Children and mental health talk : perspectives on social competence - an epilogue

In this chapter, we offer a commentary of the individual chapters as well as the contribution of the volume as a whole. Specifically, we discuss the notion of children’s social competence advanced in this book, as well as its intellectual history in ethnomethodology, against the reductionist conceptualisations of children and young persons often found in mainstream social and behavioural science literature. Moreover, we also discuss the relatively broad approach taken towards children’s mental health and well-being, and conclude by identifying some implications that the chapters bring to this research field as well as to professional practitioners working with troubled children.En professionaliserad röst för barnen? Bris och det nya samhällskontraktet mellan stat och civilsamhäll

Video-stimulated accounts: Young children accounting for interactional matters in front of peers

Research in the early years places increasing importance on participatory methods to engage children. The playback of video-recording to stimulate conversation is a research method that enables children’s accounts to be heard and attends to a participatory view. During video-stimulated sessions, participants watch an extract of video-recording of a specific event in which they were involved, and then account for their participation in that event. Using an interactional perspective, this paper draws distinctions between video-stimulated accounts and a similar research method, popular in education, that of video-stimulated recall. Reporting upon a study of young children’s interactions in a playground, video-stimulated accounts are explicated to show how the participants worked toward the construction of events in the video-stimulated session. This paper discusses how the children account for complex matters within their social worlds, and manage the accounting of others in the video-stimulated session. When viewed from an interactional perspective and used alongside fine grained analytic approaches, video-stimulated accounts are an effective method to provide the standpoint of the children involved and further the competent child paradigm

‘Just teach us the skills please, we’ll do the rest': empowering ten-year-olds as active researchers

This paper discusses the outcomes of an initiative to empower ten-year-olds as active researchers. It debates some of the barriers that are commonly cited with regard to children of this age taking ownership of their own research agendas—power relations, competence, knowledge and skills—and challenges the status quo. It describes a study in which a group of ten-year-olds participated in a taught programme aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills to design their own research. This empowering process resulted in the children undertaking research projects of their own choosing, designed, carried out and reported entirely from their perspective. Reports from two of those projects are presented as part of this paper

Il paesaggio nell’aldilà

Saggio nel Catalogo della Mostra: Tra le Palme del Piceno, S. Benedetto del Tronto, Palacongressi: 13 luglio - 30 ottobre 200