Social pedagogy for social inclusion and children's rights discourses

The publication is the outcome of the international conference that took place in Warsaw in June 2022 titled: Discourses of childhood and social education (co-financed from the conference grant from the Ministry of Education and Science “Excellent Science”), that fell on the 100-year anniversary of the Maria Grzegorzewska University (APS), the eldest pedagogical unit in Poland. The celebrations and the conference took place under the patronage of UNICEF Polska and the Polish Commission of UNESCO. We also celebrated 2022 as the year of our patron, Maria Grzegorzewska, established by the Polish Parliament. Maria Grzegorzewska had an honourable mission of social inclusion, reflected in the values represented at our university. APS stands for: Access, Participation and Solidarity, which were echoed in the composition of speakers and participants. Discourses of childhood and social education conference was aimed at representatives of social sciences, in particular social pedagogy, social education and sociology of language. The way we perceive the world, the needs of the child and the social positioning of children, depends heavily on social imaginarium of children’s rights. This imaginarium is often influenced by discourses that surround it. Social pedagogy/social education plays a role in how the social imaginarium is formed, critically assessed, deconstructed, reconstructed, and implemented in social practices. Social educators/ social pedagogues are often amongst the changemakers, that promote inclusive practices, based on human rights and therefore also advocate for the children’s rights agenda. We have been interested in what language is used in political discourses, in legal and policy documents, in related media discourses; wow narratives form social imaginarium around children’s rights, child participation, the idea of childhood are formed, and last but not least; how these may aid or negate social inclusion of children and youths in the socio-environmental contexts.