Roseanna Bourke

Exploring informed consent and dissent through children's participation in educational research

Involving children and young people in educational research has been foundational in developing and understanding theories of learning, and understanding child development. Attempts to identify childrens perspectives on policies and practices that directly affect them in educational settings have resulted in an increase in the involvement of children to inform research. This means children are interviewed by researchers about matters of interest to their research agenda, and raise questions around the childrens experiences and benefits from such participation. This article explores the involvement of children in educational research with a specific focus on the two-sided images of consent: the dilemmas of negotiating and maintaining childrens informed consent and the related nature of informed dissent during the research process. The introduction of a Childrens Research Advisory Group to explore these issues provides a tier of analysis closer to the young people.

Educating teachers about a code of ethical conduct

Worldwide, there is a growing expectation that teachers will act in a ‘professional’ manner. Professionalism, in this regard, includes identification of a unique body of occupational knowledge, adherence to desirable standards of behaviour, processes to hold members to account and commitment to what the profession regards as morally right or good. In other words, as ethical conduct. Teaching ethically involves making reasoned decisions about what to do in order to achieve the most good for learners. Often, this involves a complex interplay between current context, past experience and personal beliefs and values. However, teacher education and accountability frameworks typically give priority to the ‘practical rationality’ of planning, delivery and assessment of the official curriculum, not the ‘value rationality’ involved in exploring the ethics of teaching in difficult practical circumstances. An aspirational code of ethics for teachers was recently developed by the New Zealand Teachers Council. The authors were part of a group commissioned to design and deliver a single professional development workshop for teachers to raise awareness about the code. This article focuses on the challenges of developing a workshop that both informs and educates teachers about ethics.

Liberating the learner through self-assessment

An international agenda to raise educational ‘standards’ and increase the accountability of schools has the unintended consequence of increased uniformity around pedagogical practices, and of introducing assessment practices that influence the way students experience learning. This paper explores how the self-assessment experiences of primary and secondary school students in relation to their learning reflects their perceived respective institutional demands to account for their learning. Students’ dilemmas and experiences of school-based assessment include the use of pre-defined criteria for assessment tasks focusing the learner’s attention to ‘getting to the identified outcome and in the right way’. When school assessment systems do not reflect students’ socially and culturally valued learning, this reduces conversations around learning to that of outcomes. In contrast, by supporting learners to self-assess in increasingly sophisticated ways, teachers encourage students to think about their learning across contexts, and liberate them from thinking only about institutional assessment demands.

Visibly learning: teachers’ assessment practices for students with high and very high needs

This paper examines the assessment practices of teachers working with students with special educational needs in New Zealand primary and secondary regular and special schools. A national survey was used to identify current assessment practices used by teachers working with students designated, through a resourcing policy, as having high and very high needs. Specifically, the survey sought to determine the type of assessment practices used, reasons for using different approaches, the role of the person carrying out the assessment and levels of confidence in assessing students in relation to learning. The use of learning stories as a form of narrative assessment was further explored through the questionnaires and in a relatively small number of interviews. The results showed that teachers were largely responsible for assessment, and that the three main assessment methods used included collecting examples of work, observations and anecdotal records. Teachers reported confidence in assessing students for learning, but not for funding applications and assistive technology applications. Approaches such as narrative assessment and learning stories were used by some teachers in school‐based settings. Learning stories and narrative assessment are strategies where parents, teachers, teacher‐aides and students engage in meaningful dialogue around learning. Teachers reported that through narrative assessment they could demonstrate that learners with high and very high needs were visibly learning. Through a sociocultural conceptualisation of formative assessment, the role of teachers and learners in assessment is explored.

Using Activity Theory to Evaluate a Professional Learning and Development Initiative in the Use of Narrative Assessment.

Analysis of the impact of professional learning and development (PLD) programmes for educators is complex. This article presents an analysis of a PLD initiative in which classroom teachers learned to use narrative assessment for students with ‘high’ and ‘very high’ learning needs. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the analysis showed how various tensions arose across the activity system of participants during the initiative. Tensions were associated with the roles of those involved, the narrative assessment approach, and the rules of the initiative. While the new narrative assessment approach resulted in benefits for the students and their parents, role conflict emerged in relation to established assessment approaches already used by the educators. It is argued that CHAT enables a more nuanced understanding of the complex ways in which teachers actually engage with official curriculum, pedagogy or assessment PLD initiatives, than do theories that position teachers as simply resistant to change.

An assessment framework for inclusive education: integrating assessment approaches

Teachers committed to inclusive education have the potential to revolutionise pedagogical and assessment practices within regular classrooms simply because students with high needs challenge traditional assumptions about what it means ‘to learn’ and ‘to assess’. This creates opportunities for teachers to find creative ways to ascertain what and how a child learns, and how these assessment results can be communicated to the child, parents, the school and funding bodies to enable further learning. This paper explores diverse assessment practices including criterion-based, normative, ipsative and self-assessment, with both formative and summative functions, reported as being used by teachers in New Zealand who teach students with high needs. These multiple approaches can be integrated into learning stories to ‘narrate’ student learning. An assessment framework is introduced to support teachers to appreciate the functionality of an integrated assessment approach to document student learning and outcomes, arguably a framework applicable for all learners.

A sociocultural analysis of the ethics of involving children in educational research

ABSTRACT This article explores the ethical complexities of involving children in research in the contexts of their families, schools and communities. We argue for an approach that is dynamic, reflexive, responsive and informed by an understanding of how local cultures impact on and shape negotiations and practices around ethical issues and processes. We use different sociocultural lenses to analyse the complexities of ethical processes and practices at the beginning of a research project which explored children’s informal and everyday learning. The article contributes to ethical debates about involving children with research through foregrounding the multiplicities and complexities that emerge when researchers are attentive to the practices and values of the settings that children’s and researchers’ lives traverse.

Essential elements in a professional learning and development programme: a New Zealand case study of autism professional development to promote collaborative practices

Professional learning and development (PD) programmes play an important role in improving professionals’ ability to teach and provide for the children and young people they work with. This article reviews literature relating to components considered important to successful general and autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-focused PD. It then describes the methodology and findings from an evaluation of ‘tips for autism’ – a New Zealand PD programme developed for teams of people who work or live with five-year-old to 12-year-old children with ASD. The evaluation methodology involved an examination of seven data sources to identify 57 merit criteria that could be used to evaluate ASD-focused PD programmes. Applying these merit criteria, ‘tips’ was judged to be a high-quality, valuable, cost-effective PD programme. An examination of the evaluation findings and literature identified seven specific components as being pivotal to successful PD. These are: team interaction; cultural relevancy; expert facilitation; integration of PD with the child’s intervention; translation of theory into practice; provision of time for reflection, practice and action; and the application of learning to an authentic context. It is maintained that when a PD programme results in sustained benefits for children, the programme itself becomes part of the intervention.

The ethics of including and ‘standing up’ for children and young people in educational research

In this special issue of the IJIE, a group of education researchers foreground their ethical deliberations when including learners in research agendas. On the surface, we could claim as researchers we are ethical: we work through institutional ethics committees, are ethical in our research practice, and argue that the right of the child to be heard is both an ethical issue (Clark et al. 2014) and a human rights issue (UNCRC 1989). The diversity of papers represent our values and beliefs when working and including all learners in research agendas, as shown in our untangling of the diverse issues we experience while researching alongside young children. When we are listening to student voice, being confronted by poverty, appreciating cultural diversity and acknowledging intergenerational imperatives ethical dilemmas and questions arise. However, such a complacent view of ‘being ethical’might be an optical illusion, in that we are not able to see what restrictions are placed on us as researchers and often ‘outsiders’ of the communities within which we work. Drawing on Waller’s (1932) work are we merely create an illusion that we are doing ‘the right thing’? When we experience a sense of freedom or general confidence that we are ‘ethical’, and that we believe our research agenda benefits the child, this may prevent us from engaging in deeper levels of ethical deliberation, Through rationalising our actions, do we protect ourselves from asking the tough questions created through research with children, and with the increasing multiple technologies we use in our research? Ethical questions that arise in the research presented in this issue have challenged, and changed, the way we think, incorporate and explore ethics in research. No longer can we continue to rely on standardised university or institutional ethical protocols to ensure that our research is ‘ethical’. Instead, the ongoing reflexive nature of ethics means the focus on researchers to becomemore sophisticated in their understanding of ethics in research must lie within each researcher, alongside the standard ethics committee processes. The domain of ethical practice must lie centrally with the researcher in negotiation with their research participants: the cultural and political context of our research creates both the challenges and the answers. In the majority of the examples within this special issue, researchers have used technology within their research agenda, and in all cases have investigated an aspect of partnership – with students, teachers, parents and family to understand their phenomenon under investigation. The imperative to include children and young people in educational research, and in more participative ways, is both educationally important when exploring policy and practice contexts, and a human rights issue. Increasingly then, researchers are exploring new ways to include children in the process of research, and along with this are joining in supporting teachers to challenge the status quo for learners. As a form of activism, real change can occur through including learners in research agendas that are about them. In doing this, complex ethical dilemmas emerge. In attempts to move beyond a tokenistic level of ‘student voice’ research, and into action with and for the child, researchers are conceptually challenged around what is ethical, how we understand the competing tensions around ethics in the child’s diverse settings, and how our research practices change as a result. In this special issue researchers from several countries (New Zealand, United States, Scotland, Australia, Chile and India) grapple with ethical challenges they face in their research with children. Collectively, these pieces show several key themes to consider when working with diverse learners and the ethical challenges our work presents:

Creating a space for student voice in an educational evaluation

ABSTRACT Evaluation research focusing on educational initiatives that impact on the learning and lives of young people must be challenged to incorporate ‘student voice’. In a context of conventional evaluation models of government-led initiatives, student voice is a compelling addition, and challenges the nature of traditional forms of evaluation. It requires a student-first approach where young people actively report on their experiences, rather than being represented by others. This paper presents an evaluation that draws on large-scale ‘student voice’ contribution. Using the context of a mental health programme that was piloted in secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explores the importance of a student voice agenda in evaluations. More than 2500 students participated through national surveys and an in-depth case study across five school sites. By foregrounding student voice as an evaluation tool, the ethics of student involvement becomes complex. When authentic student ‘data’ can change or challenge official thinking, students’ voice(s) can either be foregrounded or silenced. Commissioned evaluations are often fraught with wider political agendas, but evaluation researchers have a duty to ensure student voice is represented if it is to inform ongoing government policy that impacts on the lives and learning of young people.