"Et mä tiiän et mä en oo vaan pikku piste sitä taulua, vaan mä oon sitä taulua." : 5.-luokkalaisten kokemuksia osallisuudesta alakoulussa ja partiossa

Aim and background. This research aims to give a voice for children in the field that studies children's participation. Many studies have primarily used adult's views on participation and studied how this kind of participation is practiced in children's communities. These assumptions often miss children's complex and variable views of participation in their different environments. The aim of this research is to create a better understanding of the phenomenon of children's participation in school and scouting and guiding. By studying two environments this research tries to open children's views about participation as a phenomenon that children experience differently in their diverse social contexts. In this way the phenomenon is studied more widely and attempted to understand it as a part of children's lifes everywhere, not just at school. By creating the phenomenon of participation as children see it aims also to give better understanding about how to evolve children's participation both in school and scouts and also in the educational research. Methods. The research material was collected in the spring of 2017 in semi-structured interviews with five 5th graders who were also scouts. Every interviewee was interviewed twice: once at the scouts meeting place about scouting environment and once at school about school environment. Before the interview the children filled out a short sheet about how they feel about the interview and how much they know about certain concepts (for example local group or student council) they were to be asked about in the interviews. Every interview included a storycrafting assignment aimed to make the social encounter more equal between the researcher and the child. The research was carried out as a phenomenographic analysis. Conclusions. According to the results children experience both scouts and the school environment to be child centered communities, though are in fact separated from the decision-making processes. In both environments children participated in the decision-making only in certain places that were specifically meant for them. These places do not penetrate the decision-making of the communities but only include a part of it. Based on the analysis children saw their role in the decision-making and participating mainly to be sufficient and fair. They did not see that children could nor needed to have a bigger role as members of studied communities. Whereas children had some expectations towards school as an enabler of children's participation in society, scouting was not seen to have a similar role. Scouting was seen as a friendlier environment that allows children more freedom than school or other environments. The results show that there is a need for qualitative research about participation of children also in other environments than schools. Studies about participation of children also need more understanding about how children themselves experience participation so that the results would be more compatible in the light of the theoretical understanding of participation