The-problem-with-researching-with-children.edited-CS-1

Following the United Nations Rights of the Child 1989 adults woke up to the fact that children are entitled to present their own view about their lives; but we argue that despite a proli

But what if they don’t ask the right questions? Problems of power and control in

researching with children

Carla Solvason* and Johanna Cliffe**

*University of Worcester; **The Learning Institute, Cornwall

In previous work we discussed ‘voice’ in collaborative research (Solvason, Cliffe and Snowden, 2017) looking at how ideas of power and ownership are negotiated and an authentic voice found Here we move into the even more complex arena of collaborative research with children Following the United Nations Rights of the Child (1989) adults woke up to the fact that children are entitled to present their own view about their lives; but we argue that despite a proliferation of research projects focusing on ‘the child’s voice’ (for example Bateman, 2017, Flückiger, Dunn and Stinson, 2018) we rarely see young children’s views at all Instead we see children's thoughts produced within prescribed parameters and filtered through the lens of adults Although we may get somewhere near listening to and understanding young children’s interpretations of their experience, the adult and child context remain worlds apart and ‘true’ meaning remains perspectival and lost in translation

The problem

To start with, most teachers in the primary years have a touch of the control freak – as primary teachers, we are allowed to say it We are not suggesting this is entirely bad, we are just used to keeping things (including children) on track, in line, ordered Disorder does not sit comfortably with

us In our experience, early years practitioners (0-7) are used to ‘going with the flow’ a little more The reins can be looser whilst children make choices and explore But explore what? Explore an environment carefully planned by the practitioner ‘Choices’ children make are within restrictions that adults plan and offer Gallagher (2008: 25) explains that “child-adult relations are often

characterised by domination and subordination.” That is simply how it is, adults make decisions and children comply He adds, “Even in the absence of coercion, children may rely upon cues from adults whom they trust” (2008: 16) Children are used to adults being in control

Consider it this way, the adult arranges a trip to the beach, the child gets excited about the sea but would not have a clue how to get there (hot air balloon?) and certainly wouldn’t know to bring a towel To expect young children to step outside their subordinate role and take on the responsibility

of ‘researcher’ is as feasible as allowing them to take the wheel and drive to the destination

themselves They have neither knowledge nor experience of the necessary skills So James’ (2004: 158) suggestion that we abandon stereotypes of sage adult and inexperienced child and instead “see wisdom and uncertainty shared among people of varying ages and experience” is all very well, but

who is responsible for collating said wisdom? Nonetheless, whilst child led research may be

unfeasible with the very young, that should not prevent genuine endeavours to hear their unique perspective (Mukherji & Albon, 2010) This requires redressing power imbalances in early years settings to create an environment where ideas are not just listened to but genuinely valued

The need for ethical and sensitive practice in research involving children goes without saying

(Solvason 2016, 2017 and 2018) Care and respect should be evident and all processes diligently followed (British Educational Research Association, 2018) Here we move beyond ideas of consent or assent to seeing children become excited about making their own voyages of research discovery

Knowledge and power

Many are uncomfortable with the notion of classrooms as political spaces in the way knowledge and power subtly (sometimes not so subtly) operate, or to acknowledge that politics impacts on and controls children’s learning and their agency to act upon their world (Dahlberg and Moss 2005) Knowledge, in terms of our curricula is officially sanctioned and children are expected to re-tread and re-discover learning pathways that lead to what is already known (Cliffe and Solvason 2016) What begins with policy makers and becomes endorsed by educators is a comfortable credence to

Platonian discourses of recognition Essentially we are encouraged to mould children’s thinking and ideas into versions of Sameness, under the guise that developing knowledge must equate to reaching developmental benchmarks and nationally set criteria Children are assessed, labelled and

pigeonholed by the knowledge they possess, often overlooking the quality and nature of that

knowledge in favour of the social and economic power it brings, individually and at societal level (Urban, 2015; Moss,2014; Campbell-Barr and Nygard, 2014)

There is a certain safety and comfortableness to Sameness (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Olsson, 2009) If children are ‘learning’, we are fulfilling our role to imbue them with the knowledge needed

as fully functioning adults and ‘good citizens’ Sameness appeals to our sense of order, need for control and, in the busy, stressful life of the teacher, is easy to plan for and fulfils Ofsted

requirements However, this one-size-fits-all approach to knowledge and learning does not sit comfortably with our understanding of how children learn and develop, nor does it acknowledge and value the voice of children within day-to-day practice

What is promoted in this vision of learning is implicit understanding that there are right/wrong ways

of learning and knowing, a binary judgement of good/bad, serving to govern and regulate children’s thinking, actions and agency (Deleuze 1994) In this reality, as attested by Cliffe and Solvason (2016) and international studies such as Kuby (2012) and Hargraves (2014), children’s random,

unpredictable connections and ideas are often considered ‘off-task’ or ‘wrong’ The ‘Otherness’ of the child’s voice is re-directed to more acceptable pathways, or made to function as ‘Same’; either way we silence that voice rather than listen and honour it In doing so we cheat both the child and ourselves of valuable learning experiences We must ask how we can allow children more freedom to present their ideas and ensure we genuinely hear and value them, without allowing ourselves to become stuck within fixed and binary positions

The Deleuzio-Guattarian (1987) notion of rhizonalysis offers an alternative that resists binary

right/wrong judgements (Cliffe and Solvason, 2016) Founded on the metaphorical structure of the rhizome, rhizoanalysis affords fresh insights into how we understand and accommodate the

complexity and Otherness of children’s thinking and ideas Within this process all learning

connections are considered valid and function simultaneously, allowing for multiple pathways to meaning to become possible Through rhizoanalysis children’s experiences are viewed like an

interconnected web, with sense and meaning emerging in relationships between each experience - a

theory supported by research into neuroconstructivist approaches (Sirois et al., 2008, Westermann

et al., 2010) Instead of attempting to curtail the uniqueness, depth and diversity of children’s

connections into what we expect and what makes sense to us through adult rationality, rhizoanalysis challenges us to ask instead ‘How does this work?’ and ‘What else might be happening here?’ ‘What new thought does this make it possible to think?’ Resisting the temptation to become fixated on

what something is we open the door to what it might make possible This not only provides children

with a voice but it supports the notion of children as true partners in their learning and that

purposeful knowledge and understanding is a process of negotiated sense and meaning

Sellers (2009, p.149) stated that adults “…cannot understand the world as children understand it…we need children to explain their perspectives to us” whilst Grieshebar and McArdle (2010) suggest children never really need adults in order to learn In practice, rather than the balance of power

shifting from powerful teacher/educator to powerful child within policy, it still fluctuates uneasily somewhere between the two However, there is much to be said for Freire's (1999) observation that until educators and children meet together as both learner and teacher neither will realise their full potential No, children are not competent researchers, but they are the experts in their own lives

Creating a culture of exploration

For children to confidently share their ideas we need to recognise issues of power and policy within classrooms Asking children our own questions does not provide opportunity for them to discuss issues that are most pertinent to them So change must happen at the heart of the setting culture, not simply in our choice of research method Waller and Bitou (2011: 12) suggest “There may be an assumption that the tools themselves somehow automatically enable participation The key message from literature is that it is research design and relationships that confer real participation and

engagement”; so not a particular data collection method but negotiation of power, respect and the development of shared expectations Ideas of how to collect data are shaped by our views of

children's competence, emerging from our values about childhood (McDowall Clark, 2016)

Before we can hear what they have to say, children must believe they can formulate their own questions and make their own decisions; Reggio Emilia philosophy provides sound values on which to build such an approach The difference between this and other national and international

approaches, is that practitioners no longer take the role of benefactor and dispenser of knowledge Instead, children and adults are seen as fellow researchers, discovering new knowledge side-by-side

as teachers ask ‘how can we find this out?’ Rinaldi, a Reggio Emilia spokeswoman, stresses the

importance of research as a day-to-day tool within educational environments rather than a field reserved for academics She stresses that it is time for research to “come out of the scientific

laboratories, thus ceasing to be a privilege of the few to become the stance, the attitude with which teachers approach the sense and meaning of life” (Rinaldi 2005: 148) Teachers don’t hold

‘answers’ about life any more than nurses, dentists or librarians do Their role is not to give answers, but to provide children with skills to find out for themselves

How do we involve all children?

As a research supervisor it is common to see trainee practitioners' research that consults all adults within the setting, then throws in a smattering of children’s views, “more for decoration than

illumination” (Roberts, 2017: 143) Often the reasoning is that children cannot really understand the

topic, despite the fact that children usually are at the receiving end of the process under scrutiny No, they will not understand the range of approaches to phonics or which are most effective, but they will know which sound activities they enjoy and which they do not Children may not understand different approaches to observation and assessment, but wouldn’t it be interesting to compare children’s and teachers' perceptions of what is actually learnt during an activity?

Articles 12 & 13 of the United Nations Rights of the Child (UNICEF, undated) state that children’s

views should be respected and we should provide them with ways to express those views; authors such as Clark, Kjorholt and Moss (2005) provide useful tools to do that But Dockett et al (2009) stress that selecting a representative sample is not enough They say “Children have diverse

perspectives, experiences and understandings Choosing to involve some in research and not others can mean this diversity is neither recognised nor respected” (Dockett et al, 2009: 289) So perhaps it

is time to rethink the concept of the representative sample

Hart (1995) identifies eight levels of research when working with children Most research starts somewhere around tokenism and stops at consultation, where we elicit the views of the child Rarely are decisions about research made with children, let alone initiated by children Wonderful as the

Mosaic Approach is (Clark, Kjorholt and Moss, 2005) it is designed as a tool for adults to elicit what they want to find out, about topics they have identified It relies upon adults making the ultimate interpretation Yet examples from published research have found that children have very different perceptions of what, exactly, their data (artwork for example) means, compared to adult

interpretations (Punch 2002; Merewether and Fleet, 2014; Palaiologou, 2013) But how is it possible

to achieve anything with research without a clearly prescribed direction to take?

Be prepared for mess

It is claimed that Albert Einstein said “If we knew what it was we were doing it would not be called research, would it?” I hope it is true, but am not wholly certain of the rigour of BrainyQuotes.com It

is something I like to use with students to assure them there is no designated path for research - we follow where it leads; to reassure them that in a culture of educational binaries of right and wrong,

of memorising correct answers, sometimes it is okay not to know McNiff (2016: 16) compares all research to stepping off a cliff, you have no idea where you will land And if children are involved then the risk of a detour increases tenfold But is that such a bad thing? Gallacher and Gallagher (2008) found some of their most fascinating insights came when children sabotaged their planned data collection techniques

So we return to ideas of power and control If we allow children to take an active role in a research project it is unlikely that initial goals will be met (Dona, 2006) No matter how ‘meticulously planned and carefully applied’ (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008: 503) research approaches are, all best

intentions are likely to be turned inside out if children take the reins The more we try to rationalise a certain approach toward researching with children, the more absurd it seems Children are

unpredictable, impulsive, unrestrained, everything that bucks against carefully prescribed steps to successful research There is no clear start and end point, no clear path Gollop (2000) reminds me that we do not know what children know and do not Often they don’t even know So we need to be more ‘early years’ in our approach to research with children, and learn, difficult as it may be, to ‘go with the flow.’

If we are endeavouring to understand children then we should be a little bit more like them -

embrace messiness and playfulness, be genuinely nạve We should empower children and nurture their research skills by being alongside them as they discover, exploring with them Gallacher and Gallagher (2008: 510-511) argue that we should embrace the childlike position of researching and enjoy its multitudinous possibilities They say:

“In contrast to the dominant image of the academic as expert… For us, research is

fundamentally a process of muddling through, sometimes feeling lost and out of place, asking stupid questions, being corrected and having our preconceptions destroyed In this way, we cannot deny our incompetence and vulnerabilities: our immaturity And we do not want to.”

Research with children is messy and problematic, but also it has no limitations Let us hope more of

us are brave enough to explore it

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