On Ethically Examining and Supporting Children's Civic Engagement and Development

• In Event: Young Children as Democratic Citizens in Early Childhood Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

My research collaborator and I believe a primary goal of civic education is realized when a citizen who finds oneself engaged with others who hold dissimilar views, decides to carefully consider those views alongside their own, demonstrate a sincere desire and commitment to working towards good outcomes for all, and compromise in the processes of shared deliberations toward that goal. Some amount of education appears to be required to realize this and other worthy civic outcomes. To be clear, we view young children as agentic in their own right; however, we acknowledge that children’s cognitive capacities for autonomous–informed and reasoned–thinking are maturing. As such, we maintain adults have a duty to support children in practicing and advancing capacities related to civic responsibility. Our view has led us to wonder: how might we more ethically engage young children in civic education?
Previously (Author, 2019) we forwarded a conceptualization of traits of reasonable rooted in the work of Rawls (1993). Though we touch upon that conceptualization in (Author B, 2022), we largely focus on our adaptation of Brighouse and colleagues’ (2018) ‘educational goods’ framework for making ethical decisions about educational policy. We privileged this particular frame because it emphasizes the responsibility of schools to promote children’s flourishing. However, in conjunction with my involvement in the design and implementation of a civic and anti-bias early childhood curriculum, we were compelled to adapt the frame to specifically consider the kinds of goods civic education initiatives might assist children in procuring. We amended the frame to focus on four criteria:
1. Enhancing Awareness of Equality
2. (Re)Building Respectful Relationships Among Moral Equals
3. Developing Democratic Dedication
4. Prioritizing Personal Autonomy
It is our hope that those committed to the field of “children as citizens” will consider these ethical guidelines when designing, implementing, and/or evaluating civic education initiatives. Though all outcomes are desirable, a strong argument can be made for prioritizing the fourth one to support children’s agency as citizens and to promote their flourishing. Making key decisions for others can undermine autonomous thinking (Tillson, 2019). As many noted in [AuthorA, 2022] young children are often deprived of their rights to be consulted and involved in decisions impacting them. Additionally, authors across that volume indicated a need to expand democratic education beyond narrow conceptions of civic education. In response to the overarching research question posed at the start of this abstract and also to these important themes, my current research explores the ways school programming not typically considered “civic education” -- specifically reading intervention programs– support and/or undermine children’s budding capacities for autonomy. I am finding that packaged intervention programs severely limit children’s opportunities for autonomously engaging with reading. In doing so, they deprive children of civic agency and negate their cultural ways of knowing and being. How specific programs and instructional routines encourage and/or discourage children’s civic involvement and/or development are areas ripe for additional study.

Author

• Joy Dangora Erickson, Endicott College
  Presenting Author