In the diploma work, the theoretical part defines who a child is and how his role in education and socialization has changed throughout history until today. Two models are presented, deterministic and constructivist, which include the perception of the child's role in education and socialization and the concepts (competent child, active citizenship, action competence, participation of children in everyday life) on which a modern understanding of childhood is based. Since we are talking about children's participation, I researched how children’s participation is defined in documents covering pre-school education. The concept of participation is originally based on the concept of Reggio Emilia and represents one of the fundamental starting points of this concept. I wanted to present this in more detail and bring it closer to the reader. I further on describe the pedagogy of listening and looking at a child as a competent adult and his role in kindergartens based on the Reggio Emilia concept. Since the concept of participation is realized mainly through the active learning of children and thus their active citizenship, I also presented these two concepts. In the following, I summarized the results of research that show how participation is implemented in our Slovenian kindergartens and what attitudes teachers have towards participation. However, since my empirical part is based on a methodical approach, which includes the process of solving open-ended problems, I described this approach in the theoretical part.
The empirical part presents the implementation of the project, which is based on the participation of children in the process of solving open ended problems. I posed the children the problem of using a niche in the playroom for a variety of purposes, both games and activities. I described in more detail the individual activities of the Children's Participation project - our niche has become the Rainbow Nest, I have also added evaluations of it.
In the last part of the diploma work, the evaluation of the project is written through the answers to the research questions I asked myself at the beginning of the project. Both the teacher and I noticed that the whole project had a strong impact on life in our group. The children were "revived" through the project. Children who did not participate to such an extent in presenting ideas now often resort to the game in the Rainbow Nest or simply use it for withdrawal or privacy.
|