Autonomy, spontaneity and creativity in research with children. A study of experience and participation, in central Italy and North West England

ABSTRACT

Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children’s knowledges and experiences.  This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation.  This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance.  The study contributes to the debate on children’s autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice.  Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children’s choices and agency are respected.

KEYWORDS:

• Aesthetics
• agency
• arts-based methods
• autism
• autonomy
• childhood
• creative encounters
• England
• ethics
• Italy

Acknowledgments

Francesca Bernardi’s research project was funded by the Department for Children, Education and Communities, Faculty of Education. Edge Hill University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Summary of analysis from interview data, from this study.

2. In English and Italian.

3. This option was available only to participants in Central Italy.

4. Matt (aged 6) North West England.

5. Culturally relevant pseudonyms are used throughout the paper.

6. Both participants in NW England.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesca Bernardi

Francesca Bernardi is Associate Tutor and Researcher in Inclusive and Special Education at Edge Hill University, founder of the Antonio Gramsci Society UK and board member of the University Ethics Committee and Autism Catalyst (R&D NHS North West), editorial board member of Mensa’s Androgyny and guest reviewer of the British Journal of Special Education (Wiley-Blackwell). Francesca regularly collaborates with the RSA (The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) on a wide range of community research dissemination and education projects. Her latest publication is a Case Study in Research Methods for Social Justice and Equity in Education (2019, Bloomsbury, Liz Atkins and Vicky Duckworth, eds.). Her current work is on aesthetics and the politics of representation.