Having lunch with my friends - Participatory research involving children – openings, opportunities, obligations and considerations

Author(s):

Ida Charlotte Kornerup(presenting / submitting)Kira Saabye Christensen

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 10, Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Settings

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

15:30-17:00

Room:

207.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Jenna K Gillett-Swan

Contribution

The aim of this paper is, through an empirical research study, to focus on how to involve children in research and developing processes. The paper will present and discuss a case study involving four groups of children at the ages of three to five years. The case is part of a larger participatory research study investigating learning environments in Danish preschools.

Due to a European focus on effective preschool practice, many preschools have been enrolled in educational programmes and projects aiming to develop more effective and high quality practice. In most of these projects the focus for development is the pedagogical staff, though both The Conventions on Children’s Rights and The Danish Act on Daycare highlights children’s involvement in daily life as a right and as a vital part of a democratic learning environment.

(4). Day-care facilities shall give children co-determination, co-responsibility and an understanding of democracy. (Danish Act on Daycare. ACT no. 501 of June 6, 2007)

From the outset this research project has sought to question the fact that, in spite of the obligation of preschools to give children the right of co-determination, children are rarely involved and given a voice in the development processes of care and education in preschools. Therefore this paper is centered on the following questions;

How can researchers, the pedagogical staff and children collaborate in participatory research?
What happens when we involve children and ask them to participate in daily life decision-making and development processes of preschool learning environments?
’What considerations must be taken into account by researchers in connection with involving children

The aim of
the overall research project is to investigate how preschools can develop and offer high quality-learning environments for all children. The purpose is to develop knowledge and methods that will qualify preschool teachers’ competence in offering high quality care and learning environments with a focus on children’s learning potentials. In the research project, we investigate different types of learning environments, but in this paper we present a specific empirical case where researchers, pedagogical staff and children collaborated on how to develop lunch as a high quality learning environment. Our theoretical approach to learning is interactionist theory (Mead, Blumer, Bruner and Wenger), and therefore in this paper ‘high quality learning environment’ refers to a learning environment that is capable of providing access to participation for each individual child, challenging the present zone of knowledge and offering a community of learning and social interactions.

In the empirical case, the research object was a study of lunchtime. The aim was to understand and develop lunchtime as more than just eating a meal. To study the daycare lunchtime the children were enrolled as co-researchers. As well as having little knowledge on how children experience their learning environments, we also were in need of methods to involve children in these processes. Therefore, the methodological perspective on how to carry out the involvement process and the ethical considerations in these processes became a vital part of the research study. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the openings, opportunities, obligations and considerations of the involvement process. The point of departure will be the specific case study, but throughout the paper we open our questions toward a more general focus on the involvement process of children in research and development processes as a window of knowledge on children’s perspectives on daily life, including the learning environments. We will also discuss how it affected the pedagogical staff to listen to the children, and how the staff reacted and changed their procedures and preschool practice.

Method

Our overall methodological approach is participatory research in the sense of collaboration between researchers, pedagogical staff and children. In the theoretical and methodological approach we use microsociological and interactionist theories (Goffmann, Mead, Blumer, Bruner), but we are also inspired by and use methods from theories and methods on empowerment research (Hart). Using interactionist theory forces the researcher to focus on actions, co-actions, lines of co-actions and interactions. We are interested in studying ‘participation’ in the sense of actions, and throughout the study we constantly focused on how to remain open to, and give opportunities for, children’s participation and being active in the research process. The participating children were a diverse group of children, with different nationalities (some not speaking Danish) and between three and five years of age. Our goal was to provide a diverse range of opportunities to allow the children a voice into the development process. Therefore the methods used in the involvement process were a mixture of methods with inspiration from Clark, Hart, Jungk and others. The involvement process was carried out during a four-week course. In this period the children took photos during lunchtime, focusing on what they liked and disliked. During the first three weeks they created posters using the photos, documenting their lunchtime. Using the data we collected through these first three weeks, we held a workshop with the children, where they elaborated on the photos and created new scenarios of lunchtime. The elements of the workshop was inspired by ‘The Future Workshop’ developed by Jungk (1998), but had to framed and unfolded in an alternative way according to the age and experience of the children. Finally, all data were analyzed in a collaborating process with the pedagogical staff, and followingly interventions and changes for lunchtime were decided upon. In the paper, we will analyze and discuss the empirical data and focus not just on using the methods, but also on the necessary ethical considerations in a process of involving small children in these kinds of methods. We have been specifically interested in developing not only methods that encourage verbalized participation, but also methods that invite and open up to more visual and body-oriented ways of giving a voice to children. Our empirical studies show that collaboration and involving younger children calls for a mixed methodological approach.

Expected Outcomes

The investigation of the current way of having lunch in the daycare setting and the following invention of an alternative way of having lunch could not have been carried out without involving the children. The empirical study of involving children makes it very clear that including children’s voices in research and development processes allows for new insights and knowledge – in this case, not just knowledge on organizing lunch in a different way, but also fundamental knowledge on how meaning, participation and learning derives from daily life processes. One specifically interesting analytical finding from this particular case study was that children at this age are not familiar with participating in processes of giving critique. Critique here refers to the ability and democratic right to question the existing doxa in (preschool) daily-life and practice. They showed difficulties in elaborating on their critique, though observation studies carried out before involving the children showed that the present way of having lunch precluded the children’s participation rather than opening up to interaction and participation. At the same time, the children seemed more comfortable explaining what they liked when questioned about that. A part of the research is to develop a ‘frame of methods’ that will allow for more democratic and involving processes in daily life in preschools. The frame of methods should be like a toolbox and is envisaged as a way to secure children’s rights to be listened to and be given a voice.

References

Almqvist, Anna-Lena and Lena Almqvist (2014): Making oneself heard – children’s experiences of empowerment in Swedish preschools. Early Child Development and Care, Routledge. Published online: July 24, 2014. Blumer, H. (1986): Symbolic Interactionism. University of California Press. Bruner, J. (1998): Uddannelseskulturen. Socialpædagogisk bibliotek, Munksgaard Bruner, J. (1985): “Vygostky, A Historical and Conceptual Perspective”. In Wertsch (Ed). Culture, Communication and Cognition, Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge University Press. Børnerådet (2011). Regler og medbestemmelse i børnehaven. Minibørnepanelet. Clark, Alison (2005). Listening to and involving young children: a review of research and practice. Early Childhood Development and Care, 175:6, pp. 489-505. Routledge. Clark, Alison (2011). Ways of seeing: Using the Mosaic approach to listen to young children’s perspectives. www.sagepub.com. Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF Danish Act on Daycare. ACT no. 501 of June 6, 2007 Emilson, Anette & Eva Johansson (2013). Participation and gender in circle-time situations in preschool. International Journal of Early Years Education, 21:1, pp. 56-69. Routledge. Garbarino, James et al. (1992). Children in Danger. Coping with the consequences of community violence. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Goffman, E. (1967/2001): Anstalt og menneske – den totale institution socialt set. Saxo. Gulbrandsen, Liv Mette (ed.) (2014). Børns deltakelse i hverdagsliv og professionelle praksis- en udforskende tilnærming. Universitetsforlaget AS. Oslo. Hart, R. A. (1992). Children’s Participation, From Tokenism to Citizenship. Unicef. Johansson, Eva (2003). ”Att närma sig barns perspektiv- forskares och pedagogers möten med barns perspektiv”. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige 2003, årgang 8 nr. 1-2, pp. 42-57. Johansson, Barbro & MariAnne Karlsson (red). (2013). Att involvere barn i forskning och utveckling. Studentlitteratur. Lund. Jungk, Robert (1998) Håndbog i fremtidsværksteder. Politisk Revy. Kornerup, Ida & Mimi Petersen (2014). Børns rettigheder og medborgerskabs- dannelse. In Kornerup, I. & Næsby, T. (eds.): Pædagogens grundfaglighed. Grundbog til pædagoguddannelsen. Frederikshavn: Dafolo Forlag. Petersen, Mimi (to be published in February 2015). Sikkerhed i centrum - Undersøgelse af Roskilde Kommunes arbejde med sikkerhedsplaner som foranstaltning for udsatte børn og familier i 2011-2014. Powell, Mary Ann & Anne B. Smith (2009). Children’s Participation Right in Research. Sage. http://www.sagepublications.com Udenrigsministeriet (1992): Bekendtgørelse af FN-konvention af 20. november 1989 om Barnets Rettigheder. (FN’s Børnekonvention). BKI nr. 5 af den 16. januar 1992. Udenrigsministeriet. Warming, H. (2011): Børneperspektiver. Børn som ligeværdige medspillere i socialt og pædagogisk arbejde. København: Akademisk Forlag. Warming, H. (2013). Børneperspektiver: Børn som ligeværdige medspillere i socialt og pædagogisk arbejde. København: Akademisk Forlag.

Author Information

Ida Charlotte Kornerup (presenting / submitting)

University College Capital UCC Copenhagen

Copenhagen N

Kira Saabye Christensen

University College Copenhagen UCC