The challenges of participatory research with 'tech-savvy' youth

This paper focuses on participatory research and how it can be understood and employed when researching children and youth. The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretically and empirically grounded discussion of participatory research methodologies with respect to investigating the dynamic and evolving phenomenon of young people growing up in networked societies. Initially, we review the nature of participatory research and how other researchers have endeavoured to involve young people (children and youth) in their research projects. Our review of these approaches aims to elucidate what we see as recurring and emerging issues with respect to the methodological design of involving young people as co-researchers. In the light of these issues and in keeping with our aim, we offer a case study of our own research project that seeks to understand the ways in which high school students use new media and network ICT systems (Internet, mobile phone applications, social networking sites) to construct identities, form social relations, and engage in creative practices as part of their everyday lives. The article concludes by offering an assessment of our tripartite model of participatory research that may benefit other researchers who share a similar interest in youth and new media

Childhood and the politics of scale: Descaling children's geographies?

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 SAGE Publications.The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in the geographies of children's lives, and particularly in engaging the voices and activities of young people in geographical research. Much of this growing body of scholarship is characterized by a very parochial locus of interest — the neighbourhood, playground, shopping mall or journey to school. In this paper I explore some of the roots of children's geographies' preoccupation with the micro-scale and argue that it limits the relevance of research, both politically and to other areas of geography. In order to widen the scope of children's geographies, some scholars have engaged with developments in the theorization of scale. I present these arguments but also point to their limitations. As an alternative, I propose that the notion of a flat ontology might help overcome some difficulties around scalar thinking, and provide a useful means of conceptualizing sociospatiality in material and non-hierarchical terms. Bringing together flat ontology and work in children's geographies on embodied subjectivity, I argue that it is important to examine the nature and limits of children's spaces of perception and action. While these spaces are not simply `local', they seldom afford children opportunities to comment on, or intervene in, the events, processes and decisions that shape their own lives. The implications for the substance and method of children's geographies and for geographical work on scale are considered

In pursuit of rigour and accountability in participatory design

The field of Participatory Design (PD) has greatly diversified and we see a broad spectrum of approaches and methodologies emerging. However, to foster its role in designing future interactive technologies, a discussion about accountability and rigour across this spectrum is needed. Rejecting the traditional, positivistic framework, we take inspiration from related fields such as Design Research and Action Research to develop interpretations of these concepts that are rooted in PD׳s own belief system. We argue that unlike in other fields, accountability and rigour are nuanced concepts that are delivered through debate, critique and reflection. A key prerequisite for having such debates is the availability of a language that allows designers, researchers and practitioners to construct solid arguments about the appropriateness of their stances, choices and judgements. To this end, we propose a “tool-to-think-with” that provides such a language by guiding designers, researchers and practitioners through a process of systematic reflection and critical analysis. The tool proposes four lenses to critically reflect on the nature of a PD effort: epistemology, values, stakeholders and outcomes. In a subsequent step, the coherence between the revealed features is analysed and shows whether they pull the project in the same direction or work against each other. Regardless of the flavour of PD, we argue that this coherence of features indicates the level of internal rigour of PD work and that the process of reflection and analysis provides the language to argue for it. We envision our tool to be useful at all stages of PD work: in the planning phase, as part of a reflective practice during the work, and as a means to construct knowledge and advance the field after the fact. We ground our theoretical discussions in a specific PD experience, the ECHOES project, to motivate the tool and to illustrate its workings

Multidisciplinary teams, and parents, negotiating common ground in shared-care of children with long-term conditions: A mixed methods study

Background: Limited negotiation around care decisions is believed to undermine collaborative working between parents of children with long-term conditions and professionals, but there is little evidence of how they actually negotiate their respective roles. Using chronic kidney disease as an exemplar this paper reports on a multi-method study of social interaction between multidisciplinary teams and parents as they shared clinical care. Methods. Phases 1 and 2: a telephone survey mapping multidisciplinary teams' parent-educative activities, and qualitative interviews with 112 professionals (Clinical-psychologists, Dietitians, Doctors, Nurses, Play-specialists, Pharmacists, Therapists and Social-workers) exploring their accounts of parent-teaching in the 12 British children's kidney units. Phase 3: six ethnographic case studies in two units involving observations of professional/parent interactions during shared-care, and individual interviews. We used an analytical framework based on concepts drawn from Communities of Practice and Activity Theory. Results: Professionals spoke of the challenge of explaining to each other how they are aware of parents' understanding of clinical knowledge, and described three patterns of parent-educative activity that were common across MDTs: Engaging parents in shared practice; Knowledge exchange and role negotiation, and Promoting common ground. Over time, professionals had developed a shared repertoire of tools to support their negotiations with parents that helped them accomplish common ground during the practice of shared-care. We observed mutual engagement between professionals and parents where a common understanding of the joint enterprise of clinical caring was negotiated. Conclusions: For professionals, making implicit knowledge explicit is important as it can provide them with a language through which to articulate more clearly to each other what is the basis of their intuition-based hunches about parents' support needs, and may help them to negotiate with parents and accelerate parents' learning about shared caring. Our methodology and results are potentially transferrable to shared management of other conditions. © 2013 Swallow et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Dealing with abstraction: Case study generalisation as a method for eliciting design patterns

Developing a pattern language is a non-trivial problem. A critical requirement is a method to support pattern writers with abstraction, so as they can produce generalised patterns. In this paper, we address this issue by developing a structured process of generalisation. It is important that this process is initiated through engaging participants in identifying initial patterns, i.e. directly dealing with the 'cold-start' problem. We have found that short case study descriptions provide a productive 'way into' the process for participants. We reflect on a 1-year interdisciplinary pan-European research project involving the development of almost 30 cases and over 150 patterns. We provide example cases, detailing the process by which their associated patterns emerged. This was based on a foundation for generalisation from cases with common attributes. We discuss the merits of this approach and its implications for pattern development

Multimodal Lifeworlds: Pedagogies for Play Inquiries and Explorations

In this paper, we advocate a reconceptualisation of early learning in the 21st century in the form of multimodal lifeworlds. We review the research literature on the role of new technologies for young children’s learning, both in their homes and in educational contexts. We contend that, in order to make our work accessible, and to describe the ways in which digital artefacts can create new contexts for learning, we should foreground the learning that is possible in contemporary multimodal learning ecologies. We raise complex questions and issues that require consideration as we plan for pedagogies that will encourage, support and transform children’s learning. The paper presents an understanding of new and continually evolving technologies as artefacts that inhabit the contemporary child’s lifeworld. These resources form part of their suite of learning devices, which impact on children’s identities, learning ecologies and how they make meanings of self. Finally, we present a possible conceptualization, which combines these elements that are relevant for pedagogical planning, discussed in the article, to consider how new technologies, as social, cultural and personal artefacts can contribute to children’s learning ecologies

From design to narrative: the development of inquiry-based learning models

The University of Nottingham and the Open University are partners in a ca. £1.2m project to help school students learn the skills of modern science. The three-year project, Personal Inquiry (PI) (funded by the UK ESRC and EPSRC research councils), is developing a new approach of 'scripted inquiry learning', where children investigate a science topic with classmates by carrying out explorations between their classroom, homes and discovery centres, guided by a personal computer. This paper describes our progress to date on the development of four models for inquiry-based learning, as part of the PI project. These are being used as the basis for the development of educational scenarios and associated scripts to explore the use of mobile technologies in supporting an inquiry-based approach to teaching Scientific thinking across formal and informal learning

Developing a coding scheme for analysing classroom dialogue across d educational contexts.

The research reported sought to develop a framework for systematically analysing classroom dialogue for application across a range of educational settings. The paper outlines the development and refinement of a coding scheme that attempts to represent and operationalise commonalities amongst some key theorists in the field concerning productive forms of educational dialogue. The team has tested it using video recordings from classroom settings in the UK and Mexico, across age phases, subject areas, and different interactional contexts including whole class, group and paired work. Our Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (SEDA) is situated within a sociocultural paradigm, and draws on Hymes' Ethnography of Communication to highlight the importance of context. We examined how such a tool could be used in practice. We found that concentrating on the ‘communicative act’ to explore dialogue between participants was an appropriate level of granularity, while clustering the 33 resulting codes according to function of the acts helped to highlight dialogic sequences within lessons. We report on the application of the scheme in two different learning contexts and reflect on its fitness for purpose, including perceived limitations. Development of specialised sub-schemes and a version for teachers is underway.This collaborative work was carried out for a project entitled “A Tool for Analysing Dialogic Interactions in Classrooms” (http://tinyurl.com/BAdialogue) funded through the British Academy International Partnership and Mobility Scheme (ref. RG66509), between January 2013 - December 2015. We are most grateful to colleagues on the project teams who made significant contributions and helpful input during development and testing of the scheme and preparation of the manuscript, including Farah Ahmed, Riikka Hofmann, Christine Howe, Ruth Kershner, Fiona Jackson, Karen Littleton, Neil Mercer, Paul Warwick (UK team); Mariana Alarcón, Nube Estrada, Erika Gil, Kissy Guzmán, Flora Hernández, José Hernández, Haydeé Pedraza, Ana Luisa Rubio, Brenda Itzel Sánchez, Ana Laura Trigo, Maricela Velez (Mexico team). We also thank all of the teachers (especially Lloyd and Tania) and students who participated in our previous research from which examples were taken. We appreciate the support of the Economic and Social Research Council, sponsor of most of the UK team’s work in this area over the years

An investigation of children\u27s questioning and help-seeking during language arts time

This investigation explored children\u27s use of questioning and help-seeking during language arts time in a grade four/five classroom. It also considered the potential of monitoring children\u27s classroom questions as a way of understanding their thinking and preoccupations. The research was interpretative in nature involving collaboration between researcher, teacher and students. The main questions framing the investigation wer