Drawing as a Method for Accessing Young Children's Perspectives in Research

Researchers have taken a particular interest in children’s drawings as a means of representing and communicating knowledge and perspectives but a review of literature reveals that researchers routinely use drawings as a way of obtaining data without considering their function or value. This ESRC-funded research aims to explore drawing as a method of accessing children's perspectives and has three central research objectives which consider methodological and analytical factors relating to the use of children’s drawings as a research tool. These are: to develop a principled approach to analysing and interpreting children’s drawings, to create guidelines for the use of drawing as a research tool, and to gather children’s perspectives on play through the method of drawing. The research objectives were achieved by asking the following three questions: How can children’s drawings be analysed using a principled approach? What are the major factors to be considered when using drawing as a research tool? What can drawings reveal about children's perspectives on play? The study involved two visits to the homes of eight preschool children aged four. The sample included four girls and four boys from central and north-east Scotland with half of the families being categorised as being of low socioeconomic status. Visits were flexible and unstructured allowing the child autonomy regarding our level of interaction and the types of activities (such as free play and conversation) with which they wished to engage. The second visit included a prompted drawing activity in which I invited children to express their perspectives on play. The topic of play was chosen (i) to offer children a meaningful research activity to investigate the issues surrounding the method, (ii) to explore the task of representing an abstract, yet familiar, concept and how this may influence children’s drawings and representations of play, and (iii) as an extension of the ESRC project Young Children Learning with Toys and Technology at Home (Plowman et al., 2012) by giving greater emphasis to children's own perspectives on play and exploring the ways in which this can be achieved. My theoretical approach is not to consider drawings as reproductions of reality, but to value and attempt to understand children’s drawings as a semiotic vehicle in which messages are created and conveyed during the drawing process through representation and signification. Informed by social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) the research presents an innovative four-step approach to analysing children's drawings (4-SASA). The protocol, a key contribution of the research, was developed to promote a more systematic analysis, involving (i) isolating signs within drawings through manual annotation, (ii) documenting the child’s understanding of signs and the significance attributed to them, (iii) organising signs using specific categories of social semiotic analysis (mode, size, colour, salience) and identifying the child’s motivation and interest for specific sign production, and (iv) synthesis of the child’s perspectives from steps 1-3. Post hoc methodological examinations elucidated the following four key factors to be considered when using young children’s drawings: (i) contextual sensitivity of the drawing process, (ii) children’s perceptions of the research task, (iii) the complex task of representing an abstract and elusive concept such as play, and (iv) whether there is a fundamental difference between drawing spontaneously (non-commissioned) and drawing on request. Evidence from the study supports previous literature in demonstrating the potential of drawing as a method of accessing children’s perspectives. However, findings suggest that rather than routinely selecting drawing as a method for representing children’s perspectives, researchers need to be more thoughtful about the ways in which factors such as the social and contextual framing of drawing and approaches to data collection can affect research outcomes. The thesis concludes by discussing how these emerging issues impact research outcomes, along with implications for future implementation and analysis of drawings

The Elliptical Galaxy formerly known as the Local Group: Merging the Globular Cluster Systems

Prompted by a new catalogue of M31 globular clusters, we have collected together individual metallicity values for globular clusters in the Local Group. Although we briefly describe the globular cluster systems of the individual Local Group galaxies, the main thrust of our paper is to examine the collective properties. In this way we are simulating the dissipationless merger of the Local Group, into presumably an elliptical galaxy. Such a merger is dominated by the Milky Way and M31, which appear to be fairly typical examples of globular cluster systems of spiral galaxies. The Local Group `Elliptical' has about 700 +/- 125 globular clusters, with a luminosity function resembling the `universal' one. The metallicity distribution has peaks at [Fe/H] ~ -1.55 and -0.64 with a metal-poor to metal-rich ratio of 2.5:1. The specific frequency of the Local Group Elliptical is initially about 1 but rises to about 3, when the young stellar populations fade and the galaxy resembles an old elliptical. The metallicity distribution and stellar population corrected specific frequency are similar to that of some known early type galaxies. Based on our results, we briefly speculate on the origin of globular cluster systems in galaxies.Comment: 22 pages, Latex, 4 figures, 5 tables, submitted to A &

Improving the sustainability of hospital-based interventions: a study protocol for a systematic review

Introduction Sustaining effective interventions in hospital environments is essential to improving health outcomes, and reducing research waste. Current evidence suggests many interventions are not sustained beyond their initial delivery. The reason for this failure remains unclear. Increasingly research is employing theoretical frameworks and models to identify critical factors that influence the implementation of interventions. However, little is known about the value of these frameworks on sustainability. The aim of this review is to examine the evidence regarding the use of theoretical frameworks to maximise effective intervention sustainability in hospital-based settings in order to better understand their role in supporting long-term intervention use. Methods and analysis Systematic review. We will systematically search the following databases: Medline, AMED, CINAHL, Embase and Cochrane Library (CENTRAL, CDSR, DARE, HTA). We will also hand search relevant journals and will check the bibliographies of all included studies. Language and date limitations will be applied. We will include empirical studies that have used a theoretical framework (or model) and have explicitly reported the sustainability of an intervention (or programme). One reviewer will remove obviously irrelevant titles. The remaining abstracts and full-text articles will be screened by two independent reviewers to determine their eligibility for inclusion. Disagreements will be resolved by discussion, and may involve a third reviewer if required. Key study characteristics will be extracted (study design, population demographics, setting, evidence of sustained change, use of theoretical frameworks and any barriers or facilitators data reported) by one reviewer and cross-checked by another reviewer. Descriptive data will be tabulated within evidence tables, and key findings will be brought together within a narrative synthesis. Ethics and dissemination Formal ethical approval is not required as no primary data will be collected. Dissemination of results will be through peer-reviewed journal publications, presentation at an international conference and social media

How language affects children’s use of derivational morphology in visual word and pseudoword processing:evidence from a cross-language study

Developing readers have been shown to rely on morphemes in visual word recognition across several naming, lexical decision and priming experiments. However, the impact of morphology in reading is not consistent across studies with differing results emerging not only between but also within writing systems. Here, we report a cross-language experiment involving the English and French languages, which aims to compare directly the impact of morphology in word recognition in the two languages. Monolingual French-speaking and English-speaking children matched for grade level (Part 1) and for age (Part 2) participated in the study. Two lexical decision tasks (one in French, one in English) featured words and pseudowords with exactly the same structure in each language. The presence of a root (R+) and a suffix ending (S+) was manipulated orthogonally, leading to four possible combinations in words (R+S+: e.g. postal; R+S-: e.g. turnip; R-S+: e.g. rascal; and R-S-: e.g. bishop) and in pseudowords (R+S+: e.g. pondal; R+S-: e.g. curlip; R-S+: e.g. vosnal; and R-S-: e.g. hethop). Results indicate that the presence of morphemes facilitates children’s recognition of words and impedes their ability to reject pseudowords in both languages. Nevertheless, effects extend across accuracy and latencies in French but are restricted to accuracy in English, suggesting a higher degree of morphological processing efficiency in French. We argue that the inconsistencies found between languages emphasise the need for developmental models of word recognition to integrate a morpheme level whose elaboration is tuned by the productivity and transparency of the derivational system

Assessing the impact of orogenic inheritance on the architecture, timing and magmatic budget of the North Atlantic rift system: a mapping approach: Orogenic inheritance and the North Atlantic rift

International audienceIn order to investigate the impact of orogenic inheritance on the characteristics of hyperextended rift systems we develop new mapping methods highlighting the first-order architecture and timing of hyperextended rifts, as well as the distribution of heterogeneities inherited from previous orogenies. We use these to characterize the North Atlantic rift system and adjacent areas affected by the Palaeozoic Caledonian and Variscan orogenies. Comparison of these maps demonstrates major differences in the behaviour of the North Atlantic rift relative to both orogens, the Variscan front appearing to be a major limit. Indeed, the rift cuts through the Caledonian orogen and parallels its structural grain, while it circumvents the core of the Variscides. In addition, rifting is protracted and polyphase, and breakup is magma-rich North to the Variscan front, as opposed to the South where a single, apparently continuous extensional event lead to magma-poor breakup in less than 50 Myr. These observations point to a major influence of orogenic inheritance on the characteristics of hyperextended rift systems. On the other hand, our study supports that rifts reactivate sutures corresponding to former large (> 2 000 km) oceans, while leaving sutures of small (< 500 – 1 000 km) oceanic basins little affected, suggesting a significant impact of the pre-orogenic histories on subsequent extensional processes

Grasping the dynamics of creative play

In this article we give a brief overview of research findings presented in a recent paper 'Exploring the Pedagogic Culture of Creative Play' in Early Childhood Education available in the Journal of Early Childhood Research. The central focus of the journal article is on children’s creative play but from the perspective that the world is complex and cannot neatly be comparmentalised. From that perspective, we present an understanding about how the interlinking elements of a particular context shape how children’s creative play presents itself. We do not suggest that there is a typology or framework to follow which will result in children’s creativity. Rather we suggest that creativity is highly context specific and even small changes in the context will shift children’s creative experience. We say this from a positive stance because it provides opportunities for children’s creative expression to flourish in a multitude of different ways and provides practitioners opportunities to facilitate various aspects of creative play by considering the composition of the pedagogic culture

Changing pedagogy in Scottish primary schools:Insights from the exploring pedagogy in Primary 1 (EPP1) project

This paper reports on the Exploring Pedagogy in Primary 1 (EPP1) project conducted by the School of Education, University of Strathclyde (2017-2018). EPP1 was commissioned by Renfrewshire Council as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge to support the improvement of children’s educational outcomes through a targeted professional development programme exploring pedagogy and theory to inform practice in primary one. 90 teachers from 30 primary schools in Renfrewshire participated in the 8-week programme and evaluation activities. The evaluation research strand aimed to assess the programme’s impact on teachers, schools and children’s learning experiences. Data was collected using interviews, semi-structured classroom observations and questionnaires. Research findings showed improvements in teachers’ reflexive practice, confidence and knowledge and understanding of young children’s learning. The training led to teachers designing more enabling environments with a wide range of play-based learning opportunities resulting in an increase in independent and child-led learning

The imagined educational futures of mobile cultures through children and youth voices

Mobile cultures, across the United Kingdom and Europe, continue to experience widespread discrimination in their daily lives (Lloyd and McCluskey 2008). Due to transient lifestyles and tentative relationships with schools and services, children and young people from these communities have few opportunities to share their views on important issues that affect their lives. This article spotlights the children and youth from European Roma and Gypsy/Traveller communities who have collaborated with the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Mobile Cultures and Education over the past two years. These youth rarely participate in research and their voices remain marginalized in Scottish society