Background. Teachers’ ideas have a significant impact on their practical decisions. Supporting the child’s opinion and participation in decision-making helps children develop a sense of belonging and self-expression, which in turn has a positive effect on both educational achievement and overall quality of life. Nevertheless, issues related to teachers’ ideas of the concept of participation and its implementation in the study group remain insufficiently investigated.
Objectives. To develop a model of a participatory approach that allows determining the degree of implementation of the principle of participation in an educational organization. To analyze the relationship between the ideas of Russian teachers about children’s participation and the level of their support for children’s opinions and participation in decision-making.
Sampling. 42 teachers from 30 preschool groups participated in the study. To analyze the relationship between teachers’ ideas and their support for children’s opinions, all respondents were divided into three subgroups according to the quality level of the environment of the groups in which they work.
Methods. Teachers’ ideas about participation were studied using the author’s modification of the questionnaire “Preschool teachers’ ideas about kindergarten education” (Broström et al., 2012; modified by Ursulenko, 2020), in which an indicator of parental participation was added. The examination of the level of support for children’s opinions and participation in decision-making was carried out by a specially trained external expert based on the educational environment quality assessment tool “Support for children’s opinions and participation in decision-making”, developed by the Research Institute of Urbanism and Global Education MСU as a possible addition to the ECERS-3 scales.
Results. The respondents of the first subgroup, with unsatisfactory quality, have no significant correlations in the ideas describing children’s participation in decision-making. The respondents of the second subgroup, with minimal quality, have significant connections both in the ideas describing children’s participation in decision-making and in the ideas describing the manifestation of their initiative. But these ideas are not related to each other. Respondents in the third subgroup, with a good quality, believe that participation in activities affecting the interests of children is associated with decision-making and the ability to initiate joint activities. There are no subgroups with high-quality. The number of preschool groups in which teachers have created conditions that prevent or insufficiently support participation prevails — 80% (24 groups).
Conclusions. The structural and dialectical model of the implementation of the participatory approach developed by us allows us to perform a meaningful analysis of the practices of implementing the principle of participation in preschool education, which is presented in the theoretical part of the study. Teachers’ ideas about children’s participation are related to their support of children’s opinions and participation in decision-making. For participation in activities affecting interests, not only participation in decision-making is important, but also the ability to initiate joint activities that are interconnected.