Children as Decision Makers in Education

Sue Cox is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia. Anna Robinson-Pant is Reader at the Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia. Caroline Dyer is Senior Lecturer for the Centre of Development Studies, Institute of Political and International Studies (POLIS), University of Leeds Dr Michele Schweisfurth is Reader in Comparative and International Education, and Director of the Centre for International Education and Research, University of Birmingham, UK.

• Introduction; Section 1: Making Space For Children's Decision Making: Perspectives On Educational Policy; 1. The Changing Context Of Decision Making In English Primary Education; 2. Participatory School Governance: Children in Decision Making in the Zambian Context; 3. Participatory Schooling In Prefigurative Form: Two Brazilian Experiences; 4. From Participating To Defining And Influencing: Supporting Children's Voice For Peacebuilding; 5. Long Time Coming: Children as Only Occasional Decision Makers in Schools and Teacher Education as Part of the Problem; Section 2: Children's Decision Making: Its Impact On Life In Schools And The Community; 6. Children's Clubs In Nepal Campaigning Against Corporal Punishment In Schools; 7. Every Child: NGO Experiences With Children As Decision Makers In Peru, India and Moldova; 8. School Councils In Liverpool: Campaigning For Fair Trade; 9. Cross-City School Councils In The UK; Section 3: Children As Decision Makers: What Are We Trying To Achieve? The Ethical And Political Dimensions; 10. Assessing the Benefits and Impacts of Participation; 11. Uprooting The Rhizomes Of Discrimination: Affect And Cultural Violence in High School in Mexico; 12. Pedagogy And Cultural Diversity: Children's Participation in Dealing With Difference in India; 13. The Ethics of Children and other Marginalised Groups Doing Their Own Research; Section 4: Facilitating Children's Participation: Methods And Approaches; 14. Children As Researchers: Experiences in a Kent Primary School; 15. Life In The Classroom: A Pupil Perspective; 16. Children as agents of environmental change: researching to learn, learning to research.; 17. Children as Researchers: A Question Of Risk?; 18. Children's Participation: Radio Broadcasting In Ghana; Endpiece: Notions of the 'Cross-Cultural' in Relation to Children and Their Role in Decision Making.

'This book advances the current discourse surrounding the role of 'children's voice' in education and society more generally, taking it beyond the northern into the southern sphere of the globe and engaging it with issues of poverty and social conflict...it confronts deeper questions about what decisions children should be making to actively shape their experience of schooling and indeed their experience in society...[The contributions] force us to reflect about how we should be conceptualising the abilities and rights of the child in a global context, and indeed about children as partners in the global project of radical democratization.' John Elliott, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of East Anglia, UK