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Children’s participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is widely recognised as a right. Yet in everyday practice it is shaped by power relations, routines and the material-temporal organisation of settings. This article examines how children’s agency, the capacity to act, negotiate and influence within social and institutional contexts, is enacted, supported or constrained in daily interactions between educators and children. Drawing on ethnographic research in three German ECEC centres implementing the Kita-Beirat (ECEC Council), the study combines participant observation, group interviews and child-led methods inspired by the Mosaic Approach. The analysis shows how interaction quality emerges through three interrelated dimensions: power dynamics, relationships and space–time, which together shape children’s possibilities for agency. These are examined through an integrated theoretical framework that brings together relational agency, Foucauldian understandings of power and socio-material perspectives on space–time. The findings show that while formal participatory structures can open spaces for children’s influence, agency is primarily realised through high-quality, participatory interactions, marked by shared attention, reciprocity and the co-construction of meaning between children and educators. Supporting agency thus requires not only procedural mechanisms for participation but also relational and reflective pedagogies that make power visible, nurture children’s contributions and open dialogue as a shared practice. The article concludes by arguing for a view of participation as lived, negotiated and ethically grounded in the co-production of meaning and practice.

Im Sommer 2021 erschien die bundesweite Studie „Beteiligung von Kindern im Kita-Alltag“, die Fachhochschule Potsdam und die Universität Graz hatten sie im Auftrag des Bundesfamilienministeriums erstellt. Ein Team aus Wissenschaftlerinnen hatte Alltagssituationen in 89 Kitas und Krippen offen gefilmt und ausgewertet. Vor allem beim Essen beobachteten die Forscherinnen immer wieder „grenzüberschreitenden Körperkontakt“ und nicht angemessenes Verhalten der pädagogischen Fachkräfte: Sie schoben etwa den Stuhl samt Kind so nah an den Tisch, dass das Kind den Oberkörper kaum bewegen konnte. Andere stellten den Teller auf dem Lätzchen ab, ebenfalls um zu verhindern, dass sich die Kinder beim Essen zu viel bewegen. In rund 30 % der zehnminütigen Essenssequenzen beobachteten die Forscherinnen solche Vorfälle ein- bis viermal. In 16 % der Situationen sogar noch öfter. Lediglich in einem Fünftel der ausgewerteten Spielsituationen und 11 % der Essenssequenzen beobachteten die Forscherinnen überhaupt kein grenz­überschreitendes Verhalten.

In this paper, we want to present research on children’s perspectives in the context of participation. We emphasize that the survey of children's perspectives is a form of participation. We understand participation based on children’s rights. We refer to the Lundy model ([2007]. “‘Voice’ Is Not Enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.” British Educational Research Journal 33 (6): 927–942. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701657033), which emphasizes that it is not enough to simply ask children to speak their minds. Rather, they also need the experience that their views have an influence. In the discourse on quality in ECEC, children's perspectives became only recently the focus of extended research. In evaluation instruments, at least in Germany, the inclusion of children’s perspectives is rare. In the study presented here, these two aspects are brought together using the example of the evaluation instrument QuaSi. We describe how children's perspectives are taken into account in the evaluation and feedback process in contrast to everyday life in ECEC centres. It becomes clear that the collection of children's perspectives and their feedback to the pedagogues in the centre does not automatically lead to their views influencing the quality of the centre.

Children's everyday accounts of life in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) reveal the moral complexity of their relationships with adults, where care and control are intertwined. Drawing on participatory, child-centred research with 86 children in six German ECEC centres, this study examines how children perceive and describe situations in which their boundaries are crossed by adults or peers and how they experience adults’ responses. Analysis of group discussions and observations identified four interrelated themes: asymmetry of power and voice; inaction, dismissal and quick fixes; discipline, punishment and the role of rules; and children's desire for kindness and connection. Children describe being silenced, ignored or punished, while simultaneously articulating expectations of fairness, understanding and care. Drawing on care ethics, children's rights and relational agency, the article argues that adult accountability – how adults acknowledge, respond to and repair harm – is a central yet often overlooked dimension of participatory practice in ECEC.