Children as citizens "here and now" - democratic participation as a core citizenship education in early years

Turnšek, Nada (author)

For the past ten years citizenship education has been an important part of social studies at the Department for Preschool Education of the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana. The author’s basic premise is that children’s democratic participation represents a core of democratic and active citizenship in early years. The article summarises some of the knowledge and experiences gathered from the research studies as well as from practical projects aimed at promoting children’s participation in Slovene kindergartens. The research evidence indicate that children’s influence on decisions is limited; particularly low is children’s participation in shaping their own environment and influencing the conditions for learning and play. At the same time promoting children’s democratic participation represent a top priority to Slovene teachers. Increasing number of projects in Slovene kindergartens demonstrate ethics and philosophies such as children’s involvement, decision-making, empowerment, respecting human rights, listening to children’s perspectives; they enable the development of citizenship competences such as social competence, action competence, intercultural competence, active learning competence.

• Language: Unknown
• Keywords: predšolska vzgoja
• Work type: Not categorized
• Organization: PEF - Faculty of Education
• Publisher: Filozofski fakultet Nikšić
• Year: 2009
• Number of pages: 1-26
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-68328
• ISSN: 1800-5535
• Publication date in RUL: 10.07.2015

Secondary language

• Language: Unknown
• Keywords: pre-school education