A Call for a Shift in Thinking: Viewing Children as Rights-Holders in Early Childhood Curriculum Frameworks

A Conceptual Model of Children’s Rights and Community-Based Values to Promote Social Justice Through Early Childhood Curriculum Frameworks

“…Integral to processes leading to social justice are community-based values, as long as these values serve individuals, families, communities, and the planet equitably. These values are, in many ways, compatible with and complimentary to Di Santo and Kenneally's (2014) rights-integrative approach to early learning.…”

“…Di Santo and Kenneally (2014) explained that a rights-integrative approach to early learning is "a teaching and learning practice that acknowledges the CRC [Convention on the Rights of the Child] explicitly and puts it into action, regardless of the philosophical framework that guides the program" (p. 396). They analyzed Ontario's ELECT document (Government of Ontario, 2007) through a rights-based lens and presented findings on ways that the document reflected (or failed to reflect) the four guiding principles of the UNCRC, both implicitly and explicitly.…”

“…(Penn, 2008). Integrated within these three domains of rights (i.e., provision, protection, and participation) are the four guiding principles of the UNCRC, namely children's rights to nondiscrimination (Article 2); the best interest of the child (Article 3); life, survival, and development (Article 6); and respect for the views of the child (Article 12;United Nations, 1989 Di Santo and Kenneally (2014) proposed a practical approach to assist educators in using what they termed a "rights-integrative approach to early learning" (p. 396). For example, with respect to children's rights to nondiscrimination (Article 2), they suggested that educators look for "how children's rights are recognized" and "how diversity, equity, and inclusion are made explicit" (p. 405) in their curriculum documents.…”

Transforming early childhood experiences with digital technologies

“…Although research around the use of technology with children is abundant, a limited number of studies follow a critical or a postmodern theoretical framework. Though the reasons for such a lack of research have not been appropriately identified in the literature, it might be assumed that one of the reasons might be associated with the pre-eminent place of the cognitive sciences and an emphasis on socio-cultural views especially in ECE (Di Santo and Kenneally, 2014; Grace and Henward, 2013).…”

Children's Rights : an Analysis of Ontario's Kindergarten Curricula from 1998 to 2016

“…According to Di Santo and Kenneally (2014), early learning curricula are an excellent way to introduce children's rights. Hence, the purpose of the current study was to evaluate how and to what extent children's rights have been integrated in Ontario's kindergarten 1998Ontario's kindergarten , 2006Ontario's kindergarten , 2010Ontario's kindergarten /2011Ontario's kindergarten and 2016 At the time of the writing, Di Santo and Kenneally (2014) is the only research found that looks into the integration of children's rights into early years curricula in Ontario. The explicit incorporation of children's rights in early childhood curricula could facilitate the increment an increase in children's rights awareness as well as the fulfillment of children's rights within school.…”