course-details-portlet

BARN3201

Participatory Methods and Ethics

Choose study year
Credits 7.5
Level Second degree level
Course start Spring 2025
Duration 1 semester
Language of instruction English
Location Trondheim
Examination arrangement Assignment

About

About the course

Course content

The course focuses on participatory methods, techniques and ethics, and how they are linked to other research methodologies. It takes its points of departure on the idea that children are knowledgeable human beings who create and use meanings and are subjects of human rights. It follows that they have the right to be properly researched, and enabled to share their knowledge, views and experiences through methods that are both scientific and ethical. The course is practical and experiential. Students will practice how to design and use a variety of participatory research methods that should be useful for data collection in their master research projects. They learn how they can engage children in all stages of the research process. The course also enables students to gain knowledge on institutional ethical demands and how to develop reflexive thinking in ethics and knowledge production with children.

Learning outcome

The student has:

Knowledge

  • in-depth knowledge of a range of participatory methods to engage children in different stages of a research process.
  • knowledge on how to critically assess current scholarships on the social, moral, ethical and practical challenges of undertaking scientific research with children and young people.

Skills

  • advanced skills in how to design and carry out rights-based, participatory research with children and young people in diverse settings and contexts.
  • competence in ethical requirements and how to reflexively navigate new ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people.

General competence

  • understanding of the connection between rights and research with children and young people.
  • appraised the potentials and limits of participatory research and how to engage children and young people in collaborative knowledge production.

Learning methods and activities

The course begins with an introductory lecture on perspectives and principles related to participatory research with children and young people. This is accompanied by a week-long training workshop that involves hands-on experience in engaging children and young people in different stages of the research process. The training workshop draws on a manual for participatory approaches and gives students the opportunity to develop a repertoire of methods and ethical strategies by means of concrete examples, as well as plenary and group discussions.

Additional lectures will be given by lecturers undertaking empirical studies with children in different parts of the world in order to exemplify the diversity and complexity of child-focused methods and ethics.

Total lecture hours: ca. 40.

Compulsory assignments

  • Compulsory attendance in all the training workshop days. Attending lectures is also compulsory (minimum 80%).

Further on evaluation

Students will write an assignment based on a question given in advance, where they will apply the reading list and knowledge they acquired from the course.

Required previous knowledge

Bachelor's degree in the social sciences or equivalent.

Students in the master’s programme in Childhood studies will be prioritised.

Course materials

Information will be given at the beginning of the semester.

Credit reductions

Course code Reduction From
BARN3200 7.5 sp Autumn 2010
BARN3002 4 sp Autumn 2010
BARN8201 10 sp Autumn 2020
This course has academic overlap with the courses in the table above. If you take overlapping courses, you will receive a credit reduction in the course where you have the lowest grade. If the grades are the same, the reduction will be applied to the course completed most recently.

Subject areas

  • Childhood Studies
  • Social Sciences

Contact information

Course coordinator

Department with academic responsibility

Department of Education and Lifelong Learning