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PART I
The special nature of children and young people in research ā theories and approaches
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ONE
Introduction to research and children and young people: a special relationship
The aims of this chapter are:
ā¢ to introduce the nature of research with children and why research with child participants is different from research with adults;
ā¢ to explore the training and education issues in the acquisition of research skills;
ā¢ to identify major research themes involving children.
Take two biologically similar children and raise them in different environments and they will most certainly differ in terms of their behaviour, their physique, their motivation and their achievements. Take two biologically different children and raise them together, giving them similar opportunities and experiences, and they too will differ. It is these puzzling phenomena that have prompted scholars from the fields of biology, education, health, psychology and sociology to undertake research with children to understand what makes them behave as they do. The body of knowledge built up over the past hundred years or so has meant that we now have an amazing amount of insight into the minds and behaviours of the children that many of us work with every day. Those of us who work with children today owe a great debt of gratitude to the painstaking work of those scholars who spent their lives helping us to understand children better so that we may be more effective in our work.
When we wrote the first edition of this book our clear intention was to ensure that the 1990s and beyond was not seen as a stagnant time in terms of research with children. Our intention in writing the second edition and now this third edition remains the same. The body of research that we have shows us that this is not an ill-founded intention. There were many periods throughout the last century where the acquisition of new knowledge seemed to be limited, while at other times knowledge acquisition gained an impetus that was staggering. A brief summary of some of the major research themes will be discussed later in this chapter. While it is important that we are grateful for the knowledge we have, we must, however, ensure that we are always moving forward, always searching and always pursuing greater understanding.
There are many, many ways of achieving new knowledge, but the key to this achievement, regardless of the field we work in, is training. We acknowledge that few of our readers will go on to make pure research their living, but we also recognize that professional people, both during initial training and after qualifying, need a sound knowledge of how to apply research and how to undertake research. This book is about applying research practically and undertaking research practically. It is essentially a practical book, which is specifically designed for professionals who work, or intend to work, with children and who have to undertake research as part of their education or who need to undertake research, even on a very small scale, as part of their professional lives.
This book is also practical in that it recognizes the reality of studying children in the further pursuit of knowledge. Children do not exist in vacuums and their lives are naturally complex; they have to be if children are to enter adulthood with the repertoire of skills and behaviours that are essential for modern living. We have therefore taken a holistic perspective of the child and the childās environment, recognizing that research training must be cognizant of the many variables that influence development and behaviour. We have drawn from the fields of biology, education, health, psychology and sociology in our discussions about research and in our considerations of child participants. We are explicit in our acknowledgement that children are special and that research, and research training, involving children must also be special.
Not only are children special, but they also hold a very special place in society. While some of the research undertaken in pursuit of gaining understanding of children has been appalling in terms of what children have been expected to do and suffer, the majority of work has been undertaken sensitively and has followed correct ethical principles. We will focus on this theme in Chapter 10 but should give recognition in this opening section to the distinctive position children hold in contemporary society. This has not always been the case, however, or at least that is the impression one is left with when studying historical perspectives of child care. As we will discuss later in the chapter, the child of today has rights which are universally held, widely adhered to and, in most Western societies, monitored by legislation.
Children are special
As we have briefly mentioned above, children are very special people. Defining what we mean by special is, however, a complex and difficult task. Perhaps what we mean is that children are different from the adults who control and describe the world as we know it. Perhaps it is because children are necessary for the survival of our species. Perhaps it is because children are an enigma ā we do not understand so many things about them and they therefore puzzle us. Perhaps it is none or all of these things. What is evident is that children have, from biblical times to the present day, been singled out to varying extents as being exceptional beings who have been afforded special consideration. Children are seen as an outward celebration of life, as the next generation and as the future of mankind. They also eventually grow and develop into adults, which perhaps gives us further insight into why they are considered special. The famous and infamous names from our history lessons at school were all once children themselves, which leads us to wonder why they developed in the way they did. We can sometimes look back at the childhood experiences of some adults (including ourselves) and pinpoint events or experiences that we think might account for why an adult turned out as they did, but often there are no such clues and we are left wondering.
Special and very special
It is not the intention of this book to give a detailed history of the place of children in society ā there are many texts that adequately fulfil that aim. However, because we wish to focus on doing research with children, we must spend a few moments looking at the child within our society so that we can explore the wider contexts of this research.
People have children for a number of reasons. They are seen, by some, as desirable assets (Agiobu-Kemmer, 1992), as insurance to provide for adults in their old age or as a sign of oneās fertility. Some religions dictate that the purpose of marriage is for the procreation of children, and indeed in 17th-century England childlessness was even considered to be a judgement against sin (Fraser, 1985). On a macro level, any society must ensure that it reproduces itself if it is to survive. On an individual level, many cultures hold the expectation that adults will eventually marry and produce children. There are also those who have children because they do not believe in the use of, or do not have access to, reliable contraception.
Whether people have children by accident or by design, once born children have certain rights, which are upheld by law. Children have the fundamental right to life, and child murderers can expect and receive the severest of punishment. Children also have the right to protection from harm and from neglect, they have the right to go to school and receive an education, among other things. In the UK, the Children Acts 1989 and 2004 in England and Wales and the parallel legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland, together with several charters, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations Childrenās Fund, 1989), detail explicitly the rights of children, as we will discuss in following chapters. Rights, however, only lay down the minimum expectations society holds for its children. For the majority of parents and people within society, children are their future and they strive to ensure that the mistakes of one generation do not extend to the next. People generally want for children those things they did not have themselves: they want children to have more opportunities, less hardship, more success and so on.
To ensure that children attain what society wishes for them, each generation must be analysed and evaluated, and steps taken to rectify past mistakes. We must have an understanding of children and how they develop, what factors adversely affect their progress and what factors will best promote their optimum development. Gaining this understanding is the driving force behind past, present and future research with children and crosses all professional boundaries. Biologists, educationists, geneticists, psychologists and sociologists have all striven for this greater understanding of children, albeit with differing philosophies, research traditions and methodologies.
If we accept the special status of all children within society we must also recognize that there are many children who, for a variety of reasons, must be considered to be very special. These children differ from their peers because, for example, they are exceptionally gifted or because of a physical or psychological dysfunction or because they are particularly vulnerable. These children have been, and are, the focus of a great deal of research activity that aims to discover why they are different, and the effects of their difference in terms of their present and future development. What we should emphasize here is that their rights and our responsibilities as researchers and professionals remain at least the same as for all children. In many cases, undertaking research with these very special children requires even greater training, as we will discuss in the following section. A particular challenge for the researcher is that of balancing the need for childrenās participation and inclusion in research activity with the need to protect very vulnerable children. We discuss this more fully in Chapters 9 and 10.
Special but not new
It is very easy for a new generation to fall into the trap of making assumptions about the past. Professionals generally, as part of their training, study aspects of the history of their profession and will gasp in horror at how children were treated. Take, for example, the past practice of separating sick children from their parents during hospitalization because it was felt that parents upset children, or the punishment meted out to children in schools for the good of their āmoralā development. The important point to recognize here is that these things happened not because those professionals did not view children as special, but because they did. It is only when common practices are questioned that change occurs, otherwise the status quo will persist endlessly. We should not think ourselves superior in any way, for without doubt our own professional practices will be questioned in years to come. We can only ensure that we do our best to question all our practices and strive, as far as possible, to base our practice on sound research and evidence. This involves two different, but related notions. First, all professionals have a responsibility to ensure that they are aware of current research, can intelligently interpret it and incorporate sound research into practice. This will be discussed fully in Chapter 4. Second, we should all constantly ask questions, and where there is a lack of research we should encourage investigation (see Chapter 2 for further discussion). This may mean undertaking research ourselves or enabling and facilitating others to do so. However, such activity requires training, particularly when the research involves children (as we shall discover during the rest of this book), because, as we have already said many times, children are special. We are fortunate to be living in an age where great value is placed on meeting the needs of children and young people. A recent publication by the Department of Health (2010: 4) makes this clear ā ānothing can be more important than getting it right for children and young people.ā
Training for research
As all the professions move towards all graduate status, in the future all professionals should have undertaken some research training by the time they qualify. This is seen by many as a positive benefit of raising the academic expectations of initial training programmes.
A significant proportion of child-care professions, the notable exceptions being teaching and nursing, require that those who enter the profession undergo generic training before specializing with children. Generic training aims to ensure a broad base of knowledge and in many instances gives the professional a ātasterā of work with a variety of groups, including different age groups. Research training has also tended to be generic, with little consideration given to the differences between undertaking research with children or adults. There are, however, very important differences. Children are not miniature adults nor, as we have already stated, do they exist in isolation. The social and emotional relationships of the child are more fluid than at any other time of the human lifespan and cannot be ignored. For example, studying the child in a laboratory situation without also studying the child in the naturalistic setting will limit the understanding gained (Dunn, 1996; Greene and Hill, 2005). We will explore this throughout the rest of the book.
It is also important to differentiate between the study of children in general and the study of those children whom we have defined as very special. All children, for all sorts of reasons, are vulnerable, and this vulnerability is heightened in some children. These children are already in many ways often singled out because they are different, which is frequently what makes them attractive and interestin...
