Children's right to participate in early childhood education settings: A systematic review

Publisher's copyright statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Correia, N., Camilo, C., Aguiar, C. & Amaro, F. (2019). Children's right to participate in early childhood education settings: a systematic review. Children and Youth Services Review. 100, 76-88, which has been published in final form at https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.02.031. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Publisher's Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.


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Lanyon, Cronin, & Sinclair, 2003;Shier, 2001;Treseder, 1997). One of the most influential models of participation suggested the existence of eight levels of participation, three of which referred to experiences of non-participation (Hart, 1992).
Subsequent models proposed a non-hierarchical structure of participation (Treseder, 1997) or clarified different degrees of commitment to the process of empowerment, at each level (Shier, 2001).
Existing participation models differ in the extent of children's initiative considered at higher levels of the participation hierarchy. For instance, Hart (1992) described participation from manipulation by adults to decision-making initiated by children and shared with adults, while Shier (2001) only described participation from being listened to, to being involved in decision-making. Existing models also differ in the extent to which they propose a hierarchy of participation levels. Thomas (2012)  Recently, inspired by Bronfenbrenner's ecological approach, Gal (2017) proposed salient themes emerging from existing literature on children's right to participate and reorganized them into an ecological model of child and youth

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participation (see Figure 1). Specifically, relevant themes include children's ability to participate and professionals' role as gatekeepers. Together with children's competence and confidence to engage with others, professionals' perceptions, motivation, and capabilities are described as significant factors contributing to child participation. Furthermore, the model considers children's ability to meaningfully participate in different ecological levels, such as the family, the neighbourhood, or the school. In fact, there is a wide range of spheres in which children may participate: from family daily interactions or negotiations between the child and other family members, to teacherchild interactions and participation in school councils and elections, and neighbourhood planning, where children interact with authority figures.
Young children's voices should be heard and respected to ensure their perceptions, concerns, needs, and dreams are considered in decisions regarding their education and everyday lives. Nonetheless, there are some barriers to the meaningful and effective implementation of the right to participate within education settings, including a general lack of awareness of children's right to participate, adults' scepticism about children's capacity to participate, and concerns that empowering children will weaken teachers' authority (Lundy, 2007).

The Right to Participate in Early Childhood Education Settings
Within the early childhood education (ECE) field there is general consensus regarding the importance of considering children's perspectives (see Clark & Moss, 2005). For example, Katz (2006) suggested that assessment of ECE quality should consider multiple perspectives, including children's views and experiences.
Furthermore, it is consensual that children's rights and, specifically, children's right to

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participate constitute key aspects in framing ECE daily practice and overall quality (Sheridan, 2007;Sheridan & Samuelsson, 2001).
There is growing interest in addressing how adults working with young children can support shared decision-making processes in which children are actively engaged (NAYEC, 2009). Relatedly, there have been efforts to develop high-quality standards aiming to guide ECE professionals in improving participatory practices and ensuring meaningful participation for children (e.g., Save the Children, 2005). The importance of recognizing children as active and capable learners, addressing their interests and needs to promote their well-being, positive self-image, physical, social, and cognitive development is among the key principles of a quality framework for ECE (European Commission, 2014). Recently, a comprehensive set of indicators were designed to establish a common framework for the quality of ECE in Europe, addressing the importance of promoting child participation (Moser, Leseman, Melhuish, Broekhuizen, & Slot, 2017). Specifically, the authors propose that ECE teachers must show high regard for children's perspectives, adopting a child-centred approach, by facilitating children's initiative and decision-making in play and other activities, and following children's lead.

Potential Effects of the Right to Participate
Participation improves the organization and functioning of communities and enables individuals to develop into more competent and confident members of society, through increases in social competence, social responsibility, and political selfdetermination (Hart, 1992). Relatedly, two types of outcomes of exerting the right to participate are proposed: general benefits, such as better government decisions and policies, and benefits to children, such as achievement of specific objectives, development of leadership skills, self-esteem, and well-being (Save the Children, 2010).

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The development of citizenship has also been proposed as an outcome of child participation (Pascal & Bertram, 2009).
In parallel with the growing recognition of children's right to participate, there has been increasing interest in children's well-being (e.g., Bradshaw & Mayhew, 2005).
The CRC states that participation is a mechanism for promoting well-being and full development (United Nations, 2009 In the context of health services, Coyne (2008) reviewed the literature on children's participation in appointments and decision-making in health services,

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highlighting professionals' and parents' reservations and concerns about children's active involvement. Likewise, a scoping review of children's participation in planning and decision-making in Norway's protection and health services is also available (Vis, Strandbu, Holtan, and Thomas, 2010).
Evidence on children and young people's perspectives on the methods used by adults to obtain their views has also been reviewed (Hill, 2006 A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T (iii) Design: Any type of study design (e.g., correlational, longitudinal, randomized control trials), intervention, or method involving primary data collection and analysis; (iv) Evaluation: Any type of outcome, such as ideas, practices, strategies, or benefits of participation; (v) Research type: Any type of empirical research, involving qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.
Regarding exclusion criteria, studies were not considered for this review if they referred to children aged below 3 or above 6 years, based on the focus of the broader research project underlying this review and because the inclusion of children aged below 3 would require a different focus of analysis. However, studies involving multiple ages that reported results for preschool-aged children were eligible. Moreover, studies were excluded if they referred to contexts other than centre-based ECE, such as family child care or sports. We also did not include studies addressing physical participation, involvement in physical activities, or referring to participatory approaches aimed at studying other topics rather than children's right to participate. Similarly, studies referring to participation as the right to attend ECE were not considered. Studies referring to children with special needs or parental participation were excluded, as they were not the focus of the research project that originated this review. Articles that did not report empirical studies (e.g., editor letters, reviews, position statements, and theoretical papers) and meta-analysis were also not selected for review. Finally, we excluded studies in languages other than English or Portuguese, studies published in non-peer-reviewed journals, or unpublished research (e.g., PhD or Master Dissertations). Studies were identified using all possible combinations of the following groups of search terms: (a) "child* participation" OR "participat* right" OR "right to participat*" OR "right for participat*" AND (b) "preschool*" OR "early childhood education*" OR "pre-k" OR "kindergarten*" OR "3 year* old*" OR "4 year* old*" OR

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"5 year* old*" OR "three year* old*" OR "four year* old*" OR "five year* old*" OR "age* 3" OR "age* 4" OR "age* 5" OR "early education" OR "daycare" OR "day care" OR "childcare" OR "child care" NOT (equivalent AND NOT in Scopus) (c) "disabilit*" OR "special need*" OR "special education need*" OR "handicap*" OR "impairment*".
A hand search based on known authors, reference lists of previous reviews of literature, and already known papers was also performed to include relevant empirical papers meeting the search criteria that had not been captured by the electronic search.
To refine and expand the hand search, we conducted a legacy search, by using the reference lists of all articles included in the review. All duplicate studies were verified, both electronically and manually, and eliminated. Search procedures were first conducted on July and updated in December 2017.

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A selection of relevant studies was conducted, based on a sequential examination of title, abstract, and full text, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) Statement (Liberati et al., 2009).
The first part of the selection, title and abstract examination, followed by decision to retain or reject each study, was made by two independent coders separately, using the Abstrackr online tool (Wallace, Small, Brodley, Lau, & Trikalinos, 2012). Each of the coders screened all the articles identified, reaching 88.8 percentage agreement. All disagreements were reviewed in committee, mostly referring to non-empirical studies or studies not referring to preschool-aged children. The next step, full text examination and decision to retain or reject each study, was again conducted by two independent coders separately, reaching 85.9 percent agreement, and subsequently solving discrepant decisions through consensus.

Retrieval and Selection of Studies
As illustrated in Figure 2, the initial screening resulted in the retrieval of 525 articles. This number fell to 243 after removal of duplicates. Of these, 207 studies were excluded based on their title and abstract, because they did not meet at least one of the inclusion criteria. The remaining 36 articles, together with 28 articles identified through hand search, resulting in a total of 64 articles, were screened through full-text reading, with 28 more articles excluded for not meeting at least one inclusion criterion.
Disagreements, reviewed in committee, mostly referred to studies using participatory approaches, but addressing other topics or other contexts such as children's voices in nurseries, or children's voices on teacher's roles. In the end, 36 studies, 22 from database search and 14 from hand search, met the inclusion criteria and were selected for qualitative synthesis.

Results
Detailed information extracted from the full-text review is presented in Table 1.
A qualitative analysis of extracted information was conducted, aiming to identify and categorize study characteristics, in an essentially data-driven process (Schreier, 2014).
Categories addressed topics such as the context of research (i.e., country and field in which the research was conducted), definitions, voices heard (i.e., sources of information), methodological approaches, and focus of the research.

Contexts of Research
The 36  The 36 articles were published in 28 journals, with the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal publishing the most studies (n = 5, 18%). Most journals were dedicated (i.e., aims and scope) to education (n = 18, 64%), while the remaining were mostly dedicated to multidisciplinary fields (e.g., research practice,

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childhood related fields), and one was dedicated to psychology. Regarding journal's indexation areas in SCImago (2017), many journals (n = 16, 57%) were indexed in Education and/or Developmental and Educational Psychology. Moreover, authors' field of study, as reflected in academic affiliations, in most articles (n = 32, 89%) was education; few articles were written by authors dedicated to psychology (n = 2, 6%) or social and welfare studies (n = 2, 6%). Based on the SCImago journal rankings (2017), only one article (3%) was published in a first-quartile journal (indexed in 'Education'), while the majority (n = 22, 61%) were published in second and third-quartile journals.

Definitions and Theoretical Background
Authors relied on different theoretical frameworks and paradigms when defining the right to participate: to have a voice and to be listened to, to have competence and agency, to be involved, and to experience democratic citizenship. The four theoretical frameworks are described below.

To Have a Voice and to Be Listened to
Several studies (n = 25, 69%) defined the right to participate based on a legal paradigm, specifically referring to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989), which affords children's legal rights to decision-making on all matters that affect them. Participation is thus seen as children's entitlement to freely express their opinion, being listened to, and having that opinion respected and taken into consideration. Over one third of the studies (n = 13, 36%) specifically mentioned Articles 12 and/or 13 of the Convention. Not surprisingly, few studies (n = 3, 8%) used this paradigm alone to define the right to participate, with most studies (n = 22, 62%) defining participation in combination with other paradigms. Some studies (n = 14, 39%) also focused on existing national legal commitments (e.g., national laws/decrees, official curriculums) to the right to participate.

To Have Competence and Agency
Most studies (n = 28, 78%) relied on a sociological paradigm based on children as competent actors and active agents. The right to participate is thus conceptualized in the light of a new vision of childhood which considers children as having rights, as agents in their own social worlds, and as competent to use resources to co-construct interactions and make their own choices. Studies using this definition generally cited Prout and James (1997) or Corsaro (2005). While some articles (n = 7, 19%) used this approach alone to define children's right to participate, the majority (n = 16, 44%) used it in combination with the legal perspective. Some studies combined this sociological paradigm and other perspectives (e.g., involvement, democratic) (n = 5, 14%).

To Be Involved
Some studies (n = 5, 14%) defined the right to participate as individual involvement in a life situation (e.g., taking part, being involved). This perspective considers that the right to participate consists of both involvement and decision-making.
This approach translates into being involved in planning everyday activities, belonging to the group, and feeling included when solving a problem. A few studies (n = 3, 8%) referred to children's involvement according to the experiential paradigm proposed by Laevers (2005), considering children's involvement (i.e., concentration, fascination, and intensity of engagement) as a process variable that reflects the degree to which children's rights are met (Laevers & Declercq, 2018). One study (3%) considered participation as involvement from a health and functional perspective, mentioning the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning (2007). Two of the five studies also referred to participation as involvement according to the definition of Turnšek (2005Turnšek ( , 2007, describing it as children's involvement in creating their life in the institution and making decisions about aspects concerning them. All studies using

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this definition combined it with definitions based on the sociological perspective (n = 1, 3%), the democratic perspective (n = 2, 6%), or combined more than two perspectives (n = 2, 6%).

To Experience Democratic Citizenship
A democratic perspective was identified in eight studies (22%), defining the right to participate as a key concept of democratic cultures and pedagogies. This definition emphasizes children as active and democratic citizens, who learn to defend their interests and take on responsibilities. This is in line with the philosophy of education paradigm and the theory of democracy proposed by Dewey (1916), based on the direct participation of all society members, and on education as the way individuals experience participation and, therefore, democracy. All studies using this definition of children's right to participate combined it other perspectives (e.g., defining participation based on the democratic and involvement perspectives).

Voices Heard and Experiences Documented
Regarding sources of information, 14 studies (39%) included teachers as participants, six studies (17%) included children only, nine studies (25%) included both teachers and children, and one study (3%) had teachers and parents as participants.
Three studies (8%) collected data through legal document analysis. One study (3%) used both legal documents and teachers as sources of information and two (6%) combined the analysis of documentation practices with teachers and children as informants. As expected, all studies involved preschool-aged children.

Methodological Approaches
Regarding the type of methods used, most articles (n = 24, 67%) reported qualitative research, and few reported quantitative research (n = 7, 19%) or mixed methods (n = 5, 14%). Within qualitative studies, seven used a combination of data collection methods such as observations, interviews, visual data (e.g., photographic records, children's drawings), and conversations; five studies involved analysis of documentation practices, ECE teachers' behaviours, social interactions, etc.; five studies conducted conversation analysis; three studies involved document analysis, and the remaining studies used a focus group discussion, a critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954), a structured interview, or a combination of document analysis and survey.
All quantitative studies involved the use of self-report questionnaires. Fewer than half (Lopes, Correia, & Aguiar, 2016;Zorec, 2015) provided information regarding the psychometric properties of the measures used. One study (Zorec, 2015) analysed the effects of a teachers' training program, comparing two data collection points.

Focus of the Research on Children's Right to Participate
A synthesis of main results regarding the focus of studies on children's right to participate in ECE can be found in Figure 3.

Ideas About Participation
Almost half the studies (n = 17, 47%) investigated ideas about participation, focusing on teachers' (n = 13, 36%), children's (n = 3, 8%), or both teachers' and children's ideas (n = 1, 3%). It is noteworthy that the number of studies focusing on teachers' ideas is four times the number of studies focusing on children's ideas.
Regarding teachers' ideas, some studies focused on teachers' conceptions about the meaning of participation. ECE teachers seem to conceive participation as being part of a group and listening to others (e.g., Johansson & Sandberg, 2010), as participating in planning and decision-making (Sandberg & Eriksson, 2010;Turnšek, 2008), or as

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children's own activity and independent choice, supported by teachers (Broström et al., 2015).
We also found studies focusing on teachers' ideas about practices aiming to promote children's right to participate. Good practices reported by teachers include: supporting child participation in both child-initiated and adult-initiated activities, by promoting opportunities for discussion and negotiation in decision-making, within One study documented teachers' ideas before and after being exposed to a two- year intensive training program focused on the pedagogical principles of the Reggio Emilia approach, which emphasizes child participation (Zorec, 2015).
The three studies focusing on children's ideas mostly investigated how children perceive their right to participate. Children seem to describe participatory classrooms as those they like the most and in which they have more opportunities to make choices, feel better, and have fun (Correia & Aguiar, 2017). Also, children describe the right to participate as being linked with action and embedded in the relationships established

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with others, in accordance to their own needs (Harcourt & Hägglund, 2013).
Participation is also perceived by children as the opportunity to freely engage with and use different areas and materials without having to ask for permission from the ECE staff, as well as the opportunity to participate in decisions about what activities they should engage, with the possibility of refusing staff proposals (Sandseter & Seland, 2016).
The study analysing both teachers' and children's ideas about participation mostly investigated and categorized their perspectives about participation practices and experiences. Children seem consider citizenship-related topics, describing participation as managing group relations and participating in discussions and negotiations, while teachers highlight the complementary role of citizenship education, perceiving educational settings as major agents of socialization (Dias & Menezes, 2013).

Practices and Strategies Related to Participation
One third of the studies (n = 12, 33%) described practices aiming to promote the right to participate, either examining teacher practices (n = 1, 3%), children's strategies for agency (n = 2, 6%), teacher and child practices/strategies simultaneously (n = 6, 17%), or teachers' and parents' practices (n = 1, 3%). Two studies (6%) relied on the analysis of documentation practices (e.g., portfolios), while also including teachers and children as participants.
Some studies described specificities of teacher-child interactions with the potential to promote children's right to participate, suggesting the importance of Together with negotiation, the role of imagination was documented as important to promote children's instructive roles, control, and agency (Shaik & Ebrahim, 2015).
Finally, one study addressed the role of professional development and reflexive practices as means to change teachers' practices towards supporting and improving conditions for children's participation (Mesquita-Pires, 2012). In the context of a case study and using two data collection points, the author described the transformation of

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teachers' practices, through discussion and experiential learning focused on how to create enabling environments, materials, routines, and attitudes, contributing to new opportunities for adults to listen to and adequately respond to children.
While some studies documented children's capacity to manage their personal autonomy, being able to accept or decline to participate according to their own will

Ideas and Practices Related to Participation
Few studies (n = 3, 8%) investigated both practices and ideas simultaneously, although none of them documented associations between ideas and practices. Two studies examining both teacher and child practices and perceptions (Nah & Lee, 2016;Thornberg & Elvstrand, 2012). For instance, children's participation in designing learning spaces and activities, such as the development of a play area with adult's support, was described as empowering children (Nah & Lee, 2016).
Another study described variations in children's ideas and experiences as a function of ECE process quality (Sheridan & Samuelsson, 2001). In fact, also within the studies focusing solely on practices, a few mentioned the importance of ECE settings' quality to the promotion of child participation, suggesting that high-quality contexts are Notably, all studies described in this section highlighted that consideration for children's voices and initiatives is scarce, or absent in the different documents analysed.

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Participation and agency seem to be neglected, and the documents do not reflect real participation as indicated in the CRC. Rigidity and bureaucracy of educational systems are pointed as obstacles to effective consideration and implementation of children's rights (Synodi, 2014).

Child outcomes
Either investigating ideas and/or practices, only few studies (n = 5, 14%) tested associations between ideas about or experiences of participation and specific child outcomes. One study reported associations between teachers' ideas about their own practices and teachers' reports of children's self-regulation (Kangas et al., 2015), suggesting support for children's self-regulation differs as a function of levels of participation. Specifically, support for children's self-regulation was more frequent

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when acknowledging the child and his/her opinions than when providing opportunities for child participation in decision making and pedagogical planning.
Another study reported associations between children's ideas about their opportunities to participate and their subjective well-being (Sandseter & Seland, 2016), suggesting, for instance, positive associations between children's experience of being autonomous and being able to use the ECE classroom areas whenever they want, and liking the centre and being happier there. Three other studies analysed child outcomes in the context of case studies. One study investigated associations between teachers' practices and children's sense of belonging and autonomy (Freitas Luís et al., 2015), suggesting that children's autonomy and sense of belonging increase when participation is promoted. Another study described multiple benefits of child participation, following the implementation of a professional development intervention, not only for children (e.g., increased autonomy, communication, persistence in problem solving, and self-care skills) but also for teachers (e.g., increased sensitivity and stimulation of learning processes) (Mesquita-Pires, 2012). A third study described benefits from participation for both children and adults, such as increases in children's confidence, communication, cooperation and negotiation skills, and increased teachers' attentiveness and respect for children's ideas, interests, and needs (Nah & Lee, 2016). However, associations between variables were not considered.

Discussion
It was our purpose to map peer-reviewed empirical research addressing children's right to participate in centre-based ECE settings. This mapping was needed to identify gaps in available research and informing the field on how to move forward.
Interestingly, the first noteworthy finding was that, despite the growing interest in children's right to participate, the number of peer-reviewed empirical publications on

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this topic is still scarce. More empirical, peer-reviewed research is thus needed to inform ECE policy and practice in meaningful ways.

Contexts of research
Studies included in this review were published from 2001 on. Although the CRC entered into effect in 1990, when most countries ratified it, the shift to approaches based on the views of the child was not immediate, which might also help explain the scarce number of empirical publications retrieved. In fact, views of children as social agents, active participants, and "beings" rather than "becomings" were progressively adopted in subsequent years (e.g., Christensen & James, 2000;Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999;Mayall, 2000;Prout & James, 1997).
This shift was important for children's rights to be seen as worthy of investigation, with researchers becoming more interested in listening to children, investigating their perspectives and opinions, and attempting to construct more sophisticated theories of child participation (Thomas, 2012). Regarding scientific domains, most studies were conducted within the education field, with few studies analysing children's right to participate from a psychological point of view. We argue that strengthening the contributions of educational psychology to the field may deepen our knowledge on the cognitive and behavioural outcomes potentially involved in children's experiences of the right to participate, such as motivation, self-regulation, social skills, and self-concept.

Definitions and Conceptual Framework
When considering main definitions and theoretical backgrounds, this review suggests that current sociological, legal, democratic, and educational discourses converge in emphasizing children's right to participate as a pivotal dimension of highquality ECE. As noted by Malone and Hartung (2010), a shared and consistent definition of children's right to participate might be hard to attain, as it appears to be a multifaceted concept. Still, in this systematic review, different conceptualizations were

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frequently combined, resulting on the broad shared assumption that the right to participate presupposes listening to children, recognizing their competence, and involving them in decision-making.
After the CRC placed children's right to participate on the agenda, including in ECE settings, many conceptualizations of children's participation and agency emerged from sociology of childhood (Lansdown, 2005). Therefore, it is not surprising that these two perspectives are frequently combined. Nonetheless, they both seem relevant to understand various positions and discussions about children's right to participate. For instance, studies framing participation from both legal and sociological perspectives (e.g., Alasuutari, 2014) documented the need to validate children's talk and take their views into account, reinforcing the notion of the competent child.
Participation has also been described as involvement, as a way of translating this abstract concept into real action (e.g., Baraldi & Iervese, 2014). Studies relying on this definition reported increases in children's involvement associated with opportunities to participate, together with an increased sense of belonging and general well-being (e.g.,

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providing the necessary knowledge and skills to maintaining democracy), or reflexive practices (i.e., developing principles, knowledge, methods, and tools aimed at assisting ECE teachers promoting child participation). In fact, conceiving children as active pursuers of their own objectives is of great relevance to the study of children's right to participate.

Voices Heard
Importantly, there was greater emphasis on teacher's perspectives and practices than on children's ideas, experiences, or strategies towards exercising their right to participate. The limited focus on children's perspectives and experiences is likely not the result of researchers and practitioners devaluing children's voices, although it may reflect traditional roles and power relations between teachers and children (e.g., Alderson, 2000). However, it may also be associated with the methodological challenges involved in researching with young children, including the lack of validated and authentic instruments (Lansdown, Jimerson, & Shahroozi, 2014). Nonetheless, consistent with the underlying conceptual framework, children's voices should be a primary focus of future research on children's right to participate, alongside the inclusion of additional informants or actors.

Methodological Approaches
Regarding methodological approaches, the prominence of qualitative studies in this review is consistent with the study of teachers' and children's perspectives/voices on the right to participate, and particularly relevant to understanding subjective experiences in natural contexts. Nevertheless, we argue that there is a lack of

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quantitative research and research based on mixed methods. From an educational psychology perspective, a quantitative approach would be valuable to document the effects of the right to participate on children's development and well-being as well as its effects on adults and organizations, advancing the field beyond (mostly) values-based (i.e., conceptual) arguments.
Relatedly, few studies reported using measures specifically designed to assess children's right to participate. We argue that the lack of measures, with sound psychometric characteristics, to measure the implementation of children's right to participate in ECE, may be an obstacle to the development of the field and should be addressed in future research. Such sound measures would allow for important crosscontext comparisons.
Importantly, as shown in this review, research on children's rights, and more specifically on children's right to participate, seems to have little tradition in experimentation and evaluation (Petticrew, 2003). Future studies should use highquality evaluation studies to establish links between young children's right to participate and specific individual outcomes. This might also contribute to publication in highly ranked journals and, thus, increased dissemination.

Focus of Research
Most studies described ideas about participation and, to a lesser extent, practices aiming to promote participation. Teachers' ideas reflect different levels of child participation, from being heard to making independent choices (e.g., Hart, 1992), while children's ideas highlight the possibility of exerting participation through silence, resistance or avoidance strategies, which may be considered important interaction competences (e.g., Hutchby, 2002), and a way of demonstrating agency (Shaik & Ebrahim, 2015). Studies focusing on practices also reflect both child capacity and

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agency, and teachers' agentic status, mirroring the traditional imbalance in the relationships between teachers and children (e.g., Thornberg & Elvstrand, 2012).
Importantly, most studies focused on a single level of analyses, with limited consideration of associations among ideas and practices and their potential outcomes for children, adults, and organizations. Indeed, studies examining individual outcomes of the right to participate are almost nonexistent, as previously acknowledged by Reynaert et al. (2009). Nonetheless, the few studies considering child outcomes identified selfregulation, general well-being, and increased autonomy, communication, and problemsolving skills as positive consequences of participation for children.
Even though participation is understood more in terms of process rather than in terms of results (Thornberg & Elvstrand, 2012), we argue that evidence about children's, adults', and organizational outcomes of experiencing the right to participate may be instrumental in informing policymakers and practitioners about the educational, developmental, and social benefits of participation processes. Such evidence may allow the field to move further beyond arguments built around participation as a value, and inform policymakers and practitioners about the conditions under which participation experiences may benefit children's development and well-being.
Interestingly, when focusing on specific features of teacher-child interactions, some studies reported the importance attributed to teachers' pedagogically sensitive attitude, suggesting specific strategies and activities to promote participation. Moreover, some studies considered nonverbal aspects of communication between teachers and children, potentially capturing less observable aspects of the right to participate. This is important because it suggests several forms of participation in early ages have been considered. This is also in accordance with Article 12 of the CRC (1980), which

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suggests children's views should be given due weight in accordance with age and maturity, but not devalued because of age.
Participation as stated in legal documents was also analysed in the studies reviewed here. Although suggesting limited opportunities for child participation, the analysis of the right to participate in regulating documents, such as national decrees, seems useful to evaluate the implementation of this right at the policy-level and to understand the guidelines for ECE practice that might influence teachers' decisions.
Another aspect emerging from our results is the role of professional development and reflexive practices. Including children's rights and child-centred approaches in teacher's training, and reflecting on specific practices aiming to promote participation, can be important in building teacher awareness and develop specific competences towards the promotion of this right (e.g., Emilson & Folkesson, 2006).

Limitations
This review is limited by its inclusion criteria. Importantly, a criterium derived from the broader research project that encompasses this review, resulted in the exclusion of a limited number of studies focusing on the right to participate of young children with disabilities, the group of young children least likely to express their views and to be heard. Further, our focus on peer-reviewed research may also have resulted in the exclusion of research studies that tackle some of the gaps highlighted here. Finally, the features and diversity of the evidence-base limited the depth of our analyses and may have contributed to an essentially descriptive approach, while also preventing meaningful meta-analytical synthesis.

Conclusion
Children's right to participate relates to many dimensions and processes (Lekkai, 2016). The right to participate should not be considered static, but dependent on the

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characteristics of the activities, organizations, and people involved. This seems fundamental to promote a culture of participation in which researchers, policymakers, and practitioners need to be aligned. By mapping peer-reviewed research on children's right to participate, we witnessed some conceptual consistency in available research.
Also, research is already giving voice to different actors, including children, although to a limited extent, and applying some methodological diversity.
Our findings support claims from Kirby and Bryson (2002)  the benefits identified at a conceptual level and concrete evidence.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors whose names are listed below certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers' bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patentlicensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
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Figure 1. Ecological model of child and youth participation (Gal, 2017). Reprinted with permission.

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A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T Figure 2. Results of search strategy based on the PRISMA Statement (Liberati et. al, 2009).
Additional records identified through other sources (n = 28) Records excluded based on title and abstract (n = 207) Full-text articles excluded (n = 28) Motives: -Not empirical (6) -Not specifically addressing children's right to participate (e.g., social participation; participatory approaches addressing other topics) (18) -Not selected age/preschool context (4) Studies included in qualitative synthesis (n = 36) Teacher Child

Teacher and Child
A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T