EECERA Conference 2025 – Guest Blog # 33: “The teacher has to choose”

One of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.

“The teacher has to choose”: Young Children’s experiences of their participative rights in early education in Wales.

By Jacky Tyrie, Swansea University, United Kingdom

Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash

Respecting children’s participative rights in early years settings is not just a legal requirement (UN, 1989), it is a vital step towards recognising children as active agents in their own lives (James and Prout 1997). Research continues to show that young children are capable of forming and expressing views, and that involving them in decisions that affect them leads to more equitable, meaningful learning experiences (Lundy, 2007).

In Wales, recent curriculum reforms reflect this commitment. The Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act 2021 and the new Curriculum for Wales place children’s rights including the right to participate at the heart of educational practice (WG, 2021). These policies promote education “about”, “through”, and “for” human rights, encouraging schools to adopt approaches that genuinely value children’s participation (Murphy et al., 2022). Yet despite this progress, there’s still uncertainty around what “participation” really means and how best to support it in everyday practice. Too often, participation is defined by adults, with little input from children themselves. This research responds to that gap by foregrounding children’s own views on teaching practices that support their participatory rights in Welsh early years settings.

This research, explores young children’s experiences of their right to be involved in decision making in schools in Wales. It draws on findings from the large-scale research project ‘Children’s Participation in Schools’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

We used data from 21 focus groups with children from 10 schools across Wales. The research adopted a mixed-methods analytical approach rooted in interpretivism, social constructionism, and phenomenology (Denscombe 2021). It balanced data reduction with attention to participants lived experiences and context (Flick, 2024). Children’s views on participative rights were explored through constant comparative analysis (Roberts-Holmes et al. 2023) of focus group data and visual analysis of their artifacts.

The analysis, guided by Lundy’s (2007) framework, identified five key themes shaping children’s experiences of their participative rights in schools. These themes revealed how rights are experienced and negotiated within school contexts by children:

Theme 1: Interpreting rights through lived experience: children drew on their everyday experiences to make sense of what rights meant to them. While their initial definitions often reflected classroom language, such as linking ‘rights’ to ‘writing’; further prompts from researchers and teachers still led to interpretations rooted in familiar school contexts.

Theme 2: Space, safety, and conformity: some children felt that access to space dependent on how well they conformed to school expectations, believing they needed to ‘be good’ to be heard. In their imaginary school designs, reflected how features of their school environment influenced their sense/feelings of ‘being heard’.

Theme 3: Do teachers listen: children’s responses were mixed. In some focus groups, the answer was a confident ‘yes’. Many felt heard by their teachers, though some noted that being listened to often depended on the quality of their ideas, or how well they behaved. Others expressed that they did not feel listened to at all.

Theme 4: Choice and decision-making in school spaces: children shared varied experiences of choice in how they used school spaces. Many expressed a desire for more autonomy over where and when they could play and learn. Some described having choice in specific areas, such as the garden, craft zones, or during imaginative play. Others found more freedom in after-school settings or when using tools like iPads.

Theme 5: Influencing decisions and being heard: children’s views on decision-making varied. Some felt that they had a voice and could influence what happened in school, others saw teachers as the sole decision-makers, while some described it as a shared process. In their imaginary school designs, many placed themselves as positioned active decision-makers when imagining the role of head teacher.

Children’s perspectives and experiences of participation revealed in this research move us closer to building inclusive, child-informed approach that honor rights not just in theory but in practice. Therefore, this research suggests that Children’s participative rights to express their views and be involved in decision-making must be recognised as universal and unconditional, not contingent on behaviour or embedded within disciplinary frameworks. These rights should not be confined to specific times or spaces within the school day, nor granted at the discretion of adults, but understood as a consistent entitlement that affirms children’s agency across the whole school environment.

References:

Denscombe, M. (2021) The Good Research Guide: Research Methods for Small-Scale Social Research Projects. 7th edn. London: McGraw-Hill Education.

Flick, U. (2024) An Introduction to Qualitative Research. 7th edn. London: SAGE Publications.

James, A. and Prout, A. (1997) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.

Lundy, L. (2007) ‘“Voice” is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), pp. 927–942. doi: 10.1080/01411920701657033.

Murphy, A., Tyrie, J., Waters-Davies, J., Chicken, S. and Clement, J. (2022) ‘Foundation Phase teachers’ understandings and enactment of participation in school settings in Wales’, in Inclusive Pedagogies for Early Childhood Education: Respecting and Responding to Differences in Learning. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 111–134. doi: 10.4324/9781003163206-10.

United Nations [UN]. (1989). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). General Assembly Resolution 44/25, 20 November 1989. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

Welsh Government (2021) Curriculum for Wales. https://hwb.gov.wales/curriculum-for-wales (Accessed 11 August 2025).

Roberts-Holmes, G., Harmey, S., & Levy, R. (2023). Doing your early years research project: A step by step guide.

Jacky Tyrie will present work referred to in this blog in Symposium Set F2 (Wednesday, the 27th of August). (Schedule liable to change; please refer to final programme for details).