The main thrust of this research is to take issue with the perspective on children and childhood propounded by developmental psychology, and by socialization theory in mainstream sociology, in which children are seen as the objects of overarching social processes by which they move from being non-adults to being adults.
Without denying that human beings develop over time and in describable ways, nor that appropriate social behaviors are learned and not natural, the competence paradigm seeks to:
> Take children seriously as social agents in their own right; to examine how social constructions of 'childhood' not only structure their lives but also are structured by the activities of children themselves
> Explicate the social competencies which children manifest in the course of their everyday lives as children, with other children and with adults, in peer groups and in families, as well as the manifold other arenas of social action." (Ian Hutchby & Jo Moran-Ellis in Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action, p. 8)
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