The image and acknowledgement of a child as a competent being significantly affect the participation of children in everyday life – particularly in kindergarten, where preschool children spend more than half of their day on a daily basis. In this study participation is the concept, derived and defined with the help of dictionaries, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the White Paper and the theoretical contributions to teaching the concept of Reggio Emilia. The importance of ideas and participation of children as competent is established and explained in relation to active learning, civic education, ethics of participation, and with the perspective of power. We also introduce it in connection with the pedagogic approach of Reggio Emilia and the Slovenian Curriculum for kindergartens. Finally, we link it to open problem-solving research.
Through evaluations the empirical part of the study presents how to include participation of children in the open research study and how the student performers of the project consider the goals of open research study, that give the main importance to child participation, democratic decision-making, and training of children for solving problems.
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