Children's engagements in their institutional life and the educational effort of the institutional practices

Over the last decades the Danish Day-care service has undergone dramatic changes, based on the inclusion of an educational perspective, with a strong emphasis on learning-orientated practices. As a counter reaction, various researchers have made an ethical argument against this focus on education and the becoming of the child. Instead, they have called for attention towards the child as a being, underlining the importance of children´s current life and well-being.

However, both approaches are conceptualized based on a substance ontology which emphasizes the present and permanent aspect of the phenomenon. Building on this credo of presence children are enframed (Ge-Stell) as object´s, “which” states of being varies - either depending on the qualities of the environment in which they are placed or on their place in the line of development. Through such kinds of enframing, the essence of children´s being and becoming is revealed, respectively as the “true” environmental sources of being (well) or as the “true” line of transformation for the line of becoming.

In this presentation, children´s being within the ECEC is investigated from a developmental perspective which draws on existential ideas aiming at synthesizing the being and becomingness of children´s life. The purpose of such a synthesis is to develop a conceptual framework which could guide research and practitioners. The theoretical discussion will be anchored in empirical material from an ongoing participatory research project, which for a period of two years has investigated the institutional life of children and pedagogical staff in four day-car centers.