Children as members of a community: Citizenship, participation and educational development – an introduction to the special issue

Abstract

For the purpose of this publication, the authors shall discuss the subject of young people as citizens and, particularly, as members of a community. Their focus shall be on how young people perceive themselves as members of one (or several) community(ies), and on how communitarian interactions (at an interpersonal and/or an organizational level) are viewed, by them, as fundamental for their own development and for that of the community(ies) to which they belong. The contributions featured in this special issue invoke a broad understanding of participation and citizenship in terms of children's everyday experiences, informed by their roles as members of one (or several) family(ies), as students, as inhabitants of a certain space, etc. These different roles emerge both as products and as constructs of the different 'stages' upon which the child acts: they are contexts of individual but also collective -and eventually communitarian -action and appropriation. The concept of community as dialectics is especially relevant here, since what is sought is not consensus, but rather participation, which, in its plurality of forms, warrants the emergence of initiatives that really correspond to the individuals' demands. The 'common', rather than smothering diversity, emerges with the purpose of configuring fuller and more complex ways of experiencing citizenship and citizens' rights.

“Critical Agents of Change?”: Opportunities and Limits to Children’s Participation in Urban Planning

“…Children’s participatory methods are poorly executed or “tokenistic” (Wilks and Rudner 2013; Cunningham, Jones, and Dillon 2003; Lúcio and I’anson 2015; Jansson 2015; Freeman, Nairn, and Sligo 2003; Francis and Lorenzo 2002).…”

“…Discussions of poor participation or complete exclusion tend to be articulated in an absolute manner suggesting that children’s participation in some way threatens or is ignored in key societal structures and processes. Examples of such terms used include “non-participation…is endemic” (Matthews, Limb, and Taylor 1999), “prevented and obstructed” (Kylin and Stina 2015), “little more than a populist gesture” (Lúcio and I’anson 2015), “not given explicit attention” (Wood 2015), “routinely ignored or misunderstood” (Bartlett 1999), “devised by adults with adult purposes in mind” (Cunningham, Jones, and Dillon 2003), “adults remain the experts” (Liebenberg 2017), “authorities are reluctant to expand their top-down, expert-based mode of urban planning” (Horelli and Kaaja 2002), “excluded from planning processes” (Cele and Van Der Burgt 2015), and children’s participation “threatens the harmony and stability of family life” (Matthews, Limb, and Taylor 1999). These socially constructed structures and processes create conditions that either enable or hinder children’s participation and determine which children are invited to participate and in which specific parts of urban planning processes.…”

Co-creation and regional adaptation of a resilience-based universal whole-school program in five European regions

“…School professionals need child-informed understandings on how to facilitate resilience differentially (Theron, 2016), considering children's diverse responses and adaptation to risk (De Leeuw et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2013), as well as characteristics such as their gender, ethnicity, cultural context and developmental stage (Ecclestone and Lewis, 2014). The dialogue between professionals, experts in resilience, end-beneficiaries and stakeholders demands that the diverse voices within the school community are listened to, especially the voices of children and adolescents, and that they are translated into formal and effective decision-making processes (Lúcio and L'Anson, 2015). UPRIGHT co-creation research was designed to achieve these goals.…”

The Road to School. The Barcelona case

“…Moreover, Lúcio & Anson (2015) argue that children cannot only be considered as a resource for assessing the quality of life within communities, but as a starting point for more inclusive projects (Tonucci & Rissotto, 2001). Tonucci (2009) adds that a child's perspective is more inclusive than that of an adult, and how a child can gather issues and relations in a more inclusive way.…”