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Child-led research methodologies and children’s rights: Moving beyond the state of the art

Mannay, Dawn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7368-4111, Wall, Kate, Chudasama, Meera and Robinson, Carol 2023. Child-led research methodologies and children’s rights: Moving beyond the state of the art. Presented at: British Educational Research Association (BERA) Annual Conference, Birmingham, UK, 12-14 September 2023.

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Abstract

The contributions in this plenary session will explore children and young people’s rights and questions of power, ethics, participation, and methods in educational research with children and young people. There is an acknowledgement that children and young people are agentic, rights bearing citizens, whose voices and participation are necessary, yet an understanding that this is messy work. The session involves a brief provocation from each discussant before facilitator questions, and questions from the audience. This year BERA is taking additional steps to promote the voices and participation of children and young people in the domain of educational research. For over five years the Children and Childhood SIG has foregrounded the need to explore critically the concepts and methodologies utilized to situate and explicate childhoods and children’s experiences within the contexts of formal and informal education, and to interrogate changes and continuities in understandings of childhood and their impact upon the spaces, places, relations, and practices of education. This involves children as objects or subjects for study, and the spaces and places in which childhood occurs for example interrogation of the boundaries and transitions in children’s lives, including from early years to childhood, childhood to adolescence, adolescence and beyond, and how these are shaped and informed by education. Now, BERA is taking the first step of engaging directly with young people who will be present at conference as advisors to the conference and events committee, and to listen to and feedback on delegates research contributions. In this context, this plenary session addresses the key issues in the relations between children and young people’s rights, voices, and the development of innovative approaches and research methodologies that facilitate meaningful partnership and participation. Carol Robinson will begin the session with discussion of the ethical and moral commitment to children and young people’s rights in educational research and the affordances of voices, experiences, and empowerment. Meera Chudasama brings a practitioner perspective and draws on her experience to explore the potential of small-scale enquiry, led and undertaken by children, to inform practice and the academy. Dawn Mannay’s work involves the use of participatory, visual, and creative methods with communities, children and young people. She will foreground the potential impact of research findings through the use of film, art work, music and a range of other participatory and co-produced multimodal materials while acknowledging the ethical dilemmas. Kate Wall will highlight the need to develop and explore democratic spaces where learners can talk about their experiences of learning and questions if we have been asking children their opinion or to participate in appropriate ways. She emphasises the need to adopt more creative methods and practices in generating knowledge of ethical practice for eliciting voice.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status: Submitted
Schools: Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE)
Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
L Education > L Education (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords: children; creative methods; participatory research; qualitative research; impact; ethics
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Last Modified: 13 May 2024 08:57
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/168496

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