Ethical Research Involving Children

(Co)-Researching with children.

Fleet, A., & Harcourt, D. (2018). (Co)-Researching with children. In M. Fleer & B. van Oers (Eds.), International Handbook of Early Childhood Education (pp. 165-201). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. ISBN: 978-94-024-0925-3

Chapter abstract:
This chapter offers a collaborative dialogue between academics and practitioners who have given consideration to the literature, the challenges and illustrations from practice in order to examine the notion of child voice in research. It illuminates the researcher-child relationship with an accent on hearing children’s standpoints through the lens of interested and invested adults. These considerations are intended as further provocations to the growing research base that is attentive to foregrounding children’s perspectives. While the chapter is not co-authored by children, it has been constructed so as to respect children’s voices and to task the research community to further deliberate the complexity of issues involved when positioning research practice as ‘researching with children’. Organised in several sections, the chapter explores ethical issues of assent and/or consent from children, examines issues in relation to children in a range of age cohorts and proposes a number of ways forward for this particular conversation using practice-based strategies such as pedagogical documentation and clarification of language use. These broad concepts are scrutinised through a conversation between examples of cooperation, collaboration and co-research, in an attempt to clarify the ongoing perplexity in this research terrain.

Abstract reproduced with permission © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2018.