Dr Kate Bishop
Date: Friday, 10th December 2010
Time : 3.00 -5.00 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, Faculty of Built Environment
Participatory research with children and young people has increased dramatically in the last 15-20 years. Previously, children’s research largely consisted of research on children rather than with them as is common today. This change reflected a new respect for, and understanding of, childhood as a distinct social period in its own right and not simply a step along the way to adulthood. Researchers became interested in understanding this period of life from children’s perspectives, recognising that they themselves would always be outsiders as adults.
This new approach to researching children’s experience, now well established in social science research, brings with it remarkable methodological, ethical and practical challenges. These challenges need to be negotiated with understanding to ensure the experience of research is a positive one for children and young people and that the research results are robust, rigorous and credible.
The lecturer will draw on her experience of participatory research, identifying some of the challenges, their implications and possible solutions, using recent research projects to illustrate the discussion. The aim of this lecture is to be thought provoking and promote further discussion around the issues raised as there are always a number of solutions to any challenge in research.
This lecture would be of interest to anyone who is thinking of carrying out a participatory research project with children and young people and those who are more experienced.
