Conducting research with young children: some ethical considerations

By R. Flewitt. 2005

339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The recent foundation of a ‘Young Children's Perspectives’ special interest group in the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) reflects a general move in social research towards the respectful and inclusive involvement of children in the research process. However, established education research guidelines often provide no more than a loose ethical framework, appearing to focus on avoiding poor ethical conduct rather than proposing ways forward for making children's participation in research a positive experience. This short paper draws on my own experiences of conducting ESRC‐funded ethnographic video case studies on the ways four three‐year‐old children express their understandings at home and in a preschool playgroup during their first year of early years education. The paper reflects on the processes of negotiating initial and ongoing consent, problematises the notion of ‘informed’ consent in exploratory research with young children, and considers questions of anonymity when collecting and reporting on visual data. The paper proposes that by adopting a flexible, reflective stance, early years researchers can learn much from children, not only about their perspectives, but also about how to include young children in the research process.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4485ec49c6348732559d187d520019099860026d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. B. Perry
2. Sue Dockett
3. J. Einarsdóttir
4. David Messer
5. Natalia Kucirkova
6. A. Clark
7. Joanne Mulligan

In Sociology and Political Science

1. B. Perry
2. Sue Dockett
3. J. Einarsdóttir
4. David Messer
5. Natalia Kucirkova
6. A. Clark

Citations in the corpus

• New directions for early literacy in a digital age: The iPad (2015, result): “In line with the research team’s established ethical practice (Flewitt, 2005), once initial consent had been granted by the lead practitioner in each setting, we asked all practitioners for opt-in written consent, and all parents were offered opt-out consent for their children to participate.”
• Researching with Young Children: Seeking Assent (2011, background): “For example, observation of children’s body language and levels of engagement can provide indications of their willingness to participate (Flewitt 2005).”
• researching with children: ethical tensions (2009, background): “In considering children’s assent, we are also conscious of both verbal and nonverbal interactions, noting that children’s body language can itself provide some important cues about their preferred involvement (Dockett and Perry, 2007c; Flewitt, 2005a).”
• trusting children's accounts in research (2007, background): “Flewitt (2005) notes that the public nature of video and photographic data can generate anxiety among participants, particularly related to a sense of losing control over how the data can be used.”