Early Childhood Educators’ Perspectives on Children’s Rights: The Relationship between Images of Childhood and Pedagogical Practice

Abstract

There is a need to understand better the role that early childhood educators’ perspectives on children’s rights play in informing pedagogical practice. In the Australian context there is unease regarding the place of children’s rights in current curriculum policy. This article examines how educators’ perspectives on children’s rights inform and influence their pedagogical practice. The ethnographic study reported here involved the participation of three early childhood teachers located in one Western Australian metropolitan primary school, and generated data through the combination of walking tours, photographs of the school environment, and a focus-group interview. Themes of “Access” and “Power-fullness” emerged from the data as local values illustrating the relationship between images of childhood held by teachers and pedagogical practice. The theoretical propositions of “Pedagogy of Place and Space” and “Pedagogy of Possibilities” are offered as provocations for educators of young children wishing to enhance their practice with a children’s rights-based discourse.