Are you a Victorian early childhood educator who is interested in children's participation?

Expressions of interest sought. This is an invitation to express interest in taking part in a research project entitled Children's participation in theory and practice: (re)theorising the everyday enactment of children's participatory rights with early childhood educators. This project is the PhD research of Cassandra Kotsanas from the University of Melbourne and is supervised by Dr Kylie Smith and Ms Margaret Coady.

This research project seeks to explore how children's participation rights might be enacted and understood by educators in the everyday practice of early childhood education. The National and Victorian early years frameworks both refer to children's rights and citizenship and require early childhood educators to give children choices and a voice in matters that affect them. Research and other literature suggest that work in the area of young children's participation rights is limited. 

There is still much to explore about how to achieve this in a way that supports the rights of all children. Additionally there are few theoretical or practical resources about the participation of children in early childhood that are able to support early childhood educators. This research seeks to address this gap by working with early childhood educators to generate theory and practice that makes sense for everyday early childhood practice in a Victorian context.

This project will use an action research methodology and participation requirements will include:

• One individual interview of approximately one hour, in March-April 2012 at a location near you.
• Six group meetings of 1.5 hours each approximately monthly between April and October 2012. Meeting dates, times and venues will be negotiated but will take place out-of-hours on a weekday evening in a metropolitan Melbourne location central to participants.
• A follow up meeting of 1.5 hours in early 2013
• Keeping a research journal (journal writing time will be included in meetings).

Group meetings will involve discussion about children's participation, collaborative exploration of the Frameworks and other documents and ideas and how these relate to children's participation, and the identification of an area of your own practice to focus your thinking on.

Up to eight early childhood educators will be selected to participate in this research. Participants will be early childhood educators who:

• Are interested in and committed to enacting children's participation in their work
• Work in direct contact with children aged from birth to five years:

         - With any level of qualifications and experience                                        

 - In any setting/service type                   

 - Who are employed or a fulltime or part time basis

• Are able to attend all meetings which will be held in metropolitan Melbourne location and outside of business hours

If you meet the above criteria and you are interested in taking part in this research please email your expression of interest to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 2nd March 2012 and include the following information:

• Name
• Preferred contact details (email, phone number and/or mail address)
• Current role/position in early childhood setting, including age range of children
• Suburb of residence
• Suburb where you are employed

If you have further questions please contact Cassie via email or phone using the details below.

Please feel free to forward this expression of interest to others.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Cassie Kotsanas (PhD candidate, University of Melbourne)

Ph:            83444794

Email:            This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.