Our Project
We are a group of early childhood educators committed to exploring how democracy plays a role in our classrooms and in our lives. We each conducted our own individual research in our respective classrooms over a three month span in order to gain more information on the topic. From our research we decided to create a podcast incorporating voices of community members and their personal experiences with democracy and education.
|
Our Group |
Why Democracy in Education? |
We are a group of six graduate students currently pursuing our masters in Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver.
|
All six of us were immediately drawn to this topic. The idea of democracy is usually thought of in a political sense and rarely thought about in terms of an early childhood setting. We saw this project as an opportunity to highlight the complexity of the interactions between the children and teachers that happen in the classroom.
|
One of the most important distinctions in education is the distinction between teachers telling students what is and isn’t permitted, and teachers bringing students together to consider how they can live and learn as a community. It is the difference between being prepared to spend a lifetime of doing what one is told and being prepared to take an active role in a democratic society.
-Seen and Heard: Children's Rights in Early Childhood Education