Ethical Considerations

The approach taken in this study was guided by ethical principles outlined by the Research Ethics Committee at University College Cork. The guiding ethical principles for the present study were: respect for human dignity, respect for free and informed consent, respect for privacy and confidentiality and minimising harm. An

application for ethical clearance, which is included in Appendix 10 of this study, was submitted in writing to the Research Ethics Committee at UCC before data collection began. After consideration, the Committee granted ethical approval for the project to commence. The approval letter is also contained in Appendix 9

The teacher participants in the study were informed that all individual data collected in the study would remain confidential. The names of schools involved as well as the teachers and children who participated were changed to ensure anonymity. The teachers were advised that the data collected would be used in conference presentations and the final report would be published as a PhD thesis. The information documents sent to teachers, Principals and Chairpersons of the Boards of Management of schools are contained in Appendices 1 and 2.

With respect to working with children, a number of core principles guided this research. The first is that children are viewed as persons in their own right who share with adults a comparable level of agency and the capacity to reflect on and shape their own experience. Moss, Clark and Kjorholt (2005) maintain that the development in interest in accessing children’s perspectives and views has been linked in recent years to the growth in children’s rights perspective worldwide. Widespread acceptance and official endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1989) indicates a widely held view that embraces children’s participation and recognises that children have their own views of what affects them directly as well as their own perspective on the world around them. The notion of participation can be seen most clearly in articles 12 and 13

Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child

The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art or through any other media of the child’s choice (UNCRC articles 12 and 13, 1989).

Underpinning the children’s rights’ perspective is a view which recognises that children are not all the same. Children’s experiences are multiple and varied and

children encounter these worlds in an individual and idiosyncratic manner. This study aimed to give voice to and value children’s unique experience of their world of the infant classroom in a multigrade school. Therefore, there was an emphasis on utilising participatory and inclusive research strategies in which the child, viewed as a social actor, was at the centre.

This research also embraced the view of children as foregrounded in the ‘new sociology of childhood’ (James, Jenks and Prout, 1998) which has criticised the view of children as ‘other’ to adults and the ideas of developmental stages per se. In particular, children’s capacities for understanding have been re-evaluated upwards and some of the problems identified in adult-child communication laid more at the door of adults for failing to adapt to children’s perspectives. The questioning of taken- for-granted assumptions about children’s capabilities or underestimating their abilities was central to this research. Children are viewed as competent, co-constructors of knowledge and this in turn opened up certain possibilities for children’s participation in the research. However, I also remained mindful of the question ‘how information can be obtained from children in developmentally appropriate ways’ and sought to adjust the mode of enquiry accordingly.

I was particularly mindful of the centrality of ethical responsibility when undertaking research with children. A review of early childhood literature reveals that ethical issues encountered are similar to those with adults but are mediated by the child/adult power differential (Dockett and Perry, 2007). I attempted to remain sensitive to the inequalities of power which existed attempting to remedy these inequalities through collaborative research and building reciprocity into the research design. The Junior Infant children in this study obviously differed in terms of their competence in language and in their ability to comprehend abstract ideas. Therefore, the vulnerability associated with being younger, less experienced and physically smaller placed a responsibility on me to protect the children from any social and emotional harm that might be inflicted upon them through their participation in this study. The major areas for ethical concern in this study included informed consent from all participants (parents, teachers and parents regarding their children), children’s assent, confidentiality and protection from distress. (See Appendices 2 and 6 for copies of consent forms).

All potential research participants have the right to give or deny informed consent (Hill, 2005). However, given the issue of the children’s vulnerability, it was

particularly important for me to be clear that the children were able to understand the process to which they had assented and what was expected of them. It was not considered appropriate to seek written consent from the children in this study as is usually the case with adult research participants. A simple explanation was given to the children that the researcher was going to watch them to see what they like doing in school so that she could tell other adults about it. In addition, the potential benefits of the research for other children were pointed out as the children’s assent was being sought. At times during the research period, this was problematic given the fact that the research was carried out within school, an institutional setting where children’s power to say ‘no’ is limited. For example, the children may have agreed because their teacher and parents had agreed for them to participate or because their classmates were going to take part in the interview. However, it was made clear to the children that they could withdraw from the research at any stage. Flewitt (2005, p. 556) uses the term ‘provisional consent’ to highlight the ongoing nature of consent which can be understood to ‘be provisional upon the research being conducted within a negotiated, broadly outlined framework and continuing to develop within the participants’ expectations’. Parental permission was also sought before the children became involved in the research.

Confidentiality can occur at several levels within research (Hill, 2005). At the level of public confidentiality, it involves not publicly identifying research participants. The children in this study chose the name they wanted used to refer to them in research reports. A second element of confidentiality considered in this study was network confidentiality. Network confidentiality occurs where information gathered from one group of participants (such as children) is not shared with another group of participants (such as teachers).

Although the differences in social status between the researcher and the children cannot be avoided completely it was possible for me to adopt an interpersonal approach which aimed to reduce the children’s inhibitions. For instance when carrying out interviews with the children, I used informal language and sat at a level that was comfortable for them. Thus, I attempted to create the conditions where the children could manage rather than be inhibited by the power play of the research process. Christensen (2004) has described the importance of negotiating a position that recognizes the researcher as an unusual type of adult, one who is seriously interested in understanding how the social world looks from children’s perspectives

out it was difficult to reschedule. but without making a dubious attempt to be a child. Through this approach I hoped to emerge first and foremost as a social person and secondly as a professional and genuine person who was interested in finding out about children’s learning experiences at school.