Children as teacher educators: advancing children’s rights education and agency in teacher education

Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy, this study describes a Swedish case where middle school students learn about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, use it to understand their lived experiences, and act as teacher educators. Using autoethnography, the study describes collaboration between the Primary School Football Against Racism project and teacher education to explore how children’s voices and lived experiences of oppression reshape learning, body-space, subjectivities, and professional competences. The article adopts a normative and practice-oriented stance, advocating for the integration of children’s rights education into teacher education. Through dialogical workshops and multimodal storytelling, students engage with the Convention and personal experiences of oppression. The authors argue that recognising children as teacher educators challenges adult-centric norms and promotes rights-based pedagogy in teacher education. Such perspectives enhance student teachers’ professional skills, empower children’s agency, and incorporate core principles of the Convention, particularly participation and non-discrimination.