”Participation as ’Taking Part In’: education for sustainability in Swedish preschools”.

The purpose of the article is to examine how Swedish preschools (“förskoler”) work with ’Early childhood education for sustainability’, and the ways in which children are perceived as active participants and agents of change.

The study shows that the applications describe children as important players in relation to their present and future lives. The applications stress the children’s understanding of themselves and others, and their relationships with places and technologies. The applications include two different logics about children’s participation and actions. The first is described as the logic of rights, in which children are perceived as actively able to influence their own lives. The other logic, “taking part in”, shows that children’s participation and scope for action are limited and depend on the intentions of adults. Children’s participation and scope for action are often limited to questions about the individual child’s learning and development. The study points out that, even though children are regarded as important payers, recognition of them as participants and agents of change is limited.

The empirical data in the study is composed of 64 applications for diplomas for recognition of sustainable development submitted by preschools to the Swedish National Agency for Education in 2008 and 2009. Of these, 18 were analysed in more detail.

The applications were selected on the basis of the extent to which they described learning about sustainability and/or how children become active participants. After this an analysis of the content of the applications was completed, through which the themes for the analysis were identified.

Ärlemalm-Hagsér, E. (2014). ”Participation as ’Taking Part In’: education for sustainability in Swedish preschools”. Global Studies of Childhood, 4(2), 101-110.