Accessing the Views of Children: Semistructured Conversations

• In Event: 63.087 - Sheraton Roundtable Session 11 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 63.087-6 - Cultivating Democratic Spaces in Education: Eliciting Children's Voices Using Multimodal Approaches

Abstract

In this roundtable session, I explore ethical issues and dilemmas of power and representation related to conducting participatory research with children. In doing so, I will reflect upon three qualitative studies framed by the sociology of childhood, critical theory, and a child rights-based perspective. In the first two research projects, one building upon the other, I explore twelve children’s perceptions of their experiences in both a university laboratory school and in their current elementary school settings. Children express their thoughts and opinions on their learning in two different educational settings through semi-structured conversations and child-produced drawings with the goal of better understanding how children experience the two different environments, and how they compare their experiences, both directly and indirectly. These projects also aim, through the research process itself, to acknowledge children as social actors and competent informants in their lived experiences. The third study is my current doctoral research project, which explores how children perceive and conceive childhood. This research, builds upon literature that recognizes the multiple stories of children by welcoming children’s perceptions and narratives into discussions of children and childhoods; positioning children, rather than adults, as the storytellers of their lived realities.
In exploring ethical issues of representation and power, I will focus specifically on the use of conversations and drawings as methodologies that engage children’s perspectives. I reflect upon my experiences, and current debates within literature, with the goal of eliciting further consideration on how researchers may move toward more equitable and fuller participation for children in research. These reflections serve to draw attention to the importance of the research encounter in participatory research. What is central to the research encounter is the relationship between the researcher and participant. This highlights a methodological shift in which the research encounter is valued and documented as data itself, and brings to the forefront notions of reciprocity in research. Meaning emanates, and is negotiated through the relationship between the researcher and participant. Possibilities in further recognizing and celebrating children’s perspectives of their experiences may not lie solely in the planning stages of research, but rather in moments of unpredictability. This is not to discount the importance of thoughtful research design; however, it suggests that it is in an openness to receive the unknown throughout the research encounter, which, by its very nature, fosters negotiation, that further possibility in establishing a more reciprocal and equitable research relationship may lie.

Author

• Tiffany Barnikis, York University