Managing differences in the project

Although the benefits of adopting a participatory approach to developing a shared pedagogical space are evident from the discussion above, difficulties can arise in the relationships between the participatory group members, particularly where there are differences of opinion between participants that are not easily reconciled. There may be instances where the participants’ decisions may not be in alignment with the researcher’s views. The collective actions or decisions taken can be fundamentally different from those of the researcher. The motivation and willingness to continue to facilitate the project may therefore wane with time, especially during the facilitation of processes with which the researcher feels in opposition (Kidd and Kral, 2005). Similarly, there may be disagreements between the group members and the researcher may be unable to facilitate group consensus and understanding (Kidd and Kral, 2005). An example of managing different opinions within the ECRR Room project was during the naming of the pedagogical space. During WGM 2, it was decided that the room would be called an Early Childhood Resource and Research Room (ECRR Room), but this was one of the suggestions from a long list of names. The other options were Early Years Resource Room, Education Resource and Research Room, Childhood Centre and various other names, as described in Chapter Six (section 6.2.1). Although, having ‘Early Childhood’

within the room title was a majority choice, there were some student participants who wanted to keep it more open and preferred to keep ‘Education’ in the title, instead of

‘Early Childhood’. ‘Education’, to them, demonstrated an explicit willingness and inclusivity to welcome students from other education courses.

In my dual role as a researcher and an academic in the field of Early Childhood, my natural inclination was to protect the space for Early Childhood courses, as there were other similar rooms within the department, aimed for use by students from other

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education courses. The staff participants and the administrator, similarly, wanted to keep

‘Early Childhood’ within the title of the room. Staff participants and I, in my dual role, were keen to challenge the title of ‘Education’ over ‘Early Childhood’, but at the same time tried to maintain our facilitative position. Whilst we did not assert our authority over WGM discussions in an overt manner, there is evidence in the discussions that follow of tension between the Early Childhood staff participants and some members of the student group. Although a consensus is reached, there is a subtle imposing of influence by myself, as Researcher, and by Staff Participant A, and in the end it is our preferred view that prevails.

Participant A- I have come to this course not actually wanting to go into teaching. I am more interested in policy and theory and it seems that what goes around in the department gets cut off at early years practice. I am therefore keen to open the space beyond early years practice and have more theoretical and policy ideas included in it. I think calling it something ‘Education’ will be more appropriate.

Researcher- The room and its original idea comes from an early childhood work that was started by a colleague around ten year ago. There is therefore a legacy of early childhood in the project and it would be nice to capture that within the name of the room.

The initial funding for buying resources is also coming from the money allocated to an early childhood colleague from university teaching fellowship. Does that make a case to keep early childhood within the title?

Participant A- I am still not sure if it should only be called early childhood. We can broaden its use and maybe call it a Childhood or Education centre or something similar.

That would be more inclusive for students studying on other education courses.

Participant K- Childhood centre sounds good but we must be careful of other similar spaces that already exist in the university. We already have a Childhood and Youth Research Institute and you wouldn’t want people to get confused with it.

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Participant J- Also, the project invitation letter did mention the word early years in it, so I am inclined to keep to the words early years, or early childhood, as that was the original idea.

Researcher- I think it’s important to open up these questions and discuss them within the group. Having listened to your comments about broadening the early years field, do you think we are restricting the room to early years students? What else can we call it?

Participant H- Maybe we can call it an Education Centre? Or maybe Childhood Resource and Research Centre? I think having ‘research’ in the title is as important as having ‘resources’. They are both important. How can we do research without having resources? And the other way round.

Participant E- This project is very innovative. Early Childhood, as a field, is going through rapid changes. There are both methodological and theoretical changes and it will be nice to somehow embrace these methodological and theoretical shifts within the room. People who come to university come from different backgrounds and they bring different worldviews and assumptions with them. The resources and research ideas can be representative of these shifts and differing views.

Participant K- And these shifts will get reflected in the resources? That brings the focus back to early years as the resources and research ideas will be representative of the early years field.

Staff A- I have been with the project ever since it first came with ……(ex- staff member’s name) (about ten years ago). To me, it’s about childhood, and even early childhood. I think it’s important to have early childhood. There is a risk if you just say education or even educational then everything becomes diluted. Whole university is to do with education. I think the original vision was that it’s something about early childhood and that has relevance to all other stages of education, like, for students studying educational studies. It is important to see where things start off from. If you are a secondary PGCE

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student or an MA secondary student, come and see where it all starts from, where’s the origin of education. So I think that the questions about world views and assumptions are important for all students of education but I think that it’s important that we put them in an early years context.

Participant A- But are we putting people off from using the space who are not early childhood?

Staff A- Maybe there’s an argument for having another space for them. We are still being inclusive. We are saying, come and share our interest in early childhood.

Participant E- Like I said before, early childhood is going through so many changes. If we keep the focus on early childhood, we can present a kaleidoscope of the world views.

There is a recent article by …… (ex- staff member) on the worldviews of childhood, and that can be a nice starting point.

Participant K- And I believe childhood is a sociological concept. Early Years is more developmental. Do we call it EYRRR or ECRRR?

Researcher- If we are thinking of widening the scope of the room then maybe ‘Early Childhood’ is a better word than ‘Early Years’. We can always include practice within it through the use of early years resources. Like Participant A said, Early Childhood would open the space to include more theoretical and policy related ideas and this may be a way forward to keep the focus to early childhood, and at the same time, open it up to include different perspective and worldviews into the room.

Participant A- Early childhood seems better than early years. And the inclusion of the word ‘research’ in the title may help to widen its scope as research can range from something that’s done with very little children to the work that includes older children.

Research can be about anything, practice, theory, policy or anything else.

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The excerpt above shows the clear difference of opinions and power differentials amongst the participants and how different stakeholders, for example, staff and students can bring different perspectives to a discussion. On analysis, my first comment (above), where I state “Does that make a case to keep early childhood within the title?” can be seen as a leading question where I assume that the student participants’ responses would be in agreement to that of mine. Participant A, however, held her/ his position quite strongly, despite my prompting and Staff A’s intervention.

Participants K and J seem to be aligned more with my viewpoints, which might be because of the power that I held as a lead researcher. In my second comment where I suggest to open the conflicting questions for discussion, I can be seen to being more open and participatory, hence switching between my assertive and democratic positions. Staff A can be seen to be holding her/ his view back to let the discussion proceed but when she/ he joins in, she/ he puts forward firm arguments for retaining early childhood in the room title. Further in her/ his comment when she/ he states,

“Maybe there’s an argument for having another space for them. We are still being inclusive. We are saying, come and share our interest in early childhood”, Staff A makes a statement about the space being inclusive that could be seen as closing down inclusion. Participants E and K kept the discussion on an intellectual level whilst the arguments of Staff A can be seen as less intellectual and more possessive of the space.

In my third comment, where I show my preference for the terms ‘early childhood’ over

‘early years’, I can be seen to be giving a small concession to Participant A’s views.

However, I associate Participant A’s name with the idea of ‘early childhood’. I was perhaps attributing to Participant A something that she/ he did not even mention (she/

he did not mention early childhood – other student participants did) in order to seem to be listening to her/ him but to move the discussion in my preferred direction.

Participant A, finally, can be seen to be conceding to the power of the researcher, Staff A and the power of the group.

On reflection, staff, including myself as the lead researcher, were aware of the background and the legacy of early childhood that was attached with the project. As early childhood academics we wanted the room to remain the preserve of early childhood and not be subsumed within the wider department and lose its

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distinctiveness. Students, on the other hand, were drawing upon their educational and professional aspirations to contribute to the discussion. There is some evidence, in the dialogue above, of the researcher and the (more powerful) staff succumbing to the temptation to switch to their authority position to influence decision making. On a different end of the participation spectrum, the researcher and the staff may choose to fall back on a power imbalance to keep the students motivated and their interests sustained, as research involves a substantial commitment of time and energy from which the researcher may be reluctant to withdraw (Kidd and Kral, 2005). The example above shows a settlement being achieved by adding the word ‘research’ to the early childhood space. A majority of the participants were in favour of calling the room an early childhood room, but some participants’ notion of inclusivity and broadening of the field led to their competing demand to call it either an education or childhood room. A consensus, however, was reached by including the words

‘resources and research’ into the title, but this was only a partial consensus.

Had we elaborated the discussion further, there were chances of more differences of opinions arising amongst the participants. This raises the question of whose voices are heard and whose voices are silenced? Implementing a participatory approach can be a labour-intensive activity that requires considerable time, effort and resources on the part of the researcher and all its participants (Horowitz et al., 2009). The discussion here was about a pedagogical space and the participants were students and staff from the same academic discipline, making the character of the project less confrontational and relatively homogeneous. Even in a relatively homogeneous project like mine the way the consensus was reached and its ability to represent all participants’ views can be challenged. On reflection, as seen in the example above, it appears that there was not a pervasive homogeneity (Cramb, 2005) within the group that I had initially assumed. In a participatory project where the participants are more diverse and heterogeneous, reaching an agreement can sometimes be difficult. In such cases, participants are advised to work together to reach mutually acceptable solutions that promote important community values (Minkler, 2004). When a consensus cannot be reached, a review by an independent party, for example, a review committee, can help to mediate the dissent (Resnik and Kennedy, 2010). In case of any dispute, Resnik and Kennedy (2010) suggest to include both the majority view’s interpretation of the data

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as well as an addendum that reports the minority position, or a separate commentary that presents an alternative view of the data.

Reflecting upon the above conversation, a better way to introduce the project to students could have been by sharing its early childhood legacy in the introductory meeting. This is something that I (and other staff participants) made the students aware during the conversation that we had about the naming of the room (above). Any structural and topical discourses within which the project is situated should be opened to the participants from the beginning (Blackstock et al., 2015). The co-production between students and staff, and even between students, as seen above, can pose its own challenges. Any assertion by staff or more qualified and confident participants can have a power effect. There may be instances when the student and staff group take a binary opposition due to the influence of “socialisation, peer expectations, organisational culture, statutory requirements and personal biographies” (Blackstock et al., 2015: 259). In the example above, there was not such a binary opposition between staff on the one hand and students on the other, but a subtle disagreement is obvious, whilst the postgraduate student participants held a middle position, offering more intellectual arguments.

Another challenge linked with the power effects is the role and position that the participants take within a participatory project. In my study, the staff participants and the administrator generally took a similar role to that of mine, which was more at a facilitative level. Due to the fact that, on the whole, staff maintained a passive and supportive position, there were perhaps missed opportunities in participatory group meetings where the discussions could have been richer and more critical. Further, staff conditioning to the institutional relationship, for example, retaining the institutional emphasis upon corporate customer- care relationships (Carey, 2013b, as discussed in Chapter Three, section 3.2), was hard to break. There were instances where the staff were able to recognise problems, such as students’ inclination towards a materialistic space rather than a pedagogical space (for example, students asking for additional computers in the room), but were reluctant to intervene or oppose actively at the point of discussion. The institutional push towards customer- care relationships (Carey, 2013b), due to the neo-liberal thrust in education (Tandon, 2007; Buchanan, 2014), leads to constant pressure amongst the tutors to please the students and not confront