Introduction
In this opening section, the chapters address five core themes that we perceive as the bedrock for Understanding Research with Children and Young People. These are key considerations to bear in mind as you read through subsequent sections of this book, and throughout the process of your engagement with research. They include:
- How images of childhood and youth have changed over the years, and how research is always conducted in particular historical, cultural and philosophical contexts which shape how we do research and what we find out;
- What we mean by âresearchâ and by âresearch with children and young peopleâ;
- The purposes and potential impacts of such research;
- How research can give voice to the perspectives of younger members of society;
- How researchers can work to identify and maintain ethical standards.
We have chosen to begin this edited collection with a chapter by Mary Kellett, who encourages readers to reflect on the concept of childhood, how images of childhood have changed over time and how these images have shaped the nature of research about and with children and young people. Kellett established the Children's Research Centre at The Open University, the first of its kind in the UK, which exists to support children to undertake their own research (see http://childrens-research-centre.open.ac.uk), so this is a topic that lies at the heart of all her work. In this chapter, Kellett explores diverse images of childhood within and across historical and disciplinary boundaries and examines how different social and cultural understandings of children and young people have influenced the growth of childhood research. She also discusses her particular vision of critical issues that children and young people face in contemporary society, such as their human rights and participation as researchers and experts in their own lives.
In Chapter 2 âWhat is Research with Children and Young People?â Sandy Fraser, Rosie Flewitt and Martyn Hammersley review the historical origins and significance of âempirical researchâ. They discuss how sociological and psychological research has developed over time, initially influenced by models of research used in the physical and natural sciences, which involved methods that controlled âvariablesâ in order to identify and test phenomena. This approach often included following explicit procedures in experiments, which could be interpreted through quantitative analysis. Through these rigorous procedures, it was believed that research would be objective and reliable. However, applying a model of research that was designed to investigate physical phenomena was problematic when applied to the study of human beings, whose behaviour is infinitely variable. The authors discuss how modifications were made to the scientific model, and how, in time, it became apparent that radically new approaches were needed. These included qualitative methods of data collection and interpretation which permitted more sensitive insights into the complexity of human life as it unfolds in people's day-to-day lives. In the second part of this chapter, the authors discuss how this shift in research approaches led to a questioning of the relevance of conducting research on children and young people, and to the emergence of participatory research with them as active and expert co-creators of knowledge about their own lives.
For research to be meaningful it must have a purpose, and this is the focus presented in Chapter 3. Here, Victoria Cooper addresses the potentially wide-ranging impacts of research, and encourages readers to consider the different contributions that investigations can make not only to how we understand children and young people, but also to how such knowledge can be used to inform future research, policy and practice. These themes will be explored more fully in Section 4 of the book. Here, Cooper introduces readers to some core principles and issues through specific examples of contemporary research projects across the academic disciplines of education, health and social care. These examples reflect different social and cultural settings, different methodological approaches and different research purposes. Yet, as Cooper highlights, they share a common commitment to developing greater understanding of the lives and experiences of children, young people and their families, using innovative methodologies and new analytic approaches which bring genuinely fresh insights into the lives and experiences of children and young people around the globe.
In Chapter 4, Sue Bucknall discusses how shifting the focus of research to include the voices of children and young people has brought to the fore a number of profound and problematic issues which must be attended to. Adding to the views expressed in the previous chapters, Bucknall begins by considering how and why participatory research has evolved and become increasingly common. Basing her discussion on examples taken from participatory research, she then reflects on the complex notion of children's âvoicesâ and discusses the related issues of silence, and how researchers can accurately reflect children and young people's viewpoints in their findings and subsequent research reporting. Lastly, Bucknall considers the research relationships which adults build with children and young people as âotherâ to themselves, and how researchers need constantly to reflect critically throughout their engagement with research, whether as critical readers of studies, or as active co-researchers with children and young people.
The final chapter in this section turns to the question of ethics in research, particularly in research involving children and young people. The author, Priscilla Alderson, has written extensively about research ethics, and has spent many years advising on ethical issues as a member of research ethics committees, particularly in the field of medical health care. Alderson begins this chapter by considering the development of research ethics and the formal regulation of ethics. She then proposes three main frameworks for thinking about ethics, based on principles, outcomes and rights, which relate to research in education, welfare, youth, criminal justice and many other services that affect children and young people. Throughout this chapter, Alderson keeps a sharp focus on why research ethics matters, and also discusses criticisms of ethical regulations. Sound advice is given on the processes of applying to ethics review committees, and key questions are raised about how ethical issues arise throughout the research process, including potential harm and benefit, along with issues of privacy and confidentiality, information and consent.
Through these five chapters, our aim is to encourage readers to identify and reflect on core principles related to research into the lives of children and young people, and to retain a constantly questioning, critical approach to their own and othersâ research work with younger members of society.
Historical Overview
This first section provides a brief overview of the evolution of conceptions of childhood, mainly in the UK context, showing the close relationship between images of childhood in research and wider society. Childhood research began as theory generation by philosophers and gradually took on more experimental and interventionist characteristics in keeping with changing constructions of childhood leading to the richly diverse and multi-faceted nature of contemporary approaches to research with children and young people.
The question of whether and when childhood was accepted as a separate entity was raised by the French historian Ariès who claimed that in the Middle Ages there was no understanding of the child as anything other than an âadult in waitingâ and no sense of a transitory period between infancy and adulthood (1962). Using images of children from historical paintings as the basis of his work he argued that once weaned, children were in effect treated as adults. There was much criticism of Ariès (see e.g. Evans 1997) for not appreciating that parents dressed their children in small versions of adult clothing for the grandeur of portraiture and that this would not have been how they were dressed in normal daily life. Arièsâ work was further undermined by those who pointed to medical treaties on the subject of childhood diseases (Cunningham 1991) as evidence of an interest in the life stage of childhood. The division of childhood into sub-periods was also evident in literature (Shahar 1990). Ariès has been further criticised for an over-emphasis on middle- and upper-class children, taking no account of social class and gender in determining the nature of childhood. Nevertheless, Arièsâ work did challenge the notion of childhood as universal for all societies in all times in history. He showed how conceptions of childhood change and are rooted in their own times and cultures and, to an extent, the role of research mirrors this work since it seeks to confirm or challenge assumptions and images that have been constructed in different social and historical periods.
Early conceptualisations of childhood are attributed to the seventeenth century (Hendrick 1997) when images of childhood came to be dominated by Puritan dogma. This was epitomised in the belief that children were innately evil, born with âoriginal sinâ that must be purged from them. The Puritans maintained that children could only be âenlightenedâ or âimprovedâ through education, strict discipline and control. Sayings such as âspare the rod and spoil the childâ and âonly fire can straighten crooked woodâ originate from this time and aptly illustrate the harsh images that prevailed. Later in the seventeenth century Locke (1632â1704) challenged the idea that children were innately evil, or innately anything for that matter, arguing they were merely a product of their environment. He posited the image of children as a tabula rasa, âa blank slateâ capable of being shaped by their environmen...
