The right to refuse: A critical literature review of refusal-as-participation in early childhood education

Abstract

This critical literature review examines how young children's right to refuse participation is conceptualized within early childhood education (ECE) research. Guided by childism, the review analyzes 26 peer-reviewed studies published between 2019 and 2025 to evaluate whether children's refusals are recognized as legitimate participation and how they are framed within curriculum, choice-making, play, and adult–child power relations. The analysis found that refusal-as-participation is largely absent across the literature: most studies made no mention of refusal or treated it as disengagement or misbehavior, while only a small subset explicitly recognized refusal as an expression of children's agency. Curriculum and choice contexts overwhelmingly positioned refusal as a problem to be resolved; play offered more space for refusals, but they remained inconsistently supported; and power dynamics often overshadowed or redirected refusals rather than acknowledging them. These findings reveal a persistent gap between theoretical commitments to participation rights and their enactment in ECE settings. Implications include the need for explicit conceptual recognition of refusal within participatory frameworks; structural conditions that enable children to decline participation without penalty; and rights-respecting pedagogies that honor refusal as an expression of children's dignity, boundaries, and humanity.

Keywords

children's rights refusal participation agency power relations childism

Introduction

When a three-year-old child crosses her arms and declares “No, I don’t want to!” in response to her teacher's invitation to join circle time, she is exercising a fundamental human right that remains largely invisible in early childhood education research and practice. Young children's refusal represents not defiance or non-compliance but rather a sophisticated expression of agency and self-determination that should be recognized and honored as authentic participation. Yet across early childhood education (ECE) settings worldwide, children's right to refuse participation—a cornerstone of genuine consent and autonomy—remains critically underexamined and poorly understood. This oversight has profound consequences for millions of young children whose daily experiences in ECE settings are shaped by adultcentric assumptions about what constitutes appropriate participation.

Problem statement

Children's participation rights in ECE are typically understood through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Long, 2022), which positions participation as foundational to children's experiences across contexts. However, participation rights remain inconsistently interpreted and enacted in practice (Correia et al., 2023; Višnjić-Jevtić et al., 2021). Research repeatedly documents a persistent gap between educators’ rhetorical commitments to participation and the challenges they face implementing these rights meaningfully in daily interactions (Hayes, 2024; Sevón et al., 2023).

This gap is especially pronounced regarding the child's right to refuse participation—an essential dimension of authentic consent that has significant implications for children's lived experiences. Contemporary ECE scholarship largely focuses on encouraging engagement and voice while overlooking children's equally important right to disengage, resist, or refuse (Castro-Zubizarreta and Calvo-Salvador, 2024). This omission reinforces adultcentric power structures that reinterpret refusal as non-compliance or disengagement rather than as a legitimate form of agency and self-determination. When educators lack conceptual frameworks for understanding refusal as participation, they risk adopting coercive practices that undermine the very rights they intend to support.

This critical literature review examines how children's refusal-as-participation is conceptualized—or neglected—within ECE participation scholarship. Refusal is defined here as an active expression of agency enacted through verbal dissent, silence, avoidance, resistance, or withdrawal. Rather than representing the absence of participation, refusal-as-participation reflects children's decision-making power and their negotiation of boundaries within institutional contexts. Using childism as the guiding theoretical framework, this review interrogates how refusal is recognized, framed, or erased in the literature and identifies the conceptual, structural, and pedagogical conditions that shape whether children's refusals are treated as legitimate expressions of their participation rights.

Purpose statement

The purpose of this study is to critically synthesize the body of literature on children's participation rights within ECE to evaluate how young children's right to refuse participation is a valid and appropriate expression of their human rights, in order to identify gaps for future research.

Research questions

This critical literature review examined the following research questions:

To what extent is the child's right to refuse participation conceptualized in the existing literature on children's participation in ECE settings?

How is the child's right to refuse participation conceptualized in the existing literature on children's participation in ECE settings?

Theoretical framework

Childism provides the critical lens through which this review interrogates how young children's refusal is conceptualized within ECE. As Wall (2024) argues, childism offers “a critical lens for deconstructing systemic adultism and reconstructing norms and structures that empower the lived experiences of children as children” (2024: 208). It challenges the assumption that adults inherently know what is best for children and asserts that understanding children's experiences is central to understanding what it means to be human (Warming, 2020). Childism's vision encompasses “recognition, social justice, and inclusion of all humans” (Biswas et al., 2024: 746) and aims not simply to advocate for children but to reconstruct social, cultural, and institutional norms “in light of childhood” (Wall, 2008).

As a critical framework, childism exposes how adultcentric power structures shape and constrain what counts as acceptable participation in ECE settings. Participation is often framed through adult-defined expectations of cooperation, engagement, and voice, leaving refusals—silence, withdrawal, redirection, or dissent—conceptually invisible or misinterpreted as misbehavior. Childism requires equal weighting of children's refusals and their consent, positioning refusal not as the absence of participation but as a meaningful expression of agency, preference, and boundary-setting.

Applied to this review, childism directs analytic attention toward how refusal is recognized, interpreted, or erased in the literature. It highlights the interpretive authority adults hold over children's actions and how normative expectations of compliance shape daily routines, pedagogical decisions, and assessments of children's behavior. Childism therefore supports a reconceptualization of children's participation rights as expressions of dignity and humanity rather than as tools to advance curricular aims or classroom management. This review extends childist scholarship by examining how the field frames refusal within participation and by identifying the structural, pedagogical, and conceptual conditions that limit or enable refusal-as-participation in ECE settings.

Methodology

Research design

This critical literature review employed a systematic approach to identify, analyze, and synthesize existing research on children's refusal as a participation right within ECE. Paré et al. (2015) highlight that critical literature reviews “aim to critically analyze the extant literature on a broad topic to reveal weaknesses, contradictions, controversies, or inconsistencies” (2015: 189). Guided by Dixon-Woods et al’s (2006) approach to critical interpretive synthesis, this review moved beyond aggregating findings to interrogate how refusal is framed within the literature. The analysis involved iterative reading, conceptual coding, and the development of interpretive themes that illuminate dominant assumptions and silences.

Eligibility criteria

This review applied eligibility criteria designed to ensure conceptual alignment with the study's aim of examining how refusal is constructed within ECE participation scholarship. Both empirical and theoretical studies were eligible, and only peer-reviewed publications in English were included to ensure accurate interpretation and analysis. Following Correia et al’s (2019) comprehensive review of participation in ECE, the search was limited to articles published between 2019 and 2025, to capture recent conceptual developments while maintaining a manageable scope for critical synthesis.

Studies were included if they focused on children from birth to five years, a range that reflects widely accepted international definitions of early childhood. Mixed-age settings were eligible when all participating children were within this range. Studies had to have taken place in ECE environments in which groups of children from multiple families were cared for and educated together, including both center-based and home-based programs. Because the focus of this review was participation within educational settings, studies centered exclusively on children's participation in research were excluded.

Studies conducted exclusively in specialized disability settings were also excluded, as the purpose of the review was to analyze refusal within mainstream ECE classrooms designed to serve all children. Specialized settings operate under distinct pedagogical, staffing, and diagnostic conditions that fall outside the conceptual scope of this review. However, studies conducted in inclusive ECE classrooms serving both disabled and non-disabled children were included. Although specialized disability settings were beyond the scope of this review, children with disabilities’ right to refuse remains an important area for further study. Finally, studies that used “participation” to refer solely to attendance did not meet the conceptual boundaries of this review.

Search strategy

A staged search strategy was used to identify literature relevant to refusal within ECE participation scholarship. Searches were conducted in ERIC and Education Source as accessed via ProQuest, and Education Source as accessed via EBSCOhost. These databases were selected based on consultation with an education research librarian for their comprehensiveness and reliability in capturing peer-reviewed ECE scholarship. Given this review's focus on ECE and young children's participation rights, these education-specific databases provided the most relevant scholarly coverage of the topic.

The search term strategy was designed to ensure that ECE settings and children's right to participation were central. To ensure precision and relevance, searches were limited to abstracts and were conducted using the Boolean search strategy: abstract (“early childhood education”) AND abstract (participant*) AND (child* rights), as well as additional combinations including “refusal” and “no.” Limiting searches by abstract helped to ensure relevance by targeting articles where these concepts were central rather than peripheral. Due to the general nature of the search terms, extensive manual evaluation of the search results was required. Reference lists of included studies and key reviews were also scanned to identify additional literature.

Screening and selection process

The screening and selection process was designed to ensure that the studies included were conceptually relevant to refusal within ECE. Search results from all databases were imported into Zotero, where duplicates were removed and records were organized for review. Screening proceeded in three stages. First, titles were reviewed to exclude clearly irrelevant studies while retaining any with potential relevance (n = 259). Abstracts of the remaining studies (n = 75) were then examined to assess conceptual alignment with the review's focus on participation rights in ECE. Finally, full-text articles that met all eligibility criteria were evaluated in depth (n = 26). For each included study, key characteristics—such as setting, methods, and conceptual treatment of participation—were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet to support comparison and analysis.

Data analysis

Data analysis was guided by childism as the theoretical lens shaping how refusal was interpreted within the reviewed literature. The analytic goal was twofold: to determine whether children's refusal was conceptualized as part of their participation rights, and to examine how such refusals were framed when they appeared within studies.

Guided by Dixon-Woods et al’s (2006) critical interpretive synthesis, analysis proceeded through iterative reading, conceptual coding, and the development of interpretive themes. The coding process drew on principles of childist inquiry, attending to three key dimensions: recognition (whether refusal was acknowledged as legitimate communication), agency (how children's decision-making capacities were portrayed), and power (how adult–child power relations shaped opportunities to refuse). These dimensions served as sensitizing concepts rather than fixed categories, supporting interpretive rather than classificatory analysis.

As part of the initial mapping of the literature, studies were clustered according to their treatment of refusal: those with no mention of refusal (42%, n = 11), those offering peripheral reference without conceptual anchoring (19%, n = 5), and those with explicit discussion of refusal-as-participation (38%, n = 10). Peripheral references included brief mentions of children “resisting,” “withdrawing,” or “not engaging” without further analysis of these behaviors as potential expressions of agency. In these cases, refusal was acknowledged descriptively but not conceptualized as part of participation rights nor examined in relation to power, autonomy, or consent. All included studies were read multiple times with attention to explicit references to children saying “no,” resisting, withdrawing, or redirecting participation, as well as implicit framings that positioned non-participation as a choice, problem, or silence.

Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was applied to the 10 studies that explicitly engaged with refusal. Themes were generated inductively and refined interpretively, with childism shaping how meaning was constructed. Four themes were identified: curriculum, choice, play, and power. These themes illuminate the conceptual patterns, tensions, and silences surrounding refusal within contemporary ECE participation scholarship.

Findings

Young children's refusal-as-participation is largely absent from the literature on children's participation rights in ECE. None of the reviewed studies focused specifically on refusal-as-participation, requiring close analysis of how refusal appeared within broader discussions of participation. Eleven out of 26 studies (42%) made no reference to children's refusal, five studies (19%) mentioned refusal only peripherally without conceptualizing it as part of participation, and only 10 studies (38%) explicitly discussed aspects of refusal-as-participation. Findings are presented across four themes: curriculum as a site of compliance, choice without the possibility of refusal, play as negotiated participation, and adult power and the silencing of “no.”

Curriculum as a site of compliance

Participation was frequently conceptualized as children following their interests within curricular activities, creating a formal understanding of participation that overlooks children's lived experiences and minimizes their right to refuse. Piškur et al’s (2022) cross-country curriculum analysis found that curriculum alone was insufficient to support genuine participation and made no mention of refusal-as-participation. Avgitidou et al. (2024) similarly found that pre-service teachers often understood participation as a means to curricular ends rather than as a right in itself. When participation is framed as a tool for learning, refusal is rendered problematic.

Teachers’ experiences further highlight how curriculum structures complicate recognition of refusal. Canning et al. (2022) found that teachers took pride in “painstakingly, precisely, and carefully” planned activities and felt it was a personal failure if children did not want to take part (2022: 228). Here, refusal becomes a threat to teacher identity and is reframed as non-compliance. Nauss (2023) likewise found that teachers focused on engagement rather than participation, revealing a misalignment between teachers’ interpretations and children's rights. This misalignment may lead teachers to pressure children into participation under the guise of supporting agency.

In contrast, Correia et al. (2022) found that teachers can recognize refusal as a valid form of participation. When teachers provided children with clear information, sufficient processing time, and choice, refusal was seen as legitimate and even supported future participation. These findings indicate that curricular approaches attuned to refusal can support children's autonomy and comfort.

Choice without the possibility of refusal

Choice-making was a common conceptualization of participation rights, yet it was typically framed as choosing between adult-designed options, rarely allowing children to choose none. Because refusal requires opting out entirely, this narrow framing obscures children's autonomy. Interactions between adults and children are central to supporting choice-making that include refusal. Correia et al. (2024) found that young children themselves conceptualized participation as including refusal—the right to say no to a teacher's idea or choose not to participate at all. Correia et al. (2020) similarly found that as adult decision-making decreased, children's choice and perceived participation increased. Genuine participation through choice thus requires reciprocal interactions and adult compromise.

Structural conditions also shape whether refusal is possible. In Nauss’s (2023) study, a teacher explained: “If children don’t want to go to the gym then a teacher will stay behind with the children who don’t want to go. That's a choice.” This highlights how refusal requires staffing flexibility. Knauf (2019) further emphasized the importance of designing spaces that allow for withdrawal.

Ylikörkkö et al. (2025) described how children's participation unfolds across social, cultural, and material dimensions, with both engagement and rejection shaping agency. Whitington et al. (2024) showed that involving children in decisions about routines and materials—including refusals—supports meaningful choice-making. Creating ECE settings that center refusal requires structural and cultural shifts away from adultcentric assumptions.

Play as negotiated participation

Children's play offered opportunities for refusal-as-participation to be both honored and discounted. Heikka et al. (2022) found that teachers were more likely to support children's full participation during play than in formal pedagogical moments, perhaps because play carries fewer predetermined outcomes. Lagerlöf et al. (2023) found that teachers at times recognized and respected children's refusals to take up adult ideas in play. However, Rentzou et al. (2023) showed that across seven countries, adults frequently shaped play with predetermined, adult-centered goals, restricting children's agency. Murray (2022) also noted that children often asked for permission during play, underscoring how adult authority still regulates children's actions even in ostensibly child-led contexts.

These patterns reveal that children's refusals within play (redirecting narratives, avoiding roles, resisting suggestions) are often visible but not conceptualized as refusal. Instead, they are reframed through developmental language, obscuring children's communicative intents.

Adult power and the silencing of “no”

Adult–child power relations were central in shaping how refusal was recognized or disregarded. Castro-Zubizarreta and Calvo-Salvador (2024) found that participation remains “conditioned by inertia where attitudes and the adult–child power disparity silence children's voices” (2024: 654). Macha et al. (2024) found that children clearly articulated what would improve their participation—including greater control and more opportunities to refuse—yet adults did not respond adequately in practice.

Emerging models suggest possibilities for more equitable power-sharing. Barros et al. (2024) found that the Lundy (2007) model—space, voice, audience, and influence—supports redistributing power in ways that explicitly accommodate refusal. Weckström et al. (2022) described the “we-narrative” as a cultural shift toward interdependence and unhurriedness, enabling children's refusals and relieving adults from rigid institutional expectations.

Correia et al. (2019) highlighted refusal strategies—silence, resistance, avoidance—as competencies that express agency and relational skill. Viewing refusal as capability rather than liability aligns with childist understandings of children as full humans with preferences, boundaries, and political agency.

Without meaningful redistribution of power, participation rights remain rhetorical. Sevón et al’s (2023) discourse analysis found that teachers viewed participation rights as “unrealized,” “adult-defined,” or “elusive.” Banko-Bal and Guler-Yildiz (2021) and Hayes (2024) similarly found gaps between teachers’ professed beliefs and their actions. These discrepancies reveal how deeply adult authority shapes whether refusal is possible, legible, or supported.

Discussion

This review demonstrates that refusal-as-participation remains conceptually underdeveloped within ECE scholarship, despite widespread rhetorical commitments to agency, voice, and rights. The relative absence or marginalization of refusal across the literature reflects deeper adultcentric assumptions about how young children ought to behave within educational settings. A childist lens helps illuminate how these assumptions operate: adults often hold interpretive authority over children's actions, and refusals, rather than being recognized as everyday expressions of autonomy, are frequently reframed as misbehavior, disengagement, or developmental difficulty (Canning et al., 2022; Castro-Zubizarreta and Calvo-Salvador, 2024). The findings across curriculum, choice, play, and power reveal a field that equates participation with cooperation, making refusal difficult to perceive, let alone value, as a rights-based act.

This review defined refusal broadly to include silence, withdrawal, avoidance, resistance, and verbal dissent. While these behaviors differ in visibility and interpretation, they share a common function: each marks a moment in which a child interrupts or declines adult-defined expectations. Grouping them as refusal-as-participation foregrounds their shared role as boundary-setting acts within unequal power relations, and future research may benefit from examining distinctions among these forms in greater depth.

Curriculum-driven understandings of participation position refusal as incompatible with pedagogical aims. When participation is defined as supporting curricular progress, children's refusals appear as disruptions to the flow of planned activities. Studies examining teachers’ beliefs (Avgitidou et al., 2024; Canning et al., 2022; Nauss, 2023) show how closely teacher identity and professionalism are tied to well-executed plans, leaving little conceptual space for refusal. Even educators who genuinely wish to support children's autonomy may prioritize engagement because it is more observable, documentable, and aligned with the structures of curriculum and assessment (Hayes, 2024; Nauss, 2023). These dynamics suggest that refusal challenges not only pedagogical routines but also the underlying logic of curriculum as a mechanism for order, progress, and adult-defined success. Only when educators slow down, offer information, and allow children time to process (Correia et al., 2022)—conditions that depart from traditional curricular pacing—does refusal begin to emerge as a legitimate expression of participation.

The literature on choice further illustrates how adult authority constrains participation. Although choice is often celebrated as a core component of children's agency, it is typically bounded within adult-generated options that preclude the possibility of opting out entirely. This creates the appearance of agency without its substance. Children, however, understand refusal as central to participation (Correia et al., 2020, 2024), yet structural realities—such as staffing ratios, routines, and spatial design—largely determine whether refusal is possible (Knauf, 2019; Nauss, 2023; Whitington et al., 2024; Ylikörkkö et al., 2025). These constraints reveal that refusal is not solely an interpersonal negotiation between teacher and child but is conditioned by institutional arrangements that prioritize efficiency and predictability. These same studies on environment and materiality reinforce that meaningful choice-making requires shared control over the rhythms of the day, including the right to withdraw, redirect, or decline. Without restructuring these conditions, choice remains an adultcentric practice rather than a meaningful expression of autonomy.

Play emerges as a paradoxical context. It appears to offer greater opportunities for recognizing children's refusals, yet adult expectations continue to shape the boundaries of what children can do or say within play. While some studies (Heikka et al., 2022; Lagerlöf et al., 2023) show moments where teachers respect children's refusals to adopt their ideas, others reveal that adults often embed predetermined goals into play, limiting children's agency even in spaces theoretically designed for freedom (Murray, 2022; Rentzou et al., 2023). Children frequently seek permission during play (Murray, 2022), signaling that their autonomy is mediated by adult oversight, even within settings that claim to be child-led. Acts of withdrawal, redirection, or resistance—behaviors that could easily be interpreted as refusals—are often reframed through developmental narratives rather than understood as expressions of preference or boundary-setting (Castro-Zubizarreta and Calvo-Salvador, 2024; Correia et al., 2019). The long-standing romanticization of play as inherently liberatory thus obscures how adult authority continues to regulate children's participatory possibilities and renders refusals conceptually invisible.

Behind each of these domains lies a consistent organizing force: adult–child power relations. Adults determine what counts as participation, how behavior is interpreted, and which forms of expression are acceptable. Across national contexts, studies (Banko-Bal and Guler-Yildiz, 2021; Hayes, 2024; Sevón et al., 2023) document substantial gaps between educators’ professed commitments to participation rights and their everyday actions. Refusal is particularly challenging for adults to recognize because it disrupts normative expectations of order, safety, and smooth routines. Yet emerging models point to possibilities for rethinking power. For example, applications of the Lundy (2007) model in early childhood settings (Barros et al., 2024) demonstrate how redistributing space, voice, audience, and influence can create structural conditions that accommodate refusal. Similarly, relational participation frameworks such as the “we-narrative” (Weckström et al., 2022) reposition participation as interdependent rather than purely individual. Research highlighting silence, resistance, and avoidance as competencies (Correia et al., 2019) further challenges deficit framings and positions refusal as part of children's communicative repertoires.

Taken together, these patterns suggest that refusal is not a gap in children's participation but a vital dimension of it. When refusals are unrecognized, participation collapses into compliance, and children's agency becomes aligned with behaviors that serve adult aims. Recognizing refusal as participation requires re-examining the structures, routines, and interpretive practices that shape daily life in ECE settings. It requires adults to scrutinize how power circulates in mundane moments of decision-making, how environments and schedules constrain or support autonomy, and how rights frameworks can move beyond rhetorical commitments to transform practice. A childist perspective makes refusal legible as a human expression of preference, discomfort, or self-protection. Integrating refusal into participation rights is essential for creating early learning environments that honor children's dignity, boundaries, and full humanity.

Implications

This critical literature review reveals that children's refusal-as-participation—their fundamental right to refuse—remains critically underexamined in ECE research despite constituting an essential component of participatory rights. While literature on participation rights within ECE is becoming more prevalent, the review found no studies that positioned refusal-as-participation as the center of inquiry; in fact, none of the studies even had a heading or section on children's refusal. The absence of children's ability to refuse, avoid, or resist participation presents a significant gap that undermines both theoretical understanding and practical implementation of authentic participation rights.

This theoretical blind spot has profound implications for advancing childist theory and children's rights scholarship. The finding that only 38% of studies explicitly discussed aspects of refusal-as-participation reveals how traditional participation frameworks inadvertently perpetuate adultcentric power structures even when explicitly committed to children's rights. The field must move beyond additive approaches that simply include children's voices toward transformative approaches that fundamentally restructure adult–child power relationships. Authentic participation rights cannot be achieved through piecemeal reforms but require comprehensive reconceptualization of children's status as full human beings deserving of genuine choice, including the choice to refuse.

As this review has shown, this absence has immediate consequences for young children—and their teachers—in ECE settings. Teachers struggle to navigate children's refusal (Canning et al., 2022; Nauss, 2023) and often misinterpret refusal-as-participation as non-compliance rather than recognizing it as a legitimate expression of rights and agency. This disconnect suggests an urgent need for practical reform, including the development of explicit policies recognizing children's right to refuse participation, environmental design that include dedicated spaces for withdrawal, and professional development programs that help educators understand refusal-as-participation as sophisticated communication requiring skilled interpretation rather than as problematic behavior requiring correction. Programs must also examine staffing ratios and scheduling to ensure children's refusal can be honored without creating operational difficulties, moving beyond offering choices between predetermined options to providing genuine opt-out possibilities for all activities.

This review has revealed a significant gap between theory and practice, in which teachers recognize children's participation rights but fail to enact them meaningfully (Banko-Bal and Guler-Yildiz, 2021; Hayes, 2024; Sevón et al., 2023). Without explicit frameworks for understanding and supporting refusal-as-participation, ECE settings risk the continuation of adultcentric power structures that marginalize young children and deny them their human rights. This failure to recognize refusal as a form of participation maintains traditional oppressive power structures and points to critical policy needs. ECE programs and regulatory bodies must examine how current quality standards and assessment practices may inadvertently penalize authentic respect for children's refusal. Quality frameworks should explicitly include indicators of refusal-as-participation support rather than focusing exclusively on engagement metrics, while licensing standards and program evaluation criteria should incorporate children's right to refuse as a fundamental quality indicator.

These findings suggest that meaningful advancement of children's participation rights requires dedicated research that centers refusal-as-participation both as a theoretical concept and as operationalized in ECE settings. Future research should explore how children experience and exercise their right to refuse using child-friendly methodologies that center children's voices, investigate how authentic refusal-as-participation support affects children's long-term social-emotional development, and examine how different cultural contexts shape understandings and practices related to children's right to refuse. Additionally, implementation research should explore how ECE programs successfully operationalize refusal-as-participation rights, including examination of structural supports, professional development approaches, and policy frameworks. How educators can authentically support refusal-as-participation and what structural changes are necessary to create ECE environments where children's full range of participatory choices—including refusal—are honored remain critical areas for investigation that will advance both childist theory and evidence-based practice in ECE.

Conclusion

Through thorough analysis of 26 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2019 and 2025, this review made visible a vital gap in the conceptualization of children's refusal-as-participation within the literature on children's participation rights in ECE settings. Four key themes emerged across the studies—curriculum, choice, play, and power—each illustrating different ways refusal-as-participation is constrained, overlooked, or unevenly supported. In curriculum and choice contexts, refusal was often positioned as a problem to be managed rather than a valid expression of children's rights. Play offered more space for children's refusals to be enacted and occasionally recognized, though findings were mixed regarding the role of the adult. Power dynamics consistently shaped both children's experiences of participation and the ways adults interpreted and responded to children's refusals.

Studying participation rights without attending to children's refusal-as-participation strategies creates a skewed understanding of the daily lived experiences of children and teachers in ECE settings. The failure to conceptualize refusal-as-participation may help explain the disconnect often noted between teachers’ theoretical commitments to participation rights and the challenges they face in implementing those rights in practice. This is a crucial area for further investigation. By identifying how refusal is conceptualized—and more often, how it is neglected—this review contributes to the literature on children's participation rights in ECE and highlights key gaps that warrant deeper empirical and conceptual attention.

Reconceptualizing refusal-as-participation as legitimate participation offers a pathway toward more authentic, rights-respecting ECE. Recognizing refusal as a meaningful form of agency honors children's full humanity and acknowledges their capacities to express boundaries, preferences, and discomfort within relationships and routines. As this review shows, supporting refusal-as-participation is both a pedagogical and ethical imperative—one that invites educators, researchers, and policymakers to re-examine the structures and assumptions that shape participation in ECE and to imagine practices that embrace children's interdependence, autonomy, and capabilities.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Em Clark

Ethical approval and informed consent statements

Ethical approval was not required for this theoretical article. There are no human participants in this article and informed consent was not required.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Author biography

Em Clark is a PhD Candidate at Drexel University. Her research examines children's rights and humanity in early childhood education.

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