3.1 Paradigm Shifts: From Taboo to Accepted Practice

In almost all instances, novel discoveries yield criticisms at best and downright mockery and even humiliation at worst. When the latter happens, a latent discovery is initially considered to be bizarre, irrelevant, or taboo among a particular field’s community of scholars. Given that there are occasional instances of parent-researchers studying their children (cf. Bissex, 1980; Dezuanni, 2018; Hackett, 2017; Halliday, 1975; Kabuto & Martens, 2014; Piaget 1936/1952) or, in even rarer instances, with their adult children (Long & Long, 2014), we see this collection as part of a latent movement in educational research that, we hope, gains greater traction, legitimacy, and growth.

In what follows, we offer a wide-angle view of historical shifts in normative practices across various disciplines. Doing so calls attention to discoveries and practices that have defied convention and underscores how these shifts helped to situate new ways of making meaning. The field of child-parent research is much like these exemplars in that it challenges or extends what is known and introduces a new paradigm and, with it, offers new epistemological understandings. Historical examples abound. Here are a few:

In 1842, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, invented what we now know to be the first algorithm for an analytical engine, which is, in contemporary parlance, the first computer program. Unfortunately, her work was overshadowed by that of her male colleagues, particularly Charles Babbage. It is important to note, however, that the research community at the time was unaware that Ada King documented her synthesis and development of the first algorithm for an analytical engine in a series of notes from 1842 to 1843. With few exceptions among her mathematician peers, her work was considered irrelevant in her day because the utility of her algorithm was unclear. Fortunately, these notes were resurrected and republished by Bertram Bowden in 1953 as an appendix.

That is but one of many examples in mathematics and computer science. Moving to linguistics, in 1879, Ferdinand de Saussure posited the existence of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, the original language that developed into what we know today as a system of 448 languages, which can be hypothesized through the study of laryngeal phonemic reconstructions. In his own day, Saussure was derided for even suggesting the existence of PIE—let alone the use of laryngeal theory to support the notion of a PIE language. It wasn’t until the 1930s, through the findings of mid-twentieth-century linguists, most notably Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1935), that Saussure was recognized for this significant discovery.

Moving from linguistics to physics, Albert Einstein is a novel case in that the world-renowned physicist’s theory of relativity, particularly general relativity, gained little, if any, recognition until about 50 years later in the 1960s when astrophysics blossomed as a field in the natural sciences. Mostly known during the early twentieth century for the law of the photoelectric effect, Einstein is most celebrated today for the theory of relativity, one that was challenged in his day for two major reasons: (1) a putative lack of usefulness in both academic and lay circles; and (2) an overall lack of acceptance among most European physicists prior to World War II (Wazeck, 2014).

Like King, Saussure, and Einstein, Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, was met with skepticism from the community of geologists who argued that his notion of continental drift, first posited in the early 1900s, did not conform to the findings of leading researchers in geology of the day. But, fortunately, Wegener’s reputation as an “outsider” in geology was short-lived; by the early 1950s, his contributions served as the primary foundation of the theory of plate tectonics (Frankel, 1987).

In addition to researchers whose ideas have been met with derision, momentous discoveries have at least another thing in common: As soon as they are discovered, they seem self-evident. An example of this is problem-solving methodology that was developed by the famous twentieth-century mathematician, George Pólya. Prior to the publication of Pólya’s How to Solve It (1957), the notion of a stepwise progression of solving problems, particularly in mathematics, was inconceivable and not often seen as obvious (Alexanderson, 2000). This is also true with novel ways to think about who can do research.

In his foreword to Inside/outside: Teacher research and knowledge, Frederick Erickson (1993) acknowledged the newness of Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle’s conception of teacher research. Erickson stated thus: “Cochran-Smith and Lytle have not only provided here a fresh and incisive review of a developing field, they have been active in helping that field to develop” (p. vii). Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1993) sentiment about an unfolding field—especially one in its nascency—is, at once, inspirational for researchers in the fields of education and human development, as well as the subfields of research methods and measurement, and, at the same time, apt from the perspective of the need to ensure the dynamism of methodological approaches. Cochran-Smith and Lytle stated the problem succinctly in the opening chapter of their book:

Although current educational research has placed considerable emphasis on developing a systematic and rigorous body of knowledge about teaching, little attention has been given to the roles that teachers might play in generating a knowledge base. Lack of significant teacher participation in codifying what we know about teaching, identifying research agendas, and creating new knowledge is problematic. Those who have daily access, extensive expertise, and a clear stake in improving classroom practice have no formal ways for their knowledge of classroom teaching and learning to become part of the literature on teaching. (p. 5)

Those who live the experience, therefore, should have a voice in the research. Cochran-Smith and Lytle noted the subjugation of the teacher’s expertise to that of the university researcher when the authors argued that “efforts to construct and codify a knowledge base for teaching have relied primarily on university-based research and have ignored the significant contributions that teacher knowledge can make to both the academic research community and the community of school-based teachers.” Like children in traditional research, teachers who are “most directly responsible for the education of children have been disenfranchised” (p. 5).

Research, regardless of field of inquiry, is in flux. From an ontological perspective, it has to be; that is the nature of research—the élan vital of the scientific method. But the extent to which research in a particular field changes seems to be greatly influenced by how the academic community accepts, or rejects, that change. Therefore, our experiences as contributors to a burgeoning concept in terms of both who does research and how it is conducted might face opposition, and we remain confident that child-parent research will gain normativity. We believe a paradigm shift is needed both methodologically and structurally in terms of who can engage in the process of researching. For too long, research was conceived of, almost exclusively, as a white lab-coat, mostly male endeavor, especially from the mid-nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century. Only since the last third of the twentieth century to the present has it included a wider scope of adult participation—namely, those who made it their goal to engage in research (Ceci, Williams, & Barnett, 2009). Rarely, if at all, has it included young people in its pool.

And we call attention to an inherent (and possibly unintentional) elitism that exists in the boundary-making between those who are deemed “researchers” and those who are not. It seems ironic that, in a field that looks to empower the otherwise voiceless, there is the relative absence of youth-as-researchers in the literature and at presentations; for the latter, even if raw data are presented and recordings of youth voices or images are played or shown, the adult researcher remains the filter when presenting the study. Long and Long (2014) pointed out, “Rarely is the question asked: What does it mean to the child when researchers interpret his or her words and actions to the broader educational community through articles, books, and conference presentations” (p. 124, emphasis in original). Budd Hall (2005) noted that, despite movements to create participatory practices in research that would counter “the monopoly over knowledge production by universities” (p. 22), there are still deeply rooted power structures that support the status quo: “While the university world explodes with new discourses on power in all its forms, the faces in the universities in my part of the world, the resumes of scholars we hire, the forms of sharing knowledge we use, and the structures of learning and knowledge production have changed but little” (p. 22). When it comes to including children, the traditional forms of research do not include them as researchers, but, instead, “they [children] tend to be excluded from educational policy-making and the ‘rarefied world’ of the academic: a hegemonic ‘score-keeping’ world where professional adult researchers separate themselves from others” (Murray, 2016, p. 705).

Although the idea of children and teens as co-researchers may seem novel in academia, the general undercurrent of child study, whether children have participated as equals or not, has been an important area of inquiry for over a century. To be sure, then, child-parent research is neither taboo nor new to education research. Although Dewey’s formal writing did not identify his own children specifically, Dyehouse and Manke (2017) explained how Dewey’s children were a source of inspiration: “Dewey’s parenting experiences affected his thinking about language and communication…[and] helped him see language activity as primarily concerned with agreement in action” (p. 22). Dewey, however, is not known for his role as a parent-researcher, and only recently has his engagement in child-parent research received attention.

When researchers were overt about their work with their children, they faced scrutiny. As Kabuto (2008) noted, the linguist Leopold (1939) who examined his daughter’s bilingualism, “felt his work went unappreciated” (p. 179). Likewise, when Piaget (1936/1952) developed theories of cognition based on his own observation of his infant children and his one-on-one clinical interviews with children and teens, his work was challenged by some of his peers (Braine, 1962; Graue, Walsh, & Ceglowski, 1998). Nonetheless, Piaget’s investigation of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of intellectual development³ by creating and engaging in the Piagetian clinical interview—that is, with the participation of children—has helped to pave the way for future research. Piaget’s novelty was not so much his newness of method as it was the nature by which children and teens exhibited their intellectual and cognitive abilities. In their research on everyday mathematical knowledge of preschool children, Ginsburg, Pappas, and Seo (2001) emphasized the idea of “asking young children what is developmentally appropriate” (p. 181), a Piagetian concept that we are incorporating and fostering in our research.

As we develop a conceptual framework and work towards a new epistemology, we do so acknowledging that just as “parent-research has held an ambiguous place in research designs, paradigms, and frameworks…[and] has often been marginalized” (Kabuto, 2008, p. 177), so, too, is child-parent research a nascent field that has yet to develop the exposure and development of established lines of inquiry. In the last forty-five years, there have been occasional parent-researcher investigations of (or inspirations from) their own child(ren)’s or grandchild’s meaning making (Baghban, 1984, 2014; Bissex, 1980; Dezuanni, 2018; Gee, 2003; Goodman, 2014; Goodman & Goodman, 2013; Hackett, 2017; Halliday, 1975; Kabuto, 2008, 2014; Kress, 1982; Long, 2004; Maderazo, 2014; Martens, 1996, 2014; McCarty, 2012; Miller, 2014; O’Mara & Laidlaw, 2011; Shannon & Shannon, 2014; Wolf, 1992; Yoon, 2012) or of their own role as parent-researchers and advocates of their child(ren) (Haddix, 2014; Lopez-Robertson, 2014). There also have been limited examples of the child or, in the case of Long and Long (2014) the adult child, in a co-research or co-authorship role, privileging the child’s voice and challenging traditional paradigms.

Even though parent-researcher investigations challenge the norm, the language of convention perpetuates hierarchies. Perhaps without realizing it, parent or grandparent-researchers have discussed “research on them [the children]” and learning from “studying” their children or grandchildren in some instances “by carefully examining specific features of [the child’s] writing over time” (Goodman & Goodman, 2013, p. 518; Kabuto, 2014; Shannon & Shannon, 2014). As Kelli Long retrospectively considered her mother’s role as a parent-researcher, she explained that her mother “studied my experiences learning Icelandic culture, my acquisition of the language in particular” (Long & Long, 2014, p. 123). We wonder how this research might have looked had the childhood or adolescent Kelli been studying her own practices and writing with her mother about her experiences.

Just as parent-researchers have offered important discoveries of child learning by situating the child as the object of study, they also have showcased the continued struggle to situate the child in parent research. Such a challenge is critical to explore in the child-parent research dynamic and is part of the methodological transparency needed to substantiate the line of inquiry (Kabuto, 2008). Likewise, these examinations are important to the genesis of this field of study, which has had sporadic pockets of research production, but no cohesive and steady growth. We hope this book will serve as fodder for the field to develop and refine child-parent research.

4.1 Participatory Research

Over the course of time, the field has pushed against the hierarchies of research to make room for participants in the research in varying degrees. Speaking for oneself has tremendous power and authenticity, and research has proven discrepancies between adult reporting and child self-reporting. For instance, Theunissen and colleagues (1998) found inconsistencies between the way parents and their children reported the “children’s health-related quality of life” (p. 387). In the study of 1,105 Dutch children between the ages of 8–11 years old, Theunissen and colleagues found that there was a difference in agreement between child and parent reporting, suggesting “that parent reports cannot be substituted for child reports” (p. 395). If this is the case, why then are children’s voices often presented through the adult mouthpiece? Counters to these concerns are addressed in participatory research, which is rooted in the understanding that knowledge can be created and presented in multiple ways and it is most authentic when the meaning maker is the researcher of his/her/their practices.

Participatory research stemmed from an international effort and was “first articulated in Tanzania in the early 1970s to describe a variety of community-based approaches to the creation of knowledge” (Hall, 1981, 2005, p. 5). Essentially, participatory research began as a concerted effort to mitigate the privilege and possible myopia of traditional research and moved towards empowering the otherwise silenced or less heard. Hall (2005) identified seven key components of participatory research: (1) it involves “powerless groups of people”; (2) it “involves the full and active participation of the community in the entire research process”; (3) the community—not the outside researcher—identifies the problem to be researched and then actively engages in analyzing and solving the problem; (4) the community directly benefits from the “ultimate goal” of the research, which is “radical transformation of social reality and the improvement of the lives of the people themselves”; (5) there is an increase in self-awareness: “the process of participatory research can create a greater awareness in the people of their own resources and mobilize them for self-reliant development”; (6) the approach yields an “authentic analysis of social reality”; and (7) there is a direct, not peripheral, involvement of the researcher (p. 12). These seven tenets of participatory research underscore the inherent involvement, personal investment, self-reflection, and overall empowerment of the learners involved in such research.

Similar to participatory research, but having roots in social psychology and management theory, action research typically focuses on “individual, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis” in an effort to support effective social systems (Khanlou & Peter, 2005, p. 2335). In an offshoot of action research, Participatory Action Research (PAR), wherein “Participants are enabled to contribute their physical and/or intellectual resources to the research,” (Khanlou & Peter, 2005, p. 2336), there is a combination of action research and participatory research features:

the action research component provides an ongoing, spiral framework where the participants themselves evaluate the validity and the relevance of the research process. The participatory research component incorporates equity and resistance to societal oppression. (Khanlou & Peter, 2005, p. 2335)

Although PAR combines two empowering frameworks (participatory research and action research), and the “process itself can facilitate learning among community members regarding resources for self-determination and research methods” (Khanlou & Peter, 2005, p. 2336), there are ethical issues that can arise. If researchers are not sensitive to social, cultural, and political implications, those involved might be vulnerable to related consequences and unanticipated exposure. Additionally, given that the “knowledge gained from PAR is focused upon action, not understanding alone” (p. 2335), “researchers and ethical reviewers must consider whether a protocol truly has such emancipatory potential” (Khanlou & Peter, 2005, p. 2336).

Furthermore, because forms of participatory research involve co-researchers creating agreements pertaining to each step of the research process—from the design, to each researcher’s responsibilities, to data analysis, dissemination, and ownership—there are concerns about equity in the partnership. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), which supports “collaboration and equal partnership between researchers and participants,” might have ethical and methodological issues if positioning and power structures are not acknowledged: “there is the potential of tokenistic partnerships and ‘false equalitarianism’ that can emerge, and as such can cause further harm to participants and the community” (Kwan & Walsh, 2018, p. 374).

Another arm of participatory research is one that includes a critical dialectical pluralist approach. Put simply, critical dialectical pluralism (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013) underscores the integral involvement of the participant-as-co-researcher and helps to flatten conventional hierarchies associated with researcher-driven decisions related to a study’s design, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of findings. Critical dialectical pluralism, therefore, specifically works toward

empowering the participants to make research-based decisions at the various stages of the research process (i.e., research conceptualization, research planning, research implementation, research utilization)…[and] either perform or present the findings themselves (e.g., using Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube) or…with the research-facilitator(s). (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013, p. 15)

This methodological and conceptual frame helps to mitigate “token” partnerships and confront existing hierarchical structures. In the case of child-parent research, two are inherently present—the authority of the adults as parents and as education researchers.

4.2 Youth Engaged as Researchers

The concept of participation becomes a bit muddled when youth are part of the equation, especially because there is a “distinct risk that activities are only labelled ‘participation’ when they fit comfortably into the agendas of the organising adults” (Tisdall, 2008, p. 422). Therefore, the question of who may participate in research as researchers becomes important to address. According to the British Educational Research Association’s (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, “children who are capable of forming their own views should be granted the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them, commensurate with their age and maturity” (p. 15). Although research suggests that the focus should be on developmental appropriateness instead of age (Chabot et al., 2012; Murray, 2016), there is an important distinction here, namely that children should be able to participate freely as long as, when appropriate, there is consent from a parent or guardian.

Research also suggests that participation, often defined as “taking part in,” varies according to country, region, and culture (Mason & Bolzon, 2010, p. 128). For instance, in Asian countries, youth participation typically was associated with obligation, especially given the cultural emphasis on family and community instead of individual right (Mason & Bolzon, 2010). This perspective of participation contrasts with Western, individualistic understandings of “taking part in” activities often designed and orchestrated by adults; ironically, according to Mason and Bolzon, the children in Australia (i.e. Western-based culture) perceived a sense of obligation to participate. What is more, the Western “understanding of participation as investment in the future contrasts with majority-world conceptions of participation as making an active contribution in the present” (Mason & Bolzon, 2010, p. 128). In other words, simply noting that youth are participating in research does not automatically mean that there is equity in the research. If there is a sense of obligation to participate, then hierarchies persist.

Such threads of authority, however, can be mitigated if participation is viewed as decision making, which involves the transference of power between adults and children that can be “potentially transformative of adult-child relations” (Mason & Bolzon, 2010, p. 129). Decision-making based participation does not remove the tensions of authority. Rather, it involves “a commitment to the self understanding and reflexivity of children” in a dialogic, negotiated space of “reciprocal interaction” (Mason & Bolzon, 2010, p. 302). We suggest this inherently involves trusting in the child’s forms of contribution regardless of age. As Landsdown (2010) explained, children form and express their views at an early age, and participation should not be limited to age or to the “expression of views in ‘adult’ language” (p. 12). Furthermore, children are capable of self-reflection and making evidence-based decisions. In Murray’s (2016) study of 138 children aged four to eight, children made evidenced-based decisions as a “rational underpinning for forming epistemology—philosophies concerning what they counted as truth and knowledge” (p. 706). In other words, child participation is feasible, relevant, and noteworthy.

More specifically, for Murray’s (2016) Young Children As Researchers (YCAR) project, three principles supported the research, which also involved reflexivity: (1) an emancipatory principal rooted in “collectivity, reciprocity, and respect”; (2) a participatory principle based on shared responsibilities and action; and (3) an inductive principle that supported the collaborative construction and interpretation of data (p. 708). Murray discovered that, as the youth partook in co-research with adult researchers, the youth engaged in four overarching research behaviors—“exploration, finding solutions, conceptualisation and basing decisions on evidence” (p. 711). These findings suggest that being a researcher need not be relegated only to those over 18 years of age or with an advanced degree.

Unfortunately, research that reveals children thinking like a researcher from a psychosocial perspective is relatively scant, and investigations that either directly or tangentially consider this area often fall within the realm of creativity studies. Nonetheless, one such line of research considers the young child as scientist and mathematician by exploring the architectural implications in young children’s Lego™ and block constructions (Ness & Farenga, 2007). An expert’s close analysis of children’s constructions demonstrated that when children are engaged in spatially related constructions, they test their ideas, estimate lengths, consider options and alternatives, and even base their actions on previous constructions that might (not) have succeeded. In sum, young children’s everyday mathematical and scientific thinking is inextricably linked to that of professional mathematicians and scientists. In a parallel manner, children have the potential to research topics in which they are motivated or inclined to investigate. These results strongly suggest, then, that young people’s motivation to engage in research is not only common, but also potentially accessible. This accessibility advances the point that children are key constituents—equal to parents and other adults—within the concept of researcher.

6.1 Engaging in Ethical Activity

Understanding children’s position in research as participants and co-researchers necessitates that we identify and contextualize ways that children authentically might be involved in knowledge building and creating. For this discussion, we draw on the literature from the wider field of researchers who conduct research “with” children. To date, there is a dearth of literature on child-parent research, so we look to research that positions children as participants and co-researchers (Christensen & Prout, 2002) to help build a theoretical and ethical space for parents engaging in research with their children in formal and informal spaces. The more traditional approaches that position children as research objects and subjects do not reflect the vision of research that we are presenting here: First, a parent who sees his or her child as a research object or subject potentially squanders rich opportunities that may present themselves when the child is an involved participant or partner in the research context. Additionally, like Murray (2016), we recognize that “when adults deny children opportunities to make decisions in matters affecting them, they subjugate them” (p. 708), and we take issue with that point on an ethical level as well. Hence, we take up Christensen and Prout’s definitions of non-traditional research with children as most helpful and relevant to child-parent research. Children are: (1) social actors who “take part in, change and become changed by the social and cultural world that they live in,” where children are given “autonomous conceptual status” (p. 481); and (2) “active participants in the research process [promoting] the idea that children be involved, informed, consulted and heard” (p. 481). In this second conception, the child partners with the parent as a co-researcher—but in both conceptions, children’s voices, interests, routines, values and desires are foregrounded in the research activity and become the key pieces of a framework for ethical practice.

Ethical research with children moves from a view of research that desires to avoid harm/damage⁴ to one that “invites potential positive experiential possibilities” in ways that brings a “positive research experience” to children (Mortari & Harcourt, 2012, p. 236). Accordingly, it is helpful to examine some of the ways that researchers have ensured that the research activities they engage in with children do, indeed, manifest in such a positive experience. Generally, researchers try to promote what Christensen and Prout (2002) call “Ethical symmetry,” an a priori assumption whereby “the researcher takes as his or her starting point the view that the ethical relationship between researcher and informant is the same whether he or she conducts research with adults or with children” (p. 482, emphasis in original). In practice, this means that the activities involved in research must be drawn from children’s “experiences, interests, values and everyday routines” (p. 482). Ethical symmetry means that research activities not only are interesting to the child (Lundy & McEvoy, 2011), but also hinge on listening to children carefully and encouraging verbal interactions (Christensen & Prout, 2002; Dockett, Einarsdottir, & Perry, 2009; Dockett & Perry, 2011).

It also is ethically important, in involved and partner child-parent research, that children exercise choice in research directions and activities—this includes choice of expression (e.g. oral, written, digital representations) and voice in research concerns and agendas (Dockett, Einarsdottir, & Perry, 2009; Mortari & Harcourt, 2012; Pinter & Zandian, 2014). This responsibility is, of course, related to the idea that children are active, agentive cornerstones of the research. Striving for ethical symmetry means that the agency of the child is valued, respected and attended to as an ongoing and integral process of the research (Dockett, Einarsdottir, & Perry, 2009). Attentiveness to the process of consent and the willingness of children to continue in research activities is a critical researcher responsibility and ethical imperative (Bell, 2008; Docket & Perry, 2010). Engaging in quality research with children requires an ethical symmetry that is based on a working relationship built around trust, respect, and reflexivity. Nowhere in the world of research is that special, trusting, valued, respectful relationship more self-evident and important than in formal and informal contexts wherein child/ren and parent/s research together.

6.2 Ethical Relationships and Responsibilities

In Figure 1.4, we build on the idea that ethical research with one’s own children has different levels and forms of collaboration. We denote positions on a continuum from “involved” to “partner” in order to reflect the idea that there can be degrees of children’s participation in research. For example, there might be developmental reasons to begin research with one’s child with different, perhaps minimal levels of involvement, and then as the child becomes more developmentally ready, it can be a mutual decision to move towards a partnering position. In the context of child-parent research, both positions are ethical and imperative. In the involved stance, the “child-as-researcher” participates not as an object to be studied, but as a social actor with his or her own experiences and understandings that require research methods and activities that reflect his or her interests, values and everyday routines (Christensen & Prout, 2002). An ethical child-parent research position, then, commits to drawing research questions from the child’s everyday world and adding a layer of communication to that world so that the social actions of children can be carefully understood. Sometimes that might mean just sitting with one’s child and observing everyday play activities and interactions. Other times it might be a combination of observation and question—but the ethical position privileges the idea that the research draws from the child’s world and his or her interests. On the partner end of the child-parent research continuum, the child desires to participate as a fully engaged co-researcher of his/her everyday activities or experiences. In this position, the child becomes a fully vested partner in the research relationship; this means, among other things, that the child-researcher creates and analyzes data, determines next steps for the research project, and participates in formalizing and reporting findings.

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A conceptual framework for ethics of child-parent research

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Striving for ethical symmetry in child-parent research means that the child and the parent must confront and negotiate new positions—new ways of looking at power and privilege, new ways of speaking and collaborating, and new ways and opportunities for the child to direct his or her degrees of participation. Engaging in child-parent research involves communicating, and hence listening, in (potentially) new ways. In turn, the nature of the child and parent relationship likely will evolve beyond the confines of an otherwise hierarchical structure. As some of the researchers in this volume can attest, issues of power, authority, boundaries, bias, balance and privacy come to the fore in sometimes disconcerting, discomforting ways. Those moments of disequilibrium can also present rich opportunities for further understanding and inquiry.

The three facets of ethical research that we present here—consent-as-process, critical reflection, and dialogic interaction—are drawn from ethical issues experienced by researchers in this book and designed to help child-parent researchers maintain an ethical stance while enhancing research methods and findings. As such, the ethical framework offers the field opportunities to envision child-parent research while understanding that there remains an openness to update and customize each of these facets as child-parent research evolves.

6.3 Consent-as-Process

In order to engage in research activity with children in the United States, the researcher must obtain “assent” from the child and “consent” from the adult. Differentiating “assent” from “consent” builds a negative connotation for the former word; because “consent” must be given by the adult guardian, “assent” implies a lack of full understanding of the research, with children needing an authority’s “consent” to compensate for that lack of understanding. In this section, we prefer to draw upon the British Educational Research Association’s (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research and use the word “consent” to describe the child’s role in child-parent research.⁵ Focusing on consent instead of assent helps to illustrate parent-researchers’ ongoing commitment to leading their children in full knowledge of their rights and responsibilities. Consent implies knowledge. Consent implies power. Seeking ongoing consent from the child-researcher is a continuous process and ethical burden of the parent-researcher.

In her research on adults reflecting on childhood trauma, Etherington (2005) recommended obtaining “process consent,” as a way of “ensuring at each stage that participants are still willing to be involved in the project and reminding them of their right to withdraw at any time” (p. 305). In child-parent research, making consent an ongoing part of the research process is essential (Dockett, Einarsdottir, & Perry, 2009; Kabuto, 2008), especially in light of some of the issues that can come to the fore, including bias, balance, power, and boundaries. Take, for instance, issues of ethical symmetry that might arise when a parent-researcher enters into new and perhaps secret spaces of their child’s world—perhaps the inner world of thought, or the world of private play. Although the child has chosen to disclose this information, a veil has been lifted to some degree. Both the child- and parent-researcher need to consider the boundaries of ethical participation, asking questions, such as: What is kept private? What kind of surveillance is an inherent part of play (vis-à-vis videogame play)? How, if at all, is ongoing observation allowable? Even with a child’s ongoing consent, is it okay to shift the context and adjust play in service of some research agenda? While we revisit these kinds of questions later when we talk about critical reflection, they are also germane to issues of consent.

One way to obtain and secure ongoing consent is to develop a strategy of asking children, before each planned or spontaneous research session, questions such as: Do you want to participate in this session? How do you want to participate? Here the parent is in a privileged position of familiarity: the parent-researcher might notice that her/his child’s body language suggests the need for privacy. The parent-researcher might also know that her/his child did not sleep well that night or had an argument with a best friend. These contextual influences matter. It may be argued that parents are in the best position to “read” their child’s willingness to consent. An awareness of power imbalances and a commitment to ongoing discussions of the research itself (Dockett & Perry, 2011) help support children in their decisions about consent. In ongoing and frank discussions about consent, it always should be made clear to children that any kind of participation—long term or short term—is their choice (Dockett & Perry, 2011). Additionally, over time, the child-researcher will develop the language and routine for discussing ongoing consent, and, although the parent-researcher will need to remain continuously vigilant of ethics, the child-researcher will become instrumental in creating and adjusting degrees of participation and offering boundary-setting and boundary-extending language and designs for research. Critical reflection is essential for achieving such agentive ethical work.

6.4 Critical Reflection

Although engaging in thoughtful reflection about one’s own biases and assumptions is an important element of most research methods, when engaging in child-parent research, this element is crucial. Here both child and parent can foreground particular issues and tensions that arise during the course of their research together, including, but not limited to, relationships, boundaries, power, surveillance, control, privacy and trust. The fact that these components are not static adds another layer of complexity and underscores the importance of ongoing critical reflection. Each researcher has an ethical responsibility to consider and discuss the intended or unintended consequences of participating in research together (Dockett & Perry, 2011). In research that claims a level of ethical symmetry, both the child’s and the parent’s reflections inform the research processes and findings.

Critical reflection can appear in formal and informal capacities. For instance, child- and parent-researchers alike might keep research memos in which they record how they feel that day about the dynamic of the research team, the direction the research is taking, the role(s) each researcher is playing, and what, if any, assumptions the child is making about the parent or the parent is making about the child. For the latter, it is essential for the child- and parent-researcher to remain cognizant of how, when, and why they use their knowledge of the other to provide context. Take, for instance, a child discussing his/her favorite music. The parent might unintentionally insert his/her knowledge that the child has enjoyed listening to Ed Sheeran. Yet, the child might be thinking about a new artist or genre that the parent did not consider or is unaware of at that point in time. Moments like these—when thoughts run parallel—must be accounted for in any research, but especially in child-parent research because of the inherent hierarchy that accompanies conventional family structures. We are not saying that critical reflection will mitigate assumptions although that might be possible over time. Rather, we advocate for ongoing critical reflection that accounts for in-the-moment and retrospective constructs of how each of the researchers, regardless of age, has (a) presented oneself to the research team and to the data collection process—this can include a range of behaviors revealing levels of openness, trust, or (dis)interest; (b) inserted internal dialogue to make sense of the data; (c) interpreted and understood the data and developed analyses; and (d) built upon previous experiences. Hence, critical reflection is central to securing trustworthiness in (and of) the data, as well as advancing the inquiry’s shared objectives.

Informally, the child and parent can speak aloud or jot in the margins of transcripts of meeting minutes their assumptions and surprises. When reviewing research meeting transcripts, for instance, the child and parent separately (or together) might write questions that arise, note what surprised him/her, and admit assumptions circulating as an inner dialogue. It is especially important to reflect critically upon the inner dialogue—that which one thinks but does not necessarily speak aloud—because the integrity of child-parent research is upheld by the ongoing, dialogic relationship between the child and the parent.

The child new to the field of research might not immediately critically reflect upon the experience. Instead, the child might need prompts to help spur such reflection, and these prompts—preferably designed by the child and parent together, but possibly designed by the parent-researcher—also should guide the parent-researcher’s critical reflection. The child might reflect upon (a) what was confusing and not confusing; (b) ideas that were articulated; (c) ideas that arose but were not said aloud and explain why the ideas were not voiced; (d) feelings of confidence or lack thereof; (e) discoveries about the parent; (f) concerns about and hopes for the research trajectory.

Additionally, the research team needs to engage in ongoing critical reflections about methods and ethics, including, but not limited to, the research agenda, personal discoveries, and the child-parent relationship in and beyond the roles as research team members. Furthermore, each member of the research team needs to remain sensitive to the inner workings of the child-parent research relationship. A dialogic partnership needs to include a discussion about how, when, what, where, and why data collection and analysis can and will take place. This means establishing and re-establishing the boundaries of the research. Critical reflection is at the heart of such an iterative approach and further develops the trustworthiness of the data and the ethics and the integrity of the research process.

6.5 Dialogic Interaction

As mentioned previously, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (United Nations, 1989) resulted in a series of articles related to the rights of children. Of particular interest to child-parent research are Articles 12 and 13. Article 12 stipulates the right of the child to form and express his or her views, and Article 13 claims, “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds…either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice” (UNCRC, 1989). Both of these claims address the responsibility of the adult researcher to build a research culture that cultivates and privileges dialogic interaction.

How do child- and parent-researchers know when the conversations and interactions they have with each other are dialogic? Recognizing the call for a dialogic research relationship with children (Fitzgerald et al., 2010), we also use the term “dialogic,” but through a Bakhtinian lens to signal conversations that are fluid, relational, and dynamic. Bakhtin (1984) talks about two speech concepts that are helpful to explore when thinking about discussions that represent an authentic co-construction of knowledge: dialogization and heteroglossia. Dialogization refers to interactions whereby language, culture, and discourse infuse in speech exchanges so that there is a negotiation of values and meaning. Its opposite, authoritative, monologic discourse, “permits no play with the context framing it” (p. 343). In authoritative, often adult-led discourse, there is only one meaning. Heteroglossia supports the dialogic approach because it embraces multiple meanings and the “centripetal forces of the life of language” (p. 271) that work against the norm—against the authoritative discourse, or what Bakhtin calls “official” language. Heteroglossia invites a multiplicity of ideas, voices and opinions. It challenges the authoritative discourse sometimes adopted by parents and many researchers. Infusing children’s voices in dialogue in, on, and about research creates opportunities for deeper understanding. Bakhtin suggests that “understanding and response are dialectically merged and mutually condition each other; one is impossible without the other” (p. 282). Affordances related to these active speech acts are exciting to think about in the context of child-parent research. As Bakhtin explains, “every utterance is oriented toward this apperceptive background of understanding, which is not a linguistic background but rather one composed of specific objects and emotional expressions” (p. 281). In research where new knowledge and understandings are enabled by dialogized interactions, having a child-researcher and parent-researcher who are already familiar with each other’s culture, values, and ideas can provide a context for dialogization that produces stunning insights, new knowledge, and perhaps even a new kind of research discourse.

In dialogic, heteroglossic conversations with children researchers, the child participant is a full partner in any discussion (Ely, 1991/2003). Referring to our metaphor of the wheel (Figure 1.3), we contend that such a dialogic, heteroglossic relationship—and, thus, the level of involvement or partnership—is both discursive and recursive. Continued communication and re-evaluation help to build and sustain ethical strength and support the integrity of the research process.

Because the parent-researcher has the privilege of previous experience with scientific inquiry, the initial and ongoing onus is on the parent to ensure that the investigation is ethical and thoughtful. Furthermore, parent-researchers cannot expect their children to engage in research automatically. The child and the parent need to work in tandem as they begin and continue their investigation. Relatedly, in their discussion of engaging in meaningful research with children, Lundy and McEvoy (2011) argued that, although the research literature is “replete with efforts to ensure that practices are respectful and attend to a number of key children’s rights issues in critical, reflexive ways” (p. 130), there remains an issue with helping children to understand their own views and formulate a way to express those views. While Lundy and McEvoy (2011) developed strategies to help children build capacities for participating in discussions of research, in the child-parent relationship, those capacities can be understood and developed in very different ways given that parents and children can engage in research activities in a wide variety of contexts (i.e. cars, stores, home, playgroups) and a child’s understanding of her/his parent (and vice versa) can help facilitate discussions of research findings. In many cases, the parent can support the child when research discussions or activities falter. Clarifying questions and queries can be built around the child’s known interests and abilities. Furthermore, an ethical, dialectical position helps to create a safe space wherein the child can make spontaneous, perhaps “off-topic” remarks, asking questions, and moving the discussion (and research) in ways that the child finds interesting or important (Pinter & Zandian, 2014). In this way, heteroglossia is invited, dialogic interactions are courted, and new understandings are acquired.

7.1 Reimagining Research

Over 25 years ago, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) forged an important path by calling for teachers as researchers. In the same way, our edited collection intends to open methodological, epistemological, and ontological arms to the child’s voice, especially at every facet of scientific inquiry. Although the contributing authors herein present a diversity of ways in which children engage in research—accounts that involve and partner with child-researchers, as well as feature retrospective methods—our goal is to elevate the roles that children play in the unfolding of research to one whereby children and other frequently alienated groups are demarginalized from the process. Indeed, child-parent research needs to be rigorous, methodical, ethical, and careful; we contend it needs to be all the more rigorous than conventional research in that children’s participation—whether it be one of involvement or one of partnership—demands a meting out of appropriate ethical practices that protect historically marginalized populations and extend otherwise traditional boundaries that separate the researcher from the researched. Although skepticism is a healthy counterpart to novelty, it is our hope to overcome obstacles that are often set by critics who are steadfast on keeping the status quo in terms of who does the researching. We argue that, instead of hermetically sealing research and researcher boundaries and roles, scholars should engage in hermeneutical debates (Packer & Addison, 1989) to further consider the ethics and logistics of child-parent research.

To be sure, we anticipate the provocative disposition of this book. The overarching purpose, to call attention to the child-researcher working along with her/his parent-researcher—prompts the field to reimagine methods and approaches that challenge traditional, hierarchical constructs and embrace partnerships with ethical strength and integrity. This edited volume provides a robust account of what it means to do research within the broad continuum of child-parent investigations, with involvement on one side and partnership on the other. The community of scholars—in our context, the field of education research—already has witnessed metamorphoses with regard to who does research, with whom, when, and where. The field cannot be complacent and needs to consider the far-reaching implications of participatory research that reaches those otherwise silenced, be it because of race, ethnicity, or age (to name a few factors). The work in this volume pushes boundaries by offering a new epistemology for research with the child-as-researcher and the child-parent research team offering new dimensions for inquiries and understandings.