Hargreaves, Eleanore;
Quick, Laura;
Buchanan, Denise;
(2025)
Shifting the focus: seven recommendations from children highlighting conditions that enhance intentional engagement in curriculum-work and participatory wellbeing.
Education 3-13
, 53
(7)
pp. 1071-1084.
10.1080/03004279.2025.2529873.
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Abstract
From a social justice perspective, schools’ curriculum must shift to promote participatory wellbeing. However, what do primary school children themselves recommend about how participatory wellbeing be promoted, especially those who are ‘lower-attainers’? This article portrays ideas from 23 children whose school-life-histories we constructed through 12 termly individual, lengthy interviews and observations, over four years. Through these, we developed seven key recommendations for schools and teachers. The children’s recommendations accorded with Ryan and Deci’s theory that – to evidence wellbeing – children’s needs for a Sense of Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness must be fulfilled. The children recommended emphasising healthy relationships among children; nurturing a strong sense of belonging and participation; boosting respect among teachers for children; and facilitating collaboration among friends and peers. They proposed making lessons more engaging; minimising testing and ‘attainment grouping’; providing opportunities for de-stressing; and encouraging children’s critical reflection on classroom learning and teaching. We conclude that future curriculum development needs to take children’s experiences into account and therefore to focus more strongly on their Sense of Autonomy and Relatedness.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Shifting the focus: seven recommendations from children highlighting conditions that enhance intentional engagement in curriculum-work and participatory wellbeing |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03004279.2025.2529873 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2025.2529873 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Children’s recommendations; lowattainers; participation; Nancy Fraser; Ryan and Deci; sense of relatedness |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210493 |
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