Researching with children: Some lessons learnt the hard way

by Kim Brown

I have compiled some thoughts on researching with children from my point of view as a parent, a teacher, a researcher, and an advocate of social justice. I have taken extracts from my Masters and mixed these with more recent deas reflections.

Positioning children within research relations demands awareness of the asymmetrical power relations between researchers and younger participants. The notion of voice encapsulates children’s capacity to speak and their right to do so (Thomson, 2008). Indeed, Roberts (2006) reflects on social research practice that is well-rehearsed in listening to children but not hearing them. Simply adopting child-centred approaches to research may not provide children sufficient opportunity to be heard.

Children’s voice represents a “hard-won” gain in research, yet might equally present researchers with ethical dilemmas when considering how far to acknowledge children’s agency (Kraftl, 2013). Questioning whether it is possible for an adult researcher to create equality with a child participant, Jenks advises recognising “the grounds of difference” (2006, p. 87). One aspect of difference draws attention to adult responsibility, particularly in research domains not conventionally thought of as child-friendly, sexuality being an obvious example (Kraftl, 2013). Drawing upon critical reflexivity may support a researcher in the precarious act of recognising rather than assuming differences. Additional actions may involve participatory roles for the students in the research design or creative modes of communication. Again, I caution that providing children with choices during the research process does not necessarily equate to balancing power differentials between researcher/subject or adult/child. If I reflect on my own research with child participants during my Masters, I can see that I created additional workload for the the young people involved despite my espoused principles of addressing differential power relations.

I sought to empower children to express themselves in flexible ways, both as individuals and as a group, and elicit data to investigate the research question. I chose visual approaches, in part inspired by scrapbooks (Bragg & Buckingham, 2008), and an anti-CV (Higgins, Nairn, & Sligo, 2009). What strikes me in retrospect (ah, the value of hindsight) was my emphasis on using visual approaches to provide tools that ease communication, and not necessarily generate data as a visual product. I now see this distinction as being particularly important. Why agonise over the process of setting and gathering indepedent research activities from children if my intention was to create an atmosphere for ease, conversation and interaction? Having devised an independent presentation and a group activity, the latter was by far the most efficient approach. I am extremely grateful for the efforts that the young people put into their independent activities, but I suspect I might have been able to save them some time had I started with the group activity.

On the day of the activity, I turned up at school laden with morning tea goodies. My visit, whilst pre-aranged was not in the school diary, nonetheless, a member of the administration team facilitated a space for me to meet the young people and then called them up on the intercom. The young people were also not expecting me, so I offered them the chance to opt in or out. All came along. Using low-tech pen and paper, they set about the task of writing a guide book (their prefered form of communication) on the topic of my research. They enjoyed the morning tea, conversing in-depth whilst they doodled, made lists and wrote ocassional sentences. The conversation was the source of rich data analysis, proving that the visual medium of the guide book served it purpose as a conversation starter. Equally important, I think we all had a pleasant morning.

 I have learned several important lessons from my Masters experience around researching with children and school:

1. We know that schools are busy places and present particular challenges for research activity, for example, around communication, access, recruiting participants, free space, and so on. This being the case, why design research that might be overly-reliant on multiple visits? I am not suggesting superficiality here. When our research is small scale, not directly related to curriculum activity, and lacking status of external funding or accomplished researchers, I have found simplicity to be most effective approach.

1. Be clear about the focus of my research. Am I researching methodology or a particular phenomenon? I may have gotten a little enthusiastic about the research design without really thinking about what I was asking of already busy young people. Lambert, Glacken and McCarron (2013) discuss achieving a balance between creative instruments and comonplace conversation when researching with children, and offer some very helpful key considerations in their paper.    doi: 10.1177/1744987112475249

1. Building a relationship with the children involved in research is critical, and if time is short and I am unable to meet with children, I must rely on ethical practices. Procedural ethics offer some widely recognised standards to scaffold research practices, but I would argue, these need to be substantiated by ethical reflexivity or ethical integrity. Maintaining ethical reflexivity involves ongoing critical self-analysis and scrutiny of the research process that moves beyond a simple form of self-confession. Ethics of reflexivity involve an acceptance that differences between researcher and participant extend beyond our research roles and practices, and include values, experiences and dispositions we bring to and maintain beyond the process.

If you'd like any literature references, let me know. :)