Children as Growing Rights Subjects – The Significance of Teachers’ Actions

The overarching ambition of this paper is to explore how teachers’ actions shape children’s growth as rights-subjects. This is done by addressing the question: which rights-subjects are privileged for children by teachers’ different rights-teaching mentalities? The paper draws on observation and interview data from fieldwork in three Year 1 classes in Swedish primary schools. Theoretically framed by a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, rights-learning situations were analysed through the lens of teachers’ rights-teaching mentalities and governing techniques. The findings show how teachers’ different actions privilege different rights-subjects for the children, and demonstrate how the teachers’ actions in everyday interaction in the classroom play a significant role in this process. It is argued that rights-learning, and growing as a rights-subject, does not primarily happen in designated children’s human rights events at school, but rather occurs continuously, day after day, in ordinary school practice.