Children and Young People as Knowledge Producers |
Session Title: | Children and Young People as Knowledge Producers | ||
Session Affiliation: | Developing Areas Research Group Geographies of Children, Youth & Families Research Group | ||
Session Organiser(s): | Gina Porter (Durham University) Kate Hampshire (Durham University) Janet G. Townsend (Newcastle University) | ||
Session Abstract: | The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child represented a particularly important way-mark for child-centred studies because it affirmed children’s rights to participation: the right to give and receive information, rights of association and rights to participation in cultural life. Since then the potential for young people to participate in a range of other communication and advocacy activities, including a more proactive role in participatory research, has been promoted with growing determination by many child-focused NGOs. Concepts of children’s rights and empowerment are central to these efforts. Save the Children’s briefing paper (2000) on research, monitoring and evaluation with children and young people puts the emphasis firmly on partnership with children – the importance of collaborative work between children and adults, but also on allowing children to plan and carry out their own research. However, despite the widespread promotion of children’s voices by activists and policy makers in recent years, the potential for young people’s knowledge to impact on adult agendas and policy arenas remains less than certain. For academics, working with children as research partners [as opposed to research subjects] is by no means beyond dispute. An exciting but arguably perilous enterprise, it brings to the fore a range of debates around power relations, ethics, capacities and competencies [of all concerned]. Alison James (2007) asks whether research carried out by children necessarily represents a more accurate or authentic account of children’s issues: her warning about the dangers of ethnographic ventriloquism may be salutary. | ||
Session: 1 | Children and Young People as Knowledge Producers 1 | ||
Session 1 Chair: | Janet G. Townsend ( Newcastle University) Gina Porter (Durham University) | ||
Paper 1 | |||
Title: | “Anthropology at home”: Lessons from children doing research among children in Malawi | ||
Author(s): | Alister Munthali (University of Malawi) Elsbeth Robson (Brunel University & University of Malawi) Kate Hampshire (Durham University) Gina Porter (Durham University) | ||
Presenter: | Alister Munthali (University of Malawi) Elsbeth Robson (Brunel University) Kate Hampshire (Durham University) Gina Porter (Durham University) | ||
Abstract: | In the Child Mobility and Transport project, implemented in Malawi (as well as Ghana and South Africa), children (aged 14-18) were recruited as researchers, to conduct research among their fellow children, of a similar age and living in the same neighbourhoods. This paper explores the experiences of child researchers in the collection and analysis of data and the dissemination of findings. While a small handful had some negative experiences (unwelcome reactions and lack of support from community members), the experiences of the overwhelming majority were very positive. With appropriate training and support supervision, provided by adult researchers and teachers, the children were able to generate reliable data from their communities and relay relevant information to policy-makers. Some of the information generated by the child researchers could not be collected by adults, since it relied on the researchers sharing a common set of identities and experiences with those being researched. Child researchers were also able to reflect usefully on their own experiences, engaging in auto-ethnography. This raises important issues about the value of ‘insider’ research, or ‘anthropology at home’, where home refers to shared experiences and processes of identification and where age, gender, space and life events constitute ‘homeness’. Our study demonstrates that with appropriate support, children can be active researchers, can reflect critically on their findings, and can effectively participate in decision-making processes. | ||
Paper 2 | |||
Title: | Remoteness, Mobility and Access: Issues related to Children’s Participation in Education | ||
Author(s): | Sugata Mitra (Newcastle University) Suneeta Kulkarni (Newcastle University) | ||
Presenter: | Sugata Mitra (Newcastle University) | ||
Abstract: | The HiW [Hole in the Wall] experiments showed that, given the facilities, children from disadvantaged and remote settings can learn to use the computer and access internet resources. This paper attempts to apply these findings to formal, underprivileged school systems in Hyderabad, India. Issues of remoteness and mobility expand to go beyond geographical distance and transport facilities and encompass economic and social remoteness leading to restricted use of even the limited resources available. The initial work raises several questions which will be studied as part of the current project. The usage of technology in SOLEs [Self Organized Learning Environments], and learning strategies employed by children are being studied to help understand how these resources could facilitate academic learning. In the process the inter-relationship between remoteness, mobility and access emerge as key issues. Other related issues re gender and ownership of the learning environment. Potential implications of these issues are raised. | ||
Paper 3 | |||
Title: | The mobile phone = bike shed | ||
Author(s): | Emma Bond (University Campus of Suffolk, Ipswich / University of Essex) | ||
Presenter: | Emma Bond (University Campus of Suffolk, Ipswich / University of Essex) | ||
Abstract: | Part of a wider qualitative research study which investigates children’s perceptions of risk and mobile phones in their everyday lives, this paper explores the role of the mobile phone in young people’s construction of identity as gendered, sexual beings. This finding is of additional interest methodologically as it demonstrates the effectiveness of the child centred approach adopted and the use of unstructured focus groups with established self-selected friendship groups which facilitated the discussions of the young people’s thoughts, feelings and experiences of mobile phones in their own terms. It was through this method that a less anticipated research theme emerged - relating to their developing sexuality and sexual identity - and one which, it could be argued, would not have been possible through another method. This paper considers children, mobile phones and sexuality and examines contemporary discourses of childhood, culture and sexuality in post modernity to suggest that the mobile phone is central to understanding children’s social networks, sexuality and reflexivity in their construction of self-identity. The study illustrates the role of mobile phone technology in children’s everyday lives and the blurring of traditional public/private boundaries; adult/child(hood) boundaries and challenges previously defined ideas of public space as adult space with the notion of independent space in the individualisation process associated with late modernity. It is suggested that the mobile phone provides a space in contemporary children’s lives for developing their sexuality, the sharing of and exploration of sexual material and indeed each other’s bodies largely concealed from the adult world. | ||
Paper 4 | |||
Title: | Children's Voices in Urban Resilience: Understanding children and young people's knowledge and agency in the flood recovery process | ||
Author(s): | Marion Walker (Lancaster University) Rebecca Sims (Lancaster University) Kate Burningham (University of Surrey) Will Medd (Lancaster University) Jo Moran-Ellis (University of Surrey) Sue Tapsell (Middlesex University) | ||
Presenter: | Marion Walker and Rebecca Sims (Lancaster University) | ||
Abstract: | Existing evaluations of flood recovery, and 'natural hazards' response generally, take little account of children/young people as knowledge producers. This is true of a study involving some of the authors (Medd, Sims) that builds an archive of adult experiences of flood recovery in Hull. That study highlights the impacts of flood recovery on children, but neglects children's own voice in the archive, nor to analyse children's own agency in flood resilience. This paper presents early findings from a complementary project funded by the ESRC, Hull City Council and the Environment Agency which uses participatory methods (including story boards, group work and interviews) to enable children to articulate their experiences of flood recovery. The project redresses the previous study's focus on adults by contributing children's knowledge to the archive and analyzing children's active agency in building future resilience. We draw on research that recognises the role of children and young people as social actors in their own right who can articulate their experiences and potentially shape responses from relevant agencies and adults. The paper will identify what children's knowledge tells us about the flood recovery process, examine what we can learn from that knowledge about their role in the flood recovery process, | ||
Paper 5 | |||
Title: | The role of emotion in empowering young people through participation | ||
Author(s): | Barbara Van Wijnendaele (Brunel University) | ||
Presenter: | Barbara Van Wijnendaele (Brunel University) | ||
Abstract: | I focus on participatory action research with young people in in Mejicanos, a poor and violent municipality of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. Through PAR we aimed at empowering young people, in terms of increasing self-esteem, personal change in consciousness, capacity building, democratic decision-making, building alliances and confidence between young people, the re-negotiation of social behavior and facilitating young people’s participation in their communities. I engaged young people in reflecting on the empowering impact of action research focusing on the opportunities that PAR offers for personal and social transformation? Recently there has been a growing concern about children’s geographies not being engaged sufficiently in critical theorising and there is a growing concern about the existing trend towards empiricism (Matthews 2005, Horton and Kraftl 2005). For young people’s geographies to be useful and empowering they have to be rigorously theorised and understanding young people’s empowerment and participation should relate to broader understandings of power. Based on three years of participant observation, I argue that, in participatory literature and practice, one has not paid sufficient attention to the ‘politics’ of emotion. In order to make full use of the empowering potential of participatory processes, one should consider what role emotions play in empowerment and how they can be worked with. Relating to broader theories of emotion is useful to give emotions a proper place in participation and empowerment. |
Children and Young People as Knowledge Producers, 2 | |||
Chair: | Kate Hampshire (Durham University) | ||
Paper 1 | |||
Title: | Researching children and young people .... and collaborative research with children. Why is nothing as simple as it looks? | ||
Author(s): | Liz Todd (Newcastle University) | ||
Presenter: | Liz Todd (Newcastle University) Janet Townsend (Newcastle University) | ||
Abstract: | This paper considers what is problematic in child ‘voice’ research and looks for ways to conceptualise perspectives of children and young people, and their involvement in research. Over the last 10 years there has been more and more research incorporating child views and, more recently, research where children help to carry out the research. For a time it has seemed enough to just ‘ask’ children and young people, usually through interviews or focus groups. There is an absence of methodological critique in the large proportion of the published reports of such research. That research is a contested and constructed site muddies any ‘taking voice at face value’ . So how are we to foreground under-represented voices, if motivated by social justice concerns? This paper considers some of the main problems with ‘voice research: a lack of critical engagement with what counts for knowledge or with different kinds of knowledge; an uncritical reifying of child voices; lack of recognition of the cultural and economic capital gains for researchers through publishing voice research; and an absence of justification of any ‘asking children’ in either methodological or theoretical grounds. The neo-liberal education context in which voice research and practice takes place risks co-opting children further into ‘responsibilisation’ and ‘consumerism . Most conceptual tools to assist voice research – such as linear models of the involvement of children – fails to engage with such critique and risks disempowering children even further. This paper offers a number of ways to think about voice research that – thankfully for those of us committed to such approaches - enable it to continue. | ||
Paper 2 | |||
Title: | Through the eyes of youth: children as writers | ||
Author(s): | Ghanaian Young Researcher [if possible] Marinke van Riet (International Forum for Rural Transport and Development) Albert Abane (Cape Coast University, Ghana) Kate Hampshire (Durham University) Gina Porter (Durham University) | ||
Presenter: | Ghanaian Young Researcher [if possible] Marinke van Riet (International Forum for Rural Transport and Development) Albert Abane (Cape Coast University, Ghana) Gina Porter (Durham University) | ||
Abstract: | In October 2008, 19 young researchers from Ghana, Malawi and South Africa came together at a workshop in Ghana with young and adult co-researchers from the three countries and UK. The main aim of the young researchers at the workshop was to review the research they and their peers [70 young researchers in total] had conducted in a study of child mobility [www.dur.ac.uk/child.mobility] and to write the first draft of a booklet about their research methods and findings, for circulation to schools and other relevant institutions. This paper reflects on the process of producing that work, including young researcher/adult researcher negotiation and the broader ethical issues raised by the project. | ||
Paper 3 | |||
Title: | Learning from children about their lives: producing individual and collective accounts | ||
Author(s): | Nicola Ansell (Brunel University) | ||
Presenter: | Nicola Ansell (Brunel University) | ||
Abstract: | The methods of participatory research are widely celebrated as suitable ways to encourage young people to speak openly about their lives in unthreatening contexts, to the point where their ethics and efficacy are seldom questioned. In 2007/8 we undertook research, designed from this premise, in Malawi and Lesotho, exploring the livelihoods of young people who were, to greater or lesser degrees, affected by the AIDS pandemic. However, while participatory methods proved an effective means for enabling young people to tell us about some general aspects of their lives, it proved difficult to encourage them to share directly their personal experiences in group contexts. It was necessary to supplement collective participatory research with more individualised research methods, including individual interviews, in order to gain insight into the empirical situations of children living in different personal circumstances. This experience not only points to the applicability of different methodological approaches for answering different types of research questions, but the use of contrasting approaches highlighted the very different kinds of knowledges that they produce. While the participatory research facilitated the development of collective knowledge and understanding, this often conflicted with the individual stories we were told in more private circumstances. Diagramming methods, for instance, facilitated the production of dire stories about what happens to children when their parents die: yet in many cases the children engaged in producing these accounts had very positive stories to tell about their own lives as orphans. These contradictions present us with dilemmas in relation to the weight we give to different aspects of the research and how we interpret different voices. Our paper explores the challenges posed for the participatory research paradigm, and proposes ways of reconciling the conflicting perspectives. | ||
Paper 4 | |||
Title: | Producing a participatory video with young people and other community actors | ||
Author(s): | Matej Blazek (University of Dundee) | ||
Presenter: | Matej Blazek (University of Dundee) | ||
Abstract: | The paper captures the process of production of a participatory video with young people from the Petržalka district of Bratislava, the Slovak capital. The video-as-a-product served three purposes – as a part of my PhD research on the past and present geographies of childhood of the area, as an account of the young people to be presented at an international meeting organized by the European Playwork Association in Liverpool, and as an outcome of the work of the local Community Centre (through which the co-operation has been established). The video-as-a-product is not the main theme of the paper, however. Three other issues are at the centre of discussion apart from the final video:
| ||
Paper 5 | |||
Title: | Accessing home: Using the internet to research young men | ||
Author(s): | Akile Ahmet (Goldsmiths, University of London) | ||
Presenter: | Akile Ahmet (Goldsmiths, University of London) | ||
Abstract: | Valentine and Holloway (2002) have demonstrated the growing use of the internet and the important role of computers to the lives of young people and children. Through my work on young men of mixed race living and studying in Tower Hamlets in East London, I adopted a multi method approach to my research which was informed by Participatory Action Research where I used one to one interviews, written electronic diaries and photo voice. The use of written electronic diaries was a method which allowed for the young men in my research to have the opportunity to construct their own narratives in their own time within their own personal spaces. This I argue allowed for a more in-depth approach beyond the moment of the interview and further time for reflection by the young men. I was able through my research to capture ‘moments’ in the lives of the young men. Although there were limitations to my methods, it is important that alternative approaches to research be considered when working with children and young people. This paper seeks to address the use of a multi method approach to research and the importance of considering alternative qualitative methods beyond the interview and focus group. |