The purpose of this paper is to explore the position of children and young people in research, particularly in research that aims to include their voice. Inclusive education is not possible without participation (Todd, 2007). To evolve education towards greater inclusion requires of spaces of reflection and action, spaces populated by the knowledges of children, young people, and adults (including parents, teachers, lunch supervisors, psychologists etc). There has been some attention to ways this might happen in the development of school provision (Allen, 1999). Indeed, more and more attention is now given to the inclusion of the young person’s voice in education (Burke et al. 2003) . However, relatively little focus has been on the active contribution of children and young people as researchers. Despite the movement to listen to children and young people – when research is carried out, they more often than not occupy the position a subject rather than a person with agency, with some exceptions (Kellett, 2005). This research aimed to explore with young people their perspectives on what psychology was all about and how they would want psychology to be used in everyday life. Our intention was to work with young people as researchers and for them to have a high degree of agency in the research process. Our journey into trying to bring about young people participation in research took us through two different processes. In the first we employed a young researcher to work with young people in groups in the context of a school A-level class, meeting once a week. The young person researcher used a range of group processes to encourage the other young people to reflect on what they made of psychology. By the 4th week, the attendance of the young people was down to two, the main concerns of the group to do with passing the A-level. The notes of the groups resembled the psychology read by the young people in the A-Level textbooks. Our hunch was that we had not been able to put the young people in a position where they could reflect on what they themselves made of psychology. The outcomes from this process led us to rethink our ways of working. We next engaged with a project in Durham County Council called ‘Investing in Children’ which was solely concerned with engaging young people as researchers. In this situation, three young people acted as facilitators for 14 other young people who were from a range of backgrounds, some of them studying A-Level psychology, others with no experience of the subject area of psychology. They used the project offices situated in a Durham village. Over the course of two days, the young people working through ‘Investing in Children’ generated some very varied ideas about what psychology was about and what they wanted it to do. Their emphases gave some different takes on this discipline, so often used to measure and control young people. Ideas from different theoretical frameworks, socio-cultural historical activity theory (Engestrom et al 1999) and social constructionism are drawn upon to discuss the kinds of rules and discourse circulating within the different contexts that might explain the responses of the two different groups of young people. Issues are also raised for the validity claims of much research into the views of young people. With consulting children’s views now much more part of research and professional practice in schools and services, implications of this research are discussed for the possibilities for collaborating with young people that move beyond lip-service.

Our methodology involved two separate consultation approaches with different groups of young people, using very different situations and contexts. In each situation the young people and, ourselves, the HEI researchers, occupied very different positions. In one, the young people were situated as pupils in a school required to respond to the lead of the facilitator or the teacher, and in the other the young people had greater agency in the research process.

The first consultation process led to critical reflections on the context within which young people are consulted for the purpose of research. We adopted a second consultation process which used similar methods but within a very different context. These outcomes – the discussions and the recorded ideas – were wide-ranging and seemed to contribute to a debate about what psychology is rather than copy a current curriculum. There seemed to the researchers that there were important aspects of the second context that encouraged collaboration and placed young people in a position that they could articulate their own perspectives.