The symposium will focus on methods for participatory research with children and young people in social scientific research. Following the Convention on the Rights of the Child, research with children is in a path of transformation: From viewing children as research objects – and thereby relying on observing their behaviour – to addressing them as individual subjects, for instance through in-depth interviews, and, more recently, to inviting them as active contributors to the research. It has been argued that studies with a focus on children and youth have not seldom overlooked the children’s own wishes and desires, and that the children and young people's own voices and perspectives are often missing in research. 

Participatory research with children can be motivated for several reasons. First there is the child rights’ aspect: According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) article 12, children have a right to express their views in all matters affecting them, including having the same rights as adult stakeholders to participate with their experiences and views, as co-researchers in a research context. Also, there are arguments of quality: research results become more accurate when stakeholders are given the opportunity to share their views on the phenomenon in focus, and how it should be studied. Not least, children's participation as co-researchers may directly promote a sense of empowerment and secure that results are communicated in a way children can understand and relate to.

However, how to involve children and young people as co-researchers is in practice not unproblematic. Pitfalls and difficulties have been identified and discussed among scholars, relating to questions of representation of “children’s voices”, ethics, and methodological procedures, to name a few. It can also be noted that participatory research with children and young people is still uncommon in Sweden. The symposium gives an opportunity to learn more about methods for participatory research with children through invited talks and panel discussions, research presentations and hands-on practice on how to involve children in participatory research.  

About the research network “Children’s voices, rights and development: Future practices for a resilient childhood”.

Do you have ongoing research where children/youth are engaged through participatory research? If your affiliation is within the Faculty of Social Sciences at LU and you would like to make a short presentation from this work at the symposium, please, contact elia [dot] psouni [at] psy [dot] lu [dot] se no later than the 30th of May, 2024. Please, include in your email your affiliation and a short abstract of what you would like to present. 

Organisers are:

Elia Psouni & Amanda Angelöw, Department of Psychology, and
Sara Eldén & Linn Alenius Wallin, Department of Sociology

Programme

09.00-09.15  Introduction and welcome: Elia Psouni & Sara Eldén
09.15-10.15    Keynote: Helen Lomax, Professor of Childhood Studies, University of Huddersfield
10.15-10.45    Coffee
10.45-11.45    Keynote: Kirsten Elisa Petersen, Ass. Professor of Educational Psychology, Aarhus University
11.45-12.45    Lunch
12.45-13.15    Practical guidelines for meaningful and ethical youth participation: Elia Psouni & Amanda Angelöw
13.15-14.30    Participatory research with children and young people at LU: experiences and reflections
14.30-16.00   Workshop and coffee – children as co-researchers: Linn Alenius Wallin. A creative exercise to encourage solutions that enhance children’s and young people’s contribution to participatory research.
16.00-17.00   Concluding panel – Thinking ahead

• Register here no later than 30 August

Presentations

Helen Lomax

This paper shares methodological insights from our research (Lomax and Smith, 2021, 2022, 2024) which sought to centre children in the production of knowledge during the 2020 global pandemic to consider how this can inform research with children beyond the crisis. Drawing on longitudinal participatory arts-based research with thirty children aged 9-12 during 2020-22, the paper illustrates our response to the shifting research landscape which included navigating social restrictions to develop child-centred ways of working with socially distanced arts-based methods and technologies. The paper sets out key principles focused on foregrounding children’s ways of knowing and attentive seeing which underpinned our reframing of the research encounter from one in which adults are intent on extracting children’s ready-made thoughts to a space in which knowledge generation is recognised as a process of co-construction and engagement with children. Central to this process is our commitment to feminist care ethics and the application of principles from early childhood research and pedagogy which prioritise attentiveness to younger children’s rhythms and pace. Our aim, in setting out an approach which makes a space for playfulness with older children, is to elaborate the potential of slower, attentive methods and to offer a methodological framework to address wider questions about what arts-based methods do. 

Suggestions for readings

Lomax, H; Smith, K. (2024) Towards attentive, playful arts-based methodology with children. Global Studies of Childhood, 14 (1): 102-120.

Lomax, H. and Smith, K. (2022) Seeing as an act of hearing: Making visible children’s experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic through participatory animation Sociological Research Online, 27 (3)

Lomax, H., Smith, K., Walsh, B., Jensen, K., McEvoy, J. & Brickwood, E. (2021) Creating online participatory research spaces: Insights from creative, digitally-mediated research with children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Families, Relationships and Societies:1-19. 

Biography

Helen Lomax is Professor of Childhood Studies and Director of Research in the School of Education and Society (HudCRES) at the University of Huddersfield. She has a long-standing interest in the development of participatory, arts-based methods with children and has led and co-led multi-disciplinary UKRI and EU funded projects on landscapes and well-being, children’s digital literacy and childhood well-being in contexts of disadvantage. Helen currently leads (with Barry Percy-Smith) a Nuffield funded participatory action research project with children and young people living in three socio-economically disadvantaged (rural/coastal, post-industrial, suburban). The research upon which this paper is based is drawn from a British Academy funded research project, Back Chat a longitudinal qualitative study led by Helen with Kate Smith which prioritised hearing directly from children about the continuing impacts of the pandemic on their lives. For links to the project methods and resources we developed to research with children visit hud.ac/backchat and for more information about Helen’s work see LinkedIn.

Kirsten Elisa Petersen

Children and young people’s active participation in research 
- perspectives on participatory research with children and young people

The purpose of this presentation is to contribute to discussing the importance of children and young people’s active participation in research, including the increasing ethical-methodological literature that discusses the situated, contextual, and often very complex ethical issues arising from participatory research with children and young people – in this case children and young people considered vulnerable due to exposed life situations.

In this presentation, actively involving children and young people in research is associated with exploring how children and young people contribute to developing research methodological work through participation in the development of e.g. questionnaires and interview guides for focus group interviews and individual semi-structured research interviews. Actively involving children and young people contributes to the fact that the knowledge developed is based on children and young people’s perspectives on their everyday life, and thus developed subjectivized and contextualised. 

Research methods and ethics are closely connected and in this context ethics-in-action is also discussed focusing on research ethical dilemmas associated with sensitive and dangerous research when dealing with participatory research with vulnerable children and young people.

Suggestions for readings

Focusing on children and young people:
Petersen, K. E. (Accepteret/In press). Youth clubs working with children and youth at risk for school failure – how to prevent exclusion from school. International Journal of Inclusive Education.

Petersen, K. E. (2021). Leisure and youth clubs’ work with young people of ethnic minority background living in socially deprived housing areas: creating processes of hope and empowerment through social pedagogical work. International Journal of Social Pedagogy, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2021.v10.x.010

Petersen, K. E. (2021). Fritids- og ungdomsklubber i udsatte boligområder: Pædagogers arbejde med ustyrlige unge, eller unge i ustyrlige problemer. Nordiske Udkast, 49(1), 40-51. http://nordiskeudkast.dk/

Focusing on ethics in action:
Petersen, K. E. (2018). Farlige unge eller farlig forskning: om udviklingen af strategier for etiske situationer og dilemmaer i forskning sammen med unge mænd i bandegrupperinger. Dansk Sociologi, (4), 31-53.

Petersen, K. E., & Ladefoged, L. (2020). Etik i dybdegående forskningsinterview sammen med unge. I K. E. Petersen, & L. Ladefoged (red.), Forskning med børn og unge: etik og etiske dilemmaer (s. 155-166). Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Törrönen, M., & Petersen, K. E. (2021). Ethical reflections on sensitive research with young people living in conditions of vulnerability. Social Work and Society, 19(1), 1-15. https://ejournals.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/sws/article/view/703/1318 

Biography

Kirsten Elisa Petersen, Associate Professor, PhD, kepe [at] edu [dot] au [dot] dk (kepe[at]edu[dot]au[dot]dk), Head of research programme Social Exclusion and Pedagogy in the Welfare State (SEP), DPU, Aarhus University, Denmark (https://www [dot] au [dot] dk/kepe [at] edu [dot] au [dot] dk) (https://dpu.au.dk/forskning/forskningsprogrammer/social-eksklusion-og-p…) 

Researching within a multidisciplinary research field that is concerned with children and young people’s everyday life, development, learning, well-being in the Danish (and Nordic) welfare state, including children and young people considered vulnerable due to exposed life circumstances, e.g. upbringing in socially disadvantaged housing areas, children and young people at risk of decline of well-being and diagnoses, as well as processes of stigmatisation, exclusion and marginalisation. 

The methodological basis deals with the qualitative research tradition with the use of fieldwork, focus group interviews, and individual in-depth semi-structured research interviews, and with the active involvement of children and young people in the research processes. Theoretically, research, among other things, is inspired by the tradition of critical psychology and social practice (Holzkamp, 1998, 2005; Dreier, 1997, 2003; Schraube & Osterkamp, 2013), as this tradition unfolds within the field of pedagogical research focusing on children and young people’s everyday life, as well as inspiration from urban and housing sociology research, which is particularly represented by Wacquant (2008, 2009, 2013), and which frames children’s and young people’s upbringing, well-being and opportunities for development in the urban and housing contexts - living an everyday life in the institutionally organized welfare state.

We look forward to seeing you September 30^th - and do not forget to register!

Elia Psouni & Amanda Angelöw
Sara Eldén & Linn Alenius Wallin

Arranged by: Lund Social Science Methods Centre