Little, Alice ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2214-5814 (2024) Workshop title: Dear Researcher – Exploring the possibilities of transformative research spaces. In: BERA 2024. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this workshop I ask attendees to think about the central processes, characteristics and responsibilities involved when undertaking research with not on children and young people. As Michelle Fine suggested, as ‘theorists, activists, teachers and worriers’ (Fine, 1997, 95), we have a responsibility to create ripples within the circles we work. These ripples have the potential to turn into ruptures of meaningful change. I would like to take this opportunity for us to collectively explore the ‘how’ of constructing research spaces with children and young people. 
 
Over the last three years I have being undertaking research alongside young people who have become active researchers within UK schools (Kellett, 2005). To date I have worked with three groups of young people, all committed to opening conversations about what it takes to become a student researcher and the space needed to enact this. Together we scrutinised the experience of becoming youth researchers and began to explore ‘how’ to create collaborative spaces within UK schools that can elevate children and young peoples voices (Levitan, 2019). This ‘how’ of collaboration has been described as a ‘under-researched’ within PAR fields (Levitan, 2019, Lac and Fine, 2018), and exploring the use of emotional touchpoints and emotion words (Dewar et al, 2009) encouraged us to acknowledge the complexities and vulnerabilities and to engage in ongoing conversations about this kind of research. 
 
The idea for this workshop was borne out of the consideration ‘How do we engage others in a conversation about research spaces?’. Through collaborative sessions with emotional touchpoints and collective writing activities, youth researchers have described feeling ‘vulnerable’, ‘confused’, ‘heard’, and have also documented key elements of a research space in a collaborative letter titled ‘Dear Researcher’. The words offered a chance to explore how youth researchers can share and make meaningful the research process from their own particular vantage point (Greene, 1998). Additionally in each project the youth researchers raised questions such as, ‘We can’t speak for everyone, how do we include more diverse youth voice?’ and ‘What does it take to engage young people in research?’. Through this process of acquiring research skills the young people came to reflect critically on their position as researchers and the ‘opportunity’ to engage with research (Finneran et al, 2023).

In this workshop we will work together using emotion words, as the youth researchers have used within our research, to explore our own experiences and begin to construct a piece of collaborative work. Alongside provocations shared by the youth researchers we will consider the values that we hold, what it is that makes the difference in our own experiences of research, and clarify what kind of theorists, activists, teachers, and worriers we are aspiring to be. Maybe one collective letter, maybe individual poems, maybe a drawing inspired by the conversation with your neighbour. If we begin to look inside, to share, to work on our own accountability and to expand our goals and aspirations with a collective conscience, we can begin to really consider what it takes to create ethical and socially just research spaces with children and young people.  

Participants will be asked to:
Discuss within groups their experiences of engaging with research or youth driven enquiry within school settings.
Explore using emotion words to unpick the negative and positive aspects of these experiences and spaces.
Use prompts to further question research spaces, and youth-driven opportunities within UK schools.

Learning outcomes:
To share individual and collective insights into spaces of enquiry and knowledge production with children and young people.
To imagine what collaborative research spaces in schools look like, feel like and what they can achieve.

Interactive elements:
Participants can engage with the workshop however they feel comfortable. There will be a variety of resources to engage with including paper, pens and playdough.
We will share back to the whole group to create a collaborative manifesto of the workshop session.

References
Dewar, B. et al. (2009) ‘Use of emotional touchpoints as a method of tapping into the experience of receiving compassionate care in a hospital setting’, Journal of Research in Nursing, 15(1), pp. 29–41. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987109352932. 

Fine, Michelle. “Chapter Five: A Letter to Paulo.” Counterpoints, vol. 60, 1997, pp. 89–97. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45135943.

 
Fine, M. (2018) Just research in contentious times: widening the methodological imagination. New York: Teachers College Press. 
 
Finneran, R., Mayes, E. and Black, R. (2023) ‘Pride and privilege: the affective dissonance of student voice’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 31(1), pp. 1–16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2021.1876158. 

Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York and London. Teachers College Press.  

Kellett, M. (2005) Developing Children as Researchers, London, Paul Chapman Publishers.

Lac, V.T. and Fine, M. (2018) ‘The good, the bad, and the ugly: an autoethnographic journey on doing participatory action research as a graduate student’, Urban Education, 53(4), pp. 562–583. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918762491. 

Levitan J. (2019). The role of reflexivity in performing collaborative student voice research. In Berson I. R., Berson M. J., Gray C. (Eds.), Participatory methodologies to elevate children’s voice and agency (pp. 73–92). Information Age.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Other)
Status:	Unpublished
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
Institutes:	Institute for Social Justice
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/10715

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