Young children's lived democracy

Abstract

Ways of helping children fulfil their democratic rights through participation are often emphasised in educational contexts, but the ways in which teachers practise their good intentions are not a guarantee of democratic practice. Knowledge of how children live or do their democratic education – their lived democracy – can be gained through anthropological or ethnographical fieldwork while following children in their everyday lives. The chapter is structured around the challenge of conceptualising such research material; in this case, conceptualising children’s participation as more or less democratic, which is referred to as ‘a dance between theory and research material’. The presented dance is between relevant theories about young children’s democratic participation – Habermas, Hart’s ladder of participation, the mosaic approach, Biesta, and Cohen – and research material. It reveals the importance of reflexivity and critical examinations of concepts used for analysing everyday life closer to the perspectives of those people involved.