Ethical, Methodological and Practical Considerations When Researching Children’s Perspectives of Career Education Programmes

Research with children from diverse backgrounds that supports expression of their perspectives, ideas, opinions and representations is needed for policies and programmes to become more equitable and responsive to their concerns and needs. Child-focused research requires additional ethical and methodological considerations to address unequal power imbalances, support autonomy and agency and enable participation. This chapter draws on a research project which investigated best practice career education for primary-school students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds to explore the ethical, methodological and practical challenges of conducting qualitative research with children. This project used a multi-method research methodology, which included participant drawings and group interviews. The chapter discusses ethical and methodological considerations and how utilisation of multi-method research approaches with children can generate rich and reflective data not possible through other methods. The chapter then explores the methodological benefits and practical challenges experienced in implementing this approach. Suggestions are offered as to how a multi-methods approach can be used as an effective tool in qualitative research with children from low SES backgrounds in the field of career education.

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