Children’s prerequisites for a successful participatory research project

This presentation will report on a recent UK research council project (ESRC Environment and Human Behaviour Programme: Listening to Children – Environmental Perspectives and the
School Curriculum) which involved researchers, children and teachers in a participatory research project. The project was based in a secondary school situated in a socially and economically deprived urban area in England. It focused on children’s experience of their local community, and how they make sense of this in relation both to their lives and to the
school curriculum. Three questions were posed to the children at the start of the project:
would you like to participate, why are you interested, and how can we make your
participation meaningful? The presentation will consider children’s prerequisites for a
successful research project design; these include: their aspirations, authenticity, access to
information, consultation, community experience and action, connectedness, ethics and the
diffusion of ideas. The presentation will highlight the desire that young people have for
schools to address community issues within the curriculum, and for schools to play a much
more significant role in community development. It will also discuss and try to account for
the difficulties that schools have in doing this