Lundy’s (2007) model for conceptualising Article 12 of the UNCRC has been hugely influential in research. It argues that “Space, Voice, Audience and Influence” are required for the fulfilment of children’s participation rights and forms the basis for many research projects on this topic.

This research project introduces a post-humanist theoretical approach to the research of children’s participation rights in UK schools, considering the explicit incorporation of the matter with which children interact at school, and by which they express themselves, to be an essential component of understanding how agency is produced. The addition of a relational-materialist perspective to the child-led, participatory, standard in modern social research of childhood encourages work which takes a nuanced perspective on agency and treats it as a starting point for understanding children’s social worlds, rather than a terminus (Prout, 2000). Child-led participatory research since Lundy’s (2007) model was devised often relies on attempts to give children platforms to express themselves which are separate from the daily interactions in which their participation rights are facilitated or inhibited. Children’s utterances in research encounters are often presented as the result of a capacity for agency inhered in the individual human, pre-existing the interactions in which they are housed (Jackson, 2003). The human agent who “knows who she is, says what she means and means what she says” is rejected in new materialist conceptions of voice, including those which research children’s voices in learning institutions (Maclure, 2009, no pagination; Harvey et al., 2021). 

This perspective on social research, as well as other duties in the UNCRC such as the principle of ‘Evolving Capacities’ (Article 5) call for an expansion of Lundy’s (2007) model which encourages the participation of children without reliance on their ‘voices’ as conceived thus far, or on specialised participatory spaces (Varadan, 2019). By combining a rights-based approach with post-humanist social research in this project, the tenets of childhood studies and rights respecting research can be upheld, namely those which impel a duty to provide opportunity for active and agentive participation in research, while tempering these principles with the troubling of traditional humanist conceptions of matter and of the mind-body dualism in which voice “lingers close to the true and the real… seen almost as a mirror to the soul” (Alderson, 2012; James and Prout, 2015; Mazzei and Jackson, 2017, pgs.1090 & 1091).

I will present the methodology for this study, its early findings and its potential impact on understanding the enactment of participation rights in schools, as well as on theories of rights as they are applied to children. By demonstrating the affective force of the materials with which children interact in schools on the formation and expression of their views, I will argue that Lundy’s (2007) model for participation rights should explicitly address the material component of autonomy rights, encouraging a duty among researchers and educators to facilitate every-day, relational and co-produced agentic participation,outside of devoted participatory activities which are limited in their impact and accessibility. The value of increasing the accessibility of agentic participation can also be seen in the opportunities to promote “voice” in a way that is not dependent on language, increasing opportunities for international co-production and for easier engagement in UK schools by those for whom English is not their primary language.

The theme of “Controversial Topics in Children’s Rights and Education” in the main conference seeks to challenge established assumptions in research. This presentation may facilitate similar discussion in the emerging researcher’s conference about how children’s rights may be researched as co-produced, challenging the relied upon model of participatory research in the field of childhood studies.  

Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) utilising art-based methods made up the first part of this study, with an emphasis on the immanent production of artefacts wherein the matter with which the young people intra-act to explore the space of the school are regarded as affective co-producers of the data alongside participants, researcher and the complex communication system of the school (Baraldi, 2022; Barad, 2007). In the first part of the FGDs, participants were asked to make maps depicting part of their school or classroom, paying attention to areas where they make decisions. This allowed the physical space of the school and its material make up to be central in their contribution. In the second part of the FGDs, the participants designed their own classroom. These tasks allowed the participants to explore their current, lived, experiences of school life and their views on what school ought to be like, without demanding immediate, independent, verbal reflection with a researcher. The use of materials present, many of which are associated with play or learning in younger age-groups allowed the children to be active, engaged participants, without overburdening them or infringing the duties placed on rights respecting researchers. The artefacts produced will be presented along with tracing lines of flight from aspects of them which affected the output of the group as a whole. This method of analysis utilises memo making and diffractive reading of research encounters to incorporate the spoken words of children in research spaces alongside the material production of the group as a whole (Freeman, 2014). The FGDs undertaken approach the research data as the product of an embodied, immanent and relational endeavour, where “hotspots” may be identified which impact the creative work of all present (Maclure, 2013). The second data generation method will be a series of participant observations of day-to-day interactions in normal classroom learning. The findings of the FGDs will inform the observation phase of this study- to take place after the submission of this application but before the conference. Areas of and interactions within the school identified as participatory by the FGD participants will be the focus of the observations. Attention will be paid in the analysis of field notes to points of contact observed between the imagined classrooms of the children in FGDs and their real classroom learning. This will allow for features which enhance or inhibit children’s autonomy in the classroom to be identified and explored.

The early findings of this study have centred on the participants use of the media on offer in FGDs as a liberating and empowering tool for the enactment of their rights. Within the FGDs this has occurred through their employment of Play-Doh as a tool for self-reassurance and emotional regulation while settling into the research environment, and the creation of familiar shapes associated with these tools and the norms of play with which they, particularly Lego and Play-Doh, are typically associated. Additionally, the affective force of these materials can be seen in the artefacts and the types of classrooms and that the young people imagine and co-create, often leading to an emphasis on play, movement and the absence of traditional desk-based learning, as well as a clear desire for collaborative approaches to learning. As a result, and depending on the findings in the rest of the study, I feel there may be a great deal of value in expanding Lundy’s (2007) model for participation when focussing on schools. At present Lundy’s (2007) model consists of voice, space, audience and impact. A fifth criteria, to sit between space and audience, would place a duty on educators and researchers to facilitate the enactment of children’s participation rights by providing multiple media for the expression of their voice. This addition will acknowledge the principle of ‘evolving capacities’ as a cross-cutting standard of the UNCRC as well as reducing an overemphasis on vocal utterances by children, which privileges those more comfortable or capable in their speech (Hanson and Lundy, 2017). As a result, school children would be afforded greater opportunities for agentic decision making, reducing the need for spaces such as school councils or consultation groups which are easily led or manipulated by adults (Chateris and Smardon, 2019).

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