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Embedding children's participation rights in pedagogical practice in lower primary classrooms in Wales.
Project description
Project Lead:
Dr Sarah Chicken
Duration:
1/12/2022 – 30/11/2025 (36 months)
Organisation:
University of West of England
Research theme:
- teaching and learning, with a focus on teachers and their recruitment, retention and professional development
The four nation focus:
- Wales
Project overview
- Aims
In the context of lower primary classrooms in Wales and focussing on young children aged 5-7 years, this study aims to establish how pedagogic practices can embed participatory rights and attend routinely to young children's voice and agency.
- Description
The project adopts an innovative participatory research design across four interrelated work packages (WPs). WP1 charts the current picture within the Welsh policy context regarding participation in early educators via a critical policy review and an audit of the opportunities for professional learning (PL). WP2 explores children's experiences and knowledge of participative rights using Reggio-inspired pedagogy as a stimulus. WP3 works with one ITE partnership to provide insight into the professional learning journey of ITE students and teacher educators with regard to developing pedagogic practices that embed young children’s participation rights. The final work package (WP4) focuses upon dissemination and impact and is integrated across the project.
- Project partners
- Partnership plans
The research is designed to be co-constructed throughout, foregrounding the development of partnerships across the project with key stakeholders to draw in and disseminate out the knowledge created, via webpage content, social media, dissemination events, public engagement, conferences, advisory groups (made up of children, experts in the field and practitioners) and the generation of resources (WP4).
- Researchers
- Dr Sarah Chicken, UWE, Bristol (Principal Investigator)
- Dr Jacky Tyrie, Swansea University
- Dr Jane Waters-Davies, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
- Dr Alison Murphy, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
- Dr Jennifer Clement, Cardiff Metropolitan University
- Professor Jane Williams, Swansea University
- Debi Keyte-Hartland, Pedagogical Consultant and Artist-Educator
- Research findings and policy recommendations
- Murphy, A., Roberts, L., Williams, J., Chicken, S., Clement, J., Waters-Davies, J., & Tyrie, J. (2024). Participative rights in Welsh primary schools: Unpicking the policy rhetoric. Policy Futures in Education, 23(2), 295-315.
This paper from the Children’s Participation in Schools team reports the findings from a legislative and policy analysis of Welsh educational documents from 2000 to 2022. This analysis was undertaken to explicate the positioning of teachers and their responsibilities regarding children’s participative rights. Although there is evidence of the increased inclusion of children’s participative rights in more recent legislation and policy, the move to education about, through and for human rights is only significantly pronounced in recent reforms such as the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act 2021.
- Annual Symposium: Young Children’s Participative Rights in Schools the Messages from Phase Two (YouTube, March 2025)
This recording is from the Children's Participation in Schools Annual Symposium that took place in March 2025. The seminar took a ‘podcast’ format facilitated by co-investigator Professor Jane Wiliams from Swansea University and focused on findings from our second phase the project where we worked with children and teachers in primary schools across Wales. The sharing event featured conversations with Principal investigator Dr Sarah Chicken, our artist-consultant Debi Keyte-Hartland who facilitated dialogic sessions with teachers, and presentations from teachers at two of the schools involved in the project.
This infographic produced by the Children’s Participation in Schools team reports on findings from a survey administered to ITE providers across Wales. The infographic presents the research process and the core finding, that initial teacher educators would like guidance and resources around teaching about participative rights.
This infographic produced by the Children’sParticipation in Schools team details the process of undertaking a legislative and policy analysis of Welsh educational documents from 2000 to 2022. The infographic highlights that human rights education is a cross-cutting theme in the Curriculum for Wales however prior education policy and legislation has limited focus on children’s human rights. The team also provide future policy recommendations for Welsh Government.
This policy briefing concerns findings from a legislative and policy analysis of Welsh education documentation from 2000 to 2022 in relation to young children’s participative rights in schools. The policy briefing provides a brief background to the project, a definition of participative rights and a link to our published paper. The policy briefing provides recommendations in order to better support young children’s participative rights in Welsh policy.
