Children's Voices Matter

Cynthia Hicban; Cathy Nielson

This paper presents the project, Children’s Voices Matter initiated to understand how an organisation that facilitates play experiences to support children’s learning and wellbeing in less formalised early childhood spaces, upheld children’s participation rights. The aim of the project was to design a framework for children’s voices to be heard and taken seriously. Guided by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and adhering to the National Principles for Child Safe organisations, the first step of this multi-stage initiative was to generate a shared image of children that could be audited against Lundy’s Model of Participation (2007) to reconcile rhetoric with praxis. The Children’s Voices Matter project was grounded in a contemporary study into children’s participation rights in an early childhood setting in Australia that used conversation analysis as its methodology. Findings from this previous study identified that in ‘high quality adult-child interactions’ (Gillett, Swan & Sargeant, 2014; Murray, 2015) enacting children’s rights happened in mundane exchanges between educators and children and elevated the significance of multimodal forms of communication. Findings from the Children’s Voices Matter project identified key interactions at play experiences and made explicit children’s rights enactment practices. The findings highlight what educators and facilitators have in their ‘teaching toolkit’ and make clear links to how these tools are applied in play spaces to uphold children’s rights. Children Voices Matter is part of a proactive shift towards a right’s-based approach providing safe platforms for children to share views and make informed decisions; is attuned to children’s diverse self-expressions, and open to actioning their views where possible. A rights-based approach addresses structural and systematic issues and holds adults accountable as duty bearers of children’s human rights. This paper reveals the lessons learned, the unique strategies employed, and potential translations to practice within this organisation and beyond.

Children's Voices Matter

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