Understanding Rural Children¿s Sense of Agency through Social and Cultural Practices at Home, at School, and in the community: Holding Space for Children to Voice their Own Perspectives of Value, Purpose and Meaning.

There is a growing interest in involving the perspectives of children in the understanding of different social phenomena. In this study we will explore the concept of children¿s individual understandings of identity development and agency in relation to their social and cultural practices at home, at school, and in the community. Children construct meaning from their experiences and interactions through events, institutions, and people that allow them to recognize themselves, think about their individuality, but also see themselves as part of a collective or community. Through collaborative ethnographic research with children at a rural school and at a place-based learning program for children, we aim a deep examination of children¿s actions in both formal and informal learning scenarios in a rural community in Nariño, Colombia. It should be noted that historically children have been invisibilized in research, their voices and ways of viewing the world have been neglected by a historically entrenched idea that children are incompetent, dependent, and lesser developed beings, which deprives them of being visible both socially and politically (Cussiánovich, 2017). The voices of rural children, who have been made particularly invisible, are capable of making an important contribution to our understanding through their own telling of the stories and challenges that impact their lives and the spaces where they live. ¿The rural child subject has generally been recounted or told through an `othering¿ lens, seen through another and interpreted as other¿ (Buriticá y Saldarriaga, 2020, p.14). In the collaborative research experience that we are proposing, the rural children are the experts of their own lived experience, they are the experts of the lands that they inhabit and they are the expert knowers of their roles within these spaces. James and Prout (1997) argue that children are not passive objects in social structures or of economic and political processes, but rather, they are active subjects in the construction and outcomes of their own lives. The children of Cariaco in their practices and discourses are considered ¿actors and agents that influence the social organization of their families, village and school¿ (Buriticá & Saladarriaga, 2020, p. 14). In this way, we hope to identify the unique aspects of growing up in a rural context, by affording specific attention to the history and cultural practices of the community as experienced by the children through centering the children not only within their educational context, but also within generational dialogue with elder members of the community.