Researching Young Children's Perspectives

Debating the ethics and dilemmas of educational research with children

Deborah Harcourt, Bob Perry, Tim Waller, Deborah Harcourt, Bob Perry, Tim Waller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136822292
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

What ethical dilemmas face researchers who work with young children?

Researching Young Children's Perspectives critically examines the challenges and complexities of rights based, participatory research with children. Rather than approaching these dilemmas as problematic issues, this book positions them as important topics for discussion and reflection.

Drawing from their own rich experiences as research collaborators with young children in internationally diverse settings, the authors consider the ethical, methodological and theoretical frameworks that guide best-practice in research with young children. Each chapter poses points for consideration that will inform and challenge both the novice and experienced researcher, such as:

• How 'participatory' can research be with infants under eighteen months?
• When should listening through observation stand alone?
• What is the distinction between methodologies and methods?
• How can all young children be assured of a voice in research?

The authors also present seven separate case studies which demonstrate exemplary research with young children. Each study is accompanied by insightful commentary from the authors, who highlight the issues or difficulties faced and propose potential solutions.

If you are a student at undergraduate level and above, this book will give you all the confidence you need to conduct your own high quality research with children.

Part I Ethics, methodologies and theoretical frameworks

DOI: 10.4324/9780203830437-2

Chapter 1 Respecting children’ s rights and agency

Theoretical insights into ethical research procedures

Anne B. Smith

DOI: 10.4324/9780203830437-3

This chapter looks at how Children's Rights and Childhood Studies theory inform approaches to carrying out research with young children. Young children's participation rights entitle them to have their voices heard and taken into account, and to give and receive information. A recent Committee on the Rights of the Child document emphasizes that Article 12 applies equally to older and younger children. Childhood Studies theory argues that children are participating subjects rather than the mute objects of research or incompetent and immature beings. Childhood is a social construction, which influences how researchers treat children, and how children are positioned within the research process. The chapter argues that researchers should view and treat children as capable, competent people who can contribute ideas and knowledge to researchers, and who should be informed and respected. Research topics, recruitment, methodology, feedback and dissemination procedures, all reflect researchers’ constructions of childhood and children, and influence whether children can be engaged in research in a way which respects their participation rights.

Introduction and theoretical framework

Our understanding of research with children, and, indeed of ethics in research with children, are embedded within our understandings of children and childhood.

(Farrell 2005a: 5)

Taking a rights perspective is a powerful way of uncovering previously unheard or hidden stories (Freeman 2007). In the past, the voices of children, particularly young children, have often been ignored or silenced in research and are the ‘missing piece of the puzzle in understanding childhood’ (Smith and Taylor 2000: ix). It is not that research has ignored children, because there is a huge body of research on children. The problem is that the dominant approach to researching children's experience has been from a ‘looking down’ standpoint (Alanen 1998, cited by Mayall 2002: 3), which views childhood from a large-scale and adult point of view. Performance or behaviour is measured through highly structured instruments, such as standardized tests, questionnaires and interviews, which are guided entirely by the hypotheses and questions of adult researchers, and in which there is a marked power imbalance in favour of adult dominance and control. ‘Grand overarching abstract generalizations substitute for empirical studies of children in their everyday environments’ (Oakley 1994: 22). An alternative approach from Children's Rights and Childhood Studies paradigms is to study childhood in a more contextualized way – by ‘looking up’ (Mayall 2002), trying to understand children's standpoints in the context of their own lives, and treating them as actors and knowers.

Children's rights

Rights are claims that are justifiable on legal or moral grounds to have or obtain something, or to act in a certain way.

(James and James 2008: 109)

The introduction of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 helped change the dominant image of childhood and bring about a new culture in relation to children's rights and interests in many parts of the world (Karp 2008). UNCRC ‘confirmed an agreement that children and young people are citizens whose entitlements straddle moral, political and social agendas’ (Matthews 2005: 1) and became ‘a watershed in the global articulation of children's rights as human rights’ (Farrell 2005b: 167). UNCRC provides an internationally accepted standard of basic human rights for children. It is a document of reconciliation, which treats parents and children with respect, and recommends a partnership between parents, children and the institutions of the state.

The 54 Articles in the Convention are divided into three main types: (1) provision rights (to health, education, social security, physical care, play, etc.); (2) protection rights (to be safe from abuse, discrimination and injustice); and (3) participation rights (to have a say in matters which affect you, to have access to information and to be able to express an opinion) (Lansdown 1994). These rights are to apply to all children wherever they live, which has sometimes been used as a criticism that it imposes a global model of childhood, despite the different social and cultural contexts of childhood (James and James 2008). The most innovative and controversial aspect of the convention, however, has been its message that children should have agency and voice, and that they have a right to participate – to receive and give information, and to take part in decisions in matters that affect them.¹ Participation rights are particularly important when it comes to considering how research with children should be conducted, but protection rights are also relevant because they point to the importance of ensuring that the child is not subjected to discrimination, humiliation or ill-treatment. The protection rights of children, especially young children, however, are commonly given more prominence than their participation rights. Woodhead (2005) argues that the image of a child in need is associated with protection rights, while an image of a competent child is associated with participation rights.

There is no mention of early childhood in the original 1989 UNCRC document, but the Committee on the Rights of the Child remedied this omission by holding a day of discussion in 2004 about implementing children's rights in early childhood (defined as below eight years of age). This discussion resulted in General Comment No. 7, 2005 (published in September 2006) which contains a set of recommendations explicitly addressing dominant assumptions about early childhood. Section 3 of the document (page 2) explained the Committee's concern that children as rights holders were not being given sufficient attention by state parties in their laws, policies and programmes. They advocated a shift away from traditional beliefs that early childhood is a time when immature human beings are socialized towards adulthood, towards the recognition that young children have their own concerns, interests and points of view, and should have the freedom to express these from the earliest stages:

Article 12 states that the child has a right to express his or her views freely in all matters affecting the child, and to have them taken into account. This right reinforces the status of the young child as an active participant in the promotion, protection and monitoring of their rights. Respect for the young child's agency – as a participant in family, community and society – is frequently overlooked, or rejected as inappropriate on the grounds of age and immaturity. In many countries and regions, traditional beliefs have emphasized young children's need for training and socialization. They have been regarded as undeveloped, lacking even basic capacities for understanding, voiceless and invisible within society. The Committee wishes to emphasize that article 12 applies both to younger and older children.

(Committee on the Rights of the Child 2006: General Comment 7, III, 14, p. 7, my italics)

Childhood Studies

Childhood Studies is compatible with a rights-based approach towards ethical and methodological issues in research with children. It is engaged in producing new knowledge of children's experience, grounded in children's perspectives, and it has been productive in extending our understanding of childhood. Childhood Studies evolved from a critique of developmental psychology, and from the treatment of children (like women in previous years) as a social minority group lacking in independence, rationality, intelligence, autonomy and confidence (Oakley 1994). Allison James suggests that there is now a considerable body of research on childhood which challenges taken-for-granted assumptions about what children do or do not think. She defines the field of Childhood Studies as follows:

With a commitment to interdisciplinarity at its core, and drawing on sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, geography, and law, what united this field of concern was a concern for the socially constructed character of childhood that involves the twin research foci of childhood as a sociocultural space and children's own perspectives as social actors.

(James 2007: 263)

If children's ‘voice’ is being sought, then children have to be positioned as participating subjects, knowers and social actors, rather than objects of the researcher's gaze. The generational divide between adults and children is not unbridgeable. James (ibid., citing Alanen and Mayall) argues that it is important to acknowledge the different standpoints of adult researcher and child participant, but that good conversations are achievable within participatory dialogue. It is important, however, for researchers to be aware of power differentials in research with children. Respecting the agency of the child ‘strikes at the heart of conventional authority relationships between children and the adults who regulate their lives’ (Woodhead 2005: 92).

The consensus that emerges from studies exploring children's perspectives is that the major issues of the researcher–researched relationship are essentially the same with children as they are with adults. These issues include the need to be aware of and respect the imbalanced power relations of the researcher vis-à-vis the researched, the importance of distinguishing ‘private’ from ‘public’ accounts and the need to handle controversial and or personal topics with sensitivity.

(Oakley 1994: 26)

An interesting question is to what extent research which is not participatory can be considered to be ethical, and whether Childhood Studies itself is wide and interdisciplinary enough to encompass traditional developmental psychology approaches. It has been argued that the latter should be consigned to ‘the dustbin of history’ (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998, cited in Woodhead 2009: 56), but in my view it is possible to do ethical research without it always having to include children's voices. As Woodhead points out (2009: 56), Childhood Studies would ‘be seen as a minority interest and not of mainstream concern and relevance’ if it took such an approach. He argues that this would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and that it would be a mistake to discard such a wide field:

Yet concepts and tools are still needed that acknowledge that children are, for much of the time and in many contexts, relatively more vulnerable, dependent and inexperienced. They require (and often seek) guidance, support and teaching from more experienced members of society – through enabling structures and pedagogies for participation.

(ibid.: 57)

In the practical implementation of participatory principles, it is important to maintain a balance, by also recognizing children's vulnerability, ‘evolving capacity’ and their need for guidance and direction at times (ibid.). I am arguing in this chapter for a better balance of research that foregrounds children's perspectives, and for all research to be respectful of children's agency but also aware of their dependency. It is important, I believe, for Childhood Studies to be wide enough to encompass developmental research, which hopefully will itself evolve to fit with new constructions of childhood and consequent ethical standards.

The key contribution of Childhood Studies has been to recognize children's agency, and to emphasize that children are not just empty vessels whose development is determined by biological and psychological processes (James and James 2008), and that childhood is not a natural or universal feature of human societies, but a social construction (Prout and James 1997). Constructions of childhood have important implications for what we do as researchers. Early childhood settings and practices are also culturally constructed, and mediated by complex belief systems about the ‘right’ way for children to develop and be cared for (Woodhead 200...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgement of reviewers
• Commencing the conversation
• Part I Ethics, methodologies and theoretical frameworks
• Part II Case studies of high quality research with young children
• Index