Children's perspective research in pre-service early childhood student education

Abstract

An important component in the role of an early childhood teacher is the ability to respect children, interact with them and respond to each child's ideas, thoughts and desires. Therefore, early childhood teacher education should emphasise the significance of relating to children as independent and thoughtful human beings. We suggest that children's perspective research is a suitable approach for educating students to relate to children in a profound and holistic way and to integrate inquiry of children's perspective into their practice. Hence, we present an implementation of the rationale and methodology of children's perspective research as a central component in pre-service early childhood student education. We first describe educational views regarding teachers' roles in child-centred educational approaches, which are rooted in democratic values. We then focus on the democratic stance, present the rationale of integrating children's perspective research into early childhood student education and portray three examples of implementing this approach in Israel. Students' reflections reveal that the process of studying about and experiencing rich engagement and conversations with children deepened their understanding regarding both children's world and their own professional role.