Conference Program

Critical pedagogy has played a decisive role in challenging developmentalist and paternalistic constructions of childhood. By foregrounding dialogue, conscientisation and resistance, it repositioned children as thinking subjects capable of questioning domination and participating in democratic life. In doing so, it unsettled the notion of students as citizens in waiting and exposed schooling as a political space structured by power. This reorientation resonates with the recognition of children as rights holders in international frameworks such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly the right to participate in matters affecting them. Yet, despite its transformative ambitions, critical pedagogy often remains anchored in a model in which emancipation is achieved primarily through critical awareness and dialogic participation. While students may be invited to speak, reflect and contest injustice, the institutional architectures of schooling, including control over time, curriculum, spatial organisation, evaluation and legitimate knowledge, frequently remain intact. Political agency risks being framed as discursive expression without extending to shared governance of educational life, and participation risks becoming procedural compliance with rights discourse.

This paper argues that moving beyond these limits requires a conceptual shift from participation to commoning. Drawing on theories of the educational commons, democratic governance and childhood studies, it proposes the figure of the child as commoner. The child as commoner is understood as a political actor engaged not only in critique but in the collective stewardship of social and pedagogical arrangements. Educational commons are conceptualised as relational and institutional processes through which communities co create and co regulate norms, responsibilities, uses of space and forms of knowledge production. Democracy, in this sense, exceeds voice or consultation and becomes an ongoing practice of negotiating authority, redistributing responsibility and collectively designing shared rules. Children’s rights are approached not as abstract entitlements guaranteed from above, but as lived practices enacted through shared decision making and collective responsibility.

Revisiting central themes in critical pedagogy such as dialogue, power and emancipation, the paper interrogates their structural implications within contemporary neoliberal schooling. Without institutional reconfiguration, dialogic participation can be absorbed into managerial and performative logics, transforming critique into a pedagogical technique while leaving governance untouched. Commoning redirects attention to the material and organisational conditions that enable or constrain democratic co-determination. It foregrounds questions of who decides, under what conditions and through which collective mechanisms authority is exercised and redistributed.

This shift demands that democracy be enacted as an experiential practice in the here and now. If children are to exercise their rights meaningfully and contest existing arrangements, they must encounter and reshape them within everyday educational environments. Political agency emerges through situated practices of reclaiming space, exercising parrhesia, co deciding rules, co learning knowledge and co configuring the rhythms of classroom life. Inspired by commons based and Freinet influenced traditions, democratic formation unfolds through repeated collective practices that rework authority and responsibility in daily interactions. Children are therefore understood not only as rights holders or critical subjects, but as co-governors shaping the commons of schooling.