Following Part 1 Symposium, where we explored different conceptualisations and methodologies employed in various countries in studies that focus on students’ voices and inclusion in schools, in this second Part Symposium, we move into examples of empirical studies, carried out in three countries of our World Educational Research Association International Research Network (WERA IRN) “Student Voice for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in Schools”: Indonesia, Portugal, and UK (England).

Involving children and young people in research links to notions of childhood that view children as active participants and as “being” as opposed to “becoming” (James, Jenks, and Prout, 1998).  However, even though the idea of listening to children’s and young people’s voices in research and in schools has gained ground in recent years internationally, there is still a danger that such approaches are used superficially.   Fielding (2001) offers a helpful formulation in this respect when he suggests ‘a four- fold model which distinguishes between students as sources of data, students as active respondents, students as co-researchers, and students as researchers’ (p. 135). These are different levels of student involvement that can be used for school improvement or school self-review, or purely for research purposes. Hart’s (1992) ‘Ladder of Participation’, is also useful in thinking about levels of participation in schools and in research, ranging from manipulation of students’ voices, where children are used to achieve adults’ aims, to higher degrees of participation where students and adults, in projects in schools and in research, share their own unique perspectives and take shared decisions. In these ways, students are actively involved and respected for their own contributions.

In employing such inclusive approaches in research, where students are genuinely active participants, participatory approaches and methods can be instrumental, such as the use of photovoice, drawings, diaries and observations by student researchers. The role of research methods when engaging with children and young people’s voices has been discussed extensively in the literature (e.g., Christensen and James, 2001; Thomson, 2008) such as photo voice and photo elicitation (e.g. Shaw 2020). A range of such approaches are explored in the papers that follow from studies carried out in different countries.

However, involving children and young people in research involves a range of challenges, the most predominant one being that of power dynamics (Montreuil et al., 2021). Morrow and Richards (1996) suggest that “using methods which are non-invasive, non-confrontational and participatory, and which encourage children to interpret their own data, might be one step forward in diminishing the ethical problems of imbalanced relationships between researcher and researched at the point of data collection and interpretation” (p. l00).   It has been argued that participatory research methods address power differentials, maximise participation and are oriented towards “researching inclusively” (Nind, 2014).  At the same time, as Purdy and Spears (2020) argue, co-participatory research with children is “potentially radically democratising, inclusive and empowering while at the same time potentially disruptive, uncomfortable and bumpy” (p. 189).

In this second part of the symposium, we will explore the following questions:

-       How can we involve children and young people in research in different contexts?

-       How do different methodologies allow students’ voices to emerge?

-       What are the challenges encountered in employing such approaches?

Through our analysis of the empirical studies in each of the different countries we will highlight how methods are crucial in promoting students’ voices and inclusion in diverse contexts, whilst at the same time emphasising the importance of the overall methodologies employed and the positionalities of the researchers involved. 

Christensen, P. and James, A. (2001) Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices. London: Routledge/Falmer. Fielding, M., (2001). Students as radical agents of change. Journal of Educational Change 2 (2), 123–141. Hart, R. (1992). Children’s Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship. Florence: UNICEF. James, A., Jenks, C. and Prout, A. (1998) Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. Montreuil, M., Bogossian, A., Laberge-Perrault, E., & Racine, E. (2021). A review of approaches, strategies and ethical considerations in participatory research with children. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 1–15. Nind, M. (2014). What is Inclusive Research? London: Bloomsbury. Shaw, P. A. (2020) Photo-elicitation and photo-voice: Using visual methodological tools to engage with younger children’s voices about inclusion in education. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 44 (4), 337–351.