Gaining consent

After I had negotiated entry into the school and classroom - the research community - the next step involved obtaining permission from the research participants. The research participants included the class teacher as well as the pupils in the Year 5 class at the school.

In agreement with the class teacher and the head teacher, all parents and guardians were notified through a consent form about the procedures involved with this research (also see Appendix 6.1 Consent form to parents and carers). In my research, the head teacher wanted the letter phrased in such a way that only the parents who did not agree to the study would have to notify me, rather than requiring that each parent give written consent. This approach is often referred to as giving passive consent (Spence et al., 2014), in which the parents are informed about the research and rather than actively giving consent, they can opt out. Unless they do this, their children will participate. This approach is used, for example, in research to increase participation and representativeness (Testa and Coleman, 2006; Spence et al., 2014). When I asked why the school wanted to distribute an informed consent form rather than a form on which the parents had to explicitly say “yes” to their children’s participation in the

research, the school explained that this was due to the lack of responses from the parents of their pupils. I was ambivalent about the kind of soft practice that the head teacher was using, but was unable to insist that all parents should be

required to explicitly agree to their children’s participation and followed the school’s normal procedure. I knew this practice from the school in which I had still been working when researchers came from the university to work with children. However, I did not feel completely comfortable with the head teachers’ decision and would have preferred signed consent forms.

Other ways of doing this could have included translations of the consent form for families not proficient in English or meeting with the parents’ liaison of the school to engage further in the community. I was, however, dependent “on the goodwill of the school” as Alderson and Morrow (2011, p. 107) phrase it, and the in loco parentis practice in which the school acts with authority on behalf of the best interests of the pupils. I found a precedent for this type of consent which is described in various ethical guidelines, including those published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) (2014, pp. 17 & 32) that state:

In relation to the gaining of consent from children and young people in school or other institutional settings, where the research procedures are judged by a senior member of staff or other appropriate professional within the institution to fall within the range of usual curriculum or other

institutional activities, and where a risk assessment has identified no significant risks, consent from the participants and the granting of approval and access from a senior member of school staff legally responsible for such

approval can be considered sufficient… researchers should ensure that parents or guardians are informed about the nature of the study and given the option to withdraw their child from the study if they so wish.

However, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (2015, p. 32) writes: “Passive assent, including group assent (with consent given by a gatekeeper) should be avoided wherever possible”. Also, I spoke with my supervisor and looked at Goldsmiths’ (2005, p. 3) code of practice on research

ethics, which states: “Research involving children under 16 will require the informed consent of parents, carers or guardians”. In Appendix 6.2, I have attached a copy of the ethical practice in research form from Goldsmiths which was submitted and approved by Goldsmiths Departmental Ethics Committee summer 2011. The British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) (2016, p. 6) writes: “For children under 16, consent also needs to be obtained from parents or other adults acting in loco parentis”. And lastly, I looked at the British Educational Research Association (BERA) (2011, p. 7, emphasis in original) states, “researchers must also seek the collaboration and approval of those who act in guardianship (e.g. parents) or as ‘responsible others’”. This complies with Article 3 (best interests of the child) and Article 12 (respect for the views of the child) of the United Nations convention on the

rights of the child (United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF, 2019).

For a full discussion about the ethical considerations involved, also see Section

5.2.

No parents approached me with further questions or objections.

It must be said that this does not mean that the children’s decisions and opinions to participate were not taken into account. While children cannot opt out of lessons, they certainly could opt out of my research (also see

Section 5.2). The viewpoint on children participating in research has changed

over the years, regarding children as participants who are capable of speaking for themselves. The idea of “empowerment of children and the significance of listening to children’s voices” (Bélanger and Connelly, 2007, p. 25) has become an integral part of educational research. For this, I had asked the children for

their voluntary informed consent (also see Section 5.2 for a discussion of the ethics and a discussion of the issue of preventing harm). In other words, recognising children as people in their own rights, capable of expressing their views also requires asking them whether they wanted to participate. I spoke with the children about the purpose and nature of my research in terms of multilingualism and foreign language learning. Further, I told them that I would spend time in their classroom, participating in the foreign language lesson. Also, I detailed the data collection methods and explained the consent form. I

encouraged the children to approach me with any worries and questions they had. My research guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity. To protect the participants, pseudonyms were chosen for the school, the teachers and the pupils which were used from the start during the research and data analysis process. I had told the children and the teacher that, throughout the research, they had the right to withdraw, but no one made use of this. These and other ethical considerations will be discussed in Section 5.2.