ABSTRACT
By its very nature, the majority of educational research involves children and young people. This chapter considers the kinds of strategies that are most effective for working alongside younger people. It asks questions about how one might gather data from very young children, and considers how schools, colleges and universities elicit ‘data’ from their students. It distinguishes between the various levels of participation – for instance, research conducted about, on, for, with and by children. Approaches involving students as researchers and co-researchers are outlined and discussed. The chapter concludes by outlining key issues for these approaches to research – most notably, issues of power in terms of differences and equity in adult–child research relations.
