Embracing uncertainty in research with young children

Chesworth, Liz

doi:10.1080/09518398.2018.1499982

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The activities, which can be viewed at Lomax and Smith (2020;, were not prescribed to avoid 'setting up norms of appropriate engagement' (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008: 507); instead, they offered multiple ways to encourage creativity and support a participatory dialogue between ourselves and the children. The assemblage of activities went well beyond a simple list of digital online creative methods, and allowed for the research team to acknowledge and reflect on the emergent approaches of digitally mediated participatory research with children (Chesworth, 2018). The prompts were also developed by the participating children and emerged as highly relational to each other.…”

Section: Designing Online Research With Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating online participatory research spaces: insights from creative, digitally mediated research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lomax

Smith

McEvoy

et al. 2022

Families, Relationships and Societies

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Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in order to consider the potential of digitally mediated participatory research for child-centred research practice. Our specific focus is on how children’s inclusion can be centred in the absence of opportunities to meet in person. We reflect on how we sought to support children’s engagement through offline and online creative activities and explore how these digitally mediated spaces can facilitate children’s inclusion, creative engagement and dialogue. We offer examples from our arts-based, digitally mediated research to consider how researchers might work remotely, yet inclusively, in contexts where children have been marginalised and their voices silenced. Our research suggests that scaffolding creative activities through bespoke digital animation and asynchronous chat can facilitate children to participate in ways of their choosing. However, to address equity of inclusion researchers must attend to the contingencies of children’s digital, material and social exclusion.

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Section: Designing Online Research With Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating online participatory research spaces: insights from creative, digitally mediated research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lomax

Smith

McEvoy

et al. 2022

Families, Relationships and Societies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…(2020) exploring children's physical and material encounters with museum objects and spaces. Chesworth (2018) notes how young children enact agency through intra-actions, and embodied entanglements whilst playing and argues that young children's involvement with research must be understood to be “emergent, dynamic and unpredictable” (p. 859). She urges a more relational and emergent approach to research with young children and notes an ethical responsibility to, “recognise and make visible the elements of uncertainty” (p. 860).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It's our museum too: co-producing research in a university museum through a nursery residency programme

Noble

Wallis

2021

QRJ

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PurposeThe authors draw on Howard and Thomas-Hughes' (2020) framework for quality assessment of co-produced research, to interrogate our assumptions and processes and to reflect on our project. They consider if they achieved our planned outcomes around developing practice, enabling a range of voices and perspectives within their research, and enacting change within the university museum.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ early years residency programme explores the potential of collaborations with community groups to transform knowledge and practice through action research. As museum educators, the authors find synergy between the participatory pedagogies underpinning their practice and the co-construction of knowledge within action research. Both are committed to enabling diverse interpretations within a collective and supportive framework. Within their project, practitioners from the museum and playgroup worked collaboratively to collect video footage, photos, children's artwork and reflective journals and memos.FindingsThe process of action, observation and reflection revealed much about the authors’ different perspectives and they found variations in both pedagogy and practice. Although the authors had a shared commitment to providing high quality, memorable, exciting opportunities for the children, the exploratory nature of the project meant that they did not agree what these experiences might look like in advance, and so they had different understandings of what they saw.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the authors’ methodological framework was designed to make their research collaborative, structural challenges and the contexts of the art museum and university reinforced long established hierarchies. While some felt supported by the research process and the prestige of working with a university museum to gain legitimacy for their practice, others were disempowered by these same structures. The authors consider their obligations as practitioner-researchers to become aware of the role they play in maintaining, as well as challenging, hierarchies and assumptions.Originality/valueYoung children in museums is a growing area of study and this practitioner-led action research project develop a new strand of enquiry within this field. Through this research the authors can collaborate with community partners to record, analyse and make visible the many different ways in which young children experience the museum. As research led institutions, university museums are ideally placed to develop research in partnership with local public bodies and community groups. However, future work in this area would benefit from a more explicit consideration of the constraints implicit within the institutions within which they all operate.

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“…In developing this section of the paper, we discussed whether there would be specific rules for our un/familiar space. However, Toby argued that there can’t be rules like ‘make your bed’, because the un/familiar space theory is flexible, and it depends on the family, and so I guess flexibility is the rule , akin to what Chesworth (2018: 851) describes as an ‘ethical responsiveness to uncertainty’. In recognition of this, we present, in the following, the underpinning characteristics of the un/familiar space.…”

Section: Developing the Un/familiar Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

An un/familiar space: children and parents as collaborators in autoethnographic family research

Little

2021

Qualitative Research

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This paper, coauthored by mother and son (aged 10 at the time of writing, 12 at time of revisions), reports on the collaborative research experience during a 2.5-year-long autoethnographic study, which focused on bringing back the family heritage language after a 2-year break. Through a joint research diary, we regularly and rigorously chronicled both language-related conversations and our emotions linked to the process of bringing back the heritage language. Frustration, guilt, joy, exasperation, and pride were jointly discussed via what we call an un/familiar space. This paper explores the evolution of this space, linking it to Bhabha’s third space theory and Gadamer’s fusion of horizons. We present the un/familiar space both as an epistemological stance and as a methodological tool for intergenerational autoethnography, enabling both parents and children to engage with each other in a more neutral space, deliberately removed from traditional family roles. Further, we critically engage with the role of children as co-creators of knowledge within this space, contributing longitudinal data of co-construction and critical reflection from two generations to the research community.

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Embracing uncertainty in research with young children

Cited by 22 publications

References 36 publications

Creating online participatory research spaces: insights from creative, digitally mediated research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

Creating online participatory research spaces: insights from creative, digitally mediated research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

It's our museum too: co-producing research in a university museum through a nursery residency programme

An un/familiar space: children and parents as collaborators in autoethnographic family research

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