At Barnrättsdagarna it was asked: should we adopt a child perspective or children's perspective in early childhood education and care? The presenters Katarina and Ulla draw on the Reggio Emilia approach and believe that it is important that we mainly take our starting point in children's perspective, rather than a child perspective.
A delegate in the audience, a lecturer at the University of Goteborg questioned their position and suggested we actually need to take both perspectives when working with young children.
I believe we need to move away from dichotomous thinking. Just as in my position on the "being and becoming" discourse I believe we need to take both a child perspective and children's perspective in earl childhood education and care. It is not either or but about valuing the knowledge and experiences of both the adult professionals and the children in a setting.
As Sommer, Prattling-Samuelsson and Hundeide (2010) state "child perspectives are created by adults who are seeking, deliberately and as realistically as possible, to reconstruct children's perspectives, for example through scientific concepts concerning children' understanding of their world and their actions in it (p. vi).
Children's perspective focuses on "the child as subject in his or her world, the child's own phenomenology. This is what adults attempt to understand through their child perspective" (p. vi).
The two concepts are as such different but interrelated and not necessarily mutually exclusive.
