How do we meaningfully engage children in research?

What does it mean to meaningfully engage children in research? This is a question that has come up time and time again in recent decades as the recognition of, and interest in, children’s rights, identities and lived experiences have expanded. Over the past century, we’ve witnessed a notable shift: from the near absence of children’s presence in research, to research about children, then with children, and increasingly research by children. This evolution reflects a growing acknowledgement of children as whole, complex and capable individuals – agents with rich inner lives and perspectives that deserve to be explored and taken seriously. It also, I propose, reflects an effort to repair the systemic marginalisation and devaluation of children – in research and social systems more broadly – referred to as ‘childism’.[1]

Scholars of critical childhood studies, Allison James and Alan Prout, explain the ways in which children have been historically marginalised due to deeply entrenched beliefs of childhood as a time of preparation for adulthood and thus regarding children as social ‘becomings’ rather than social ‘beings’ in their own right (James & Prout, 1997; Qvotrup, 1985). Traditional ‘adultist’ views of children as vulnerable, uninformed or incompetent have consequently meant that they have been largely excluded from participating in important research about their own lives (Canosa, Graham & Wilson, 2019). Indeed, it was only in 1989 with the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCRC) that children were legally granted the ‘right to be heard’ (Article 12).

Since the establishment of the UNCRC over thirty years ago, we have seen increased efforts towards involving children in collaborative, advisory and even, in some cases, lead capacities (Lee et al., 2022). Yet, despite well-intentioned efforts, the concern remains that children’s participation in research is often limited or tokenistic and injustices against children as rights- and knowledge-holders persist (McMellon and Tisdall, 2020; Zeldin et al., 2000). For instance, Liebenberg et al. (2020) describe how children’s roles in analysis, report writing and dissemination are often limited, while others report challenges when seeking to present children’s views to adult decision-makers – including the strong potential for those views to be overlooked (McMellon & Tisdall, 2020; Natil, 2021; Tisdall & Cuevas-Parra, 2021). Percy-Smith (2010) captures this as the “limitations of voice as a meaningful participatory exercise” (p. 108). This leaves us as educators and researchers to continue grappling with the question of how to meaningfully engage children in research and repair the ways they have thus far been marginalised, excluded, tokenised, undervalued and harmed through adultist research norms.

Given the critiques of various participatory approaches and their susceptibility to perpetuating adultist injustices against children, I propose that we need to go beyond merely voice as the participatory mechanism. What is needed is far more comprehensive and, I argue, reparative research methods in which children are not only involved in the research but lead the research: child-led research methods. This reframing shifts children from being the subjects of study (the ones being researched on) to being the objects of study (the ones leading the research). In other words, dismantling and repairing adultist research norms by regarding children as agentive beings who have the capacity to be researchers in their own right. Decentring the nexus of knowledge production as an exclusively adult domain, child-led research reflects a repair praxis that strives to democratise knowledge production by redefining who holds the authority to produce knowledge and, therefore, hold influence and drive change.

As such, the central question we began with: “what does it mean to meaningfully engage children in research?” could be responded to with, “by engaging them as researchers.”

This, however, is by no means the only answer, nor a complete one. But it does open up a whole new line of inquiry, one I put forward to you as fellow educators, researchers and practitioners:

What does it mean to meaningfully engage children as researchers?

Revitalising the somewhat tired initial question, this reframing sparks an exciting field for us to explore, questions I too hope to explore in my project, such as:

• How do we support and build children’s capacity to be researchers?
• What do children see as the purpose of research?
• What is the role of the adult/ institutional researcher in working with children as researchers?
• How do different fields of research need to develop in order to justly include children as researchers?
• What skills, capacities and behaviours do we as adult/ institutional researchers need to develop in order to support children as researchers?
• Which research methods are appropriate and accessible for children to use? How can existing methods be adapted? What new methods emerge from children as researchers?
• How can children analyse their research findings? How can existing practices be developed or new practices be created for children’s analysis?
• What reporting methods do children use to share their findings?
• What findings do children come to? How do these differ from adult findings on similar issues?
• What can we learn from children as researchers?

The last question is particularly important. It not only offers immense potential for new knowledge, but also for reparative justice. Childism scholar, John Wall, puts forward the notion that childhoods provide a lens or ‘microscope’ through which to examine the world (Wall, 2022). A childist lens enables us to “critique the deeply engrained adultism that pervades scholarship and societies and reconstructing more age-inclusive research and social imaginations” (Wall, 2022, p. 257). In the same way that feminism and anti-racism aim to make social structures more just for all people, so too does childism strive to use the lens of childhood as a way for creating a more just world not only for children, but people of all ages (Elkins, 2013). Child-led research therefore has a critical, reparative role to play in how we understand, imagine and create more just futures for all.

[1] Similar to feminism or anti-racism, childism focuses on the prejudice and discrimination against children in society, and seeks to dismantle and reconstruct (repair) power structures to include their rights and voices (Wall, 2022).

References

Canosa, A., Graham, A., & Wilson, E. (2020). Growing up in a tourist destination: developing an environmental sensitivity. Environmental Education Research, 26(7), 1027–1042. https://doi-org/10.1080/13504622.2020.1768224

Elkins, K. G. (2013). Biblical studies and childhood studies: A fertile, interdisciplinary space for feminists. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 29(2), 146–153.

James, A. & Prout, A. (1997). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. (2nd ed.). Falmer.

Lee, L. M., Wright, L. H. V., Machado, C., Niyogi, O., Singh, P., Shields, S., & Hope, K. (2022). Online Intergenerational Participatory Research: Ingredients for Meaningful Relationships and Participation. Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 3(3, Youth-themed Special Issue). https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.38764

McMellon, C., & Tisdall, E. K. M. (2020). Children and young people’s participation rights: Looking backwards and moving forwards. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 28(1), 157–182.

Natil, I. (2021). Youth civic engagement and local peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa: Prospects and challenges for community development. Routledge.

Percy-Smith, B. (2010). Councils, consultations, and community: Rethinking the spaces for children and young people’s participation. Children’s Geographies, 8(2), 107–122.

Qvotrup, J. (1985). Placing children in the division of labour. In Chase, P. & Collins, R. (Eds.), Family and Economy in Modern Society (pp. 129–145). Palgrave.

Tisdall, E. K. M., & Cuevas-Parra, P. (2021). Beyond the familiar challenges for children and young people’s participation rights: the potential of activism. The International Journal of Human Rights, 26(5), 792–810. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2021.1968377

Torre, M. (2009). Critical participatory action research map. Retrieved from: http://www.publicscienceproject.org/files/2013/04/PAR-Map.pdf

United Nations. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Treaty Series, 1577, 3. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

Wall, J. (2022). From childhood studies to childism: Reconstructing the scholarly and social imaginations. Children’s Geographies, 20(3), 257–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1668912