Look Who’s Talking:Using creative, playful arts-based methods in research with young children

Young children are often ignored or marginalised in the drive to address children’s participation and their wider set of rights. This is the case generally in social research, as well as within the field of Arts-Based Education Research. This article contributes to the growing literature on young children’s involvement in arts-based research, by providing a reflective account of our learning and playful engagement with children using creative methods. This small pilot project forms part of a larger international project titled Look Who’s Talking: Eliciting the Voices of Children from Birth to Seven, led by Professor Kate Wall at the University of Strathclyde. Visiting one nursery in Scotland, we worked with approximately 30 children from 3 to 5 years old. Seeking to connect with their play-based nursery experiences, we invited children to participate in a range of arts-based activities including drawing, craft-making, sculpting, a themed ‘play basket’ with various props, puppetry and videography. In this article, we develop reflective, analytical stories of our successes and dilemmas in the project. We were keen to establish ways of working with children that centred their own creativity and play, shaped by the materials we provided but not directed by us. However, we struggled to balance our own agenda with the more open-ended methods we had used. We argue that an intergenerational approach to eliciting voice with young children – in which adults are not afraid to shape the agenda, but do so in responsive, gradual and sensitive ways – creates the potential for a more inclusive experience for children that also meets researcher needs

CLC-2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as potential modifiers of cystic fibrosis disease severity

BACKGROUND: Cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease manifest by impaired chloride secretion leads to eventual respiratory failure. Candidate genes that may modify CF lung disease severity include alternative chloride channels. The objectives of this study are to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the airway epithelial chloride channel, CLC-2, and correlate these polymorphisms with CF lung disease. METHODS: The CLC-2 promoter, intron 1 and exon 20 were examined for SNPs in adult CF dF508/dF508 homozygotes with mild and severe lung disease (forced expiratory volume at one second (FEV1) > 70% and < 40%). RESULTS: PCR amplification of genomic CLC-2 and sequence analysis revealed 1 polymorphism in the hClC -2 promoter, 4 in intron 1, and none in exon 20. Fisher's analysis within this data set, did not demonstrate a significant relationship between the severity of lung disease and SNPs in the CLC-2 gene. CONCLUSIONS: CLC-2 is not a key modifier gene of CF lung phenotype. Further studies evaluating other phenotypes associated with CF may be useful in the future to assess the ability of CLC-2 to modify CF disease severity