Participatory Action Research: Feminist and Sociology of Childhood Approaches An Annotated Bibliography

Meghan Mordy Women’s Studies (WS) 695: Independent Study Colorado State University Fall 2010

Supervised by: Lori Peek, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Co-Director, Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis (CDRA) Colorado State University

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DESCRIPTION OF BIBLIOGRAPHY This annotated bibliography explores feminist and sociology of childhood approaches to participatory action research (PAR). It examines the history and guiding principles of PAR with detailed attention paid to the feminist influence on these methods. In addition, it reviews how PAR and feminist methods have impacted approaches to research with children and youth. It was developed as part of an independent study that I completed under the supervision of Dr. Lori Peek, Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. The course was part of my Women and Gender Studies graduate certificate program and was called “Participatory Action Research: Feminist and Sociology of Childhood Approaches.” I designed the syllabus for the independent study (which can be found at the end of this document). The bibliography is divided into five sections: (1) Participatory Action Research covers readings on the history, diverse theoretical underpinnings, and debates within the PAR tradition, (2) Feminist Approaches to Participatory Methods & Action Research describes readings on feminist epistemologies and their influence on the development of critical methods, (3) Participatory Methods for Research with Children reviews readings on the adaption of feminist and PAR approaches to research with children, (4) Sociology of Childhood covers some key articles and books in the development of this sub-discipline, and (5) Examples of research with children reviews empirical studies that have used participatory and other qualitative research methods to describe the worlds of young people. CAVEATS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY The reader should be aware that I did not develop this bibliography with the objective of covering the full extent of the vast literatures on PAR, feminist epistemologies, and childhood research methods. Rather, it was part of my effort to do background reading and push myself to fully consider the types of methods and approaches I wanted to use in my dissertation research. I aimed to create a reading list that would challenge me to learn new methods and be critical of my assumptions. My dissertation examines the problem of adolescent dropout in El Salvador. I wanted to learn about participatory research methods with kids, while also gaining more insight on the strengths and weaknesses of PAR and the feminist critiques of participatory approaches. This all means that the bibliography I created was not written for a general audience. I wrote the summary and notes on each reading with a view of how helpful it was to me. I also completed this bibliography while studying for qualifying exams, a stressful time packed with lots of reading (and occasional panic attacks!) I’m sure that I did not give each article in this bibliography its full due. At times I know I was annoyed by how much information I had to cram into my head (and getting snobby about how much I *thought* I knew!) and that tone may come across in some of my reviews. I ask the reader’s forgiveness for these weaknesses, but I also hope that some of you, especially those interested in participatory research with children, may find this a helpful starting point for developing your own reading list. If you have any questions, you may contact me at [email protected]. Thank you and good luck!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Participatory Action Research..................................................................................................... 1 Bacon, Christopher M. and V. Ernesto Mendez. 2005. .............................................................. 1 Baker Collins, S. 2005. ............................................................................................................... 1 Cleaver, F. 2001. ......................................................................................................................... 2 Chiu, Lai Fong. 2003. ................................................................................................................. 4 Fahmi, K. 2007. .......................................................................................................................... 6 Fox, J. A. 2006. ......................................................................................................................... 14 Gaya Wicks, Patricia, Peter Reason, and Hillary Bradbury. 2008. .......................................... 15 Gergen, Kenneth J. and Mary Gergen. 2008. ........................................................................... 15 Kemmis, Stephen. 2001. ........................................................................................................... 16 MacIntyre, Alice. 2008. ............................................................................................................ 19 McTaggart, Robin. 1997. .......................................................................................................... 20 Wadsworth, Yoland. 2001. ....................................................................................................... 20 Zeichner, K. 2001. .................................................................................................................... 21 Feminist Approaches to Participatory Methods & Action Research ..................................... 23 Acker, J, K. Barry, and J. Esseveld. 1996................................................................................. 23 Alldred, Pam. 1998. .................................................................................................................. 24 Ansell, Nicola. 2001. ................................................................................................................ 26 Cornwall, A. 2003. .................................................................................................................... 27 Crawley, H. 1998. ..................................................................................................................... 29 Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy and Abigail Brooks. 2007. .......................................................... 30 Lykes, M. Brinton. 1997. .......................................................................................................... 31 Lykes, M. Brinton. 2001. .......................................................................................................... 32 Lykes, M. Brinton and Erzulie Coquillon. 2007....................................................................... 33 McDonald, S. 2003. .................................................................................................................. 35 Maguire, P. 2001. ...................................................................................................................... 36 Rocheleau, Dianne, Laurie Ross, Julio Morrobel, and Ricardo Hernandez. 1998. .................. 39 Rowlands, J. 1995. .................................................................................................................... 40 Sprague, Joey. 2005. ................................................................................................................. 40 Unger, R. K. 2004. .................................................................................................................... 42 Participatory Methods for Research with Children ................................................................ 44 Alderson, Priscilla. 2000. .......................................................................................................... 44 Barker, John and Susie Weller. 2003. ....................................................................................... 44 Ben-Arieh, A. 2008. .................................................................................................................. 46 Boyden, Jo and Judith Ennew. 1997. ........................................................................................ 47 Camfield, Laura and Yisak Tafere. 2009. ................................................................................. 53 Christensen, Pia and Alan Prout. 2002. .................................................................................... 54 Clark, Cindy Dell. 2004. ........................................................................................................... 55

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Cook-Sather, Alison. 2002........................................................................................................ 57 Gordon, Gill, Rachel Baker, Ernesto Cloma, Julian Faulkner, Mahfuza Haque, Joanna Hill, Rachel Hinton, Andy Inglis, Alice Lamptey, Charity Mayau, Thabang Ngcozela, and Joachim Theis. 1998................................................................................................................................ 59 Hart, Roger A. 1992. ................................................................................................................. 61 Hart, R. 1997. ............................................................................................................................ 63 Hill, M., J. Davis, Alan Prout, and K Tisdall. 2004.................................................................. 65 Kellet, Mary, Ruth Forrest, Naomi Dent, and Simon Ward. 2004. .......................................... 66 Lansdown, Gerison. 2006. ........................................................................................................ 67 Lundy, Laura and Lesley McEvoy. 2009. ................................................................................ 70 Maglajlic, Reima Ana. 2004. .................................................................................................... 71 Mayall, Berry. 2002. ................................................................................................................. 71 O’Kane, C. 2000. ...................................................................................................................... 72 Punch, Samantha. 2002. ............................................................................................................ 75 Roche, Jeremy. 1999. ................................................................................................................ 76 Sinclair, R. 2004. ...................................................................................................................... 77 Thomas, N. and O’Kane, C. 1998............................................................................................. 79 Torre, Maria Elena and Michelle Fine. 2006. ........................................................................... 80 Sociology of Childhood ............................................................................................................... 82 Boyden, Jo. 1997. ..................................................................................................................... 82 Qvortrup, Jens. 1994. ................................................................................................................ 83 Thorne, Barrie. 1987. ................................................................................................................ 84 Thorne, Barrie. 2009. ................................................................................................................ 86 Wells, Karen. 2009. .................................................................................................................. 87 Examples of research with children .......................................................................................... 89 Admassie, A. 2003. ................................................................................................................... 89 Ansell, Nicola. 2005. ................................................................................................................ 89 Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham. 2008. ............................................................................. 90 Durham, Deborah. 2008............................................................................................................ 91 Flanagan, Constance A. 2008. .................................................................................................. 92 Leiten, G. K. 2008. ................................................................................................................... 94 Levinson, Bradley A. and Dorothy Holland. 1996. .................................................................. 96 MacDonald, Robert and Jane Marsh. 2004............................................................................... 98 Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, Barrie Thorne, Anna Chee, and Wan Shun Eva Lam. 2001. .... 99 Rose, Pauline and Caroline Dyer. 2008. ................................................................................. 101 Thorne, Barrie. 1993. .............................................................................................................. 105 Thorne, Barrie. 2005. .............................................................................................................. 109 Thorne, Barrie. 2008. .............................................................................................................. 110 Woodhead, Martin. 2005. ....................................................................................................... 112 Syllabus for Independent Study .............................................................................................. 114

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PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH REFERENCE: Bacon, Christopher M. and V. Ernesto Mendez. 2005. "Participatory Action Research and Support for Community Development and Conservation: Examples from Shade Coffee Landscapes in Nicaragua and El Salvador." Center Research Briefs, Santa Cruz, CA: The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. Summary: This article is an example of doing PAR that I wanted to read because it is of relevance to my own project. It provides some of that nuts and bolts, “how to do PAR,” material that I wanted to get a feel for. I also appreciated that both scholars describe how they started out as dissertation researchers (the same position I’ll be in). Also of importance here is how the authors worked with the communities to translate dissertation research objectives into actionable PAR questions. Both researchers stressed that you should begin the PAR process by explaining to PAR participants how you individually will benefit from the project (i.e., getting a PhD and furthering career goals). Being honest helps facilitate trust. The next step is to figure out collaboratively how the research project will be mutually beneficial. The key result from both of the examples discussed was how the researchers facilitated the cooperatives participation in larger networks of food justice issues – fair trade, South to South collaborations, exchanges with northern activists, etc. The two biggest take-away recommendations I came away from this article with were: “be a good and patient listener” and “don’t make promises you can’t keep” (7). This is excellent advise, and I know from experience, hard to follow. I think this is something I need to keep in mind as I begin this process. The authors also have a very nice list of “guidelines” for PAR practitioners that is worth keeping at hand during your PAR project. These include: “be committed to the learning process of local actors, allowing them to take leading roles, even when they make mistakes. Learning from mistakes is a key part of the process.” “Avoid paternalism and the creation of external dependency.” And “Invest in relationships of mutual trust with local actors.” The full list is on page 7. I recommend this article for undergraduate or graduate courses. It is not theoretical or methodologically complex, but it does provide a sense of what doing PAR is like. REFERENCE Baker Collins, S. 2005. "An understanding of poverty from those who are poor." Action Research, 3(1): 9-31. Summary: This article is an example of doing PAR that I wanted to read because it is of relevance to my own project. It provides some of that nuts and bolts, “how to do PAR,” material that I wanted to get a feel for. I also appreciated that both scholars describe how they started out as dissertation researchers (the same position I’ll be in). Also of importance here is how the authors worked with the communities to translate dissertation research objectives into actionable PAR questions. Both researchers stressed that you should begin the PAR process by explaining to PAR participants how you individually will benefit from the project (i.e., getting a PhD and furthering career goals). Being honest helps facilitate trust. The next step is to figure out collaboratively how the research project will be mutually beneficial. The key result from both of

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the examples discussed was how the researchers facilitated the cooperatives participation in larger networks of food justice issues – fair trade, South to South collaborations, exchanges with northern activists, etc. The two biggest take-away recommendations I came away from this article with were: “be a good and patient listener” and “don’t make promises you can’t keep” (7). This is excellent advise, and I know from experience, hard to follow. I think this is something I need to keep in mind as I begin this process. The authors also have a very nice list of “guidelines” for PAR practitioners that is worth keeping at hand during your PAR project. These include: “be committed to the learning process of local actors, allowing them to take leading roles, even when they make mistakes. Learning from mistakes is a key part of the process.” “Avoid paternalism and the creation of external dependency.” And “Invest in relationships of mutual trust with local actors.” The full list is on page 7. I recommend this article for undergraduate or graduate courses. It is not theoretical or methodologically complex, but it does provide a sense of what doing PAR is like. REFERENCE: Cleaver, F. 2001. "Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory development." Pp. 36-55 in Participation: The New Tyranny?, edited by B. Cooke and U. Kothari. London: Zed Books. Summary: In this book chapter, Cleaver presents a broad critique of the role of participation in development. Her major argument is that development practitioners have uncritically embraced the idea of participation without considering how it is brought into existence, what its effects are for participants, and how participatory programs interact with relations of power within households, groups, communities, and states. As she writes, “Participation has become an act of faith in development, something we believe in and rarely question. This act of faith is based on three main tenets: that participation is intrinsically a ‘good thing’ (especially for the participants); that a focus on ‘getting the techniques rights’ is the principal way of ensuring success of such approaches; and that considerations of power and politics on the whole should be avoided as divisive and obstructive” (36).

Cleaver states that she is not “a complete pessimist about [participatory] approaches;” rather she wants development practitioners to “see them as promising but inevitably messy and difficult, approximate and unpredictable in outcome” (37). She argues that development practitioners should be careful not to think that participation is inevitably positive. As she writes, “there are numerous, documented examples of situations where individuals find it easier, more beneficial, or habitually familiar not to participate” (51). Overemphasis on supposed, but as yet unfounded assumptions that participation is inevitably good, may end up harming some individuals who are influenced into participating in things that have no real benefit for them. Cleaver represents one of the early critics of neo-institutional approaches to development. She points out its “blindness to historical and social context” (42). New institutionalism is a very popular, economics-driven theory development which argues that development is halted by “collective action failure.” Development practitioners subscribing to this view aim to create institutions that “formalize mutual expectations of cooperative behavior” and “thereby reduce the costs of individual transactions” (39). Participation is hypothesized to be part of this “institutionbuilding” process.

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These are complex theories, but briefly the argument goes something like this: Underdevelopment is self-reinforcing. The major problem is that people do not trust each other, therefore no one takes the risks necessary to initiate market-based development (for example, no one has enough confidence to provide credit to farmers or start a new business). In order to create trust, institutions (formal and informal) must exist that provide negative sanctions for nontrustworthy behavior and rewards for those who act in a trustworthy way. The development question then is how to create these institutions. Several theorists and practitioners have latched onto the idea of participation as one mechanism for doing this. (Historically, these theories developed at the same time as the debt crisis, problems of corruption in Third World states, and neoliberal structural adjustment policies – so giving people “responsibility” over social services and dealing with market failures was also politically feasible.) Participation was hypothesized to “build capacity” which in turn led to local organizations that could manage social services and make demands on local and national governments for more efficient (less corrupt) governance. At the same time, participants were hypothesized to be gaining skills and “social capital.” All this activity in the public sphere by everyday people is hypothesized to somehow create an atmosphere of “trust”: people learn to work with others, they build relationships across class and other social lines, and they sense that institutions are working for them, and not against them. Cleaver, like many others, sees many holes in this argument. As she writes, “Development practitioners excel in perpetuating the myth that communities are capable of anything, that all is required is sufficient mobilization (through institutions) and the latent capacities of the community will be unleashed in the interests of development. The evidence does little to support such claims. Even where a community appears well motivated, dynamic, and well organized, severe limitations are presented by… the very real structural constraints that impede the functioning of community-based institutions” (46).

Her major critique in this article is that theorists have failed to fully interrogate the processes by which participation is linked to transformation. In her words, “Further empirical evidence and analysis is needed of whether and how the structures of participatory projects include/ protect/ secure the interests of poor people. What exactly are the linkages between the participation of poor individuals and the furthering of their social and economic good? Understanding this requires analyses of ‘competent’ communities and ‘successful’ participatory projects that focus on process, on power dynamics, on patterns of inclusion and exclusion. These could be built up through process documentation of the dynamics of conflict, consensus-building and decision-making within communities, not just the recording of project-related activities” (54).

This article made some really good points, but it did not explore any one issue in depth. I felt like it jumped around quite a bit. If I were looking for a better understanding of the underlying problems with new institutional approaches to development, I would not recommend this article. I think it’s one of the early voices on this topic, but not the best. Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Critique of de-politicization of empowerment:  “As ‘empowerment’ has become a buzzword in development, an essential objective of projects, its radical, challenging and transformatory edge has been lost. The concept of action has become individualized, empowerment depoliticized” (37).
Critique of the lack of precise definitions of the effects of empowerment and how it happens:  “A number of problems arise in analyzing empowerment within projects. It is often unclear who exactly is to be empowered – the individual, the ‘community,’ or

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categories of people such as ‘women,’ ‘the poor,’ or the ‘socially excluded.’ The question of how such generalized categories of people might exercise agency is generally sidestepped. The mechanisms of such empowerment are either startlingly clear (i.e., empowerment of the individual through cash transaction in the market) or conveniently fuzzy (as in the assumed benefits to individuals of participation in management committees). The scope of and limitations on the empowering effects of any project are little explored; the attribution of causality and impact with the project alone problematic” (38).
Need to understand how participatory approaches impact everyday lives:  “There is a need to conceptualize participatory approaches more broadly, for more complex analyzes of the linkages between intervention, participation, and empowerment… We need to better understand the non-project nature of people’s lives, the complex livelihood interlinkages that make an impact in one area likely to be felt in others and the potential for unintended consequences arising from any intended intervention or act” (38).
Critique of the overemphasis on formal organizations, voting for representatives, and speaking at meetings  Focus in development work on “committee-like institutions” is driven by the association in between participation and democratic representation. The result is heavy emphasis on the “election/selection of committee members.”  “There is also a strong assumption (particularly in PLA approaches) that meaningful participation in public meetings is evidenced by individual (verbal) contributions. Such principles are not necessarily in concurrence with local norms and practices and an insistence on them may both exaggerate and disguise people’s actual involvement” (44).  “Socially embedded institutions are not necessarily ‘better’ than organizational ones, as they uphold and reproduce locally specific configurations of inequity and exclusion. However, the mere setting up of formal organizations and the specification of their membership does not necessarily overcome exclusion, subordination, or vulnerability” (44). REFERENCE: Chiu, Lai Fong. 2003. "Transformational Potential of Focus Group Practice in Participatory Action Research." Action Research, 1(2): 165-183. Summary: Chiu argues that “focus group methods can be adapted not only to facilitate critical awareness-raising, but also as a systematic and focused way of managing the change process through problem-solving, decision-making, and reflection” (180). She views focus groups as a fundamental method used in PAR, but is concerned that PAR methodologists have failed to assess it adequately. As she writes, “overemphasis [in PAR] on the emancipatory goal has led to the underdevelopment of systematic practice… [and] the inability to establish a coherent and constructive methodological discourse” (166). Chiu was involved in three PAR projects between 1990-2002 and uses that experience to assess the transformational potential of the focus group. She is concerned with the “epistemological basis upon which focus group practice has been founded” (165). She uses the

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concept of “extended epistemology” to define this epistemological basis, however, this concept is not well defined. The author assumes that the reader knows what she is talking about. Her view of what “transformation” consists of is also not very clear. She appears to have an individualist account of “transformation.” She describes two change processes: In the first, group discussion is a catalyst for participants becoming aware of unfair social relations and building the self-esteem necessary for assertiveness in the face of these relations. She also describes a group whose participants were in higher social positions (medical professionals) and how the focus group triggered self-awareness and self-critique. This group became aware of how they were using and reinforcing stereotypes of non-white clients and used the focus group transcripts to identify and critique these modes of thinking and behaviors toward non-white patients. Chiu uses this example to caution against using “one-off” focus group approaches and advises that the transformational potential of focus groups can only be harnessed when data (in the form of transcripts) are shared with participants and they are guided (by the researcher) in critiquing them: “Far from being an instrument for emancipation, this particular focus group was functioning as a process in which negative stereotypes of minority ethnic women were actively constructed. This example demonstrates that the result of using focus groups as a vehicle for critical awareness-raising is not guaranteed, particularly in the one-off settings that are common in conventional focus group practice” (178). “Unlike conventional focus groups where participants are seldom involved beyond the initial discussion, PAR participants are often involved in data analysis and generate solutions for change actions. This involves, as good practice, the process of returning to the focus group transcripts for rectification. Aided by the researcher’s theoretical understanding (propositional knowledge), participants are then involved in collective refection on issues identified” (178).

Chiu does not fully explicate the conditions that enable focus groups to trigger group and individual processes of change. She does however mention some critical steps in the change process. The first is dialogue: “Rather than gleaning information from participants, the researcher will create dialogue to induce critical thinking among participants as they recall their experiences. From this perspective, facilitating experiential knowing can be seen as a precondition for facilitating critical awareness” (176). The second is critical awareness: “before participants can suggest how things can be improved they need to become critically aware of the problems they face” (176). Focus groups that are repeated over time (her groups met a minimum of three times each) enabled a process of dialogue, critical awareness, problem identification, action plans, and reflection on action. Chiu argues that focus groups should be envisioned as both “an instrument for understanding the concerns of participants” and also provide them “with an arena and focus for their decisions for action” (174). There are a lot of good ideas in this article, but the author does not really tie everything together. For that reason I gave it a low rating. I would like to see more on the topics the author addressed: For example, the role of dialogue in creating self-awareness and change. This seems like it would vary by context and composition of the group. Other arguments:
The importance of co-researchers from the communities:  “the importance of linguistic and cultural skills for accessing and accurately interpreting minority communities’ experiences are paramount. By involving bilingual women from the communities as co-researchers, we provided not only an

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environment where uninhibited discussion and express of cultural nuances could take place, but also an opportunity for community members to be actively involved in the project” (171).
Size and make-up of the focus group  “The sizes of the groups and the populations from which they are drawn vary according to the key research problems and local conditions” (171). REFERENCE: Fahmi, K. 2007. “Participatory Action Research” (pp. 8-46), “The Beginning” (pp. 83-107), and “Impacts and Concluding Commentary” (pp. 157-170) in Beyond the Victim: The Politics and Ethics of Empowering Cairo's Street Children. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Summary: This was a truly refreshing work to read. Fahmi is an excellent writer with a sense of humor and the courage to criticize PAR’s ideals. Some critics could say he toes the line of paternalism in his pragmatic critique of PAR emancipatory ideals, but you can tell when reading this that Fahmi has been deeply engaged in PAR process, has struggled intensely with failing to live up to the PAR ideals he believes in, and wants to provide other PAR practitioners like himself with some salve for their wounds (rather than the whiplash of critique). His goal is to begin a commonsense discussion of PAR ideals, how they are achieved in practice, and how they should be revised. His book pushes PAR researchers to be more honest and reflective about their work. And he offers a short rebuke to PAR idealists who mostly practice from within universities and engage in short-term projects or with already established PAR-organizations. These tend to be the people who write the treatises on PAR, thus the over-emphasis on emancipation and ideology. He argues that the critiques offered by these authors often suffer from the “who is more radical syndrome” (13). I read three chapters in the book. In the first, Fahmi reviewed the history of PAR and its various methodologies and epistemologies. In the second, Fahmi described the beginnings of his PAR project in Cairo. The last was the conclusion. Fahmi’s book details his 8-year experience working with street children in Cairo. He is writing in the context of Egypt at the height of the “War against Terror.” The street where the children he works with live or work is depicted by government officials the media as a breeding ground for terrorist recruiters. Government agents mingle amongst the street children to identify and arrest possible suspects. The drop-in center for street children that Fahmi’s PAR process eventually led to was shut-down by a government ministry for its involvement in political affairs. The children Fahmi worked with, however, at the time he was writing the book, had started a new NGO with the intention of continuing the work of the original project. This experience and context colors Fahmi’s view of PAR and its potentialities. Fahmi’s PAR process involved what he calls an “eclectic methodology” of street ethnography, street work and action science. Little was known about his targeted group, street children. Not only were they deeply poor, but they were being villainized by the government and media. Fahmi found that the street children were deeply skeptical of outsiders. As he writes: “The numerous occasions on which the children described to us their frustrations and anger with researchers and journalists who approached them for the sole purpose of gathering information, lends credibility to the plea for a genuine participation by the children themselves” (98). This lack of knowledge about street children and their skepticism amongst the population of outsiders, led Fahmi and his co-researchers to develop a three-stage approach to their PAR project. The

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first involved covert information gathering, what Fahmi calls “street ethnography.” Fahmi hired two street children that he knew to map out the places that where the children worked, slept, played, and spent time. He asked these children to begin to build relationships and confidence with other street children. Eventually, the hired “street workers” revealed themselves to the other children and began to involve them in the PAR process. Fahmi defends the fact that this first phase of the project was not participatory, but rather research on street children by writing: “In our minds it was clear that the ‘action’ component of PAR, in terms of achieving social change, could only be adequately conceived through the process of getting to know these children and through their increasing participation. Accordingly, the action of brining about social change was not predetermined but was intended to be developed ‘as we went along’ and as our understanding of the social realities with which we would be engaged deepened, and after a comfortable level of trust was attained with individuals and groups from the street communities” (92).

In his review of history of PAR, Fahmi names 14 different approaches to participative inquiry. He writes that among practitioners “there is a strong resistance to assimilating all actionoriented research into one category and thereby undermining the difference in the degree of politicization” (10). He focuses on the Lewinian tradition in PAR and that of Third World practitioners like Freire and Fals Borda. Of the former tradition, he notes how Lewin’s followers de-politicized his approach. Similarly, the World Bank and other non-critical organizations have adopted participatory approaches. It shows that “PAR is not intrinsically conducive to acquiring power for the powerless; the risk of appropriation is always there” (28). At the same time, Fahmi cautions the more critical approaches to PAR not to get into a war over “who is more radical.” Rather, the PAR process as it exists in practice needs to be reconsidered and a more honest discussion of how change happens over time needs to be started. Fahmi accepts the emancipatory goal of PAR, but is critical of the implications of its ideals. He addresses the problems with five “PAR promises:” (1) the initiation of the PAR process, (2) democratic participation, (3) leadership, (4) training and education, and (5) the sequencing and timing of reaching PAR ideals. Each of these is discussed in detail below. Briefly, Fahmi argues that the ideal notion that PAR is initiated by disempowered groups should be abandoned. This has rarely happened in practice so PAR theorists should stop propagating it in the literature. Next, Fahmi is critical of PAR approaches which are eager to claim they are “democratic” or “highly participatory.” In practice, PAR involves the PAR researcher exerting a lot of power and influence over the process. Moreover, the participants themselves have different stocks of power. Truly becoming “democratic” and developing participant leadership is a long-term process fraught with internal struggles and requiring individual and collective commitment to learning about and respecting oneself, others in the group, and processes of change. As Fahmi writes: “Democratic participation as a major PAR ideal cannot from the outset of a PAR process be the actual state of affairs. This kind of democratic participation requires a wide range of abilities, including personal, intellectual, political, interpersonal, group management, and data management skills, in addition to a capacity for self-awareness and reflexivity. It is very unlikely at the initial stage of a PAR enterprise with marginal and excluded populations that practitioners would be able to constitute a group that is more or less homogenously equipped with these abilities. Therefore, the promotion of democratic participation requires educating participants to acquire such abilities so that they can eventually participate more actively” (163).

Given the complex processes involved in creating democratic participation and leadership, Fahmi calls for more critical attention to be paid to training and education. There is little consideration of how participants “build capacities” in the literature. Fahmi wants researchers to give more explicit consideration to these capacity-building processes so that PAR practitioners

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can have more realistic expectations of how PAR really happens and be able to judge their projects progress toward PAR ideals. Fahmi notes how in his own project the PAR process was sequenced so that participants assumed more responsibility and leadership over time. This leads him to urge PAR practitioners to further explicate the role of sequencing and timing in their PAR processes. PAR practitioners should come armed to PAR projects with a set of reflective questions that allow them to see if their PAR process is headed in the right direction. Throughout the book Fahmi also is concerned with power. He argues that the emancipatory approach tends to see PAR as transferring power from the powerful to the powerless. However, Fahmi is a skeptic. He sees the disenfranchised as losing power across the globe and argues that PAR is more about defending ground, than gaining new ground. This view may be informed by his particularly difficult situation in Egypt. I was not able to fully consider his argument, as I didn’t read the whole book. But I found his skepticism to be warranted. He asks PAR practitioners to avoid painting the world in black and white, good and evil terms. This is the approach of the “war on terror” and the terrorists. Instead, he calls for a focus on ethics and urges practitioners to help PAR participants develop a sense of self-awareness and critique. This is evident in the following quote where Fahmi discusses how he and the street children participating in his group often explored “dyads” like “education and social control.” I like this quote because it reminds the researcher that PAR may set off processes of anger, one may be led to see things in the group they support they don’t want to see or which may be detrimental in the long run. PAR practitioners should think about how they are going to deal with these issues: “In exploring these dyads, we followed the Southern tradition of PAR in terms of developing a dialectical sensitivity that was concerned less with solving contradiction than with developing the capacity to identify and dissect them, to recognize them in the self and in others and to struggle with them actively, both individually and collectively. This vigilance in maintaining a reflective approach and dialectical sensitivity is paramount in PAR undertakings. In a process that requires political involvement and taking sides with the excluded, a critically reflective stance can act as a safeguard against the pitfalls of reproducing dyads, of accusations of treachery, and of longing for innocence and purity” (165).

I will conclude this summary, which doesn’t do justice to this book, which quotes Fahmi’s view of PAR as a long-term process involving contradiction and ambiguity. Below I pull some other important arguments and quotes from the book. “PAR processes… [are] very time-consuming, labor intensive, field based, longitudinal, and engaged undertakings that require extensive patience, perseverance, and a capacity to handle a great deal of ambiguity” (161).

Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
History:  Lewin: Lewin was interested in how action research served social movements. However, he died young and his followers depoliticized his approach. Coming from a consensus-based epistemology, their approach “has for the most part been associated with private industry, organizational development, and more recently, with the work of scholars in the disciplines of education agriculture, and human development” (12). It demonstrates how “action research based on a participatory strategy can serve to reinforce and perfect the status quo” (12)  Lewinian approach vs. Third World (Southern) Tradition: “Whereas the Lewinian tradition is based on Consensus Social Theory, the school emerging from the Third World assumes that societal groups have conflicting interests. Moreover, whereas the Lewinian School believes that enhanced efficiency and effectiveness

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improve the situation of all system members, the equitable distribution of resources and the enhancement of self-reliance of disenfranchised groups in general are central to the Third World school, even at the cost of economic efficiency and growth. Furthermore, the values and ideology of the Third World school (empowerment, equality, self-reliance, and commitment to interests of local participants) often entail challenging oppressive political and social arrangements, with the result that the research group is often positioned in opposition to dominant and mainstream forces” (14).  Note: In the literature, AR is used to refer to the Lewinian tradition whereas PAR refers to the Third World (Southern) tradition.  However: “In reality, it is common to encounter PAR undertakings that borrow from both schools, in addition to those that clearly adhere to one or the other” (17).  Emancipatory goal in PAR: “Commitment to genuine socio-political change, coupled with a strong belief in the capacity of participants, through collective and conscious actions, to influence the political and economic factors that shape their existence, are pillars in both critical theory and PAR. This emancipatory view is believed to be conducive to greater social justice” (18).
Common ground between PAR practitioners and critical theory:  Critique of research methods that support the status quo: “Since PAR practitioners work for the most part with subordinated communities, they are critical of research methodologies that serve the interests of the dominant culture by monopolizing the productions of knowledge and using the latter to sustain the subordinate status of disadvantaged communities” (18).  Rejection of positivism / Value for experiential knowledge and multiple realities / Insistence on values and morality in research processes: “Action-oriented researchers make a strong plea for an alternative epistemology that is to a large degree a reversal of the positivist conception of knowledge. Firstly, it calls for clarifying the position between epistemology and ideology, knowledge and power…[They] stress the importance of recognizing the value of popular knowledge, common sense, wisdom, and intuitive learning. Secondly, the new epistemology strives to understand the complex world of lived experience from the point of view of those who live it… Thirdly, by embracing the idea that experiential knowledge arises through participation with others, action-oriented research believes that people can and should participate in the identification of their own problems, the analysis and interpretation of these problems, and the generation of relevant knowledge. Thus, participation gives rise to experiential knowing and helps to break up subordination by transforming the relationship between researcher and researched into subjectsubject rather than subject-object… Moreover, unlike positivist research, which is concerned with describing ‘what is’ and refrains from proposing what ‘should be’, action-oriented researchers believe that any scientific endeavor is value-laden and that judging the morality of proposed solutions to social problems cannot and should not be avoided” (24).  PAR’s critique of interviewing / PAR promotes dialogue, not interviews: “A key methodological feature distinguishing PAR from other social research is dialogue, which is different from traditional interviewing in several aspects. As Sohng (1996, 85-86) remarks, ‘interviewing presupposes the primacy of the researcher’s frame of

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reference. It offers a one-way flow of information that leaves the researched in the same position after having shared knowledge, ignoring the self-reflective process that the imparting of information involves.’ Moreover, in the dialogue approach, the researcher shares his/her perceptions, questions, and reflections in response to the participant’s account and puts forward different theories… This sharing invites participants to engage in explicit reflexivity. It is also conducive to the creation of an authentic, two-way relationship between researchers and participants, in which learning involves self-examination from a new, critical standpoint” (26).
Contradiction between PAR ideals and the reality of PAR in practice  PAR practitioner often attempts to convince participants to view things as s/he does, paradoxically this is a form of indoctrination: “While Friere’s notion of ‘conscientization’ refers to a process by which self-awareness is raised through collective self-inquiry – dialogue and reflections in opposition to indoctrination – there are many traditional process of knowledge transfer that falsely attribute themselves a liberatory Freirean approach. Selener (1997) points to the paradox observed between researchers’ intentions, claims, and desires for dialogue and the actual effort made to convince the participants of the value of the researcher’s view and method, thus, paradoxically producing the very effect that they want to avoid, that is, the ‘indoctrination’ of the other, that is, the uneducated” (28).  PAR practitioner assumes many roles – these roles give him/her power: “The role of the researcher is often described rather humbly as ‘co-learner’ and ‘participant.’ Yet the researcher is also engaged actively in ‘educating,’ ‘awareness raising,’ ‘managing conflict,’ and making other contributions that would not only make him/her less of an outsider, but also lead to the ‘emancipation’ of both individual and the community. Healy (2001) remarks that all of these activities, including the initiation of the research itself and the promotion of participants’ involvement, illustrate research workers’ power, an issue that often receives insufficient attention” (29).  PAR workers need to reflect on the consequences of their power, they often fail to do so: “PAR workers do not reflect on the positive (liberatory) as well as the negative (constraining) effects of their own power” (30).  Creating an egalitarian relationship between researcher and participants is VERY difficult: “Forging an egalitarian relationship between researchers and community members is no easy task. Disenfranchised groups often internalize the negative connotations of the stigma imposed on them by a dominating structure, which may reinforce subordination to outside researchers. The latter may find it difficult to relinquish the role of expert and tend to impose their own views and ideas. These tendencies can be countered… if there is a clear commitment to implement mechanisms in the PAR process for explicit reflexivity and for scrutinizing interactions and unexamined assumptions of authority and expertise” (32).  Communities are divided by a series of power relations, members are not uniformly disempowered: “‘Community’ when used to refer to homogenous groups as equally disempowered and disenfranchised, glosses over social and power differences within these same groups. The appearance of consensus may be deceiving. PAR researchers cannot simply, by fiat, wish, or otherwise, create a

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participatory stance, one enabling them to lead the community, bringing it to rise above historically rooted issues related to gender, factions, class, and so forth” (34).  PAR processes require leadership / this creates a tension between democratic processes and the need to get things done: “Inevitable tension between the ideal of participation as presented in the PAR discourse and the practical demands for effective leadership” (33).  Vague definition of what participation means in practice / too many projects claim to be participatory that are just consulting with the disempowered, not giving them a role in decision-making: “There is a tendency to label any activity along the continuum of participation (from information-sharing to consultation to participation) as ‘participation.’ Information-sharing and consultation occur more frequently than participation in decision-making or implementation” (33).
Critique of overzealous critics of PAR: Those that suffer from the “who is more radical syndrome”  The World Bank’s “endorsement of participatory methods in 1998 triggered the emergence of structured participative technologies based on formulaic prescriptions that have helped strip the concept of empowerment of its political potential” (33).  However, “by hastily associating all divergent PAR practices with some form of cooptation, critical practitioners and researchers not only fall into the trap of the ‘who is more radical’ syndrome, but also, and more importantly, fail to discern different types of divergence” (34).  “[The] prototype definition of PAR, which represents it as a sort of panacea, tends to generate very high expectations among its critics… When the ideal that are supposed to be the guiding principles in PAR processes become rigid criteria in the construction of critical appraisals, we run the risk of becoming ‘utopist’ instead of remaining ‘utopian’” (37).
Demystifying PAR ideals: In order to improve the practice of PAR, and counter critics, it is necessary to examine what PAR has accomplished in practice and acknowledge that PAR is a long-term process. Ideals should guide this process. Rather than being quick to judge projects for their failure to meet these ideals, PAR practitioners should be concerned with implementing practices that permit progress toward them.  It is time to forget the ideal that PAR processes should be initiated by the disempowered group. This does not happen in practice: “It would seem appropriate now, after decades of PAR practice and documentation, to recognize the fact that the majority of PAR undertakings are initiated by outside researchers and/or practitioners, keen to develop solidarity ties with oppressed grassroots communities or groups. This recognition can pave the way for divesting PAR discourse of the utopist claim and ambition that the initiation of the research process itself comes or should come from members of the oppressed communities or groups. Many oppressed groups have neither the abilities nor the resources to initiate a PAR process” (38).  Democratic participation and leadership is something that is achieved in the long-term. It is not an immediate reality in most PAR processes: “Another PAR promise that needs to be demystified concerns the ideal of democratic participation. PAR researchers and practitioners are often confronted with the participation issues, and are reproached with the fact that participants do not assume a primary role in the

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research process. Once again, these criticisms assume that egalitarian participation should be the normal state of affairs in PAR, whereas in reality there is a great deal of evidence that point to the contrary… Democratic participation, like other PAR promises, is an ideal toward which researcher and participants strive in a PAR process” (39).  Leadership is a very difficult issue in PAR processes, both for the PAR practitioner and emerging participant leaders: “Another day-today practice concern that does not receive due attention in the literature is that of leadership… Leadership is vital to initiating a PAR process, and it often comes from the ranks of intellectuals by virtue of their privileged economic and social status… Leadership’s input is often necessary to sustain the process as well. There is an implicit expectation in the literature that leadership skills and responsibilities and, by the same token, the power associated with them, have to be rapidly disseminated in order to facilitate the emergence of genuine participation (democracy)… Some elements of the leadership issue not addressed in the literature include the following:  “The transmission of skills and knowledge in a PAR process is not simply a technical question. It takes place within a liberatory pedagogical framework and process that needs to be respectful of the participants’ pace and the material conditions of their daily lives, which tend to be harsh and strategically oriented toward survival mechanisms. Accordingly the pedagogical pace tends to be slow, often delaying the full sharing of leadership. This raises the question of the necessity, not to mention the paradox, of PAR initiators maintaining leadership for longer than is implied by PAR promises…  “[I]t is naïve to think that all participants will simultaneously acquire similar levels of leadership skills and knowledge to enable them to participate. In effect, in PAR undertakings with large groups, only a small group of participants become ‘full’ participants. This issue is handled in the literature rather superficially by maintaining that when working with large groups, it is not essential for everyone to participate. While this assertion may be comforting, it dismisses a wide range of related problems from the analysis… The latter, even if not so keen themselves to participate more actively, nonetheless resent and resist the assumption of leadership roles by peers. As such, participants who may be ready to assume leadership roles and responsibility have to cope with this resistance. This is no easy task for an emerging leadership of participants who, for good reason, are usually concerned about not jeopardizing their relationships with peers…  “[E]merging participant leaders [that] gain authority, [may] begin to focus their efforts on maintaining this newly acquired power…  “By challenging oppressive political and social arrangements, PAR leadership is often positioned in opposition to dominant and mainstream forces, which often elicits charges of subversion and repression from governments and various vest interests” (40-41).  The processes of how leaders acquire skills through capacity building, training, and education are issues that are not well-documented in the PAR literature: “Associated with the leadership issue is that of training and education, also

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notoriously absent from the literature. It may be that the overemphasis on the researcher as co-learner has prevented any acknowledgement of the fact that PAR leaders do assume an important role in training and educating their co-workers, as well as participants” (41).  PAR is a long-term process, it requires a sustained commitment: “PAR entails a long process requiring sustained commitment and involvement; it is usually intense and laden with tensions and risks. As such, time is a critical element for the success of a PAR undertaking” (43).  The process of how PAR becomes more participatory over time, and leadership is assumed by participants, needs to be explicated. PAR practitioners ought to have a set of questions on hand that lead them to assess the quality of their process: “PAR promises are utopian ideals that guide the process… Those involved in PAR ought to be asked what they do to elicit more participant involvement, how they approach obstacles to increased participation, and how they deal with power differentials. PAR researchers should account for their efforts in transmitting knowledge and skills: have they been able to demystify research, and have participants and workers acquired critical analysis and research skills? Have researchers themselves been able to develop and refine their methodologies? In short, the challenge for PAR is to strive for the attainment of its promises through a monitored and reflexive process so that the emphasis is less on achievements and more on the processes that facilitate them” (39).
Critique of postmodern approach to Foucault and postmodern critique of PAR  Fahmi is annoyed that postmodernists insist on ignoring Foucault’s claim that he was not a postmodernists  He argues that “insisting on using Foucault’s notion of power, as do Healy and other critics inspired by poststructuralism and postmodernism, may only fuel the ‘power aversion rhetoric’” (44).  In his final two volumes of The History of Sexuality, Foucault shifted from a focus on “government of others” to “government of the self.” His main focus in these works was ethics. (45)  Fahmi argues that PAR practitioners and theorists, should make a similar shift from focusing on power to ethics:  “In cynical times like the present, action strategies, to the dismay of revolutionary activists and theorists, cannot be designed with the sole aim of acquiring more power for the oppressed. Instated, whether we like it or not, action strategies will need to focus on minimizing further losses with a view to saving essentials… Resistance then becomes the primary issue that ought to be in the forefront of PAR researcher and practitioner concerns” (45).  “In light of mounting aversion to power rhetoric observed among activists, it is important to ask whether the ethics with respect to the government of self and of others might not be a better entry to elicit the critical reflection necessary for producing social emancipatory change” (46).
Description of Fahmi’s project and outcomes  Sequencing information-gathering, trust building, education, and political action: “It took over two years to… acquire adequate understanding of the phenomenon of street children and to establish a comfortable level of complicity

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between the children and the street workers (researchers)… This beginning phase of the PAR can be seen as street ethnography undertaken with a view to preparing the ground for a PAR to develop progressively. As such, this phase consisted of research on street children. The participation dimension was focused on educating and enabling street workers to become practitioner-researchers and, consequently, increasing their participation in the design, implementation, and monitoring of the different activities” (106).  Enhanced self-esteem and behavior change amongst PAR participants: The experiences at the drop-in center “lend credit to the claim made by Becker (1964) regarding the importance of positive interactions for eliciting behavior changes. It also adds credit to the value of non-formal education: changes in behavior need not be, and seldom are, the outcome of strict correctional measures. Instead, enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence, and a wider scope of awareness and creativity change the way individuals feel about themselves, and their behavior is modified accordingly” (159).
Warning to researchers with vulnerable populations: Do not overdo expressions of pity  “Well-meaning individuals who do not understand and control their feeling may actually harm the children they wish to help by strengthening the children’s feelings of exclusion and making them feel helpless” (98). REFERENCE: Fox, J. A. 2006. “Lessons from Action-Research Partnerships.” Development and Practice 16: 27-38. Summary: In this article, Fox offers advice to researchers looking to partner with organizations in action research projects. Fox is speaking to researchers interested in critical, social movementoriented PAR projects (rather than ‘conservative’ or applied participatory research). His goal is to provide advice on how to partner with activist organizations. He points out that “activists take risks in partnerships with researchers whose findings they usually cannot control” (32). Given the high stakes for both sides (activists may have issues aired that they would like to keep secret and academics depend on interesting data in order to get published and keep their jobs), Fox cautions researchers to be up-front about what they can provide and their own expectations. He provides the following recommendation: “Activist-scholar partnerships, if they are to work, need to be based on an understanding of the other, respect for difference, shared tractable goals, and a willingness to agree to disagree. Ideas like partnership and coalition – more than the term solidarity, for example – recognize that participants are autonomous actors that each bring their/our own agendas, priorities, and – whether we recognize it or not – baggage to the table. Coalitions and partnerships that last are grounded in more than shared values, but in shared interests as well” (32).

Fox emphasizes that “sustained research partnerships need to be driven by questions that each side sees as both interesting and relevant” (30). This orientation toward mutual interests and goals in action research has developed over decades of doing these types of projects. Fox reviews the traditions of action research, noting that “over time this tradition shifted from an implicit assumption that the researcher’s job is to help to ‘raise the awareness’ of social actors – which sometimes involved unconsciously paternalistic assumptions – to a much more balanced goal of mutual learning and agenda sharing. One could call this a shift from trying to build the movement to partnering with the movement” (28).

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Creating sustainable partnerships require value to be exchanged between the two parties. This means that researchers need to think about the type of contribution they can make to the organization. Fox provides two models that researchers can use for thinking about the contribution they will make: “As academics, we need to be clear about the nature of our own contribution. Is our role to disseminate knowledge from and about the movement to other constituencies, perhaps providing academic legitimacy to ‘movement common sense’? ...Or does the scholar contribute by providing information and analysis about other actors or issues to the movement? In other words, it is worth recognizing the directionality of the researcher’s goals – are we drawing from the movement in order to project analysis outward, or are we drawing from the external environment in order to project analysis inward?” (30).

In regards to the latter option, Fox notes that conventional research (i.e., data crunching, ivory tower stuff) may be of use to activist organizations. As he writes, “it is worth keeping in mind that some of this vast amount of conventional research is actually relevant to public interest groups… This means that one kind of contribution that scholars can offer to social actors is to wade through, decipher, and boil down the mind-bending quantities of arcane and hard-to-access information that is produced by mainstream institutions” (29). REFERENCE: Gaya Wicks, Patricia, Peter Reason, and Hillary Bradbury. 2008. "Living Inquiry: Personal, Political and Philosophical Groundings for Action Research Practice." Pp. 15-30 in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: In this article, the authors share email exchanges with other PAR researchers and asked for their intellectual influences of their approach to participative inquiry. The article is a collection of excerpts from people’s responses. Most respondents discussed their first experience learning about PAR at conferences or from a professor and then listed some important authors. REFERENCE: Gergen, Kenneth J. and Mary Gergen. 2008. "Social Construction and Research as Action." Pp. 159-171 in The Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: This article defines social constructionist theory and uses it to lay out an alternative approach to action research. In an attempt to avoid the paternalist weaknesses of some critical action research approaches, Gergen and Gergen use constructionist theory’s emphasis on multiple constructed realities to advocate for the practice of “appreciative inquiry.” Gergen and Gergen are concerned that some action research approaches romanticize the idea that action research is about defending the “good” against the “evil” (be it government agencies, corporate interests, etc.) The authors caution that this interpretation leads to a dismissal of the “multiple realities” within communities/organizations/etc. and may lead to action researchers “trampling” others “with [their] success.” As the authors write, “hierarchies of good and evil are divisive.” They are also “nourishing myths” that should be replaced “with a vision of conflicting goods” (168).

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Gergen and Gergen recommend that the action researcher strive to give full consideration “to forms of inquiry that more fully recognize the existence of conflicting goods” (168). In appreciative inquiry, “the major emphasis is on sharing in the diversity of views and concerns that each person brings to the event. By carefully listening to one another and sharing in some common experiences, they develop relationships that facilitate new activities into the future… Rather than focusing on failures, the appreciative process involves all the participants in a search for a commonly valued future” (169). The challenge for action researchers in this approach to action research is that “when a researcher enters a group or organization… the researcher will almost necessarily be required to affirm this particular account of the real. A failure to do so would function as a token of bad faith. To embrace the local ontology maximizes the potential for coordinated action.” Gergen and Gergen use “constructionist arguments [to] warn against the constraining and blinding potentials of commitment to any given reality.” (169). The challenge for the researcher then becomes how he/she “can function as a polyvocal agent. Under what conditions, and with what practices, can the researcher help alternative voices to be heard, enable movement across the borders of meaning, or introduce new worlds?” The authors offer no definitive solution. Rather, they promote the use of “appreciative inquiry,” or getting together various people and learning to appreciate difference and apply the knowledge gained from a respect to difference innovatively to organization and social change movements. Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Gergen and Gergen identify four themes of constructionist theory: 1. “The social construction of the real and the good, 2. The pivotal function of language in creating intelligible worlds, 3. The political and pragmatic nature of discourse, and 4. The significance of relational process as opposed to individual minds” (164).
Importance of relational approach to action research:  “Constructionism recognizes the community as opposed to the individual as the fundamental source of intelligibility… Action research extends this view in three ways. First, they do not work in separation from others, but with them… Second, they do not sustain the traditional separation of communities between the professional community and those they study… Finally, in their suturing these otherwise isolated communities, action researchers also undermine the incipient creation of knowledge hierarchies” (166).  “It is not individuals who come together to create relationships, but relationships that are responsible for the very conception of the individual. The constructionist dialogues thus serve to undermine three hundred years of accumulated belief, along with the instantiation of these beliefs in the major institutions of society” (163).  “In contrast to this individualist orientation to research, action inquiry has from its very inception laid stress on processes of collaboration” (165). REFERENCE: Kemmis, Stephen. 2001. "Exploring the Relevance of Critical Theory for Action Research: Emancipatory Action Research in the Footsteps of Jurgen Habermas." Pp. 91-102 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Summary: In this article, Kemmis applies Habermas’ theory of communicative action to the theory and practice of PAR. Habermas’ theory allows Kemmis to re-conceptualize the social problem that PAR is addressing. Rather than empowerment, the goal of Kemmis’ PAR is “enlightenment.” He follows Habermas in understanding the social problem as colonization of the lifeworld by the impersonal media of money and power. In order to facilitate higher levels of economic and political organization, these media replace communicative action. The lifeworld is under threat by rationalized, depersonalized processes. The problem in this vision of society is not so much that some people (the rich or the government) have more power than others, but rather that the depersonalized media and rationalized bureaucratic systems are too powerful. The goal of PAR in Kemmis’ vision is to create “communicative spaces,” or “autonomous public spheres,” in which people can come together to enhance mutual understanding and consensus. Main argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Kemmis argues that there are three types of PAR research.  Positivist PAR. This type of PAR is about “getting things done effectively” (92). It is a problem-solving approach that is concerned with improving outcomes.  Hermeneutic PAR. This type of PAR is about “wise and prudent decision-making in practical situations” (92). It is also about problem-solving, but it begins to understand how the participants in PAR may be implicated in the social processes which are creating the problem. So it is also a “process of self-education” in which practitioners learn about themselves and change themselves, not just the outcomes.  Critical PAR. This type of PAR is about “emancipating people from determination by habit, custom, illusion, and coercion which sometimes frame and constrain social and education practice” (92). This is only a small subset of PAR projects. It “aims at intervening in the cultural, social, and historical processes of everyday life to reconstruct not only the practice and the practitioner but also the practice setting” (92).
Kemmis and his co-researchers recognized that no one version of PAR is more legitimate than the others. In the mid-1980s the decided they needed to “cease proselytizing for [critical] action research.” The other forms of PAR provided an entrée into more critical versions of PAR while also providing space for participants to become comfortable with the process. This is how Kemmis put it:  “We feared that our advocacy for critical action research had become a ‘solution’ looking for ‘problems’ – that we had an answer to questions that people were not necessarily asking for themselves. Instead, we thought, we should be working with people already committed to addressing felt dissatisfactions and overcoming injustices in the settings in which they found themselves… Our role in helping with the development of the critical approach would be subsidiary to the end of addressing felt dissatisfaction and injustices” (93).
Kemmis criticizes the postmodern and poststructuralist critique of modernist theory, which he argues results in the impossibility of “progress through reason” and the destruction of the possibility of action research.  “The possibility of progress through reason became the target of attacks on modernist theory from postmodernists and poststructuralists… The very possibility of a critical social science was under threat from the postmodernist and poststructuralist

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challenges – and with it the notion of critical or emancipatory action research… I argued that, contrary to the despair induced by understanding evaluation technologies as social technologies understood in Foucaualdian terms, Habermas’ concept of communicative action offers humane, convivial, and rational resources for the further development of the theory and practice of educational evaluation” (93).
Kemmis response to the postmodern attack is to turn to Habermas’ theory of the colonization of the lifeworld. In this theory, the lifeworld, or communicative sphere, is threatened by impersonal media (money and power). The goal is to use PAR to create spaces in which people can come together and enhance mutual understanding.  “[Habermas] suggests that a possible way forward is through the formation of autonomous, self-organized public spheres capable of asserting themselves with ‘a prudent combination of power and intelligent self-restraint’ against the systematically integrating media of money and power” (97).  The “communicative spaces,” however, should not be transformed into formal organizations. Kemmis quotes Habermas to support this argument “Grassroots organizations may not cross the threshold to formal organization… otherwise they will pay for the indisputable gain in complexity by having the organizational goals detached from the orientations and attitude of their members” (97).  “Part of the task of an action research project, then, is to open communicative space, and to do so in a way that will permit people to achieve mutual understanding and consensus about what to do, in the knowledge that the legitimacy of any conclusions and decisions reached by participants will be proportional to the degree of authentic engagement of those concerned” (100). Weaknesses/Critique:
Kemmis does PAR with teachers and within university environments. He referred to participants as “practitioners.” It seems like doing PAR with teachers or other professionals may be very different than doing PAR with community groups – teachers / professionals share a common workplace identity that community members may not. I would have liked more discussion of this.
Kemmis does not discuss race, class, or gender. Are “communicative spaces” supposed to be diverse spaces? One of the major components of Habermasian theory is his discussion of reactionary (conservative) movements that want to go back to the past – these movements are reacting to the colonization of the lifeworld, but in this case they want to reverse gains made by non-dominant groups (women, nonwhites) and the legal protections (impersonal media of power) those groups have been provided. It seems to me that there may be a dangerous undercurrent in applying Habermasian theory if these issues are not addressed. Representing all people who want to rise up against colonization of Are negative reactions against the impersonal media due to the protection non-dominant groups are offered by impersonal laws? He also does not discuss the presence of power and domination at the community level or within communicative spaces. Workplace PAR may be able to sidestep these issues to the extent that participants feel united under a common identity (i.e., “teacher”) and can bracket out other differences. Memorable Quotes:

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“Others cannot do the enlightening for the participants; in the end, they are or are not enlightened in their own terms” (91). REFERENCE: MacIntyre, Alice. 2008. Participatory Action Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Summary: MacIntyre defines PAR as “an approach characterized by the active participation of researchers and participants in the co-construction of knowledge; the promotion of self- and critical awareness that leads to individual, collective, and/or social change; and an emphasis on a co-learning process where researchers and participants plan, implement, and establish a process for disseminating information gather in the research project” (5). MacIntyre stresses that no PAR process is alike, and that each practitioner will need to be creative and patient as they allow participants to guide the research process. The book gives you a sense of the difficulties of doing PAR and highlights that participants may be less engaged than the practitioner originally imagined. I appreciated its sober assessment of the limitations of PAR, especially the discussion of “commonsense participation.” Although I think this topic deserved more attention in the book, I think MacIntyre’s following discussion of “commonsense participation” is important to keep at hand: “It is my experience that the most effective strategy for engaging people in a PAR project is for the participants and the researchers to use commonsense participation and to take joint responsibility for developing the group’s version of what it means to participate in the PAR process. If both parties do not contribute to how people participate and in what ways, then practitioners run the risk of ‘telling’ people how to do things, thus becoming too pedagogic and/or manipulative. Thus, they, and the participants, lose sight of the collaborative nature of the participant/researcher relationship – a relationship that is vital to the effectiveness of a PAR project.” (29)

Overall, I got the sense from this book that MacIntyre sees PAR as an opportunity that participants can choose to take on or not, but that it should not be forced on people. As she writes: “Participatory action research offers people… the opportunity to act on events that directly affect them and that contribute to their individual and collective well-being” (40). Throughout the book, MacIntyre highlights the difficulties of doing PAR with examples from her own projects in two sites: the first with a group of young people in an urban school and the second with a group of women in Northern Ireland. Through these examples, you see how MacIntyre dealt with participants telling her to expect less and failing to do what they had promised and planned as a group. You also see participants arguing with each other, treating each other poorly due to frustration, choosing sides in arguments, and, at times, coming to each other’s defense. I thought that an insightful idea was how MacIntyre used transcripts from group discussions (“the group’s data”) at critical junctures in the PAR process. By reviewing the transcripts in small groups, PAR participants were able to review their experiences, what they had learned and what caused arguments or breakdowns in learning, and to summarize their “lessons learned” into key arguments for presentation to other parties or for developing action plans to move forward. MacIntyre also provides a brief, but important, introduction to the ethics of doing PAR research. Most important here is that practitioners have an obligation at the beginning of the PAR process to inform participants about how they plan to analyze and disseminate data. These plans must be approved by participants before the practitioner proceeds to use the data. Participants have the right to determine the use and conditions for publication of the “group’s data.” At the

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beginning of each PAR project, MacIntyre recommends that the practitioner go over the following concepts with the participants: “consent, documentation of data, ownership of data, control of the overall PAR process, confidentiality, privacy, trustworthiness, and responsibility” (65). The practitioner should continue to address these topics throughout the PAR process. While I appreciated the soberness of MacIntyre’s presentation, I felt that some critical issues were not addressed. For example, I did not come away from reading the book with a sense of how to plan and prepare for a PAR project. Also, I would have liked more discussion of the tools and techniques used to facilitate group discussion and collective action. I did not come away from this book with a sense of who the practitioner is and what they actually do – something that is much more apparent in a book like Adler and Adler’s on membership roles. I would recommend the previous book much more than this one. REFERENCE: McTaggart, Robin. 1997. "Guiding Principles for Participatory Action Research." Pp. 25-43 in Participatory Action Research: International Contexts and Consequences, edited by R. McTaggart. New York: State University of New York. Summary: McTaggart aims to set out a set of PAR principles in order to distinguish authentic PAR processes from “corrupted participation” or the “illusion of participation.” He argues that authentic PAR “establishes self-critical communities of people participating and collaborating in all phases of the research process: the planning, action, observation, and reflection” (35). The fundamental principle of PAR is “the commitment that all participants do research for themselves” (28). McTaggart is concerned that the emancipatory potential of PAR is being eroded by its use by people in power to improve policies and programs that in the end do nothing but “maintain control” of the powerless by the powerful. To conclude his essay, McTaggart provides a list of what PAR is not – chief amongst these is that PAR is “not simply problem solving” (39). For McTaggart, “authentic participation in research means sharing the way research is conceptualized, practiced, and brought to bear on the life-world” (28). Although I appreciate McTaggart’s lofty aims for PAR, what are the limitations of this view? To what extent are our PAR participants uniformly going to be “victims” in need of “emancipation” or will some participants also be generators of oppression (i.e., men)? These are complicated issues and I think making practitioners feel bad for the lack of authenticity of the PAR process is not where all the blame needs to be laid. We need sober assessments both of PAR’s capacities for social change and the problems of power within communities. REFERENCE: Wadsworth, Yoland. 2001. "The Mirror, the Magnifying Glass, the Compass, and the Map: Facilitating Participatory Action Research." Pp. 420-432 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: This article is based on a long-term PAR project in Australia with a mental health institution that aimed to give mental health “consumers” more power over their treatment. The project engaged consumers and mental health service providers in a long-term effort to change practices in the facility. The author has some good ideas, but she has a very “pomo” tone, which was annoying to me (so I might be judging this unfairly!) (I also didn’t like that a large section of 20

the article is a set of coded fieldnotes with no real explanation as to why they are there!) When I selected this article for this section I thought the “mirror, magnifying glass, compass, and map” in the title were going to be PAR activities. Rather, they are metaphors for the role of the PAR facilitator (the compass). The mirror and the magnifying glass refer to the importance for all PAR participants to “know others and our own selves” (425). One very positive contribution of this article is its discussion of the ebbing and flowing of energies or commitment amongst the participants to the PAR process. Wadsworth describes how participants constantly shift from enthusiasm for change to managing the realities of their day-today responsibilities or roles in the facility. This results, Wadsworth points out, from participants shifting from having confidence that they can change the “system” to becoming overwhelmed with the difficulties involved in doing so. To get over this, Wadsworth recommends “mapping” out how permanent change can be “built in” to the institution. Wadsworth argues that PAR traditionally works to create “spaces” for dialogue and collective action, but often neglects making sure these “spaces” “remain built in.” To do the latter, Wadsworth recommends constantly asking: “How will this survive the end of the project? Who will carry out this function? Where in the organization does this fit?... Who learned or did what differently after being involved in this?” (428). (Wadsworth doesn’t spell it out, but I think this is what the mapmaking is about. She uses the term “mapping” a lot!) Closely related to this issue of sustainability, is that of resources. Wadsworth writes that “every inquiry needs nutrition or fuel for growth” (427). The resources she emphasizes are intellectual ones: notes, transcripts, historical knowledge of the problem. Though she doesn’t mention them as “resources,” she also notes that the project was awarded long-term funding and won awards from mental health and academic organization. REFERENCE: Zeichner, K. 2001. "Educational Action Research." Pp. 273-284 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: This article reviews the history and current “best practices” for “educational action research.” Zeichner mostly discusses action research projects undertaken by (or with teachers) aiming to improve their own practice (other types of educational action research are not specifically defined.) Zeichner reviews the action research spiral, plan, act, observe, reflect, and discusses five historical traditions of educational action research in the English language. Most of these programs aimed to improve teaching quality or “make the curriculum more relevant to the lives of students” (275). Advocates of the action research approach “believed that teachers would make better decisions in the classroom if they conducted research to determine the basis for their decisions” (274). Zeichner notes three factors that motivate teachers to conduct research about their own practice: 1. “First, there is the motivation to understand better and improve one’s own teaching and/or the contexts in which that teaching is embedded… 2. “Secondly, there is the motivation to produce knowledge that will be useful to others… 3. “Finally, consistent with the ‘democratic impulse’ that was originally associated with the emergence of action research in the US in the 1940s, there is the motivation to contribute to greater equity and social justice in schooling and society. Here there is an explicit

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agenda by educational action researchers to work for social change by working on issues of equity within the classroom and beyond” (276). Zeichner also cites case studies which reveal positive outcomes for teachers that engage in action research about their own practice. These positive outcomes include: teachers become more selfconfident, more proactive in dealing with difficult issues, and “acquire habits and skills of inquiry that they use beyond the research experience” (279). Some studies indicate that teachers that use these methods move towards more learner-centered instruction. Zeichner concludes by detailing five conditions for success action research projects (1) “The creation of a culture of inquiry that respects the voices of teachers… A balance is achieved between honoring teachers’ voices and expertise and asking them to critique what they know. (2) “There is an investment in the intellectual capital of teachers which results in teachers having control over most aspects of the research process, including whether to participate or not, the research focus and the methods of data collection and analysis… (3) “There is an intellectual challenge and stimulation in the work and teachers are helped to think more deeply about their practice rather than given ‘solutions’ for their problems. (4) “The research takes place over a substantial period of time (at least a year) in a sage and supportive environment. Predictable rituals and routines are established in groups of teacher researchers that help build community. (5) Participation in the research is voluntary.” (279) Note to remember:
“The hardest part of beginning an action research project is developing the discipline to keep a written account of what’s happening, particularly when you have no idea of what you’re looking for” (273).

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FEMINIST APPROACHES TO PARTICIPATORY METHODS & ACTION RESEARCH REFERENCE: Acker, J, K. Barry, and J. Esseveld. 1996. "Objectivity and Truth: Problems in Doing Feminist Research." Pp. 60-87 in Feminism and Social Change: Bridging Theory and Practice, edited by H. Gottfried. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Summary: This article was originally published in 1980. Here the authors reproduce the original and offer their commentary on it 16 years later. In the article, Acker, Barry, and Esseveld explore the challenges they experienced while doing a study of women who had been primarily mothers and wives and were attempting to move into the labor market. The study began in 1976 and involved multiple interviews of the women participants. Acker, Barry, and Esseveld begin by outlining their political stance and theoretical roots. The authors are committed to the “liberation of women.” This led them to select a topic and develop a methodological approach that contributed to this goal. As they write: “This is a method of exploration and discovery, a way to begin to search for understandings that may contribute to the goals of liberation. Exploration, in our usage, means an open and critical process in which all the intellectual tools we have inherited from a male-dominated intellectual tradition are brought into question, including ideas about the basic nature of human beings, the nature of social life, the takenfor-granted worldview of tradition science, what concepts and questions might help to illuminate our shared condition, and how we should go about developing such knowledge” (63).

The authors describe their theoretical roots as belonging to feminism, Marxism, and critical theory. This leads to how they conceptualize the agency of women in their study: “Although we view people as active agents in their own lives and as such constructors of their social worlds, we do not see that activity as isolated and subjective. Rather, we locate individual experience in society and history, embedded within a set of social relations that produce both the possibilities and limitations of that experience. What is at issue is not just everyday experience, but the relations that underlie it and the connections between the two” (63).

This theoretical position leads the authors to reject an approach which privileges the women’s subjective experience. Rather, Acker, Barry, and Esseveld want to reveal the “social relations that organize [women’s] oppression” (84). To do this, however, requires that they violate one of their principles and objectify women’s experience. “The act of looking at interviews, summarizing another’s life, and placing it within a context is an act of objectification… Acknowledging that a necessary part of understanding another’s experience involves an act or moment of objectification poses further problems and contradictions. The question becomes how to produce an analysis that goes beyond the experience of the researched while still granting them full subjectivity… Our solution to this series of problems was to present a number of life histories, expressed largely in the women’s own words, to typify what we thought were particular patterns of change” (71).

Throughout the article Acker, Barry, and Esseveld describe how they attempted to “to minimize the tendency in all research to transform those researched into objects of scrutiny and manipulation. In an ideal case, we would create conditions in which the object of research enters into the process as an active subject” (63). They developed three strategies to reduce power differential or subject-object problem. However, each of these strategies had its own limitations. These are described below: 1. Encourage interviewee to take the lead in deciding what to talk about. This strategy did not always work because interviewees expected to be asked questions. Encouraging them

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to take the lead was often an uncomfortable experience for the interviewee. The authors had more success with this strategy with those interviewees that they interviewed multiple times and developed more personal relationships with. 2. Tell the interviewee about yourself. The authors attempted to build friendships with the interviewees. However, over time they began to feel this was manipulative. As they write, “However, we recognized a usually unarticulated tension between friendships and the goal of research. The researcher’s goal is always to gather information; thus the danger always exists of manipulating friendships to that end. Given the power differences between researcher and researched cannot be completely eliminated, attempting to create a more equal relationship can paradoxically become exploitation and use. We recognized this more as the research progressed and tired to avoid it” (69).

3. Share your interpretations of the data with the interviewees and ask for their input and analysis. The authors decided to share their analysis only with the women who participated in the most interviews and who identified themselves as trying to change their consciousness. These were women who shared the authors’ worldview. They did not share their interpretations or invite analysis from women they had taken a critical approach to in analysis because they thought would be hurt by them. Acker, Barry, and Esseveld admit that the failure to share power over analysis with this group of women demonstrates their power to objectify them. They make the following commentary: “Whether or not to confront groups or individuals with interpretations of their lives that are radically different from their own is an ethical question faced by anyone attempting critical social research… We have not solved this problem; we believe that the solution lies in accepting the dilemmas and maintaining an awareness of when and why we are not able to make the research process a true dialogue” (70).

The authors also found that amongst the women they did share the manuscript with, many were disappointed in how the authors’ minimized the sociological analysis. The women participants, Acker, Barry, and Esseveld note, “wanted us, the researchers, to interpret their experience to them” (72). Acker, Barry, and Esseveld’s article points to the contradictions and challenges involved in solving the subject-object problem. An ethical commitment to privileging the women’s point of view made it difficult for the authors to “objectify” their experience, place their experience in the larger context of structural issues, and take a critical approach toward the women’s consciousness or actions. Another note worth adding here is Acker, Barry, and Esseveld’s discussion of the limitations of interview research. They write that “it was extremely difficult to analyze process… Yet, that process may be the most important to understand if we are to comprehend the ways the larger structure penetrates the life of individuals, as well as the ways that individuals in their daily lives reproduce and undermine that structure” (79). REFERENCE: Alldred, Pam. 1998. "Ethnography and Discourse Analysis: Dilemmas in Representing the Voices of Children." Pp. 140-170 in Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and Private Lives, edited by J. Ribbens and R. Edwards. London: Sage.

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Summary: Alldred uses discourse analysis to critically assess the “representation” children’s voices in the texts of the sociology of childhood. She uses post-structuralist theory to understand the “politics of giving voice” to children. She begins by arguing that “giving voice” achieves certain ends for researchers – it has moral, political, and ethical weight with researcher’s audience (funders), because it seems democratic and also promises to produce something lacking in modern society, concrete portrayals of “real” people. She begins with a lengthy critique of Corsaro’s work. She argues that Corsaro claims to “enter” into children’s culture, to bracket as much as possible his “adult” point of view. In doing so, he assumes that childhood culture is “prior to” adult culture, a separate world from the adult version into which he can he can enter without altering it. Corsaro claims to be “giving voice” to children, but does not critically assess his political act of representing those voices. He “simply assumes that readers of the research will rest their faith in [his] own perspective as the basis for knowledge” (153). Alldred is concerned that researchers naively assume that the “re-presentation” of children’s voices is good for them. She calls for researchers to more deeply assess how the politics of how children’s voices will be used. She is less concerned with what children are saying than with how they are heard. As she writes, researchers need to ask themselves “How do we hear children?” and “how will our reports be heard in the public sphere?” The following quote speaks to this concern: “Recognizing the fact that in providing a research voice for a particular group we may simultaneously reinforce their construction as Other, and concurrently our own perspective or the dominant perspective as central, prevents us from naively assuming that our work is bound to be liberatory… Taking up a position as one who knows, in relation to those who are oppressed, is fraught with ethical problems which are not assuaged by good attentions. At the very least, this requires that we focus on the potential losses as well as gains of particular approaches to research” (154).

Alldred also applies post-structuralist theory of language to the act of giving voice. She writes: “For adult-dominated culture, language is ‘by definition,’ reflective and productive of adult power, status, and authority. Since the whole frame of reference is adult-center, it is difficult to see to what extent children could, as ethnographic subjects, present ‘their own’ account of their worlds. Furthermore, it can be argued that children are having to render themselves meaningful in adultcentered terms, and explain themselves convincingly to those who have power over them… Seen in this light, children’s interviews, because they entail the requirement to make sense for adults, might not necessarily be empowering occasions for children” (154).

This is a warning to researchers not to assume that “giving voice” is empowering. It may be very uncomfortable experience for children. The warning is well-placed and children surely often experience “language” as “adult-dominated,” something that teachers and possibly parents try to get them to speak “correctly.” But language is also children’s, they use it to express themselves, and what they express is not necessarily corrupted by the adult “origins” of language. Alldred goes on to rejects the possibility of authentic subjects as fantasy. Alldred’s article is well-written and her critique unique amongst the sociologists of childhood that I have read so far. But I’m going to give a clumsy attempt to apply “discourse analysis” to her article and say that I think her argument is very representative of its cultural moment – the so called “turn to language” that she praises. Her warnings may be valid, but they are done in heavy theoretical language rather than for example something empirically backed-up like the selfassessment done by Thorne in Gender Play. Overall, I came away with a sense that research is a “dirty” business, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves with the idea that we’re “empowering” kids. Does self torture get us out of these dilemmas? Do critiques that make the sociology of

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childhood look dirty really help? I think the idea that shame and self-abhorrence producing higher quality work is going out of fashion, at least amongst my friends. Getting lost in an ethical postmodern labyrinth (or drinking too much) seem self-destructive and not particularly helpful. I would recommend this article if you want to give students a taste of what the postmodern critique. Alldred also has some good quotes in here: “Reflexivity involves being explicit about the operation of power within actual processes of researching and representing people” (162). And: “Children’s voices need to be heard alongside critical attention to the way childhood is constructed” (167). I would have liked to see some more on what that “power” is and how it affects the social construction of childhood – rather than just a critique of ethical hollowness of “giving voice.” REFERENCE: Ansell, Nicola. 2001. "Producing Knowledge About 'Third World Women': The Politics of Fieldwork in a Zimbabwean Secondary School." Ethics, Place, and Environment, 4(2): 101116. Summary: In this article, Ansell explores “fieldwork’s effects on the researched” (101). Her research project took place in a secondary school in Zimbabwe. Ansell discusses how her body was “read” in the field and describes oppositional knowledge as textual productions. She cites important postcolonial critiques of development that made the article compelling. For example, she writes: “A researcher’s presence in an African country is arguably evidence of conquest, of the West’s ‘mastery’ over African space: their existence in the field exposes/constructs knowledges of power relations” (105). “‘Consciousness raising’… relies on a shared subject position between researcher and researched. Once essentialist categories are rejected, the Western background of the consciousness raiser carries the same colonialist overtones as teaching” (103).

She attempts to counter the exploitative possibility of herself (a white Westerner) doing research with young African women by “destabilizing dominant discourses” in the school. Ansell’s article is an examination of her ability to do that. As she writes: “A way to avoid exploitation might be to attempt to ‘manage’ the research encounter such as to promote the destabilization of dominant discourses, of, for instance, race, gender, or age, and facilitate the production of new oppositional discourses. This paper assesses how far such a strategy is possible by addressing three areas of the fieldwork process: the researcher’s embodied presence in the field, the topic of research and the choice of research methods” (103).

I thought her discussion of focus groups and the possibility that they reinforce dominant relations was very interesting. “However, focus groups are embedded in wider power relations which structure knowledge production. Peer pressure discourages students from expressing unconventional opinions. The knowledge produced through focus groups most strongly reflects the views of more dominant participants. This dominance reflects personality, interest, competence in discussion, and command of English, as well as other patterns of dominance and subordination between students… New discourses emerging from focus groups, then, are produced under relations of production that, to an extent, reflect existing patterns of dominance. This raises the question of whether they reinforce these patterns, a possibility that Mohan (1999) discusses in relation to the techniques of Participatory Rural Appraisal” (110).

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Ansell attempted to destabilize the dominant discourses in focus groups by asking the students to challenge her, playing the devil’s advocate, and pressing them on issues. She subscribes to James’ model of the “adult child” and sought to treat them as she would treat adults. She argues that “to seek to protect young people from challenging questions would deny their agency. In fact, young people are often less bound by politeness and more ready to challenge the researcher than are adults” (111). Another interesting method that Ansell describes is the use of compositions. She describes the advantages of this method in the following quote: “Another means of giving voice to the students/appropriating their knowledge/ encouraging the production by students of new knowledge about Third World women was through asking students to write compositions. Story writing is a research method that exploits young people’s particular talents, affording them greater control over the process than many methods” (112).

The downside to this method is that the children wrote in English. To secure the students’ cooperation, Ansell, a native English speaker, promised to correct their grammatical errors. This activity reaffirmed the dominance of English. The article made me feel that Ansell struggled deeply with the fact of her privilege in the research setting. The steps she took to minimize her privilege are impressive. However, at times, I felt like she enjoyed her own discomfort and was relieved by occasional failures. For example, when the students did not complete a homework assignment she gave them, she writes: “Finding students’ refusal to co-operate a reassuring exercise of agency, I allowed them to ‘undermine my authority’ by failing to ‘produce homework’” (113). I think her view of this specific situation is a healthy one: the students exercised their right to refuse to participate and that’s a good thing. But I wonder if the concerns of postcolonial theorists are satisfied by Westerners demonstrating their dislike for themselves /the West. It is necessary to acknowledge your privilege and be vigilantly aware of your arrogance and misperceptions, but it seems to me there also has to be something more than that. I’m not sure what it is now that I see that participatory methods have their problems. But self-hatred seems insufficient. Acker, et al. warn that friendship may be exploitative in a research relationship, so that may not be a solution. But it would have been nice to see Ansell describe the humanity of the people she was doing research with rather than just her own struggles. REFERENCE: Cornwall, A. 2003. "Whose Voices? Whose Choices?: Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development." World Development, 31(8): 1325-1342. Summary: In this article, Cornwall reviews “gender-aware” and “participatory” approaches to development. She is concerned that participatory approaches tend to ignore gendered relations of power and thus fail to give women “a voice or a choice.” As she writes: “The issues are familiar: subsuming ‘women’ under the ‘community’ masks the distinctiveness of women’s experiences, and claims to inclusiveness wobble once questions are asked about who participates, decides, and benefits from ‘participatory’ interventions” (1327). Cornwall is also critical of some feminist approaches to development, specifically WID (Women in Development). “Both WID and participatory development are about inclusion, but on terms and within the parameters set by prevailing constructions of development assistance. Both lent – and continue to lend – themselves to congruence with neoliberal development agendas in which fundamental questions of structural, intersubjective, and personal power remain unaddressed” (1326).

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GAD (Gender and Development) emerged as an alternative to WID. It has its own disadvantages, however, in that it is a top-down approach which projects an image of “women as victims” and “men as the problem” (1326). In Cornwell’s view, the advantage of participatory approaches is that it attempts to provide some tools for action (whereas GAD provides only “tools for thought.”) The remainder of Cornwall’s article is an assessment of participatory methods’ capacity to effect change in gendered relations of power. Cornwall begins by describing the different types of participatory projects. These projects use participation for different ends. Cornwall identifies four modes of participation:  “Functional: To enlist people in projects or processes, so as to secure compliance, minimize dissent, lend legitimacy…  “Instrumental: To make projects or interventions run more efficiently by enlisting contributions, delegating responsibilities…  “Consultative: To get in tune with public views and values, to garner good ideas, to defuse opposition, to enhance responsiveness…  “Transformative: To build political capabilities, political consciousness and confidence; to enable to demand rights; to enhance accountability” (1327). She then assesses two types of approaches: PAR (participatory action research) and PRA (participatory rural appraisal.) Cornwall identifies PAR for emphasis on structural dimensions of power and cites PAR practitioners like Fals Borda and Rahman. She critiques this approach because “applying structural models may serve to essentialize gender identities and relations” (1328). She sees PRA as a more agency-centered approach, but notes that its weakness is that it has little ability to critique local power relations: “Other schools of thought, such as PRA, emphasize the importance of tuning into and building on people’s own experiences, concepts, and categories. Rather than importing concepts from elsewhere, they focus on enabling local people to articulate and analyze their own situations, in their own terms, and focus more on individual agency than on structural analysis. This opens up the potential for a more nuanced and less essentialist approach to issues of power and difference… [H]owever, PRA-based participatory approaches appear to offer the facilitator little scope for challenging aspects of the status quo… Local people are presumed to know best, even if they advocate the chastisement of younger women who step out of line or indeed the repression of women considered to be ‘loose’” (1328).

Cornwall concludes that PRA’s emphasis on consensus “can exacerbate existing forms of exclusion, silencing dissidence and masking dissent” (1328). Cornwall then moves on to review evaluations of efforts to involve women in participatory development projects. In the first project, women were elected to be representative on committees. Review of the project outcomes leads Cornwall to argue that women’s influence rests not just on getting elected to committees “but on how and whether women represent women’s interests, whether they raise their voices, and when they do, whether anyone listens” (1329). Moreover, “there is no reason to suppose that women, by virtue of their sex, are any more open to sharing power and control than men” (1330). In conclusion, Cornwall finds that getting women elected to representative committees is necessary but not sufficient. As she writes, “Installing women on committees may be necessary to open up spaces for women’s voice, but it is not sufficient: it may simply serve as a legitimating device, and may even shore up and perpetuate inequitable gender relations between women… To assume female solidarity masks women’s agency in the pursuit of their own projects that may be based on other lines of connectedness and difference” (1330).

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In a review of another project in Uganda, Cornwall finds that women’s participation in PRA activities led to backlash amongst the women. There were several reports of women being beaten by their husbands and divorce rates when up. After several years of these problems, the NGO decided to shift its strategy from working with women to doing advocacy work with men. Cornwall critiques some reviews of PRA that have found it to be gender biased. She argues that Studies show that PRA is gender neutral and that PRA is not the problem, rather the problem lies in biased facilitators. As she writes: “Participatory processes are as ‘gender sensitive’ as those who facilitate them” (1335). This leads Cornwall to conclude, once again, that there is a greater need for advocacy: this time at the level of NGO workers and PRA facilitators. Advocacy work is the major theme of the concluding sections of the article. Cornwall argues that if participatory approaches are to be empowering, they must begin “moving beyond the comfort of consensus.” This “requires institutional commitment to supporting longer-term process of social change rather than ‘quick fix’ development solutions’” (1334). She proposes that advocacy campaigns begin to mobilize men and women around issues where they have common ground: “The need for advocacy on gender is evident, at every level… To do so calls for strategies that are sensitive to local dynamics of difference and that build on the ‘gender issues’ that men as well as women identify with and mobilize around – like gender violence, safe motherhood – rather than essentializing sexual difference… Looking at the ways in which people identify themselves with others or with particular issues can provide a more effective basis for advocacy and for action” (1338).

The article concludes with a very well-written paragraph and a smart critique of the “add women and stir” approach: “Seeking to challenge and transform relations of power that turn difference into hierarchy is a common thread that can bring together feminist and participatory practitioners’ concerns with voice and choice… Rather than the ‘add women and stir’ approach to addressing gender, what is needed is strategies and tactics that take account of the power effects of difference, combining advocacy to lever open spaces for voice with processes that enable people to recognize and use their agency” (1338).

Like many other articles, there was not enough space to consider any one issue in depth. However, Cornwall is a good writer and demonstrates mastery for the arguments not found in other articles on this topic. The only problem I had with this article is that Cornwall replaces one vague concept, “participation,” with another, “advocacy.” Moreover, she criticizes a consensus approach but then urges a consensus-like strategy to advocacy: identifying issues where men and women have common ground. This is a slight contradiction that needs to be clarified. This would have happened, I think, had Cornwall spent more time defining what advocacy is, how it produces change, its potential weaknesses, and her recommendations for how organizations should go about being advocates for women. REFERENCE: Crawley, H. 1998. "Living up to the empowerment claim?: The potential of PRA." Pp. 24-34 in The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development, edited by I. Guijt and M. K. Shah. London: Intermediate Technology. Summary: In this article, Crawley addresses the question of whether or not participatory rural appraisal (PRA) “empowers” people by enabling them to “analyze their condition” and “giving them confidence to state and asset their priorities, to present proposals, to make demands and to

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take action” (24). Crawley notes that PRA, in its emphasis on conceptualizing power as centered around the relationship between North and South, has ignored local power relations and failed to address “the local social and political processes through which ‘empowerment’ takes place” (25). The most significant failure for PRA, in Crawley’s view, is its “ignorance of gender as a critical aspect of power relations” (25). Crawley’s major argument is that “an approach cannot be empowering if it overlooks the strategic needs of women” (27). She concludes: “Empowerment only occurs when the disempowered become able to take collective social action to alleviate particular socio-economic and political conditions, and claim power. For this to happen, PRA must question and address gender relations” (29). Crawley repeats her argument several times. Here are two more quotes: “Given that PRA does not automatically empower, the challenge is one of how to increase the power associated with participation…[T]he answer lies in asking questions about why subordination and powerlessness occur. Gendered relations of power must be a fundamental premise upon which the approach is based” (32). “What is clear is in the context of these debates is that empowerment is a concept that goes beyond the issue of participation. It is more than simply widening access to decision-making… It implies enabling people to understand the reality of their situation, to reflect on the factors shaping that situation, and, most critically, take steps to affect changes to improve it. As a result it must include processes that lead the individual or group to perceive itself as able to occupy decision-making space. By implication, therefore, an empowerment focus involves the radical alteration of the structures which reproduce women’s subordination position as a gender” (26).

While critical of PRA’s ignorance of gender relations, Crawley does view PRA as vehicle for helping women to recognize their disempowerment and build the self confidence necessary for action. As she writes: “A specific aim of the methodology of PRA is to catalyze a process that leads to new forms of awareness and self-confidence… The first step in empowerment is women’s abilities to define their needs and realities… Identification with other women strengthens their sense of connection to women as a distinct social group. Producing a commonality that empower personal and collective action” (27).

Crawley criticizes PRA for assuming and aiming for consensus in the community. She argues that PRA should be more willing to explore and reveal conflict. In her words: “The very structure of PRA sessions assumes and encourages the expression of consensus rather than difference. The results is that ‘the interactive context of PRA emphasizes mediation between outsiders and insiders, experts and locals, but it is not so good at identifying and handling differences of perception within communities’ (Mosse 1993:12)” (28). “Power is usually not given up voluntarily, rather it must be taken. This suggests that where participatory approaches do not give rise to situations of conflict, they are failing to claim power” (31).

Crawley argues that it is the responsibility of the facilitator to produce a more emancipatory PRA process. In her view, there is nothing inherently radical or conservative about a method. It is the intentions of using the method that make it one or the other. She concludes that “the onus of the responsibility for living up to the empowerment claim of PRA falls upon practitioners” (32). REFERENCE: Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy and Abigail Brooks. 2007. "Core Feminist Insights and Strategies on Authority, Representations, Truths, Reflexivity and Ethics across the Research Process."

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Pp. 419-424 in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, edited by S. N. HesseBiber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Summary: This article is really just an introductory piece to a set of articles in an edited volume. It summarizes the main arguments of each. At the end, I really wished I had read this earlier and then selected one of the articles on reflexivity by Hesse-Biber and Piatelli. I also liked the summary of Mary Hawkesworth article. The authors write: “Only by engaging in ongoing and reflexive dialogue with ourselves and other researchers about our positions, viewpoints, and values can we hope to build connections and construct common ground… This new objectivity demands inclusivity” (421-2). This is the alternative to self-torture that Alldred’s critique of “objectivity” and voice seems to call for. For Hawkesworth, creating objectivity, “truth,” is a collective act, something researchers do as they “come together across difference”. I would not recommend this article for a syllabus, but it’s a good way to get an idea about the articles in this section of the book. REFERENCE: Lykes, M. Brinton. 1997. "Activist Participatory Research Among the Maya of Guatemala: Constructing Meanings from Situated Knowledge." Journal of Social Issues, 53(4): 725746. Summary: In this article, Lykes describes her experience as a facilitator of PAR in two projects. The first was a multi-national research project with a team of psychologists and community workers to address the needs of child survivors of war in Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. The second was a PAR project Lykes initiated with indigenous women and children in Guatemala. Lykes describes the challenges of participatory research. The initial project was instigated by concern that “children and their caretakers who were objectified by violent aggressors within their own countries were [being] reobjectified, albeit in a much more benign way, by the social scientists who sought to get questions answered and checklists completed” (728). This project aimed to understand the experience of war and terror from the child’s point of view and to make the investigation a resource for healing and re-establishing broken social ties. In the following quote, Lykes demonstrates her belief that PAR/ group processes can be a source of healing: “The workshops were designed in part to facilitate communication and to help break silence. The initial commitment was to create a bounded space in which children and youth could begin to integrate theater, bodily movement and expressivity, the plastic arts, music, and words as resources for recovering their natural capacities for play. We sought to create a context where participants could project themselves and share thoughts, feelings, and fears or anxieties. The group is a context in which these techniques can be appropriated as means of communication. They enable one to take advantage of one’s own resources and of ‘the other’ as resource. In this co-created group space, creativity is a resource for developing the possibility of modifying one’s relations, reestablishing previously destroyed social ties, symbolizing one’s experience of the terror that one has lived, recuperating or reconstructing one’s story, and searching for one’s truth” (730).

The remainder of the article is concerned with two issues: (1) the contradictions of doing PAR for Lykes herself and (2) criteria for choosing participatory methods. (These criteria can be found on pages 742-3. I do not list them here because they can be found elsewhere.) Lykes notes two major issues that made her uncomfortable during the PAR process. First, she partnered with a Guatemalan NGO who ended up firing one of her closest confidants (and someone she had

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hired in the initial stages of the project), she believes for reasons of racism. Lykes was very disappointed but felt she had to accept the decision of the NGO. As she writes, “Partnerships require strategies for sharing power and decision making in a context wherein all stakeholders are not equal” (733). The other major personal challenge she experienced was sexist behavior by her male coworkers and co-researchers. It was necessary for Lykes to ignore these “traditions” if she were going to find a place in the group. She was very troubled by the contradictions of being a Northern (empowered) white (empowered) female (disempowered) working with Southern (disempowered) Ladino (empowered nationally, disempowered internationally) males (empowered). As she writes, “I was extremely uncomfortable with myself as I experienced the limits of my power to challenge of critique the normative behavior of a group that included my colleagues and co-researchers. To do reinforced my position as outsider and as ‘other.’ By disrupting these rituals of male, primarily Ladino, hegemony and power within the group, I would be interrupting an experience of trading insider information, thus excluding myself from future strategic planning sessions… I was repeatedly challenged to walk a ‘razor’s edge’ between accepting, however passively, ‘traditions’ that I experienced as embodiments of patriarchal power and male privilege and being subjected to charges of ‘cultural imperialism’ when I challenged these gendered practices” (734).

My major critique of this article is that doesn’t really describe the women and children participating in the PAR project. I would have liked to know if PAR had the healing impact that Lykes expected at the outset. In her conclusion, which she titles “implications for future praxis,” Lykes lists how her PAR experience has improved her own research practice and conceptualization of power and domination, but does not offer any suggestion of how it has impacted the Maya. REFERENCE: Lykes, M. Brinton. 2001. "Creative Arts and Photography in Action Research in Guatemala." Pp. 363-371 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: In this article, Lykes describes the use of photography, and the photovoice and talking pictures methodology, in a participatory action project with Mayan women in Guatemala. These women, their children, families, and communities, had been victimized during the war, with many fleeing as refugees or forcefully recruited into the guerilla or army. Lykes’ work involved facilitating workshops over several years that “integrated Freirian pedagogical and analytical techniques, creative resources, indigenous practices (i.e., weaving, religious ceremony and oral histories), and PAR strategies” (365). She found that fear enshrouded the events of the war in silence. “The storytelling and analysis process[es in PAR] offered an opportunity to reconstruct the events, to create a shared story” (366). The goal of her article is to “illustrate how the arts and photography serve as resources in participatory action research” (363). Lykes describes how “photovoice” and “talking pictures” were “incorporated into existing group processes” in the following quote: “[The group] developed an iterative process of data collection and analysis: the women ‘analyzed as they photographed.’ Photographers recorded their own life stories, sometimes assisted by a facilitator, through paired interviews among the 20 participants. They photographed life in Chajul and travelled to neighboring villages, photographing women and their children. Through recording multiple stories of

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daily living, that is, of war, its effects, and ongoing poverty, they developed sensitivities to the various forms of violence experience in the wider municipality as well as analyses of the complex challenges facing the region as it develop recovery strategies in the wake of war’s trauma” (365).

At the end of the project, the women displayed the photos to the community and formed the photos and the life histories into a book. In the process, many gained new skills including computer skills, data recording, grant writing, and managing the project’s finances. Women have drawn on these skill sets, as well as the new sense of self confidence inspired by the success of the project, to pursue new initiatives. However, the project encountered many problems. Amongst these are the fact that younger women’s husbands became angered at their wives’ participation in the group. Many had to stop participating or endure their husbands’ abuse. In addition, the fact that the project was a very expensive undertaking (and that many of the nonindigenous project facilitators were well paid) caused conflict and stress due to the high level of poverty of the community. However, Lykes argues that the project provided the women and their community with important resources for healing and recovery. She argues that these types of projects should also be pursued with men so that they too are provided with the tools necessary for healing. In her analysis, Lykes finds that “the process of taking pictures within one’s local community became an opportunity to develop individual and collective stories that had heretofore been silenced…or spoken only privately. The photograph creates its own story and became a site for wider participatory storytelling and analysis. It represents the photographer’s perspective or point of view but then becomes a stimulus for the group’s reflections, discussions, analyses, and re-representations” (369).

REFERENCE: Lykes, M. Brinton and Erzulie Coquillon. 2007. "Participatory and Action Research and Feminisms: Toward Transformative Praxis." Pp. 297-326 in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, edited by S. N. Hesse-Biber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Summary: This article briefly describes a series of PAR projects and uses these examples to highlight various PAR approaches and feminist interpretations of PAR in practice. (Many of these projects were so well described that I spent most of my time flipping to the back and noting citations that I wanted to look up and add to my PAR syllabus, that resulted in my not appreciating the reading’s conceptual framework as much as I should have.) Lykes and Coquillon central argument is that feminist approaches to PAR have a more complex conceptualization of power. These approaches refuse to see power in a binary way – i.e., powerful v. powerless, voice vs. voicelessness. This complex view of power “introduces a number of critical questions into [the] movement-building agenda” of participatory and action research, including “the need not only to redistribute power but also to interrogate traditional understandings of power and to transform the praxis of power” (317). The authors caution that some forms of gender-based research and activism (i.e., women in development (WID) or gender and development (GAD)) “obscure complex and deeply contextualized constructions of power and powerlessness within local communities” (309). According to Lykes and Coquillon, feminist approaches to action research problematize how PAR is carried out. The authors are particularly critical of the concept of “giving voice” (see quotes below), arguing that this binary view of local communities obscures complex relationships and politics. The authors are also echo the “growing concern that PAR, AR, and PR 33

risk becoming depoliticized tools for improving practice” (301). For example, participatory research on education lacks an “explicit political or feminist underpinning and has failed to question the broader goals of improving education practice” (303). Additional argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Critique of “giving voice:”  The authors also critique the idea of “giving voice” to the marginalized. As they write: “Although many projects describe themselves as processes wherein outsider researchers ‘give voice’ to the ‘voiceless’ or marginalized, we suggest her that feminist-infused participatory and action research seeks to interrogate and contest these ideas by problematizing voice and transforming the binaries of power and powerlessness, voice and voicelessness, situating work within representations and transformational politics” (315).  “Michelle Fine (1992) cautioned strongly that the researcher who serves as a ‘ventriloquist,’ that is, who speaks over or for participants, often contributes disinformation, obscuring the respective and varied roles and voices of the participants. She urges researchers to situate themselves as facilitators of the voices of the community participants with whom they work by creating opportunities through which they are enabled to tell their stories and where there is a public to both hear these stores and be held accountable to the storytellers” (315).
Feminist research approaches:  “Feminist academics or scholars who infuse their work with feminist values and ideals seek, minimally, to design research that looks for what has been left out of a previous research and to use gender as an analytic tool. Others argue that feminist research is not (only) about gender differences but critically explores aspects of social status and the participants’ positionalities. Thus many feminist researchers focus their work on raising awareness or generating consciousness (their own and that of others with whom they work) about gendered oppression and how it constrains women’s lives” (299).
Community-based PAR:  “the community is a more frequent locus for participatory and action research within the majority world… These efforts emphasize full and active participation of people historically marginalized from power, decision making, and knowledge construction” (308).  “[C]ommunity-based researchers [should not] assume women’s solidarity…[I]n local communities, women may rather see their interests as aligned with those of their sons or kin” (309).  “Wider social conditions of gendered inequalities and ongoing poverty and oppression deeply constrained what could be achieved through any single project” (311).
Limitations on PAR in practice:  “Who does participate is in many cases who can participate” (321). Issues include: duration of the project, location of the project, and participants’ skills to contribute to the project Weaknesses/Critique:

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The authors posit a diffuse view of power. However, this vision is not well explained and it is not clear how this non-binary, complex vision of power impacts PAR in practice. For example, how should a PAR practitioner situate herself within the research relationship given the probability that some PAR-collaborators will also be implicated in using, and possibly abusing, power? REFERENCE: McDonald, S. 2003. "Answering Questions and Asking More: Reflections on Feminist Participatory Research." Resources for Feminist Research, 30(2): 77-100. Summary: In this article, McDonald reminds the reader that “feminist participatory research calls for exceptional commitments of time, energy and involvement” (93). She draws on her experience doing a participatory action research project with Spanish-speaking immigrant women in Toronto. Many of the women had suffered from domestic abuse or other encounters with violence that led them into having to deal with the legal system. The goal of the project was to provide the women with legal education and demystify the legal process. As McDonald remarks: “The law affects all of us and yet remains mystifying and inaccessible to many. Having personally experienced the hierarchy and professional hegemony in the lawyer/client relationship, I wanted a research methodology that would challenge this relationship” (80). Throughout the article, McDonald inserts excerpts from personal diaries where she had noted her own experiences with violence. McDonald struggled during the project with the issue of selfdisclosure in feminist participatory research. The participatory nature of the project required that MacDonald assume many responsibilities: she was not only the researcher, but also the leader, organizer, mobilizer, and educator. She remarks that “the juggling of these roles can be difficult and time consuming and attempts to shift control and transfer leaderships are no always successful” (87). Her multiple responsibilities, and overall leadership of the project, exhausted her. She did not have the time or energies to connect with the women as she had hoped. She was partnering with an immigrant services organization, but did not feel she could ask the staff to assume more responsibilities because the project was new and had not yet proven itself valuable. These issues lead McDonald to conclude that “one of the limitations of participatory research is that it is so resource intensive” (86). She is critical of the lack of attention that feminist participatory researchers have given to the demands on the researcher’s time and the level of emotional commitment. As she writes, feminist participatory researchers have been “silent as to the contradiction inherent in [multiple role] demands” on the researcher. “For a feminist researcher who brings care, commitment, and complete immersion to the project, these demands can prove to be overwhelming. The result is a persistent tension within the researcher about fulfilling commitments to the project and caring for her own needs” (95). Although McDonald does not explore this issue in depth, her experience supports the need for further exploration of two neglected issues: (1) the resource demands of participatory research and (2) the process of PAR, or more specifically, how best to sequence the transition toward more democratic participation and leadership. As she writes: “Strong, centralized leadership is necessary at the beginning of the project where leadership capacity is not yet identified or developed... Until the transfer of control of the project to the participants and community is complete, demands continue to be placed upon the initiator of the project… [Silence about this issue] does a disservice to those contemplating or embarking on a feminist participatory research project” (95).

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In regards to the issue of self-disclosure, McDonald finds the following: First, “in not talking to the women about my own experiences with violence, I had remained disconnected from them. Therefore I had not truly challenged the hierarchy implicit in the researcher/ participant relationship” (89). However, she is hesitant to recommend that feminist researchers practice selfdisclosure. As she writes, “stating the self-disclosure is good feminist practice is… a dangerous generalization” (95). The multiple roles and demands for leadership and commitment of the researcher in participatory projects make it difficult for researchers to deal with the emotional fall-out that comes from self-disclosure. Moreover, self-disclosure does not automatically build trust: this takes time and commitment to relationship building. As McDonald writes: “Self-disclosure cannot achieve trust, identification, and a more equal relationship on its own. In feminist participatory research, where leadership and the demands of time, commitment, and energy are critical, it is important to understand what can happen when and if the vulnerabilities take over. Because of these demands, this may be one methodology where the benefits of self-disclosure must be weighed carefully” (96).

I gave this article a moderate rating because it was of the few that I read where the author provides a vivid portrait of the research experience and the limitations of the participatory approach. Like Fahmi (though not as explicitly), McDonald suggests that the PAR ideals need to be revised so that they better reflect how PAR is practiced. The resource-intensiveness of PAR is an issue that is particularly underappreciated and McDonald is one of the few researchers to reflect on its impact on the research process. Additional Arguments:
Summary of Reinharz’s (1992) position:  In feminist research, “learning must occur on three levels: the person, the problem, and the method.” Furthermore, “feminist research will be politically motivated research that aspires to produce learning that is useful for women, makes women visible, and facilitates the potential for change while causing minimal harm to participants” (78).
Using a “retreat” as alternative to focus group:  “In developing this technique we were being responsive to the needs of the participants in the project to ensure that they would be positively affected by the process” (83). REFERENCE: Maguire, P. 2001. "Uneven Ground: Feminism and Action Research." Pp. 273-284 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Summary: Maguire begins this article by stating her objective: the exploration of how feminisms have informed action research. She outlines five major feminist contributions to the practice and theory of action research: Social Construction of Gender, Existence of Multiple Identities/ Interlocking Oppressions, Voice and Silence, Everyday Experience, and Power. Her overall goal, though not clearly stated, is to describe how these advances in feminist theory have resulted in similar advances in action research theory. Maguire describes how action and feminist researchers share a similar objective to “problematize systematic relations of power in the social construction of knowledge” (60).

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Feminists specific project has been to unearth the processes of the social construction of gender and “debunk” the naturalization of gender, “what had been considered as immutable, unchangeable ‘givens’ of male or female” (61). This “debunking” of the sex/gender distinction has contributed to the action-researchers’ theories of emancipatory knowledge. To some degree, action researchers and feminists agree that by enabling research participants/informants to become aware of social nature of power/domination, participants will be empowered to challenge or deconstruct them. At the same time, however, theorizing gender has challenged action researchers to problematize the idea of the “oppressed community” as a unified whole and to recognize the existence of power within communities, especially the oppression of women by men. As Maguire writes, “Historic, hidden, taken-for-granted male control of local institutions, public forums, and development processes has often silence or marginalized women in development processes. Feminist-grounded action research works to uncover and disrupt silencing mechanisms, subtle and overt, in knowledge creation and organizational change efforts” (64).

The problematizing of gendered oppression by (some) action researchers, however, is not always seconded by research participants. For example, Maguire cites Lykes’ experience doing action research in Guatemala in which many of her female co-researchers denied the existence of sexism in their indigenous communities. Feminist theory of multiple identities/ interlocking oppressions (advanced by Hill Collins and others, not acknowledged here) describes “how differences such as race, ethnicity, class, culture, sexual orientation, physical abilities, age, religion, and one’s nation’s place in the international order create conditions for a web of oppression” (60). Maguire argues that theory enables feminist-inspired action researchers to comprehend “some women [who] may not identify gender as the central oppression of their lives.” Feminist-grounded action research, Maguire writes, “is not limited to a struggle against gender oppression alone, as gender oppression is structured and experienced in the web of other oppressions” (62). Maguire does not explore at this point how theories of “intersectionality” and the process of “excavating” research participants’ complicity in some forms of domination impacts the practice of action research. It would have been interesting to hear how the groups participating in action research have responded to these discussions of multiple sources of domination. Were the indigenous women in Guatemala concerned about undermining their “ethnic” group’s quest for political recognition and participation? Were they trying to protect themselves from dominant men that the researcher/research project could not? African American feminist researchers have acknowledged their experience of being silenced/silencing themselves during the Civil Rights movement in order to achieve the overall goals of their “group.” They have also explored their experience of gender-based violence within African American communities. These issues are complicated and far from resolved. To a certain degree, Maguire suggests that feminist researchers bring emancipating knowledge (multiple oppressions, social construction of domination, complicity) to communities where action researchers work. She does not, however, provide evidence to support this claim or investigate what the experience of this “delivery” of emancipatory knowledge is like for the groups participating in it. What does it mean to be emancipated? How do women experience/make meaning of male partners/sons/fathers who they recognize as both victims and perpetrators? I haven’t worked this out in my head yet, so I apologize for the sloppiness of ideas here. It appears to me that there is a tension in action research theory between whether or not action

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research results in emancipatory knowledge or the less ambitious claim of co-learning processes between researcher/researched. One’s perspective on this issue probably results from their epistemology on what knowledge “does” or “can do” in the context of people’s everyday reality. What does it mean to be emancipated mentally? Is that sufficient to be emancipated socially? These are the unfair questions that all researchers would probably rather avoid answering, because, as always, it depends. But it seems to me that some feminists and action researchers are a bit too in love with the idea of emancipation and may be suggesting that they can deliver it. How emancipation really happens is something that needs to be more carefully thought through. Getting back to Maguire’s article… Maguire argues that feminism has provided action researchers with the concept of how “listening empowers” research participants, helping to break down the power relationship between researcher/researched. Here she quotes Noffke’s argument that “regardless of how we see our positions, we do not ‘give voice’ to those in less powerful positions. Rather, we must see ourselves as part of the process of breaking apart the barriers for speakers and listeners, writers and readers, which are perpetuated through and act to support our privileged positions” (62).

Maguire does not, however, explicate the implications of Noffke’s statement. Noffke is arguing for researchers to ground the “voices” they represent in the everyday realities of their speakers and readers, illustrating for the latter how they are “connected” through webs of oppression to the speaker. Maguire also mentions feminists contribution of the theory of social change occurring through relationships (as opposed to individual liberation, I assume.) She writes that “supportive and challenging relationships facilitate breaking silence. Action research draws from the relational processes inherent in many feminist methodologies. There is a profound connection between empowerment and relational processes, as feminists posit that people grow and change in the context of human relationships” (63).

This is an incredibly interesting idea and one that seems to be vital to action research practice. I would have liked to hear more about it than just claiming that feminists inspired it. Why do relationships facilitate individual and social change? How do action research partnerships facilitate that process? Maguire’s weakest argument in this paper was her suggestion that the feminist practice of reflexivity is equivalent to the action research practice of creating co-researchers. She quotes Lather’s argument that researchers must deliberate on “how we contribute to dominance despite our liberatory intentions” (65). It seems like a stretch to me to say that self-criticism and awareness is the equivalent of a co-research partnership. Lowering myself does not necessarily result in “empowering” my research informants. At the same time, it seems naïve for action researchers to claim that co-research results in a “flattening” of power relationships. It would have been interesting for Maguire to use feminists’ long-standing and intense discussion of reflexivity/ the role of the researcher to comment on action research’s possible naïveté and hubris. I apologize for being too critical, but I felt Maguire’s article was rather sloppy. It seemed like a laundry list of feminist concepts and a silly battle for giving feminist theories a more prominent place in the origin stories of action research. Feminisms undoubtedly have made an important contribution, but origin arguments are not what matters. There’s a straightforward argument to be made: Action research would not be possible without recognition of the social construction of knowledge – and feminists, as well as class, race/ethnicity, third-world, and other theorists have been a part of that process. Intersectionality says we cannot designate “the worst” oppression.

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Feminist theory has a clear role to play in the bettering of action theory into the future. This seemed to be Maguire’s main point but it got lost in the laundry list of origin arguments. She writes that “the overarching lesson is that any action research that continues to ignore, neglect, or marginalize feminist thought and its goals is simply inadequate for its supposed liberatory project. Without grounding in feminisms, what would action research liberate us from?” (66). It seems to me that both feminists and action researchers need to be careful to understand what liberation means for people in their own experience, how it happens or is prevented from happening from the perspective of those being researched. Suggesting that one can deliver it to people if they do research in the “right” (feminist, in this case) way is unhelpful. I think feminists’ approaches to reflexivity and their call to ground research in everyday experience are helpful ways to begin to do just that. REFERENCE: Rocheleau, Dianne, Laurie Ross, Julio Morrobel, and Ricardo Hernandez. 1998. "Gendered Landscapes, Gendered Lives in Zambrana-Chaucey, Dominican Republic." Pp. 178-187 in The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development, edited by I. Guijt and M. K. Shah. London: Intermediate Technology. Summary: This article is a chapter in a book called The Myth of Community: Gender issues in participatory development. I’m not exactly why it is included in this book because there is no real discussion of participatory methods, gender, or community. (I chose the article because it was from Latin America and was cited in a review article on PAR.) The authors are mostly just celebrating the advantages of mixed methods. The project that the study is evaluating may have been “participatory,” but the authors do not really discuss it (It was a Forest Enterprise Project in the Dominican Republic.) The authors approach did involve a PRA method (participatory mapping), however, there is no discussion of what made it participatory (other than PRA developed it) or how it was beneficial/empowering/respectful to the people involved: It is simply just referred to as beneficial to the researchers. The article focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of three of the methods employed by the research team: life histories, landscape mapping, and a formal survey. The authors found the life histories to be particularly rich sources of information. As they write: “Life stories in particular clarified for us the different influences of gender, life cycle, and household differences based on class, family composition, and occupation on women and men. Maps gave us a sense of local-landscape features and their gendered uses and vocabulary. The survey tested, and confirmed, our findings” (180). “Several women and men recounted their lives to us in detail. Their own analysis of their life course and their future aspirations for themselves and their children allowed us to understand better the context for the many decisions made by individuals, households and organizations about diverse dimensions rural land-use and resource management. These life stories helped to explain how people’s daily routines are linked to the community’s economic and ecological well-being and how rural life is connected with national policies… One of the most dramatic insights was a deeper understanding of the gender division of labor, land, and authority and its relevance to land-use change and farm forestry” (180).

One of the major limitations of life histories, however, is the time it takes to gather them. Researchers need to schedule several meetings and complete follow-up research with other sources (other interviews, documents) in order to make sure they are providing a complete

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portrait of the person’s life and not a superficial sketch. In addition, the non-random sample resulted in the researchers only gathering life histories from some types of people. The random sample survey helped correct for the bias in this information. The survey questions, however, would not have been as informative without the data from interviews and mapping. As the authors write: “Yet only through the random sample for the final survey did we discover the nature and distribution of distinct situations such as those of traders, caretakers, near landless women farmers, and the male wagelaborers… Without hearing these less heroic accounts, our conclusions would have been very different and our recommendations would not have suggested ways to transform the forestry project to serve them. In turn, without the oral histories and maps, we would have omitted survey questions that addressed what really mattered to local residents and federation members” (186).

REFERENCE: Rowlands, J. 1995. “Empowerment Examined.” Development and Practice. 5(2): 101-107. Summary: In this article, Rowlands criticizes the tendency of development practitioners to claim their projects as “empowering” without ever defining the term “empowerment.” Rowlands concludes that the concept of empowerment “can help focus thought, planning, and action in development,” but “when its use is careless, deliberately vague, or sloganizing, it risks becoming degraded and valueless” (106). The goal of her article is to begin the process of conceptualizing empowerment, first by examining the concept at the root of empowerment, “power,” and then by discussing how “empowerment” is practiced in development. She first examines the theories of “internalized oppression.” This examination leads her to conclude that “Empowerment is thus more than simply opening up access to decision-making; it must also include the processes that lead people to perceive themselves as able and entitled to occupy that decision-making space, and so overlaps with other categories of ‘power to’ and ‘power from within’” (102).

However, power is more than “internalized oppression.” It is also a set of structural factors. Rowlands concludes: “There is a worrying temptation to use [empowerment] in a way that takes the troublesome notions of power, and the distribution of power, out of the picture… [The term] can easily become one more way to ignore or hide the realities of power, inequality, and oppression. Yet it is precisely those realities which shape the lives of poor and marginalized people, and the communities in which they live” (106).

In her review of the literature Rowlands finds that “there is broad agreement that empowerment is a process; that it involves some degree of personal development, but that this is not sufficient; and that it involves moving from insight to action” (103). She urges development practitioners to think more about the structural factors that constrain empowerment processes. REFERENCE: Sprague, Joey. 2005. “Seeing through Science: Epistemologies,” “Authority and Power,” and “Qualitative Shifts: Feminist Strategies in Field Research and Interviewing.” Pgs. 31-80 and 119-163 in Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Summary: I think this book may have been written for an undergraduate audience. The writing is clear and Sprague does not assume the reader understands difficult concepts like “epistemology.”

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At times, however, the clarity can be a bit tiresome, as she repeats arguments often and writes exactly as we were taught to in 9th grade English class. That said, the book is an adequate introduction to some elements of feminist methodologies, particularly standpoint theory. I read three chapters in the book. The first began with a critique of positivism, describing how social constructionists, since Mannheim, have demonstrated the social character of knowledge production. Sprague critiques radical forms of social constructionism (in which all knowledge is depicted as texts and each person’s interpretation of that text is equally valid and incomplete) for its relativity. She cites Mary Hawkesworth quote that “relativist resignation reinforces the status quo” (39). I also liked this quote: “Scholarship separated from action can devolve into a form of intellectual game conducted by a privileged class of knowledge producers with no relevance to most everyday actors” (39). Sprague then moves on to distinguish critical realism from standpoint theory. She writes that, “for critical realists, the relationship between the knower and the known is culturally organized, but every knower has the same potential access to the known, or at least there is nothing systematically organizing the relationship of groups to the known. This last point is the main source of disagreement between critical realists and the other important application of social constructionism, standpoint theory” (41). I’m not sure exactly who counts as a “critical realist,” but I’m concerned this is a bit of a misrepresentation on Sprague’s part. It shows my own limited knowledge of social theory to be able to say so more certainly, so I apologize if my critique is misplaced. But it seems to me that the social constructionist theory is a very diverse and complicated field. I’m pretty sure there’s quite of few people in the social constructionist camp who understand the role of power in social construction and how it “systematically biases the interests, experience, and forms of subjectivity of the privileged,” but who don’t necessarily identify themselves as standpoint theorists. To imply that social constructionist theory is divided into two camps is not fair. I think Sprague is setting up “critical realism” as a straw man here, in an effort to influence students that the only right way to do “social construction theory” is by doing standpoint theory. That leads to my main critique of this book. Sprague fails to assess the limitations of standpoint theory or describe the controversies within feminist theory about it in any detailed or thoughtful way. Sprague did, however, clarify for me what standpoint theory means. She notes that many critics of standpoint theory mistake subjectivity for standpoint. “A standpoint is not necessarily how people in a particular social location think… [It] is a way of making sense of social processes and structures that can be developed from the resources available to a particular social location” (67). To emphasize the point, Sprague cites Patricia Hill Collins argument that standpoint is about “historically shared, group-based experiences” (67). Sprague uses the standpoint v. subjectivity distinction to critique a series of feminist (and other) research approaches. She writes that feminists have two main methodological goals: (1) to increase their “connectedness” between researcher/researched and therefore the researcher’s ability to see from the informant’s standpoint and (2) to compensate for the limitations in the researcher’s standpoint. Sprague describes many feminist approaches to these goals and some of their limitations. The first approach is when researchers attempt to “give voice” or simply “act as a conduit” for their research informants. She writes that “a strategy of simply transferring authority to research subjects is taking a very limited view of research and romanticizes the oppressed” (61). She outlines four major weaknesses of this approach: “(1) it fails to take into account how and where research subjects already have some power; (2) it ignores situations in which the researched have even more power than the researcher; (3) it is insensitive to the

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selection biases built into implementing this strategy; and (4) it can privilege hegemonic discourses over critical ones” (58). Sprague also critiques grounded theory (note, feminist are more critics than applicants of this approach in which the researcher immerses herself in the data in order to identify patterns, without or limitedly consulting previous research.) Sprague writes: “Every research interaction and the stories they generate are co-constructed by the researcher and the researched… Simply refusing to read prior research on a particular topic does not protect the researcher from organizing frames and values of these discourses. They are so embedded in the ways we learn to see, that even the most well-intentioned and critical observers can miss the dynamics that surreptitiously reconstitute privilege in the process of choosing topics, observing, responding emotionally and interpreting data” (131).

Sprague is also critical of “member checking,” or the practice of reviewing fieldnotes, interview transcripts, or preliminary data analysis with research informants. She argues that logistically “member checking” is difficult to accomplish and participants are often unwilling or uninterested in participating. Also, results tend to be biased toward agreeable participants. Most importantly for Sprague, research informants may not have the same access to critical points of view as researchers, therefore use of member checking risks over-representing hegemonic and non-critical analysis. Sprague warns that researchers should “not adopt their [informants’] worldviews uncritically” (150). This last point seemed a little bit elitist. I think member checking has its benefits, especially in terms of asking for clarification or demonstrating respect for research informants. I see the argument that Sprague is making – that researcher’s should feel the right to express their point of view and not be embarrassed because in doing so they violate feminist’s critique of positivist knowledge construction and assume the authority to speak for (interpret for) their research informants. Lareau makes a similar point in her methods chapter to Home Advantage. And I agree. Sprague provides two recommendations for achieving her version of feminist goals. First, she recommends that researchers work in teams, preferably made up of members from different social locations in order to address the limitations in the researcher’s standpoint. Second, she recommends using focus groups or group interviews (in her view the groups should be as ‘homogenous’ as possible across lines of race, class, sex, etc.) She argues that these groups provide the research informants with “the infrastructure for generating an alternative sphere of discourse” (161). REFERENCE: Unger, R. K. 2004. "Dilemmas of Power: Questions for all of us." Pp. 169-178 in Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research, edited by M. Brydon-Miller, P. Maguire, and A. McIntyre. Westport, CT: Praeger. Summary: I am not exactly sure why this article appears in a book titled Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research. The article is not about any of those three issues and it was definitely not what I expected to read (given the title, I had hoped for something about the power of the feminist/participatory researcher.) However, the article does provide an interesting take on the politics of academia. Unger describes the power she acquired while serving as the editor of a journal. The specific experience she describes is about publishing a critical review of a previously published work. Unger decided to publish the article, but to also allow the original authors to respond. She also included other academics commentary on the debate.

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Unger is concerned that feminists have neglected to consider the implications of the power and gate-keeping functions they have acquired in recent decades. She is critical of “those of us who would prefer to deny our own power” (175), because, she argues, “[t]he failure to analyze and criticize our own work increases the opportunity for those who would tear down the edifices we have built” (177). She makes a strong statement about the relationship between silence and power and calls for individuals from previously marginalized positions to be considerate of the power they wield. As she writes, “Silence is another form of power. And when we talk about power, we rarely recognize that we are talking about many little moments and the way in which power is in fact the accumulation o the ability to shape lots of microprocesses and tiny events…One important lesson is that lack of information about gate-keeping processes does not serve the powerless… As individuals from previously marginalized groups move into gate-keeping positions, it is important that we acknowledge our power and consider the responsibility that comes with it” (177).

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PARTICIPATORY METHODS FOR RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN REFERENCE: Alderson, Priscilla. 2000. "Children as Researchers: The Effects of Participation Rights on Research Methodology." Pp. 241-257 in Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, edited by P. Christensen and A. James. London: Falmer Press. Summary: This book chapter is an early piece promoting children assuming a larger role in the research process. Rather than just participatory methods, the author recommends that children be giving more responsibility for designing the research project, collecting and analyzing data. Most of the article briefly describes a series of research projects of this type. However, none of these projects is considered in detail nor is an analysis of the potential pitfalls of this approach provided. The author begins by summarizing the CRC and outlining how it demands that researchers consider children’s participation rights in designing their projects. Alderson also notes the methodological implication of the sociology of childhood’s theoretical assertion that are “actors in the social construction and determination of their own lives, the lives of those around them and of their society” (244). As she writes: “Two related questions therefore arise. First, if children’s social relations and culture are worthy of study in their own right, then who is better qualified to research some aspects of their lives than children themselves? Second, if children can be active participants, as this chapter contends, can they also be active researchers?” (244). In addition to the push given by international law and sociological theory, Alderson argues that active research roles for children is beneficial to them. She writes: “Doing research helps children (perhaps disadvantaged ones especially) to gain more skills, confidence, and perhaps determination to overcome their disadvantages than adult researchers working on their behalf could give them. Adult researchers have noted their surprise at child researchers’ competence, and mentioned their plans to do more complicated work and work with younger children in the future. Adult researchers frequently emphasize the value of listening to children, and this point is made more effectively when children can express themselves through doing and publicly reporting their own research” (253).

However, Alderson warns that these types of methods need to be carefully designed, reviewed and piloted with children before they are implements. As she writes: “Working with child researchers does not simply resolve problems of power, exploitation, or coercion. Indeed, it may amplify them and so working methods need to be planned tested, evaluated, and developed with young researchers” (252). I do not recommend this article. It is a bit dull and doesn’t provide an in-depth analysis of these types of methods. It is more of cheerleader article than a careful consideration of methodological approaches. REFERENCE: Barker, John and Susie Weller. 2003. "'Is it Fun?': Developing Children Centred Research Methods." International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23(1/2): 33-58. Summary: Barker and Weller are geographers in the UK. Their article describes their each of their dissertation projects and the methods that they used to engage children aged 7-11 years-old

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(Barker’s project) and children aged 13-16 years-old (Weller’s project). The title and abstract to this article caught my attention because it promised to review innovative child-centered research methods that enable the “repositioning [of] children’s voices at the centre of the research process” (35). Barker and Weller claim to provide “new ways of engaging with children, characterized by mutuality and ‘negotiation not imposition’” (35). They argue that child-centered methods enable researchers to “listen carefully to children’s agendas and address issues relevant to children’s lives” (36). After reading the article I found the methods described (photographs, drawing, diaries, and questionnaires) and the authors approach to using them to be rather conventional. The authors also failed to review other researchers that have used these methods and develop a set of “best practices” in using them. (There is quite a bit out now about this so I think this would have been a good approach rather than re-hashing more of the same.) Some of the recommendations that Barker and Weller provide, however, are worth keeping in mind. These are listed below:
Photographs  Cameras are beneficial when working with children with poor written or verbal literacy  “Giving children the responsibility of a camera also helps to forge a relationship of trust with the researcher” (41).  Children are not inevitably drawn to taking photos. Their child-informants demonstrated varying levels engagement with the method. Some children enjoyed taking pictures and were comfortable with it, while other were embarrassed by their photography skills. The authors suggest that other children demonstrated their desire to withdraw consent from participating by taking only a few pictures.
Interpretation of drawings and photos:  “It is vital for researchers to ascertain children’s own reasons” for taking photographs or drawing pictures (42). Adult-centered interpretations often get it wrong.  Researchers often use photos or drawings “as prompts for other full scale methods, such as interviewing” (42).
Ownership over drawings and diary entries  Children often dedicate a lot of time and effort to their drawings and diary entries. Researchers need to think about how they will be able to return the original copies to the children because many children will become anxious about getting these things back.
Confidentiality of questionnaires and diary entries  Children often do not have confidential spaces to work on these projects. The authors found that home-administered questionnaires were often reviewed or fillout by parents. Some of the diary entries were also completed by parents. In order to ensure children that classroom administered surveys were confidential, the researchers provided sticky labels and instructed the students to place the label over the envelope before handing it back to their teacher.  Before using one of these method, researchers need to think about the space the children will complete the task in and the issues of confidentiality and privacy.

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REFERENCE: Ben-Arieh, A. 2008. "The Child Indicators Movement: Past, Present, and Future." Child Indicators Research. 1: 3-16. Summary: In this article, Ben-Arieh describes the history of the child indicators movement. He argues that the child indicators movement has “its origins in the ‘social indicators movement’ of the 1960s, which arose in a climate of rapid social change and a sense among social scientists and public officials that well measured and consistently collected indicators could provide a way to monitor the condition of groups in society currently and over time, including the conditions of children and families” (3). Ben-Arieh identifies three theoretical shifts and three methodological changes that contributed to the movement. The three normative or theoretical changes are: (1) children’s rights movement, (2) the new sociology of childhood, and (3) ecological theories of child development. The three methodological changes are: “(1) the emerging importance of the subjective perspective, (2) the child as the unit of observation, and (3) the expanded use of administrative data and the growing variety of data sources” (5). Ben-Arieh describes the impact of the new sociology of childhood as shifting the focus in research from indicators the predicted children’s future adult status to ones that assessed their well-being in the present. As Ben-Arieh writes, “Although it is reasonable to develop indicators of child well-being that include a focus on children as ‘future adults’ or members of the next generation, such approaches often fail to consider the life stage of childhood, a stage that has its own sociological characteristics… The CRC makes very clear that children’s immediate well-being is important in its own right. Children’s present life and development and future life chances thus must be reconciled in conceptualizations of well-being” (6).

Ecological systems theory has also been a major resource for child indicators research. Ecological theories of child development posit that “children interact with their environment and thus play an active role in creating their well-being by balancing the different factors, developing and making use of resources, and responding to stress” (6). Ben-Arieh describes Bronfrenbrenner’s bio-ecological model of child development which “conceptualizes child development on the basis of four concentric circles of environmental influence” (6): the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. (Ben-Arieh provides definitions of each of these systems on p. 6.) Ben-Arieh explains that “the different systems are dynamic and interdependent, influencing one another and changing over time… In interacting with the different systems and subsystems, children and their families encounter both barriers and facilitators” (6-7). Ben-Arieh argues that these barriers and facilitators are used as indicators of child-wellbeing. The child indicators movement has evolved from an emphasis on child survival to one on child well-being. This evolution has involved a shift from focusing on negative outcomes to positive outcomes, a shift from focusing on “well-becoming” to “well-being,” and the use of children’s own reports to create indicators (subjective approach). Ben-Arieh concludes that “these efforts in turn moved the field from efforts to determine minimums, as in saving a life, to those that focus on the quality of life” (10).

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REFERENCE: Boyden, Jo and Judith Ennew. 1997. “The background to all methods,” “Classroom-based learning,” and “Field-based learning” Pp. 83-166 in Children in Focus: A Manual for Participatory Research with Children. Stockholm, Sweden: Save the Children. Summary: Boyden and Ennew wrote this manual for individuals engaged in training facilitators of participatory research with children. In other words, it is a manual for “training of trainers” or TOT. It consists of a brief review and critique to approaches to research and a set of tips, best practices, and activities that trainers can use to build the capacities and knowledge of future child-researchers. In these sections of the manual, the authors describe the following methods: (1) observation, (2) role play, (3) written methods, (3) visual methods, (4) interviewing, and (5) focus group interviews and (6) collective visual methods (PRA activities). Boyden and Ennew also review best practices for all research approaches, including (1) planning and preparation, (2) selfawareness and ethics, (3) data management and organization, and (4) monitoring and evaluation. The section concludes with a self-evaluation checklist. Boyden and Ennew begin by reminding the trainers that “[n]o method is inherently participatory: it is largely through its application that research becomes participatory; even methods that are defined as participatory can be disempowering and excluding for respondents if used with the wrong group, in the wrong situation, or the wrong way” (83). In this summary, I will review some of the points that struck me as particularly helpful as I read. They are tips for (1) planning, preparation and monitoring, (2) role play, (3) written methods, (4) visual methods, (5) interviewing, (6) focus groups, (7) collective visual methods, and (8) the self-evaluation checklist. Planning, preparation, and monitoring: There were three major issues that I pulled from Boyden and Ennew’s review of this topic: (1) learn about the local culture and children’s capacities and use of language, determine which methods are culturally appropriate and sensitive to children’s capacities and needs, and pilot your methods before implementing them on a large scale, (2) set up protocols for monitoring the effectiveness and problems of different methods, and (3) be prepared to handle children’s emotional responses to the research project. (Note: These issues are discussed in detail throughout the manual and I only discuss here things that struck me as particularly good advice.) Before describing each method, Boyden and Ennew stress that the researcher should be aware of the cultural appropriateness of the method (including the language and materials used) and children’s capacities to carry it out. They emphasize that researchers should spend significant time reviewing these issues before developing a research protocol. In addition, the authors recommend that “pilot the materials and ways of using them” (121). On the same note, Boyden and Ennew emphasize that researchers be vigilant about monitoring and evaluating their methods as they implement them. As they write: “Good planning also means incorporating into the research process procedures for monitoring progress. It is important to keep a check on how individual methods are applied, how children respond to methods used in different ways and in different circumstances, and the kind of data that are generated” (86). Boyden and Ennew urge researchers to consider the emotional impact of the methods on children. They emphasize that researchers must be prepared to respond to children’s distress. The

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authors recommend that you prepare yourself for children’s distress by thinking through and identifying potential sources of long-term support for children in need. The authors also recommend that researchers address this issue by (1) setting realistic expectations about what the project can achieve and being transparent with children about this and (2) learning to be a good listener. Below I pull some quotes from the authors on these two issues:
Be realistic about what the project can achieve and manage children’s expectations  “It is essential that the children have really understood what the research is about and what the research process entails” (89).  “Never make promises you cannot fulfill” (87).
Learn to listen to children. “Good listening and talking with children involves:  A genuine wish to support children and families… without taking over parental roles or creating dependency…  Concentration; make yourself available to the child;  Full acceptance of what the child is expressing;  Being able to identify with – but not be overwhelmed by – a child’s expression of his/her feelings…  Patience; children who are shy distressed or small take time sometimes to find words, to formulate ideas. Give them time to do this without conveying through your own words or body language that you are impatient…  Learn to tolerate pauses, tears, anger. They are valuable and necessary parts of the communication between yourself and a child;  Prepare yourself for strong expressions of emotions from children; you cannot take away such feelings, or ‘make her/him forget’, but you can share these feelings, be a sounding-board, help a child with the meaning of the feelings, help to correct the child’s poor self-image, to re-examine guilt feelings… and perhaps arrive at a more realistic interpretation” (91-2). Role Play Boyden and Ennew describe how role play can be both a fun alternative to direct questioning and a method which enables children to discuss sensitive issues or traumatic experiences. Role plays or songs are also a good ice-breaker or energizer for other activities. In regards to the issue of sensitive topics, puppets have proven to be a particularly effective option. Again, Boyden and Ennew recommend that the researcher review the cultural appropriateness of this method. Below I pull two quotes from the authors about this topic. “Role play methods include individual or group mimes or improvisation, as well as plays written for performance by children themselves, by others or using puppets. It is usually enjoyable and interesting for children and can be an excellent stimulus for other research activities, especially focus group discussion… Many children find it easier to communicate through drama than by answering direct questions in interviews… Role play enables children to tell adults about sensitive issues without having to enter into areas of personal distress. Puppets can be particularly useful for exploring children’s traumatic experiences” (105). “Drama and other performance arts are cultural products, so it is important to find out about local modes of dramatic expression with which children are familiar. It may be the case that dramatic narrative is not a local cultural form. Children may be able to learn how to improvise plays over time, and this can be useful for a researcher who has a long-term relationship with a specific group of children, but, in the short-term, some children may be happier to use another form of dramatic expression, such as narrative songs, to which they are accustomed” (106).

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Written Methods Boyden and Ennew describe written methods, including answering questionnaires, providing short answers to questions, creating lists, writing compositions on a topic, or writing essays, as a child-centered approach. The authors argue that “the most productive form of written research with children is collecting essays on specific topics” (107). They reveal that “many children enjoy writing and may spontaneously produce accounts of their lives. Like adults they often find it helpful to write at times when they are under stress, or dealing with difficult feelings” (108). They provide several tips on pages (111-112). Some that stood out are:  “Make sure there is enough time for children to finish their essays and also have another activity (such as drawing on a related subject) for children who finish the task rapidly;  Make a note of any distractions or other limitations during the writing process;  Make sure that children know that their writing is valued and that there are no ‘marks’ being given for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ writing and spelling” (112). Visual Methods Visual methods include drawings, photos, cartoons, collages, posters, weaving, pottery, sculpture and other objects created by children. The authors provide three major tips regarding the use of visual methods: (1) learn about local customs regarding visual representations and local ways of “seeing,” (the learning point on page 116 shows how Nepalese respondents “saw” stick-figure drawings commonly used in the West); (2) ask children’s permission to use their artwork and return it to them; and (3) ask children to explain what they have produced. Here are the authors’ quotes on these issues  “Children’s drawings are not simple representations of the world. They are cultural as well as individual products and research should be preceded by some initial reading so that researchers know: local ways of seeing and drawing, local customs respecting drawings and conventions of representation, [and] what children in the culture draw at different ages” (118).  Remember: “Children own their drawings. Ask if you can use pictures or take them away. Explain the purpose of your research and how drawings will be used. Return drawing to children (after reproduction) if that is what they request” (119).  “Drawings and other representations should not be used in research without also taking note of children’s explanations” or interpretations of their work (120). Interviewing Boyden and Ennew have a very strict definition of what constitutes an in-depth interview. In their opinion, an in-depth interview involves “a series of long, relatively unstructured conversations between a researcher and respondent who know each other well, interact verbally on a day-to-day basis and are relaxed and comfortable in each other’s company” (122). According to the authors, “when conducted in a supportive and respectful way, interviews can be a very powerful medium of liberation for children, more especially because in most societies children are given very little opportunity to speak for themselves” (127). According to Boyden and Ennew, the best interviews are child-initiated. They typologize two types of interviews: researcher-led vs. respondent led. In their view, “researcher-led interviews can make children feel uncomfortable and result in poor data… Respondent-led interviews can be conducted as an unstructured conversation or monologue without questions from the

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researcher” (125). In respondent-led interviews, children have the “freedom to determine the topic [and] control over the flow of conversation. In addition, researchers “use of a few open questions or no questions at all” or train “children [to] conduct interviews.” An exemplary research project of this type was Tobias Hecht’s research with street children in Brazil, where he provided children with the tools to interview each other (tape recorder and microphone.) The result was that children asked questions Hecht had not previously thought of and that they also asked questions in “words and ways that their companions understood” (127). To achieve this type of more equitable relationship between the researcher and childinformant, Boyden and Ennew recommend using a series of non-interview methods initially. As they write: “This entails that interviews should not normally be the first method used in research, or take place with children you do not already know fairly well and who are interested to talk to you about the topic in which you are interested. The best interviews are those the children initiate themselves, or in which children interview other children” (123). In the following quotes the authors provide advice on how to prepare for an interview. They write that you should “never ask questions unless you are sure you know:  “The correct ways of beginning, carrying out, and ending a conversation between the persona you are intending to interview and yourself (taking into consideration such factors as gender, relative age, and other aspects of status) in the social or cultural group concerned,  “Cultural ways of framing questions and answers  “If the topic is one that can be discussed in conversation – it is can be discussed with that culture or is of interest;  “The words and phrases normally used to discuss the topic, and what they mean” (122-3). Focus Groups The authors provide two major tips about focus groups. (1) Make sure they are cultural appropriate. And (2) pay detailed attention during the discussion to group dynamics. Here are two quotes from the authors about these issues: “Facilitators should bear in mind that focus group discussion is a method that originated in the United States, where free discussion between individuals is the norm and it is regarded as impolite to dominate a conversation. In other culture, the normal model of discussion may take another form – for instance it may be usual for everyone to take their turn to give a lengthy opinion, followed by other (often repeating what has just been said)… It is vital to find out how people normally discuss important issues before asking them to take part in a focus group discussion and to adjust your expectations and way of running the session to be appropriate to the cultural context” (131). In your fieldnotes, “make a general description of group dynamics: level of participation; level of interest; [and] dominant and passive participants” (131).

Collective Visual Methods (Participatory Rural Appraisal) The authors adopt several methods from Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) for use as collective visual methods. These include: Transect walks, resource and settlement maps, social maps, health maps, mobility maps, raking matrices, Venn diagrams, linkage/flow charts, pie charts, and time lines. The authors explain that PRA and participatory research with children share many values. As they explain, “PRA is based on a philosophy of human development that involves transferring power and control to the poor so that they can participate fully in all political and social processes. Thus PRA claims that:  Research should be an essential part of social action;

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 Research should be for the direct benefit of respondents, or research participants, rather than for the researcher;  Research results derive from a consensus among participants; collective methods reflect the conditions/perspectives of whole communities;  Powerless groups (which includes children) can be empowered by developing knowledge about themselves” (135). The authors are also aware, however, of several limitations to PRA. These include:  “Group consensus could emphasize existing power structures and imbalances, which might eventually increase social conflict…  Collective methods may not by suitable for gathering qualitative information, especially on sensitive personal issues or major social structural problems…  Outside researchers may not be able to reduce the, often subtle, ‘sabotage’ activities of dominant figures…  Empowerment raises expectations, which cannot always be met…  PRA is not necessarily rapid – negotiation takes time and children may not be free to participate” (146). For these reasons, the authors recommend that “PRA methods and exercises be used with whole communities and repeated with sub-groups… within these communities to reveal similarities and differences in their perspectives and experiences” (135). Self-evaluation checklist At the end of the section, Boyden and Ennew provide future child-researchers with a selfevaluation checklist that they can use as they design their research and implement their methods: “(a) Preparation:  Did you familiarize yourself with local customs and practices before going into the field?  Did you know what children of the chosen age group may be able to achieve in this local area?  Did you have a plan that included ͏ A clear, written protocol including aims, objectives, methods, and expected outcomes? ͏ Time management? ͏ A precise list of materials to be used?  Describe any problems that arose as the result of any negative answer to these questions. (b) Self-awareness:  Did you discuss with colleagues your own potential emotional needs with respect to this research?  Did you have a plan for coping and follow-up if children became distressed?  Describe any problems that arose as the result of any negative answers to these questions.

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 Did you ask colleagues for feedback on what you did well and which skills or methods you need to improve?  Did you notice that you still need to work on some skills and attitudes? If so, what needs to be improved – and how will you improve? (c) Privacy and respect for children:  Who chose the topic?  Who chose the place to work and the seating or working arrangements?  Was the purpose of the research explained – could children explain to someone else what the research is about?  Did you ask children’s permission to take drawings or other work away and use them?  Have you promised to show pictures or writing to other adults such as teachers? Did you ask children’s permission to do this?  If you collected drawings, were children… given sufficient privacy for both drawing and explanation?  Was the time for discussion adequate?  Was the discussion a question and answer interview or did it take the form of a dialogue?  Did children really understand that they could refuse to take part in this research? Did any refuse or show reluctance? Did you attempt to persuade them?  Did you allow or encourage children to take control of the process? If not, why not?  Did you act in an authoritarian or patronizing manner towards the children?  Did you find yourself teaching, rather than being a researcher and learning? (d) What would you do differently next time?” (165-6). Limitations/ Critique This manual provides many good ideas for doing research with children. It is often cited in publications about child-centered methods. However, the authors do not discuss any one method in detail so you do not get a good sense of how to carry out the activity or how well the activity works in different settings or with different age groups. Also, there are some contradictions and inconsistencies in their approach to participation. For example, in interviewing, they emphasize the respondent-led approach, letting children choose the topic and the pace of the conversation. In another section of the manual, however, they inform trainers how to help future researchers design research questions and protocols. If children are choosing the interview topics, why are researchers also being trained about how to do these more researcher-led approaches? These contradictions arise because the authors do not have a very precise definition of participation. Their approach belongs to the school of practice where participatory methods help researchers “do no harm” to children rather than to the school which emphasizes methods that “empower” children. However, they seem to want to claim all child-centered approaches as empowering; a claim which has limited empirical and theoretical weight. This manual would be strengthened by a more explicit assessment of different types of participation. Note that the manual is that it is written for an audience with limited training in research methods.

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REFERENCE: Camfield, Laura and Yisak Tafere. 2009. "'No, living well does not mean being rich': Diverse understandings of well-being among 11-13 year-old children in three Ethiopian communities." Journal of Children and Poverty, 15(2): 119-138. Summary: In this article, Camfield and Tafere review the preliminary findings from a study of children in Ethiopia. The study is part of the Young Lives project funded by UK Department for International Development (DfID). Young Lives is a longitudinal study of 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam (8000 children born in 200-01 and 4000 children born in 1994-1995). A baseline survey was conducted in 2002, a second round survey was conducted in 2006-07, and subsequent survey rounds are scheduled for every few years through 2015. A qualitative component to the study was introduced in 2007. The qualitative component is an integrated sub-study that explores in greater depth the lives of 204 children across the four countries. It aims to explore how children define and experience well-being and ill-being, highlighting experiential aspects such as the importance of being respect and able to preserve one’s dignity. The authors point out that “participatory research” of how people define and experience poverty is increasingly common, but that findings rarely address children’s experiences. They conclude: “The primary shortcoming of research into understandings of well-being and ill-being is a lack of attention to children’s perspectives. When these are acknowledged, there is still insufficient attention to diversity within the broad category of children. For example, there is a tendency to contrast the children’s singular ‘voice’ with the adult ‘voice,’ without acknowledging the many opinions within each group and the processes of power the ensures some ‘voices’ are audible and others are not” (120).

The Young Lives project sets out to correct for this deficiency. The study, however, faces many challenges, particularly given the researchers’ emphasis on understanding children’s wellbeing from their perspective. As the authors write: “Studying children’s well being involves firstly understanding what different children are doing, what they need, what they have, what they think and feel, how they contribute to their own and others’ well-being, etc., and secondly, engaging with their diverse and dynamic understandings of well-being and ill-being” (121). In sum, there is not only a lack of data on children’s perspectives, but also little information on their everyday lives. The article focuses on the study and findings from Ethiopia. The authors review the quantitative and qualitative components of the study, including the sampling frames, data collection methods, and preliminary findings. The initial survey and qualitative components of the study (these involved group exercises in three sites) focused on children’s perceptions, aspirations, and relationships. The main findings are highlighted below: Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
The quality of relationships is the most important aspect of well-being identified by children:  “In summary, the most important aspect of children’s well-being in the studies reviewed appears to be the quality of their relationships with others. In particular, well-being is dependent on whether children feel ‘valued and secure,’ if they can depend on ‘good quality family relationships,’ whether or not they enjoy ‘comfort and openness’ in their relationships, and finally whether they feel ‘included and respected’” (123).

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Schooling is nearly universally described as essential by children and parents: 98.8% of children described formal schooling as “essential” in their future lives (127)
Rural children had lower educational aspirations than urban children:  Rural children were less likely to aspire to completing university education (62.5% of rural children aspired to attain this level of education versus 80.5% of urban children) and, in the qualitative exercises, were less likely to identify education as the main reason for “moving up the ladder” (social mobility).  “This indicates how children in rural areas might lower their future aspirations to match their present reality, either through ‘adaptation’ or a realistic assessment of the quality of local education and employment opportunities, and it is important information for policymakers who aim to break the poverty cycle” (132).
Children’s aspirations should be understood in the context of what they and their communities consider to be the good life  “Transitions such as joining or leaving school are best viewed not only in terms of how they affect the well-being of children and their households, but also should be contextualized within individual and collective visions of what defines a good life… Further exploration of these ideas involves setting particular case studies in a broader context while continuing to explore children’s experiences and their understandings of these over time” (133). REFERENCE: Christensen, Pia and Alan Prout. 2002. "Working with Ethical Symmetry in Social Research with Children." Childhood, 9: 477-497. Summary: This is an excellent article; although it is a bit to wade through at the beginning, the final 5 pages of the article are a real homerun. I’ll begin where the authors do. They define ethical symmetry as “the view that the ethical relationship between researcher and informant is the same whether he or she conducts research with adults or children” (482). The implications of ethical symmetry are that “researchers do not have to use particular methods, or indeed, work with a different set of ethical standards when working with children. Rather, it means that the practices employed in the research have to be in line with children’s experiences, interests, values and everyday routines” (482). “The task of the social scientist is to work for the right of people to have a voice and to be heard. In the case of children, ‘age’ is perhaps one of the most dominant factors used to discriminate against children being heard and listened to” (483). The ethics of “giving voice” to research subjects are similar for children and adults. Researchers need to be conscious of how they gain access, the role of power in the relationship, and how consent is negotiated throughout the research process. For Christensen and Prout, dialogue needs to be central to the researcher-child relationship. It is important for the researcher to not take responsibility for children – in doing so the researcher is being paternalistic and actually taking responsibility from children. Christensen and Prout write that in order to avoid doing this, researchers need “to consider ways to enable children to protect their own interests through the research… This in turn means engaging with children in a dialogue through the research process” (489). The authors, however, “do not advocate for the idea that all children are at all times equally suited to be involved in the research. Nor should they necessarily be involved as co-researchers… Critical attention… needs to be given to variations in children’s social

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experiences and social competencies by identifying the commonalities and differences between children in the particular contexts we research and by understanding the way they engage with and respond to the research itself” (483). This leads to Christensen and Prout’s better-developed argument: the need for more constructive dialogue about ethical standards for childhood research. The authors begin by critiquing an example of childhood research. The researcher filmed children’s private interactions in school. In order to get permission, she agreed to let the head teacher view the tapes. She did not however ask children for permission to do this. The authors cite this example as an incidence of the limitations of individualist notion of reflexivity and call for stronger ethical standards. Here is their quote. They say it much better than I do: “While agreeing with the vital place of reflexivity in research practice, we feel that reliance on the individual researcher alone is problematic. It rests on the experience and skill of the individual researcher and may lead to an overreliance on developing ethical practices that are personal and idiosyncratic. Flexibility and sensitivity to children’s interests by the individual researcher is necessary but, in itself, it does not provide, or help to develop, a collectively available set of ethical values. It does not recognize clearly enough the need for childhood researchers to debate and develop a shared ethical ground on which their work stands” (492).

The authors describe the individualist reflexivity as a tactical approach and argue that it needs to be anchored in a larger strategy, a disciplinary reflexivity amongst childhood researchers. They call for the creation of formal venues for dialogue about ethics. Like Hawkesworth, the authors are reflecting a disillusion with individualist notions of reflexivity, or in my words self-torture, and calling for a more collective alternative. Summarizing Rorty, they write, “in a world disillusioned by the promise of any universal and rational solutions, it is only through dialogue that we can regain some sense of progress, however slow and incremental it might be” (495). REFERENCE: Clark, Cindy Dell. 2004. "Visual Metaphor as Method in Interviews with Children." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 14(2): 171-185. Summary: In this article, Clark describes her experience using visual metaphors to enable children to communicate meaning. Clark is doing ethnographic research on children’s experience of diabetes and asthma. Her goal is to develop child-centered methods that enable the “study children in their present cultural worlds from their own vantage points” (172). These methods should “activate a child’s discursive power, reducing deference and enhancing the child’s authority in an adult-child encounter” (171). Clark argues that visual, nonverbal methods may allow children to more fully express abstract or inchoate ideas than is possible in strictly verbal research methods. The method described is called the Metaphor Sort Technique (MST). Clark used 2 variations of MST. In the first, she used 25 pictures of places (ranging from a dark cave to a sunny playground). Children were asked to choose pictures of places that conveyed the same feelings as their illness (diabetes or asthma). Then an interviewer asked the child to explain why they made their choice. In the second MST variation, children were provided with 30 picture cutouts of objects (including a boxing glove, magic wand, lightning bolt, etc.) Children were asked to place the picture cutouts that conveyed the same feelings or mood they experienced during medical treatments in boxes labeled with different medical treatments that they received (i.e., injections, inhalers, etc.) Clark argues that “this sorting task allowed the children to communicate

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nonverbally and to concretize inchoate feelings through engagement with the visual stimulus” (174). Clark concludes that “visual materials, rather than reducing a complex phenomenon to its simplest form, in this study empowered each child to communicate with emotional depth and nuance. A picture invites consideration in fluid, layered ways, as aptly implied by the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. Putting pictures into children’s hands gave them appropriate tools for framing intricate ideas” (180). Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Difficulties of using verbal research methods with children  “The younger the child, the less likely it is that established research tools – such as straightforward verbal interrogation – can serve to give access to the full range of youths’ understandings… Interviewing minors calls for employing communicative strategies that draw from children’s own native practices, respecting children’s ways of extracting and expressing meaning. Visual, metaphor-derived modes of interaction, I argue, can be instrumental to accomplishing this goal” (172).
Use of visual metaphor to enable child to fully express meaning and sense making  “Metaphor privileges the child’s meaning making, since metaphor’s non-literalness gives the child wide latitude over how to express meaning. That is, metaphor is enabling rather than constraining, in that allusive ties or common attributes implied by a metaphor are creatively derived and discoverable by the individual person, rather than determined or explicit. The child draws from a reservoir of communally available cultural meanings in constructing metaphors, but she has scope to make creative linkages” (173).  “As the parties to a metaphor ‘get’ the entailed connection of meaning, there is a sense that (as in sharing a joke) a community between teller and hearer comes into being along with the metaphoric insight. In an interview situation, the interviewer is thus intimated through metaphor into the child’s meaning making, a desirable turn of events for child-centered inquiry” (173).  Children’s aptitude at using visual metaphors demonstrates that this “kind of mental adeptness with making connections may be entailed in young persons’ navigation of cultural meanings as they find their way in a dissonant world… Restricting our communication with children to words or ignoring metaphorical processes unwittingly limits researcher to modalities that exclude the full range of sense making. Verbal questioning, as a restrictive menu of inquiry, favors adults’ superior language skills and in the process dilutes what children can express. Although it is certainly true that visual methods have disadvantages, visual approaches are less prone to silence children than are strictly verbal methods” (180).
Advantages of MST: Gives children greater control over the interview and topics addressed  “Children maintained control of whether and when to mention a problem. I did not need to ask directly about vulnerable issues because children raised them themselves; I thereby avoided the interviewer’s ethical quandary of implicitly ‘teaching’ the child about a hazard or problem of which he was not aware. Through the sorting task and talk about it, children raised and framed issues in their own terms, while I played the role of an interviewer who sought to understand. The MST proved to be a genuinely child-centered method, which enabled young children to express abstract or inchoate

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ideas through concrete, familiar objects and scenes. Even children with limited vocabularies and incomplete language development used the visual metaphors as a way to articulate feelings nonverbally through linkages of images, without relying solely on language-based communication” (175).
MST unproven in other cultures and contexts  “It remains to be seen if the MST can travel across cultures, and if so, along what paths. Intimate cultural acquaintance would certainly be a prior condition for designing or carrying out a study with the MST and for assessing its sociolinguistic relevance” (180). Weaknesses/Critique:
The article is fairly brief and only describes the positive aspects of the method (negative experiences were not conveyed). Also, Clark does not describe if other researchers have employed the method with similar results.
One aspect not fully explored is the role of the interviewer. Clark puts in a note that the interviewer had to coax younger children, in particular, who often gave “I don’t know” as their initial answer to questions about why they choose to place a picture in a certain box. It seems to me that the interviewer may risk leading the child to a particular answer and that full consideration of how to avoid this should have been addressed.
Clark belongs to the group of child researchers that see children as having their own culture and forms of communicating. Other researchers take a more interactionist approach, seeing children and adults as belonging to and creating culture together (see James’ 4 approaches to childhood research). REFERENCE: Cook-Sather, Alison. 2002. "Authorizing students’ perspectives: Toward trust, dialogue, and change in education." Educational Researcher. 31(4): 3-14. Summary: In this article, Cook-Sather argues that educational reformers must “not only to attend to student perspectives but also to position those students as authorities and to act on what they say” (9). It is a very well written article with forceful commentary on the benefits of giving students a voice and role to play in shaping educational practices and policies. Cook-Sather demonstrates the benefits of authorizing student perspectives to both educational reformers and to students. Her article summarizes the history of research on student perspectives and the slow movement toward educational practice that not only recognizes student perspectives but also acts on them. Cook-Sather begins by acknowledging the unique contribution that students can make to understanding schooling processes and reforming practice. As she writes: “Students have a unique perspective on what happens in school and classrooms and on the dynamics between schools and communities… As long as we exclude these perspectives from our conversations about schooling and how it needs to change, our efforts at reform will be based on an incomplete picture of life in classrooms and schools and how that life could be improved” (3).

Moreover, authorizing students’ perspectives provides several benefits to the students themselves. As Cook-Sather writes: “When students have the opportunity to articulate their perspectives on school, they not only offer insights into that schooling that are valuable for educators. They also have an opportunity to hone their

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own thinking – to think metacognitively and critically about their educational experiences. And as a result of this newly gained perspective and investment, students not only feel more engaged but are also inclined to take more responsibility for their education because it is no longer something being done to them but rather something they do” (10).

The bulk of the article addresses five examples of research approaches that Cook-Sather identifies as attending to students’ perspectives. These are: 1. Constructivist pedagogies: “Constructivists position students as active creators of their knowledge rather than recipients of others’ knowledge” (5). 2. Critical pedagogies: Critical pedagogies foreground the political nature of education and commit to “redistributing power not only within the classroom, between teacher and students, but in society at large” (6). 3. Postmodern and poststructuralist feminist pedagogies: These approaches “caution against uncritically or unreflectively privileging student voices” (6). They identify the intersection of other relations (identity, language, context, and power) as privileging some student voices over others. 4. Educational researchers that focus on student voice: These researchers describe how students’ perspectives contributes to larger policy- and practice-shaping conversations about education and also consider the difficulties in making these student perspectives seem relevant in these discussions. 5. Social critics: Social critics are able to comment on education and schooling policies and practices in a way that appeals to a large audience. They also provide a critical perspective unhampered by allegiance to being public educators. 6. Research on students’ interpretive frames: “These educators employ students voices and perspectives not only in support of their own agendas as educators and as evidence that change is needed, but also in the terms according to which practice and plans for reform should be shaped… [These researchers are] striving to elicit students perspectives and learning to listen to and act on them” (7). Cook-Sather concludes this review by arguing that these 5 approaches need to be “brought into complementary balance.” As she writes: “From century-old constructivist approaches to education we must retain the notion that students need to be authors of their own understanding and assessors of their own learning. With critical pedagogy we must share a commitment to redistributing power not only within the classroom, between teachers and students, but in society at large. Keeping in mind postmodern feminist critiques of the workings and reworkings of power, we must be willing to take small steps toward changing oppressive practices, but we must also continually question our motives and practices in taking these steps. Like the few educational researchers who have included student voices in arguments for how to reform education, we need to include student perspectives in larger conversations about educational policy and practice. Like critics positioned outside the classroom, we need to find ways of illuminated what is happening and what could be happening within classrooms that the wider public can hear and take seriously. And finally, we must include students’, as well as adults’, frames of reference in conversations about educational policy and practice” (10).

The only weakness of this article is that it packs so many great ideas into 10 pages that it can’t fully address any of them. I took down many long quotes from this article that I would like to highlight in the next section. Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:

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Authorizing student voice involves twin challenges: Changing the structures in our mind and those in our educational system which devalues students’ perspectives  “To move toward more fully authorizing the perspectives of students is not simply to include them in existing conversations within existing power structures. Authorizing student perspectives means ensuring that there are legitimate and valued spaces within which students can speak, re-tuning out ears so that we can hear what they say, and redirecting our actions in response to what we hear. The twin challenges of authorizing student perspectives are (a) changing the structures in our minds that have rendered us disinclined to elicit and attend to students’ voices and (b) changing the structures in educational relationships and institutions that have supported and been supported by this disinclination” (4).
Educational institutions do not trust students  “The educational institutions and practices that have prevailed in the United States both historically and currently reflect a basic lack of trust in students and have evolved to keep students under control and in their place as the largely passive recipients of what others determine is education” (4).
An important manifestation of power is the ability to ignore or silence. Power relationships do not tolerate listening.  “Most power relationships have no place for listening and actively do not tolerate it because it is very inconvenient: to really listen means to have to respond. Listening does not always mean doing exactly what we are told, but it does mean being open to the possibility of revision, both of though and action. At a minimum, it means being willing to negotiate. Old assumptions and patterns of interactions are so well established that even those trying to break out of them must continue to struggle. And understanding that is part of what it means to listen” (8).
Learning to listen is a life-long process  “We cannot ever learn, once and for all, to listen. We must continually relearn to listen – in every context, with each group of students, and with each individual student. The understanding that each time we will need to learn to listen anew should be as inspiring as it is daunting. It is our opportunity as educators to meet the very challenge we pose to our students: to learn” (11). REFERENCE: Gordon, Gill, Rachel Baker, Ernesto Cloma, Julian Faulkner, Mahfuza Haque, Joanna Hill, Rachel Hinton, Andy Inglis, Alice Lamptey, Charity Mayau, Thabang Ngcozela, and Joachim Theis. 1998. “How to: The Process.” Pp. 65-116 in Stepping Forward: Children and Young People's Participation in the Development Process, edited by J. Victoria, E. Ivan-Smith, G. Gordon, P. Pridmore, and P. Scott. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Summary: In this section from the book Stepping Forward: Children and Young People’s Participation in the Development Process, the authors set out to describe “innovative methods, including the use of video, photography, and theatre, that enable children to record and present their own realities without adult interpretation and distortion” (65). Unfortunately, I found this book to be very disappointing. The book came out of workshop of researchers and practitioners who use participatory methods with children. It is organized into a series of sections where each

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co-author describes her or his project briefly (2-4 pages) and the editor provides a summary of findings and conclusions from the workshop. The quality of writing varies from each author. Also, the findings and summary tend to be bulleted lists which are not very fun to read. My major problem, however, with the book is that it seems a bit naïve. Most of the projects described seem to be one-time PRA exercises or short-term projects. You don’t get a real sense that children are “participating in the development process.” Rather the authors see themselves as innovative because it is the first time that children are being incorporated into participatory development measures. This book makes the mistake of claiming everything to be participatory (from information gathering to consultation to activism) and assumes that participation (no matter its form) is inevitably good for kids. The editor presents some critique for better practices, but does not, nor do any of the practitioner authors, assess the strengths and weaknesses of the projects described in the book. In sum, the authors present participatory methods as of techniques, rather than a process of engagement with children and their communities. I did like the criteria for effective participatory processes and methods that the authors developed at the workshop. The criteria are that “the process and methods should:  Enable less confident and marginalized children to participate fully in all stages of research  Build the skills and confidence of children so that they become more capable of participating in democratic processes and advocating their own rights and needs;  Enable children to own, plan, analyze, document, and present their work to others including those in power and their peers; and  Stimulate creative ideas, new visions, and options for the future” (65). However, it was disappointing that the authors failed to use these criteria in evaluating their own projects. On a more positive note, I liked some of the methods described. The authors innovatively adopted culturally-appropriate methods with children that were unaccustomed to using pen and paper. As they write, “cong, dance, role-play and the use of local arts such as clay modeling and cloth painting may work better than unfamiliar drawing conventions” (113). Many of the authors mentioned that songs were an effective ice-breaker and trust-building activity, especially with girls. Moreover, some of the projects used video, radio, and dance. Many of the tips the authors provide are also worth noting:  “Games and energizers are necessary to refocus children and bring the group back together” (71).  “Sensitive facilitation, work in single-sex groups, discussion in pairs before presentation to the larger group, and the use of games to develop trust can all help less confident children to participate” (67).  Give the children a chance to say no: “their relative lack of power makes exploitation of their involvement a real possibility. Children often feel an obligation to be helpful or are inhibited from voicing their true feelings” (101).  “When working with children, schools may not be the best places to hold participatory planning or research events. They tend to be formal, adult-controlled settings, with an underlying culture of children trying to give adults the answers that will impress or please them, rather than expressing what they are really thinking” (104).  “Considerable time is needed to access and establish rapport with children, involve them in planning research, and enable them to work at their own pace. However, time is a

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scarce resource for donors, researchers, families, and children, particularly poor working children” (111). The authors provide two major warnings to researchers interested in participatory methods: First, be transparent about what the project can achieve and manage children’s expectations so that they are not disappointed at the project’s end. This requires that the facilitator get to know “children’s expectations” so that the s/he can “explain what the process can and cannot provide for the participants” (79). Second, fully share information about the project with the children so that they can (1) give their consent to participate with full knowledge and (2) have ownership over the data. Here are two quotes about these issues: “Children and adults must be given full and honest information about who is initiating the research and its objectives, processes, end results, and potential benefits before the research starts. Only then can they decide whether to commit time and energy to participating and give informed consent. They must also feel free to opt out of the process or parts of it at any time” (110). “There is a need to pay more attention to children’s participation in the analysis, interpretation, reporting, and presentation of outcomes. Too often, children engage in participatory activities that enable adults to take notes on their ideas and analyze, document, and present them to others in their epistemological framework. This can seriously distort or bias the children’s perception of reality. It also deprives them of an opportunity for further skill development and empowerment and for sharing their learning with family, peers, community, and others with an influence on their lives” (115).

Another important point that the authors emphasize is that the researcher should observe the interactions in the group, not just focus on what people are saying or the pictures/charts/etc. that they are producing. These observations of action “demonstrate group interactions and power dynamics” (114). As the authors write: “The level of participation of different children will determine the outcome of the research in terms of validity and empowerment. This makes it as essential to record the group’s processes as the content” (114). Ways to do document this data are: (1) video the group meetings, (2) create a check-list where you can record who speaks and for how long, and (3) ask children to serve as note-takers. REFERENCE: Hart, Roger A. 1992. "Children's Participation: From Tokenship to Citizenship." Innocenti Essays No. 4, Florence, Italy: UNICEF International Child Development Centre. Summary: This article is frequently cited for its adaptation of Sherry Arnstein’s (1969) “Ladder of participation” to children’s and young people’s participation in projects and research. There are 8 levels of participation (the first 3 are referred to as “degrees of non-participation” and the latter 5 are referred to as “degrees of participation”): (1) Manipulation, (2) Decoration, (3) Tokenism, (4) Assigned but not informed, (5) Consulted and informed, (6) Adult-initiated, shared decisions with the children, (7) Child-initiated and directed, (8) Child-initiated, shared decisions with adults. (p. 8) Manipulation refers to situations in which children have no understanding of the issues or events, yet are asked or made to participate (i.e., children carrying a signs at a political rally). Decoration refers to a similar situation in which children have little understanding of the issues underlying a cause or event but participate in “decorative” ways (i.e., by wearing t-shirts or singing.) Hart uses “tokenism” to “describe those instances in which children are apparently given a voice, but in fact have little or no choice about the subject or the style of communicating it, and little or no opportunity to formulate their own opinions” (9).

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For Hart, the following 4 requirements must be met for a project to be “truly participatory”: 1. “The children understand the intentions of the project; 2. They know who made the decisions concerning their involvement and why; 3. They have a meaningful (rather than ‘decorative’) role; 4. They volunteer for the project after the project was made clear to them.” (11) Truly participatory projects belong to levels 6-8. In these levels, decision-making is shared with children and youth. Hart argues that level 8 projects are generally initiated by teenagers. Teenagers design and manage these projects, but they are very rare – not because teenagers a incapable or uninterested in carrying them out, but due to the “absence of caring adults attuned to the particular interests of young people” (14). Additional arguments:
Definition of participation: “The term participation is used in this Essay to refer generally to the process of sharing decisions which affect one’s life and the life of the community in which one lives. It is a means by which democracies are built and it is a standard against which democracies should be measured” (5). Definition of PAR: “Its main features are (a) that the research be carried out by or with the people concerned; (b) the researcher feels a commitment to the people and to their control of the analysis; (c) research begins with a concrete problem identified by the participants themselves; and (d) it proceeds to investigate the underlying causes of the problem so that the participants themselves can go about addressing these causes” (16).
Importance of play AND work to children and youth:  “In many countries youth are trapped in childhoods where no work is allowed until they are 15 or 16 years of age, well beyond the age where play alone is fulfilling” (20).  “Work for a child can be highly participatory and hence educational. If it is somehow supplemented with sufficient education to allow a child future choice of alternative work it need not be exploitative” (21).
Importance of family and social context: Improving children’s lives means involving families and communities:  “But the larger solution to improving children’s lives must involve families and communities: they must be supported to do what they have traditionally done – to care for their children in a stable manner consistent with their culture. Simultaneously, families need to be encouraged to open traditional practices to the greater involvement of their children as a part of a general move towards creating a more democratic society” (7).  “One should not… think of a child’s evolving capacities to participate as a simple step-like unfolding of individual abilities. One should rather think of what a child might be able to achieve in collaboration with other children and with supportive adults” (31).
Child-development issues:  “A child who is troubled or who has low self-esteem is less likely to demonstrate her competence, to think, or to work in a group. For this reason, in attempting to facilitate the participation of children who seem less competent than might be expected, one

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must identify situations which will maximize a child’s opportunities to demonstrate her competence” (31).  Age 7-12 children are able to imagine themselves in the shoes of others REFERENCE: Hart, R. 1997. “Children’s Developing Capacity to Participate,” “Action Research with Children,” and “Methods” Pp. 27-39, 91-107, 161-194 in Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. Earthscan. London. Summary: In this book, Hart describes action research projects with children orchestrated by community-based organizations. Hart has an action-oriented research approach, emphasizing the capacity-building aspects of kids doing research projects. He argues that children’s participation in research not only contributes to their personal development, but also increases their appreciation for democratic practices and environmental care. Hart’s goal is to raise children’s consciousness of environmental issues by engaging them in their local environment and through children’s awareness of these issues, increasing their appreciation for democratic practices and promoting change by adults and communities. This book portrays itself as a toolkit of participatory methods, but it is not very satisfactory on that front. The methods described require significant financial resources, support staff, and a long-term structure for keeping kids involved. The underlying resource demands, however, are not discussed. Action research is implied to be self-reinforcing (children get interested in initial projects, increase their participation, and thus, arguably, increase organizational resources), when this is probably not likely to be the case. Moreover, the methods are not well assessed. Hart only describes the most basic details and then lists successful experiences by organizations across the world. The methods described are (pp. 161-194):  Visual methods: Drawings, story boards, collective drawings, collages,  Maps: Three-dimensional maps using models, personal world maps, community base map  Interviewing and surveys  Trails or scored walks  Journalism and publishing  Music and Dance  Drama and Puppetry  Special events In many ways, this book is a product of its times: the 1990s. It is concerned with building democratic and environmental behaviors amongst children, and through their influence, encouraging those practices by adults and communities. The book was written at the height of the children’s rights movement as well as democratization movements in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. In addition, U.N. summits like that at Rio de Janeiro deepened international consciousness of environmental problems as a global issue. Like much of the development literature coming out of the 1990s, the book demonstrates a faith in social movements and civil society organizations being unambiguously positive sources of social change. The resourcechallenges faced by these organizations and movements, as well as the problem of underfunded states and public sectors, is ignored.

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One of the helpful areas of this book for me was its discussion of child development issues. Hart is very aware of age-appropriate methods (he admits to knowing less about culturally appropriate ones). Also, I appreciated his argument that supporting children involves creating pragmatic tasks that they can accomplish to build their self-esteem. Below are some quotes about these issues: Supporting argument(s) and sub-argument(s):
Ecological systems theory: How children’s competencies vary by culture, region, class, etc.  “Children living in different cultures, environments, and social classes are exposed to different materials, experiences, and informal teaching by their families and neighbors, and this results in the appearance of different competencies at different times” (27).  “Rather than the development of a universal kind of intelligence, one should think of multiple intelligences in each individual, which develop at different rates according to both the innate capacities of each child and the particular opportunities he or she has to experiment with and exercise those capacities” (27).
Pragmatic and realistic tasks: How accomplishment creates self-esteem  “Environments like schools, emphasizing self-restraint and doing what one is told, can, if carried to the extreme, make children dependent and overly restrained. At the other extreme, relaying entirely on free play and doing what one likes to do can lead children to a feeling of confusion. Children need to be able to discover that they can accomplish pragmatic and realistic tasks. Such accomplishment makes them aware of previously unexplored potentials in themselves” (29).
Helping children appreciate democratic approaches  “Children need to learn how to decide whose perspectives should be considered in diagnosing a problem. In particular, they need to include those groups of residents whose perspectives are often not considered in community development efforts, such as the elderly, the poor, and the disabled” (93).  “The most appropriate methods for promoting democratic participation in children are based on dialogue” (34).
Creative idea: Interviewing Grandparents  “They have found that it is particularly effective to have the children interview grandparents about their childhood as a way of discovering changes in the environment” (92).
Tips for doing action research with children:  “Children need to get into the practice of summarizing data after each data collection trip. In this way they understand their task concretely as they proceed, rather than blindly amassing data in the hope that you will help them make sense of it all at the end” (96).  It is “best to design micro-action first – small projects close to children’s homes that can be completed in a matter of days or weeks, before joining with other children to conduct macro-actions of considerable importance to their community” (97).
Caution about drawings:  “Unless special efforts are made by the adult facilitator, children sometimes do not consider this medium a serious opportunity to express their ideas. Furthermore,

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children who have been in school a few years commonly conclude they have no artistic talent and being to feel intimidated when asked to draw” (162).  Most appropriate for children under 10
Personal map: Places children go to find support  “By mapping their use and evaluation of their daily environment, they can build a more ecological account of their world than if this information were collected by adults through an interview. In the case of street and working children, for example, such a map will include their social supports, activities, workplaces, and sleeping and eating places” (167). REFERENCE: Hill, M., J. Davis, Alan Prout, and K Tisdall. 2004. "Moving the Participation Agenda Forward." Children and Society, 18: 77-96. Summary: This article is the opening paper of a journal. It reviews the history of the participation agenda, outlines some of the major debates, and highlights some of the key arguments in the other papers in the edition. The authors here are focus on the participation agenda in the UK and that have occurred in implementing it in that country. The major concern is that “the participation of children will be a fad rather than an enduring principle or process” (92). The authors note that “participation” has reigned as the policy and theoretical solution in the era of “social exclusion” rhetoric (which accompanied Tony Blair entrance into office and other policymakers in the New Washington Consensus). Participation is envisioned as the opposite of exclusion, yet “in research, as in theory, policy, and practice, there is a need to develop links between participation and social inclusion” (87). To begin the development of a more adequate conceptualization of participation, the authors call on researchers and practitioners to distinguish participation from consultation, and regret the practice of using these terms interchangeably. They define each as: 1. Participation: “Participation means the direct involvement of children in decisionmaking about matters that affect their lives” (83). 2. Consultation: “Consultation may operate in one direction (asking for opinions, but not responding or taking them into account) or it can take the form of a dialogue. Consultation may be a means of enabling children to participate but it can also be a substitute for participation in that decisions are made without the direct involvement of children” (83). The authors also call on researchers to pay more attention to three key structural issues and their impact on the effectiveness of participation: 1. Power: “If power is seen positively, as the ability or capacity to act, then power emerges as a variable rather than a zero-sum game. This means that that there need not be clear winners and losers fighting over a fixed amount of power but rather that power is diffused throughout society and is generated in such a way that the benefits and costs may be shared by many different actors” (89). The authors call on researchers to interrogate the assumption that “participation” delivers “empowerment” and call for a more explicit appreciation of how power operates in children and young people’s worlds. 2. Generation: “For children a generational perspective entails understanding how members of the same generation make sense of and react to the prevailing socio-economic

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conditions, social policies and normative pressures that they share (albeit filtered by myriad personal and local influences)” (89). 3. Diversity: The authors call for an enhanced discussion of the impact of bases of (in)equality and emancipation, such as gender, disability, ethnicity, etc. on childhood. This article presented some interesting arguments, but it was not particularly well-written. Other findings:
“It has been repeatedly found that the main issues young people want something done about in their areas include greater respect and involvement in decision-making at school, improved leisure facilities and transport, a more satisfying physical environment at school and in the community, and respect for young people in shops and public spaces” (82).
“Probably the foremost barriers to participation comprise adults’ perceptions, including their images of children’s capacities, and their self-interest in maintaining their own position with respect to children” (82). The authors recommend that researchers move toward statistically representative samples. There has been an over-use of focus groups. However, children and youth should be actively involved in research design. REFERENCE: Kellet, Mary, Ruth Forrest, Naomi Dent, and Simon Ward. 2004. "'Just teach us the skills please, we'll do the rest': Empowering ten-year-olds as active researchers." Children and Society, 18: 329-343. Summary: At the outset of this article, Kellet notes that “[m]any, perhaps most adults would not be able to undertake research without training. It would appear, therefore, that a barrier to empowering children as researchers is not their lack of adult status but their lack of research skills. So why not teach them?” (332) The article goes on to describes a pilot study Kellet led with seven children (aged 9-10) in a British primary school. The goal of the pilot study was to demonstrate that “with the appropriate training, help, and support, children [in the middle years of childhood (8-12)] can become active researchers, designing and leading their own studies” (341). The article also includes the reports from two of the research projects completed by children, written by the children themselves. Kellet provided the children with 10 weeks of training in research methods and later supported them in carrying out their research projects. Kellet notes that “much participatory research is generally adult-led, adult-designed, and conceived from an adult perspective” (329). When projects are child-led, they tend to be carried out by children in their teenage years. She designed her pilot study to assess the training and support needs of children in the middle years of childhood (8-12) in doing research. She concludes that the pilot study was a success and that the children demonstrated high capacity to complete their research project. This means that child-led research projects should be part of the strategy for realizing the UNCRC’s goal for children’s participation. As Kellet writes, “the dissemination of research carried out by [children] and, importantly, owned by them, is an important vehicle for child voice” (341). I gave this article a low-rating because it has a somewhat uncritical view of participation and child-led research projects. Kellet does not describe any challenges, weaknesses, or pitfalls

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experienced during the pilot study. However, it was fun to read the children’s research reports and see firsthand their remarkable skill at completing research and writing up the results. Supporting argument(s):
“Articles 12 and 13 of the UNCRC require that children should be informed, involved, and consulted about all activities that affect their lives” (329).
“Empowerment goes beyond recognizing children’s rights and acknowledging their expertise. It involves providing opportunities for meaningful participation… [T]he more experienced and competent a child becomes through participation, the greater their empowerment because their participation becomes more effective” (332).
“Sharing power with children, engaging in consultation and active participation should not threaten nor destabilize society but lead to enhanced understanding and the creation of more effective policies” (330). REFERENCE: Lansdown, Gerison. 2006. "International Developments in Children's Participation: Lessons and Challenges." Pp. 139-156 in Children, Young People, and Social Inclusion: Participation for What?, edited by K. Tisdall, J. Davis, A. Prout, and M. Hill. Bristol: Policy Press. Summary: In this book chapter, Lansdown reviews various efforts for increasing children’s participation and argues for integrating children’s participation into the institutions they come into contact with everyday (family, schools, etc.). Lansdown emphasizes that participation enhances children’s evolving capacities and that the failure to listen to children and respect them leads “to increase their vulnerability by failing to equip children with the information and experience they need to make informed choices in their lives” (147). Lansdown conceptualization is more complex than one in which children are consulted or given voice. He view participation as a vehicle for providing children increasing social responsibilities which in turn build children’s capacities and self-esteem. In that vein, he cautions children’s rights advocates to recognize the important role that children’s traditional responsibilities play in integrating children into their families and communities. As he writes, “meeting these responsibilities can be vital to children’s social integration, self-efficacy, and self-esteem” (151). Lansdown argues that children’s rights advocates need to be cognizant of the importance of these responsibilities or otherwise risk undermining children’s place in their society. Like many of the other authors this week, Lansdown is concerned that “participation” is a vague concept that lacks measurable criteria. He argues that participation needs to be part of children’s daily lives, integrated into the institutions with which they have everyday contact and criticizes approaches which view participation as simply consultation with children or providing forums for airing children’s voice. As he writes, if participation is to be “meaningful, it needs to be an ongoing process of children’s expression and active involvement in decision making… It requires information sharing and dialogue between children and adults, based on mutual respect and power sharing, and must give children the power to shape both the process and outcome” (139). Lansdown argues that this type of ongoing, active participation requires adult participation. Adults must play a supporting role and recognize that denying children’s participation undermines their protection. Adults also need to acknowledge how they learn from children. As

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Lansdown writes, “traditional hierarchical models based on presumptions of adults always knowing best, with wisdom flowing only from adult to child, need to be challenged” (141). Lansdown is unique in that he stresses that participation enhances children’s protection (rather than being a trade-off between the two.) He also fully acknowledges that adults are inherently more powerful and thus must play an integral role in promoting children’s protection. He concludes that “the lesson to be learned is that effective protection of children can only be achieved by listening to [children] and taking them seriously… What is now needed is a more sophisticated approach, in which [participation] is understood as a dynamic process in which adults take responsibility for keeping children safe by listening to and respecting their perspectives, while empowering them to contribute to their own protection” (149). Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Definition and dimensions of children’s participation:  “Understanding of what is meant by participation varies widely, but, if it is to be meaningful, needs to be an ongoing process of children’s expression and active involvement in decision making at different levels in matters that concern them. It requires information sharing and dialogue between children and adults, based on mutual respect and power sharing, and must give children the power to shape both the process and outcome” (139).
How the type of participation changes with child’s age:  “[A]s the child acquires capacities, there must be a gradual transfer of the exercise of rights from care givers to children themselves. Not only are children entitled to express their views and have them taken seriously, but they also have the right to take those decisions for themselves that they are competent to take. This entitlement raises significant questions as to how that competence is assessed, respected, and promoted” (140).
Relationship between participation and capacities: Children’s capacities evolve in response to relationship with their environment  “Children’s competencies evolve, in large part, in response to the world in which they grow up. Accordingly, the defense of excluding children from participation in decision-making processes on the grounds of inexperience and incompetence becomes open to challenge. It is increasingly apparent that, given the opportunities, children, even those of young ages, can provide unique expertise and experience on their situation, have capacities to contribute towards their own protection, and can advocate effectively for the changes they perceive as necessary to improve their lives. However, building an environment in which this happens will necessitate very real challenges to existing presumptions about children’s capacities” (141).
Need for adult facilitation of children’s participation:  “Although children, given appropriate access to information, space, and opportunity, can be powerful and effective advocates, they can only do so where there are adults to facilitate the process. Sustained autonomous activity on the part of children is not, in most instances, a realistic goal and therefore necessitates ongoing commitment of supportive adults” (141).  “Respect for children’s participation in their own protection does not mean that adults can abdicate their responsibilities… Supporting adults, therefore, have a duty to ensure that, in any initiative, they give careful consideration to children’s best

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interests and take responsibility for assessing any risks to which they are exposed” (148).
Dangers of over-protection:  “Over-protection can serve to increase vulnerability by failing to equip children with the information and experience they need to make informed choices in their lives. Protective approaches that make children dependent on adult support leave children without resources when those adult protections are withdrawn. And given the scale of many national crises that are undermining the traditional family and community networks that served to protect children’s well-being, there is an acute need to harness children’s own potential strengths in order to maximize their opportunities for survival and development” (147).
Importance of recognizing children’s responsibilities (not just their rights):  “The idea that children bear responsibilities alongside their rights is controversial within the children’s rights community” (151). In non-Western societies it is common for cultures to hold deeply rooted assumptions about children’s responsibilities… Children’s sense of belonging to a particular social group is seen as fundamental to their well-being and is often expressed and reinforced through the fulfillment of duties or responsibilities to the group… Meeting these responsibilities can be vital to children’s social integration, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. It follows therefore that seeking to limit children’s responsibilities to protect their rights, for example by taking them out work so as to facilitate school attendance, can lead to unintended adverse consequences for children, undermining their integration within family and community. So, within a rights-based framework, it is important to consider not only the detrimental effects, but also the benefits that children can gain from fulfilling responsibilities” (151).  “This issue has equal relevance in developed societies where it is arguable that the effective removal of children from economic and social responsibilities has served to infantilize them, reduce their status, and remove opportunities for acquiring skills, independence and greater autonomy. The insistence within the rights discourse of constructing children as subjects of rights but lacking any associated responsibilities would appear to reinforce this construction of the status of children” (151).
Measuring and evaluating children’s participation:  “To date, there are few agreed indicators against which to measure and evaluate participation. Without such tools, it is harder to assess or contrast the effectiveness of different approaches… A number of dimensions need to be addressed: • Scope – what degree of participation has been achieved and at what stages of project or program development? • Quality – to what extent have participatory processed complied with recognized standards of effective practices?... • Impact – what has been the impact on young people themselves, families, and the supporting agency, and on the wider realization of young people’s rights within families, local communities, and at local and national governmental levels?” (152) Weaknesses/Critique:

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Lansdown envisions participation as involving children assuming responsibilities. By assuming responsibilities, children are able to gain skills and self-esteem and acquire a sense of their social relevance. However, other than suggesting that preventing children from working may be detrimental to their social integration, Lansdown does not define what other types of responsibilities children should assume. I think an essay exploring this topic is necessary. It is not clear what types or how much “work” would be beneficial to children and in what social contexts. It is also worth exploring other types of social responsibilities that children assume that are not related to economic well-being.
The conceptual vagueness of participation is a problem for theory and practice. Lansdown adds an important element into the mix: responsibility. Participation as responsibility expands it from being envisioned as participation in democratic institutions to also involving participation in economic, cultural, and other areas. I wanted Lansdown to discuss the implications of this view more. If participation is not just children’s right to be heard, but their responsibility to contribute to society, what types of venues and activities should children be incorporated into? REFERENCE: Lundy, Laura and Lesley McEvoy. 2009. "Developing Outcomes for Educational Services: A Children's Rights-Based Approach." Effective Education, 1(1): 43-60. Summary: This article reviews the experience of a project in Northern Ireland that aimed to incorporate children as co-researchers in the analysis of a baseline survey on children’s wellbeing and the effectiveness of educational interventions. Lundy and McEvoy argue that children need to be seen as “salient stakeholders in all aspects of service design” and employ the CRC to argue for this position. The authors stress throughout that take a rights-based approach to informing their research design. The authors’ main finding is that involving children as coresearchers, particularly in the interpretation of survey data, “improves the accuracy of findings and the credibility of knowledge gained from research” (52). The research project involved forming a group of 8 children (4 boys and 4 girls ages 10-11 years) as co-researchers capable of interpreting the data gained from the survey. The method was not fully participatory: the theme of the study (educational intervention) and the instrument of investigation (survey) were pre-determined. The primary tasks of the children’s research group was to “(1) provide advice on the research process which principally involved assisting with interpretation of the literature review; (2) to provide insight on the main issues relating to educational underachievement and social disadvantage; and (3) to identify potential services which might address problems” (48). I found this article to be very confusing to read. There are several discussions of the articles of the CRC which seem out of place (i.e., the rights of parents.) The authors also discuss how the children needed to be “assisted in forming their views in addition to being given the opportunity to express their views” (48). This involved several early meetings where children were provided with information about the problems the survey aimed to investigate. The authors do not discuss what these training sessions consisted of or how they may have biased the children’s later expressed “perspectives.” Also, there is not much discussion of the limitations of such a small group of co-researchers. The article seemed to mostly quote best practices (i.e., confidentiality, working in small groups) and concluded with a summary of how the co-researchers helped the authors to interpret the survey findings. The authors, however, provided very little concrete detail

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about the experience of working with child co-researchers other than to say that CRC demands that it be done. The article did have some good ideas on best practices for child-research. These are cited below. Best practices: Working in small groups
Think-pair-share  “This activity was selected because it provides space for children to think about the question being posed; to test their ideas with another child in a pair, before they share their suggestions with the whole group” (49).
Working in small groups  “Working in small groups can facilitate children in forming their views by providing an optimum opportunity for them to talk reflectively with one another and coconstruct ideas with their peers” (49).
Avoid homogenizing children:  “[I]t should be noted that, just as ‘child-friendly’ research methodologies can be criticized for homogenizing children, capacity-building activities need to take account of differences between children” (49). REFERENCE: Maglajlic, Reima Ana. 2004. "Right to know, UNICEF BiH: Developing a communication strategy for the prevention of HIV/AIDS among young people through participatory action research." Child Care in Practice, 10: 127-139. Summary: The article is a summary of activities of a UNICEF-funded project with youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author states at the outset that the youth were “involved in tokenistic ways (i.e. partake in some predefined activities)” (128). Neither the author nor the research team she is writing for appear to be aware of the critiques of “tokenism” as a model of children’s participation developed by Hart and others in childhood studies. The article provides a broad and non-critical overview of youth’s participation in project activities. REFERENCE: Mayall, Berry. 2002. “Introduction” (pp. 1-8) and “Generation and Gender” (pp.159-178) in Towards a Sociology for Childhood: Thinking from Children's Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Summary: Mayall attempts to demonstrate the parallels between women’s experience and children’s experience and argues that children constitute a minority group. Like women, children’s “accounts point to disjunctions, flaws, injustices, and gaps in conceptual schemes and dominant institutions, whereas men’s [and adults’] accounts fit too closely with them… We can assert that child standpoints are essential to giving a good account [of how society works], and are to be considered in relation to adult standpoints” (176). Her aim is to “think from children’s lives, as recounted by them,” in an effort to “help improve the social and political status of childhood” (4). I only read the introductory and concluding chapter to this book, so my assessment is not very fair. I found Mayall’s writing to be a bit dull. She makes some insightful points, like those above, but the “children” that appear in her account do not seem real to me. I did not feel like she 71

applied standpoint theory in a critical way, indeed, it seemed to me like she mistook “subjectivism” for standpoint, as Sprague criticizes. Again, these are preliminary reactions based on limited reading. For example, she makes the following statement: “Children’s own agency in constructing childhoods has to be set in the context of adult power to construct them too – the two kinds of agency are in tension” (162). But did not say anything more on the point. She writes that “her London children” are demanding the three p’s – protection, provision, and participation (164). And then proposes how the state needs to do more to promote a “technological revolution” that will enable “child-led” education. The state also needs to help parents and children have more “flexible” schedules so that they can spend more time together. These all sound like great ideas, but a little bit out there given current political and economic constraints. Mayall does have an excellent quote: “At issue is their ability to make their knowledge known and respected” (174). Her conclusion is also well-stated: “The aim of the sociological enterprise in respect of children and childhood is to provide a reasoned account of how… childhood can be understood as contributory to the social order” (178). I think her underlying goal is to demonstrate children’s moral competence and their capability to participate in the “adult” public sphere. I found her assessment, however, to have more rhetorical strength than theoretical or empirical. I think I need to read other chapters or perhaps more empirical papers to get a better sense of Mayall’s approach. REFERENCE: O’Kane, C. 2000. “The Development of Participatory Techniques: Facilitating Children’s Views and about Decisions which Affect Them,” pp. 136-159 in Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, edited by P. Christensen and A. James. London: Falmer Press. Summary: In this article, O’Kane reviews her use of participatory research techniques with children in a project which aimed to assess children’s experiences in the foster care system in Britain. (O’Kane was part of a research team, although the numbers of people involved are not clear. This is a downside to the article because some of the activities seem like they would require several people.) O’Kane’s major argument is that participatory research methods enable children to play a more active part in determining the themes and pace of research activities. (She describes this as allowing the children to set the research agenda, however, she and her coresearchers determined the research topics and participatory activities to be used, so this seems like an overstatement of what was actually achieved.) In O’Kane’s view, allowing children to have more say in shaping the research experience has two major benefits. First, participatory techniques “aid sensitive interviewing with children” by giving them “more control over what they want to talk about” (154). Second, by “encouraging children… to set the agenda we are more likely to encompass new and more relevant areas of questioning as we proceed” (152). In other words, participatory methods enable children to reveal new topics in need of investigation. O’Kane describes her teams’ adaptation of three participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods for their research project: decision-making pocket chart, pots and beans activity, and diamondranking activity. (Of these three, I found only the first one to be well explained in this article, so I will focus on how it works.) The goal of the activity was to help children reflect on how much say different people had in decisions which affect their lives. It involves making a grid with top axis labeled with “decisions” and the Side axis labeled “what people” (see below). The children identify both important decisions that are made about them (or that they make) and the people

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involved in making those decisions. They then rank “how much say” each person has in each decision as “no say,” “some say,” and “a lot of say.” Example: Decision-making chart of 12-year old boy in foster care Decisions Decisionmaker

Me My social worker My mum My Foster carers My teacher



What time I have to be in 









































When I see my mum

What I should do

Who I should live with

Going into foster care







Legend =  No say,  Some say,  A lot of say O’Kane argues that “the creation of the chart… created a natural space for discussion of more abstract aspects of decision-making processes and the roles different people play in their lives” (143). She uses excerpts from interviews to show how the chart helped the interviewer probe more deeply into these issues with children. Excerpts also reveal that children enjoyed these hands-on, visual methods. In addition to these one-on-one participatory activities, O’Kane’s team also held “activity days” with the child informants. These days were like expanded focus groups. They involved a series of ice-breaking games, participatory research activities, and discussions (in pairs, small groups, and presenting to large group). This activity day seemed like a lot of fun, but also very resource intensive and requiring a lot of coordination amongst co-researchers. O’Kane cautions researchers that PRA-activities are not quick alternatives to ethnographic research, but rather part of the process of creating long-term dialogues between researcher and informants. As she writes: “Contrary to the common criticism of PRA that it is a quick way of doing things, the proper use of participatory approaches encourages dialogue, joint analysis and learning, processes which take time and may be complex. There is a danger that PRA is used as simple technique without recognition of the importance of the additional skills needed by the facilitator, with regard to communication, facilitation, and conflict negotiation skills. It has been found, for example, that the successful use of participatory methods greatly depends on the individuals involved, on the quality of facilitation, and the context in which they are applied” (151).

In addition, O’Kane warns that participatory methods may increase children’s expectations for better services. As she writes: “Transparency is critically important in attempting to conduct good practice in research with children, just as it is one way to tackle the problematic area of expectations with regard to participatory work with children. As Chawla and Kjorholt (1996:45) observe, ‘participation may indeed be an empowering process, but the limits of this power need to be acknowledged in order to make the potential for real achievements clear’” (153).

O’Kane, however, does not discuss how she and her team made their research intentions and process transparent to children, nor does she discuss whether or not she found children’s

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expectations to be raised amongst her research informants and, if so, how the research team dealt with this. Later research on participatory methods in Britain describes disappointment among children who have participated in several activities aiming to reveal their voice, but have seen little change in their day-to-day experience. Further discussion of these issues is necessary. An addition limitations to participatory research methods is that the tension between the researcher’s interest and that of the children. O’Kane mentions that “in choosing to use research techniques which are more responsive to the participants, rather than the researcher’s agenda, the opportunity to gather information in a uniform way is forfeited” (155). However, she does not discuss this issue in depth. This could be important issue, especially given the need by researchers to follow protocols set up in IRB proposals or meet the objectives set out in funding proposals. I gave the article a moderate rating because it presents how participatory techniques give children more control over the themes and pace of research. Like Cindy Dell Clark’s article on visual metaphors, this article (particularly the decision-making chart) demonstrates how these methods improve the interview setting, allowing children to bring up sensitive issues at their own pace, decreasing the power differential between child and interviewer, and providing the children with an opportunity to do something hands-on and, arguably, more fun than “just talking.” However, in the rush to describe the benefits of participatory methods and the three activities as well as the activity day, the author fails to provide a full discussion of the potential problems associated with participatory methods. She hints at some issues (i.e., loss of control over the research topic, raising expectations, and the need for long-term engagement). I think it is necessary for the claim that the participatory methods allow children to set the research agenda needs to be revised. It seemed to be an exaggeration in the case of O’Kane’s research project and obscured a full discussion of these methods’ limitations. Supporting argument(s) and sub-argument(s):
Explanation of James’ 4-part typology of how we see the child: This is a great explanation!  “In her four-fold typology, James (1995) illustrates how the way we ‘see’ children informs the selection of methods and techniques. She describes four models: the developing child, the tribal child, the adult child, and the social child. The ‘developing child’ is seen as incomplete, lacking in status and relatively incompetent whereas the ‘tribal child’ is viewed as competent, part of an independent culture which can be studied in its own right, but not as belonging to the same communicative world as the researcher. Thus, in both these constructions children are unable to have the same status as adults. In contrast, the ‘adult child’ is seen as socially competent in ways comparable to an adult, the ‘social child is seen as having different, though not necessarily inferior social competencies… It was with particular adherence to the ‘social child’ that we approached children in our study. While stressing the uniqueness of children, the ‘social child’ seeks to encapsulate different domains of childhood which, as James (1995) suggests, enables us to develop research techniques which engage more effectively with children, allowing them to participate on their own terms and thereby enabling us to learn more about their experiences of the world” (139).
Participatory methods enable children to communicate in a way that is responsive to their abilities and interests

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 “In recognizing both the biological and structural conditions which structure children’s lives, we need to develop communication strategies which engage children, build upon their own abilities and capabilities, and allow their agenda to take precedence. The use of participatory activities does precisely this” (140).  “It became clear that many children in the middle age-group preferred methods of active communication (doing or moving), rather than passive communication (‘just talking’)” (153).
Importance of getting parents’ and/or adult caretakers’ support  “In seeking to involve children in any participatory activity it is important to gain active support from children’s adult caretakers for it is through this that the child or young person may be given more space and autonomy to make choices about when and how they participate in the research” (154). REFERENCE: Punch, Samantha. 2002. "Research with Children: The same or different from research with adults?" Childhood, 9(3): 321-341. Summary: Punch begins her article by asking “if children are competent social actors, why are special ‘child-friendly’ measures needed to communicate with them?” (321) She argues that “research techniques often thought to be suitable for children can be problematic as well as beneficial” (322) and calls on researchers to “engage in a critical reflection of the use of such ‘child-centered’ methods in order to explore the advantages and disadvantages of how they work in practice and the implications for analysis of the different kinds of data generated” (323). She argues that researchers should be careful to assume their methods are “child-friendly” as there are a diversity of children, just like there are a diversity of adults, and no one research strategy is appropriate for all children. The bulk of Punch’s article is an assessment of 5 task-based methods that she used in research with 37 children (age 8-14 years-old) in Bolivia. In addition to these task-based methods, Punch strongly recommends combining traditional field research methods with taskbased methods. “By using ‘adult’ research methods, such as participant observation and interviews,” she writes, “children can be treated in the same way as adults and display their competencies. Thus they are not being patronized by using only special ‘child-friendly’ techniques” (330). She also argues that traditional methods, particularly participant observation, help a researcher build a relationship with children. This is important because “the nature of childhood in adult society means that children are used to having to try to please adults, and they may fear adults’ reactions to what they say. Time needs to be invested to form a relationship and gain their trust” (328). The 5 task-based methods that Punch assesses are drawing, photographs, PRA (participatory rural appraisal)-adapted activities, diaries, and worksheets. She found the drawings to work well as warm-up, particularly with younger children. But she also noticed that the kids often copied classmates who were deemed better drawers. Many children were self-conscious about their lack of drawing ability. Being rural Bolivians with no electricity, many had little experience seeing drawn images. Some copied images from their school text books. Punch warned researchers not to over interpret drawings. Children were more comfortable with cameras and taking pictures, although some adults in the community disapproved of giving children expensive equipment to use and then taking it away. Punch struggled with the fact that she had helped children develop a

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skill they were proud of (taking photos) but then provided them no means of how to realize this skill in their everyday lives. She also warns researchers that even though children are asked to photograph their everyday lives, many took pictures of spontaneous events, such as a fight. These photos may give a distorted view of the everyday. What seemed to work best were the PRA-adapted activities. Punch used two PRA activities: spider diagrams and activity tables. The spider diagrams help children to document their mobility within and outside the community. While the activity tables elicit children’s description of the range of activities and work that they engage in and the amount of time they dedicate to each. Diaries were popular among some of the children, with several recording their daily activities for up to two months. Other children, however, were not as interested in filling these out. Some parents also disapproved of the amount of time children worked on these. Lastly, Punch prepared 8 worksheets for the children to fill-out in the class-room during the research period. These worksheets consisted of open ended questions on school, community, family, work, and aspirations. (On p. 335 Punch lists the questions, a good reference.) Punch does admit that younger children had a harder time completing these worksheets. But she does not assess gender or other differences in regards to children’s capability or interest in filling out the questionnaires. I liked this article because it described each task-based method in some detail and gave a preliminary assessment of its strengths and weaknesses in practice. Punch, however, did not address how she analyzed these data. This was a big disappointment. It seems to me that researchers will need to develop some type of systematic practice for analyzing this data. I would have liked to see Punch begin to develop that discussion. Also, in recommending the combination of task-based and traditional research methods, Punch writes that “the challenge is to strike a balance between not patronizing children and recognizing their competencies, while maintaining their enjoyment of being involved with the research and facilitating their ability to communicate their view of the world” (337). (She prefers to call these methods “task-based methods” rather than the “patronizing term ‘child-friendly’” (337).) She does not, however, discuss at what point it is appropriate to implement either taskbased or traditional methods. For example, is there an appropriate sequence of activities? Also, her methods were classroom based. She does not discuss the relationship with the teachers, or whether it is possible to use “task-based” methods outside the classroom. REFERENCE: Roche, Jeremy. 1999. "Children: Rights, Participation and Citizenship." Childhood, 6(4): 475493. Summary: Roche aims to ground the children’s rights movement in a political philosophy perspective and asks what a growing recognition of children’s agency and competence means for the debate over citizenship. He outlines the rhetorical use of children by the welfare state to advance the development of the health and education systems. But argues that alongside children’s growing rhetorical value “there is much evidence to suggest that the social citizenship of children has been eroded over the last 20 years by a dramatic increase in poverty” (480). He argues that we need to move away from problematizing children as “trouble or in trouble” and develop a “proper regard for the contributions and insights of children in the here and now” (486). Roche grounds his analysis in a brief discussion of political philosophy and the debate in that field over individual and social rights. He argues that the children’s rights movement pushes

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theorist to think beyond the civil rights/social responsibilities dichotomy and recognize that rights are less about state-citizen relationships than about a recognition of our social interdependencies. “Once we see rights as expressing, in particular and contested forms, social forms,” he writes, “the children’s rights movement can be seen as an attempt to rethink the relations of civil society and the public/private divide: as a challenge to accepted ways of thinking about adult-child relations and family-life” I really liked Roche’s simple definition of participation: “Participation is about being counted as a member of the community” (484). Roche points to research that demonstrates that children as young as 9 have the moral competence and reasoning capacities of adults. Research also shows that treating children with respect has instrumental value as it increases their reasoning skills and encourages them to take more responsibility. This leads him to ask: “If older children are no longer to be distinguished from adults on the basis of a presumed intellectual and cognitive inferiority, on what basis can we routinely exclude children from full participation in the life of the community to which they belong? (482) Roche calls for children to be granted “partial citizenship” and given opportunities and spaces for participating in communal decision-making processes. In his view, older children in particular should be incorporated more into the political community. “No one is arguing that children are identical to adults or that they should enjoy exactly the same bundle of civil and political rights as adults,” he writes. “What is being argued is that children are social being too, they are social actors and have much to contribute here and now” (487). Roche also urges theorists and policymakers to stop portraying children as victims or threats as this rhetoric fails to encourage respect for children’s agency and competency. Roche seems to be calling for a cultural change (although he doesn’t call it that specifically) in which adults recognize children’s moral competence. “The acquisition of voice itself is not enough,” he writes. “We need to get beyond the culture of disrespect if not outright hostility towards young people in particular” (488). I also liked this quote, although Roche doesn’t expand much on the idea: “Children have to start from where they are socially positioned. This means that they have to make their own space in spaces not of their making” (479). Roche’s article recognizes how political rhetoric and adult-centered notions of citizenship and rights serve to act as constraints upon children’s agency and limits their ability to realize their human potential in the “here and now.” REFERENCE: Sinclair, R. 2004. "Participation in Practice: Making it Meaningful, Effective, and Sustainable." Children and Society, 18: 106-118. Summary: In this article, Sinclair expresses concern that the concept of participation lacks precision. She notes that a great deal of varied activities claim to be participatory, but that there is little systematic review of what participation means in practice, its long-term impact on child participants, and its ability to effect organizational or policy change. Her article is more directed at program managers or practitioners, than researchers, but she makes some good points. Her goal is to start of discussion amongst child workers and researchers and to promote more participatory organizational cultures. As she writes:“if participation is to be more meaningful to children and effective in influencing change, it is necessary to move beyond one-off or isolated

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participation and consider how participation becomes embedded as an integral part of our relationship with children” (106). She attempts to make participation more precise by defining, in her view, its four key dimensions: 1. Level of participation (or degrees of power sharing): Sinclair critiques Hart’s participation ladder for suggesting “a hierarchy with the objective of striving for the topmost rung. Different levels may be appropriate for different tasks… These models highly the need to understand and distinguish different levels of empowerment afforded to children” (109). 2. The focus of decision-making in which children may be involved: For example, service planning and service development, policymaking or advocacy, organizational change, evaluation of services, etc. 3. The nature of the participation activity. 4. The children and young people involved: Researchers must consider that “what is appropriate for one group may not suit another; it is necessary to design forms of dialogue and engagement that start from the position of the child, whatever their age or ability” (109). She then moves on to describe seven issues for reflection and debate by childhood researchers employing participatory methods: 1. Clarity of purpose: “The first imperative for any participatory activity is clarity about its purpose. Why are we doing it? What are we seeking to achieve, short term and long term? What is in it for children? There is no single model [of participation] to follow – the method or level must match the purpose and the context.” You should ask yourself the following: a. “Are you ready to take children’s views into account? b. Does your decision-making process enable you to take children’s views into account? c. Is it a policy requirement that children’s views be given due weight in decisionmaking?” (111) 2. Which children are included?: “Despite the growth of participation activity there is still limited evidence on who is involved, and more importantly, who is not involved” (112). Researchers should ask themselves: a. “How do the processes and mechanisms that [you] use influence who gets involved and who gets excluded?” b. Does representativeness matter? 3. How do we interpret what children are saying?: Sinclair recommends methods where researchers develop longer-term relationships with their child informants. As she writes, “participation will be more effective when it is seen as a process and not an event” (113). 4. Locating children’s views along the views of other stakeholders: Too often, children’s views are solicited but not acted upon. Sinclair warns that children may soon become disillusioned with the participation agenda, suffering from “consultation fatigue.” Sinclair calls for “greater honesty about the purpose of participation activity and whose agenda it is serving and about the potential for children’s view to influence change; for participation to become embedded within organizations, part of the mainstream, rather than an isolated or marginal activity” (113-4).

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5. Making participation more meaningful: Sinclair urges organizations to “build cultures of participation” and “move from being consultation-focused to participation-focused to child-focused” (114). 6. Assessing the impact of children’s participation: Sinclair calls for more monitoring and evaluation of participatory activities, including evaluations that consider “how do we ensure the widest representation of children; what processes, in what situations, do children find most meaningful; and what approaches help to bring about sustainable change” (115). 7. Appropriate ethical standards: Sinclair calls for a “child-focused” approach to ethics which respects and values children. (116) This article makes some very interesting points and definitely begins to open up a more complex view of what participation means in practice for children and for the organizations that serve them. It is a definite advancement over some of the more non-critical cheerleader articles. However, it was a bit choppy (two big long lists) and fails to describe what a “child-focused” “culture of participation” – what Sinclair urges child organizations to become – would look like. Memorable Quotes:
UNCRC places children’s right to participation alongside their need for protection and provision. “In doing so it goes a considerable way to deflect the former paternalistic notions that accepting responsibility for someone resulted in taking responsibility away from them” (107). REFERENCE: Thomas, N. and O’Kane, C. 1998. “The Ethics of Participatory Research with Children,” Children and Society, 12: 336-348. Summary: Thomas and O’Kane are real cheerleaders for participation. The first line of the abstract is: “Ethical problems in research involving direct contact with children can be overcome with a participatory approach.” The authors describe how they operationalized participation in their research. First, they gave the consent process extensive attention. Each child received a packet of materials and audio tapes explaining the research process. If they were interested in participating in the project, the child was to work with their care-taker to fill out an information sheet which further explained consent and privacy. Children were repeatedly given the opportunity to withdraw consent at any point. The authors call this an “active agreement.” Second, the researchers did not begin with research questions set in stone. They developed a set of activities, such as stories, drawings, games and an “activity day” (a day long workshop that was like an extended focus group with games and other activities), that enabled the children to “choose subjects for discussion and decide what they wanted to say about them” (345). In addition, multiple interviews allowed the children them to review and refine what they had said. And group processes created “space” for “collective” interpretation of research questions and preliminary findings. The authors conclude: “The use of these participatory techniques greatly assisted in breaking down imbalances of power, not only by giving children greater control over the agenda and more time and space to talk about the issues that concern them, but also by creating an atmosphere in which there were no right or wrong answers and even some opportunities for children to interpret and explain their own data” (343).

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Thomas and O’Kane argue that this participatory approach is empowering because, “rather than reinforce views of children’s incompetence by portraying them as victims, … [it] allow[s] us to explore children’s capacities, needs, and interests from their own points of view” (346). They call for further development of participatory methods. My only problem with this article is that the authors do a poor job of assessing the limitations or problems in their approach. Everything seemed to work great, though we never get a sense of the empirical value (descriptions of children’s situations, children’s voices on specific topics, etc.) that emerged from this work. The authors clearly employed a thoroughly participative and creative approach – we just don’t get a sense of when and where this approach is most effective. REFERENCE: Torre, Maria Elena and Michelle Fine. 2006. "Participatory Action Research (PAR) by Youth." Pp. 456-462 in Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia, edited by L. R. Sherrod, C. A. Flanagan, R. Kassimir, and A. K. Syvertsen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company. Summary: This article is a brief encyclopedia entry defining the outcomes of and guidelines for conducting participatory action research (PAR) by youth. Torre and Fine also provide 1-2 paragraph descriptions of 10 youth-led PAR projects in the U.S. (pp. 458-461). The authors’ take the emancipatory or radical approach to PAR, writing that “participatory action research projects are radical strategies rooted in the ‘soil of discontent,’ generated in response to oppressive conditions of struggle” (462). They also claim that PAR has the capacity to generate radical social change and argue that they have witnessed PAR projects that have “prick[ed] the ‘psychic amnesia’ that has infected America” (462). Torre and Fine point out that in youth-led PAR projects, youth may work alone or with adults. However, if adults participate, they must come to the table willing to learn. As they write, all research collaborators (including adults) “come to the research table simultaneously bearing intellectual and experiential gifts and in need of further education on the tools of research” (461). Torre and Fine describe youth-led PAR projects as involving youth in all stages of research. As they write: “Across research settings youth engaged in PAR are active collaborators in every aspect of the research. Alone or together with adults the name the ‘problems’; frame the inquiry; create the measures, surveys, interview schedules, and focus-group protocols; conduct participant observation and archival searches; analyze and interpret the data; create the research products; write up reports; and present to audiences of community members, academics, and policymakers” (460).

One of Torre and Fine’s unique contributions to the PAR literature is their discussion of the role of diversity within the research group and setting. Torre and Fine argue that PAR processes must acknowledge diversity in the distribution of power and privilege within the group and work toward using these differences to create change from within. As the authors write: “This underscores a respect for knowledge embedded in diversity within the group and the need for a common language of research so that all can participate as equally as possible. When PAR collectives are organized as ‘contact zones’ as purposely diverse communities that explicitly acknowledge power and privilege within the group… and use these differences as resources to further the social justice agenda of the research, there is the potential to produce research that is optically layered, that addresses issues that otherwise might be left uninterrogated, that pushes the boundaries considered comfortable, and that explodes categories once thought to be ‘normal’” (461).

Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:

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Definition of PAR emphasizes process of co-learning:  “Participatory action research is a methodological stance rooted in the belief that knowledge is produced in collaboration and action: that those ‘studied’ have knowledge and must be repositioned as subjects, architects, of research” (457).
PAR guidelines: (See #5, Torre and Fine’s unique contribution)  “While there is no “official” set of PAR guidelines, as participatory work is by nature a process that grows and evolves out of the concerns of the research collective and their communities, there are some fundamental principles, which include the following: 1. “Commitment to research as a tool of social struggle designed toward revealing radical possibilities – a perspective critical of ‘what is’ and demanding ‘what must be’… 2. “Understanding of the importance of participation with, not only for, community; and refusal to research on communities… 3. “Acknowledgement that intellectually powerful and searing social commentary is very often developed at the bottom of social hierarchies… 4. “Recognition that local customs and practices are profound sites for possible learning, shared engagement, and long term social change and therefore must be incorporated into the practice of participatory research… 5. “Insistence on analyzing power dynamics and social-positionality within the research collective and analyzing dissonance and dissent as potential sites of knowledge rather than silencing them… 6. “Commitment to collectively addressing questions of audience, product, and what is left behind once the research is incomplete. In this spirit, creating a legacy of inquiry, a process of change, and material resources to enable transformation are commonly understood to be crucial to the PAR project” (458).

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SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD REFERENCE: Boyden, Jo. 1997. "Childhood and the Policy Makers: A Comparative Perspective on the Globalization of Childhood." Pp. 190-229 in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, edited by A. James and A. Prout. London: Falmer Press. Summary: In this book chapter, Boyden describes the “core ideology [of childhood] in the South” and explores “the historical origins of this ideal,” its global export, and its impact on children, especially children of the poor (190). The chapter is broken into two section: the first part originally written in 1990 and the post-script written for the 1997 edition of the book which comments on what happened in the years following the 1989 ratification on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The post-script is more interesting part of the piece and my summary focuses on that section. Boyden is concerned that universal human rights approaches as well as the one-size-fits-all policies that follow from the global ideology of the child ignore the social, cultural, and economic realities of children and due to this ignorance often have harmful consequences for the children of the poor. She calls on policymakers to turn away from universal human rights discourse and toward an appreciation for research which reveals children’s perspectives and attends in a detailed way to their lived experience. As she writes: “The point is that the human rights discourse tends to detract from careful ethnography, as often as not calling forth simple explanations and solutions, many of which are inappropriate and ineffectual” (220). The section below highlights some of Boyden supporting arguments for this position: Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Negative consequences of child-labor ban: Conclusion = No shortcuts in achieving children’s rights  US legislation banned importation of products from foreign industries that employed children 15 years or younger  A follow-up study found that children that were pushed out from their employment in the garment sector due to this law were worse off than children still working in the industry in a number of ways: They moved into employment in more dangerous or exploitative sectors, they had higher rates of malnutrition and chronic disease, and none attended school. Boyden writes: “For these children there was never really a choice between employment and schooling since they were obliged for economic reasons to work” (222).  “It is evident that the best interests of the garment children in Bangladesh were not served by an intervention which was ultimately based on a set of assumptions far removed from the children’s reality. This highlights that there are no short cuts in achieving children’s rights, and that applying solutions which have been developed elsewhere and in a different context can make a mockery of the underlying intentions of the Convention” (222).
Work is not necessarily harmful to children. Children and families choose for children to work for practical reasons. Work and school are not incompatible.

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 No evidence that work is a damaging experience for children. “In many societies, in rural areas particularly, work is and has always been a traditional activity of childhood and it may be fundamental to the transmission of skills and knowledge between generations” (211). “What is harmful is child involvement in work processes that impede normal development and health, and child labor that is exploitative” (211).  Poverty does not cause child labor. Ethnographic studies reveal that many parents prefer that their children work in order to learn a trade. In addition, the low quality of education and the lack of opportunities for skilled employment contribute to children and families’ negative attitudes toward schooling.
School may have negative consequences.  Many children are illiterate even after completing primary school.  “Thus, for many children, schooling acts neither as a channel of upward social mobility nor as an instrument of social change and personal development but as yet another medium of social control. Worse still, it can further disadvantage the poor child by acting as a drain on income and undermining the direct transmission of culture” (213).
Policymakers need to listen to children: “It is incumbent upon social planners to listen to and learn from children directly” (223).
Boyden rejects universal approaches to children’s rights and welfare. Advocates for alternative approach that emphasizes children’s perspectives, acknowledges cultural, social and economic contexts, and employs flexible frameworks for achieving children’s rights.  “Globalization certainly creates new awareness, but it also makes explicit the contrasting norms and values of local and global models, generating a sense that things local are morally superior and leading to the rejection of things global” (219). Boyden warns that this may lead to conservative or fundamentalist backlash against global rights approaches.  Alternative = “a flexible framework that brings cultures together around children’s rights and children’s welfare rather than an instrument of censure endorsing a single model of childhood. In this vision cultures are allowed some latitude to proceed towards the global goal in their own way and in their own time, solutions are negotiated and not imposed and children assume an active role in these negotiations” (224).  “If globalization is to become an opportunity for children to grow and develop in security and respect and with access to all the benefits and services that are their right, the Convention needs to pay due regard to children’s own views and to their culture and economic condition, for chances are that strict enforcement of a universal set of values without proper contextualization may have unforeseen adverse consequences for children” (224). REFERENCE: Qvortrup, Jens. 1994. "Childhood Matters: An Introduction." Pp. 1-23 in Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice, and Politics, edited by J. Qvortrup, M. Bardy, G. Sgritta, and H. Wintersberger. Aldershot: Avebury.

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Summary: This article is the introductory chapter of an edited book written about the contributors’ research in a project called “childhood as a social phenomenon.” This chapter is frequently cited as a foundational piece in the new sociology of childhood. Qvortup notes that “children often [are] denied the right to speak for themselves, either because they are held incompetent in making judgments or because they are thought of as unreliable witnesses about their own lives” (2). He argues that children should be “granted children the conceptual fairness to focus directly on their own use of time and space” (7). In addition, children should be treated “as ‘human beings’ rather than ‘human becomings,’” and childhood should be analyzed “as one among other structural forms, which continuously interact with other structural forms in society” (4). Perhaps one of Qvortrup strongest arguments is his recognition that children are dependent on adults. This dependency is an inevitable fact (he is not arguing for children’s emancipation) and means that researchers need to pay attention to the varieties of child-adult relationships. As Qvortrup writes: “One cannot deny the asymmetrical power-relationship between adulthood and childhood. In this sense, children are as a matter of fact – justified or not – dependent on adults. This fact is difficult to change because by adults it is believed to be part of a natural order. Therefore, from a sociology of knowledge point of view, dependency on adults is a reality, which defines childhood. Given this complication, it becomes our task to delineate the forms dependency, power and authority take and to suggest their limits of justification by envisaging the activities of children and the position of childhood” (5).

Qvortrup is pointing researchers towards cross-case comparisons of children’s vulnerabilities and capacities in different social, cultural, and economic situations. He also hints at a critique of Western forms of childhood. For example, he begins to develop a critique of “too much protection” of children, which later becomes a common theme in European childhood studies. As he writes: “There is no doubt that [protection] is very often extremely relevant, but there is at the same time an inherent risk of exaggerating it and to the extent this happens it may turn into its opposite, namely a convenient tool to protect the adult world against intrusion of children… So [children’s] marginalization may be protective, but it may also at the same time – or alternatively – be paternalistic” (21). REFERENCE: Thorne, Barrie. 1987. "Re-visioning Women and Social Change: Where are the Children?" Gender & Society, 1(1): 85-109. Summary: This is one of the foundational articles for the “new” sociology of childhood. In it, Thorne argues that as feminists granted “women conceptual autonomy and [placed] them at the center of study” (86); “we need a similar re-visioning of children; their full lives, experiences, and agency have been obscured by adult standpoints” (86). Thorne begins by summarizing the theoretical and empirical advances of feminist work, demonstrating how “women have been revisioned as active, speaking subjects” in “varied economic, family, cultural, and social contexts” (88). She then describes the traditional ways children are envisioned: as threats to adults, as victims of adults, or as products of socialization. Commenting on the ideological constructions of children as victim or threat, Thorne writes: “Neither portrayal allows much room for understanding children’s consciousness and actions within their sometimes difficult circumstances. Our current images of agency are deeply adult centered” (91). Thorne then moves on to a more prolonged discussion of child socialization (see quotes below). She concludes this discussion by calling on researchers to acknowledge “the effects of

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structural constraints and the importance of children’s subordination, [while also] grant[ing] children agency and… attend[ing] to gender, race, and class, as well as to age” (101). The goal is to challenge the ideological singularity of the child” (101). Thorne concludes the article with a brief discussion of limits or dangers involved in granting “conceptual autonomy” to women and children. She cites the New Right’s attack on the women’s movement as an example. The New Right uses children’s issues (the ideology of children as threat or victim) to blame women for not attending to their “traditional duties” in the home. Thorne argues that by paying attention to the “child-side” of the women as mother ideology, feminists will have new tools for discrediting this myth. As she writes, “Improved understanding of children, in all their diversity and in varied institutional contexts, will strengthen feminist visions of and strategies for social change” (104). Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Research Question: “How can we bring children more fully into our understanding of social life, including processes of social change?” (86)
Critique of ideological constructions of children as victim or threat:  “Within sociological, feminist, and popular thought, children rarely appear on public agendas unless they are defined as a social problem. Adults do the defining, using imagery that vacillates between two sometimes interrelated poles: children as a threat to adult society and children as victims of adults. In both views, the experiences of children are filtered through adult concerns” (89).
Critique of child socialization paradigm:  “Adults are understood by their present actions and experiences in the world; children are understood more by their becoming, as adults-in-the-making” (93).  Several studies “organize their insights around the theme of children’s active participation in the processes of socialization… Because these studies are richly empirical and allow for the agency of children, their discoveries spill beyond the conceptual container of socialization. But other lines of interpretation are not developed. The socialization framework has the effect of translating doing into learning, locating experience in abstracted developmental rather than in historical time, and conveying a preoccupation with the reproduction of adult social order. Studies of socialization are useful, but limiting; w understanding children” (94). Frameworks for understanding children” (94).  “Some researchers have dislodged the conventional socialization framework by turning it on its head, asking not how adults shape children, but rather how children influence adults… Studies of this kind challenge the assumption that adults are selfsufficient and complete; they also indicate that adult-child relations may involve considerable mutual influence” (94-5).
Exemplary studies of childhood:  “In these studies, children are not defined as undergoing socialization, but rather as human actors negotiating within and sometimes resisting institutional structures – schools, families, wage labor. These studies emphasize both agency and structure; they bridge between public and private institutions; they trace complex and sometimes contradictory intersections of class, gender, race, and age” (101).
Critique of ideological constructions of childhood in general:  “Ideological constructions both shape and distort the varieties of lived experience. By uncovering gender ideologies and questioning their assumptions… feminists have

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cleared space for examining the actual, enormously varied experiences of women. If we turn fuller attention to the ‘child’ side of these ideologies, we would also clear space for better understanding of their enormously varied experiences” (97-8).  “In short, we need fuller understanding of the social contexts in which different ideological constructions of children are evoked, the effects of adult definitions on children’s own experience of themselves, and more attention to children’s abilities to act within and upon the world” (98). REFERENCE: Thorne, Barrie. 2009. "'Childhood': Changing and Dissonant Meanings." International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(1): 19-27. Summary: In this brief article, Thorne reviews some of the latest work in childhood studies, focusing on research on children’s relationships with consumer culture, digital technologies, and consumption. Her central argument is that the “term ‘childhood’ should be deployed with careful reflection about its multiple and shifting valances of meaning.” (26) She warns that “in the English-speaking world, childhood has come to be framed as a thing or possession that may be given, lost, stolen or even disappear… [T]he reification of childhood as a relatively stable ‘thing’ fuels dichotomous thinking and glosses ambiguity, ideological struggle, cultural variation, and historical transformation” (19). In her view, the best research on childhood pays careful attention to these latter contextual factors. She calls for “more care in the use of age terms and the questioning of reified and unitary notions of childhood help in transcending the pitfalls of dualistic thinking.” On the latter note, Thorne welcomes contributions that “critique dualisms – vulnerable versus competent, dependent versus autonomous, needs versus rights.” She also praises working that draws “upon feminist theories of care and relationality, [and] emphasize human interdependence and the persistence of vulnerability and needs, as well as autonomy through the life course.” (26). She reminds researchers that “awareness of the varied circumstances in which children grow up undermines any singular image of ‘contemporary childhood,’ especially if one takes a global perspective” (24). Supporting arguments for her thesis are below: Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Assertions that childhood is under threat or being transformed by digital technology are informed by a class-biased ideology of childhood:  Thorne critiques the idea that children are “naturally” adept at digital technology or that technology is changing childhood. “Children are not born as savvy users of digital technologies. The skills learned, interest and access are unevenly distributed, and young people may take to the media in part because designers and marketers spend a great deal of effort and money trying to lure them in that direction” (22-3).  “But not everyone, young or old, is equally facile with [digital] technologies, and, for economic reasons, large segments of the global population have little or minimal access to computers. Popular mappings of generational change tend to be drawn with class privilege at the center” (22).
The wide availability of children’s consumer culture obscures social inequalities:  “Because commercialized children’s culture, including access to mass media, is widely accessible, it tends to obscure widening and racialized gaps between rich and

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poor. Fantasies of childhood, inscribed in many forms of popular culture, should not be equated with the sometimes harsh circumstances of action children’s lives” (23).  “During the past five decades commercial culture, consumption, and mass media have become central sites of struggle over who children are and where how and with whom they should spend their days” (24). REFERENCE: Wells, Karen. 2009. Children in a Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Summary: In this book, Wells provides a historical and comparative perspective on the lives of children across the globe. In the opening chapter, she reviews the approaches to child studies by historians, sociologists and geographers and also provides a brief history of international efforts to “govern” childhood. She criticizes these approaches for being dominated by accounts of North American or European childhoods and promoting the Western model of childrearing. As she writes: “This book is structured around the argument that a particular model of childhood, one that originates in contemporary Western ideas about what it means to be human and what differentiates children from adults, is being globalized through international instruments. This model of childhood constructs healthy childhood as one that orientates the child towards independence rather than interdependence, towards school-based rather than work-based learning, and separates them from the wider forces of politics, economy, and society. I call this model of childhood the neoliberal model because of the compatibility between liberal ideas than value independence, rational choice, and autonomy and the concept of childhood inscribed in this model” (4).

According to Wells, international efforts to govern childhood fail to appreciate local values and conditions across the globe. As she writes: “A key problem… is that to construct a body of law to deal with ‘the child’ presupposes that there is universal agreement on what a child is and what children need to flourish… [A]n agreement across cultural and national borders about what children’s capacities and vulnerabilities are, and what states and societies should be morally obligated to do for children, is far from assured” (24).

Moreover, the emphasis on child rights has ignored the ways that children’s access to protection, provision, and participation is stratified by race, class, gender, and region. As she writes: “The unevenness of the shift to protected or sheltered childhoods draws attention to the need for multiple histories that describe and illuminate how the experience of childhood has been shaped by race, class, gender and region” (7). On the same note, Wells’ criticizes sociology of childhood for adopting a “child standpoint” perspective because the standpoint approach privileges children’s age-based identities over the raced, classed, and gendered ones. In her words: “Feminist standpoint theory has been criticized for its implicit assumption that women’s life experiences are not radically fractured or cut across by other social locations, particularly ‘race’ and class. The same critique can be made against the child standpoint theory – that it emphasizes the common, age-based and generational experience of being a child over the way that experience is shaped by children’s raced and classed identities and locations” (15).

Moreover, Wells is critical of the participatory methods that the sociology of childhood has adopted from feminism. As she writes: “Child standpoint theory shares with participatory methods of child-research the problem that the researchers working with children are not

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themselves children, a fact that stretches the coherence of both standpoint theory and participatory methods almost to the breaking point” (15-16). Wells also is very critical of the emphasis in human and economic development literature on schooling. She notes in the following quote that children are being pushed into poorly resourced schools that are unable to provide them access to better-paying jobs. Schools thus are recreating class-based disadvantage: “The emphasis on getting children in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to attend school is not without its problems. Leaving work to attend school for most children in most of the world involves leaving familybased employment, typically in agriculture, or the family home to attend a poorly resourced school with barely qualified teachers where the teaching methods largely rely on rote-learning. Most children who do enroll in primary school will leave before completing the four years of education that is generally considered the minimum necessary to retain functional literacy. Smaller numbers of children will go to high school and even smaller numbers on to university. The myth universal schooling is that children are select to continue their education on the bases of ability. In practice whether or not children progress through different levels of education is largely dependent on their class… All of these problems are well recognized by educationalists, yet the expansion of compulsory schooling is assumed to be the single most important indicator of a country’s ability to achieve economic growth and development” (95).

She argues in the following quote that the global economy is individualizing children’s responsibility for their economic wellbeing, but not providing them access to less vulnerable livelihoods. Rather, inequality is being “reconfigured” in new ways: “As the local economy changes under the dual action of the national state and the expansion of global capitalism, it becomes increasingly difficult for working children to learn the knowledge and skills that the state needs them to have if they are to participate in this new configuration of the global and the local. The skills and knowledge and indeed the subjectivity that a child learns in a family-based economy, particularly a rural economy, become increasingly redundant and anachronistic… The promise of education is that children will be able to be judged on their intellectual merit as individuals – their access to desirable work only being limited by their own ability to gain qualifications. For most (but of course not all) children this will turn out to be a hollow promise, since the insertion of national economies into the global economy does nothing to erode inequality but simply reconfigures it in new ways” (116).

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EXAMPLES OF RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN REFERENCE: Admassie, A. 2003. "Child Labour and Schooling in the Context of a Subsistence Rural Economy: Can They Be Compatible?" International Journal of Educational Development, 23: 167-185. Summary: This article used data from a household survey in Ethiopia to estimate the impact of children’s participation in household labor on their schooling. I gave it a low mark because it did not really fit with the objectives of the course or take an innovative, child-centered approach to research. The author does call for the development of more child-relevant variables in household survey research. However, I did not like how the author repeatedly said that “education” was “the best weapon” to “combat child labor.” This does not appreciate the findings cited by Woodhead, Boyden, etc. that child labor and education are not “either/or” options for poor children in many contexts. This article did have one really good quote; unfortunately the author did not follow up on it: “Very little is known about the magnitude, nature, and distribution of child labor within the context of subsistence rural economies. Information on whether child work and school attendance are necessarily inherently incompatible or whether the two activities could sometimes be compatible is lacking. A holistic approach that considers schooling in conjunction with child work is essential to formulate policies that will encourage greater educational attainment for children in subsistence economies” (169).

REFERENCE: Ansell, Nicola. 2005. “Schooling and Education.” Children, Youth, and Development. London: Routledge. Summary: This is a chapter from a book. Given the style of writing, it appears intended for an undergraduate audience. The chapter briefly reviews statistical data on education in the Third World, provides an overview of the theoretical approaches to education and development, notes some of the severe challenges of education in poor communities, and discusses alternative schooling formats, like vocational education and community pre-schools. No topic is considered in depth. Ansell highlights three theoretical approaches: (1) The economistic or human capital approach to education. This approach calculates the benefits of schooling to the individual (cognitive development, skills) and to society (better overall health, economic capacities, “self control”). This view also supports girls’ education. In addition to the social benefits of lowering fertility, supporters of this approach note that girls receive a higher wage premium than boys do (boys often have access to highly paid physical labor, despite their level of education). (2) Critical views of education. Ansell cites Althusser’s theory that schools are a mechanism of discipline which creates a compliant workforce and Illich’s argument that schooling encourages consumption. As Ansell writes, critical education research reveals that “the wider power relations in which schools operate and young people study constrain education’s capacity for social transformation” (139). (3) Critical pedagogy. Here, Ansell discusses Freire’s approach to alternative pedagogies focused on consciousness-raising and “encouraging young people to resist oppression and transform society” (139). Below I quote Ansell’s observations on the problems of school dropout and repetition:

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“International concern has focused on primary schooling, partly because primary education is perceived to bring the widest social benefits at the lowest costs. Nonetheless, political pressure (not least from large numbers of primary school graduates who expect to proceed to secondary school) has resulted in the most rapid enrolment expansion being at secondary and especially tertiary levels. Enrolment is also uneven within each cycle. In many Third World countries, enrolment begins relatively high, but many children never proceed beyond the first year of school. The first year of each cycle is often swollen by the presence of children repeating the year. Dropout rates are often high, relatively few children remaining in school at the end of the cycle” (133).

REFERENCE: Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham. 2008. "Introduction: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth." Pp. 3-23 in Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham, eds. Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research. Summary: This book grew out of a conference on globalization and children and youth. The introductory chapter summarizes the book’s approach to globalization and introduces some of the major arguments by the authors of the other chapters. Cole and Durham explain that the all of the authors found it necessary to shift analysis of globalization and youth from emphasis on theorizing spatial relations to one that theorizes temporal relations. As the authors write, “The role of youth and children in remaking of place is surely important, but most current analyses fail to take sufficient account of the temporal nature of youth and childhood” (5). Cole and Durham argue that the globalization of children and youth practices, institutions, and imaginary is re-shaping the life course. As they write: “Discourses of, and practices by, youth and children bring the new temporal conjunctions of globalization into relationship with people’s negotiation of the life course” (3-4). In order to conceptualize the impact on the life course, the authors provide a three part definition of the ‘future’: “We conceive of the ‘future’ as (1) how the future is imagined through specific representations of temporality, (2) how one orients oneself and others to it through sentiments like hope or anxiety and their relationship to risk, and (3) how one substantively creates it by designing and normalizing new kinds of practices. A common theme in all the chapters is the sense that youth practices – by which we mean the actions undertaken by young people and by people and institutions concerning youth – are fraught with risk and uncertainty and are, in the phrase often invoked during the seminar, on the cusp of success and failure” (11-12).

In summarizing the findings from other chapters in the book, the Cole and Durham draw on this definition of the future, noting how imaginaries of the future shapes young peoples’ orientations toward school, politics, and others. As they write: “Youth struggle with the new social contract, which was created one hundred years ago to protect them from the vagaries of the market. US youth understand that the new conditions of flexible capital mean that they must work harder and regularly retool in order to meet the needs of the market… Hope is inscribed in [young people’s] attitudes toward education and the political field; it is neither passive nor dependent on outside agencies. Among disadvantaged young people in America, hope is embodied in their determined belief that hard work and personal moral choices produce one’s future… [However,] hope is also paired with anxiety, self-doubt, and enormous risk because young people can see, all around them in America, those who have failed – the unemployed, the homeless, the eternally dependent” (17).

Cole and Durham also take a critical approach toward child-centered studies that fail to theorize children’s in relation to adults and socio-economic and cultural contexts. As they write:

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“Much recent work has argued that it is important to study young people not as adults in the making… but as active agents who create cultural forms in the here and now that are worthy of scholarly attention… In many ways, this argument was a valuable analytical move because it freed scholars to consider aspects of children and youth’s lives apart from adult concerns. The irony is that it champions the perspective of children and youth but increases the likelihood that we will ignore the more general kinds of insights gained from taking children and youth as a site for social and cultural inquiry” (21).

REFERENCE: Durham, Deborah. 2008. "Apathy and Agency: The Romance of Agency and Youth in Botswana." Pp. 151-178 in Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham, eds. Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research. Summary: In this book chapter, Durham criticizes the notion that Botswana youth are “apathetic” by questioning the underlying assumption embedded in the idea of agency. As she writes, “by examining the concept of youth agency more closely, we can free the concept of agency from is narrower association with free will and liberalist autonomy” (151). Durham argues that “Botswana’s apathetic youth are… enacting other forms of agency. To understand their agency, we cannot rely upon unexamined Western models of youth or agency” (157). Durham defines agency as an individual’s “ability to act effectively and to grow in their own power” (175). In Botswana, youth acquire agency as “their acts recognizably [situate] them more tightly in the community and at the same time [link] the community with other people and social spheres” (175). Durham points out that anthropologists have identified that there are many types of agency. Yet there is a tendency when examining agency to only consider expressions of independence. In particular, this leads to a romanticzation of images of violence and discontent. As Durham writes, “The consolidation of images of violence and despair in studies of African youth coordinates with the sense in anthropology that agency is fundamentally oppositional, standing against structure, hegemony, and routine… These examples look at youth agency as the assertion of independence and self-interest against impositions of power and cultural hegemonies that support it” (165).

Durham conclude that “to understand youth agency in Botswana, we must shake ourselves loose from both [Western] notions – that of increasing individualization and independence and that of youth as a period of movement away from a stifling home and into a fresh one” (168). Durham expands the concept of agency to include youth’s acts that reinforce their ties of interdependence with their family. Particularly agentic youth are able to increase ties between their family or community and other social spheres. Youth experience or feel agency as they increase their interdependence, not independence. As Durham writes, “People in Botswana feel their agency – their ability to act effectively and to grow in their own power – primarily as it becomes manifest in ties of interdependence with other people. Youth is a particularly potent stage of life in which to develop the capacity for effective action – when people learn to use emotion and labor (conjoined practices) and ‘hearing’ and mobility to build mutualities, interdependencies, and social linkages. People who married or studied overseas often found themselves cut off from those ties. The Herero youth were successful agents and were ‘given hands,’ not when their actions signaled growing independence, but when their acts recognizably situated them more tightly in the community and at the same time linked the community with other people and social spheres” (175).

I really liked the central argument at the center of this chapter, but I gave it a moderate rating because the author does not provide much compelling qualitative evidence for her view. She

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describes the youth of Botswana (where youth are considered to be anyone younger than 40) in sporadic and blurry portraits, including youth’s participation in a youth group and choir, political leaders of the youth group complaining that the youth are apathetic, and youth’s unwillingness to wait for political leaders who were late to give a speech at a ceremony. She convincingly breaks down the false dichotomy between apathy and agency, arguing that agency is not only demonstrated by youth’s active rejection of the status quo. As she writes: “Youth in Botswana are and are not the kinds of agents of social and cultural change often envisioned in the West, where youth are popularly seen to be leaders in innovation and change” (175-6). This false dichotomy has been challenged before, as Durham recognizes, by James Scott in Weapons of the Weak where he demonstrates that everyday acts of resistance are to be found in apathetic actions like foot-dragging. The more interesting argument in this article is that agency is manifested by youth in actions that increase their interdependence, not independence. I wanted to see more illustrations of how this happens and a deeper consideration of what it means for youth and stratification. Are agentic youth only those that are able to gain the respect and admiration of their families and communities? Does this reinforce the gender, status, or classbased relations of power? Or, are there mechanisms in this interdependent view of agency by which disadvantaged youth can challenge these sources of stratification and gain influence over or prestige within the wider community? REFERENCE: Flanagan, Constance A. 2008. "Private Anxieties and Public Hopes: The Perils and Promise of Youth in the Context of Globalization." Pp. 125-150 in Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham, eds. Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research. Summary: This book chapter is divided into two parts. In the first, Flanagan examines the psychological consequences of economic-restructuring and privatization of government services for youth in Michigan. In the second, she explores how activist youth are challenging marketization of society through various movements. (The second part is much weaker empirically and theoretically than the first.) Flanagan begins by describing how the relationship, or social contract, between the state and the individual has changed in the neoliberal era. As she writes: “In recent decades, a new social contract has been evolving, one that reflects the ascendancy of markets and the decline in governments role in curbing their excesses and protecting citizens against their vagaries. The new deal with which younger generations now grapple as they come of age also reflects a devolution in responsibility for risk, from a model in which risks were socialized, to one in which risks increasingly are privatized. Finally, the facts of life with which younger generations must content include a restructuring of the nature of work that portends more episodic and insecure jobs with fewer lifetime benefits and guarantees” (127).

In her study of Michigan youth, Flanagan asked student in high school social studies classes “how they would explain to a hypothetical foreign visitor why some people in our country are poor, some are unemployed, some homeless, and some rich” (133). She found that these economic and political changes have led youth to “privatize” or individualize responsibility for their economic wellbeing. As she writes: “Regardless of their age of [class] background, the most common theme young people expressed was the individual’s responsibility for his or her fate and the imperative in childhood to work hard in school in order to succeed in adulthood… No benefit of the doubt is give to those who lose their jobs. Rather,

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unemployment is considered a just desert, a consequence or ‘payback’ for failing to ‘plan ahead’ as a child and develop the qualities of character that lead to success… Young people also located success and failure in the character of families, rather than in wider structure of social and economic relations” (135).

Moreover, students were highly aware of the lack of job security in the U.S. economy and placed responsibility on the individual for preparing for that instability. As Flanagan says, “[I]mages of insecurity and apprehension about an unpredictable future were integral to [the students’] narratives… And [their] only advice for how to deal with [instability] is to persist in the face of adversity. The young people recommended that individuals should deal with job loss or even homelessness by working harder and being persistent… The demands of the ever-changing workplace mean that individuals must be prepared to retrain and retool” (141).

Flanagan argues that young people’s visions of the future and the possibilities open to them “frame the personal choice they make today” (133). The fact that students are “individualizing” responsibility for their economic success portends high costs in psychological wellbeing for these young people. As she writes, “there are psychological costs in anxiety and self-doubt for individuals who imagine only private solutions to the uncertainties that global capital and the privatization of risk have normalized” (126). Although all the students demonstrated belief in meritocracy, African American students were even more likely to point to individual characteristics as the causes of economic success. As Flanagan writes: “When asked what their parents told them about making it in America, the African American students were more likely than their European American peers to say that they were told they should work twice as hard as others if they want to get a good job, they should not expect people to hand them opportunities, and if they did not succeed in life, then they would only have themselves to blame” (137).

Flanagan argues that children born into disadvantage have to believe in the ideal of meritocracy even more than privileged kids if they are to escape poverty. As she writes, “the success of disadvantaged youth especially depends on an ardent commitment to this belief. For people ‘like them,’ with few connection, safety nets, and second chances, there is no other way to succeed except through intense self-reliance and hard work” (133). Ironically, however, their path out of disadvantage is becoming more and more difficult as the privatization of responsibility for economic wellbeing increases. As Flanagan notes: “Increasingly, individual youth must define their own path to adulthood and identify and pay for the raining and opportunities they will need in order to achieve their goals. The family is the main backup system that scaffolds young people during this period, but there are class difference in the financial resources that families can offer” (131).

In the experience of youth activists, Flanagan sees an alternative to the high psychological costs associated with taking on personal responsibility for economic success. As she writes, “activist youth are making public and political the private anxieties that they share, challenging a world organized on market principles, and seeking a fuller sense of character than jobs alone can furnish” (126). Moreover, “the experience of being part of the decision-making process in [youth activist] organizations enables youth to see how, collectively, they can solve the public problems we share” (148). I gave this article a moderate rating because, at times, it felt like the author was forcing a theory onto the students’ responses. The foil she is comparing the students’ responses to is the relative stability of 1950s and early 1960s Michigan. This period is more of an aberration than the norm in U.S. history. It seems to me that globalization has transformed the relationship

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between education and work, creating a more competitive school environment, more than it has eroded job insecurity (the latter has happened, but mostly for a minority of the working class population: white men who got jobs between the late 40s and early 70s). The students may be responding more to the intensification of competition within the school, than to the flexibilization of work. Moreover, the belief in meritocracy is elemental to U.S. and many immigrant cultures. Flanagan hints at the paradox involved in critiquing it when she argues that non-white and other disadvantaged students have to believe in it and embody it if they are to get ahead. She suggests that youth activism may be a way for these students to both embody the meritocratic ideal while giving them a social outlet and support system for the psychological consequences associated with the individualist ethos. It would be interesting to study these two types of students (youth activist vs. disadvantaged individuals who attempt to follow the meritocratic ideal) over time. This might provide a firmer base for critiquing of the psychological consequences of the American Dream and an argument for why the state/society should halt further privatization or individualization of responsibility. Interesting additional argument:
Why youth become caught up in processes of social change:  “Typically, youth are less committed than older adults to rules that constrain the futures they envision. They are also more intellectually and psychologically flexible and more socially mobile. Thus, it is easier for them to accommodate, as well as contribute to, social change” (126). REFERENCE: Leiten, G. K. 2008. “School and Education.” Children, Structure, and Agency: Realities across the Developing World. New York: Routledge. Summary: This chapter is from a book which reviews a multi-team research project on children in the developing world. The countries where the research took place are Bolivia, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Vietnam, and India. I did not read the methods chapter, but it appears that research is based on interviews with children, parents, teachers, and others as well as observation of the “day in the life” of some select children. The book often quotes children directly, as well as their parents and teachers, and also notes some contextual factors (i.e., classroom conditions). The large number of countries featured, however, do not allow for a very detailed analysis. Also, theory is not well integrated into the report. For these reasons, the book and article do not feel like they are the “state of the art” on children’s research. In the area of education and schooling, the author argues that children and their parents value education. However, they often choose to drop out due to a mix of within school and outside factors. The within school factors include low quality teaching, poor facilities, and the humiliation and abuse suffered by children at the hands of teachers or other children. Leiten stressed the latter factor, noting that routines of harsh discipline and didactic teaching styles lead to children, particularly those of the poor, being alienated from school. I outline these arguments and others below: Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Attitudes of parents and children:

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 “the value of education in general is by and large not in doubt. Practically all parents told us that education helps children to prepare a better future; it develops their talents and it increases job opportunities” (65).  “It became clear that it is extremely difficult to categorize children as either ‘going to school’ or ‘not going to school.’ More common are children who go to school whenever they are not needed elsewhere to work… Children both in urban and rural areas realize the importance of education, but often accept the inability because of their families’ economic condition and their responsibility to supplement family income. Most of the case studies inform us that the value of education is recognized but that actual attendance is dependent on the environment, particularly the socioeconomic situation of the family” (69).  “The overall attitude of parents toward education is that children should go to school. In that sense, education has become a universal aspiration, but due to factors mentioned above, education has yet to become a universal option” (73).  Children are eager to learn. Children see education as a way to improve their living conditions, a tool for upward mobility in rural and urban areas Teacher attitudes:  “An attitude of blaming nonparticipation on the selfishness or disinterest of the parents indeed was not uncommon among the middle-class teachers” (72). School culture and pedagogy:  “Schools tend to dissipate knowledge based on the culture and occupational needs of the middle class rather than on the worldviews, experiences, and aspirations of the children of the poor” (74).  “Poor village boys and girls enter the realm of education because they have understood the need for learning through a public institution. Once within the school, however, they have to succumb to a regime of order and discipline. Pedagogues from all backgrounds generally agree that such rigorous discipline tends to kill the imagination, sense of belonging, and self-regulation, which are three important features to develop in a child” (75).  Interactive approaches are rare. Reading loudly from textbooks, writing on the chalkboard and having children copy it  Children would like their teachers to be “communicative, friendly, caring, creative, and mature” (78). Links between education and well-paying jobs:  A major problem is that “well-paying jobs re by and large out of reach for the children of poor families, even if they have invested in education” (73). Dropping out:  “Dropping out is usually due to a multiplicity of factors. Even when parents indicate that work at home or financial constraints are the reason for not attending school, the real cause may often be found within the school itself” (79).  “The features in a school system will have worse effects on the poorest children who outside the classroom and inside the classroom are the most marginalized… among all the children. The choice not to go to school among the poor often reflects such a feeling of discrimination and nonbelonging” (89).

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REFERENCE: Levinson, Bradley A. and Dorothy Holland. 1996. "The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: An Introduction." Pp. 1-56 in The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, edited by B. A. Levinson, D. E. Foley, and D. C. Holland. Albany: State University of New York Press. Summary: This article is the opening chapter to an edited anthology on critical education research in the developing world. The chapter provides an overview of the history of critical education theories and posits the authors’ theoretical approach. I highly recommend this article for those interested in education studies because it is well written and comprehensive. The major theories reviewed are: (1) Social reproduction theory, (2) Cultural Reproduction Theory, (3) Cultural Difference Theory, (4) Ethnographies of education, and (5) Cultural production of the educated person (the authors’ approach.) In summary, the authors write: “In reproduction theory, subjects were imagined as being ‘interpellated’ by ideology, and without agency. Reshaped by the more recent focus on practice and production, the larger question is now one of how historical persons are formed in practice, within and against larger societal forces and structures which instantiate themselves in schools and other institutions. Cultural production is one vision of this process. It provides a direction for understanding how human agency operates under powerful constraints. Through the production of cultural forms, created within structural constraints of sites such as schools, subjectivities and agency develops. These are the processes we seek to evoke with our phrase, ‘the cultural production of the educated person’” (14). (italics and underling added)

The authors note that “without a doubt, the historical rise of mass public-education systems has generated powerful, and to some extent convergent or ‘global,’ constructions of the ‘educated person’” (15). This is increasing the need for global education research. The authors also note that “encounters with formal education can result in a feeling of responsibility for one’s lowly social standing” (1). However, “unlike may studies in the critical tradition, [the] authors [in this book] show that school knowledge can be empowering for subordinate groups, as long as it respects, and even draws upon, the cultural resources of those groups” (24). Given the global export of the image of the educated person, understanding what those cultural resources are, and how schools can avoid make students feel “responsible for their low social standing” in those contexts, is more important than ever. Below I quote the authors’ definition of each theoretical approach and summarize their assessment of its limitations. Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Definition of critical education research = “Such research is fundamentally local and ethnographic, yet moves beyond the school and examines links between local cultural practices and the community, region, the state and economy. Alongside with this broadened interpretive perspective, we also urge a more extensive comparative base” (2).
Social reproduction theory  Major theorists = Althusser, structural Marxists  Definition = “schools serve to reproduce rather than transform existing structural inequalities” (5).
Cultural reproduction theory –  Major theorists = Bourdieu, Lareau, Dimaggio, Delamont

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 Distinction from social reproduction theory = “The concept of cultural production was originally employed as a means of challenging notions that schooling was unopposed, and thus invariably successful in its reproduction of wider structures” (9).  Explanation of Bourdieu  “Cultural capital” is convertible into economic capital. It “helps its bearers to secure loans, find business partners,” etc. Schools “allow elite groups to maintain power by only recognizing as ‘intelligent’ their cultural capital, that is their tastes for certain cultural products (art, literature, film, music), their manner of deportment, speech, style of dress, consumption patterns, and the like” (6).  Symbolic violence: “The process of schooling imposes a kind of ‘symbolic violence’ on nonelite students, in which ‘instruments of knowledge… which are arbitrary’ are nevertheless made to appear universal and objective. Such symbolic violence has a stultifying effect upon its recipients. As they develop a sense of their social position, and the relatively degraded value of their own cultural-linguistic resources in given social situations, nonelite persons also tend to develop a ‘sense of their social limits.’ As these limits become permanently inscribed in a person’s habitus, he or she learns to self-censor and self-silence in the company of those with greater social standing” (6). Limitations of the social and cultural reproduction approach:  Lack of emphasis on the intersection of class, race, gender, and age structures  Lack of investigation of education systems in non-Western societies  Reliant on “highly schematic and deterministic models of structure and culture, as well as simplistic models of the state and its supposed use of schools as instruments of control” (7).  Image of “placid, malleable student” (9).  “None of these broad-scale educational theories really tells us what happens to students confronting these changes” (17). Cultural difference approach: Arises from American anthropology. The authors (and many others) criticize this approach because it “tended to essentialize cultural repertoires of minority groups… The deeper, structural context of cultural production and school failure remained obscure and largely unaddressed” (8). Ethnographies of schools:  “Ethnographic studies forced scholars to move beyond the more deterministic formulations of both structural Marxism and poststructural ‘productivist’ discourse analysis… Ethnography problematized the reproductionist formula by showing that students created cultural forms which resisted ideological interpellation, and that schools were not monolithic purveyors of dominant ideologies” (9).  Ethnographies demonstrate contradictions: “how ‘reproduction’ could be both contested and accelerated through actions by the same people” (9).  First important example: Willis. However, authors critique Willis for allowing the dimensions of race and gender to take a backseat, “lads” were sexist and racist. Cultural production of educated person: Authors’ approach to critical education studies  “Schools create a space for the formation of social relations among people of different classes, genders, castes, ethnic, and age groups which would be unlikely in other sites. Such relations may come to reconfigure previous alliances, allegiances,

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and sympathies. They may indeed be empowering. Thus, schools provide each generation with social and symbolic sites where new relations, new representations, and new knowledges can be formed, sometimes against, sometimes tangential to, sometimes coincident with, the interests of those holding power. These paradoxical potentialities of schooling (both for dominant groups that seek to control the schools, and for students), and the way they play our under various historical circumstances, provide the central dynamic of our book” (22).
Reminder Notes:  The authors caution that schools are difficult places to study. They require sustained observations and interviews in order to observe change over time. There are many gatekeepers whose trust needs to be earned. The authors recommend more innovative, team-based approaches to education research.  The other chapters in this book look great! Look them up later! REFERENCE: MacDonald, Robert and Jane Marsh. 2004. "Missing School: Educational Engagement, Youth, and Social Exclusion." Youth & Society, 36(2): 143-162. Summary: This article reviews the findings from a qualitative study of youth transitions from school to work in a poor neighborhood in Northeast England. The goal of the research was to document “how young people carve out school-to-work careers in relation to the structure of opportunities that prevail for them” (144). The major research method was biographically focused interviews of 88 young people aged between 15 and 25 years (45 young women and 43 young men). Most were white and from working class backgrounds. Second interviews were completed with 60% of the original sample within one year of the first interview. The authors’ major finding is that “the forms of working-class educational (dis)engagement… can only be understood in relation to the specific contemporary and historical conditions of this place, its decline in respect of the national and international economy, and more precisely, the growth of unemployment and underemployment that has accompanied rapid deindustrialization” (144). The authors conclude that for their sample “the form of severely casualized employment that pays no regard to educational credential does much to explain the ready abandonment of formal education by East Kelby teenagers and their often dismissive attitude to it” (160).In sum, the economic opportunities young people perceive shapes their attitude toward and behavior in school. They argue that Brown’s statement from his study of youth in the 1980’s still holds true. Brown wrote (1987): “It is making it increasingly difficult for ordinary kids to see why they should continue to make an effort in school if it is no longer the basis for personal survival in the labor market” (158). Indeed, the 6 interviewees that worked hard in school and received credentials ended up with work transitions and economic prospects that were equivalent to those achieved by their counterparts that received lower or no educational credentials. The authors warn that these findings portend of negative schooling outcomes for future students in the area. Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Peer influence:  “Several interviewees claimed that they had wanted to work harder at school but found this difficult …[due to] the implicit imperative to ‘mess about’ and the

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informal sanctions [that] operated against those seen to be bowing to formal school demands” (151).  “Inclusion in the formal life of school could mean effective exclusion from informal friendship groups” (151).  “Much of what our interviewees said about school can be understood in terms of the competition, played out day to day in the classroom, between a generally alienated but instrumental orientation to school and a complete disengagement from its formal purposes and strictures” (150). Brown’s critique of Willis  The authors summarize Brown’s critique of Willis in which Brown demonstrates through ethnography that students attitudes toward school are more complex than Willis’ resistance/conformity dichotomy.  Brown defines 3 orientations toward schooling = (1) “a positive, normative acceptance of school;” (2) “a negative, alienated rejection” of school; and, “between them,” (3) “an alienated but instrumental orientation to school” – the “ordinary kids” (149). Authors’ critique of Brown  The authors argue that Brown’s orientations also need revision. Students may assume each of the identities at different period in their life or in different classroom contexts. As they write: “We are not convinced that pupils’ orientations to school are as stable as implied on Brown’s (1987) analysis. Sometimes the same individuals recounted narratives of school which contained episodes of both instrumental engagement and complete disaffection… Some of our informants described a process of instrumental accommodation in the latter years of compulsory schooling, following earlier disengagement” (151). Frames of reference: What students draw on to model their school attitudes and behavior  “locally differentiated working-class culture generates alternative, cultural predispositions toward education which are then molded by the school’s own systems of educational differentiation and labeling” (149).  “The number and type of frames of reference that might be displayed by pupils in a given context will reflect the different forms of local working-class culture, the recent socio-economic history of the place, internal school systems, and… the consequences of special policy directives” (149). Structural causes of inequality “individualized” by the meritocratic culture of education  “the flux and complexity of contemporary youth transitions engenders subjective feelings of individual agency among those stuck in them. Consequently, failure is interpreted as an outcome of an individual’s own actions rather than as an experience shared by many in their class position” (159).

REFERENCE: Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, Barrie Thorne, Anna Chee, and Wan Shun Eva Lam. 2001. "Transnational childhoods: The participation of children in processes of family migration." Social Problems, 48(4): 572-591. Summary: This article describes one theme from a larger collaborative research project on childhoods in two urban areas of California “that differ in social class and ethnic composition

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and in histories of immigration” (573). The authors focus here on children’s participation in immigration processes, using ethnographic evidence from three immigrant groups: migrants in Los Angeles with close ties to Mexico and Central America, ‘parachute kids’ who migrated from Korea to attend school in the U.S., and Yemini families who live in Oakland and sustain active ties “back home.” The authors used multiple methods, including school observation, focus groups with parents, child interviews, and home and neighborhood observation, to describe children’s experience of migration and their role in family’s migration decision-making process. Their main argument is that children are major factors in “why families move across borders and sustain transnational ties” (588). They critique “adult-centered studies of migration [for] obscure[ing] ways in which children actively shape the nature of their families’ journeys, the spaces they move in, and their experiences with those social fields” (588). One of the major findings was that families use migration and transnational ties “to reposition themselves within a changing global economic order; disrupting class relations that may more rigidly bind families back home” (588). Children become key players in this process and families struggle over the decision of whether or not children should migrate. In the Korean example (and in some cases from Central America where children were fleeing wars), children migrated on their own. In the Yemeni and Mexico and Central American cases, children tended to follow their parents’ migration. In making children’s migration decisions (together with children), families tended to struggle over their perception that children would have more opportunities in US but would have to give up their childhood freedom in their home country in exchange. In addition, some families struggled with the decision of how much money to send home to support relatives, parents, or children left behind. In some cases, it appeared that the welfare of children born in the US may be “pitted against” the welfare of children born at home because sending money home means not investing it in “getting ahead” in the US. Lastly, many immigrant children experience the threat of being ‘sent back’ when and if they show signs of getting into trouble. (583) This article highlighted the neglected study of present-day immigrant children and reviewed the sociology of childhood approach to child-research. However, it did not feel like a polished product. For me, the biggest weakness was that they made some arguments that relied on assumptions rather than evidence (see below). The authors concluded by pointing to future publications on “how immigrant children facilitate process of settlement and community building” and “how processes of immigration help reconfigure both generational and gender relations” (587). These seem like they may draw more interesting conclusions from this research projects. Additional argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Explanation of sociology of childhood:  Authors cite Philippe Aries as originating the concept that “childhood is not a natural phase of life or a given biological age, but socially constructed” (573).  “To bring children more fully into knowledge, it is important to examine not only organization of reproductive labor and relations of care, but also children’s participation in social process and the ways in which they grow up and change over time. Children contribute to family divisions of labor and relations of care, and they express their own wishes with regard to moving or staying” (579).  “Immigrant children, like all children, are, to some extent, dependent on adults for physical, economic, and emotional care. However, just how and in what ways

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children of different ages and genders are seen as dependent, and how their perceived needs are met, is culturally constructed. Beliefs and practices are, in turn, influenced by material realities, resources, and obstacles” (587).
Transnational strategies families use to challenge class relations:  “Transnational families challenge mainstream constructions of ‘motherhood’ and ‘households,’ as well as middle class assumptions that all the needs of children can and should be provided by parents in nuclear families based in one community” (587).  “In seeking opportunities for the future of their children, families are also strategizing to improve their collective conditions. The individualistic focus of traditional Western views of child development tends to neglect the collective interests of families and to ignore the tight links that may connect children to larger family networks… Transnational arrangements can help families to reposition themselves within a changing global economic order; disrupting class relations that may more rigidly bind families back home. By operating in a transnational sphere, in an historical moment with increased flows of labor and capital around the world, families and individuals create room for maneuvering, and for altering the trajectories laid out a birth” (587). REFERENCE: Rose, Pauline and Caroline Dyer. 2008. "Chronic Poverty and Education: A Review of the Literature." Working Paper No. 131. Manchester, UK: Chronic Poverty Research Centre. Summary: This working paper from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre reviews the relationship between poverty and education in the developing world. Rose and Dyer review three major sets of literature: chronic poverty, the human capital approach to education (or the “economics of education”), and critical education studies. Their major argument is that theorists of chronic poverty and critical education have made major conceptual advances in the last 20 years; yet the two are failing to speak to each other. As Rose and Dyer write: “This review argues that the processes by which education influences poverty are insufficiently understood… It finds that the discourses of poverty theorists and educationists currently run on parallel tracks; and that neither discourse benefits as fully as it should from the conceptual advances of the other” (2).

The chronic poverty approach has identified education as both a cause and solution to poverty. However, theorists in this approach uncritically incorporate the human capital approach to education which fails to understand the wide variation in school quality and children’s variable experience within schools. The human capital approach quantitatively measures the benefits accrued to individuals for one year of schooling. As the authors write: “This measure fails to capture wide variations in formal and hidden curriculum, quality of schooling with respect to teaching and learning approaches adopted, competencies of teachers, class size, availability of learning materials, and so on. While some studies have sought to address this by including variables to measure quality (most commonly using pupil/teacher ratios, but also sometimes other measures, such as teacher training or pay, indicators of physical infrastructure, etc.)… these are mainly focused on school inputs, with more limited attention to process and outcome indicators” (18).

Rose and Dyer urge scholars of poverty to incorporate assessments of schooling by such critical scholars as Bourdieu and Freire. Rose and Dyer (like Levison, et al.), however, do not view education as inevitably a source of domination or reproduction of class hierarchy. They note that education can have important effects in terms of self-esteem and self-confidence that

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could play a crucial role in interrupting the reproduction of chronic poverty. They argue that two sets of processes need to be examined: (1) how education reproduces hierarchies in the developing work and (2) how and in what contexts it interrupts that reproduction. In their words: “If formal education is to contribute to processes that can support an escape from chronic poverty, it is crucial that it moves from being viewed as narrowly defined, academic examination oriented system towards an approach that is proactive to enhancing learners’ self-confidence, self-esteem, and critical thinking. These outcomes in turn can build voice and agency which are understood to play crucial roles in relation to poverty. Developing and strengthening education systems to play these roles is one of the key challenges facing the educational community” (12).

Rose and Dyer conclude that chronic poverty theorists, who conceptualize poverty as partly the result of educational deprivation, need to begin to study how that educational deprivation can be countered (types of schools, learning processes, student experiences, etc.). In other words, there is a need to understand the types of schooling experiences that keep children in school and attaining valuable skills. As they write: “Chronic poverty may adversely influence educational opportunities yet, for many, it may also be ‘the critical path out of poverty’… It is, therefore, important to understand how the chronically poor, who are caught in a multidimensional trap, can get onto and stay on this path” (14). Rose and Dyer are also critical of education scholars, however, for failing to assess the postschooling experiences and opportunities of degree earners at various levels (primary, secondary, technical school, university, etc.) and drop outs. In order to better understand the role education plays in the lifecourse of people suffering from chronic poverty and in interrupting intergenerational transmission of poverty, Rose and Dyer advocate for bringing the two sets of literature together. As they write: “The evidence base in relation to exactly how education interrupts intergenerational transmission of poverty is weaker than its confident reiteration by agencies such as these would suggest. It argues for a methodologically innovative future research agenda that brings poverty and education research together to provide a nuance and detailed understanding of how the two are linked, and to improve policy targeting” (2).

I found this review paper to be a very valuable resource. It succinctly summarizes the strengths and weaknesses in several decades of theoretical and empirical work on education, development, and poverty. Also, it presents major gaps in knowledge and sets out an agenda for research on: (1) school processes, quality, and how poor children are kept on an education track or pushed off and (2) longitudinal studies of the impact of educational attainment on poverty. Note: I only read the first-half of the 80-page article (the other half is a series of country case studies). Supporting argument(s) and sub-argument(s):
Summary of major argument: Chronic poverty literature depends on a human capital approach / education literature fails to address post-schooling experiences of those that receive degrees or drop out  “This paper has identified what appear almost to be two separate discourses. On the one hand, there have been considerable advances in recent years in the conceptualization of poverty; within this, there has been recognition of the importance of education – although this recognition is often based narrowly on

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human capital approaches focusing on the implications of an individual’s skills acquisition for development. On the other hand, research in the field of education recognizes the importance of political, social, and economic processes that exclude children from attending school and/or participating and achieving if they do manage to enroll. Yet this literature has shown less concern with what happens to children beyond schooling, and shows limited engagement with the developments that have taken place within poverty debates. These findings are reiterated in education policy approaches internationally, as well as within countries… As such, we conclude that the conventional wisdom of the importance of education in addressing chronic poverty is largely unclear with regard to how, why, and what forms of education can achieve the desired outcomes. We therefore argue that there is an urgent need to bring together each of these areas of research to inform policy, if education is to be able to play its role in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty as anticipated” (7).  “Chronic poverty theorists have developed nuanced definitions of multi-dimensional poverty in relation to both its duration as well as its dynamics. Education is seen as both a cause, and a factor contributing to the transmission of poverty, but little attempt is made in this literature to unpack the ‘black box’ of education. Conversely, the term ‘chronic poverty’ hardly appears in the education literature, which typically focuses more sharply on other indicators of disadvantage – such as caste, class, race – that education needs to challenge it is not to reproduce inequitable social power relations. Its recognition that education deprivation has multiple causes, including poverty, contests an oversimplified view of the capacity of formal education to tackle various forms of disadvantage. The use of education to address chronic poverty does not emerge from this review of the literature as a focus of education policy” (2).
Human capital/ economics of education view of the effects of education  “Over the past 15 years, primary education has been a priority among many governments and international agencies, owing mainly to its perceived role in reducing poverty. This view is mainly based on research that has indicated, for example, that primary education plays a role in improving productivity in the labor market and agriculture… In addition, education, particularly of girls, has been found to be highly correlated with improvements in health, as well as reductions in fertility, infant mortality, and morbidity rates” (6).
Definition of chronic poverty (pg. 7-8)  Multidimensional view of poverty over the life course. A person can be classified as chronically poor if they have experienced poverty for a period of five years.  “In this definition, capability deprivation as a result of lack of education is understood in terms of lack of skills in particular, whereas ‘capability enhancement’ is related to improving skills through education. Thus, as an understanding of chronic poverty broadens beyond the narrow income/consumption definitions, education becomes more clearly implicated. It is both part of the definition of poverty, as well as potentially part of the solution for people to break out of the cycle of poverty” (8).
Critical view of school: Reproduction theory / This view counters the claims of the human capital approach.  “Within the education literature, the capacity of formal schooling to act effectively as the agent by which exclusion – and thus obliquely poverty – can be addressed is highly contested. Rather, it has long been acknowledged that education is an obvious

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arena for the reproduction of unjust and inequitable social conditions… This understanding of some of the social functions of schooling runs counter to the expectation/assumption in much of the poverty literature that schooling is an effective instrument for the generation of human capital” (11). List of school factors:  School leadership/support  School physical environment  Curriculum relevance  Pedagogical approaches  Language of instruction  Class size  Teaching/ learning resources  Learning time  Assessment/ feedback  Teacher recruitment and conditions  Teacher characteristics (i.e., training, motivation, etc.)  School fees  Diagram of school factors, international/national factors, community factors, and individual/ household factors and mechanisms of poverty reduction (p. 13-14) Failure of education literature to address post-schooling opportunities of degree earners and drop outs  “These studies have rarely been extended to consider the influence of factors such as curriculum choice (for example, academic versus vocation), teaching styles, etc. on post-schooling opportunities – an understanding of which is crucial of education policies are to address chronic poverty effectively” (13) Focus on educational access rather than quality  To date, “attention is paid mainly to the need to overcome constraints to access to education (with more limited concern for quality)” (14). Consequences of interrupted schooling = permanent drop out  “Once children drop out of school, there are many reasons – some related to poverty and others to the organization of schooling (such as progression via a generally single-entry, lock-step system that lacks the flexibility to deal with interrupted learning) – that make it probable that they will remain out of school” (15). Children’s engagement in work may be more beneficial than their attendance at bad schools  “Where a workplace is not detrimental to a child’s wellbeing, it can provide a more stimulating cognitive environment than the often tedious routine found in the poor quality schools that are accessible to the poorest children… In some cases, formal schooling may ‘de-skill’ children, making them unfit for their traditional occupations yet unable to gain alternative employment… and so contribute to a decline rather than a gain in a family’s wellbeing in this and future generations” (16). Critique of human capital or economics of education approach of analyzing effects of education  Reviews of education and development (i.e., Harper et al. (2003) and Hannum and Buchanan (2005)) draw “primarily on economics of education analyses – and this is not surprising, given that this is the most widely available literature on the topic. However, this approach does raise some problematic issues. These analyses focus on

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the contribution of education to economic growth at the macro level, and to labor market productivity, mainly with respect to paid employment in the formal sector, at the micro level. Such micro-evidence of positive outcomes of schooling is commonly based on analyses of rates of return to education in labor market, which have been widely adopted to justify a focus on primary schooling, as this is the level that studies commonly show to have the highest private and social returns… Among the studies on rates of return that are frequently cited, however, many date from the 1980s or before, and cannot necessarily extend to the present day; analyses of rates of return of this kind have been heavily criticized from a methodological perspective… Such analyses assume, for example, that jobs are available for which school leavers can compete without discrimination, and that wages proxy for productivity in the labor market” (18).  “Importantly, such studies usually focus on the benefits accruing from additional levels of schooling. One year of schooling, however, can mean something very different across countries, as well as across schools within countries” (18).  Critique of education’s impact on agricultural productivity (19)
Need to assess the returns to secondary schooling  “So many more children are now gaining access to primary schools that, in time, the returns to secondary schooling are likely to become relatively more important. In addition, the studies are unable to address the implications of economic crises and austerity programs, which have had important impact on labor markets in many developing countries” (18).
Critique of human capital approaches to impacts of education on girls and women  “Instrumental arguments (viewing education as a means to improving the wellbeing of others, rather than focusing on the implications for the women themselves with respect to building self-esteem, self-confidence, etc.) are problematic on several counts. They lack the critically informed gender perspective that is apparent in the wide-ranging literature on gender and education, failing to recognize not only the additional burdens placed on women, as they expected both to be more productive at work at the same time as enhancing support to the family, but also the processes through the relationship between mothers’ and household might operate… This requires attention to whether and how education influences power relations between the sexes, as well as the importance of education in developing voice and agency of females… [S]tudies suggest that autonomy is crucial to women’s control over their fertility, and that the relationship between education and autonomy is mediated by the cultural relations of patriarchy” (20).
Need for different methodological approaches to education and poverty studies  “We argue that reliable evidence on the role education can play in addressing chronic poverty is constrained in part by limitations of methodological approaches adopted within research on education in development contexts, which have not tended to use longitudinal approaches to understand lifecourse and intergenerational processes” (24-5). REFERENCE: Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

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Summary: This short summary does not do justice to Thorne’s seminal work on the social construction of gender in primary schools. I quote below some of her major arguments. Briefly, Thorne critiques the socialization and child development approach to understanding and theorizing childhood. She notes how kids are not just influenced by adults, they also influence them. Therefore, she argues that children merit attention for what they accomplish in the here and now (not for what they are becoming) and childhood researchers should examine how kids impact the organization of our daily lives. Thorne’s book details ethnographic evidence of kids in classrooms, playgrounds, and lunchrooms. She demonstrates how children’s actions both reinforce the sense of gender as opposition and undermine it. The critical feature is the social context. As Thorne writes: “[G]ender may or may not be central to the organization and symbolism of an encounter. In some situations… participants mark and ritualize gender boundaries. In other situations, gender may be far less relevant” (35). She draws on Barth’s concept of borderwork to argue that how difference is enacted and maintained (when, where, why, and how borders are signaled and maintained) is more important than categorizing “differences” on either side of that border. Her most forceful critique is of the “different cultures” approach to gender. She concludes that “[t]he view of gender as difference and binary opposition has been used to buttress male domination and to perpetuate related ideologies like the division between public and private” (109). She urges researchers to pay more attention to social context, writing that “[a]n emphasis on social context shifts analysis from fixing abstract and binary differences to examining the social relations in which multiple differences are constructed and given meaning” (109). I have a few critiques of this book. First, at times I felt like her frequent references to other bodies of literature (as well as a weird additional study where she asked college kids to reflect back on their childhoods) detracted from the richness of her own ethnographic details. At times it was hard to get a sense of who these kids were and what their schools were like. Another factor that made it hard to get a sense of these kids was the lack of children’s voice. Thorne illustrated her major conclusions with ethnographic data from playground interactions, but you do not really get a sense of what these kids were thinking or feeling. This made them feel, in a way, less human; something Thorne was not aiming for in this book. Supporting argument(s) and sub-argument(s):
Critique of socialization as occurring in one direction – the powerful socialize the powerless: Kids influence adults too  “My observations fully supported the view that gender is socially constructed. But I increasingly became dissatisfied with the frameworks of ‘gender socialization’ and ‘gender development’ that organize most of the literature on the social construction of gender in children’s lives. For one thing, the concept of ‘socialization’ moves mostly in one direction. Adults are said to social children, teachers socialize students, the more powerful socialize, and the less powerful get socialized. Power, indeed, is central to all these relationships, but children, students, and the less powerful are by no means passive or without agency. As a parent and as an observer in schools, I have been impressed by the ways in which children act, resist, rework, and create: they influence adults as well as being influenced by them” (3).

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Children’s actions and interactions are important not just for how they influence what children will become, but also because they shape our institutions and daily lives in the here and now:  “Many theorists now argue that ‘children participate in their own socialization.’ But that tinkering still defines children primarily as learners, as those who are socialized, who are acted upon more than acting. Beneath this view lies a double standard: social scientists grant adults the status of full social actors, but they define children as incomplete, as adults-in-the-making… The more time I spent with children, the more I came to question that perspective. There is much to be gained by seeing children not as the next generation’s adults, but as social actors in a range of institutions… Children’s interactions are not preparation for life; they are life itself” (3).
Some of children’s action reinforce the sense of gender as opposition; others undermine it:  “When kids maneuver to form same-gender groups on the playground or organize a kickball game as ‘boys-against-the-girls,’ they produce a sense of gender as dichotomy and opposition. And when girls and boys work cooperatively on a classroom project, they actively undermine a sense of gender as opposition. This emphasis on action and activity, and on everyday social practices that are sometimes contradictory, provides an antidote to the view of children as passively socialized. Gender is not something one passively ‘is’ or ‘has’; in the phrasing of Candace West and Don Zimmerman, we ‘do gender’” (4-5).
Social context shapes the organization and salience of gender:  “The landscape of contemporary childhood includes three major sites – families, neighborhoods, and schools. Each of these worlds contains different people, patterns of time and space, and arrangements of gender… As individuals, we always display or ‘do’ gender, but this dichotomous difference (no one escapes being declared female or male) may be more or less relevant, and relevant in different ways, from one social context to another” (29).
Gender is marked situationally: Difference does not always make a difference  “[I]n the ongoing complexity of social life, a given difference does not always make a difference. Individuals enter situations as girls or boys, displaying gender through details like names, dress, and adornment. But gender may or may not be central to the organization and symbolism of an encounter. In some situations… participants mark and ritualize gender boundaries. In other situations, gender may be far less relevant” (35).
Explanation of Barth’s concept of borderwork  “Although contact sometimes undermines and reduces an active sense of difference, groups may also interact with one another in ways that strengthen their borders. One can gain insight into the maintenance of ethnic (and gender) groups by examining the boundary that defines them rather than by looking at what Barth calls ‘the cultural stuff that it encloses’” (65).
Kids’ pollution rituals reinforce patterns of inequality  “Recoiling from physical proximity with another person and their belongings because they are perceived as contaminating is a powerful statement of social distance and claimed superiority. Pollution beliefs and practices draw on the emotion-laden feeling of repugnance that accompanies unwanted touch or smell… When pollution rituals appear, even in play, they frequently express and enact larger patterns of inequality,

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by gender, by social class and race, and by bodily characteristics like weight and motor coordination” (75). Boys control more playground space than girls and are unembarrassed about violating. Adult men enact the same privilege over adult women.  “On school playgrounds boys control as much as ten times more space than girls, when one adds up the area of large playing fields… and compares it with the much smaller areas… where girls predominate. In addition to taking up more space, boys often see girls and their activities as interruptible; boys invade and disrupt all-female games and scenes of play much more often than vice versa… Boys’ control of space can be seen as a pattern of claimed entitlement, perhaps linked to patterns well documented among adults in the same culture… [A]dult men take up more personal and public space than adult women. Furthermore, men more often interrupt or violate the space, as well as talk, of women” (83). Why is borderwork so memorable?: Intense emotions and ritualized performances  “The occasions of borderwork may carry extra perceptual weight because they are marked by conflict, intense emotions, and the expression of forbidden desires. These group activities may also rivet attention because they are created by kids themselves, and because they are ritualized, not as high ceremony, but by virtue of being stylized, repeated, and enacted with a sense of performance… Cross-gender chasing has a name (‘chase and kiss’), a scripted format (the repertoire of provocations and forms of response), and takes shape through stylized motion and talk. The ritual form focuses attention and evokes dominant beliefs about the ‘nature’ of boys and girls and relationships between them” (85). Major Argument of the Book: Critique of “different cultures” approach to gender. Need for emphasis on how gendered is enacted in given social contexts and situations, rather than binary oppositions.  “The contrastive framework has outlived its usefulness, as has the gender ideology that it builds on and perpetuates. The view of gender as difference and binary opposition has been used to buttress male domination and to perpetuate related ideologies like the division between public and private. A sense of the whole, and of the texture and dynamism of interaction, become lost when collapsed into dualisms… [B]y examining gender in context rather than fixing binary abstractions like ‘boys emphasize status and girls emphasize intimacy.’ Instead we should ask ‘which boys or girls, where, when, and under what circumstances?’… [T]he organization and meanings of gender vary from schools to neighborhoods to families, and from classrooms to playground to lunchroom settings… Some situations, like cross-gender chasing and invasions, evoke a sense of gender as dualism, but other situations undermine and spread out that view. Furthermore, gender takes shape in complex interaction with other social divisions and grounds for inequality, such as age, class, race, ethnicity and religion… An emphasis on social context shifts analysis from fixing abstract and binary differences to examining the social relations in which multiple differences are constructed and given meaning” (109). The romantic ideal undermines girls’ ambitions and reinforces male privilege. Children need a new language and images for cross-gender friendship.  “Active efforts to get and keep a boyfriend lead many young women to lower their ambitions, and the culture of romance perpetuates male privilege” (170).

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 “The painfully sparse language that kids have for relationships between girls and boys – ‘like’ charged with romantic connotations, ‘hate’ as a quick nullification – underscores the need for more images of, and more experiences with, cross-gender relationships based on friendship and collegiality. The culture of heterosexual romance needs fundamental reconstruction so that it no longer overshadows other possibilities for intimacy and sexuality. Friendship and equality are a much better basis for intimate relationships than mistrust and a sense of being strangers” (172). REFERENCE: Thorne, Barrie. 2005. "Unpacking School Lunchtime: Structure, Practice, and Negotiation of Differences." Pp. 63-87 in Developmental Pathways through Middle Childhood: Rethinking Contexts and Diversity as Resources, edited by C. R. Cooper, C. Garcia Coll, T. Bartko, H. Davis, and C. Chapman. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbarum Publishers. Summary: This article is part of an edited volume and it seems as though Thorne was knowledgeable the book would be largely read by non-sociologists. She is very careful to define her terms and justify her methodological approach (participant observation is well defined here on p. 67). There is also a glossary of terms at the end. The major goal of the article appears to be introducing major theoretical concepts in qualitative sociology – social practice and situated interaction – and demonstrating their effectiveness at understanding children’s lives in schools. Here’s some examples of how she defines and justifies sociological theory and methods: “theories of social practice extend and enrich [Goffman’s] approach by bringing larger structural forces into conjunction with situated interaction, while also attending to the open-ended quality of human activity and to the changing constitution of persons through historical and biographical time. Social practices are best studied across multiple face-to-face settings” (82). “In any face-to-face context, a wide array of available differences (e.g., in physical appearance, comportment, mode of talk, belongings) may be marked and given social significance. But only some of these differences are noted, brushed with meaning, and made consequential… In the course of fieldwork, my co-researchers and I were on the lookout for social relations and practices through which various lines of difference were marked, negotiated or muted” (73). “As I analyze and write up the data, I am also knitting between the dynamics of everyday life and larger structural and historical changes. Thus I am working with multiple and interrelated levels of analysis” (68).

My notes from my first reading of this article suggest it is less about Thorne’s research results than about her approach. Maybe because I am getting ready for the methods exam, I paid particular attention to that and less to her findings! I need to re-read it to get more of a sense of the latter. (: I do have some of the following info: She opens by stating that her article will “examine large-scale structural changes within the situated and embodied practices of everyday life” (63). She writes that “schools operate as sorting machines, explicitly dividing children according to a variety of explicit and implicit criteria. All of these features make schools prime sites for the marking of difference” (69). Her research question is: “How did Oakdale teachers, students, and parents understand and negotiate these and other differences in their daily lives in and outside of school? What practices made socially marked differences more or less consequential in the shaping of identities and pathways through schooling?” (69) She argues that “the lunchtime scene, especially in a school

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where students come from strikingly divergent backgrounds, is a fruitful site for uncovering practices used to mark, mute, or negotiate social differences” (64). She does find that one major line of difference that is marked by teachers and students is the label “prepared to learn.” Students that have adequate lunches are marked as having responsible parents and therefore are “ready to learn.” There is substantial differentiation in how children use the label “free lunch kids” – sometimes it is marked, other times not. If this comes up in research, it would be good to come back to this article. Children use lunches to mark class and other ethnic differences, but they also use it as a time to build relationships – giving marks friendship and trading allows children to cross racial or class boundaries. I liked this article and would recommend it for a syllabus – especially for people new to qualitative methods. I need to re-read it so that I can better comment on her findings – apologies for that! Here are some other good quotes that demonstrate the importance of recognizing children as social actors: “The adult work of regulating school lunchtime was continually in tension with kids’ uses of food to establish and mark relationships – an example of contradictory, even colliding social practice” (81). “Children are central actors in shaping relations across domains of social life, sometimes working in concert and sometimes working in opposition to adults” (82).

REFERENCE: Thorne, Barrie. 2008. "'The Chinese Girls' and 'The Pokemon Kids': Children Negotiating Difference in Urban California." Pp. 73-97 in Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham, eds. Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research. Summary: In this book chapter, Thorne explores “children’s perceptions of and participation in” processes of globalization through an ethnographic study of a public elementary school in Oakland. Throughout the chapter, Thorne describes the consequences and character of globalization. Here she describes her view: “Processes of globalization have led to economic polarization, the depletion of state provisioning for families and children, the spread of the market ethic, and a dramatic influx of immigrants from diverse points of origin. This chapter explores the articulation of these structural shifts in the social positioning and daily experiences of children growing up in Oakland. It also highlights a significant historical change. The growing cleavage between affluent and low-income childhoods in contemporary California have reversed a trend initiated in the United States during the Progressive Era a century ago, when the outlawing of child labor and the introduction of comprehensive public schooling and other forms of state support muted class divisions in the circumstances of children’s lives” (74).

Thorne’s major finding is that “the spread of children’s consumer culture” obscures “widening gaps between today’s rich and poor children” (74). As Thorne writes, “commercial children’s culture operates as a global lingua franca, supplying forms of knowledge, fantasy, and skills (such as video game playing) that kids carry across national and linguistic boundaries” (86). Moreover, “students from low-income families worked to hide, and teachers deflected attention from, overt signs of poverty. As a result of these many factors, differences of income were often ambiguous and obscured from view” (89). As a result of this obscuring of class difference, Thorne concludes that “neoliberal capitalism magnifies class differences while also undercutting class consciousness” (74). 110

At the same time, however, the divide between rich and poor is becoming more concrete in California as upper-class parents increasingly educate their children in private schools. Thorne concludes that middle- and lower-class children are left to “do the work of democracy” in public institutions that bring together diverse student bodies. However, they do so with fewer and fewer state resources. As Thorne writes: “Over the past thirty years, processes of global economic restructuring have amplified cultural, linguistic, and (in American perceptions) racialized differences in urban California. But children’s experiences of diversity are unevenly distributed because of another globalized shift: widening gaps between rich and poor that have become increasingly institutionalized in a division between affluent, privatized childhoods and the more racial-ethnically diverse childhoods that are organized through public institutions. As the class-privileged have pulled out of the ‘public,’ they have left middle- and lower-income children to do the work of democracy – making sense of and negotiating lines of difference and commonality in local contact zones like Oakdale Elementary School. As this ethnography suggests, these negotiations have creative, conflictual, and constraining dimensions” (95).

Thorne does not provide a clear view of what is happening and what may be the consequences. Her view of boundary making is fluid, or as she writes “creative, conflictual and constraining.” On one hand, children are highly aware that white, wealthy children are cut off from them, educated in sterling building “in the hills.” At the same time, children’s awareness of class and racialized difference within their own school is muted by the shared “lingua franca” of commercial culture like Pokemon. However, at times, children’s inability to keep up with new trends may lead to their difference (economic, racialized, immigrant background) being noted and their suffering exclusion. In the following paragraph, Thorne notes the most important finding from her study: “Perhaps the most notable conclusion I draw from this effort to map and untangle diverse and crisscrossing lines of difference is that the most significant structural change – the increasing polarization of rich and poor – tends to be hidden from the active awareness of the children in our study. Social class divisions, are more extreme now than at any time in U.S. history, but extensive residential and school segregation, widespread consumption of commercial children’s culture, and the amplification of racialized cultural differences divert children’s attention from these tectonic economic shifts” (96).

Thorne’s chapter is very well-written and her arguments are vividly illustrated by ethnographic evidence. But, at the same time, it’s hard to be satisfied with a conclusion that things are “creative, conflictual and constraining.” I do agree with Thorne that the spread of consumer culture has obscured our ability to intuitively know “class” and lent credit to the idea that a “rising tide lifts all boats.” At the same time, it seems like the kids are highly aware that rich kids go to schools in the hills and resent it. What are the implications of this resentment? What are the implications of upper (and probably) middle-class parents continuing to pull their kids out of public schools? Can consumer culture continue to obscure these differences? Thorne’s penchant for using “fluidity” to model social processes may better represent reality, but it is not much of a guide for action. I would have liked to see a typology of those processes/interactions/behaviors in which kids “creatively” challenged boundaries vs. those where kids experienced boundaries as “constraining.” Tip for identifying categories

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“Rather than supply preset categories in our interviews, we asked open-ended questions, such as ‘What kinds of kids are there in this school?’ which invited informants to put forth their own categories and meanings” (84). REFERENCE: Woodhead, Martin. 2005. "Combating Child Labour: Listening to What Children Say." Pp. 267-292 in Childhood: Critical Concepts, vol. 2, Critical Concepts in Sociology, edited by C. Jencks. London: Routledge. Summary: This article reviews the findings from Woodhead’s collaborative research project on children’s perspectives on work in 6 countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. 300 girls and boys, aged 10-14 years, participated in 49 focus groups. Woodhead provides a cogent argument for why children’s perspectives on issues that affect them and participation in policymaking are important. As he writes: “[L]istening to children’s feelings, perceptions, and views is an essential source of evidence on the way work affects their development, especially psychosocial aspects of development. Their feelings about work, about school, and about core social relationships that support or undermine their dignity and sense of security are vital indicators of hazard and harm” (269). Woodhead foreshadows later calls for more permanent forums for children’s participation, writing: “appropriate ways [must] be found to ensure children’s participation in the decision processes that shape their lives” (270). He also points out that the UN CRC gives children both the right to be protected from harmful working conditions and the right to express their views on issues that affect them. The team researchers developed the “Children’s Perspectives Protocol,” a series of semistructured activities and games focusing drawings, mapping, role play, and group discussion. Many of the activities were “based on locally produced picture cards which children can compare, sort and rank, yielding a combination of individual and group responses” (271). The protocol was developed from participatory methods and conventional methods developed by developmental and social psychologists. Specific activities included: (1) “My day” (2) “My work” (3) “Who matters?” (4) “Work and school” (5) “Which work is best?” (6) “What is a child?” and (7) “Life stories.” Supporting argument(s) and sub-arguments:
Unintended consequences of child labor laws:  “A first concern is about the outcome of interventions that target impoverished, vulnerable children, for whom work may be essential for survival and at the core of personal identity. At worst, such interventions risk inadvertently undermining their security unless followed through by sustained and comprehensive measures that they recognize as genuinely improving their prospects. Ensuring that intervention strategies are in children’s long-term best interests is especially important in contexts of acute poverty and social change, where schooling may be inadequate and alternative work prospects restricted” (267).
Psychosocial impacts of children’s work:  “Whether young people are affected positively or negatively by their work experiences depends on their personal vulnerability, which is in turn mediated by the economic, social, and cultural context of their work, especially the value placed on their economic activity and the expectations for their development and social

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adjustment. With the possible exception of extreme cases of forced or bonded labor, children are not simply passive victims, physically and psychologically damaged by their work. They are social actors, trying to make sense of their physical and social world, negotiate with parents and peers, employers and customers, and make the best of the oppressive and difficult circumstances in which they find themselves. They shape their working life as well as being shaped by it. Their work is part of their activity and (to a greater or lesser degree) it may become part of their identity” (269). Policy and theoretical advantages of listening to children:  “Listening to these young people’s perspectives is a valuable complement to more ‘objective’ criteria for judging which are the worst kinds of work. They draw attention to the personal investment many young people place in their own occupation, despite the arduous conditions and hazards. They also highlight the way children judge their occupation relative to other possibilities that might be open to them – taking account of hazards, costs, and benefits” (277). Danger of negative child labor rhetoric:  “The discourse of researchers and policymakers, the language of child labor regulation, and the strategies of practical intervention filter down to the children themselves. Having their lives described in terms of ‘social deprivation,’ ‘lost childhoods,’ or a ‘socially toxic’ environment does little to help these children, especially if they can see no means of escape. Today’s working children seek respect and support, not condemnation and harassment” (289). Conceptualization of childhood:  “Childhood is not static, nor is it narrowly prescribed. Each generation reconstructs childhood, structuring children’s experiences and channeling human potential to reflect its own goals, values, and circumstances” (289). Childhood in the developing world:  The “tensions between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ conceptions of childhood are in many ways inevitable. They are being felt most acutely in Majority World contexts – ‘developing countries’ where economic and social change as well as urbanization have been the most rapid, and where it is most difficult to ensure that quality schooling is both available to all and that it yields tangible benefits for all” (290). Findings of study:  “A recurring theme in the children’s comments is not so much about the work itself, but about the way they are treated. Children feel vulnerable to those with greater power and authority” (279).  Work was valued not only for its economic benefit but for also “offering skills and training” (281).  Good things about school = literacy and numeracy, making friends, positive relationships with teachers  Bad things about school = harsh punishment by teachers, humiliation by teachers or other children, absent teachers  Children consistently preferred to combine work with school (287)

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SYLLABUS FOR INDEPENDENT STUDY Participatory Action Research: Feminist and Sociology of Childhood Approaches Women’s Studies (WS) 695: Independent Study Colorado State University Fall Semester 2010 Instructor: Dr. Lori Peek, Assistant Professor, Sociology Email: [email protected] Student: Meghan Mordy, Ph.D. Student, Sociology Email: [email protected] Course Description: I will explore feminist and sociology of childhood approaches to participatory action research (PAR) with the goal of applying what I learn to my dissertation research proposal on children and school in El Salvador. The course will examine the history and guiding principles of PAR with detailed attention paid to the feminist approach and critique of these methods. In addition, the course will examine how feminist epistemologies and methodologies have influenced participatory research methods with children and youth. Specific course topics include:  The Logic of Participatory Action Research  Research with Children & Youth: History & Concepts  Feminist Methodologies & Epistemologies  Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups  Theoretical Underpinnings of PAR  The Children’s Participation Agenda: History & Advances  PAR with Children & Youth on Child Labor  PAR with Children & Youth on Education & Schooling  Children’s Participation in Quantitative Research  Critiques & Limitations of PAR  Feminist Critiques of Community & Empowerment  PAR Techniques (Parts I-III)  Situating the Self: Feminist Critique of the Researcher Role Learning Objectives: My goals for this course are to learn how to incorporate participatory techniques into my research methods and to think critically about my role in the research setting. I will complete a comprehensive research proposal, an annotated bibliography, three concept papers and a synthesis paper that draws together the major concepts from the course. Course Activities: 1. Syllabus: I will prepare the course syllabus, selecting appropriate topics, readings, and activities. Due: September 1. 2. Weekly Reading Abstracts: I will outline the major arguments and assess the strengths and weaknesses of each reading.

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3. Research Topic and Personal Statement (for Fulbright): I will prepare a statement of grant purpose (2 pages) describing my research topics, questions, and methods and a personal statement (1 page) describing my qualifications to complete the research and my personal goals and history. Due: September 15. 4. Research Proposal (10 pages): I will prepare a comprehensive research proposal (10 pages) that draws on participatory research methods to investigate children’s perspectives on schooling in El Salvador. 5. Concept Papers: I will write 3 concept papers (3-5 pages, double-spaced). The first will define the major concepts, debates and approaches to PAR. The second will describe feminist epistemologies, debates, and approaches to participatory methods. And the third will outline the theoretical, ethical, and methodological concepts underlying participatory research with children. Due: December 13. 6. Reflection paper: I will write a reflection paper (3-5 pages) that discusses the types of participatory, child-centered methods I think will be effective in my dissertation research project and reflect on my concerns about using these approaches. Due: December 13. Course Outline: Week 1

September 1

The Logic of Participatory Action Research

Topics:  History and guiding principles of PAR  Feminist perspective on PAR and sociology of childhood  Effects of women’s and children’s rights on research methods Required Reading:  MacIntyre, Alice. 2008. Participatory Action Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.  McTaggart, Robin. 1997. "Guiding Principles for Participatory Action Research." Pp. 2543 in Participatory Action Research: International Contexts and Consequences, edited by R. McTaggart. New York: State University of New York.  Bacon, Christopher M. and V. Ernesto Mendez. 2005. "Participatory Action Research and Support for Community Development and Conservation: Examples from Shade Coffee Landscapes in Nicaragua and El Salvador." Center Research Briefs, Santa Cruz, CA: The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.  Lykes, M. Brinton and Erzulie Coquillon. 2007. "Participatory and Action Research and Feminisms: Toward Transformative Praxis." Pp. 297-326 in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, edited by S. N. Hesse-Biber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.  Thorne, Barrie. 1987. "Re-visioning Women and Social Change: Where are the Children?" Gender & Society, 1(1): 85-109. Example of research with children and/or youth:

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 Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, Barrie Thorne, Anna Chee, and Wan Shun Eva Lam. 2001. "Transnational childhoods: The participation of children in processes of family migration." Social Problems, 48(4): 572-591. Week 2

September 8

Research with Children & Youth: History & Concepts

Topics:  History of research with children and youth: critiques and new consensus  Children’s voice, participation and citizenship  Challenges of research with children and youth Required Reading:  Qvortrup, J. 1994. “Childhood Matters: An Introduction” pp. 1-23 in J. Qvortrup, M. Bardy, G. Sgritta and H. Wintersberger (eds) Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice, and Politics. Aldershot: Avebury.  Boyden, Jo. 1997. "Childhood and the Policy Makers: A Comparative Perspective on the Globalization of Childhood." Pp. 190-229 in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, edited by A. James and A. Prout. London: Falmer Press.  Alderson, Priscilla. 2000. "Children as Researchers: The Effects of Participation Rights on Research Methodology." Pp. 241-257 in Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, edited by P. Christensen and A. James. London: Falmer Press.  Thorne, Barrie. 2009. "'Childhood': Changing and Dissonant Meanings." International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(1): 19-27. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Selections from: Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham, eds. 2008. Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research.
Cole, Jennifer and Deborah Durham. "Introduction: Globalization and the Temporality of Children and Youth." Pp. 3-23.
Thorne, Barrie. "'The Chinese Girls' and 'The Pokemon Kids': Children Negotiating Difference in Urban California." Pp. 73-97.
Flanagan, Constance A. "Private Anxieties and Public Hopes: The Perils and Promise of Youth in the Context of Globalization." Pp. 125-150.
Durham, Deborah. "Apathy and Agency: The Romance of Agency and Youth in Botswana." Pp. 151-178. Week 3

September 15

Feminist Methodologies & Epistemologies

Topics:  Feminist critiques of qualitative research methods  Feminist dilemmas in representing children’s voices  Conceptual relationship between gender and generation Required Reading:  Sprague, Joey. 2005. “Seeing through Science: Epistemologies,” “Authority and Power,” and “Qualitative Shifts: Feminist Strategies in Field Research and Interviewing.” Pgs. 31-

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80 and 119-163 in Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.  Mayall, Berry. 2002. “Introduction” (pp. 1-8) and “Generation and Gender” (pp.159-178) in Towards a Sociology for Childhood: Thinking from Children's Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press.  Alldred, Pam. 1998. "Ethnography and Discourse Analysis: Dilemmas in Representing the Voices of Children." Pp. 140-170 in Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and Private Lives, edited by J. Ribbens and R. Edwards. London: Sage. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Thorne, Barrie. 2005. "Unpacking School Lunchtime: Structure, Practice, and Negotiation of Differences." Pp. 63-87 in Developmental Pathways through Middle Childhood: Rethinking Contexts and Diversity as Resources, edited by C. R. Cooper, C. Garcia Coll, T. Bartko, H. Davis, and C. Chapman. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbarum Publishers. Week 4

September 22

Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups

Topics:  Feminist perspectives on research ethics  Ethical challenges in research with children  Children’s participation as a solution to ethical dilemmas in researching children Required Reading:  Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy and Abigail Brooks. 2007. "Core Feminist Insights and Strategies on Authority, Representations, Truths, Reflexivity and Ethics across the Research Process." Pp. 419-424 in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, edited by S. N. Hesse-Biber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.  Christensen, Pia and Alan Prout. 2002. "Working with Ethical Symmetry in Social Research with Children." Childhood, 9: 477-497.  Thomas, N. and O’Kane, C. 1998. “The Ethics of Participatory Research with Children,” Children and Society 12: 336-348.  Roche, Jeremy. 1999. "Children: Rights, Participation and Citizenship." Childhood, 6(4): 475-493.  Punch, Samantha. 2002. "Research with Children: The same or different from research with adults?" Childhood, 9(3): 321-341. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Week 5

September 29

Theoretical Underpinnings of PAR

Topics:  Feminist approaches to and critiques of PAR methods  Critical theory and its influence on PAR methods  The theory of social construction and its influence on PAR methods  PAR’s influence on participatory research with children 117

Required Reading:  Gaya Wicks, Patricia, Peter Reason, and Hillary Bradbury. 2008. "Living Inquiry: Personal, Political and Philosophical Groundings for Action Research Practice." Pp. 1530 in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Maguire, P. 2001. "Uneven Ground: Feminism and Action Research." Pp. 273-284 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Kemmis, Stephen. 2001. "Exploring the Relevance of Critical Theory for Action Research: Emancipatory Action Research in the Footsteps of Jurgen Habermas." Pp. 91102 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Gergen, Kenneth J. and Mary Gergen. 2008. "Social Construction and Research as Action." Pp. 159-171 in The Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Hart, Roger A. 1992. "Children's Participation: From Tokenship to Citizenship." Innocenti Essays No. 4, Florence, Italy: UNICEF International Child Development Centre. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Week 6

October 6

Children’s Participation Agenda: History & Advances

Topics:  Defining children’s participation  Assessing its effectiveness and pitfalls Required Reading:  Lansdown, G. 2006. "International Developments in Children's Participation: Lessons and Challenges." Pp. 139-156 in Children, Young People, and Social Inclusion: Participation for What?, edited by K. Tisdall, J. Davis, A. Prout, and M. Hill. Bristol: Policy Press.  Sinclair, R. 2004. "Participation in Practice: Making it Meaningful, Effective, and Sustainable." Children and Society, 18: 106-118.  Hill, M., J. Davis, Alan Prout, and K Tisdall. 2004. "Moving the Participation Agenda Forward." Children and Society, 18: 77-96.  Torre, Maria Elena and Michelle Fine. 2006. "Participatory Action Research (PAR) by Youth." Pp. 456-462 in Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia, edited by L. R. Sherrod, C. A. Flanagan, R. Kassimir, and A. K. Syvertsen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Wells, Karen. 2009. Children in a Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Week 7

October 13

PAR with Children & Youth on Child labor

Topics:  Assessing child labor in the context of the developing world  Listening to children’s voices on the issue of child labor Required Reading:  Woodhead, Martin. 2005. "Combating Child Labour: Listening to What Children Say." Pp. 267-292 in Childhood: Critical Concepts, vol. 2, Critical Concepts in Sociology, edited by C. Jencks. London: Routledge.  Leiten, G. K. 2008. “School and Education.” Children, Structure, and Agency: Realities across the Developing World. New York: Routledge. (pick relevant sections)  Admassie, A. 2003. "Child Labour and Schooling in the Context of a Subsistence Rural Economy: Can They Be Compatible?" International Journal of Educational Development, 23: 167-185. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Wells, Karen. 2009. Children in a Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Week 8

October 20

PAR with Children & Youth on Education & Schools

Topics:  History of PAR in educational settings  Exemplary PAR project with urban youth addressing racism and inequality in schools  Disadvantaged children and their experience of work/education choices Required Reading:  Zeichner, K. 2001. "Educational Action Research." Pp. 273-284 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Ansell, Nicola. 2005. “Schooling and Education.” Children, Youth, and Development. London: Routledge.  MacDonald, Robert and Jane Marsh. 2004. "Missing School: Educational Engagement, Youth, and Social Exclusion." Youth & Society, 36(2): 143-162.  Levinson, Bradley A. and Dorothy Holland. 1996. "The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: An Introduction." Pp. 1-56 in The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, edited by B. A. Levinson, D. E. Foley, and D. C. Holland. Albany: State University of New York Press. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Wells, Karen. 2009. Children in a Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Week 9

October 27

Children’s Participation in Quantitative Research

Topics:  Children’s participation in identifying indicators of their well-being  Children’s rights in outcome assessments  Mixed methods approaches to measuring children’s well-being Required Reading:

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 Ben-Arieh, A. 2008. "The Child Indicators Movement: Past, Present, and Future." Child Indicators Research. 1: 3-16.  Lundy, Laura and Lesley McEvoy. 2009. "Developing Outcomes for Educational Services: A Children's Rights-Based Approach." Effective Education, 1(1): 43-60.  Camfield, Laura and Yisak Tafere. 2009. "'No, living well does not mean being rich': Diverse understandings of well-being among 11-13 year-old children in three Ethiopian communities." Journal of Children and Poverty, 15(2): 119-138. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Clark, Cindy Dell. 2004. "Visual Metaphor as Method in Interviews with Children." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 14(2): 171-185. Week 10

November 3

Critiques & Limitations of PAR

Topics:  Critiques of PAR from institutional perspective  Limitations of PAR in practice Required Reading:  Cleaver, F. 2001. "Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory development." Pp. 36-55 in Participation: The new tyranny?, edited by B. Cooke and U. Kothari. London: Zed Books.  Cornwall, A. 2003. "Whose Voices? Whose Choices?: Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development." World Development, 31(8): 1325-1342.  Fox, J. A. 2006. “Lessons from Action-Research Partnerships.” Development and Practice 16: 27-38.  Lykes, M. B. 1997. "Activist Participatory Research Among the Maya of Guatemala: Constructing Meanings from Situated Knowledge." Journal of Social Issues, 53(4): 725746. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Cook-Sather, Alison. 2002. "Authorizing students’ perspectives: Toward trust, dialogue, and change in education." Educational Researcher. 31(4): 3-14. Week 11

November 10

Feminist Critiques of Community & Empowerment

Topics:  Feminist assessments of PAR’s potential and pitfalls  Feminist critiques of community and power Required Reading:  Crawley, H. 1998. "Living up to the empowerment claim?: The potential of PRA." Pp. 24-34 in The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development, edited by I. Guijt and M. K. Shah. London: Intermediate Technology.  Rowlands, J. 1995. “Empowerment Examined.” Development and Practice. 5(2): 101107.  Rocheleau, Dianne, Laurie Ross, Julio Morrobel, and Ricardo Hernandez. 1998. "Gendered Landscapes, Gendered Lives in Zambrana-Chaucey, Dominican Republic."

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Pp. 178-187 in The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development, edited by I. Guijt and M. K. Shah. London: Intermediate Technology.  Baker Collins, S. 2005. "An understanding of poverty from those who are poor." Action Research, 3(1): 9-31. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Fahmi, K. 2007. “Participatory Action Research” (pp. 8-46), “The Beginning” (pp. 83107), and “Impacts and Concluding Commentary” (pp. 157-170) in Beyond the Victim: The Politics and Ethics of Empowering Cairo's Street Children. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Week 12

November 17

PAR Techniques (Part I)

Topics:  Facilitating children’s participation: Creative ideas from PAR researchers Required Reading:  Hart, R. 1997. “Children’s Developing Capacity to Participate,” “Action Research with Children,” and “Methods” Pp. 27-39, 91-107, 161-194 in Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. Earthscan. London.  O’Kane, C. 2000. “The Development of Participatory Techniques: Facilitating Children’s Views and about Decisions which Affect Them,” pp. 136-159 in Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, edited by P. Christensen and A. James. London: Falmer Press.  Barker, John and Susie Weller. 2003. "'Is it Fun?': Developing Children Centred Research Methods." International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23(1/2): 3358. Week 13

November 24

PAR Techniques (Part II)

Topics:  Facilitating children’s participation: Creative ideas from PAR researchers Required Reading:  Boyden, Jo and Judith Ennew. 1997. “The background to all methods,” “Classroombased learning,” and “Field-based learning” Pp. 83-166 in Children in Focus: A Manual for Participatory Research with Children. Stockholm, Sweden: Save the Children.  Kellet, Mary, Ruth Forrest, Naomi Dent, and Simon Ward. 2004. "'Just teach us the skills please, we'll do the rest': Empowering ten-year-olds as active researchers." Children and Society, 18: 329-343.  Chiu, Lai Fong. 2003. "Transformational Potential of Focus Group Practice in Participatory Action Research." Action Research, 1(2): 165-183.  Maglajlic, Reima Ana. 2004. "Right to know, UNICEF BiH: Developing a communication strategy for the prevention of HIV/AIDS among young people through participatory action research." Child Care in Practice, 10: 127-139.

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Week 14

December 1

PAR Techniques (Part III)

Topics:  Facilitating children’s participation: Creative ideas from PAR researchers Required Reading:  Gordon, Gill, Rachel Baker, Ernesto Cloma, Julian Faulkner, Mahfuza Haque, Joanna Hill, Rachel Hinton, Andy Inglis, Alice Lamptey, Charity Mayau, Thabang Ngcozela, and Joachim Theis. 1998. “How to: The Process.” Pp. 65-116 in Stepping Forward: Children and Young People's Participation in the Development Process, edited by J. Victoria, E. Ivan-Smith, G. Gordon, P. Pridmore, and P. Scott. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.  Lykes, M. Brinton. 2001. "Creative Arts and Photography in Action Research in Guatemala." Pp. 363-371 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  Wadsworth, Yoland. 2001. "The Mirror, the Magnifying Glass, the Compass, and the Map: Facilitating Participatory Action Research." Pp. 420-432 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, edited by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Week 15

December 8

Situating the Self: Feminist Critique of the Researcher Role

Topics:  Feminist critiques of objectivity, truth, and power  Interrogating the “researcher-self” in the research process  The ethics of research in developing countries Required Reading:  Acker, J, K. Barry, and J. Esseveld. 1996. "Objectivity and Truth: Problems in Doing Feminist Research." Pp. 60-87 in Feminism and Social Change: Bridging Theory and Practice, edited by H. Gottfried. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.  Unger, R. K. 2004. "Dilemmas of Power: Questions for all of us." Pp. 169-178 in Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research, edited by M. BrydonMiller, P. Maguire, and A. McIntyre. Westport, CT: Praeger.  McDonald, S. 2003. "Answering Questions and Asking More: Reflections on Feminist Participatory Research." Resources for Feminist Research, 30(2): 77-100.  Ansell, Nicola. 2001. "Producing Knowledge About 'Third World Women': The Politics of Fieldwork in a Zimbabwean Secondary School." Ethics, Place, and Environment, 4(2): 101-116. Example of research with children and/or youth:  Rose, Pauline and Caroline Dyer. 2008. "Chronic Poverty and Education: A Review of the Literature." Working Paper No. 131. Manchester, UK: Chronic Poverty Research Centre.

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