Children’s perceptions of their experiences in early learning environments: An exploration of power and hierarchy

Abstract

This qualitative study explores five children’s perspectives of their experiences in both a university laboratory school and in their current public school setting. The perceptions of the children, aged between 4 and 6, provide innovative and significant information on how early childhood education is being realised in Ontario, Canada, as the government’s full-day kindergarten curriculum is being fully implemented across the province. Children express their thoughts and opinions on their learning through semi-structured conversations and child-produced drawings. Employing the ‘new’ sociology of childhood, critical pedagogy and a child rights–based perspective as theoretical frameworks, an overarching theme of power and hierarchy is established throughout the children’s descriptions of their experiences in their current public elementary school setting. More specifically, this central theme of power and hierarchy, and how it is realised in classroom environments in order to regulate and control children, is explored through the children’s descriptions of space, pedagogical practice, rules, and their decision-making and influence on curriculum.