Seen and Heard: Children's Rights in Early Childhood Education

Using examples from a Reggio-inspired school with children from ages 6 weeks to 6 years, the authors emphasize the importance of children’s rights and our responsibility as adults to hear their voices. Seen and Heard summarizes research and theory pertaining to young children’s rights in the United States, and offers strategies educators can use to ensure the inclusion of children’s perspectives in everyday decisions. Real-life classroom vignettes illustrate how young children perceive the idea of rights through observation and discussion. The authors’ work is based on three essential ideas: (1) the “one hundred languages” children use for exploring, discovering, constructing, representing, and conveying their ideas; (2) the “pedagogy of listening,” in which children and adults carefully attend to the world and to one another; (3) the notion that all children have the right to participate in the communities in which they reside.

“This exuberant study of how children see their world should be read by every one concerned about the future of democracy.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson, cultural anthropologist

“Seen and Heard is a much-needed and powerful antidote to so many of the worrisome forces at work in early childhood education today.”
—Diane E. Levin, Wheelock College

“What we feel about children's rights affects everything. It impacts how we are with children, what we offer, what we say, how we listen, the questions we ask, the opportunities we provide.”
—From the Foreword by Bonnie Neugebauer, Co-founder and Director of Program Development, World Forum Foundation and editor of Exchange magazine