Full title: When an Organisation's Ethos of Children's Participation Facilitates Manipulation by Adults: Exploring the Lowest Rung of Hart's Participation Ladder

Speaker: Dr Lotem Perry-Hazan, Department of Leadership and Policy in Education, University of Haifa, Israel

DATE AND TIME: TUESDAY 8TH MARCH, 10.00-11.00AM

VENUE: MICROSOFT TEAMS

Hart’s seminal typology of children’s participation––The Participation Ladder––classified eight participation rungs. The presentation will focus on the dynamics of adults’ manipulation of children's participation ––the lowest rung of the Participation Ladder. It will draw on a case study of manipulated participation in a youth organization’s collective decision making. The study showed that the manipulated participation had social, cognitive, and discursive facets. These multiple facets resulted in intense youth engagement, blurring the boundary between authentic participation and manipulation. The intersection of participation and manipulation is particularly relevant to youth organizations and alternative schools embracing a strong participation ethos, which, paradoxically, provides fertile ground for the emergence of manipulated participation.

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Leadership and Policy in Education at the University of Haifa Faculty of Education and a member of Israel Young Academy. She serves as an editor for the Critical Studies in Education journal and as a co-convenor of the Research on Children’s Rights in Education Network at the European Educational Research Association. Dr. Perry-Hazan’s research interests include children’s rights in education and the intersection of law and education policy in multicultural societies. To register for this event, please email amy.hanna@qub.ac.uk