Emma Kearney

Promoting children’s informed assent in research participation

Informed agreement to participate in research is a critical element of ethical practice. When researching with children, opportunities to provide informed agreement are often afforded to adult gatekeepers, yet not necessarily extended to the children involved. This paper reports an approach to engaging with children in research, emphasising strategies to facilitate their informed, and ongoing, assent. As part of a research project seeking children’s perspectives of their local community, researchers developed assent and information forms for children and young people. The aim of these forms was to promote discussion of children’s research rights, including the right to choose whether or not they engaged in the research. Within the broader research project, 130 children aged 4–12 years provided feedback about the forms and discussed how the forms influenced their participation in the research project.

Researching with Families: Ethical Issues and Situations.

This article draws on an Australian project engaging with families with complex support needs as their children start school. The project itself is focused on developing collaborative research relationships between families, community support agencies and researchers with the aim of investigating what happens for families during the transition to school. In particular, the project has focused on developing strategies that promote recognition of family strengths, as well as challenges, and that support a positive start to school education. This article reports a range of ethical issues and situations encountered throughout the project. The aim of reporting these is to share some of the critical reflections about the assumptions underpinning the research, ethical engagement with research participants, and the responsibilities researchers have. In particular, the authors share reflections about the nature and implications of conducting research with families, accessing research participants and strategies for engaging with research participants. The approach taken in the project, and this article, reflects assumptions about research as an ethical process and the need for researchers to consider the ethical issues and situations they meet within research contexts.

Building Positive Relationships with Indigenous Children, Families and Communities: Learning at the Cultural Interface.

Drawing on the work of Martin Nakata, this paper brings into focus the everyday complexities involved in the cultural interfaces that educators, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, negotiate in order to promote children’s engagement with formal education processes. Analysis of emergent data from a recent evaluation of a preschool education programme operating in 35 rural and remote Indigenous communities in Queensland, Australia, revealed that educators struggle to situate their own knowledge and experiences in relation to the knowledge and experiences of others in both the educational and cultural contexts in which they work. A series of composite vignettes reporting the experiences of early childhood educators across these communities is used to examine the pedagogical opportunities available to educators when they are able to recognise the value of the knowledge and experience of all those involved in a child’s educational success.

Moved by the past: discontinuity and historical mutation

Dews, P. 1995. The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: Verso. Dreyfus, H. L., and P. Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Han, B. [1998] 2002. Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the Transcendental and the Historical. Translated by E. Pile. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.