Abstract:

At the beginning of the 21st century, in an environment of political, social, and economic transformations, the discussion about what kind of democracy we seek, or "Where is democracy going", as titled in a book, aims to interpret the paradoxes found within liberal democracies as they have prevailed in the Western world and to approach ways of conceptualizing and ultimately realizing it. Education for democracy or through democracy presents opportunities, or more accurately, creates hope, for the promotion of values that are capable of counterbalancing critical social issues such as xenophobia, stereotypes, and racist outbursts. Educational tools in this direction involve the creation of pedagogical environments where children learn to collaborate, communicate, and create together. eTwinning projects, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by a network of services at the European and national level, are promoted as pedagogical frameworks that foster and encourage participation, mutual respect, and active engagement. With its open-ended approach to program design and implementation, preschool education is a particularly suitable educational setting. From a contemporary sociological perspective, the young child is considered an "active social subject", and their views should be treated with equality and respect within democratic pedagogical practices co-constructed by educators and children. Given the aforementioned issues and challenges, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the preliminary findings of an ongoing ethnographic research in four classes of a Greek kindergarten. We explore the eTwinning educational context and the various parameters involved in its implementation, concerning the development of democratic citizenship. We apply a qualitative research methodological strategy, with field observations. The research process started in October 2024, and it is scheduled to be continued until the end of the school year 2024-2025. The preliminary results discussed in this paper indicate that the initial coding and analysis of observations reveal themes in two directions, deductively and inductively. Firstly, codes supported by the literature and derived deductively have been identified, such as: Equal student participation, where all students have the opportunity to participate in the learning process regardless of their abilities actively; Equal support, where teachers provide all students with the same support and guidance, ensuring that everyone has equal opportunities to succeed; Decision-making, where students participate in decision-making, encouraging a sense of responsibility; Cooperation: cultivating teamwork and communication skills; Multilingualism: the development of their language skills and understanding the importance of communication in a multilingual environment. Moreover, from the field notes, codes were inductively derived such as the Collaboration between the preschool teacher and the English language teacher in the Greek kindergarten, operating for the last four years and appearing to determine the multilingual prospect of the educational practice and the Culture of collaboration at the school level. The preliminary findings suggest that eTwinning projects share characteristics as powerful tools to cultivate democratic citizenship in early childhood education. At the same time, the first coding can serve as the basis for the creation of research tools for further examination in the field.

Keywords:

Democratic citizenship, early childhood education, eTwinning.