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This article was downloaded by: [University of Chicago Library]On: 16 November 2014, At: 02:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Children’s participation in preschool– on the conditions of the adults?Preschool staff’s concepts of children’sparticipation in preschool everyday lifeAnette Sandberg a & Anette Eriksson aa School of Education, Culture and Communication , MälardalenUniversity , Västerås, SwedenPublished online: 06 Jun 2008.
To cite this article: Anette Sandberg & Anette Eriksson (2010) Children’s participation in preschool– on the conditions of the adults? Preschool staff’s concepts of children’s participation in preschooleveryday life, Early Child Development and Care, 180:5, 619-631, DOI: 10.1080/03004430802181759
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Early Child Development and CareVol. 180, No. 5, June 2010, 619–631
ISSN 0300-4430 print/ISSN 1476-8275 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/03004430802181759http://www.informaworld.com
Children’s participation in preschool – on the conditions of the adults? Preschool staff’s concepts of children’s participation in preschool everyday life
Anette Sandberg* and Anette Eriksson
School of Education, Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University, Västerås, SwedenTaylor and FrancisGECD_A_318342.sgm(Received 24 March 2008; final version received 2 May 2008)10.1080/03004430802181759Early Childhood Development and Care0300-4430 (print)/1476-8275 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & [email protected]
The purpose of this study was to investigate, analyse and describe preschool staff’sconcepts of children’s participation in everyday preschool life, as well aspreschool staff’s experiences and concepts of what characterises the children whoparticipate. Furthermore, it addresses the conditions that preschool staff consideras crucial in promoting children’s participation in preschool. This study has amixed methods design in which the definitions of participation given by preschoolstaff were initially analysed using a qualitative content analysis approach. Thedefinitions provided by the preschool teams were then matched to interviews withstaff from 20 preschools. Results from the questionnaire show that self-determination and management of everyday life are strong indicators for highparticipation according to the staff. The interview results show that preschool staffshare the understanding that giving children a sense of coherence andcomprehension of their surrounding world consequently supports children’smanagement of and participation in everyday life in preschool.
Keywords: preschool; participation; democracy; child perspective
Introduction
This study is a part of a project titled ‘Early intervention for young children inpreschool – general and specific support’. The project’s overall purpose is to examinepedagogic activities that are offered to young children (one- to five-year olds) in needof special support within Swedish preschools. The purpose of this study is to investi-gate, analyse and describe preschool staff’s concepts of children’s participation ineveryday preschool life, as well as preschool staff’s experiences and concepts of whatcharacterises the children who participate. Furthermore, it addresses the conditionsthat preschool staff consider as crucial to promoting children’s participation inpreschool.
Participation is a multidimensional construct. Most of the definitions coincide withICF’s and WHO’s (2001) description and definition of participation as being ‘anindividual involvement in a life situation’ (p. 14).
Dewey (1916) states that if democracy is about participation, then education is theway that makes individuals experience participation. An emphasis on engagement andmotivation can also be found in psychological and pedagogical research concerningparticipation (Paldanius, 1999).
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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It is common to undertake investigations in participation from specific lifesituations, such as participation in sport (Giuliano, Popp, & Knight, 2000), parentalparticipation in education, that is participation in class (Marcon, 1999; Stanulis &Manning, 2002), in literacy activities (Dale & Crain-Thoreson, 1996; Gadsden & Ray,2003) and in preschool activities (Foot, Howe, Cheyne, Terras, & Rattray, 2002). Thisstudy raises questions about parental training and the responsibilities and roles thatparents should have in preschool.
Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003) indicate that if the adults in the preschoolsucceed in capturing a child’s perspective and make the children feel involved, thenthe children may consider themselves to be understood as worthwhile participants.Furthermore, the same scientists write that through capturing a child’s perspective, theadults will gain an understanding that will give the child’s expressions a genuine mean-ing. This will lead to the teachers taking the child’s perspective into consideration fordifferent pedagogical activities. When children understand that they are heard and seen,and know that their interests and needs have been taken into consideration respectfully,then they will experience genuine participation feel influential.
In studies of children’s participation in the preschool and early intervention inpedagogical activities, the niche concept is central. The experiences that individualshave are made possible by their available environments, activities and situations.These factors provide and deny access to possible niches, which constitutes anindividual’s niche potential. Wachs (2000) describes a niche as an ‘opening in theenvironment’ and as the interface between the child and the environment where theindividual in a certain activity or situation interacts with others. Wachs (2000) alsostates that a niche describes the components in the environment that are stable overtime and are meaningful to the child, and that the niche is created in the process thatarises in the meeting of the individual and their environment. Wachs (2000) view isthat the same environment can be experienced differently by different children andcan therefore influence them in different ways. This implies that preschool activitiesinfluence children in different ways, because the child creates their own niches. Themore niches the individual has accesses to, the more opportunities for developmentthey have. For this reason, availability is an important aspect to consider when study-ing participation. From this perspective, it is important to provide opportunities for thedevelopment of the children’s participation, because children have to participate to beable reach their potential niche (Wachs, 2000). This leads us to the following researchquestions:
(1) What does participation mean to preschool staff?(2) How do preschool staff try to promote children’s participation in daily
activities?(3) How can and how do preschool staff want to work to promote participation in
daily activities?(4) What conditions do preschool staff experience that promotes participation in
daily activities?
Method
This study has a mixed methods design in which the definitions of participation givenby preschool staff from preschool units were initially analysed using a qualitativecontent analysis approach. The definitions provided by the preschool teams were then
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matched to interviews. The preschools that participated in this study were drawn froma sample of 568 preschools from two counties in Sweden, which had participated in aprevious study within the same project. In the previous study, preschool staffanswered a questionnaire about the pedagogical services offered to children in need ofspecial support in the preschool and the prevalence of children in need of specialsupport (see Lillvist, Sandberg, Björck-Åkesson, & Granlund, in press; Sandberg,Lillvist, Eriksson, Bjöck-Åkesson, & Granlund, 2008). The open-ended question of‘what characterises a participatory child in the preschool?’ has been categorised andanalysed from this questionnaire. The questionnaire with its data and categorisationsof the open question gives a general picture of how preschool staff characterisesparticipatory children in the preschool, and by doing so guides the direction of thestudies’ second component, the interviews. From the sample of 568 preschools, asmaller sample of 20 preschools was contacted for the present study. The selectioncriterion was that the preschool should have at least one child with identified disabil-ities and one grey-zone child. A child with identified disabilities is a child that isformally identified as being in need of special support, and is usually identified ashaving an established disability, medical condition or being at psychosocial risk andreceiving additional resources and support. On the other hand, a grey-zone child is notformally identified as being in need of special support. Their preschool teachers orparents consider them to have a developmental delay that calls for extra help andsupport for daily preschool activities, but they do not receive additional support fromsociety. The concept of grey-zone children is not well understood and as such there isa gap in the current research about this group of children, although they constitute themajority of children perceived as being in need of special support by preschool teach-ers (Lillvist et al., in press).
Data analysis
The qualitative analysis was undertaken in four steps of repeated categorisations basedon a latent content analysis approach (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). Firstly, the 508responses to the open-ended question ‘what characterises a participating child in thepreschool?’ were transcribed from the questionnaires. It is 568 preschools that haveanswered the questionnaire but 508 have answered this open-ended question that isattrition rate of 60 answers. Each answer was read a number of times in order to obtaina sense of the whole body of data. After this, a broad analysis to determine common-alities between all respondents was performed, with an aim to identify the genericcharacteristics of a participatory child in preschool. Secondly, categorisations weredefined based on similarities and differences between these generic characteristics.Thirdly, the categories obtained were grouped into clusters that were assembled intotwo super-ordinate themes. The fourth step was to study the similarities anddifferences of what characterises a participatory child in the preschool in each super-ordinate theme, producing final categories. Some categories involved subcategories,which had a shared meaning on a lower level. During the process, the authors realisedthat there was a hierarchic relationship between the categories. Graneheim andLundman (2004) indicate that in such a case, it is beneficial to divide the categoriesinto subcategories as well. The results are introduced as a horizontal system where themain categories are considered as equal, with vertical subcategories. The sameprocedure was undertaken with the interviews.
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Trustworthiness
By using method triangulation, an increase in validity of the study’s data can beachieved (Patton, 2002). Correspondingly, this study has been conducted through bothan open-ended research question and through interviews. Graneheim and Lundman(2004) describe that two central aspects must be taken into consideration regarding thestudy’s validity and reliability when using a content analysis. The first aspect is thatreliability is easily compromised if the data collection is extensive and continues overa long period of time. Graneheim and Lundman (2004) purport that in such a casethere is a risk of inconsequence and a lack of coherence. This was not the case in thisstudy, as the time it took to collect the data was not unnecessarily lengthy and theauthors were careful in following the interview protocol so that the interview situa-tions were as consequent as possible. Furthermore, the content analysis was onlyundertaken after all the interviews had been conducted. By doing so, the risk ofinterviews conducted earlier influencing subsequent interviews and questions werereduced. A study’s reliability is related to what extent the result is applicable to othercontexts and systems (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). The preliminary results fromthe categorisation were discussed among the researchers and a co-rater approach wasused to control the trustworthiness of the categorisations for both the open-endedquestion and the interviews. The inter-rater agreement was 96% for the questionnaireand 98% for the interview. A presentation of the findings, at national conferences forcritical feedback has also contributed to ensuring the objectivity of the research.
Results from the questionnaire
The results here report on two perspectives that preschool staff have, being a childperspective and an organisational perspective. The open research question was: ‘whatcharacterises a participatory child in the preschool?’ In total the data consists of 508questionnaire answers. How these questionnaire answers were distributed is shown inTable 1.
Table 2 depicts the themes, categories and sub-categories.The themes of the child perspective can be separated into three categories: ‘sense
of belonging’, ‘self-esteem and contact ability’, whereas the theme organisationalperspective can be sub-divided into ‘performance of activities’ and ‘safe everydayenvironment’.
Table 1. The distribution of the units, spread over the total number of questionnaire answersand the perspectives.
Preschool unitsQuestionnaire
(number and percent)Child perspective
(number and percent)
Organisational perspective
(number and percent)
Age group (1–3.5 years) 118 (23%) 49 (20%) 69 (27%)Age group (2.5–7 years) 168 (33% 96 (38%) 72 (28%)Mixed age group
(1–7 years)176 (35%) 80 (32%) 96 (37%)
Non-response of preschool units
46 (9%) 24 (10%) 22 (8%)
Total 508 (100%) 249 (100%) 259 (100%)
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The focus of the child perspective is the child itself. In this perspective, threecategories emerged on the subject of what characterises a participatory child. Thesecategories were formed by the ideas that children participate in companionship andfriendship and perceive a sense of belonging, internal perceptions and experiencesconcerning self-esteem, and contact ability in relation to having interaction with otherchildren and social competence. Furthermore, a sub-category that preschool staffexperienced was that children show a sense of belonging via being active in their envi-ronment and participating in social life, for example, playing or taking part in what ishappening around them. Self-esteem is linked to how children master everyday life,and whether or not the child is alert and outgoing. Positive abilities such as beingopen, curious, happy and positive are considered by preschool staff as characteristicsof participation. Self-esteem is also shown through the child’s autonomy. Preschoolstaff stated that a child being able to choose and to make decisions for themselvescharacterises participation. Contact ability is displayed through the child’s ability tointeract, communicate and utilise language. According to preschool staff, interactionas social competency is essential for the children’s participation. To express oneselfverbally is an important tool for gaining high participation and is also considered as acharacteristic of participating children.
The organisational perspective focuses on the preschool and its pedagogical activ-ities. In this perspective, the preschool staff describe the presentation of pedagogicalactivities, and perceives that it is important to contribute to and take part in them. Thepreschool staff also describe a safe everyday environment, where the children aresupported by their preschool teachers, and perceive the preschool and its routines andactivities as being safe.
Results from the interviews
The preschool staff define the concept of participation in three ways. The mainconcept is ability to influence. The staff are of the opinion that participation in one
Table 2. Overview of themes and categories.
Age group(1–3.5 years)
Age group(2.5–7 years)
Mixed group(1–7 years) Non-response
All categories 118 168 176 46Child perspective 49 96 80 24● Sense of belonging 18 40 43 8
● Active 7 21 15 4● Contribute 11 24 31 5
● Self-esteem 47 81 69 20● Mastering everyday life 38 68 62 11● Autonomy 18 31 28 12
● Contact ability 19 48 58 13● Interaction 16 36 45 9● Communication/language 8 21 22 5
Organisational perspective 69 72 96 22● Performance of activities 50 59 83 19● Safe everyday environment 37 24 26 7
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way or another has to do with influence and decision-making. The second definitionis a sense of belonging. The preschool staff describes this in terms of experiencingsolidarity, unity and fellowship. The third definition is performance of activity. Anindividual can participate in many ways, but it is in this concept’s nature that an indi-vidual actively takes part in activities. According to the preschool staff, the concept ofparticipation is connected to carrying out activities.
The preschool staff indicate that a participatory child utilises their ability to influ-ence through communication either verbally or though body language. Children alsoutilise their ability to influence by manifesting intentions that are interpreted by thepreschool staff. Furthermore, a participatory child demonstrates their participation bythe means of performing activities and actively taking part in pedagogical activities.According to the preschool teachers, a child who does not participate is left out andalienated, displaying an absence of a sense of belonging. Furthermore, these childrenare insecure and can establish passive and active behaviours as signals of alienation.According to the preschool staff, the teacher team must have positive values, policiesand attitudes towards the children’s participation. The teacher team is viewed asanother tool for increased participation on the children’s behalf. These values, policiesand attitudes are about being interpretative, safe, admitting, observant and a good rolemodel as a preschool staff member.
The preschool staff experience that the children in general participate in thepreschool’s decisions, but at the same time recognise that there are conditions andobstacles for their participation. Conditions are presented in form of the personnel,how big the work force is and attitudes, the children’s age and the informal structuresthat the preschool teachers have in the team. According to the preschool teachers,obstacles for the children’s participation can be the parental upbringing of the chil-dren, the preschool’s routines and structure in the shape of what is seen as being theadults’ responsibility and that it is the adult who has the overall perspective.
The preschool staff allow and supports the children’s opportunities to influencedecisions in the preschool, by improving accessibility to activities and material. Inaddition, the staff are aware of their professionalism, including values, methods ofwork and views of children. According to staff, the children’s ability to influence deci-sions in preschool is heightened through verbal communication. This communicationtakes place in structured forms with rules and guidelines as upholders. A further wayof utilising the ability to influence is to protest. Other ways for children to influenceare: to perform activities and the teacher’s professionalism, by work with the childrendivided in to small groups and sensitise the teacher team’s own structures and infor-mal structures. The important conditions that the preschool staff describe to supportand increase the children’s participation are: professionalism relating to parents, theteacher team’s teamwork, values concerning the professional role, to have profes-sional awareness of the concept of participation and self-knowledge along withobstructive and supporting factors in the prevailing method of work. In addition, thestaff are of the opinion that organisational factors can influence children’s participa-tion. All these concepts are described as obstructive and supporting factors.
However, the preschool staff mainly experience participation as a prioritised areain their preschools; it is not strictly represented as the concept of participation. Instead,it is represented as the concepts of reasonability, influences, empathy, interaction andsocial competence. The preschool teachers are of the opinion that children’s participa-tion in the preschool is under development. The opposite opinion is found in obstructivefactors, which are attributed to a lack of time.
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When the concept of participation was connected to the areas concerning demo-cratic principals, the respondents made several associations and three main conceptsemerged. The preschool teachers discussed the preschool’s role from a democraticperspective and brought forth the importance of giving the children good values andan ability to influence, reasonability and an understanding of taking responsibility fortheir own actions and other individuals’, as well as recognising the preschool’sresponsibility to create and give the children a sense of belonging.
Discussion
What does participation mean to preschool staff? Results from the questionnaire showthat self-determination and management of everyday life are strong indicators for highparticipation according to the staff. The interview results show that preschool staffshare the understanding that giving children a sense of coherence and comprehensionfor their surrounding world consequently supports children’s management of andparticipation in everyday life in preschool. This can be explained by Antonovsky’s(1991) concept – sense of coherence (SOC) – which can also be related to Wach’s(2000) niche theory that SOC stands for the power that is decisive for how muchdemand the environment puts on the child that they can manage. This in turn deter-mines the number of opportunities the child utilises to create new niches and how theydiscover how many niches there are available for them to interact with.
The results show that preschool staff’s perceptions of participation are related topositive definitions of wellbeing, involvement, belonging, interaction, communicationand activity. The results also imply that that the meaning of participation to preschoolstaff is dependent on multiple aspects, connected to different ecological levels andenvironments.
Preschool staff point out factors at the micro-, meso-, exo- and macro-levelsconcerning children’s participation in preschool. In the micro-environment, the indi-vidual’s experience is at the centre and is closest to them (Bronfenbrenner, 1999). Theresult shows different definitions linked to the micro-environment such as the experi-ence of availability to influence, a sense of belonging and the availability of activitiesin a context. This context consists of the environment and the people who enable orreduce an individual’s opportunities for participation. The results show that staff viewthe children’s participation at both the micro-level and from the children’s perspectiveat the meso-level, which is the preschool staff’s relations to other adults such asparents, management and the teachers’ team. Results also show that preschool staffdescribe participation on the macro-level by describing supportive factors of thechildren’s participation concerning the local authorities’ obligations to create goodprerequisites for the preschool in general. The staff’s perceptions of their ownparticipation are mostly related to concepts that are linked to the experience and theindividual interaction that takes place in their close surroundings, that is, on the micro-level. But the preschool staff also describes participation from a democratic perspec-tive, that is, on the macro-level. In other words, the staff describe participation bothspecifically and in general terms. Staff also describe participation from the role andreasonability they have relating to both the child and their occupation.
How do preschool staff try to promote children’s participation in their daily activ-ities? Säljö (2000) states that communication is the central component and linkbetween the child and the context. Communication and the notion that a child’s inten-tions are being interpreted as well as manifested are seen as large parts of participation,
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according to the respondents. According to the preschool staff, these are opportunitiesavailable to children to influence their micro-environment. Preschool staff declare thatthey work with both communication and giving the children the opportunities to influ-ence and utilise their availabilities to influence by manifesting intentions as well ascommunication. Furthermore, the staff experience that children’s communication istheir biggest possibility of influencing decisions in their daily activities.
To interpret children’s intentions is important for both the child and teacher in thepreschool. Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003) state that when a child experi-ences something, the child’s world is seen and heard and when their intentions areinterpreted, that’s when a child has real influence and is participating fully. The resultsshow that it is fundamental for preschool staff to interpret children’s intentionsbecause that increases the children’s opportunities for participation and thereby thechildren’s influence.
The tendency in the results is that the staff’s concepts of children’s participationin the preschool is mostly based on availability to influence and decision-making aswell as being able to choose, in such a case the thought of involvement in a life situ-ation (WHO, 2001), is not in focus but rather in the shadows. By this being stated, itis not necessarily true that this concept cannot have any pedagogical advantages eventhough the knowledge is weak. Eriksson (2006) believes that participation is oftenjudged from the degree of activity while ICF’s definition judges participation as towhat extent an individual is committed and involved in a situation. In this study,preschool staff tend to suggest that children are participating when they perform anactivity or actively take part in decision-making. The preschool’s role from thisperspective is then to make the ability to influence available to the children. On themicro-level this implies that the child has to find and use these opportunities and avail-abilities to influence by communication or that manifest intentions are interpreted bythe teachers. The results further show that preschool staff determine non-participatorychildren by how passive they are, as active children are participating while passivechildren are not. The result suggests that preschool staff determine participatory chil-dren from what they do and non-participatory children from passive behaviours thatare interpreted as lack of a sense of belonging. The passive child displays detachedand uncommitted behaviours, which is in line with ICF’s description (WHO, 2001)which characterises participation by the commitment and involvement in a situation.
How can and how do preschool staff want to work to promote participation in theirdaily activities? The results from the questionnaire establish that preschool staff put ahigh weight on sense of belonging as a characteristic of participatory children in theinterviews. The sense of belonging in the questionnaire shows how active and contrib-utory the child is in their micro-environment.
Further, the results from the questionnaire illustrate how importantly staff see self-esteem relative to children’s participation. Mastering everyday life and being autono-mous is related to being active in the environment on the micro-level, according topreschool staff. Mastering everyday life and self-sufficiency is connected to theautonomous positive characteristics and behaviours in children that teachers describeas characteristics of participatory children. Eriksson (2003) finds that self-sufficiencyis a concept that somewhat overlaps participation. The questionnaire result tends tocoincide with Eriksson’s (2003) study, by the fact that preschool staff view self-sufficiency and autonomy as a central part of participation.
Niche theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1999; Wachs, 2000) describes individuals asinteracting in a context and environment on the basis of the interpretation of the
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environment’s conditions that the individual makes. The experiences that a child haspreviously will influence how the child will interpret future situations. Subsequently,the child somewhat forms their own context and seeks out niches that are consideredand experienced as being appropriate, and avoids those that do not fit to their owncharacteristics. To have niches available and to gain access to them is to takeadvantage of the offers and opportunities the environment and its context gives. Theavailability to material and activities indirectly influences the child’s participation inthe preschool. If the availability of how interaction and activity can be formed islimited, this will inhibit the children’s opportunities for increased participation.Results indicate that preschool staff has an understanding of this. They explain that itis important to allow activities and that preschool teachers describe that the children’savailability to activities and materials is crucial for the children’s well-being at thepreschool. This can, in continuation, be linked to the notion that preschool staffbelieve that one of the preschool’s assignments is to present the opportunity toperform activities. This understanding and awareness is further shown in the results,as the respondents discuss the formal and informal structures in association with theorganisational factors that, according to the teachers, inhibit children’s opportunitiesand access to new niches. This limits the niches that children can develop, and in turnalso indirectly influences the degree of participation of children in preschool.
The results from the questionnaire imply that interaction is a fundamental factorfor participation. Bronfenbrenner (1999) writes that through interacting with an envi-ronment, the experience of participation emerges. The questionnaire’s result showsthat gaining access to interaction with both adults and children is essential forpreschool teachers. The tools for this are the groups of children themselves, and asense of belonging to this group, coupled with experiencing oneself as a part of thiscontext. The category ‘sense of belonging’ wasn’t as prominent in the interviews. Thiscan be explained by the fact that the preschool staff implied that the group of childrenitself is always present in the preschool. Another explanation could be that thepreschool staff described participation from a more democratic perspective during theinterview process. In other words, when viewing the situation from a community ormacro-perspective, participants were of the opinion that democracy is practisedtogether in a group.
The Swedish preschool curriculum, Lpfö, 2006 (Ministry of Education andScience, 2006) describes children as co-constructers in the creation of culture andknowledge. Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003) state that this assumes thechild’s participation in the child’s own process of learning and states that this isclearly emphasised in the curriculum. To Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003),participation has a value and pedagogy implies that children’s participation is viewedas fundamental, and hence this forms the basis of both the content of the research aswell as the praxis. The same scientists establish that if children’s participation is goingto be a prerequisite, then their possibilities of expressing and speaking for themselvesmust be realised, meaning that children must be allowed to participate in both decisionand pedagogical processes. The results in this study seem to imply that preschool staffdefine children’s participation mostly as a value related to rights and decision-making,which is in turn related to democracy.
Participation relating to pedagogy and pedagogical processes concerns wantingand being able to capture the interests of children, according to Pramling Samuelssonand Sheridan (2003). This means finding and catching children’s worlds, and utilis-ing their experiences and understandings in pedagogical activities. A finding in this
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study is that preschool staff tend to interpret children’s intentions in conjunction withtheir communication skills. This is described as a condition for children’s participa-tion. Whether or not children’s communication and manifested intention thenbecomes guidance for the pedagogical activities in preschool is another question.This study’s results imply, as stated previously, that although an awareness andunderstanding for children’s own interests and needs should guide the content ofpedagogical activities, this is not always enough for it to occur. The authors’ inter-pretation of the results concerning preschool staff’s experiences if children are partic-ipating in the preschool decisions, or what is going to happen in the pedagogicalactivities, is linked to the category structure where the teachers describe that theoverall pedagogical responsibility for the activities lies with the adults.
Which conditions do preschool staff believe promote participation in daily activi-ties? The authors’ reflection is that this pedagogical responsibility can be related to theconcept of participation as pedagogy and pedagogical processes. Results in the studyshow that when it comes to the overall pedagogical responsibility, teachers don’t thinkthat children can participate. It is here the preschool staff express uneasiness whencontemplating what would happen if the children were to decide. The authors’ thoughtis that it is because preschool staff relate participation to decision-making, which, inthe equation of children’s participation, doesn’t really add up for the preschoolteachers. If the staff defined participation as Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan(2003) did, by stating that adults assume a child’s perspective and in this way experi-ence the children’s way of understanding and expressing themselves, then the childrencan become participants in both words and actions.
Learning, according to Carlgren and Marton (2000), Säljö (2000), Marton and Booth(1997) as well as Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003), demands that the childis participating in the child’s own learning process. The preschool staff in this studyrelate activity to participation, which is defined as being given the opportunity to influ-ence. Children utilise this availability to influence by active behaviours. Could thismean that preschool, perhaps without being aware of it, promotes learning and thenindirectly also promotes participation by that activity which is regarded as central tothe degree of participation?
In this study, results show that the child’s view is not so prominent. With the aboveline of argument in mind, the authors ask the question of why preschool teachers inthe study didn’t describe issues regarding the views of children more. Interpretingchildren’s intentions has emerged as an important part of preschool staff’s way ofunderstanding what children feel and want. This is one way to have a child-centredapproach, or in other words, to have a child’s perspective. To have a child’s perspectiveis a prerequisite for children’s real participation and influence in preschool activities(Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2003). Results in Sheridan and Pramling Samuels-son’s (2001) study show that in preschools that are presumed to be of high quality,children can influence and negotiate with the teachers, and consequently feel as thoughthey are participants. This can be related to what Granlund, Eriksson, Almqvist,Luttropp, and Björck-Åkesson (2003) theorise as a locus of control, as these preschoolspromote the children’s locus of control, just by being influenceable. Even so, thegeneral concept for these children in the aforementioned study was that they were onlyallowed to decide for themselves their activities and what to play. The teachers decidedeverything else. Sheridan and Pramling Samuelsson (2001) believe that one interpre-tation could be that the teachers took for granted that the children understood that theywere participating in different decision processes and therefore didn’t visualise this for
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the children. In a way, this study supports the above interpretation. The authors got thefeeling at the interviews that the preschool staff took the children’s participation forgranted. However, on the other hand the result showed that the teachers found that thechildren had the ability to participate in the preschool’s decisions and planning muchmore than they currently did.
The results also show that the preschool staff thinks that they know what restrictschildren’s participation in the preschool. Sheridan and Pramling Samuelsson (2001)also found that children took for granted that they participated in the preschool’severyday situations, but not in decision processes, rather in play where adults do notparticipate. The questionnaire results show that play is a vital component to a sense ofbelonging, and is related to being active and contributing to togetherness as well as atool for high participation. In this study, the knowledge and awareness of the fact thatchildren manifest their participation in play seem weak. When describing children’spossibilities of experiencing participation in preschool, staff do not describe ‘perfor-mance of activity’ as an overall category for children’s opportunities for participation,but as a minor dimension of concepts in the form of availability of material and activityunder method of work in the child group. The category ‘performance of activity’ is ingeneral less prominent in the categorisations. This category is most prominent through-out the descriptions of how teachers experience participatory children. As mentionedpreviously, these children are active and they play. Throughout the descriptions ofpreschool staff’s experiences of children’s ability to influence decisions in their dailyactivities, and throughout descriptions of how preschool staff work with the children’spossibilities to influence everyday preschool life, the category of ‘performance’ canbe found, but is not prominent.
The above result, in this study, confirms that play is only exhibited by those whompreschool staff describe as participatory children. Play is not viewed as either anopportunity for participation or as a possible influencing factor for children, nor ashow preschool teachers should work with promoting participation in preschool.
To conclude, the preschool staff define participation as the ability to influence,unlike WHO’s (2001) definition of participation as ‘involvement in a life situation’.Pramling Samuelsson and Sheridan (2003) believe that children’s participation is nota question of listening to children and then letting them decide. It is more about inter-preting children’s intentions and actions and to have trust, even expectations, that achild can handle and manage things with the right support and guidance from adults.If the preschool staff prioritise decision-making, it is difficult to promote children’sreal participation, or to see participation as Granlund et al. (2003) do as a goal for anintervention, or as pedagogy (Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2003), where chil-dren’s intentions, interests and needs should guide and steer pedagogical activities.This knowledge will in turn lead to seeing children as the Ministry of Education andScience (2006) does, which is as co-constructers of knowledge and culture.
Notes on contributorsAnette Sandberg is an Associate Professor in Education at Malardalen University. She teachesand supervises in the area of early childhood education. Her current research interests includeplay, professionalism and children in need of special support.
Anette Eriksson is a Lecturer in Education at Malardalen University. She teaches in the areaof early childhood education. Her research interests include children’s participation, play andteachers professionalism.
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