Agency, participation and democracy in child care: an ethnographic case study of babies’ everyday praxis

This article examines how agency, participation and democracy are lived, negotiated and made visible in child care with very young children. Drawing on a doctoral ethnographic case study in a Portuguese infant-toddler room, it presents a secondary qualitative analysis of field notes, pedagogical documentation and a semi-structured educator interview. The study challenges deficit-oriented and adult-centred understandings of babies by showing that agency is expressed relationally and bodily through gestures, movement, affect, refusal, repetition, proximity seeking and participation in routines. Participation is understood as an everyday pedagogical condition constructed through attentive listening, time, space, documentation, family dialogue and reflective professional decision-making. The findings identify four interrelated dimensions of democratic praxis: responsive care; environments that invite initiative; pedagogical documentation as visibility and dialogue; and professional reflexivity in addressing tensions between discourse and practice. The analysis shows how babies’ embodied expressions can become consequential in pedagogical decision-making. Democracy in child care is therefore understood not as a topic to be taught, but as a relational, ethical and political way of organising everyday pedagogical life, enabling the youngest children to experience belonging, recognition and participation from the beginning of life.