Children Are Citizens: A Project-Based Approach to Children's Citizenship Enactment in Washington, D.C.

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

Abstract

Children Are Citizens (CAC), an early childhood initiative in Washington, DC, began in 2014 with the belief that young children have substantive ideas to contribute to public deliberation over topics of interest to them. The project aims to elevate the voices of children, build curriculum around their interests, and channel their energy toward action in the community (Rothschild, 2015). CAC’s guiding research question was: What kinds of support do early childhood teachers need in order to put a project such as Children Are Citizens into place?

In creating a Reggio-inspired professional development program for a citywide cohort of early childhood teachers, CAC project leaders envisioned providing support in various ways as each teacher-participant enacted an action-oriented curriculum built around young children’s ideas about ways to engage with their community. CAC endeavored to have teachers create a child-centered classroom that fosters empathy, kindness, curiosity, and respect--long-lasting “residuals” of learning (Ritchhart, 2015, p. 19). In pursuing topics of relevance to them and their community, the children wrestled with complexity, weighed varying perspectives, pursued a class project that stemmed from their interests, and contributed to seeing that project through to fruition.

At the heart of the approach to understanding the complex processes of learning among children and adults lies the belief, strongly influenced by social constructivist theory (Vygotsky, 1978), “that participation in groups is key to the construction of individual learning” and “that group learning can lead to creating a community culture or collective knowledge that is larger than what any one individual knows” (Project Zero & Reggio Children, 2001, p. 285).

Over seven years, there have been four iterations of CAC, each consisting of a citywide cohort of teachers. Participants have come from twelve different sites across Washington, most of which qualify for federal funding that supports schools serving a majority of students whose family income is below the federal poverty threshold. Given the nature of the aforementioned guiding question, project leaders collected various forms of data, including:
• ongoing surveys of participating teachers and a more comprehensive evaluation at the culmination of every project cycle;
• interviews with teachers, administrators and, to a lesser degree, parents along the way;
• classroom observations;
• a review of each class project, as depicted in book pages co-created by teacher and students; and
• two program evaluations conducted by outside researchers.
Data collection not only led to adjustments intended to improve teachers’ and children’s experience in the project, but also provided a means for triangulating data in order to establish trustworthiness, articulate emerging themes and, eventually, findings, and formulate recommendations for further research (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Merriam, 1998).

Employing principles of teacher action research (TAR) in the design of CAC established an iterative process of teachers using new pedagogical tools and strategies with their students, reporting on these attempts with their peers, and refining them (Pine, 2009). Participatory action research (PAR) influenced the approach as well, with CAC specifically building an ongoing collaboration between researchers and teachers as they sought to understand what was happening in each classroom (Jacobs, 2016).

Author

• James Duey Reese, Washington International School
  Presenting Author