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The expansion of research with children offers new opportunities for the development of child-centred practice. Children's participation in research has been championed as a positive way to challenge the processes and practices that affect their everyday lives. Yet opportunities for collaborating with children, and leveraging their voices, remains heavily guided by adult-led priorities. In this chapter, we offer a critique of ‘child-centredness’ and related voice-based and participatory discourses in the absence of a full-fledged engagement with the power imbalances between adults and children. We draw on examples from our research with children on contemporary global challenges (COVID-19 pandemic, health and migration) to expose the ways that adult-led agendas for, and definitions of, participation can affect children's engagement in research. We highlight how children also effect change and display their agency through the sharing of their experiences with adult researchers. The dynamic nature of social change highlights children's considered engagement with contemporary challenges but also the importance of reciprocity and willingness of adults to listen and respond to the issues that children identify as being central to their lives. We attend to the ways our methodological decision-making offers opportunities for leveraging children's perspectives, but also highlight the dangers of reproducing dominant adult/child power relations when seeking to be ‘child-centred’. We conclude by offering some critical questions to prompt further debate in this field, In doing so, we highlight the value of reciprocity and critical reflexivity as necessary first steps towards a more considered engagement with adult/child power relations in ‘child-centred’ research.

Over the past ten years, geographers have contributed to the growing body of interdisciplinary research developing new ways of undertaking research with children. Traditional research methods which do not directly involve working with children, such as the large scale observation of children, have been criticised for carrying out research on rather than with children. Instead, drawing upon the increasingly important children’s rights movement, researchers have been developing inclusive and participatory children centred methodologies, which place the voices of children, as social actors, at the centre of the research process. In this paper, we draw upon two ongoing postgraduate geographical research projects with children to reflect upon our own experiences of adopting children centred research methodologies. We also critically evaluate our own use of different innovative children centred research techniques, such as photographs, diaries, in‐depth interviews and surveys.We also highlight the importance of considering the impact of the spaces in which we conduct our research.

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.

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.

The overarching aim of our research is the social and environmental sustainability of cities, with a focus on ensuring the rights and needs of the children who live in them are considered in policy and planning arenas. How do we, as researchers, work ethically and effectively with children to foreground their voices and produce robust evidence to inform policies and processes which promote their wellbeing in child-friendly cities, and in line with Sustainable Development Goals? Children have the right to be heard, and their views taken seriously, in policy and planning arenas. Conducting ethical and effective child-centred research requires balancing considerations of children’s rights to genuine participation and their rights to protection at all stages of the research process. This balance requires methodological flexibility and a situated ethical approach, where researchers and participants together determine appropriate research pathways. In this chapter, the authors reflect on ethical and methodological insights gained during a decade of conducting urban-related research with children. The various projects used different methods and provided different lessons; but common to all was an understanding of the importance of relationship-building, of supportive and engaged adults, and of methods which were respectful, age/culturally appropriate and ‘fit for purpose’. These factors are crucial to ethically enable the foregrounding of children’s voices, the collection of robust data and effective dissemination of research with children.

The purpose of this research was to reflect on the enablers, challenges and ethical considerations in conducting qualitative research with young children using online methods. The aim was to suggest recommended practices to be put in place for researchers conducting online focus groups and interviews with young children.

This research article explores the use of Zoom video conferencing as a tool to collect qualitative data with young children in Singapore, as an alternative to face-to-face interviews. Taking a child-centred participatory approach, children shared their perspectives of their experiences of child agency in school and at home through their drawings, pictures and dialogue in online group interviews. Schon's model of reflective practice was used to guide the researchers' process of reflections during the research project.

Screen sharing and real-time nature of interactions of Zoom video conferencing enabled building of rapport and children's narratives to be developed while group size and the effect of parental influence provided challenges and ethical issues that needed to be addressed in the research process. Researcher withitness emerged as an essential quality in successful engagement of children in an online focus group discussion.

Online video conferencing platforms like Zoom provide a powerful alternative tool for participatory research with children. It challenges researchers to share control of the interactions and data collection process with children. However, parental interference and effect on data may present itself as a research limitation if not navigated well.

Group size of the focus group has an impact on children's engagement levels and wait time for their turn to speak during group interviews. While parents' presence during the online interview ensured child safety and a comforting presence for the child, parents should also understand their role in the study to avoid interfering with the data collection process.

The Zoom platform resembled onsite interviews' spontaneity of exchanges which allowed the researchers to build rapport with children through small-talk and icebreaker activities. Establishing personal connections and building of trust were essential elements in ensuring children were comfortable participating in the interviews. Observing real-time behaviour and body language of children also allowed for indication of withdrawal of consent and participation by the children.

This research adds new insights to the emerging discussions on collecting data from children via online video platforms with suggestions of new strategies and recommendations to overcome challenges, as well as future implications and potential of using Zoom as an alternative tool for participatory research with children. This research conducted in Singapore provides an Asian context and is different from current literature on this topic, largely focused on western countries' reports.

Health literacy is a key international public health goal. Conceptualising health literacy as an asset highlights the importance of fostering a health literate youth for the benefit of future generations, yet research has predominantly focused on examining adults’ and older adolescents’ health literacy. This presents a gap for child-centred studies with younger populations. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a qualitative study that explored health literacy, in a nutrition context (i.e. nutrition literacy), from primary school children’s perspectives.

The study examined children’s experiences in accessing, understanding and interacting with nutrition information. In doing so, the research employed a socio-ecological framework to understand facilitators and barriers that can influence children’s nutrition literacy. Preadolescent boys and girls aged 11–12 years were invited to take part in the study. At the time of recruitment, students were attending one of three state government schools in a socioeconomically disadvantaged region of metropolitan South Australia. A series of focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 38 participants. Interview data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic techniques.

Children demonstrated that they accessed and interacted with a variety of sources of nutrition information. Nutrition understandings were derived from the home, school and media environments. Parents and teachers were cited as key influences on children’s interactions with nutrition information and children particularly emphasised the trust placed in their teachers as health “experts.” While the home and school environments emerged as potential settings to develop children’s nutrition literacy skills, the children’s narratives also alluded to potential barriers surrounding nutrition literacy.

This study provides further insight into children’s nutrition literacy. While functional nutrition literacy remains a fundamental starting point, children are interested in opportunities to develop more interactive skills, such as those related to cooking. Opportunities also exist to foster more critical competencies. This research thereby highlights the importance of more integrated strategies to promote nutrition literacy among this population group across multiple settings.

This chapter explores ethical issues related to the use of drama-based methods in child and youth-focussed research projects. It begins by outlining some of the reasons for utilising drama-based research methods in projects that examine children’s perspectives and lived experiences. The chapter proceeds to discuss specific methods of drama-based inquiry including ethnodrama, ethnotheatre, reader’s theatre, play-building, devised theatre and collective creation. The sections draw on examples from recent drama-based research projects to highlight some of the key ethical considerations in drama-based research with children and young people, including specific issues surrounding representation, transparency, physical risks, power dynamics, consent, confidentiality, anonymity and reciprocity. The author shares her experiences of navigating some of the tricky ethical challenges involved in a recent participatory play-building project in Canada, providing some suggestions to help researchers in the field become better prepared to use and assess these methods and approaches in research with children and young people.

Shows how child‐centred marketing in China has gradually developed, using an example the traditional hero figure Wukong, who now appears and behaves in a far more child‐friendly way than before. Uses child‐centred qualitative research, including drawings, play and photography, as well as interviews with parents and children, to assess trends among Chinese children and youth. Finds that gender is important in children’s choice of toys and games, especially for boys, and that empowerment is a dominant theme in their choice, and also in their aspirations for employment; they are curious, and wish to be successful, powerful and popular. Moves on to young people, finding that peer group pressures are their strongest influences and spending time with friends their favourite leisure activity; they appear to put the individual ahead of the family and to value self‐actualisation over external recognition, in strong contrast to traditional Chinese culture. Finishes with what counts as cool in China: this is a mix of western and traditional Chinese values, with sporting ability and competence scoring high, but musical tastes were for Chinese rather than international artists.