LISTENING PROCESSES AND CHILDREN'S PARTICIPATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH

The need to consider children as a collective with their own intentions and interests, who have the right to be listened to and to participate in matters affecting their lives is the starting point of this paper. We believe that the school context is a privileged and determinant context in which, since early childhood education, young children can play an active role in the development of effective participatory processes that, gradually, can expand to the public and social spheres. In order to achieve this aim, the adult becomes a key figure in promoting listening to children. In addition, this implies a recognition of the other, an encounter that leads to a bidirectional and symmetrical communication in which children are accepted and regarded. On the basis of these considerations, in this paper we present a review of studies carried out with young children in the last two decades. All these studies aim at children's active, conscious and voluntary participation and are focused on different areas and topics, using various techniques (visual, oral and written) in order to reach a better knowledge of and approach to child perspective.