Young children's research: children aged 4-8 years finding solutions at home and at school

Children's research capacities have become increasingly recognised by adults, yet children remain excluded from the academy, with reports of their research participation generally located in adults' agenda. Such practice restricts children's freedom to make choices in matters affecting them, underestimates children’s capabilities and denies children particular rights. The present paper reports on one aspect of a small-scale critical ethnographic study adopting a constructivist grounded approach to conceptualise ways in which children's naturalistic behaviours may be perceived as research. The study builds on multi-disciplinary theoretical perspectives, embracing 'new' sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy and early childhood education and care (ECEC). Research questions include: 'What is the nature of ECEC research?' and 'Do children’s enquiries count as research?' Initially, data were collected from the academy: professional researchers (n=14) confirmed 'finding solutions' as a research behaviour and indicated children aged 4-8 years, their practitioners and primary carers as 'theoretical sampling'. Consequently, multi-modal case studies were constructed with children (n=138) and their practitioners (n=17) in three ‘good’ schools, with selected children and their primary carers also participating at home. This paper reports on data emerging from children aged 4-8 years at school (n=17) and at home (n=5). Outcomes indicate that participating children found diverse solutions to diverse problems, some of which they set themselves. Some solutions engaged children in high order thinking, whilst others did not; selecting resources and trialing activities engaged children in 'finding solutions'. Conversely, when children's time, provocations and activities were directed by adults, the quality of their solutions was limited, they focused on pleasing adults and their motivation to propose solutions decreased. In this study, professional researchers recognised 'finding solutions' as research behaviour and children aged 4-8 years naturalistically presented with capacities for finding solutions; however, the children's encounters with adults affected the solutions they found

Endangered Children: Experiencing and Surviving the State as Failed Parent and Grandparent

The state removes children from ‘failed’ parents to give them a better experience of parenting. This article examines the role that the state plays as parent to young mothers in care and grandparent to their children, drawing on a small-scale study undertaken in western Canada using grounded theory methodology. The findings were bleak: the state as parent and grandparent also fails these children. We consider why this is the case and make suggestions for ways forward by critiquing the ideology of familialism that underpins the state’s punitive approach to these young mothers and their children. We also call for policies and a practice that enable practitioners to address structural inequalities such as poverty and racism alongside the capacity to respond to the personal needs of the young women and their children as young people with dignity and rights

‘Here's my Story’: Fathers of ‘Looked After’ Children Recount their Experiences in the Canadian Child Welfare System

Fathers tend to be excluded and ‘invisible’ participants in the child welfare system. We interviewed fathers with ‘looked after’ children in a child protection system in Western Canada. They wanted active roles in children's lives and to become engaged fathers, whether the children were theirs by birth or not. Their stories exposed the strategies they used to convince social workers that they were ‘good enough’ fathers. In the telling, they revealed the barriers they surmounted to create meaningful relationships with these children. In this paper, we focus on the stories fathers used to describe their involvement in caring for children. These were: ‘misrepresented dad’; ‘survivor dad’; ‘mothering father’; ‘denied identity dad’; and ‘citizen dad’. We conclude that the fathers' narratives depict a complex typology that transcends the ‘good father’–‘bad father’ binary that informs practice and consider how social workers can involve fathers more effectively in child welfare practice by actively listening and drawing on their strengths