4 - Child-Centredness and Democratic School Structures

Summary

Chapter 4 explores how schools can embrace participatory research with children or child-led research, first exploring the concept of child- or learner-centredness. Child-centred research is linked to child-centred and early childhood education, to participatory research in an emancipatory sense, such as that inspired by Freire (1972, 1974), and rooted in the key articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) emphasising children’s voice and rights. Child-centredness is also congruous with democratic working patterns and autonomous ways of learning (Little et al., 2017), with autonomy-promoting schools driven by the core principles of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2021) and alternative inquiry-based pedagogies (Hatch, 2014; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). Institutions that embrace a child-centred approach to teaching and learning and take student voice and rights and a democratic way of working seriously will accommodate child-led research or research with children more easily and meaningfully. The alternative framework for research with children promoted in this volume is revisited to tease out the main opportunities and challenges associated with it.