Young Children about School: Whose Voices Do We Hear?

Abstract

School is one of the important educational practices, in which children are actively involved. When we want to contribute to the development of young children’s voices, we need deeper insight into the way children act as they do. Therefore, we have to distinguish how young children’s voices are composed, as we proclaim that all voices are essentially polyphonic. We found children’s expressions which were not corresponding with their own teachers’ and parents’ expressions. Many of the presented examples of non-corresponding expressions by the children, refer to situations in which resistance, one of the identifiers of voice, is shown. This article is part of a larger study we conducted on young children’s voices. In our research we want to explore the content of young children’s voices and the meaning they attribute to the educational contexts they are involved in. We conducted five case studies with young children, aged 5-6, in school. We have analyzed their expressions and presented our findings earlier. In this phase of our research project we are looking for possible correspondences between the children’s expressions and the expressions of their teachers and parents

Keywords

• young children
• multi-voicedness
• voice content
• school environments