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Book part
Publication date: 9 June 2023

Nadine Correia and Cecília Aguiar

Listening to and considering children's voices shows respectful regard for children's needs, interests and experiences, and helps discern what is meaningful for them in a…

Abstract

Listening to and considering children's voices shows respectful regard for children's needs, interests and experiences, and helps discern what is meaningful for them in a particular subject or situation. Creating opportunities for the expression of children's voices implies child-centred practice: recognising children as active agents, with evolving competences and capacity to understand, think and choose with some degree of autonomy, thus being able to influence decision-making. Therefore, the commitment to listen to children's voices represents a fundamental step towards empowering children and supporting their participation rights. Importantly, children have the right to be heard and to have their voices considered from the earliest ages, in their significant relational contexts, such as early childhood education and care (ECEC). Listening to and valuing children's multiple voices in ECEC can be done in many ways, ensuring the context, children's background, characteristics and preferences are respected. In this chapter, we address the specificities of listening to children's voices and taking them into account in ECEC. We discuss common challenges that may prevent the full expression and consideration of children's voices, and ways to overcome them, to ensure children's meaningful participation in what matters to them and support them in becoming active citizens in society.

Details

Establishing Child Centred Practice in a Changing World, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-941-3

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 March 2017

Jessica Clark and Sarah Richards

The canonical narratives (Bruner, 2004) of contemporary research with children include participation, agency and voice. This inclusive language has saturated research literature…

Abstract

The canonical narratives (Bruner, 2004) of contemporary research with children include participation, agency and voice. This inclusive language has saturated research literature throughout the development of the “new” social studies of childhood (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998). Their presence was highlighted as illuminating greater understanding of the social realities of children’s lives but they mask and mute as much as they reveal. Heralded as the holy grail of emancipatory research with children, participatory methods have come to be recognized almost exclusively as the route for ethical practice and valid data. The absence of substantial, critical evaluation results in these concepts being little more than “cherished conceits” (Segal, 1999, p. 118). There has been a lack of thorough interrogation of what participation actually means and the data and social relations it produces. Participation implies collaboration and reciprocity but is counter-intuitively used to seek and promote the agentic child enshrined in neoliberalism. Children as social beings negotiate complex social relations (Richards, Clark, & Boggis, 2015) but this is often lost in research encounters which privilege the individual voice, informed by an under-interrogated definition of agency. Instead of following the neoliberal agenda we argue that recognizing the ways in which participatory methods, agency, and voice can and should promote reciprocal and relational social realities is vital to a better understanding of the worlds of children. We call not for their expulsion from research methods but for a re-evaluation of the assumptions that lie beneath and what is produced in their name.

Details

Researching Children and Youth: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-098-1

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Book part
Publication date: 8 March 2017

Ingrid E. Castro

Exploring the “How?” and “Why?” of children’s agency through the employment of strategies to listen and to participate within parent interviews, this chapter addresses various…

Abstract

Exploring the “How?” and “Why?” of children’s agency through the employment of strategies to listen and to participate within parent interviews, this chapter addresses various “agency routes” children used in the effort to contribute their voices to adult conversations. The generational relationship between children and parents is tempered by children’s ownership claims to shared spaces within the home, which allowed them the room to defy parents’ directives to “Go Away!” Children utilized three different tactics of defiance (overt, quiet, and covert) in the attempt to listen and be heard, and in the process were motivated to participate in five distinct ways, which included: (1) informative, (2) corrective, (3) instructive, (4) investigative, and (5) expressive participation. Concluding with a call to recognize children’s voices as more than merely “background noise” when transcribing interviews, I encourage researchers in childhood studies to potentially revisit data collected in the effort to further theorize children’s agency as situated within generationality, contributing to a recontextualized framework of analysis.

Details

Researching Children and Youth: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-098-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Isobelle Barrett Meyering

This chapter offers a critical examination of children and young people’s participation in Australia’s official celebrations of the International Year of the Child (IYC) in 1979…

Abstract

This chapter offers a critical examination of children and young people’s participation in Australia’s official celebrations of the International Year of the Child (IYC) in 1979. While the global objectives of IYC strongly reflected ‘protectionist’ or ‘welfarist’ approaches to children’s rights, the chapter shows that, at a local level, the year was also shaped by alternative notions of children’s liberation that had emerged in the preceding decade and a new emphasis on children’s voices by policymakers, advocates and researchers. The chapter explores how these ideas were incorporated at a national level before closely examining three initiatives in New South Wales (NSW), the Australian state where the emphasis on children’s voices was taken furthest. The initiatives examined are: (1) the establishment of a Kids Council to provide input into the state’s response to IYC; (2) the organisation of a Youth Forum for high school students; and (3) the provision of funding for the ‘Speakout’ camp for children in out-of-home ‘care’. None of these initiatives approached the radical forms of democratic participation envisioned by liberationists. Nonetheless, they attest to the wider credence given to ideas of children’s self-determination in this period, well before the formalisation of children’s ‘participation’ rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). The selected case studies also provide context to more recent debates over the inclusion of children and young people’s voices in decision-making processes, demonstrating how concerns around tokenism, exclusivity and adult-centricism manifested and were navigated at a time when the concepts of participation and voice remained relatively novel.

Details

Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and their Advocates
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-469-5

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Book part
Publication date: 9 June 2023

Rossana Perez-del-Aguila, Patricia Rodriguez Aguirre and Jimena Cuba Blanco

This chapter explores how eight children from five Bolivian migrant families living in Madrid perceive their participation within their families. Children understand their…

Abstract

This chapter explores how eight children from five Bolivian migrant families living in Madrid perceive their participation within their families. Children understand their participation as taking responsibility for domestic chores and taking care of younger siblings. Children's ideas of participation are associated with their school experience and are about simply having a voice in everyday mundane interactions with adults and peers.

Parents' cultural values, power and authority dominate decisions in the family. These children were born in Spain and practices in their family homes are influenced by their parent's strong cultural ties with Bolivia. The data collected show that the lives of these children and their views of participation need to be understood beyond the binary of the Global North and Global South (Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2019).

The research employed the ‘routes of participation’, a playful and creative research method that aimed to empower children to explore their ‘interdependent agency’ (Abebe, 2019) and the meaning of participation within the context of their family lives. We conclude that any successful intervention with children needs to understand the meaning of what children say in relation to the various situations in which they live. Listening to children's voices and paying attention to the language that they use in their everyday lives should continue to be the basis of child-centred research and child-centred practice. The chapter encourages to reflect on the value of culturally grounded playful activities to understand children's agentic experiences and their contribution that they can make to their own lives.

Details

Establishing Child Centred Practice in a Changing World, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-941-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 March 2012

Pepukayi Chitakunye

The purpose of this paper is to explore how children can be empowered in the research process, as active agents and key informants, in matters affecting their consumption.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how children can be empowered in the research process, as active agents and key informants, in matters affecting their consumption.

Design/methodology/approach

Insights are drawn from a study that used multiple methods to explore children's everyday food consumption practices. The data set was gathered over a period of two years and included: 23 informant‐generated visual diaries; seven online depth interviews; 15 school‐based depth interviews; 42 days of school‐based mealtime observations; and home‐based mealtime observations with four families, each visited on five different occasions.

Findings

The paper uncovers how visual diaries can be used in combination with other methods to transform relationships between adults and children in the research encounter. The emergent transformations are organised around three core themes that include: children's authentic voices; multiplex reality; and power and control. It was also found that children were able to express their own interpretations and thoughts about their food consumption practices, rather than solely relying on the adult interpretations of their lives.

Originality/value

For scholars and practitioners, the paper offers an approach that provides an opportunity for children to participate in family food decision‐making processes. It offers a cautionary tale not just about getting children to talk, but to allow children's voices to be heard in food policy initiatives, as well as in qualitative research and marketing. This poses a challenge to social researchers to think of different ways of engaging children in research.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

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Article
Publication date: 7 April 2015

Bertil M L Hultén

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the introduction of auditory sensory cues, through a human voice, affect children’s and parent’s shopping behaviour in a retail grocery…

2232

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the introduction of auditory sensory cues, through a human voice, affect children’s and parent’s shopping behaviour in a retail grocery setting. In the field of retailing and sensory marketing research, there is a paucity of knowledge on how auditory sensory cues impact on consumers’ shopping behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical study was a field experiment and entailed direct observation of shoppers of the Swedish grocery retailer ICA. The observations were based on a convenience sample of shopping families assigned to a control group (n=200) and an experimental group (n=131). A new innovative Swedish audio story track system was to be tested in a hypermarket containing 13 different stories for children.

Findings

Auditory sensory cues affect children’s and parent’s shopping behaviour in a significant way. Children are quieter, more relaxed and do not move around and reduce the parental stress behaviour during the shopping process.

Research limitations/implications

The findings demonstrate that auditory sensory cues through human voice have a positive effect on children’s and parent’s shopping behaviour. It is also obvious that parent’s perceived stress is significantly influenced by the children.

Practical implications

The study provides guidelines for grocery retailers who wish to offer children and their parents a more pleasant shopping trip by emphasizing the role of the children.

Originality/value

The research demonstrates that the introduction of auditory sensory cues through human voice in a significant way affect the children’s and their parent’s shopping behaviour in a retail setting.

Details

Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 33 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-4503

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 June 2023

Susan Kay-Flowers

Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of…

Abstract

Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of parental separation (Kay-Flowers, 2019). It examines the role of young people in designing and co-producing the research tools, specifically designed to give voice to childhood experiences of parental separation and divorce. It explains how the research findings were shared with different audiences and reflects on the effectiveness of the approaches taken.

The chapter starts by outlining the four elements of ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ in Lundy's model (2007) before going on to identify the gap in existing research on children's experience of parental separation and divorce, explaining why their voices need to be heard.

A focus group of young people were involved in designing the study. Finding current methods unsuitable for addressing the research question, they co-produced new research tools specifically designed for the study, alongside the researcher, in a process known as bricolage. The chapter explains the processes involved in creating the bricolage and describes the newly created research tools which were an online questionnaire and Prompt Simulation Video (PSV).

The last part of the chapter explains how ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ informed decision-making about how the study's findings could be presented to amplify childhood voices of parental separation and divorce, to ensure they were heard by different audiences of academics, practitioners, parents, public and children. It concludes with consideration of the effectiveness of this approach.

Details

Establishing Child Centred Practice in a Changing World, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-941-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 September 2016

Susan Jennifer Ni Chuileann and Jean Quigley

This paper assesses the ability of the minimally verbal child with autism to recognise their own voice. The rationale for this study rests in recent advances in technology aimed…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper assesses the ability of the minimally verbal child with autism to recognise their own voice. The rationale for this study rests in recent advances in technology aimed at making the voice of speech generating devices (SGDs) sound more like the child using them (van Santen and Black, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the child’s ability to actually recognise the sound of their own voice in a series of short experiments using computer-based methodology.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a voice-face matching computerised paradigm, the performance of 33 children with autism was compared to that of 27 children with developmental delay (DD), and 33 typically developing (TD) children. The children were matched for verbal and non-verbal ability and a training period was conducted prior to the main test to ensure children’s understanding of what was expected of them.

Findings

The findings of this study suggest that the child with autism recognise the sound of their own voice at test, but with much greater difficulty than age-and-ability matched comparison groups. The implications of this finding are useful for researchers in the field of speech mimicry technology and manufacturers of SGD software packages. The paper also provides empirical insights about how the child with autism may process voice in their everyday social interactions.

Research limitations/implications

Some limitations to this study exist, for instance, there were only a small number of presentations involving self-voice in this task. This may have over simplified the process for the young TD children and the children with DD. Nevertheless, it is striking that despite being matched for non-verbal mental age, the children with autism performed significantly less well than either of the other two groups of children. However, future studies would benefit from adjusting the number of presentations of voice and face accordingly. It is also important to note that for some children with autism the simultaneous presentation of faces and voices may act more as an interference effect (Cook and Wilding, 1997; Joassin et al., 2004) than a facilitation effect (Molholm et al., 2002). Future studies may wish to test a subgroup on voice recognition without the aid of visual prompts.

Practical implications

The paper includes implications for the type of voice children with autism may prefer to use when communicating via a SGD. The authors suggest that if the child does not recognise or prefer the sound of their own natural voice on such devices, partial or complete abandonment of the SGD may occur.

Originality/value

This paper fulfils an identified need to research how children’s abilities and preferences can be taken into account at the point of decision making for particular communication tools.

Details

Journal of Assistive Technologies, vol. 10 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-9450

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Understanding Children's Informal Learning: Appreciating Everyday Learners
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-274-5

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