Children as Stakeholders

Children as Primary Stakeholders in Their Own Education

(Edited from my Dissertation)

Students who are children might be viewed as inappropriate primary stakeholders in their own education because of their age, and perhaps, their potentially limited knowledge and experience. As such, children might be considered incapable of knowing what is in their own best interests.

I take the opposite view: that students, including children, are the ones most capable of determining what is in their best interests.

A growing number of scholars and researchers agree that children have more knowledge and experience than some give them credit for and should be listened to (e.g., Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Hyder, 2002; Lansdown, 2004; Mirra et al., 2016; Nelson, 2007; Schultz, 2011; Yoon & Templeton, 2019).

“Kids are quite sophisticated and knowledgeable” (Eden).

Appadurai (2006) notes that “all human beings are, in a sense, researchers” (p. 167), and this includes children of elementary school age.

Dyson (2013) writes, “[A]dult-designed institutions do not dictate children’s lives. Children have agency in the enactment of their own childhoods; this is a structured agency, shaped in response to the relational and power dynamics of everyday practices” (p. 404).

“Learners [children] are active agents in constructing their own understanding, and their own lives (Tomlinson, 1999, as cited in Grant & Lerer, 2011, p. 24).

Kellett (2009) advocated that children with learning disabilities, too, should be able to participate in a meaningful way in decision-making that impacts their lives.

And as Moll et al. (1992) discovered, children bring not little knowledge but funds of knowledge to their learning environments.