Developing an ethical and reflexive mindset in emerging childhood researchers.
From The Embassy of Good Science
ResourcesCases
Developing an ethical and reflexive mindset in emerging childhood researchers.
What is this about?
As thinking and practice has grown around ethical research involving children, so too has the need to train and equip new researchers with relevant knowledge and the associated mindsets. However, developing a comprehensive training program on ethical research involving children can be a complex task. When I (Daniella Bendo) took up an Assistant Professor position at King’s University College (at Western University) Canada last year, I developed a third-year undergraduate unit entitled, ‘Researching Childhood (in Childhood and Social Institutions).’ The ERIC materials were invaluable in providing an established, rights-based framework for the course, as well as a wealth of material and resources to draw upon in the lectures and tutorials. In terms of assessment, I sought a way to draw the students’ learning together and ask them to demonstrate their theoretical and practical understanding of ethical issues in research involving children, in what was, otherwise, a theoretical unit. Based on the many real-life case studies on the ERIC website, I set students the assignment of developing their own hypothetical case study. Here, one of our students, Paige Sheridan, shares the approach she took with this assignment. The depth of her ethical understanding is evident in the reflexive detail of her case study and, while hypothetical, the five-step process she describes would likely be a useful tool to consider in research practice.
