Abstract:

The essence of participation is to give children the opportunity to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. Increasingly, professionals in educational institutions are faced with the challenge of providing children with more opportunities to actively participate in or co-create their daily lives. Although children's participation has proven benefits, it is not yet an established practice in educational institutions. To this end, the practice of the early childhood education (ECE) teacher in involving children in the planning of educational work in kindergarten was examined. The research was carried out in the framework of the project Enrolment in early childhood education: factor ensuring equal opportunities in the development of an individual and society, and lifelong learning, funded by the Slovenian Research Agency. The research involved 423 ECE teachers and assistant teachers employed in Slovenian public kindergartens in the school year 2021/2022. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The results show that the majority of ECE teachers and assistants listen to children's wishes, expectations and ideas and incorporate them into the planning and implementation of educational work, but that there are statistically significant differences between ECE teachers and assistants in favour of ECE teachers. A closer look at the ways in which children are involved in planning shows that most ECE teachers and assistants plan educational work themselves, but do so based on their own knowledge of children's wishes and interests. This is followed by ECE teachers and assistants, who give children more active role in planning, because although they plan the educational work themselves, they talk to the children and take their wishes and suggestions into account. Few ECE teachers and assistant plan educational work together with the children. Consequently, in practice, ECE teachers and assistants are not fully exploiting the potential of participation, and they need to be informed about their practice so they can raise awareness of the importance of participation and thus offer children more opportunities for participation.

Keywords:

Participation, educational planning, child, teacher, kindergarten.