Children's Authentic Participation A Facilitator's Guide

By Zazie Bowen

Do social and emotional challenges impact your work with children and young people?

Such challenges can no longer be treated as simply the difficulties of individual children. They are systemic. Young people's meaningful participation is now recognised

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zazie Bowen
• Release date: Dec 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645352115

Book preview

Publisher, Interactions Institute.

Copyright © 2021 Zazie Bowen

All rights reserved. Except as permitted by Australian copyright law, no part of this work may be reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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www.interactionssocialresearch.com.au

Citation: Bowen, Z. 2021 Children’s Authentic Participation —A Facilitator’s Guide. Interactions Institute. Sunshine Coast, Australia

ISBN:

Photo credits: Unsplash; The River School, Maleny, Queensland, Australia; Lotus Children's Centre, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Contents

SUMMARY

1 Introduction

What is participation?

Why participation matters?

What is participation in schools?

2 What is Children’s Authentic Participation? Definitions

3 Why is Participation Important? — Benefits of Authentic Relational Participation

Benefits for children

Learning benefits

Wellbeing benefits

Social justice benefits

Benefits for teachers/adults

Benefits for organisation and community

4 Principles and practices for children’s authentic relational participation

Principles

Practices

Roadmap

10 ways to enable participation

5 A framework for implementing children’s participation.

6 Stories

Tim’s tantrum

Learning from Rita

My ‘aha!’ moment

Getting up from rock bottom with intergenerational collaborations

Roughing it in far north Western Australia and intergenerational collaboration

‘What’s all this got to do with children’s participation in your school or organisation’ you might ask…

September 9 at 4:31 PM  ·

The Blacksmith

The lion and the mouse

7 Taking the Next Steps

REFERENCES

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY (ZAZIE BOWEN)

SUMMARY

Involving young people in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives has compelling benefits.

Children and young people benefit because engagement in their social communities is a pillar of wellbeing. Participation enhances children's confidence, learning, decisions, and sense of belonging.

Schools and organisations benefit from more effective initiatives to tackle entrenched disjuncts causing stress to both children and adults.

Despite public recognition of the importance and requirement of greater young people’s participation, many professionals and institutions who work directly with young people still grapple with how to translate ideas about children’s participation into meaningful practice.

This book supports facilitators of children's authentic participation. It explores what participation means; why it is important; and indicates a few elements of how to implement authentic participation.

While the main focus is on school settings, the ideas are also applicable to diverse communities and organisations where children and adults interact.

Part 1

INTRODUCTION

Engaging children and young people in organisational decision making makes sense. For all people, including children and young people, have a right to express their views when decisions are being made that directly affect their lives.

It makes sense because children and young people are experts in their own lives; they have a body of experience and knowledge unique to their situation. So, they can communicate things that adults don’t know and can get adults to look at things differently.

And it makes sense because we know that initiatives designed for children and young people are more likely to be effective if children and young people themselves participate in their development and implementation.

This book, which focuses on the 'what' and 'why' of authentic participation, is for those who want to meaningfully and effectively involve children and young people in decision making, especially in education settings. For those who want to become participation facilitators, it shows the importance of including children and young people with adults in decision making processes and how to work with young people to put this into practice.

What is participation?

Children’s participation is more than just adults asking young people for their ideas and views. It’s about deeply listening to them, taking them seriously and finding collaborative ways to bring their ideas and suggestions into reality.

It is also about supporting them with the required information, skills and opportunities to influence some of the things that affect them and at the same time helping adults understand children’s issues through their lens.

Children's participation is mandated in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child