Session Information
25 SES 02, Children's Rights: Methodological and Theoretical Issues
Paper Session
Contribution
In the last two decades a growing body of research with young children enacting upon the United Nations Convention of Children’s Rights 1989 (especially the participatory right that is reflected on article 12 where it stated: “The underlying idea is that children have a right to be heard and have their views taken seriously , including in any judicial or administrative proceedings affecting them”) has opened a public debate about how young children are seen. The UNCRC has impacted on governments’ policies, legislation and practices as well as research with young children. Academic research taking up the rights movement and the emerging views of children as active, competent and able to participate and express their opinions, sought for methodologies and research methods that will embrace this ideological shift. Children in research now are asked to be active participants “on the basis of who they are, rather than who they will become (Moss and Perries 2002:6) and a number of researchers (e.g. Evans and Fuller 1996, Clark and Moss 2001, Einarsdottir 2007, Sargeant and Harcourt 2012, Palaiologou 2012, 2014) are investigating innovative ways to incorporate the participation of children into research. The quest for children’s involvement into research has led a number of researchers into children’s lives in visual research pathways as it is perceived as participatory. However, this paper argues that visual research with young children has reached an important point in time where the legal and institutional requirements for informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality are determining decisions about ethics rather than the ethical terrain of visual research being determined by invariable different principles that are depending on context and situational actions. For example Parson et al (2015) examining how social researchers in the UK are dealing with instutitional ethics and research with young children in relation to informed consent, concluded that there is a need for the co-creation of research information with children and young people and greater transparency by sharing creative solutions. Palaiologou (2014) also found that although participatory research using visual methods has become an orthodoxy in the field of early childhood there is limited questioning in relation to the structuring processes of this research, to the axiologies that shape the ontological interactions in the research process and proposes that in order to tell the “whole story” we should move to an axiological shift based on ethical responsibility as an “autonomous act of narration” (Portelli, 1998).
On the one hand universities in UK are adopting a blanket approach to informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality and yet on the other hand visual research sits at odds with such ethical protocols. Thus the research reported here aimed to examine the three key aspects of ethical protocols: informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality in visual research with young children at two levels:
- Philosophical and ideological level discussing how these three aspects of ethical protocols are contested by visual research and create axiomatic antinomies.
- Practical level examining the factors impacting on ethical dilemmas and decisions in visual research with young children in the name of participatory research.
In doing so I position my own ethical ideology within the Meta-ethics’ questioning of people’s actions’ morality, and try to understand the foundations of “wrong” or “right” in diverse contexts.
Using Guillemin and Gillam (2005) “ethical moments”, Ulsher’s (2000) “ethical anxieties” and Palaiologou (2014, 2016) “ethical helix praxis” as theoretical lenses, meta-analysis is employed to investigate the ethical decisions made at philosophical/ideological and practical levels in research with young children that incorporates visual methods. Published research of the last five years that claims to use visual research with young children was analysed around practices of informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Christensen, P. and James, A., (2008) Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices (2nd ed.), London: Routledge. Clark, A., and Moss, P. (2001) Listening to young children: The Mosaic approach, London: National Children’s Bureau. Einarsdottir, J., (2007) Research with children: methodological and ethical challenges, in European Early childhood Research Journal, vol 15 (2), pp. 197-211. Evans, P., and Fuller, M., (1996) Hello. Who am I speaking to? Communicating with pre-school children in educational research settings, in Early Years, vol 17 (1), pp 17-20. Guillemin, M. and Gillam, L. (2004) ‘Ethics, reflexivity, and ‘ethically important moments’ in research’, Qualitative Inquiry 10, 261-280. Moss, P., and Petrie, P., (2002) From children’s services to children’s spaces: Public Policy, Children and Childhood, London: Routledge Falmer. Palaiologou, I, (2012) Introduction: Towards an understanding of Ethical Practice in Early Childhood, in I. Palaiologou (Ed) (2012) Ethical Practice in Early Childhood, London: SAGE (pp. 1-12). Palaiologou, I., (2014) “Do we hear what children want to say?” Ethical Praxis when choosing research tools with children under five, in Early Child Development and Care, vol 184 (5), pp 689-705 (DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2013.809341). Palaiologou, I., (2016) Ethical issues associated with Educational Research, in I., Palaiologou, D., Needham. and Male T., (Eds) (2016) Doing Research in Education: Theory and Practice, London: SAGE. (pp: 37-58). Palaiologou, I., (2014) The Axiological challenges in participatory research with young children: Fragmentation or Empowerment? , Paper presented at the 24th European Early Childhood Education Research Association Conference, 7-10 September 2014, Crete, Greece. Parsons S, Abbott C, McKnight L, Davies C. (2015) High risk yet invisible: conflicting narratives on social research involving children and young people, and the role of Research Ethics Committees. British Educational Research Journal ICT. DOI: 10.1002/berj.3160. Portelli, A (1998) ‘What makes Oral History Different”in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader, London: Routledge. Pp 63-74. United Nations. (1989). The Convention on the Rights of the Child Defence International and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Geneva. Usher, R. (2000) ‘Deconstructive happening, ethical moment’, in H. Simons and R. Usher (eds.) Situated Ethics in Educational Research. London: Routledge, 162-185.
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