Ethics and the Everyday: Reconsidering Approaches to Research Involving Children (original) (raw)
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Journal of Childhood Studies
The aim of this paper is to discuss examples of ethical and methodological choices that respect children’s rights to participation by encouraging them to be actively involved in the data generation process. The paper introduces the boxes, a model for confidentially obtaining ongoing and informed consent. It also discusses the use of cultural artifacts, chosen by the children themselves, to communicate with the researcher during the interview process. This paper concludes by emphasizing the need to design and cocreate open, flexible approaches in research that encourage children to obtain control and ownership of the research process.
Research, children and ethics: an ongoing dialogue
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was a crucial moment that changed children’s status in both society and in research. Nevertheless, if on the one hand children’s competence has been recurrently challenged by the dominant discourse of developmental psychology; on the other hand children have demonstrated themselves to be very helpful in helping researchers to understand the complexities enclosed in their contemporary life experiences.The recognition of children as social actors, followed by the upsurge in empirical interest in childhood, raises new ethical discussions, dilemmas and responsibilities for researchers that need further discussion and reflection.In accordance with this, this text gives an overview of key ethic decisions that were carefully considered along a qualitative study: access to children; protecting children’s privacy and confidentiality, managing power in adult-child relationship, building trust, entering children’s space
A sociocultural analysis of the ethics of involving children in educational research
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2017
This article explores the ethical complexities of involving children in research in the contexts of their families, schools and communities. We argue for an approach that is dynamic, reflexive, responsive and informed by an understanding of how local cultures impact on and shape negotiations and practices around ethical issues and processes. We use different sociocultural lenses to analyse the complexities of ethical processes and practices at the beginning of a research project which explored children's informal and everyday learning. The article contributes to ethical debates about involving children with research through foregrounding the multiplicities and complexities that emerge when researchers are attentive to the practices and values of the settings that children's and researchers' lives traverse.
Children's Geographies, 2008
This article offers a discussion of the ways in which institutional ethical frameworks can obstruct and obfuscate research with children and young people at the very same time as they attempt to protect these subjects of research. The article shows that key aspects of institutional ethical guidelines and regulations fly in the face of contemporary social studies of childhood, of which geography constitutes a significant part. The increasing recognition of the competence of children and young people combined with their right to participate, as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has not yet been adequately integrated within institutional ethics frameworks. This places those conducting research with children and young people in an invidious position of trying to follow their political respect for the rights of their research participants at the same time as meeting the strictures of research practice defined by their institutional ethics committees. Examples of the author's own experience, plans for future research and actual research practice with young people will be used throughout to explore the tensions between ethics, competence and participation.
Research with Children: Ethical Mind-fields
Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 2001
This article explores some ethical issues involved in research with young children. Research that involves children always contains assumptions about the nature of the child and of childhood in general and these can affect every aspect of the research undertaken with them, particularly ethical concerns. Seeing children as social actors, not as passive participants, has profound implications for researchers who work with children, particularly in how power relations between adults and children are conceived and experienced. In this article I problematise these relations through analysis of taped transcribed conversations with children. 'While the young have always been identifiable by their physical size and age, the meanings these differences have been given are not universal' (Baker, 199 8, p. 117). MacNaughton, G. (1996). Collaborating for change in postmodern times: Some ethical co•nsiderations. Keynote address presented to the Weaving webs conference. Melbourne, July 12. Mayall, B. (2000). Conversations with children: Working with generational issues. In P Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research with children: Perspectives and practices. London: Palmer Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identit;y. New York: Cambridge University Press. Woodrow, C. (1999). Revisiting images of the child in early childhood education: Reflections and considerations.
On, to, with, for, by: ethics and children in research
Children's Geographies
The ethics of the participation of children in research have attracted the attention of childhood researchers for thirty years. By analysing central scholarly work in childhood sociology and in early childhood education research, the aim of this paper is to unfold, but also queer how ethics are articulated within literature that discusses children in research. Through the methodology of tracing-and-mapping, a map is constructed that displays how children in research are articulated in relation to the prepositions on, to, with, for and by. The map shows how these prepositions form a value scale, underpinned by certain philosophical assumptions about ethics. By relating this to a randomized control trial (RCT) study performed in Swedish preschools, the paper highlights the fact that it is not necessarily more ethical if the research is done by children, than on children. This contributes to a renewed and extended reflection on ethics, that throughly problematize a placing of research on a 'scale of ethics'ranging from bad to good.
ETHICAL ISUUES IN RESEARCH INVOLVING CHILDREN
This essay aims to explore some of the main ethical issues that arise in research involving children. After introducing basic concepts and definitions, the essay evolves around the importance of distinguishing between the needs and rights of children and adults as well as recognizing the fact that children should not be dealt as objects of protection but as subjects of rights, as active social actors. This constitutes one of the first and foremost ethical challenges in research involving children. In addition, the essay investigates the fundamentals of ethics, how ethics can be promoted and justified in research involving children while embarking on a more detailed account of ethical issues before, during and after research such as informed consent, power relations, and confidentiality. The last part suggests and recommends a new methodological approach to research involving children based on the scientific shift from research on children to research with or by children. To conclude, the essay insists on reflecting on the importance for children to remain at the centre of consideration and re-conceptualize children within the social sciences as active agents rather than as the objects of research
Ethical insights and child research
… EL Kronqvist & P. …, 2010
Childhood research aims to investigate and understand children in their everyday life; their actions, intentions and emotions in order to provide supportive environments where children are listened to and valued as such. As long as children are encouraged to take part in activities and express their insights, delights, suspicions and worries, their learning and development is enhanced.
Research with young children: contemplating methods and ethics
Journal of Educational Enquiry, 2007
The United Nations Rights of the Child mandates the right of children to express themselves and participate in decisions that affect them, while receiving care and protection from adults. However, children's voices have not often found their way into research. Concerns about their powers of communication and cognitive abilities have restricted children's participation. Empirical evidence suggests that if one appropriately engages children in the information-gathering process there is no reason why their perceptions and thoughts should not be regarded as competent. However, methodologies that require researchers to adopt a role of passive observer potentially pose ethical dilemmas. When working with children ethical dilemmas can be minimised by taking on the role of a participant adult. The participant adult role for the researcher is entirely congruent with the cognitive and social needs of children to participate meaningfully in research.