Methods and tools for studying children

Why it is difficult for researchers to isolate specific causes of child behaviour - using two of your own examples. How is the term “correlation” a solution to this problem?

to help us achieve a high level of care for every child and to ensure we are meeting their needs. The pastoral carers are responsible for monitoring the children within their groups and recording events, behaviour and development. Twice a year the pastoral carers are required to transfer this knowledge from note-taking, observations, record books, assessments of the children they care for, onto ‘progress reports’ for the parents to receive.

Little Children (2006) is a film that explores couples (Sarah and Richard) and (Brad and Kathy) and how unhappy they are in their marriages. Sarah and Brad start to develop a romantic relationship, which then frightens the other mothers in the park. Then, Ronnie, sex offender, and Shelia, a woman Ronnie’s mother, wanted him to see, go on a date. It went downhill once Ronnie asks Shelia to drive by an elementary school to masturbate.

The Child Study data I have gathered comes from the observation I have completed at Mission Bell Elementary School. Mission Bell Elementary School is a local school in Riverside. In the P.M preschool class there are 24 students, one teacher, and one assistant. The child I decided to observe is names Zoe. Zoe is 4 years and 10 months old. I immediately was drawn to Zoe because she had such a big personality, was very social, and smart. I am glad that I choose to observe Zoe because she was able to make my observation process smooth and easy. While observing her I had to pay close attention to her biosocial development, motor skills, cognitive skills, communication skills,

The Birmingham Children's Crusade, a march by hundreds of school students, boys and girls of all ages in Birmingham, Alabama. The students began the march on May 2-5, 1963. This march was during the Civil Rights Movements of the Birmingham Campaign. Students marched to fight against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. For African- American children in Birmingham, the Civil Rights Movement was part of the children's lives everyday, an important part in history, that changed the way life is today. As a group of audacious kids, they fought against fire hoses, police dogs, police batons, and bombs, and they decided, blacks, whites, and other races, should be integrated, and equaled as a whole. The Birmingham Children, were arrested and beaten in order for Birmingham integration, for not only blacks, but other races as well. The kids

There are ethical issues relating to children being participants in the looked after setting. Therefore, the TMA03 study carried out debates about multi breakdowns in the care system and explored the extent to which children should be regarded as valued sources in social research instead of children being positioned as vulnerable, incompetent and relatively powerless in society and this relates to how this conceptualisation of children can be used in social research, in order for them to have reliable or consistent involvement in their decision-making.

To enable the children’s voices to be heard, I explored various tools to engage the children from the Mosaic approach (Clark & Moss 2001). I disregarded using questionnaires as the children were unable to read and write so this would have been inappropriate. I disregarded role play as I didn’t feel I would get the responses I needed as directly, and I decided not to use tours as not all the children were confident communicators and they may have found this difficult. I wanted to be as inclusive as possible and ensure the technique was age and development appropriate. Therefore I chose to gather documentation by enabling the children to use cameras to take photos outdoors of what they liked and didn’t like. To ensure confidentiality of the photos taken I kept them in my private locked filing cabinet that only myself and my manager had access to. As my research required the children’s perceptions this technique ensured it was child led as were the later discussion where we came together in a quiet area to talk about why they took their particular images. This discussion enabled me to interpret what they were trying to say to me through the photos. As we looked at the photos it prompted their memory of why they had taken the picture. It was an interactive way to engage the children, and by the children taking their own photos helped lead the

Childhood studies is a subject area surrounding the study of children’s lives through many different concepts or ideas with many different features. It is related to many different fields such as law, history, sociology, health, anthropology and much more as Martin Woodhead (Open University) said “It uses multiple methods rather than just singular methods” and is “inter-disciplinary” Childhood studies expresses and tries to understand the many different parts of a child’s life and the different issues surrounding childhood, therefore it has many different features.

Bogolub and Nigel Thomas questioned whether the birth parent should be included in the child’s right to consent. If demanded, this adds another adult to a situation in which the child might feel pressure to please various adults by completing the research study. Sheila Greene and Diane Hogan argue that when researching children in the past, adult’s views and thinking have been placed on the child. The authors argue that researchers need to understand the child’s views, priorities and experiences to better help their research (2005).

British Education Research Association (BERA) (2011) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, London, BERA Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2011) Convention on the rights of the child [online] Available at www.bera.ac.uk (Accessed 17 January 2014)

According to Robert Holmes (2006), the ‘power dynamics between adults and children’ present an important obstacle to the collection of high quality evidence from children. Of course, engagement with children and young people is not always at an individual level. There are a variety of issues to think about when engaging with young children. Children and young people may be shy around unfamiliar adults, even at times even afraid, so it is important to find ways of making them feel safe and secure. Explanations for adults having power over children and young people are willingly established in materialistic and paternalistic declarations of looking out for the young children’s best interests, which is to protect them from harm. Most people including young children are in agreement with the involvement of adults is necessary there are however some critics who question this. Roberts, H. (2008) points out that power dynamics in children’s participation are much messier than is often explicated, and that power isn’t something that children

I also noticed that I tend to scaffold the learning of children without even realizing it. According to the textbook, scaffolding is when an adult, “adjusts the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance. As competence increases, the adult gradually and sensitively withdraws support, turning responsibility over to the child” (Pg. 331, Ch. 9- Cognitive Development in Early Childhood). For example, when I asked Zane to write his name on the bottom of the picture that he drew, at first he was very hesitant because he did not know how to draw a “z.” When I drew dotted lines in the shape of a “z” and asked him if he would be willing to trace the letter. Very willingly he did so, and within one minute he had not only traced the letter “z,” but had also written the other letters of his name. Another example of when I was scaffolding learning was when one of the younger children in the Mom2Mom group was trying to build a tower like the rest of the children, but he could not get the tower to be more than three blocks high before it would knock over. Seeing that he was becoming frustrated, I offered to show him how to make a tall tower, by having him help me place the blocks on top of each other. After doing this two times, I withdrew my help and watched him successfully build a tower with eight

Observer visited a play place of a restaurant in New Jersey, Hackensack. Why I have chosen the place is easy to observe every part of child development such as cognitive, social emotional, language as well as physical at the same time. Observer performed the observation on April 28 from 1 pm to 3pm. The child was an Asian boy. He has strait short black hair with dark brown eyes and thin black eye brows. His height looked around 37 inches that he may be a little smaller than other early childhood children. He looks thin and has a full set of teeth inside his mouth, full cheeks, and a small button nose.

Secondly, it is important to consider the strengths of naturalistic observation as a method. This was identified when the child was consistently moving and doing different activities that allowed me to understand how he communicates with other children, how he behaves and what he learns from others. In the play setting the child was able to develop his thinking and according to the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DOH, 2000) through social relationships, the child was encouraged to express his feelings, emotions, which was achieved by the setting creating an enjoyment environment.

Teachers are aware of what they should do in the classroom when teaching young children. Teachers should provide opportunities to develop positive dispositions toward learning when working with young children to make sure they are using their knowledge and skills. Teaching young children, the skills that need to learn about is the big key of understanding what the information that you will need when you are assessing the young children. In this paper, the reader will read about observation and documentation as assessment and why is it important? The reader will also read about the difference between looking at and authentically or genuinely observing a child, the types of documentation, two types of documentation that relate how teachers use the documentation in the classroom and how documentations would be useful as assessments.