Evaluating children’s participation: seeking areas of consensus

Introduction The subject of children’s participation in decisions that affect their lives, as provided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and explored in this issue, is a complex one. Participation means different things to different people, and the form of participation that is most appropriate varies with circumstances, including culture, age, gender, setting, political conditions, available resources, and participants’ goals. It follows that one of the questions that brought child researchers and community development experts together in Oslo for a symposium on “Children’s Participation in Community Settings” is equivalently complex: how can participation be evaluated in ways that will encourage best practices? This article will review some of the areas of consensus and debate during the symposium, with the hope that doing so will indicate some productive ways forward for research and practice in this area. (For the definition of participation adopted at the symposium, see Box 1.) from the symposium. It then examines opportunities and constraints shaping children’s participation in different settings. In the end, it reviews areas of agreement among symposium members in terms of the qualities that characterise good settings for participation and how evaluation research should be conceptualised.