Voice and the Ethics of Children’s Agency in Educational Research

Abstract

In both educational research and educational reform work, “student voice” methodologies assume that children are competent social agents. For historical and cultural reasons, institutional research ethics procedures commonly assume that children are not. This chapter discusses the ethics of children’s agency in educational research, drawing on watershed discourses in the biomedical and social science research literatures. Three recent historico-ethical discourses are summarised: the child as not yet a person, the child as person and the child as agent. It is argued that in the first of these, the child’s voice is often inferred, in the second, it is respected and acknowledged, but only in the third does “student voice” educational research hold the possibility of becoming genuinely child-centric. The chapter discusses the need for empathetic consideration of research ethics from the position of the child and concludes with practical suggestions for increasing children’s agency and voice in educational research.