A Comprehensive Analysis of Child and Youth Experiences within Shaking the Movers Workshops: A Discourse Analysis of Canadian UNCRC Implementation Efforts

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) has been ratified by 197 nations, aiming to protect and provide for the rights of all children and young people. However, signatories such as Canada known as State Parties have mostly failed to adequately implement children’s rights (Senate of Canada, 2007; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 1995, 2003, 2012, 2022). Instead of widespread implementation efforts across governments and education systems, smaller organizations have been left to take on rights-based initiatives that provide children with safe spaces to facilitate rights-based education and discussions. In 2007, Carleton University's Landon Pearson Resource Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights (LPRC) in Ottawa, worked to ensure this by establishing their annual Shaking the Movers (herein, STM) workshops. These workshops have engaged young Canadians by providing research and education about children’s rights. Over 14 years, these workshops have produced and published 40 reports which consist of the unfiltered and unique perspectives of young people. This qualitative study will use them as data to address the main question: “How are young people in partnership with adult stakeholders involved in the cross-Canada Shaking the Movers workshops understanding and implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child?” The study employs Michel Foucault’s (1981) critical discourse analysis as the methodological framework to systematically analyze the STM reports. It has been adapted as a tool to identify and critique children’s experiences of rights and recognize how adult power relations impact them (Scraton, 1997). The Foucauldian analysis is guided by the sociology of childhood for a more extensive critical review of this database and to facilitate a wider understanding of children as active agents of their own socially constructed world, rather than passive or incomplete future citizens. This context further acknowledges that understandings of childhood are ever-changing and vary based upon history, culture, and politics of society (James & Prout, 1997). The findings of this study emphasize the need for better partnerships between children and adults at all levels of Canadian society for better implementation of the Convention.