Children's analysis processes when analysing qualitative research data: a missing piece to the qualitative research puzzle

Children’s role in the research process is often limited to a passive role as subject, recipient or object of data rather than as active contributor. The sociology of childhood considers children to be competent social actors and advocates for them to be recognised as such. This recognition is yet to filter into mainstream research agendas with children often remaining a passive provider to research that seeks to elicit their perspectives. This article presents an examination of the processes that children use when analysing their own qualitative research data as observed within a qualitative research project. It provides insight into the ability to increase the richness of data obtained when researching with children, by including their perspectives and contributions in the data analysis process. Children’s capacity as capable and competent contributors to research beyond the more passive role of participant is described and the ways that children can have a greater participatory role in qualitative data collection and analysis processes are discussed

No child should be sacrificed for the ‘greater good’ of a school or ‘best interests’ of majority. This is what child rights is about

Everyone has the right to safe working conditions and environments including children. This right is not negated by misbehaviour or convenience, or because a child’s removal from a situation or classroom will make the rest of the class easier to manage..

Voice-Inclusive Practice (VIP) : A charter for authentic student engagement

In an age of high stakes testing, diversified communication, educational transformation and pedagogical evolution, the child’s contribution to education remains underutilised. Despite the emphasis on children’s active and authentic involvement in educational decision making in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (uncrc), educational reform continues to ignore the child’s view. In contexts where the child’s voice is welcomed, there remains little guidance for education professionals on how to seek and incorporate children’s perspectives in a practically focused way. By initiating Voice-Inclusive Practice (vip), educators will be better positioned to take action that supports the imperatives of educational change. Voice-Inclusive Practice is represented by processes that actively engage with children on matters that affect them and includes the child’s perspective in planning, decision making and pedagogy. This paper provides an elaboration of the vip principles that enable the participatory rights of the child in education settings

Assuring children’s human right to freedom of opinion and expression in education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights elaborated for children through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, mandates each child’s right to participate in all matters affecting them. In particular, Article 19 includes the child’s right to freedom of expression and opinion, access to information, and communication choice. However, many barriers placed on children’s daily lives often restrict or limit the enactment of children’s participatory rights in practice, most noticeably in education. It is often the adult who decides what, when, and how children can communicate, and the extent children’s views and opinions are sought, considered, or incorporated. This paper explores how children’s daily lives are mediated in ways that restrict their expression, voice, and communication rights. Children spend a significant proportion of their daily lives in education settings yet the restrictions on children’s access to information and communication choices do not reflect contemporary pedagogical thinking. Many school settings perpetuate the key participation barriers of adult attitude and knowledge, pedagogical tradition, organisational structure, and technological advancement. Such barriers to engagement stifle the realisation of the child’s communication rights that then limits educational enhancement. Supporting children’s right to communicate via a range of media enables pedagogy supporting voice-inclusive practice

The future of children's rights, educational research and the UNCRC in a digital world: Possibilities and prospects

This chapter provides a critical discussion of how the UNCRC can shape methodological practices in educational research and how existing practices may be influenced with the ready access to, and development of, digital technologies. Key issues surrounding how the UNCRC is and should be informing educational research practices are discussed and contextualised within ethical and methodological positionings. In utilising a children’s rights frame, this chapter further explores the opportunities and tensions that the UNCRC creates for educational researchers. While the availability of technology may increase the potential for actualising participatory methods that are more responsive to the methods that children seek to engage with in their free time, it also presents a number of challenges from an ethical and methodological standpoint. Technology changes the way in which individuals and communities interact with one another and the outside world. Both children’s and adults’ everyday lifeworlds are filled with a balance between the ‘real’ world and the cyber world and as the line between these two worlds is increasingly blurred, new opportunities for researchers seeking to understand children’s lifeworlds in different contexts may be presented

Sociomaterial Dimensions of Early Literacy Learning Spaces: Moving Through Classrooms with Teacher and Children

Classroom spaces are complex social worlds where people interact in mul­tifaceted ways with spaces and materials. Classrooms are carefully designed agents for socialisation; however, the complexity and richness of learning experiences are partly determined by the teacher. This chapter draws from sociocultural perspectives to consider processes of thinking and learning as distributed and mediated across people and resources within the learning space. We argue that learning and well­being cannot be separated as students activate their social and emotional literacies when navigating the classroom environment. Drawing on data drawn from an ethno­graphic study of classrooms located in a community of high poverty, we critique how teachers describe their classroom spaces and selection of resources to facilitate their teaching of writing. We illustrate how geographies of place, movement and resources, interact with, and expand the social dimensions of classroom spaces