Silence in the Context of ‘Child Voice’

Abstract

Recent decades have seen growing enthusiasm internationally for the concept and practice of ‘child voice’. This was encapsulated in, and stimulated, by Article 12 of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This article presents the case for incorporating the equally important concept of ‘child silence’ in both research and applied contexts. ‘Child voice’ has become a powerful moral crusade and consequently criticism of voice has been muted. This is despite the growing articulation of reservations about ‘child voice’ in various research and applied contexts. Two particular sets of emerging concerns are discussed: one set is around the purposes behind such engagement with children; and one set relates to the ethical protocols involved. Finally, the article makes a series of recommendations for researchers working in the fields of ‘child voice’. These concern five methodological aspects: recognising, noting, responding to, interpreting and reporting silence from children. It is concluded that it is timely to take a step back from assumed support for ‘child voice’ as necessarily ‘a good thing’. Rather, we need to consider more reflexively how, why and when ‘child voice’ is realised in co‐constructed research and professional contexts.

Researching children’s silences: Exploring the fullness of voice in childhood research

“…However, a search for published work which considers silence as an important feature of voice research in childhood reveals little to none suggesting that childhood scholars have failed to critically examine the more complex and problematic features which constitute voice such as silence. It was not until 2010 that an article specifically devoted to problematizing silence in childhood research appeared in print (Lewis, 2010). In this article, Lewis critiques what she sees as the moral crusade for the promotion of "child voice" and warns against the oversimplified assumption that "child voice" is necessarily "a good thing."…”

Support for Children’s Protagonism

“…When retrospectively reviewing and coding the video records, we questioned whether our presence in the settings had changed the things that the experts chose to identify as important, and also acknowledged that we would be projecting our own backgrounds and preoccupations onto the data (Sperber & Wilson 1986). When the experts' priorities were not clearly indicated, we had to make judgements about the behaviour, emotions and silences being expressed and to acknowledge that our interpretation of affect might be misguided (Green & Reid, 1996;Lewis 2010). Of course, all of these dilemmas link to longstanding concerns about the need for reflexivity in all data interpretation (Bourdieu 1992), including interpretation of children's perspectives (Lewis 2010) and their experience of poverty (Roets et al 2013).…”

The Potential of Digital Technologies for Transforming Informed Consent Practices with Children and Young People in Social Research

“…Nevertheless, research into the comprehension of research information for children and young people is rare (Lewis, 2010). The examples that do exist tend to be oriented towards medical/clinical contexts and content (Tait et al, 2007;Williams et al, 2011), and exclude children with disabilities (Hurley & Underwood, 2002) and/or comprehension difficulties (Tait et al, 2007).…”