Negotiating Democratic Citizenship in Early Childhood Etwinning Contexts: Participation, Agency, and Educator-Child Relationships

This article reports on an ethnographic study conducted in Greek public kindergartens. It examines how the European Commission’s transnational educational initiative, eTwinning, functions as a pedagogical context for the enactment of democratic citizenship in early childhood education with a particular focus on child-educator relations. Through participatory observations, semi-structured interviews with educators, and follow-up discussions with children, the research explores how roles and interactions are co-constructed as eTwinning projects unfold. The study adopted a qualitative research design informed by constructivist Grounded Theory, across two kindergartens (six classrooms). Findings suggest that eTwinning projects constitute a pedagogical framework with characteristics that support children’s agency, collaboration, and shared decision-making. Children actively express ideas, negotiate meanings, and contribute to collaborative project activities, thereby experiencing democratic citizenship as a lived process. Nonetheless, the analysis reveals an ongoing tension in educators’ practices between maintaining pedagogical structure and enabling children’s agency within the organizational demands of eTwinning projects. By examining this relational tension, the article contributes to the contemporary discussion on young children’s citizenship by critically addressing both the possibilities and challenges of democratic participation that emerge in practice.