Online intergenerational participatory research : Ingredients for meaningful relationships and participation

Over thirty years ago, children's participation rights were recognized internationally with the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Increased involvement of children and young people in lead, collaborative, and advisory roles in interdisciplinary research has challenged 'traditional' adult research practices in numerous ways. Co-production recognizes participants as experts and creators of knowledge, engages children and young people in decision-making, and addresses traditional adult-child hierarchies. #CovidUnder19 is a movement that aims to foster intergenerational partnerships between children, young people and adult members of the child rights community to develop evidence-based advocacy to uphold children's rights throughout the pandemic, as well as in response and recovery. The COVID 4P Log smartphone app was designed to better understand ways practitioners and policymakers protect, provide, enable participation, and prevent harm in their practice. Children and young people aged 14 to 19 from countries around the world are involved as co-researchers and advisors in research design, data analysis, and knowledge exchange. This paper explores the experiences of #CovidUnder19 young people as researchers focusing on the data analysis and knowledge exchange phase and includes their reflections on meaningful intergenerational partnership in research. This includes the importance of relationships, embracing the 'inner child', and fostering meaningful participation in the research process. The paper concludes with recommendations for other researchers on how to work in partnership with children and young people meaningfully to strengthen the process and impact for researchers and children's human rights

Conceptualising quality early childhood education:Learning from young children in Brazil and South Africa through creative and play-based methods

Early childhood has increasingly been acknowledged as a vital time for all children. Inclusive and quality education is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with the further specification that all children have access to quality pre-primary education. As early childhood education (ECE) has expanded worldwide, so have concerns about the quality of ECE provision, including whether its pedagogy is culturally meaningful and contextually appropriate. While these issues are much debated in themselves, often missing is a key stakeholder group for such discussions: young children. Young children have critical insights and perspectives of key importance for ensuring quality ECE. This article addresses how quality ECE can be conceptualised, through reflections on creative and play-based methods with young children, used in a cross-national project titled Safe Inclusive Participative Pedagogy. The article draws on community case studies undertake by two of the country teams in Brazil and South Africa. In contexts where children's participation is not necessarily familiar in ECE settings nor understood by key stakeholders, the fieldwork shows that children can express their views and experiences through using creative and play-based methods. We argue that these methods can become part of a critical pedagogy through ECE settings, where ECE practitioners, children and other key stakeholders engage in ongoing, challenging and transformative dialogue. In turn, critical pedagogy has the potential to strengthen local practices, challenge top-down approach, and foster quality safe, inclusive, participative early years education.</p

Inspiring Children's Futures : Children's Participation: Adults' Perceptions of Child Participation and Young People's Views on Responses during Covid-19

This Learning Report is part of a series of thematic reports documenting the COVID 4P Log survey findings from service providers and policymakers from 22 countries and five continents. The project presented in this report drew upon key findings from the COVID 4P Log project pertaining to children’s1 participation to engage young people in discussions about the meaning and implications of those findings. The COVID 4P Log questions and these findings have been analysed and co-authored by a collaborative, intergenerational partnership of adults and young people

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele