Children’s agency: different perspectives through a literature review

The paper presents part of the results of a scoping review of 46 international contributions conducted over the past decade, which aims to explore the connections between affordance theory and agency of school-age and preschool children in outdoor educational settings. In accordance with the scoping review, the material was collected consulting five different databases, selected through explicit criteria of inclusion and exclusion, and critically examined through a revision table, putting light on the different definitions of agency. Specifically, this contribution depicts possible declinations of the concept of agency, define by James and Prout (1990) as the ability of children to act independently and to affect significantly their life experience. In this regard, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) values the uniqueness of children's perspectives, emphasizing their capacity to act within material and cultural contexts; the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) has defined the need for social engagement in the development of democratic practices that enable even the youngest children to be actively involved in political and community decision-making processes. The new sociology of childhood (Corsaro, 1977) views the child as a competent social actor (James, Jenks, Prout, 1998), as an active agent with rights, bearer of unique and specific perspectives (Pramling, Samuelsson, 2009), capable of acting independently. The results suggest that agency represents an essential theoretical assumption underlying research characterized by a participatory approach in outdoor contexts (Malone, 2013; Norõdahl, Einarsdottir, 2015; Ellis et al., 2021): the possibility of playing an active role as co-participants in more or less formal decision-making processes, fostered by the flexibility and openness of outdoor educational settings, is associated with the development of a sense of agency, autonomy and awareness. However, busy schedules imposed by some educational services tends to reduce opportunities for children to express their voices in situations that can have a significant impact on their lives, and often decisions are based on adults’ beliefs, inhibiting children's sense of agency and empowerment. The paper describes some possible declinations attributed to this concept, which takes on different meanings and nuances, recognizing its importance in contemporary society: in fact, reflecting on this issue appears to be of particular interest, since recognizing the agentic potential (Manyukhina, 2022) of which children are bearers makes it possible to mature the awareness that even the youngest should have more opportunities to experience what it means to live in a society in which the specificity of their voice is heard, welcomed and understood, in which the exercise of active citizenship is valued, and more or less formal opportunities for participation in democratic processes are favored. These assumptions respond to the need to foster democratic actions in educational contexts that are substantiated by the voices of its inhabitants, in which hierarchies are blurred and replaced by symmetrical relationships based on authentic listening. Recognizing children's agency, which is expressed through active participation in decision-making processes, appears to be an essential prerequisite for the exercise of children’s rights and the development of awareness of their active role in today's democratic society.