Ethics within Participatory Research with children

• Applicant: Dr. Katrin Velten
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501073942

Participatory research with children has gained importance in the last decade in (inter)national childhood research as well as in social pedagogical and health science research fields. On the one hand, it aims to contribute to the legally anchored participation of children and to their normatively demanded individual and collective empowerment. On the other hand, it is intended to broaden children's perspectives on the object and process of research itself and to enable them to act on their own (research) questions or not to prevent them from doing so in the first place. This research approach thus has the potential to open up methodological and content-related participation and influence for children with regard to their learning and living environment. Despite the participatory research approaches developed in each case, the systematic transdisciplinary discussion of these and the formulation of possible consequences for the child-oriented design of relationships and interactions in pedagogical settings represent an international desideratum of participatory research that has so far remained largely unaddressed, not only in (primary) school research. Therefore, the network firstly aims at bringing together and transdisciplinary discussion of existing international approaches and discourses in order to make them fruitful for primary school research and pedagogy. There are also ethical challenges associated with the participation of children in research. They focus, for example, on the extent to which it is necessary and how it can succeed in enabling children to participate in and in research, and whether and what specific research skills scientific researchers need for participatory research with children. Furthermore, it remains to be seen how the specificity of research access, the consistent orientation towards children's independence of mind, and the claim to conduct "good" social science research with a view to quality criteria and goal orientation can be considered at the same time. These challenges can be traced back to antinomic structures, e.g. with regard to the interconnectedness of children and adults in generational and hierarchical systems of order, and cannot be clearly resolved due to this inherent contradictoriness. Accordingly, the network aims to reflect on practices and settings in participatory research with children, with a special focus on the paradigm of "appropriateness", as well as to develop professionalisation perspectives for adult researchers. From this, potentials for pedagogical settings in primary schools will be developed with regard to a substantial contribution to a possible "didactics of research". The sustainability of the network results will be sought within a cross-network conference in German primary school research.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Birgit Hüpping