Reflections on the enactment of children's participation rights through research: Between transactional and relational spaces

Abstract

Young people's participation in the evaluation of services designed for them has become widespread in England following the United Kingdom's ratification of the UNCRC. This makes participation a matter of citizenship as well as of research. The paper reflects on these developments from a critical social psychological perspective. In particular it looks at the experience of working with a transformational model of participation. The author reflects on the possibilities and limitations of such a model and argues that within the English socio-cultural context a number of challenges, conceptualised by the author as transactional practices, make the establishment of enduring relational practices difficult.Epistemological reflexivity and a pragmatic approach towards children's participation rights are advocated by the author as a way of managing the conflicts between different participatory approaches that present themselves in practice.

Exploring young people's and youth workers' experiences of spaces for ‘youth development’: creating cultures of participation

“…Emergent theories were tested through further analysis of policy documents as well as published literature that focused on young people's and youth workers' experiences of participation. A full discussion relating to issues of the reflexive stance developed in this research are explored elsewhere (Nolas 2011a). …”

“…These processes were documented and analysed through a methodology for critical reflection that drew on ethnographic and reflective practice (Nolas, 2011a).…”

Children's Participation, Childhood Publics and Social Change: A Review

“…While children, in particular, may spend a lot of their time in institutions, like most people, they also move through and between institutional spaces creating personal, shared and, at times, transformational memories and experiences of those journeys (Tisdall and others ; Nolas, ). It is these journeys that are of interest when thinking about childhood publics as they stitch together the public, personal and political found in contemporary notions of publicness and associated possibilities of agency (Mahoney and others, ).…”

“…In this study, I review the significant strides that have been made in England on children's participation rights since the UNCRC came into existence from the position of a sympathetic and critical observer, and at times participant, in these institutional changes (cf. Nolas, ). I argue that institutional reform and programmatic practice is one dimension of social change.…”

Young Children’s Narrations of Relational Recovery: a School-Based Group for Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Violence

“…The importance of involving children in research about issues which concern them is a central feature of much of the literature which cites children's rights (UNCRC 1989) as a framework which their methodological and theoretical approaches sit within (Cater and Øverlien 2014;Nolas 2011). Children's direct participation in research is generally accepted as a way of facilitating better representation of an otherwise marginalised group (Harcourt and Einarsdottir 2011).…”