Beth Cross

Hearing Out Children’s Narrative Pathways To Adulthood: Young people as interpreters of their own childhoods in diverging working-class Scottish communities

Participatory research with children in the main focuses on short-term interactions. As this practice develops, questions about longer-term consequences for participants have arisen, examining the empowering claims for this research approach. This article reports the findings from continued contact with participants of an ethnographic participatory research project. Longitudinal interviews emphasize the lasting influence of their experience of adults in primary school and the resulting constructions of learning relationships. Their perceptions of authority, discipline, violence and justice are portrayed as pivotal in these young people’s transitions to more mature identities. In the cluster of narratives the research discussion elicits, these themes interweave. The article demonstrates that understanding the significance and meaning of children’s perspectives is a process that unfolds over time, and requires, as Christensen and Prout advocate, continuing dialogues with children and with social science colleagues. This process leads this researcher to a reassessment of what constitutes ‘participation’. The power constraints of which children are keenly aware shape the extent to which they engage in participatory research and the ways in which they may find it empowering.

The experience of being protected

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to discuss how adult support and protection (ASP) work might support or further damage an adults strengths, skills and sense of self. There is a particular focus on adults who require some support with decision‐making.Design/methodology/approach – Forum theatre and other creative techniques were used to discuss ASP with 42 people who access support. A range of advice for practitioners was generated, a portion of which is reported here. The research design was participatory, with ten people who access support being members of the research team.Findings – ASP work can support or undermine an adults strengths, skills and sense of self, depending on the way it is performed. Three inter‐locking themes are presented to illustrate this finding. First, participants thought it might be intimidating to be “singled out”, and wished to be understood in the context of their relationships. Second, ASP was thought likely to be experienced as a judgement on the person and their pro...

Pupil participation in Scottish schools: How far have we come?:

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), which applies to all children under the age of 18, established the overarching principles guiding pupil participation. In most European states, signatories to the Convention have enacted policies to promote the voice of the child or young person in decisions that affect them. In education systems strategies to enhance pupil participation are an increasing feature of deliberation on education for citizenship, curriculum flexibility, pedagogical approaches and assessment for learning. Despite the positive policy context and professional commitment to principles of inclusion, translating policy intentions so that the spirit of the legislation is played out in the day-to-day experiences of pupils is a constant challenge. This article reports on research that examines how pupil participation is understood and enacted in Scottish schools. It considers how the over-laying of diverse policies presents mixed messages to practitioners.

The Interface Work of Narrative

The article explores further Lyra (1999) and Hermans’ (1999, 2001a, 2001b) glossing of complexity terminology within analysis of identity formation, taking a particular interest in differing uses of narrative within identity negotiations. Lyra (1999) draws attention to the importance of using an extended time frame to assess the power dynamics involved within any communicative exchange. The fragments of speech often under consideration in academic texts often preclude an appreciation of such groundwork. This article looks at a group discussion in terms of preceding ethnographic material that contextualises it within a larger socio-educational history. A mapping methodology first traces the power dynamics and different moments of dialogical activity (Lyra, 1999) across the discussion and then details the stances depicted within narratives which have a correspondence to Hermans’ (2001a, 2001b) I-stances. Initially, condensed narratives confirm each other. Subsequently, partial versions of narratives voice divergence. Boje’s (2007) concept of ante-narratives aids the analysis of these latter discursive moves and their role as exploratory devices for considering possible future identity strategies. Taken together these maps contribute to an understanding of selves as dynamic systems (Lyra, 2007, p. 180) tasked with creating coherency and yet responding creatively to uncertainty (Hermans, 2001a).

The last place to look: the place of pupil councils within citizen participation in Scottish schools

This article critically examines pupil councils as a means of developing pupils’ citizenship participation. It draws on findings across two research projects. The first study is a mixed method study commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) that reviews the range of participatory activities in Scottish schools and their contribution to Scotland’s major curriculum revision, the Curriculum for Excellence (CFE). The second is a longer ethnographic study examining young people’s experience of participation projects in more detail. The findings lend strength to the argument that pupil councils as a stand-alone approach are not an effective means of citizenship participation. When pupil councils are complemented by other participation activity across spheres of school interaction, young people’s understanding of and interest in participation can be greatly enhanced. The article examines the cross curricular linkages schools are making, the barriers that impede such linkages and the benefits derived from successful coordinated approaches in light of criteria for ‘graduated participation’ developed through decades of work internationally on children’s participation.

How does community matter? Misrecognition and the participation agenda for children in socially disadvantaged communities

Participatory research with young people has enjoyed a decade of sustained development including the development of a range of embodied and visual methodologies. Much of this has been in the service of a participatory citizenship agenda, as articulated in the Every Child Matters agenda in England, in the work of the UKs Childrens Commissioners and through service provider commitment to consultation with young people more generally. However throughout this period there has also been a sustained critique of the UK Governments citizenship agenda for young people, and consequently of the role of participatory research and consultation processes within this. Much of this critique questions what kind of citizenship young people are being asked to participate in, juxtaposing the construction of ‘inclusive’ participatory spaces with an increasingly stratified and exclusionary context for participation in the social and economic arenas of society. This article reflects on this debate using material from a two-year ethnographic project with a small group of year six and seven primary school girls from a Scottish urban area long designated as having a high concentration of people struggling with socio-economic disadvantage and exclusion. The project blended the more traditional ethnographic approach of observation and reflection with a series of participatory activities with the group. These activities took place within an after school club which they named ‘Community Matters’. This article examines the various activities of the club and the differing meanings of and associations with ‘community’ that the girls depicted and discussed. These situated meanings are then contrasted to the assumptions that underpin childrens role within the evaluation systems that govern services to children.

Platforms, Plateaus, and String A Disability Diverse Research Team’s Account of Spatial Challenges and Strategies Within Research Dissemination Spaces

This article documents the process of attempting to challenge barriers that prevent disabled people with high levels of institutional intervention from taking part in research dissemination and its more elevated spaces of presentation, debate, and influence. We have sought to keep the disabled researchers on our team in the conversation throughout article production. Thus, the article is a series of dialogues conducted across the production process. These dialogues explore the embodied methodologies that made risk management policy more accessible to those whose views about it we wanted to hear. We also explore the spatial metaphors that arose as we reflected on research. This involves an engagement with Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor of plateau and an understanding of our work as a series of assemblages that are configured and reconfigured to adapt to changing opportunities.

Strength-based approaches: a realist evaluation of implementation in maternity services in Scotland

AimStrength-based approaches draw on patients’ strengths and perspectives to partner with them in their own care, recovery and problem solving. The effectiveness of strength-based approaches to address complex health problems has a growing evidence base leading to its incorporation within universal services in many countries. However, practitioners’ understanding of implementation of strength-based approaches, such as how to agenda match, set goals and revise plans within universal services are under-researched. Maternity services are a key point of access to health services and women’s experiences of them have consequences for families’ future willingness to engage with public health provision. This study researched strength-based components of children’s services policy, Getting It Right For Every Child, in maternity care in Scotland.Subject and methodsComplex interventions, such as this policy, requires a methodology that captures complex dynamics. Consequently a realist-evaluation-informed case-study approach was adopted across three contrasting health boards comprised of: (1) interviews with women receiving maternity care with heightened risk profiles, (2) a sample of maternity care professionals responsible for implementing the policy and (3) document analysis of policy guidance and training materials.ResultsWhilst midwives reported adopting more open approaches to raising sensitive issues with women, many midwives were unfamiliar with strength-based approaches and were not drawing upon them, in contrast to a perception amongst managers that training and implementation was common.ConclusionThese findings suggest implementation of strength-based approaches within universal services require further attention to training and embedding culture change.

Negotiating the Multiple Meanings of Participation within Multi-agency Working: children's participation at policies' crossroads

Over the last decade, the term ‘participation’ has gained prominence within childrens services and policy formation. However, this term is used in variable ways and there remains a lack of consensus within policy circles about its employment. As a consequence, young people encounter a variety of practices to which this term is ascribed. This article explores the understandings of participation as they varied across settings with a cohort of upper-primary pupils who accessed a number of childrens services within their locality. Contested meanings of participation became particularly apparent within a multi-agency project in which the areas community centre and housing office piloted a project packaged as an antisocial-behaviour prevention strategy. This project brought participatory learning strategies into the school and raised awareness for those participating about community services and opportunities. The article draws on observations of sessions and interviews with teachers, youth workers and young people to explore the negotiations around pedagogy and discourse that the project entailed in order to explore the different ways that participation was glossed within these negotiations. This examination of differing understandings and performances of participation is then used to reflect upon changing the childrens services agenda and terminology.

Link or Breach? The Role of Trust in Developing Social Capital within a Family Literacy Project

This article examines survey and focus group transcripts of a well-established early years literacy project in Scotland in light of contextual information about changing local authority policy in order to look at the gains in social capital identified by participants and the extent to which these indicate lasting durable change that will reap later benefits for both individuals and the community in which they are situated. Contextual information provides the basis to examine the interlinking dynamics and resources of a network of volunteer and statutory organisations that support the project and raises questions about how its benefits will be sustained should that network be seriously undermined by the changing policies of local and national government authorities. In analysing the issues at stake in sustained empowerment, a comparison is made with Bagleys work in a contrasting early years project in England. The article questions the appropriation of the metaphor of capital to the dynamics of social relations, particularly when issues of trust are at stake. Trust, it is argued, is of particular importance in decisions about how linking capital can be said to be reinvested. By looking at layers of data the conclusions that might be reached relying on statistical measures alone are problematised.