Going Spatial, Going Relational: Why “listening to children” and children's participation needs reframing

Abstract

This article explores the consequences of the view that the identifications of children and adults and the spaces they inhabit are undergoing a continuous co-specification.Firstly, the article describes and critiques the rationales provided that suggest we should consult with children and young people and encourage their participation. In response, the author suggests that policy and practice and research on children's participation are better framed being fundamentally about child-adult relations and that the emerging field would benefit from becoming more sensitive to socio-spatial aspects. Examples of research projects in three different contexts (school grounds, an arts centre, and the 'childfree zone') are reviewed for evidence to show that they how they were centrally about the emergence of spaces for new child-adult relations. The goal for a reframed 'children's participation' project could be to understand better how child-adult relations and spaces get constructed and how they can be improved. Keywords: Pupil voice, participation, child-adult relations.1 Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA, UK. Email: gbgm1@stir.ac.uk IntroductionIn this article I suggest that the current discourse around listening to children and children's participation has grave deficiencies and needs reframing. The article explores the emerging policy and social practices (including research practices) that involve 'listening to children' / consultation (where children's views are sought) and participation wherein children may have involvement in decision making (see Hill et al., 2004). International reviewers have already noted the need for a reframing of this field:It is clear that, given powerful adult agendas at play, "having a say" is insufficient to achieve effective and meaningful participation for young people.Instead, there is a need to more fully consider the complexity and interplay of values and interests in local decision-making and everyday social processes.(Clarke and Percy-Smith, 2006, p. 2) By bringing together the critiques of this emerging field of study alongside emerging theoretical frameworks, the article goes some way towards providing starting points for what this reframing might look like. Firstly, I describe the rationales provided that suggest we should consult with children and young people and encourage their participation. While doing this, I explore the critiques that suggest there are problems with these rationales. One main critique, for example, is that the context for children's self-advocacy, 'hearing their voices' and their participation in the broadest sense, is as much about outcomes for adults as much as children. As a result, I first suggest policy and practice and research on children's participation is better framed as being about child-adult relations.The second suggestion concerns the role of the overarching socio-spatial contexts for children's participation. In order to bring these two aspects into view, I will argue that we need to take an approach that...

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