children have also been discussed as a minority group, subordinated to adults due to lack of power, control and access to resources. It is more of a “moral rather than demographic classification” in order to emphasize the “relative powerlessness or victimization” of children (James, Jenks, Prout, 1998, 31). This raises a question regarding the relationship between these views of children and the early childhood education context. How can we achieve an early childhood education context in which all participants are different, but equally valued? In other words, how can we accomplish an early childhood education context based on interculturalism? If one of the assumptions of interculturalism as active interaction and relationship with other cultures is knowledge and understanding of “others”, then, in the context of institutional early childhood education, it is necessary to try to gain insight into children’s perspectives about their own educational realities: how they see themselves, adults, child-adult relations and the early childhood education context. Specifically, their possibilities for decision-making within the early childhood education contexts and possibilities for influence on the early childhood education context. This is especially relevant if we take into consideration the hierarchical structure of the institutional context of education in general. Researching children’s perspectives could contribute to theory, in the sense of reconstructing early childhood curricula and reconceptualising existing perspectives on children and early childhood education, and in education of future preschool teachers.

children ; minority group ; early childhood education contexts ; research ; children’s perspectives

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