Introduction

Studying Children in Context: Theories, Methods, and Ethics, an important book on conducting research with children, written by M. Elizabeth Graue and Daniel J. Walsh (1998), presents in its introduction a key question for researchers of childhood: How can we “make the world a better place for children”? This question implies that research related to the lives of children around the world has begun to aim to help children to achieve their maximum potential in a safe and nurturing context. Therefore, reflecting and studying social contexts in which children develop, become individuals, and learn social, ethical, and human values, is an important way of achieving this goal.

With this in mind, this article is based on the premise that children are historically, socially, and culturally constituted in the relationships they establish in their lives, that they attribute meanings and sense to the world, to their experiences, and to the interactions established in their daily lives as they develop as people. Educational experiences are now seen as increasingly important for children, and often start during the first year of life. Furthermore, many children attend daycare full time. Thus, it becomes an inescapable challenge to better understand these experiences; in addition it is a difficult exercise for adults: listening to children in educational institutions; developing ways to approach the universe of children; seeking to understand the meanings and sense that children attribute to their social and institutional realities; understanding their forms of participation and perspectives, their feelings, thoughts, their bodily manifestations, among other aspects. The purpose of this article is to emphasize the need for such listening in the context of research with children, considering their rights to attend a democratic school which aims at assuring they have access to the knowledge socially constructed by mankind as well as to social and cultural activities.

The education of children from a young age has been increasingly identified as a universal right. However, this conception is relatively recent, and it is not explicitly stated in the first documents dealing with education as a right.

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), education is identified both as a right per se, and as a necessary condition for promoting peace and respect for human rights in general. Article 26 defines education as a right for all and considers that its objective is twofold: an individual component referring to the full expansion of human potential and the strengthening of fundamental human rights and a social component which aims at fostering understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial, and religious groups.

In the immediate post–World War II period, to guarantee access to basic education was an enormous challenge, since only a small percentage of children throughout the world attended some form of formal education, with lowest numbers particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

From the 1950s to today, there has been a growing awareness regarding the importance of education for the full development of people and the progress of nations; this awareness brought about a great reduction of illiteracy in all continents. Latin America is the most striking case, dropping from a 42% illiteracy rate in 1950 to 2% in 2010 (Martínez, Trucco, & Palma, 2014).

Since the 1990s, especially, international organizations have vigorously promoted global literacy campaigns. Education in many countries at that point still faced serious challenges, such as the fact that more than 100 million children, especially girls, had no access to elementary education; more than a third of the world’s adults lacked access to printed knowledge and new skills and technologies; and more than 100 million children and countless adults failed to complete elementary education, while millions more, despite completing this educational level, were unable to acquire essential knowledge and technological skills (UNESCO, 1990). Thus, conceptions of education, principles, and goals to be achieved by participating countries and signatories to important international documents were defined during conferences in Jomtien (1990), Dakar (2000), and Incheon (2015). These established a commitment between governments and civil society to overcome illiteracy and educational exclusion.

But even though such conferences were important in developing educational policies internationally, the economist approach to education still raises concerns regarding the tendency to reduce education policy to arbitrary scores students must achieve on standardized tests. As members of the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (Campaña Latinoamericana por el Derecho a la Educación, CLADE, 2013) point out, it is disturbing that the United Nations should emphasize the measurement of minimum results in reading, writing, and mathematics, reducing the full concept of education as a human right, which should include availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability.

Particularly in relation to children, the right to free and compulsory school education is one of the principles governing the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), which details that this education should promote young persons’ general culture and allow them—under conditions of equal opportunity—to develop their skills and their individuality, their sense of social and moral responsibility. Subsequently, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, in 1989, and formalized the following year as international law, emphasized the education of children. In two articles specifically devoted to this subject (28 and 29), education was reaffirmed as a right of all children; the conditions that signatory nations must guarantee to be exercised progressively and on an equal basis were established; and the guidelines to be adopted in relation to the objectives of education, such as developing the child’s personality, abilities, and mental and physical capacity to their full potential, were defined. The importance of this Convention is evidenced by the fact that it is the most widely accepted human rights instrument in world history and has been ratified by 196 UN member states.

It is worth mentioning, as Ximenes (2014) affirms, that recognizing education as a fundamental human right based on extensive international norms on the subject enables a discussion which overcomes the emphasis only on a school’s capacity to enroll all children. In a broad sense, the right to education

involves standards that protect the right to education (the right to access good quality, non-discriminatory schools), but also human rights standards in education (i.e. respect for human rights in the educational process) and through education (in this case, identifying education as a priority means of disseminating fundamental human rights). [. . .] The quality of education [. . .] reveals much about these distinct approaches to the right to education in a broad sense.

(Ximenes, 2014, pp. 212–213)

The topic of the quality of education highlights an axiological question, since this concept is not neutral but refers to the values of those who produce quality analysis. Thus, the evaluation criteria used to determine quality itself depends on the positions, beliefs, worldviews, and social practices of those who conceive them (Sousa, 1997). In the field of children’s education, since the 1990s, new perspectives on the quality of education have emerged. Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (2003) emphasize that this is a subjective, value-based, relative, and dynamic concept. They also highlight the importance of the process of defining quality and the need for it to be contextualized spatially and temporally, recognizing cultural and other forms of diversity. Along the same lines, Oliveira-Formosinho (2001) affirms the importance of defining quality as a participatory, dynamic, evaluative, and situational process. Bondioli (2004) also emphasizes the participation of all those involved in the construction of quality: for the author, there is no quality without participation. Since the child is a fundamental element of the educational process, the idea that children need to be heard about aspects related to their education has gradually come to be considered.

The image of a competent child has resulted in the development of research projects which seek to capture children’s perspectives, feelings, and opinions about topics that concern them, and which look at how they see things and the strategies they use to glean information from the adult world. In these projects, children are given a central place, one that they also should presumably occupy in pedagogical practices. However, it is worth keeping in mind that children’s ways of understanding the world are based on relationships, and on cultural, social, emotional, and pedagogical mediations.

In the context of education as a right—which is not restricted to access but includes the quality of the educational experience—and assuming that the quality of education requires listening to children, we will now explore the challenges for qualitative research with children that focuses on their formal educational process and seeks to grasp their perspective.

Listening to Children in Research on Education

Until the beginning of the 20th century, there were few studies that sought to understand the child; the few exceptions included Emile, or On Education, written in 1757, and Itard’s Report (1801) about Victor de l’Aveyron (1806). At the beginning of the last century, however, children began to attract the attention of scholars in various fields.

In psychology, one of the favorable conditions for this growing interest was the fact that the foundations for a new understanding of human development had been established: “the child explains man, the child is the father of man” (Smolka, 2002, p. 114). Therefore, to understand man, it was necessary to study the child. From the beginning of the 20th century, the nascent field of developmental psychology sought to understand the child in its different dimensions and with regard to several themes—thought, language, play, emotions, and morals—aiming to answer such important questions as: How is the child constituted as a person? What relationship does the child establish with objects, with other people, with culture? What factors govern the observed changes? Many questions were asked and many research strategies developed, leading to the production of a vast knowledge about the characteristics and the typical processes of children.

Therefore, what is innovative and relatively recent is the scientific viewpoint that considers children as subjects, not to evaluate them, to define their peculiarities, to establish norms of conduct, or to predict behaviors, but to discover what they think and feel about topics that directly concern them. Some conditions for the emergence of this new type of interest may be identified.

One such condition is the idea that children are different from one another. Among the scholars of human development who have had a deep impact in the second half of the 20th century are Henri Wallon, from France; Jean Piaget, from Switzerland; and Lev Vigotski, from Russia. Despite important theoretical divergences, they defended the idea that man is constituted through his relation with the physical, social, and cultural environment. The belief that the experiences children undergo mark their particular ways of thinking and feeling, their language, their games, their knowledge, their skills, and so on makes it impossible to think of a universal child. These authors highlighted, among other aspects, the construction of ways of approaching children, developing methods whose instruments and procedures made it possible to actually reveal what the child thinks, and how and why what s/he thinks differs under certain social and historical conditions.

In contemporary times, the need to recognize that there is not a universal child, but differentiated children, is obvious. As expressed by Dahlberg et al. (2003, p. 21):

Childhood, as a social construct, is always contextualized in relation to time, place and culture, varying according to class, gender and other socioeconomic conditions. Therefore, there is no natural childhood, nor a natural or universal child, but many childhoods and children.

This idea has been further developed by recent studies of childhood and child studies, especially in the field of child sociology, which considers childhood as a social construct, closely related to structural contexts, as well as the conditions and the time in which they live. In this perspective, the child is perceived as a social actor, marked by variables such as gender, age, ethnicity/race, social class, as an individual who undergoes important and valuable processes by themselves. In other words, childhood is not merely a preparation for another life stage. Criticizing the notion of socialization adopted by this traditional approach, which emphasizes children’s dependence (Sarmento, 2005), the sociology of childhood points out that the child incorporates culture in a peculiar way, bringing in the notion of interpretive reproduction (Corsaro, 2009).

Recognizing the differences among children, which result from the heterogeneous ways they experience childhood, led to the emergence of new research perspectives. After all, in addition to the non existence of a unique way (adult), of seeing, understanding, and relating to the world, the differences between children, marked by the experiences they have undergone and still live, must be considered. Hence, we need to know the concrete child, socially and culturally contextualized.

On the other hand, it is necessary to consider the transformations that have happened around the concept of the child, as well as around their ways of expressing their perspective, their opinions. In fact, society’s prevailing view of children throughout history has not been very positive. The dominant disdain for what children can say was expressed by Polish pediatrician and pedagogue Janusz Korczac in the mid-1920s:

Politicians and lawmakers are experimenting with carefully crafted solutions, but they are always mistaken. Among other things, they deliberate and decide on the fate of children. But no one would ask the child what she thinks, if she agrees. After all, what would she have to say? (1986, p. 71)

However, contrary to this view, there has been increasing recognition of the fact that, among the various competences of children, it is possible to mention their abilities to discern and communicate their feelings and ideas about issues that affect them.

It is also worth noting that the possibility for children to act as first-hand informants to express what they think and feel about issues that concern them is now considered one of their rights: Article 12 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly at the United Nations on November 20, 1989, states that the child has the right to freely express his or her opinion on matters that affect them and such views should be taken into account. This prerogative has had consequences for research with children, as well as for many other fields, such as listening to children involved in legal custody proceedings between relatives.

In addition to becoming a right, listening to children increasingly started to be seen as something beneficial, since it offers a better understanding of these issues in a first-hand way and makes possible to offer more adequate solutions. As was pointed out by Save the Children (2003), children should be involved in the discussions of adults on how to improve their lives: ensuring that those who directly experience a situation have their voices heard increases the possibility that the decisions made will be relevant and suitable.

In the field of child education, one cannot overlook John Dewey’s innovative approach to the way children learn and the repercussions of this on the way educational experiences for children should be organized. It is also important to mention the Ukrainian pedagogue Anton Makarenko, who, in the early years of the 20th century, proposed a pedagogy of participation in relation to the group of students and in the constitution of the collective dimension in the act of education. In this pedagogical perspective, what mattered was the interests of the community, and the students had unthinkable privileges at the time, such as commenting and discussing their needs in the school universe (Makarenko, 1983). However, only in the last decades of the previous century did some international references include the practice of listening to the interests, desires, needs, and curiosities of children at the center of pedagogical practice. In the pedagogical approach developed in northern Italy, for example, known as the educational experience of Reggio Emilia (or the pedagogy of listening), this is a fundamental feature. Based on an image of children and adults as rich, powerful, diverse, and with rights, the so-called emergent curriculum focuses on the child and is constructed to consider the participation of everyone involved, including families (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1999, 2016; Hoyuelos, 2006, 2009; Malaguzzi, 2001; Rinaldi, 2014). This emphasis on listening to children and their active participation in the educational process is also central to the concept of pedagogy-in-participation, developed in Portugal (Oliveira-Formosinho, 2011; Oliveira-Formosinho & Araújo, 2013).

For all these approaches, understanding and incorporating the child’s perspective should guide pedagogical action, which, in this way, will be much more likely to contribute effectively to the well-being, learning, and development of children. Such action is not restricted only to relationships established with children, but is present in the choice of materials, toys, books, and so on, and in the way space is organized. In this perspective, Zabalza (1998) affirms that the concept of considering small children as the basis for school educational action is one of the four major axes of future growth for early childhood education. Two basic ideas emerge from this perspective: the child as a subject with rights and the child as a competent person.

Thus, since the second half of the last century, children have come to be seen as having the ability and the right to be heard on issues that concern them, while the belief that listening can help adults to make better decisions, including those related to the pedagogical practice, has grown.

This context has favored the increase of research projects that seek to grasp the child’s point of view in the context of his/her school experience (Cruz, 2008a; Spinelli, 2012; Souza, 2010a). By focusing on diverse aspects of this experience, such research has opened access to new and important information for adults by exposing “a point of view which is different from what we would be able to see and analyze within the social world of adulthood” (Rocha, 2008, p. 46).

Methodological Challenges of Research with Children

Listening to children talk about their educational and school experiences has become a fundamental element in understanding childhood and the needs of children, as well as in guiding curricular development and teaching practices aimed at the well-being, learning, and development of children. However, the design of approximation methods to develop such projects has become a major challenge for researchers in different fields. Informed by the fields of pedagogy of childhood, school psychology, and human development, and/or considering the new childhood studies, especially the sociology of childhood, researchers must answer important theoretical-methodological questions, such as how do you approach a child in order to know something about their feelings, thoughts, and actions? What language to use in this approach? What does this approach require in order to understand children’s perspectives about the topics which interest them in their experiences in educational institutions, and in their processes of learning and development?

Thus, the literature in these areas tends to highlight the importance of research approaches and strategies concerned with conducting research in classroom or classroom settings (for example, daycare centers and preschools) and/or in other educational settings where playing activities are developed. These settings may be more or less formal spaces of coexistence. In these surveys, participant observation, prolonged presence in the field, and establishing bonds of trust are fundamental elements that make possible the child’s effective participation in the research.

Discussion regarding the actions, feelings, meanings, and senses children attribute to social activities, and especially those that occur in the context of their formal education, has made possible a series of research projects in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This article presents projects developed in Brazil, highlighting two research traditions beginning in the 1980s.

In the Brazilian case, listening to children at school became a key element in the academic fields of school psychology, human development, and education, due to the criticism related to positivist approaches when describing the realities of school life. The aim was to understand teaching practices as well as the historical, political, and economic contexts that constitute the school in a society of classes. This made it possible to understand the challenges and the difficulties that result in high rates of children’s disapproval of and exclusion from school, which is characterized as “school failure.” Thus, school problems started to be understood as the result of a set of social, political, cultural, and historical factors that are responsible for the low quality of education for children and adolescents (Patto, 2015; Souza & Souza, 2008). This historical-critical analysis seeks to understand why children are not benefiting from school and what learning conditions are offered to students, instead of trying to explain the difficulties of schooling—translated into difficulties in reading, writing, and school adaptation—by means of causes centered on the students. These causes were explained not only by psychological factors but also by the organic aspects of the child, as well as their family configuration and social class (Souza, 2016).

Therefore, in this historical-critical perspective, listening to children and adolescents about their difficulties in school, learning about school from their own point of view, knowing how the vicissitudes and advances in the educational process occur in the day-to-day life of the school become fundamental to understanding the pedagogical, relational, institutional, and political dimensions related to the quality of education for all students (Souza, 2010b). As Cruz (2010, p. 18) posits:

Listening to children stems from a political position . . . Greater knowledge of children’s perspectives on aspects of their experience has allowed for a broader base of knowledge, to better understand this perspective and the contexts in which children live. But the commitment to listening to children is also driven by a strong dissatisfaction with the current situation of childhood and, therefore, a desire for change.

In Brazil, it is possible to pinpoint several research centers where this perspective has been highly considered, as well as to identify studies developed by researchers and professionals from the areas of education and psychology, including articles, doctoral dissertations, and master’s theses. Participative and interactive methodologies are fundamental tools for engaging with children and allowing the development of bonds: links that make it possible to listen to very young children in different institutional contexts, as well as to hear from them in many other ways.

In general, most research projects with children in Brazil utilize the qualitative perspective. The main methodological approaches in the fields of psychology and education are ethnographic and participative research-action ones.

Ethnographic research, carried out in educational institutions with children, stems from social anthropology and is strongly influenced by the studies of scholars such as Elsie Rockwell, Ruth Mercado Maldonado, and Justa Ezpeleta in the Department of Educational Research at the Center of Investigation and Advanced Studies, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico. It is worth mentioning that these studies were based on a historical-critical theoretical approach (Rockwell, 2009). Several research-action-participative studies, especially those carried out by M. Thiollent (1992), present a methodological strategy for social research centered on a close relationship between researcher and subject in such a way that participants have the right to air their opinions about the direction of the research and the problems to be investigated, and look for answers to new questions that may arise, thus ultimately transforming the school environment and its relations.

There are many challenges in this research modality. As Viégas (2010, p. 138), said:

It’s not just about making hours on the clock available and staying in one’s own geographic ground. It also involves a willingness to capture and be captured by fragments of places and significant situations which do not happen right away; on the contrary, it is something gained through experience, when the researcher–participant relation may lose the technical appearance and assume a different form. When there is a greater trust, invisible aspects become visible to the distant gaze (not only for those looking from a distance but also for those who even being close seek “to guarantee distance”) or a hurried glance (not only of those who spend little time in the field, but also those who, even staying for hours, yearn to understand everything “quickly”).

Listening to children at school requires a willingness to create procedures and methodological instruments based on diverse participative ways which align the interest of children, their language, and their questions with the interests of the researcher: their object of study and their need to find answers to the research objectives. It means, in some way, to become immersed in the universe of children, seeking proximity with their demands and expectations, experiences, analysis, and questions. It considers that researchers should seek to distance themselves as much as possible from an adult position that considers the child as a child, unable to reason, and instead communicate thoughts in different languages and other forms of expression children use. Research from this perspective is complex and challenging since researchers can sometimes be guided more than they actually guide the process in the field. It is important to bear in mind that students have much to say about their school experience. As Branco and Pires (2010, p. 199) note:

This means walking alongside children in their creative processes, even if this procedure may make an adult insecure. In this sense, considering the child protagonist it is always necessary to open spaces for participation with different characteristics that allow for the proposition, negotiation, execution and management of collective projects by children in collaboration with adults.

Participant observations, individual meetings with children, group meetings with students, individual or group interviews, conversations, focus groups, joint production of field material, story drawings, poems, games, playing activities, music, photographs, role playing, videotapes, comic strips, question boxes, writing and reading requests, and didactic experiments are some of the procedures and instruments used in the research carried out in the field of school psychology, human development, and education with the objective of listening to children in schools and in educational institutions concerning the central interests in their lives (Souza, 2010b).

In the field of early childhood education, research expresses the perspectives of children about school, preschool, and even daycare, indicating how they perceive teachers, routines, discipline, tasks, conflicts among peers or teachers, recreation and play (which they enjoy the most), the transition from preschool to elementary school, gender relations, corporality, and ethnic and racial issues.

Thus, listening to young children has greatly expanded knowledge about various topics related to their school experience, bringing elements that need to be better considered in schools and public policies for children (Cruz & Martins, 2017). It is noteworthy, for example, that despite the possibility that making friends and playing is the main motivation for many of the children attending kindergarten or preschool (Campos & Cruz, 2006; Cruz, 2008c; Cruz & Cruz, 2015), they realize that they have little time, space, and toys to turn this motivation into reality. As one gets closer to elementary school, adults tend to see games as “messy” and they tolerate them only in some circumstances. On the other hand, activities considered pedagogical are much more prevalent (Martins, 2009; Pamphylio, 2010; Schramm, 2009). The children discern quite accurately the various roles and relationship styles of teachers and, in various researches, they denounce the heavy emphasis on discipline, with the use of mechanisms of control and punishment, sometimes physical (Almeida, 2015; Andrade, 2007; Cruz, 2008b; Farias, 2012; Marques & Sperb, 2013; Oliveira-Formosinho & Lino, 2008; Tavares, 2015). Thus, they idealize the good teacher as “beautiful,” “happy,” “cool,” “affectionate,” “playful,” “intelligent” (“learns things to teach children”) and especially sensitive to the desires and needs of children, such as playtime (Correa & Bucci, 2012 Farias, 2012).

It is also worth noting that, even during recreation time (Santos, 2015; Schramm, 2009), frequent verbal or even physical aggressions are a concern for students, especially boys against girls and older children against smaller ones (Campos & Cruz, 2006; CLADE, 2013; Santos, 2015). Boys and girls also complain a lot about the “chores” they need to do in the classroom or in their homes because they consider them difficult (“circling and making the alphabet is difficult”), repetitive (“every day the chores are the same”), beyond the scope of their abilities (“I do not like writing work because I did not learn the letters”), and excessive (“I like mathematics, but I’m too small to do much homework”) (Cruz, 2008a; Santos, 2015; Souza, 2006). Furthermore, they say that being unable (for whatever reason) to carry out these tasks leads to reprimands and punishments, such as not being allowed to participate in recreation time: “if you do not do what you’re supposed to, I will punish you!” (Andrade, 2007; Santos, 2015).

Researches conducted in Brazil and other Latin American countries indicate that one aspect that permeates interactions among children and between children and the teacher is the discrimination they perceive and express against black people, people with disabilities, and women. Researchers are starting to identify that black children especially perceive prejudice and discrimination against them, such as non-acceptance of their hair (CLADE, 2013; Cruz, 2015b; Gaudio, 2013; Godoy, 1996; Santiago, 2014; Trinidad, 2011). They also report that they receive more severe disciplinary punishment (Sarzedas & Yazzlle, 2010). Thus, it has been observed that many black children construct their subjectivity using a negative self-image and come to desire physical characteristics typical of the white phenotype; in this context, the black child’s process of identity construction is impaired (CLADE, 2013; Cruz, 2015a; Gaudio, 2013).

Children point out how much they appreciate the possibility of actively participating in a routine, learning new things, and listening to stories in their educational contexts (Campos & Cruz, 2006; Mendonça, 2008). However, to a large extent, what is more evident is that the routines to which they are subjected, the types of interactions that predominate, the activities developed, and so on can cause discontent among children. As a result, researchers found several of them preferred to stay at home or accompany their mother to work rather than go to kindergarten or preschool, and that many children developed feelings of anger toward the teacher.

With regard to elementary education, a significant part of the research with direct participation of children as protagonists focuses on themes related to the prejudices and stereotypes present in the daily life of students from economically deprived classes, such as class inequality, ethno-racial relations, gender and disability issues, public policies to decrease the disparate rates between the child’s age and school year, family income and schooling improvement policies, children’s and adolescents’ participation in school management, child protagonism, and the establishment of a culture of peace at school, among other subjects central to the fields of psychology and education (Caldas & Souza, 2014).

It is important to consider the research carried out with children entering the first grades of elementary school. When they are invited to present their point of view about current public policies, about the school structure, or about the relationships developed on the learning process and how they are evaluated, students present interpretations that reveal their interests, the contradictions of school educational practices, as well as the aspects that should be present (Asbahr & Souza, 2014; Branco & Pires, 2010; Viégas, 2010).

Recent research with children and young people in 27 Brazilian states (Carvalho & Soligo, 2015) used several participative methods in groups, such as question boxes and suggestions, theater and drawing activities, and interviews, among other strategies, to ask elementary and middle school students about violent situations at school. The results surprised researchers since the students linked violence to the lack of school infrastructure, identified in the low quality of the food, bathrooms which were out of order, and not having spaces available at school to talk. They also mentioned having their backpacks searched when entering school, buildings without sport facilities, a lack of human resources, the absence of teachers of various disciplines, and understaffing. Finally, the children were able to make a complete diagnosis of the difficulties of daily school life, demonstrating a deep understanding of what they consider a good school should be like. When they were asked for ideas to improve the school, they proposed improvements to the physical structure; access to technology; dynamic classes—studying topics that are connected with daily dilemmas; the elimination of factors which cause suffering (such as homophobia, racism); participative management; responsiveness and openness to dialogue; respectful relationships and dialogue; changes in the school curricula in order to avoid the reproduction of prejudice by means of the silence and omission of the school. Finally, the students said that they and their families should be heard. They emphasized that dialogue is the main strategy to face the difficulties.

Research that allows children to present and analyze issues pertinent to their education and schooling is, thus, an important instrument for understanding the realities of school and education, bringing forth elements that contribute substantially to knowledge of the complexities of education.

Ethical Questions in Research with Children

Ethical concerns over research with human beings appeared in a visible and explicit way in the Nuremberg trials (1945–1946). Since then, these concerns have been the subject of debates, with local and international norms aiming to delineate the boundaries between science, ethics, research, political authority, and individual conscience. The ethical questions are particularly complex when conducting research with children since it is a process that demands specific care from the way it is planned to the completion of the process.

In general, specific regulations related to research with children are justified by the vulnerability of the subjects. Since the first international document which regulated biomedical research, the Declaration of Helsinki (1964), there has been a concern to differentiate the potential of children, as well as of members of other groups considered “legally incompetent, physically or mentally unable to give consent,” to participate in a survey. In that case, the document provided that “researchers should obtain the informed consent of the legally authorized representative” (Basic Principle 24).

This provision is in line with the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), which stipulates that “children, because of their lack of physical and intellectual maturity, need special protection and special care, especially appropriate legal protection before and after birth.” The preceding document, known as the Geneva Declaration (League of Nations, 1924), gave priority to child protection. Subsequently, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), while recognizing the specificity of children and adolescents, extended to them all the rights and freedoms contained in the Declaration of Human Rights, hitherto reserved for adults. Thus, as Rosemberg and Mariano (2010) affirm, the Convention simultaneously enacted rights to protection and freedom, expression and participation, which produced a tension between different conceptions of the rights of the child. This situation has inspired debates and led philosophers, jurists, and sociologists, especially Europeans, to hold differing positions: on one hand, some consider children to be subject to the same rights granted to adults (liberationists), while, on the other, a so-called protectionist current favors greater control for adults, who should “simultaneously introduce the child into the world, in an orderly and progressive way, and protect it from its vicissitudes” (Harendt, 1991, p. 252, as quoted in Rosemberg & Mariano, 2010). At the heart of this dispute is the notion of a child’s responsibility for his actions: as Irène Théry (1996) argues, “the rights of the child are those of particularly vulnerable human beings because they are not yet autonomous. Legal incapacity is nothing more than the right to a certain degree of irresponsibility, that is to say, not to be submitted to the duty implied by full capacity” (pp. 341–342).

Analyzing this controversy is beyond the scope of this article. However, there is a need to emphasize how important it is to go beyond a formally legalistic approach when thinking about the child. Thus, despite the unequal power relationship between children and adults and the former’s dependence on the latter, ethical questions regarding child research should consider children as social actors with rights. Their differences from adults cannot be understood or treated as inferior or as a flaw.

Considering children as potent social actors with rights establishes an ethical relationship that is respectful and open to their effective participation, that is, to their involvement in the methodology proposed in the research. At the same time, establishing a friendly and trusting relationship is necessary for encouraging children to ask for clarification and to express their wishes, fears, complaints, and so on.

With this in mind, parental consent has been considered important for child participation in research, in addition to the formal authorization of their legal guardians through a signed Term of Free and Informed Consent (Termo de Consentimento Livre e Esclarecido, TCLE). In this way, the wishes of the children can be recognized along with their ability and choice to express themselves.

Respect for children is particularly essential in cases where there may be conflicts of interest between the child and his/her parents or legal guardians (Rogers & Ballantyne, 2008), such as in situations involving violence or physical and sexual abuse within the family, when those responsible for the child don’t want professionals to listen to the child. In another extreme, children may be coerced by parents or guardians to take part in the research for some benefit. In some circumstances, parents or guardians may not possess the necessary elements to give “free and informed” consent, a situation which the researcher should also approach with great care.

In the process of obtaining/understanding the children’s assent, the researcher should carefully explain their research interests and the strategy for which they need children’s collaboration. Considering the unequal power relationship between children and adults and their dependence on them in our society, special care must also be taken in offering appropriate conditions to children, such as a favorable climate for children to freely express themselves, the presence of other children and adults in whom they trust, emphasizing their ability to refuse participation at any moment with no consequence, and offering special attention to what children communicate by means of their multiple forms of expression.

Once the child’s and guardian’s consent have been obtained, the researcher must continue to ensure the safety and well-being of the child during the research, and understand there may be possible changes in his or her participation.

When working with infants or very small children in particular, each researcher must be permanently attentive and consider different forms of expression and ways of interacting in a given situation. Consent should be given before each meeting.

Considering ethics as an expression of respect for the child and their particular characteristics, the methodology that is developed and adopted in research with children also raises ethical issues. Special care must be taken in evaluating the adequacy of a given methodology, since this not only shapes the quality of the data produced but also assures that the true idea of a child was understood.

It is not enough to want to listen to the children; “entering the world of children requires the adult to create the right conditions” (Karlsson, 2008, p. 160) with a methodology that allows children to express themselves. As such, approaches should consider various forms of communication.

Care in relation to the way children are listened to is closely related to the effort required to grasp their points of view, to be as faithful as possible to their opinions, feelings, demands, and so on. It cannot be forgotten that our self-centeredness as adults, a fact not always readily admitted, presents a great challenge to the realization of this listening process and the ability to truthfully convey what children say. One may easily be surprised by the spontaneous and unpredictable nature of children, especially when their ideas contradict certain ideas or knowledge already established among adults. It is up to the researcher to avoid minimizing—and, indeed, to welcome—their views and seek to understand them.

In Brazilian legislation (Resolution CNS 510/2016), one of the ethical principles of research in the humanities and social sciences is confidentiality, considered as “the guarantee of the safeguarding of information given in confidence and protection against unauthorized disclosure” (Section III of Article 3). It is assumed that keeping the confidentiality of information provided by children and keeping their identity secret are necessary to preserve children from potential negative consequences.

However, there are situations in which the investigator finds or denounces acts of violence against children that demand some kind of action. These situations involve social or personal risk, in which “the researcher may face an ethical dilemma: to preserve the confidentiality agreed, established before starting the research, or to make public the risks facing the subject, gleaned from information obtained during the research process?” (Gaiva, 2009, p. 143). If the children are identified as responsible for the denunciations, the risk they may suffer reprisals needs to be taken into account. The researcher should seek a course of action in which respect and commitment in favor of the child guides every decision.

Final Considerations

This article has looked at children as the central participants in the research process, in schooling activities, and in pedagogical practices, understanding that their ways of understanding the world are established in a space defined by relationships and by social, cultural, emotional, and pedagogical mediation.

Therefore, it is important to understand the universe of children as a matter of human and social rights; understanding the educational institutional reality from the point of view of the children is indispensable to assure they benefit. Children, even at a very young age, feel and experience the world via a communicative process, allowing adults to share their understanding.

Thus, by means of appropriate strategies, adults must listen to children’s perspectives and consider them when designing educational policies (Cruz & Martins, 2017; Zibetti, Souza, & Barroco, 2015) or, at the school level, when they make decisions on issues that concern them. Better decisions can be taken if adults consider not only the researchers’ criteria but also the interests and needs of children.

In this perspective, the use of increasingly participative methodologies increases the possibility of children communicating their ideas by means of their own multiple forms of expression. In addition to the research carried out with a focus on school experiences, these methodologies are now present in other fields, such as in the planning of external spaces and of the school buildings (Clark, 2010), while investigations on the social use of these spaces (Alonso, 2007; Tonucci, 2015) explained the importance of the child’s perspective and the child’s protagonism in the process of decision-making.

Despite the efforts made in this regard, among the challenges still present in research with children, a major one is children’s greater involvement in the formulation of strategies to be used in the methodological procedures. In Corsi’s (2010) research on children’s perspectives on conflicts in early childhood education, the author presents a very interesting example of this possibility: considering that the researcher was not present every day in the institution, the children suggested the use of a “box of conflicts,” in which they would deposit their records (letters and drawings) of the episodes that occurred in their absence. In this case, the children took the initiative of proposing a way to complement the previously planned strategy: utilizing a written and audio record of the children’s speeches. In this case, the children took the initiative of proposing a complementation of the previously planned strategy, which was restricted to writing and recording the children’s statements. Considering this example, it is possible to realize how rich and potent the partnership with children can be in research on topics that concern them. The challenge, then, becomes how to deepen this partnership.

We believe that research conducted by listening to children in schools and educational institutions will contribute to making the world a better place for them, since it will highlight the issues that had not been discussed before. If children are not heard, adults will remain unaware of issues and, therefore, no attempt will be made to access the world of children. Respect and loyalty to children will certainly help researchers continue confronting the various difficulties that challenge them in their research.