Lessons from the ‘new’ sociology of childhood : how might listening to children improve the planning of education for development?

This paper proposes that – on the basis of their capacity and entitlement to contribute to public discourse – listening to children can improve education and development policy. This is illustrated through a discussion of findings from research exploring the outcomes that schoolchildren in one Ethiopian city expected and desired to be expanded through their schooling. These findings highlight the inadequacy of human capital understandings of the role of education in development, and illuminate the importance of including individual and collective capabilities and freedoms, as well as household incomes and national economic growth, in our understandings of development and the role of formal education within that progress