Ethical research with children: untold narratives and taboos

Ethical Research with Children: Untold Narratives and Taboos makes an important and timely contribution to research involving children and young people, not least in the ways that it weaves the experiences and concerns of children with disability through the layers of thinking and reflection needed to plan, implement, analyse and disseminate research involving children whose perspectives are less dominant in discourses of childhood.

The authors raise a series of critical questions about current constructions of children in participatory research (What constitutes voice? Who is agentic? Why do we listen to some voices and not others? What journey does the voice take from utterance to publication?). They draw on narratives of their own research experience to effectively problematise this social positioning, opening a space for reflexive discussion of institutional expectations, spaces of research encounters, dominating voices and limitations on topics for discussion with children. In doing so, they aim to provide a guide for readers for ‘doing ethics’ and ‘questioning some of the persistent illusions and cherished conceits of the institution of childhood itself’ (13).

The authors have structured the book in a way that blends the narratives of their particular research expertise throughout all of the chapters. Richards brings her focus on children from China who have experienced inter-country adoption; Clark on the assumed vulnerability of children, their interdependence and gendered natures; and Boggis on the ways in which the voices of children and young people with little or no speech and who use high-tech augmentative and alternative communication systems are ‘simultaneously facilitated and inhibited’ (9). This approach is particularly helpful for disability studies readers, who are perhaps more used to reading a discrete chapter focusing on disabled children in ethics texts which otherwise give little attention to the needs and interests of disabled children and young people. It imbues the interests of disabled children and young people across the book, and importantly emplaces them as children first and foremost – while disability is relevant and at times important, it is not defining.

The chapter structure of the book unpacks key ethical dilemmas which will be familiar to most researchers – ethical review processes and their limitations; the spaces of research encounters; ethical issues in the field; agency, autonomy and active participation (and their limits); connections between researcher and researched; and voice and silence(ing).

Chapter three, on the rights of participation and the realities of inclusion, is interesting for disability researchers and practitioners. Drawing on the distinction in childhood studies between ‘actor’ and ‘agency’ helpfully articulates tensions (and frequent exclusion) for children and young people who are social actors, but not able to provide informed consent to research participation in conventional ways. Framing these in the context of participation rights shifts the emphasis away from personal capacity and towards a focus on ‘the principles and practices of rights in situ [and how they] relate directly to opportunities made available to give individuals a voice and include them in research’ (77). It does, however, only partially resolve the concern well articulated by Curran and Runswick-Cole (2014) that in positioning disabled children as children first there is a risk of minimising or ignoring disabled children’s embodiment and lived experience.

After reading Ethical Research with Children, I was left encouraged by this well-written and reflective book – an example of the ‘new’ childhood studies, in which strong scholars are reaching for more nuanced, complex and contested narratives (Konstantoni and Emejulu 2017). The authors call for continued interrogation of concepts of voice, relational agency and power – and the ways they are defined, embodied and negotiated by children. They close in situating the book as part of a continuing conversation – opened by those who challenged the subordinate status of children, but also inviting greater critical reflection. As recently released significant work in this space emerges (see particularly Runswick-Cole, Curran, and Liddiard 2017), I think this is a well-placed and very useful contribution.

Ethical Research with Children would be a particularly helpful book for higher degree students and early career researchers, but its multidisciplinary approach makes it a valuable read for a diverse audience engaged in academia and children’s rights.

Sally Robinson
Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia
[email protected]
© 2018 Sally Robinson
https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2018.1457499