Mary Kellett

How to Develop Children as Researchers: a step by step guide to teaching the research process

This book is based on two years research piloting optimal ways to engage children with research process as a route to enhanced learning. Engaging in research enhances childrens crticial thinking skills and encourages independent learning. Undertaking their own research empowers children to explore issues which interest or concern them and to have a voice. The book adopts a child-centred and interactive approach to teaching children how to engage with research.

Small Shoes, Big Steps! Empowering Children as Active Researchers

The concept of children as researchers has gained credence in response to changing perspectives on their status in society, recognition of their role as consumers and increased attention to children’s rights. While this has led to greater involvement of children as participant and co-researchers, research led by children—research they design, carry out and disseminate themselves with adult support rather than adult management—is still relatively rare. Children designing and leading their own research opens up new protagonist frontiers. Children are party to the subculture of childhood which gives them a unique “insider” perspective critical to our understanding of their worlds. Child-to-child enquiry generates different data from adult-to-child enquiry because children observe with different eyes, ask different questions and communicate in fundamentally different ways. This paper explores some of the issues in empowering children as active researchers and draws on theory relating to participation, empowerment, voice and emancipation. Its primary focus is to celebrate and value children’s own research and includes the full text of an original research study by an 11-year-old girl.

Children as researchers: what we can learn from them about the impact of poverty on literacy opportunities?

This paper challenges some of the assumptions about our understanding of and approaches to literacy. Crucially, it provides evidence hitherto missing from the body of research knowledge: children’s own perspectives on literacy opportunities accessed by children themselves. Reading proficiency is pivotal in education, providing a platform on which much other curricular endeavour is built. Two groups of six children (aged 11 years) in two UK primary schools – one in an area of socio‐economic advantage and one in an area of socio‐economic disadvantage – underwent a programme of research training and were supported to undertake their own research projects about aspects of literacy that interested or concerned them. The extent to which poverty could be identified as an inhibiting factor was carried out as an adult abstraction from the children’s studies (with the children’s informed consent). This was done to avoid any possible poverty self‐labelling or stigmatisation being occasioned to children through association. Findings revealed that children from affluent backgrounds exuded literacy confidence derived from a variety of opportunities: routine support for homework, parental oracy role models, favourable environments for reading and writing, absence of distractions and opportunities to talk about literacy. By contrast children from poorer backgrounds had few, if any, of these opportunities. For them homework clubs were a lifeline. An important self‐development strategy uncovered in the children’s reports was the need to ‘practise private confidence’ before developing ‘public confidence’. Children identified reading aloud and writing as activities requiring ‘public confidence’ and activities which needed a lot of ‘private’ practice. A striking characteristic of children from affluent backgrounds was how easy it was for them to access opportunities for ‘private confidence’ building whereas children from low‐income backgrounds had the opposite experience. Implications for policy and practice are discussed in the light of these findings.

Responding to individuals with severe learning difficulties and stereotyped behaviour: challenges for an inclusive era

Traditionally, professionals working with individuals with severe learning difficulties who demonstrate stereotyped behaviours, such as rocking and hand-flapping, have viewed such behaviours as undesirable, inappropriate and in need of reduction or elimination. This perspective is influenced by notions of readying those individuals for mixed settings, educating, training or modifying them to help gain their acceptance. Intensive Interaction is an alternative approach for working with individuals with complex difficulties that responds positively to them and their stereotyped behaviours, sometimes using these as a point of connection. Intensive Interaction sets out to enhance social and communication abilities and not to reduce stereotyped behaviours. However, findings from two studies of Intensive Interaction that show some reduction in stereotyped behaviours are reported and discussed. The authors consider the way in which more inclusive thinking connects with changes in thinking about stereotyped behaviour and the individuals who engage in them.

Sam's story: evaluating Intensive Interaction in terms of its effect on the social and communicative ability of a young child with severe learning difficulties

Sam’s story began a little over a year ago, when he participated in a longitudinal research project to evaluate the efficacy of Intensive Interaction on the sociability and communication abilities of young children with severe and complex learning difficulties (SLD). The project spanned an academic year and involved six SLD children in two community special schools and one nursery. Significant levels of social and communicative progress were made.

Intensive Interaction in the inclusive classroom: using interactive pedagogy to connect with students who are hardest to reach

This paper examines the role of Intensive Interaction in interactive pedagogy for students with severe and complex learning difficulties. It begins with an overview of the theoretical context for interactive pedagogy and then goes on to describe how one particular approach, Intensive Interaction, can, within a flexible curriculum, support sociability and communication development for pupils who are hardest to reach because they have not yet learned the fundamentals of early communication. Findings from one case study are drawn upon to illustrate the efficacy of this and to discuss how teamwork can affect optimal outcomes. The paper argues for more pupil‐centred, flexible curricula and the wider adoption of approaches such as Intensive Interaction in inclusive mainstream schools.

Teachers' talk styles: communicating with learners with severe and complex learning difficulties

A small-scale, in-depth study of teachers’ talk in interaction with learners with severe and complex learning disabilities and very limited communication abilities is reported. The teachers had all participated in training on Intensive Interaction, a method based on the model of caregiver-infant interaction and focused on the quality of interpersonal interactions. Sequential systematic observation was used to analyse video samples of interaction, focusing on teachers’ talk styles compared with the ‘motherese’ linguistic style used with infants, and addressing whether engagement in the communication process was achieved.

WeCan2: exploring the implications of young people with learning disabilities engaging in their own research

The concept of children and young people as researchers has started to gather momentum in response to changing perspectives on their status in society, recognition of their role as consumers and increased attention to children and young people’s rights. There are early signs of a growing body of research studies undertaken by children and young people themselves. To date, this has included very little by young people with learning disabilities. 1 Concepts of young people’s participation and voice are thrown into sharper contrast for groups who sit on the margins of society. This paper reports research undertaken by a group of young people with learning disabilities exploring their experiences of youth democracy and meaningful participation in decision‐making forums. The paper draws on theoretical frameworks of participation and voice; however, its primary focus is to celebrate and value research undertaken by these marginalised young people.The concept of children and young people as researchers has started to gather momentum in response to changing perspectives on their status in society, recognition of their role as consumers and increased attention to children and young people’s rights. There are early signs of a growing body of research studies undertaken by children and young people themselves. To date, this has included very little by young people with learning disabilities. 1 Concepts of young people’s participation and voice are thrown into sharper contrast for groups who sit on the margins of society. This paper reports research undertaken by a group of young people with learning disabilities exploring their experiences of youth democracy and meaningful participation in decision‐making forums. The paper draws on theoretical frameworks of participation and voice; however, its primary focus is to celebrate and value research undertaken by these marginalised young people.

The Historical Context

Pacem in Terris, (On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty) was promulgated by Pope John XXIII on 11th April, 1963, two months before his death. The encyclical is best appreciated against the background of the development of the United Nations, the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. After the atrocities of the Second Word War (1939-1945) delegates from 50 nations met to establish an international peace-keeping organization, which was to become the United Nations. Its first resolution focused on the peaceful use of atomic energy and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, and in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Commonsense Methods for Children with Special Educational Needs (5th edition) - by Peter Westwood

Commonsense Methods for Children with Special Educational Needs (5th edition). By Peter Westwood. Pp 254. London: Routledge. 2007. £19.99 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-415-41582-8.