Purpose
The thesis deals with opportunities and limitations in relation to children’s democratic experiences in Danish kindergartens.
The PhD project investigates the following thesis statement:
What type of opportunities and limitations are there for children to gain democratic experience in kindergarten?
With the following research questions:
1) What type of cultural connections must be managed in order to be accepted as a member of kindergarten culture?
2) What understandings of ‘the ideal’ child and ‘good’ childhood can be identified and what implications do they have for different children’s opportunities regarding democratic experience?
3) What understandings of the term democratic, and what potentials for democratic experiences, can be identified in the context of kindergarten institutions?
Result
The thesis concludes that the cultural connections in institutional life relate to an overarching ideal regarding the initiating child; an ideal that is expressed through, among other things, a special materiality and organisation, and that this has an impact on how different children are seen and perceived. The ideal also influences the opportunities the children have (to find themselves in situations) (to where they can experience that they) to contribute to the community based on previous experiences, and to struggle with the question of how we want to exist with each other. In addition, the author shows how the ideal of the initiating child is closely associated with educators’ perceptions of what the term ‘democratic’ consists of, in that it is associated with verbal utterances and initiatives such as making choices and impressions.
The author argues how strong political and educational agendas contribute to some children being regarded as inadequate, as people who lack the basic prerequisites for ‘the educational’, and that Danish-language competence in particular is highlighted as a prerequisite for both ‘the democratic’ as well as participation in play and preparation for school. At the same time, the author shows that there are situations in everyday life where children, who are otherwise considered inadequate or non-initiating by educators, seem to gain experience through negotiating common goals, solving problems through the reconstruction of previous experiences and being invited to strive between their own interests and what is desirable for the community. This applies, among other things, in bodily-oriented situations, as well as in a combination between ritualising activities and child-initiated periods. However, these situations seem to go unnoticed by educators, who seem to focus a large part of their attention on political kindergarten agendas related to language, social and cultural vulnerability, as well as ‘being prepared for school’, and on efforts to accommodate individual children’s initiatives, utterances and impressions.
Design
The project’s theoretical framework is based on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy of education, and in particular his concept of experience and visions for democracy and pedagogy, as well as Gert Biesta’s theories of subjectification and world-centred education.
The empirical work consists of a combination of action research-inspired methods and ethnographic fieldwork in the children’s everyday institutional life in two kindergartens from two different municipalities in the area around Copenhagen. The methods are combined by using field notes and video recordings as data in themselves, and as a starting point for joint investigation and reflections with the staff.
The two kindergartens were selected because they were both particularly concerned with democracy and were geographically some distance apart.
References
Prins, K. M. (2019). “På jagt efter det demokratiske: En pragmatisk kulturanalyse af muligheder og begrænsninger for børns demokratiske erfaringer i daginstitutionen”. Akademisk avhandling. Roskilde Universitet.