RSS feed for Session 1: Why do it?

Introduction

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

The first Session will look at this essential element, why it is important to include children and young people in research about their lives. This underpins this course and the OU Our Voices project overall.

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Greta Thunberg, a young environmental activist, talking to a crowd of people.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

give some reasons why it is important for children and young people to be involved in research that affects their own lives
summarise key Articles of the UNCRC which relate specifically to children and young people’s rights with regard to research that affects their lives
identify some challenges that may be encountered when researching with children and young people.

First of all, have a look at this short introductory video.

Activity 1

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

As you watch Video 1, consider what key points are presented in the video. What is the value of engaging with children and young people in research about their lives? Make notes as you watch, then click on the ‘key points’ below to compare your answers.

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Video 1

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Transcript: Video 1

Narrator

Researching what goes on in the world focuses on adults, but what about involving children and young people? Especially when it comes to finding out about children and young people's lives, basic research questions are designed and often even answered by adults, yet children and young people have a right to be heard. A United Nations convention has conferred upon children the right to express their views freely in all matters affecting them and to have their best interests as a primary consideration.

Adults are often surprised to discover that children and young people articulate valuable insights into their lives, and often see things that adults haven't noticed. At the Open University, we believe that children and young people are the experts in their own lives, and that adults need to work in partnership with them to create better research so that it can lead to good decisions. The Our Voices website is for everyone interested in research from children and young people themselves to teachers, health care professionals, academic researchers, and policymakers who are looking for why and how to do better research into our world working in partnership with children and young people.

End transcript: Video 1

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Video 1

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Discussion

Key points:

Research questions are frequently aimed at, and answered by, adults.
Children and young people have the right to express themselves.
Children and young people are often more articulate than adults think they are going to be.
They see things adults do not, they are experts in their own lives.
Adults should be partners with the children and young people; this will lead to better research.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

1 Children and young people as researchers

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

While studying this course, you will think about ways to give all children and young people – aged 5-23, and regardless of gender, ethnicity or ability – a space to reflect on and raise their own voices around how they can be involved, as experts in their own right, in a research project. Consulting with them in this way allows them to be core and active participants to that research and ensures that their voices are heard.

Activity 2

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

In this video, you will see young researchers from Lincroft School talking about the research projects they participated in, which were based in their local communities.

You might like to make notes as you watch, and you can pause the video as many times as you wish. Once you have finished viewing, answer the questions that follow. Write your answers in the box on the screen, then click on ‘reveal discussion’ to see if that mirrors your own thoughts, or offers you further ideas.

Video 2

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What did the children gain from carrying out the research?

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Discussion

Confidence, how to compose a questionnaire, understanding of ethical issues, communication skills (as well as answers to their own research questions).

What new insights, if any, have you gained from the range of children’s perspectives and experiences expressed in the video?

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2 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

Not only is it likely that better research will result, involving children and young people in research affecting their lives is actually mandated by an even more fundamental factor: their international rights. These rights were articulated in 1989, in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which states that children and young people have the right to be consulted, to be heard and to participate meaningfully in matters affecting their lives. They also have the right to have their best interests as a primary consideration.

Box 1: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the UNCRC).

The UNCRC is the most complete statement of children’s rights ever produced and is the most widely-ratified international human rights treaty in history – it’s even been accepted by non-state entities, such as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a rebel movement in South Sudan. All UN member states except for the United States have ratified the Convention. The Convention came into force in the UK in 1992; in the UK, it is accepted that every child has rights, whatever their ethnicity, gender, religion, language, abilities or any other status.

The Convention must be seen as a whole: all the rights are linked and no one right is more important than another. The right to relax and play (Article 31), for example, and the right to freedom of expression (Article 13) have equal importance as the right to be safe from violence (Article 19) and the right to education (Article 28).

You can read the full Convention, and a summary, if you click here.

If you are thinking about planning a research project with and by children or young people, three of the articles stand out as particularly relevant in this context:

Article 3 In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
Article 12 Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views, the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
Article 13 The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice

Activity 3

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

What is the key element, in your opinion, that stands out, in terms of children and young people expressing their views, in these three Articles?

Click on the option that you think is the key element, and see how other learners voted.

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Discussion

You may have noted:

best interests
freely
due weight
freedom of expression
child’s choice
ideas of all kinds

3 The UNICEF U-report

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

The United Nations Children's Fund, (UNICEF), is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The UNCRC, that you have just been learning about, is at the basis of all of UNICEF’s work. You can see how UNICEF promotes and supports the key tenets of the UNCRC in a practical way as you work through this next activity.

You are now going to look at a project from UNICEF, which offers an example of children being consulted so that they can participate meaningfully in matters affecting their lives. Click on the link here to find out as much as you can about the project, then try the activities that follow. Remember to open the link in a new tab or window, so you can easily refer back to the course.

Activity 4

Timing: Allow approximately 25 minutes.

1. Complete the sentences by dragging the appropriate ending to match with the beginnings.

The objectives of the U-Report are:

Two lists follow, match one item from the first with one item from the second. Each item can only be matched once. There are 5 items in each list.

of young people in developing countries.
for the gathering of information from various sources.
through SMS text messaging.
based on the information gained.
to decision-makers in positions of power.

Match each of the previous list items with an item from the following list:

a.To send the reports
b.To disseminate information gained
c.To provide a central platform
d.To amplify the voices and views
e.To compile reports

The correct answers are:

1 = d,
2 = c,
3 = b,
4 = e,
5 = a

2. This project was successful for a variety of reasons, some of which you will see listed below.

Which was the most important reason out of this list, do you think? Remember there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer here.

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4 Listening to the very young: the Mosaic approach.

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

So far in this session, you have heard the views of secondary-aged school children who conducted research themselves, and you have just been considering the fundamental rights of all children to be heard and to participate. In this section, you are going to look at very young children whose views can easily be overlooked when they are deemed not to have anything of value to contribute.

The Mosaic approach, developed by Alison Clark and Peter Moss for use with young children in early years settings, brings together a wide range of methods and tools, which can be used in combination to gain an understanding of children’s views and experiences of their environments. It recognises that some tools will be more suitable to use with individual children than others but assumes that all children’s views and experiences are valuable. Examples of tools used within this approach include observation, interviews and child-led tours of their environment. Taking pictures and creating maps often involve children in a lot of talking and these activities are as much about a ‘vehicle for listening’ as they are about an end result. Children are in charge of the tours and are also in charge of reviewing the images they capture, deciding which ones to display and share with others. The advantages of this approach include building children’s skills and confidence, as well as giving adults insight into children’s perspectives, while the challenges include interpreting and representing the varied data gathered.

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An image of a child holding up a camera.

In the next video you are going to see a Headteacher talking about her own experience of research with very young children through a project she has called the Listening Project. Teachers in this project took a novel approach to ‘tuning in’ really effectively to nursery school children so that what they had to say was carefully listened to and heard.

The project was based at the Robert Owen Centre at the Rachel McMillan nursery school in London, where a whole Inset (staff training) day introduced the idea of children’s participation and looked at the work of Alison Clark and Peter Moss. This video clip highlights the need to develop specific skills to listen to very young children. The Rachel McMillan nursery went on to build on the principles of the project and to develop the importance of not just listening to children but of attuning to them. You will look further at the concept of ‘attuning’ in Session 2.

Activity 5

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

For now, look at this short extract, but before you watch the clip, take a few minutes to consider how we listen to each other. The Headteacher refers to ‘the many ways that people can communicate that aren’t necessarily speaking;’ what do you think she means by this? Note down your thoughts now, then watch the video and try the activities which follow it.

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Video 3

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Transcript: Video 3

Rachel Hogarth Smith

The Listening Project – that was the start point for a lot of the practitioners’ development, because there was a focus on the very many ways human beings can communicate with one another that aren’t just about speaking. We took the definition of listening to be actually everything you notice about another person, and rather than just directly hearing what they’re saying.

Man

Oh, look at that paper in the sky.

Rachel Hogarth Smith

It created a working atmosphere where practitioners were really reflecting on what they saw the children doing, but reflecting on how they responded to that, as well. And that’s what the staff used as their own action plans for the work that they were focusing on that year. And we have taken that model for all of our school development plans ever since.

Looking back, we’ve got a much deeper understanding than we had when we were sort of first started with the Listening Project. And I would have said that we had a deep understanding then. But actually, that’s just grown. And we’ve unpicked it further and to try to sort of take it to a deeper level to understand what it is we’re doing with children when they’re here.

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Video 3

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How is listening described?

Discussion

Rachel Hogarth-Smith refers to ‘everything you notice about another person,’ rather than just directly hearing what they’re saying.

What effect did this project have on the ‘working atmosphere’ in the school?

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Discussion

The staff reflected on their own practice, how they responded to what they saw the children doing. Their own action plans focussed on the project.

Can you think of any barriers to listening to children and young people, and very young children in particular?

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5 Getting the adults involved

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

In the ‘Listening Project’ you have just been looking at, the focus was on finding ways for adults to listen effectively to children, in this case very young children. Creating good conditions for children and young people to take part in research involves creating an environment where people of all ages recognise their interdependence and diversity, and feel comfortable expressing their views alongside each other. Empowering children and young people as participants in research has the potential to redress some of the balance in terms of the way in which adults dominate the world of research. It means that children and young people have an opportunity to present their own understandings and interpretations in ways that they choose, rather than adults directing their participation in the research and interpreting ideas on their behalf.

It is important that adults think carefully about their own influence and how it impacts on the research if the research is to reflect children and young people’s perspectives.

In the final sections of this Session, you are going to think about adults’ involvement in research with children and young people. You may start to consider your own research project, what that might be and what role you might play in it, while keeping in mind the rights of the children and young people to be fully involved.

In this next clip, you are going to hear an interview in which a researcher, Alison, talks about a research project she carried out. There are some activities to follow, which you may like to look at first, so you can keep the questions in mind as you listen.

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Audio 1

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Transcript: Audio 1

Victoria

So the representation of children – is that something that has interested you in your career, Alison?

Alison

Absolutely. And I too was a practitioner myself but I had moved into researching the professional learning of teachers and educators. And I had moved into sort of looking at social media, and how social media had come into our lives, and how that might be harnessed for professional learning, and how it’s being used with children and young people in schools. As I started to explore the attitudes and use of the teachers and educators, I realised that actually we really needed to explore the world of the children and young people, and to bring that voice to the table. And talk about personal motivations, I mean, was part of my own curiosity of how to engage with this social media in a safe but really useful way, to have to harness it whilst also dealing with the ethicality of it. And so I did bring teachers and children from a wide range of ages together with educators through the Festival of Social Science into creating a social media charter. And, through that, we then used the social media charter with work with the charity and looking at widening participation with disadvantaged children, and working with them to explore how digital literacy could be developed, and to hear that children’s voice strongly and let the teachers and educators working with them to hear that voice.

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Audio 1

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Activity 6

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

What was the purpose of Alison’s research?

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How and why did she involve children and young people?

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What was the result of her research?

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Discussion

She wanted to examine the role of social media in schools and professional practice.

She realised that the voices of the children and young people were actually more important and that they should be ‘brought to the table’ along with the voices of the teachers and professionals.

They created a social media charter.

This research involved the voices of the children and young people but it had been initiated by an adult.

What do you think were the challenges Alison faced in conducting this research?

If you were carrying out a similar project, how would you ensure that the children and young people were active participants?

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6 Undertaking research with children and young people.

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

In the recording you just heard, Alison referred to ‘ethicality’; you will be looking in more depth at the ethical aspect of research later in this course. For now, you are going to think about issues that may arise for you, as a researcher, and how your own feelings and experiences may impact on your research. Throughout this Session you have been considering the importance of children’s and young people’s participation in research that affects their lives. Whether you are an adult or a young person conducting the research, you need to bear in mind that children and young people are not a homogeneous group; they bring their diverse views and backgrounds to research, and the same will be true for the adults working alongside them.

Sometimes, some groups of children and young people will have more in common with some adults with whom they share particular experiences than they will with their peers. For example, some children, young people and adults will all have experiences of being diabetic or growing up in poverty. At the same time, experiences of children and young people in these situations will, potentially, differ from those of adults, and for researchers these differences are worth investigating. You might like to look at the Our Voices website here, for more detail on this aspect of sharing experiences; there will be links to this website throughout this course and in particular in Session 4.

Activity 7

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

In this last recording for this Session, you will hear three adult researchers talking about the personal and emotional impact their research had. Before you start to listen, look at the questions below, and keep those in mind as you listen. Record your answers in the box as you listen to the recording, then click on ‘reveal discussion’ to see a summary of the key points raised.

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Audio 2

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Transcript: Audio 2

Victoria

You all talk very passionately about your work with children and young people. Liz, can you say something about the emotional impact the research has had upon you?

Liz

Yeah sure. It’s an interesting question and one that I’ve been reflecting on, and I was trying to think about whether pride was an emotion. And in working with children in a kind of very close way with them as writers, both at home and at school, I found myself becoming very proud of the work that they did, and how they talked about it. So they would show me pieces of writing that they had done at home and at school. So that was definitely a feeling that I had.

And then I found myself then, when I was listening to teachers talk about the children, quite challenged in lots of ways. I knew what the children said about themselves as writers at home and how they kind of felt that they were seen at school, and then what the teacher was doing was talking about the children and framing them as non-writers or daydreamers. But of course I knew the other side of that, so I knew what the children had told me about why they were presenting as a daydreamer in some kind of way.

So I was probably quite conflicted about whether I should say anything to the teacher about that, but I was definitely – I found myself probably feeling quite defensive of the children but knowing that wasn’t the place to share that with the teachers. And one of the children that I worked with showed me a piece of writing which he termed ‘viewpoint writing’, which was actually a piece of writing taken from his perspective sitting in the back of a car and he was looking out of a windscreen. So, it is a very technical drawing, so when I looked at the writing I imagined that he would say one thing about it. But actually what he said about it was that it was a piece of writing that he had chosen to do on the way to the hospital to visit a grandfather who was very ill. And so that obviously had an emotional impact on me, but it was definitely not the place for me to be sharing that emotion back, so it was his time and his space – so that idea that sometimes you have to keep your emotions in check when you are hearing some of the stories that children are sharing with you.

Victoria

So a mixture of pride and challenge. Alison, is that something that you similarly experienced?

Alison

Mm, absolutely. And I was thinking about the work I was doing when we were creating the social charter with the mixed-age range of children, straight through from eleven to their educators. And yes, feeling the pride of having created the safe space that children who were able to say things to their teachers, or teachers around them, that they hadn’t been able to say in other spaces because they were telling about the power of peer groups that they were using for support, but worried that their teachers, if they had spoken about them otherwise, would think that they had been cheating, but also the responsibility that you have as a researcher to make sure that that safe space is actually safe. Some of the things that Liz has been picking up on perhaps. And I think also what came with that, was sort of really paying attention to the conversations all the time that they were going on, to decide whether to intervene or how to manage those.

And this particularly fed into the work with the disadvantaged children, which we were working on a much larger scale, and feeling very frustrated when I wasn’t able to create those sort of same safe spaces with working with ninety children of the same age group but coming from different schools. There was some anger in the room. There was all sorts of issues being raised, and I sort of was really conflicted because the teacher in me, the educator in me, wanted to know those children, wanted to know how I should have been handling them, that perhaps this wasn’t the right thing to be talking about and researching just now, and looking to their tutors and mentors as to how to manage that. And working with them over time, that sort of eased as I managed to be able to get to know the tutors and mentors. But it was that conflict between teacher and researcher.

Victoria

So a conflict of identities – is that something that resonates with your work, Martin?

Martin

It certainly does. I mean, a lot of my research has been around quite sensitive issues around identity, care and relationships. And I think if you are researching those issues with anybody, your own experiences inevitably come into play, your own emotional experiences. But if you are interviewing young people, then it inevitably calls up memories of your own childhood and youth, and can trigger quite powerful emotions. At the same time, as Alison was saying, I think there are particular issues if you are researching socially disadvantaged or emotionally damaged children and young people, I think I found it difficult at times not to be overwhelmed by sadness in the interview situation by some of the experiences that they are sharing in interviews.

But I am also interested in this issue as a man researching other men. I think men are still quite conditioned to suppress their emotions in professional settings, including research settings, or maybe to squeeze the emotional element out of the work and put it to one side. And I think I have to work quite hard to acknowledge what’s going on for me emotionally. I think you can’t escape emotion when you are researching children and young people. The question is what you do with it. And I think it is really important to have a support structure so that you can reflect on those experiences with your fellow researchers, and to be part of a team. And I think that’s what makes good research with children and young people.

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Audio 2

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As an adult, can you think of any issues raised in this audio that you have had to face personally in your work with children and young people, or in your daily life?

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As a young person, are there any issues raised by these researchers that you have had to face when working with an adult, or in your daily life?

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Discussion

It can be difficult not to get emotionally involved in the lives of the people you are researching with.

People may share personal information. It’s important to have a ‘safe space’ for people to talk.

Some issues raised during a research project may be contentious or cause conflict.

Adults may find their personal experiences impact on the way they research the experiences of children and young people.

7 Summary of Session 1

The Open University — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:22:30 GMT

Throughout this Session, you have been making notes and completing various activities. Anything you have written into the online boxes will be saved, so you can return to these at any time. You may prefer to keep a separate notebook, either digital or paper; take some time, now, to check that all your notes are up-to-date and organised, and to decide which is your preferred way of note-taking. Have another look back at any sections that you would like to re-visit or to work further on.

Finally, reflect on your own background and motivation to research, and put your ideas in the boxes below:

Activity 8

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes.

Why is it important to include Children and Young People in research about their lives?

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What age group will you be conducting research with?

Before you work through Session 2, make a note of any particular challenges and opportunities you think you will encounter in your chosen age-group.

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Now get started with Session 2.