ABSTRACT
When developing and implementing practices for eliciting young children’s voice and supporting democratic approaches to children’s participation, consideration needs to be given to our understandings of ‘voice’ and ‘democracy’. This chapter takes a critical look at notions pertaining to voice and democracy in the context of working with young children. We situate the discussion within a global context by first focusing on initiatives developed by the United Nations aimed at protecting and promoting children’s rights and participation, including, for example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals. We highlight the relationship between our perceptions of voice and democracy and our understandings of children as rights’ holders and progress the discussion to consider children as political beings, notably in relation to their right to participation. The chapter then addresses the complex notion of children’s capacity and agency, specifically in the context of power imbalances in child-practitioner relationships. We conclude the chapter by focusing attention on understandings surrounding notions of voice and outlining factors for creating the right conditions for cultivating and nourishing children’s, including very young children’s, voices to flourish.
