Abstract
These two edited collections are intended as companion volumes – the first presents a set of papers addressing different aspects of carrying out research with children and young people, while the second offers a more reflexive volume exploring the experiences of those who have carried out such work. Both address the issue of research with children from a multi-disciplinary perspective, as befits the growing area of childhood studies, and both are written very much with the novice researcher in mind. And, as companion volumes, they work reasonably well together. However, while the first book discusses a wide ranging set of debates related to childhood research that makes it a useful introductory text in its own right, the second book is much less successful as a stand-alone volume.
As noted in the introduction to the first book, Doing Research with Children and Young People, the collection of papers is not intended to constitute a step-by-step guide to carrying out a research project. Indeed, given the multi-disciplinary approach this would not be feasible. However, that said, many of the contributions do offer some practical guidance along the way for those seeking reassurance or advice. For example, the chapter by Jones outlines some issues that arise when involving children and young people as researchers and, using specific examples, shows how this can work out in practice. Similarly drawing on her own experiences, Roberts offers a number of informative ideas in relation to the dissemination of research results, while Alderson offers some practical guidelines to tackle thorny ethical issues.
For those new to research the opening chapters of the first section by Fraser and Robinson helpfully set out some of the paradigms and philosophies within which research in general can be situated and the kinds of broad questions and issues that one might want to think about before beginning to do research with children. Kellet, Robinson and Burr complement this with a chapter that summarises some of the key debates of childhood studies and Masson offers a rare and very useful synopsis of the legal context within which child research has to be situated. Section 2 then moves on to explore the nature of research relations, looking in particular at issues of power and gender, in addition to those of ethics, while Section 3 addresses the importance of acknowledging diversity within the childhood population, taking different age groups, race and disability as the key variables. In the final section, the contributions that research with children can make to our understanding of a children's perspective in the fields of health, social care and education are explored. In this way, then, the volume mirrors the various stages of the research process, with each short chapter providing a commentary on particular key aspects of research with children and augmenting these with illustrative examples taken from research projects of different kinds.
Written in a highly accessible style, as is fitting for a volume that accompanies the Open University course Research with Children, this book offers a rounded picture of the problems and potentials for childhood research and would be a useful textbook and guide for undergraduates setting out, for the first time, to carry out research with children. For those more experienced, it may also serve as a reminder of the issues that we ought to be paying attention to.
The second book, The Reality of Research with Children and Young People, is composed of 13 extracts from previously published research with children and young people from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Each extract is accompanied by a shorter specially commissioned commentary by the researcher which offers some reflections on that research. This was an interesting and potentially exciting idea but one which, in some ways, does not quite work out in practice. In the introductory chapter Lewis explains that they had hoped to elicit research stories which would illuminate the details of the research process that are usually obscured in the final polished account. To this end they asked the authors to engage in a process of self-reflection. And, if this request had been fully engaged with by the various authors, there would be much of interest here for it is certainly important, for those new to research, to learn about the difference between what actually happened during the research process and the final written account. However, although some authors, such as Rassool and Evans, tackle this with enthusiasm and take the opportunity to engage with the mistakes they made or to explore why some research methods did not work well, other authors are less reflexive and provide a more measured and ultimately less illuminating commentary. What we get is simply a fleshed out account of the research process as, for example, is the case with the commentaries offered by Coates and Takei.
However, the major criticism of this volume centres on the lack of connectedness between the reprinted extracts and the commentaries offered – and, indeed, maybe this was an impossible task to attempt. In many cases, the short commentaries add little by the way of additional insights to the research findings being reported and it is hard to see what value the commentary has other than as a research note. Other commentaries, however, would work well as stand alone accounts of the research process – the reader does not really need to refer to the extract. Punch, for example, offer a very personal account of the pitfalls and flea bites encountered while undertaking ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivia, while Pickett introduces some of the difficulties involved in a large scale multi-disciplinary/multi-national research project. Sutton meanwhile admits that his research into bullying happened more by accident than design and that his ‘interest’ in this topic has developed out of the research process rather than being the impetus for it. Each of these commentators would have benefited from being given more space to reflect further on such issues. Matters such as these are still not talked about enough within the research community and it is often through hearing about the problems others have encountered that novice researchers can be reassured, not only that the difficulties they are facing are not unique, but that these are problems that can be, if not overcome, at least circumvented.
For the book to have really worked in the way that was intended the editors should perhaps have been a little more prescriptive and asked their various authors to choose a published extract that would enable them, on reflection, to engage directly with a particular research issue – say, for example, difficulties of access, an ethical issue, problems of team work etc. Had they done so, the connections between the ‘polished’ account and the messiness of the research process would then have been clearer and the lessons to be learnt the more obvious.