Children’s Perspectives: Participation in Social Practice

Abstract

This article takes its point of reference in the challenge of investigating situations, dilemmas or new conditions for being a child from the perspectives of children. The aim is to unfold a theoretical discussion of this problem informed by empirical material from the everyday life of children. Through this it will be argued that to investigate children’s perspectives we must explore and analyze children’s participation in social practice. In this way the article will touch on children’s conduct of life, learning processes related to everyday life and processes of segregation. The empirical material illustrates that knowledge from the perspectives of the children can illuminate how efforts in relation to supporting children may have unintended consequences for the children. This challenges a traditional concept of universal knowledge and points to a situated curiosity about the meanings of concrete interplay when we look “from the child and out in the social world”.