Conference Agenda

A composite narrative is a story constructed using multiple children’s voices to present research findings. These stories can resonate with readers, while also capturing research rigour by conveying the properties and categories that are used to develop qualitative research findings (Johnston et al., 2021). Composite narratives offer new and effective methods for giving children voice in educational research, fulfilling children’s rights as stated within the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). Article 12 of the UNCRC outlines children’s right ‘to have a say about what they think should happen when adults are making decisions that affect them and to have their opinions taken into account’ (UNCRC, 1989). This international law entitles students to be involved in decisions about their education.

Research methods like composite narratives provide ways of giving children ‘a say,’ or ‘voice’, in their education. Thus, educational research offers a way to fulfil the rights of children outlined in Article 12 of the UNCRC (Cook-Sather, 2020). Educational researchers can work with students to generate research findings that capture students’ experiences (Sargeant & Gillett-Swan, 2015). The findings can be communicated by constructing composite narratives that convey children’s voice in a way that resonates (Johnston et al., 2021).

This paper contributes to the development of methods for conveying children’s voice in educational research by outlining a process for constructing composite narratives. The process builds upon the work of other qualitative researchers who have developed methods for constructing composite narratives (Willis, 2019). The result is a set of methods that can be used to convey student voice in educational research. Other qualitative researchers from a range of backgrounds and disciplines might also use these methods to convey children’s voices, as more and more researchers in social sciences use composite narratives to present their findings (McElhinney & Kennedy, 2022).

Composite narratives can be constructed using a six-step method, which is useful for conveying children’s perspectives to the adults that make decisions about their education. An example of a composite narrative and how it was constructed will be presented, which is taken from a research project conducted in Western Australia. The research approach was based upon the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969), which informed the development of grounded theory methods. Straussian grounded theory methods were used to develop research findings together with participants, who were adolescent children. The study included 25 fifteen-year-old students, who contributed more than 175 classroom observations and 100 interviews. The children in the study worked with the researcher to generate findings that answer the research question: “How do students experience their perceived teachers’ expectations of them?”

During the full presentation at the European Conference for Educational Research (ECER), an example of a composite narrative called 'My socks don't matter today' will be given to the audience for them to read. The example narrative will be printed and an advance copy is available through email (o.johnston@ecu.edu.au). The narrative uses a singular first-person voice, but it is a ‘composite’ of quotes from interviews with children who contributed to its development (Johnston et al., 2021). The narrative conveys the finding that was generated together with the children: that students experience teachers as having high expectations when teachers seek to understand more than students as ‘students’, but as people with whole lives.

The composite narrative was constructed to convey this finding back to the children’s educators so their voices could be heard and acted upon, fulfilling the children’s rights in Article 12 (UNCRC, 1989). The methods section below begins to explain how the finding was generated with the children and how the narrative was constructed.

Participatory research approaches – in general, not specifically targeted at students – are characterized by several central components: 1) participation of non-researching actors as co-researchers in the research process; 2) empowerment of these partners through learning processes, competence development, and individual and collective (self-)empowerment; and 3) the dual objective of researching and changing social reality and the associated intervention character and action/application orientation of research (von Unger, 2014, p. 10). Beside the development of participatory research, a new understanding of childhood emerged, according to which children and adolescents are subjects with their own rights and not simply objects or beings to be protected (James & Prout, 1997). This also applies to research (Hammersley, 2017). Participatory research with students means that they should not be studied, but they should be involved in the research process and should be also assisted in building their own view and meaning considering their situation (Lundy & McEvoy, 2012). Furthermore, participation in research is seen as an advanced form of participation and thus as an important source of participatory experiences (Hüpping & Büker, 2019). However, the approach – children as co-researchers – evokes many controversial discourses (Bradbury-Jones & Taylor, 2015; Hammersley, 2017).

In this paper we present an ongoing design-based-research project (Euler, 2014) taking place in Switzerland. The school improvement project has the aim to improve students’ learning within schools through student participation. School improvement processes should be shaped through the cooperation between teachers, students, and researchers. Various participatory settings were implemented (Author et al., 2022) to approach the central question of the study: How must learning processes be designed so that students feel supported in their learning?

Students were expected to come up with new, or even unconventional ideas to change school practices.

However, they sometimes only know their own school practice, wherefore they sometimes lack alternatives. This gave rise to the idea of reciprocal school visits, with the aim of observing concrete classroom activities in another school. A more abstract aim was to support reflection about learning and observing learning situation from a new perspective. The research team suggested the method of systematic classroom observation addressing students and teachers as co-researchers.

In this contribution the authors describe the process of how the observational study was prepared, conducted, and followed up. We will explore the question of what kind of effects the process triggers in the schools – but also among the participating teachers, students, and researchers.

Children have a right to be heard, and for their views to be given due weight (UN, 1989). To be given due weight requires an adult decision-maker to listen to those views. We know from the vast student voice literature that issues of voice are located in structures and relations of power, and that who is speaking is just as important as what is said, and what is said changes according to who is speaking, and who is listening (see Cook-Sather, 2006; Rudduck and Fielding, 2006; Taylor and Robinson, 2009; Fielding, 2004;). What traditionally receives less attention in this literature is the administration of due weight: the listening. This is perhaps because due weight becomes drowned out by a fixation with children’s capacity, or alleged lack thereof (Tisdall, 2018; Daly, 2018). There is no accepted understanding of how to weigh children’s views, and it has become something of an obstacle to children’s rights, particularly in cases where children’s wishes are divergent from prevailing orthodoxy (Daly, 2018; Cairns et al, 2018). This paper opens up debate about listening, and what this means for attributing the ‘due’ in due weight. The questions we begin with is: what does it mean to listen?

A common assumption about listening is that it means the same for everyone, but children listening to adults is not understood in the same way as adults listening to children, or children listening to other children. Frequently interpreted as the decoding of verbalised language, children are viewed as either needing to learn to listen ‘better’, or as deserving to be listened to (Gallagher et al, 2017). However, conceiving of listening in this way assumes the verbalisation of children’s views, and overlooks the role of silence in participation. It therefore advances an impoverished understanding of ‘voice’ and children’s right to be heard. It also fails to take account of us living in-relation with one another, as ‘one among others’ (Splitter, 2022a, 2022b) and the role this has to play in ‘due weight’ and attributing credibility to children’s views.

Drawing upon Fricker’s (2007) epistemic injustice, we claim in this paper that acts of hearing are an exercise of power, but that the implications of this power for ‘due weight’ have not been thoroughly examined. The issue of the epistemic injustice that children encounter is problematic (Kennedy (2010); Murris, 2013; Mohr Lone & Burroughs, 2016; Cassidy & Mohr Lone, 2020), particularly when considering notions of the right to be heard. Indeed, Fricker (2007) argues that the sort of listening required is as much to what is not said as to what is said – a type of listening that requires a ‘responsible hearer’. So, how do we listen to silence? We suggest an ‘expanded listening’ can help us understand the role of silence in participation and shed some light on the concept of ‘non-participation’.