Sarah Richards – författare

An increasing interest in children's lives has tested the ethical and practical limits of research. Rather than making tricky ethical decisions, transparent researchers tend to gloss over stories that do not fit with sanitized narratives. This book aims to fill this gap by making explicit the lived experiences of research with children.

This book reflects on the contemporary use of ethnography across both social and natural sciences, focusing in particular on organizational ethnography, autoethnography, and the role of storytelling.

Junior researchers in the field of childhood studies are often faced with many challenges that accompany research with young participants. Methodological concepts, such as research relationships, positionality, self-disclosure and reflexivity can sometimes become subordinate to more practical and procedural concerns. Researching Children and Childhoods frames these themes not as problems but as opportunities to deepen and strengthen research discussions and analysis. Providing students with a guide to support their ventures into research with children and young people, this book offers practical advice on writing a thesis/dissertation and will enable readers to:- confidently reflect on the ethical issues embedded in their own projects and recognise them as opportunities for discussion within their dissertations or thesis- demystify the role of methodologies and position them as essential tools for their research- consider the efficacy of concepts such as agency, autonomy, participation, subjectivity, and voice as ways of understanding childhood and children’s lived experiences- use ideas such as positionality, self-disclosure and category entitlement to recognise the integral role of researcher identity and relationships in the construction of knowledge- use ‘I’ authoritatively when writing about their own research without reducing content to descriptive, opinion based discussions- situate their research by exploring the context in which the research takes place and the power relations embedded within participants and researcher relationshipsEach chapter includes a variety of researcher experiences, vignette examples, and specific activities, aimed at applying the key themes represented in this volume into research dissertations.

Junior researchers in the field of childhood studies are often faced with many challenges that accompany research with young participants. Methodological concepts, such as research relationships, positionality, self-disclosure and reflexivity can sometimes become subordinate to more practical and procedural concerns. Researching Children and Childhoods frames these themes not as problems but as opportunities to deepen and strengthen research discussions and analysis. Providing students with a guide to support their ventures into research with children and young people, this book offers practical advice on writing a thesis/dissertation and will enable readers to:- confidently reflect on the ethical issues embedded in their own projects and recognise them as opportunities for discussion within their dissertations or thesis- demystify the role of methodologies and position them as essential tools for their research- consider the efficacy of concepts such as agency, autonomy, participation, subjectivity, and voice as ways of understanding childhood and children’s lived experiences- use ideas such as positionality, self-disclosure and category entitlement to recognise the integral role of researcher identity and relationships in the construction of knowledge- use ‘I’ authoritatively when writing about their own research without reducing content to descriptive, opinion based discussions- situate their research by exploring the context in which the research takes place and the power relations embedded within participants and researcher relationshipsEach chapter includes a variety of researcher experiences, vignette examples, and specific activities, aimed at applying the key themes represented in this volume into research dissertations.

What does it mean to put children's voices at the centre and truly recognise their capacity for change?Through rich, interdisciplinary research spanning Australia, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, India and the UK, this book illuminates how children actively negotiate, resist and reshape the structures around them. It champions children’s agency as central to reimagining childhoods beyond western-dominated narratives, advocating for child-led theorisation and practice.Offering a timely and critical examination of the tensions shaping children’s lives – across societies, systems and settings – it challenges readers to rethink the dominant idealisations of childhood, pushing forward new conversations about childhood in the 21st century.

This collection explores leading values and concepts in global child-based research through the lens of reflexivity.The book considers issues such as the identities and roles of researchers, as well as the burdens, boundaries, and ethical frameworks which govern their activities. Using empirical examples from Israel, India, Thailand, and England, expert contributors discuss a range of topics including online safety, disabilities, gang membership, safeguarding, sexting, and child prostitution.This book guides childhood research towards a more reflexive debate that critically challenges conventions, and highlights plurality of voice.

This collection explores leading values and concepts in global child-based research through the lens of reflexivity.The book considers issues such as the identities and roles of researchers, as well as the burdens, boundaries, and ethical frameworks which govern their activities. Using empirical examples from Israel, India, Thailand, and England, expert contributors discuss a range of topics including online safety, disabilities, gang membership, safeguarding, sexting, and child prostitution.This book guides childhood research towards a more reflexive debate that critically challenges conventions, and highlights plurality of voice.

This book advances social scientific interest in a field long dominated by the humanities: stories, and storytelling. Stories are a whole lot more than entertainment; oral narratives, novels, films and immersive video games all form part of the sociocultural discourses which we are enmeshed in, and use to co-construct our beliefs about the world around us. Young children use them to learn about the world beyond their immediate sensory experience and, even in an era of interactive electronic media, the bedtime story remains a cherished part of most children’s daily routine. Storytelling is thus the first abstract formal learning method we encounter as human beings. It is also probably transcultural; perhaps even an immanent part of the human condition. Narratives are, at heart, sequences of events and presuppose and reinforce particular cause-and-effect relationships. Inevitably, they also construct unconscious biases, prejudices, and discriminatory attitudes. Storying (a term we use in this book to encompass stories, storytellers and storytelling) is complex, and this book seeks to make sense of it.

This book advances social scientific interest in a field long dominated by the humanities: stories, and storytelling. Storying (a term we usein this book to encompass stories, storytellers and storytelling) is complex, and this book seeks to make sense of it.