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Purpose Qualitative researchers working with children are increasingly sharing accounts of their research journeys, including the inherent ethical tensions they navigate. Within such accounts, reflexivity is consistently signalled as an important feature of ethical practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore how reflexive engagement can be stimulated within ethical decision-making processes, with the aim of generating professional dialogue and improved practice in qualitative research involving children. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the authors’ work in the Ethical Research Involving Children (ERIC) project, an international initiative that synthesised literature, research evidence and the views and experiences of almost 400 researchers and other key stakeholders internationally, to consider the key philosophical and practical components that underpin reflexivity in the context of research involving children. Findings A conceptual approach linking ‘Three Rs’ - reflexivity, rights and relationship - was found to be a useful framework for enacting universal ethical principles while provoking the kind of critical engagement required for navigating the ethical tensions that characterise decision-making in research involving children. Originality/value This paper introduces a framework to help bridge the gap between espoused ethical principles and the real world dilemmas that emerge in research practice. In doing so, the paper invites a deeper engagement with the ways in which children are constructed in and through research, while offering a shared language for shifting professional dialogue and academic discourse from the aspirational to the operational of ethical reflexivity.

Warin, J. (2011). Ethical mindfulness and reflexivity: Managing a research relationship with children and young people in a 14-year qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) study. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(9), 805-814.

Much has now been written on student participation at school. Yet a lack of conceptual clarity, contestation over purpose and benefits, and uncertainty about how to culturally embed and effectively facilitate participation in school contexts continue to pose considerable challenges. This article reports the qualitative findings from a large-scale, mixed-method study that sought to explore how participation is perceived and practised in schools. The qualitative phase involved students from Years 7-10 (n = 177) and staff (n = 32) across 10 government and Catholic secondary schools in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The data demonstrate that considerable efforts are being made in NSW schools to expand opportunities through which students might 'participate', with these explored across three key arenas of school life: the classroom; co-curricular activities, including formal participatory structures; and informal relational spaces. Although participatory opportunities were largely ad hoc and often dependent upon the approach of individual teachers or school initiatives, differing enactments of childhood and adulthood were identifiable between the three arenas, along with varying expectations in this regard. The classroom emerged as a positive arena at present, and one in which adult-child relations are beginning to become reconfigured. The co-curricular arena was much more contested, with the breadth of potential participatory opportunities perhaps distracting from the need to address underlying intergenerational issues. However, informal relational encounters between students and teachers were becoming increasingly egalitarian, and these offer scope for creating the cultural preconditions such that student participation might expand more evenly across school life.At the moment it's just very much skimming the surface and we do something, 'Oh that wasn't a bad idea . . . ' but it's not really embedded, it doesn't have that well, fine-tuned and rounded approach. (Principal, School A) 1034 A. Graham et al.