Belonging, community and capability: listening to the voices of young children

This paper, from ERP team 'Embedding children’s participation rights in pedagogical practice in lower primary classrooms in Wales' addresses the problem of how to achieve process quality in early childhood education (ECE) in a manner that attends to young children’s views. Process quality, the interactional experiences of the child in ECE, is highlighted by the OECD as a critical driver for development and so should be the focus of ECE curriculum enactment, which should be responsive to children's interests. We report findings from a project that explored young children’s educational experiences of ECE during Covid-19 that provide insight into what children value in ECE. These findings can be used to consider how we ensure process quality in ECE by attending to what children value in curriculum enactment. The findings demonstrate the value that children place on belonging to the school community and illustrate young children’s capacities to express their experiences with nuance and detail.

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