Research With Children: Perspectives and Practices

Research with Children is a unique resource book on the methodology of childhood research. Leading and new researchers within the social studies of childhood discuss central questions of epistemology and methodology, demonstrating the links between theory and practice. The theoretical and practical questions are set out in a clear and well-argued fashion and will therefore appeal both to the newcomer to childhood studies and to experienced researchers in the field.

Pia Christensen is Professor of Anthropology and Childhood Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is Director of Childhood Studies and, as a leading ethnographer in the field, she has published widely.
Allison James is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth at the University of Sheffield, UK. As a pioneer of the new social sudies of childhood, she has researched extensively in children’s culture.

Introduction: Researching Children and Childhood: Cultures of Communication, Pia Christensen and Allison James 1. Subjects, Objects or Participants? Dilemmas of Pyschological Research with Children, Martin Woodhead and Dorothy Faulkner 2. The Child as a Social Actor in Historical Sources: Problems of Identification and Interpretation, Harry Hendrick Postcript: Raising the Ethical Dimension in Writing the History of Childhood and Children, Harry Hendrick 3. Macroanalysis of Childhood, Jens Qvortrup 4. Children as Respondents: The Challenge for Quantitative Methods, Jaqueline Scott 5. Conversations with Children: Working with Generational Issues, Berry Mayall Postscript, Berry Mayall 6. The Development of Participatory Techniques: Facilitating Children’s Views about Decisions which Affect Them, Claire O’kane 7. Childhood Diversity and Commonality: Some Methodological Insights, Pia Christensen and Allison James 8. Race, Gender and Critical Reflexivity in Research with Young Children, Paul Connolly 9. Research with Children in War-Affected Areas, Mathijis Euwema, Donatien De Graaff, Ans De Jager and Brechjje Kalksma-Van Lith 10. Critical Omissions, How Street Children Studies can Address Self-Destructive Agency, Roy Gigengak 11. Disabled Children, Ethnography and Unspoken Understandings: The Collaborative Construction of Diverse Identities, John Davis, Nick Watson and Sarah Cunningham-Burley 12. Entering and Observing in Children’s Worlds: a Reflection on a Longitudinal Ethnography of Early Education in Italy, William A. Corsaro And Luisa Molinari 13. Listening to Children: and Hearing Them, Helen Roberts 14. Children as Researchers: Participation Rights and Research Methods, Priscilla Alderson