Children as Researchers in Primary Schools

Choice, Voice and Participation

Sue Bucknall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136298349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

How often do your primary school pupils have the opportunity to engage in open-ended, sustained pieces of work that offer them choice and control?

Do you find that the curriculum restricts openings to provide your pupils with real challenge?

Is your school grappling with finding effective ways in which to elicit authentic pupil voice?

Children as Researchers in Primary Schools is an innovative and unique resource for practitioners supporting children to become 'real world' researchers in the primary classroom. It will supply you with the skills and ideas you need to implement a 'children as researchers' framework in your school that can be adapted for different ages and abilities. Children in primary schools are accustomed to being set short-term goals and are often unaware of long-term aims or of the connections between the concepts and skills they are learning. In contrast, this book demonstrates that children engaging in the research process have authentic opportunities to apply invaluable personal, learning and thinking skills while managing their own projects, making their 'voices' heard and experiencing increased levels of engagement and self-esteem.

Based on the author's 4-year research study exploring the experiences of young researchers and teachers in primary schools, and on her considerable experience of training young researchers, this book also contains:

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• the history and theory behind 'children as researchers' initiatives;

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• a model for good practice based on successful real life case studies;

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• questions for reflective practice;

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• practical examples of research in the classroom;

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• photocopiable resources;

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• opportunities for self-evaluation.

This comprehensive resource will be appeal to primary teachers, educational practitioners and students on CPD and ITT courses. It will also be of interest to teacher trainers, to academics involved in teaching and research and to all those interested in promoting children's voices.

Part I

Background

CHAPTER 1
Explaining children as researchers

We have a responsibility with regard to the way we exercise power: we must not lose the idea that we could exercise it differently.

Ewald (1992: 334)

Introduction

Research relating to the lives of children is changing. Over the past two decades, there has been a significant shift away from children being the objects of adult-led research towards them taking up less passive roles – it is now increasingly common for children to act as research participants or as co-researchers. This more active involvement, however, has almost always meant children working on research projects that are conceived and led by adults. Rarely has their participation meant taking part from beginning to end, and the roles they have been allowed to adopt have often typified the imbalances of power that can exist between adults and children in collaborative research. The movement to develop children as ‘active’ researchers (Kellett, 2003) helps to address these inevitable power inequalities, creating a new role for children in social research and giving them a voice. This introductory chapter draws briefly on the literature in order to set a theoretical context for this change and then offers a general overview of ‘children as researchers’ (CaRs) initiatives.

Background

The increased involvement of children in research and CaRs initiatives have been conceived in a theoretical context that, for more than 20 years, has seen considerable debate concerning the status of children and the increasing emphasis on children’s rights. Two particular factors have provided the impetus for this debate.

The first has been the shift in Western societies towards acknowledging children as social actors in their own right rather than as the passive products of adult influences (Qvortrup, 1994; James and Prout, 1997). Positioned as incomplete, incompetent and needy, children have traditionally enjoyed little autonomy and few independent rights (Christensen and Prout, 2005). Despite this, children frequently take on responsibilities in caring or volunteering roles, both within the family and in their communities, highlighting instead how adults might come to be dependent on children (see, for example, Lister, 2006; Tarapdar, 2007). Similarly, research refutes the notion of children’s innocence. It demonstrates that not only are children of primary school age aware of community, national and global issues, including racism, violence, poverty, terrorism and substance abuse but also that they would like to be better informed and more involved in helping to solve problems (Holden, 2006; Taylor et al., 2008). UK Government policy initiatives, however, continue to emphasise children’s dependency on their parents, idealising childhood as a time of innocence (Such and Walker, 2005), and thus demonstrate a lack of engagement with the realities of many children’s lives in the UK today (Hill et al., 2004).

The second factor has been the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (United Nations, 1989). This was ratified by the UK Government in 1991. Two of the Convention’s four ‘guiding principles’ encompass children’s right for their best interests to be a primary consideration for policy and decision makers, and the right of children to participate. Children’s participation rights, as set out in Articles 12 and 13, include the right of children to voice their opinions on activities and decisions which shape their lives, and the right of children to receive and share information in different ways. By adding participation rights to children’s traditional rights to protection from neglect and abuse and to the provision of goods and services, the UNCRC has influenced the way in which the status of children is perceived and means that traditional notions of childhood are no longer tenable.

Despite this, the Convention has yet to be incorporated directly into UK law. Indeed, after receiving the third of the UK’s mandatory regular reports on its progress in implementing the precepts of the Convention, the UN Committee made 124 recommendations highlighting areas where the Government was failing to meet its obligations. It was pointed out, for example, that there was still no strategic framework in place to ensure that the principles of the Convention underpinned policy and practice. It is also significant that the UK Government was advised to:

… strengthen its efforts, to ensure that all of the provisions of the Convention are widely known and understood by adults and children alike inter alia by including the Convention in statutory national curriculum and ensuring that its principles and values are integrated into the structures and practice of all schools.

United Nations (2008: Observation 21)

In view of this recommendation, it is interesting to note that, although Article 42 of the UNCRC requires governments to make its provisions known to both adults and children, the Government had previously ignored the Council of Europe’s recommendation that children’s rights should be included in the Citizenship curriculum (Howe and Covell, 2005).

Children’s rights to participate, to express opinions and to be heard are, in any case, generally mediated through adults (Wyness, 2006). As Wyness and colleagues (2004) explain, it is not that children lack competence, but that they have not been provided with opportunities to express their opinions on social and political issues. Wyness and his colleagues suggest that opportunities allowing children to acquire the skills they need in this respect are more likely to succeed at a local level. However, although schools would seem ideally placed to provide such spaces, the rights discourse in the context of education focuses primarily on children’s collective rights to education rather than on children’s experiences within the system itself. Here, children are positioned as subordinate to adults, who control their time, space and interaction (Mayall, 2000; Devine, 2002). Indeed, Prout (2001) suggests that policy initiatives in schools (and elsewhere) would be more effective if children’s active role in producing ‘local realities’ was acknowledged. Children, he argues, need to be viewed as occupying a position within a net-like system of relationships rather than being seen to occupy a lowly position in a more traditional hierarchical model of associations.

Positioning children in research

Perceptions of children as incompetent and unreliable have led to their being deemed incapable of understanding research processes, of making decisions about participating and of providing ‘truthful’ data about their experiences (Hogan, 2005; Morrow, 2005). The adult researcher has thus been seen as the powerful ‘expert’ (Woodhead and Faulkner, 2008), and the notion that adults’ knowledge of children is superior has been recognised as a factor in sustaining unequal adult–child relations (Robinson and Kellett, 2004).) Nevertheless, adult researchers can be guilty of misunderstanding, misrepresenting and sometimes disregarding children’s perspectives, particularly when these conflict with the researcher’s own experiences, interests and interpretations (Fielding, 2001a; Woodhead and Faulkner, 2008). Furthermore, the use of categorisation schemes imposed by adult researchers during data generation and analysis can result in children having others’ interpretations imposed upon them. Consequently, children’s own voices are silenced (Grover, 2004).

Despite developments in social research which acknowledge child participants as competent social actors, doubts about their competencies are still seen as barriers to children’s participation in research. Furthermore, because these doubts measure children against the competent adult norm, they act as barriers to research training for children. Although Uprichard (2008: 305; emphasis added) argues reasonably that ‘children and adults can be competent or incompetent depending on what they are faced with’, research methodology has traditionally been considered too difficult for children to learn and to implement (Kellett, 2005a).

However, Alderson (2000) notes that, as co-researchers, children have displayed levels of competence which have surprised adult researchers. Kellett (2005b: 9) argues that the attributes of researchers ‘are not synonymous with being an adult’, pointing out that it is children’s lack of research skills that imposes a barrier to their carrying out research, not their lack of adult status. She proposes that with careful training and the use of innovative approaches, it is possible for young children (and children of different abilities) to become researchers in their own right. Indeed, Kellett (2003, 2005a) refers to several projects successfully carried out and completed by 9- and 10-year-old children who have received this type of training, whereas Frost (2007) and others (Taylor with Sheargold, unpublished) have facilitated research projects in a comparable way with children up to 3 years younger. With similar support, a group of young people with learning disabilities directed their own 3-year research project, WeCan2 (Aoslin et al., 2008).

Children’s successful experiences in such participative practices lead not only to increased competence but also to increased confidence, both of which encourage more effective future participation. In turn, this leads to an increased sense of autonomy and independence. Limited autonomy, on the other hand, engenders ‘learned helplessness’, especially in contexts where children feel that their access to decision making is limited or where their decisions are likely to be over-ruled.

Programmes that facilitate children’s independent and active research contribute to the growing number of voice and participation initiatives. An emphasis on children being afforded ownership of their own research agendas offers the possibility of children researching significant issues which relate to their lives both within school and also outside it, providing the means by which adult understandings of children and childhood can be improved. Although Kellett (2005a: 2) argues that this will ‘unlock’ children’s voices, interpretations of children’s voices continue to be problematic. From some viewpoints at least, although the status of the child may have changed, current understandings of what ‘voice’ entails, the reasons it might be sought and the contexts in which children and young people might be able to express their views all influence whether or not their voices are heard and listened to in meaningful ways.

Wyness’ (2006: 210) observation that Article 12 encourages ‘top-down control’ is pertinent here. Adults have the power to decide whether individual children are capable of forming their own views and how much weight can be given to them. Since this mirrors the traditional hierarchical power relationships found between adults and children, especially in school, it is not surprising that, for many schools, engaging children’s voices in active and meaningful ways remains a challenge (Leitch and Mitchell, 2007). Failure to take up the challenge, however, does not always indicate resistance to its possibilities. As Leitch and Mitchell (2007: 53) point out, it may simply be that schools do not know where to start and what conditions are necessary for authentic engagement. So, although much is made of the gap between the ‘rhetoric and the reality’ of ‘pupil voice’, their suggestion that ‘the reality’ can be substituted by ‘a school’s readiness for genuine student involvement’ seems a positive one.

Children as researchers

Rather than being the passive focus of adult-led research, children as ‘active’ researchers (Kellett, 2003) have a new role. This role does not involve children taking on tasks as co-researchers in adult-led projects, nor does it involve children in what is usually referred to as ‘research’ in primary schools, whereby pupils use secondary sources to investigate what is already known about topics that are often chosen by their teachers. Instead, this new role involves children carrying out self-directed empirical research from inception to dissemination – research by children, not research with or on children – which relates to issues that they, not adults, have identified as significant in their lives.

The innovative Children’s Research Centre (CRC) at the Open University, UK, has been instrumental in prompting such developments. It was set up in 2004 following successful pilot studies with two cohorts of children in English primary schools (Kellett, 2003). Since then, the CRC has seen a steady increase in the number of schools and other organisations engaging in CaRs initiatives. This growing interest in child-led research in schools is not confined to the UK and is particularly evident in Ireland, Australia, mainland Europe and the Scandinavian countries. A recent 3-year European Commission project, co-ordinated by Bergen University College in Norway, for example, involved educational institutions from seven European countries (Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, Turkey and the UK) and focused on increasing the capacity for young researchers by offering training to teachers. Hacettepe University in Turkey is also currently developing work in this area.

In the early days, CRC initiatives were directly managed by university academics, sometimes with the support of school staff. More recently, a growing number of schools have indicated that they would like to take this on for themselves. In many cases, CRC has been responsible for training adults, whether this has taken place alongside the training delivered to pupils or, for example, at regional workshops. Schools’ research groups can range in size from as few as four children to as many as twenty and, whereas some research groups meet during curriculum time, others form clubs that meet during lunch breaks or after school (Bucknall, 2005, 2009). The CRC programme takes about two school terms to complete, and typically runs from October to May.

Key principles of CRC initiatives are the elements of choice and control. It is important that children are allowed to make informed choices to take part in the programme rather than having the programme imposed on them, and they should be allowed to choose their own research topics, basing these on issues which relate strongly to their personal interests and experiences. They should also be allowed to choose how they would like to work, whether this is individually, in pairs or in a small group. The process is supported rather than managed (Bucknall, 2005, 2009; Kellett, 2010), with children assuming control of their own research projects. For the adults working with the children, whether these are the children’s teachers, teaching assistants or parents, this often means being willing and able to take on a role which is rather different from the one they more usually adopt, one which is akin to that of a ‘research assistant’ (a title young researchers often choose to confer). Through sensitively judged facilitation, young researchers develop a sense of ownership which, in turn, provides the motivation they need to persevere with necessarily lengthy projects, empowers them as researchers and leads to the production of new knowledge and understanding about children’s lives. As Devine concludes from her own research on relationships in primary schools:

… where adult–child, teacher–pupil relations are framed in terms of voice, belonging and active participation, children will be empowered to define and understand themselves as individuals with the capacity to act and exercise their voice in a meaningful manner on matters of concern to them.

Devine (2002: 307)

Summary

This introductory chapter has offered a necessarily brief digest of the literature as it relates to the development of initiatives which seek to engage children as self-directed social researchers. These initiatives have developed as a response to the inevitable power inequalities that are present in adult-led research on or with children and to the perceived lack of children’s own voices in research about their lives. Children as researchers, or ‘young researchers’ as they are more usually referred to in this book, control their own studies from inception to dissemination. Their social research differs from ‘research’ as it is normally conceived of in schools, which is concerned with finding out what is already known. Instead, it generates original knowledge relating to issues which children themselves identify as significant in their lives. The view that children do not have the competencies needed to engage in this process is the cause of some debate, yet competence in this context is not related to age. It is reliant on the acquisition of skills and knowledge which adults, by sensitively facilitating children’s training and support, can scaffold for children.

Accounting for the theoretical context in which CaRs initiatives are located sets the stage not only for the exploration of a model for good practice in the next chapter but also for Part II of this book. This explains the concepts underlying the different stages of the research process and suggests how practitioners can help their own young researchers to develop the understanding and skills they need in order to take charge of their own research studies.

CHAPTER 2
Developing a model for good practice

Hmm, National Curriculum thinking. We’ve lost sight a little bit of getting the children to think a bit more. I always feel there are opportunities where the children have expressed an interest in something but you just don’t have the time to say, ‘Hold on, let’s put the brakes on and just let you work with this.’ I just don’t think we have the opportunities to do that, or perhaps we’ve just lost the courage to do it.

Nigel, class teacher

Introduction

2009 saw the completion of a 4-year in-depth study of the experiences of young researchers in English primary schools (Bucknall, 2009). Before this, there had been no systematic evaluation of programmes designed to deliver research training to children of this age and to support them while they carried out their own social research. Nevertheless, substanti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of photographs
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Background
• Part II Implementing a ‘children as researchers' initiative
• Part III Photocopiable resources
• Keywords for young researchers
• Useful reading and other sources
• Bibliography
• Index