Children’s rights, and children participating

2009 is the 20 year anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRoC), and celebrate this, the University of Melbourne held an interdisciplinary half-day conference on Moving the Children’s Rights Agenda Forward.

My interest in this area has several strands. Firstly, my arts practice is a participatory one, in particular directing collaborations between professional musicians and young people, and in bringing children’s musical ideas and voices into the foreground of music-making. Secondly, my recently-completed Masters research was focused on the perceptions and thoughts of newly-arrived immigrant and refugee children, and their responses to music-learning in Australia. (You can read about my research in a little more detail here).

Thus, the skills involved in drawing out children’s voices and ideas, and the issues surrounding ethical use of their voice, and the arguments for (and against) this, have been areas of focus for me, which has drawn me into the larger arena of children’s rights in many different contexts.

Children’s rights, as enshrined in the UNCRoC, are a balance between freedom (autonomy rights) and protective rights (the right to protection, and acknowledgement of their vulnerability). Margaret Coady, in giving a historical overview, described early critics of the Declaration (1959) and subsequent Convention (1989), in particular the child liberationists (including such eminent scholars as John Holt), who objected to the UNCRoC becuase it was protective, and took away rights from children. (Book to read: Escape from Childhood by John Holt).

The rights of children to be heard in matters which affect them (for example, matters before the courts) have been hard-won (if they could be considered ‘won’ in the current times. Perhaps it is more accurate to say “gradually gaining tiny footholds and prominence in the minds of a growing number of decision-makers”…). Article 12 of the CRoC is concerned with the child’s right to express views, and for these views to be given appropriate weight according to the age and capacity of the child. How this is interpreted in different fields, and in different countries (compare, for example, Noway, Germany and New Zealand with Australia or the UK) can vary quite a lot.

The children’s righs movement has been growing steadily, but ironically, is in danger of being dominated by adults.

Coady finished with a reminder about autonomy – adult or child autonomy. Quoting Kymlicka, she said, “No lives go better being led from the outside according to values the person doesn’t endorse…” Humans live their lives from the inside, according to their understandings of what makes life valuable. This is true for people of any age. Children, like adults, are constantly forming their understanding of what makes life valuable for them.

Good things come in threes

Today I have been writing research memos. I am trying to get a bit of clarity on my research methodology, and on the early emerging themes that are swimming around in my head, before I have made any proper analysis efforts.

First, an admission – I am doing all this in the wrong order. I should have had my research methodology well and truly decided at the time of putting the ethics application in. And I did have it decided, but since then, the more I read, the more I have been feeling that what I have proposed is not quite right. My research project doesn’t seem to neatly fit in one methodology.

A second admission – I’d like to use a bit of a pick’n'mix approach. A bit of this for the data collection, a bit of that for the analysis, yet another approach for interpreting… I suspect this is unorthdox at best, messy and potentially incoherent at worst.

You see, to me, research projects feel like arts projects. Someone said to me on the weekend, as I described my project, that he didn’t envy me… to have to ensure an objective position on all this data that I am so close to and so entwined with… but this feels natural and ideal to me. In a devised project – whether it be theatre (like Hunger last year) or music, or another discipline – one of the most important things is to let the show reveal itself to you. You keep asking questions – setting up possibilities that feel like that might reveal something new or exciting or unexpected, or beautiful – and remain open to the outcomes. Gradually the links and connections, and the natural narrative that is the result of this combination of people and events, at this particular time, will emerge.

I feel very at home with this kind of approach to work, and have developed an instinctive style. This instinct keeps kicking in in my research project, and I don’t know how much to pay attention to it. Maybe it is sloppy and immature of me. The methodology books I read (on case study, grounded theory, and phenomenology, mainly) give me little thrills as they spell out the necessary steps to ensure good research practice. I like the idea of following something to the letter. But at the same time, my instincts also keep jumping in, with their own take on how I should respond to the data I have collected.

Speaking of which, at this post-transcription, pre-analysis stage, as I let the phrases and ideas from the interviews marinate in my mind, all together, I feel like what I write is ultimately going to move through three stages – kind of like concentric circles, with no. 1 on the inside, no. 2 around it, and no. 3 the outer ring:

1. Firstly, there will be the students’ perceptions of the music program – what sense they make of it, what they feel takes place, and what they feel they learn.
2. Then, this will move into a broader discussion of the experience of ‘transition’ and the impact this has on students of this age, in how they communicate, use language, respond and perceive their new surroundings. In particular, I wonder how appropriate this research question is for students of this age, when they are in the midst of such a confusing time, trying to make sense of so many new things.
3. Thirdly, I think this will lead to a discussion on research methods appropriate to this age group, when ina time of transition. How do you elicit responses from someone when any perceptions they have are infused with the newness and unfamiliarity of their situation? How much can they articulate (in any language) at this stage? What effect does learning a new language at school have on their first language, in terms of effective communication? What kinds of research approaches are effective in this kind of environment?

I think I will probably present each of the students as individual case studies, then look for convergent themes between them.

Reflections on interviewing children

I interviewed three children for my Masters Research project. There were a number of challenges with this:

• They are all ESL students; that is, they are only just learning English. Some are not literate. Each has a different level of confidence with spoken English.
• This meant I decided to include interpreters in the interviews. Two of the interpreters were already present in the school, as Teacher Aides, so are familiar to the students. One student had to work with an outside interpreter that I hired for the project.
• Despite the presence of the interpreters, I wanted to engage the students as directly as possible with my questions, so tried to develop interview designs that incorporated visual elements, and put less emphasis on spoken language.
• One student spoke several languages already – one at home with her family, and another that she had used in school, in her second country. Her spoken English is apparently now more comfortable to her than her ‘school’ language. (According to the literature I have read, this is not uncommon – there is a point in language learning for children where the new language that is typically used everywhere except in the home, becomes more comfortable than the mother tongue, used only in the home). However, the language she spoke at home is still apparently her most comfortable language. Therefore, I arranged for her to have an interpreter for her ‘home’ language present. In the end though, she spoke mostly in English in the interview. The interpreter was very helpful in ensuring she understood the questions.
• The child who worked with the outside interpreter was incredibly nervous in the interviews – so much so that sometimes her whole body trembled. She smiled and laughed the whole time and was happy to continue, but she was clearly nervous. I don’t know if this was because of the outside interpreter, or because of the interview context, or becuase of something in the way I had set up the room, or simply that, as quite a shy girl who is quite quiet, she was just reacting to the strangeness of it all. If there had been more time between interviews, I think I would have been able to process this discomfort more, and perhaps explored some other options that she might feel more comfortable with. But the relentless time-span I had to work with made any kind of reflection very difficult. This is probably a significant weakness in my research design, but one I had very little control over.

Not all of my visual tasks worked well. Some took a little too long, for example. Here is a summary:

In the first interview, the children came with a drawing they had prepared earlier, that showed a music lesson here, compared with amusic lesson in their home country. We used these picures to compare their experiences, and to help me get a sense of the context in which they would speak about the music activities they do with me.

Interviewing ESL children

Last week I met with the teachers at the Language School to make plans for my research project that I will be starting this term. I want to film some music classes and interview three students over a series of weeks, and to do this I need formal consent from their parents.

Setting up the research – ethics and informed consent

That is no simple matter in an ESL context, with the most appropriate means of communicating with parents differing between cultural groups, and families. As is usual with University-based research projects that require ethics approval, I have prepared Plain Language Statements that outline the research project, what it entails, issues of confidentiality etc, and Consent forms that parents and children need to sign in order for me to be able to proceed.

I have written these in very simple English. For those of you who have seen sample Plain Language Statements, you will know that they are fairly detailed documents because there is quite a lot of information they need to cover. Even when the language is simple, there is a lot to take. Mine are waaaayyy simpler than any I have ever seen before!

In communicating with parents, teachers at the Language School use a number of different means, depending on the parent they are contacting and the nature of the information. These include:

• Sending home a notice in English (often in a particular colour if there are many notices going out at the same time that need to be signed and returned);
• Explaining the content of a note in English prior to sending it home;
• Using school interpreters (where available) to explain the content of the notice to the children in their own language, before sending the notice home;
• Calling parents in English (teacher, principal) or in their own language (Multicultural Education Aide/interpreter) to talk through content of the notice;
• Translating notices into the appropriate written language and sending these home.

The last option – translating notices into another written language – is not appropriate for everyone. Some languages are primarily oral languages, and rarely written down. It may be that one language is used for speaking (eg. Somali) and another for writing (eg. Arabic). Or vice versa. The parent may not in fact be literate.

Masters Research

My second Human Ethics application (to the Education Department) is IN, as of two days ago. This is a Big Relief. And, hot news straight off the press, my University Ethics application has been approved through to the final stage. I think this means no more amendments are required. Phew!

Today I was at the University, teaching my two classes. In between I hooked up to the University Wireless network (sounds easy, but always requires assistance from the helpful Ed-IT fellows), and downloaded EndNote software, which will help me keep track of my reading. I haven’t heard anyone say a bad word about EndNote – in fact, you only hear people rave about it. I figured I had better get myself set up with it.

Reading this week…

Buoyed by this affirmative activity, I hit the library (currently a minor disaster of ongoing renovations and steep stairways to the collections). This week I have decided to focus on reading all I can about Innovative Techniques for interviewing children (especially those who have English as a Second Language, so may require the assistance of an interpreter). I have ideas for eliciting responses using images and video footage to stimulate dialogue and reactions, but want to read what the experts have to say.

Calming water (Neretva River in Mostar BiH):

Project status report – forums, PD, research, writing…

This was a good work for finishing off a couple of one-off projects. It was a busy week – but it was also a shorter one with the public holiday for Anzac Day yesterday. Here’s a bit of a status report on the various projects swimming around in my head, or just completed.

Teacher and Artist Forum – collaborative partnerships

This was a Professional Development day for both teachers and artists presented by ArtPlay and funded by Arts Victoria. I was one of three artists invited to facilitate some of the sessions – a wonderful teacher was also part of the facilitator team, along with ArtPlay’s Creative Producer, and a Lead facilitator from the University of Melbourne. It proved to be a very interesting day – valuable and inspiring. I presented two workshops – my brief was to run an activity that teachers and artists could take part in together, and in which they might have very different perspectives about how it could be used in a school context. I taught them Read the Circle, and we then built up some compositions around it using voice and body percussion.

The most interesting parts of the day were the discussions about what works well in partnerships, and where the stumbling blocks can be. There was an overall aim to gather as many thoughts together as possible and to end the day with the creation of a kind of template for artists and schools to use when planning a collaborative project. I spoke for 30 minutes on two projects – I talked about one that had worked amazingly, serendipitously well, and considered what was in place to generate this success; and about one that had proved to be quite challenging, all the way through, despite a lot of planning, experience and good will. The teacher was the last of the facilitators to speak, and she just was perfect. So succinct and clear, in mapping out the roles and responsibilities in an artist-in-school residency.

I think an important thing to learn as an artist going into a school for a residency is to have the confidence (and trust) to say what you need, and what you think will work best. For me, this means longer classes (an hour at least) and small group sizes (around 22 if we are doing whole-ensemble work with body percussion or voice; about half that if we are doing instrumental composition). I feel filled with a ind of horror when I hear about young artists going into schools where they are timetabled to work with every class in the school, with short lesson times in order to fit them all in. Of course it is important, and ideal, that ‘everyone have a turn’. But it is, I think, more important that the quality of the experience for the students be the best if can possibly be. This means proper funding, and settings as close to ideal as possible. If it means you only work with three classes, for 90 minutes each, then that is perfect. Those three classes will have an extraordinary experience. Put together a longer-term plan that sees each class having this kind of experience, three classes at a time, across 2 terms, so six classes participating in a year. The next year, the next 6 classes can be the participants, and so on until the whole school has taken part. At which point, ideally, the artist starts again.

Prisons, ethics, and conferences

It has been quite an up-and-down week. Started in the prison. I have written about those last two sessions. The prison project has been one of the most interesting of all my projects. Here are some of the aspects of it that make it so interesting:

• It is the first project that other musicians in the orchestra have really engaged with. In fact, other musicians and other management staff members. I would have thought lots of our projects in the past could have warranted similar interest, but no. It is the prison project that they all ask about. There have been lots of questions. The three musicians presented a report on the project (after the first two sessions) at a Full Company Meeting a few weeks ago, and got great feedback and buzz.
• The creative team. This has been a truly delightful team of creative minds, from the singing roadie, to the sound designer, to the three musicians from the Orchestra, to the music teacher who works in the prison. Also including the researcher, who has been present in every session and building her own relationship with the prisoners, and with the project material. I have felt more supported as a project director in this particular project, than I have in many other, less challenging projects.
• Restrictions. We are constantly negotiating all sorts of restrictions, and have been, right from the start. It was the restrictions of the prison, and its transient population, that led to the complex structure of the project. Lately, it is one of censorship and what the final recorded product should sound like. We get very mixed messages from the prison authorities about what they want the final recorded product to sound like. On the one hand, they came close to pulling the project completely last year, due to concerns about being ‘soft’ on prisoners. This year, they are refusing to let us record any sounds of the prison world (keys, doors closing). the prisoners want us to include this stuff, but the prison management are adamant that the recording should not include any sounds, in any context that might allude to the “harshness of prison life”. Hmmm. Ultimately, we need to work with all of their restrictions, and still come up with a product that meets our own artistic expectations and demands. That’s our challenge.

Now that all the workshops are completed my attention as the Project Director turns to all that recorded material. D, sound designer, is going to put all the Pro-Tools sessions onto an external hard drive for me to listen through, at my leisure. We are talking hours of footage here! I will identify all the sections, and moments, that I think we will use, and log these in detail, including the characteristics about each that I think will link thematically. After this, we give a CD (or set of CDs) of all this raw material to the Prison staff, and they need to approve, or veto, each track.

Once that has happened, D and I can start working through whatever we are left with, processing sounds, layering, building up compositions and movements, and identifying where the gaps are that will be filled by the musicians in the studio. We go into the studio at the end of March. I plan to choose raw footage as judiciously as possible, in the hope that little, if any, will get vetoed. However, given the apparent changeability of concerns for the prison management, the preferred emphasis feels somewhat less than predictable.

Ethics application (and other distractions)

If you want to do a research project that involves humans in some way (interviews, observation, and videotaping, in my case) you need to apply for project approval by the designated Human Research Ethics Committee. It is a very formal, detailed, painstaking process. I am in the middle of it right now, planning to submit my proposal next week.

So far, not so bad, I am happy to report. Here is my favourite piece of succinct description so far – the one-paragraph description of my methodology. This would have boggled me completely, less than a year ago. Now I am writing it! Hooray, how I love signs of progress!

This is a qualitative study, a case study that aims to capture the music program in a particular time and place, as it is experienced and perceived by the students. Embedded within the case study structure is a phenomenological approach to the inquiry, in that no presuppositions are being made about the subject of the inquiry. Grounded theory will serve as a procedural model in drawing conclusions from the resulting data.

Lots to do still, but after my meeting with my supervisor today I feel re-energised and ready to put the whole thing together. That will happen on Friday, mostly as the rest of this week is pretty full.

I am also preparing an application for a student bursary at the moment, and at work at the Orchestra, am entering the Outreach Program for a couple of awards. Lots of forms to fill in over these next few weeks.

No, however, a mild but amusing distraction:

Here at WordPress, when you have a blog you can access a stats page which tells you how many people (other than yourself) are visiting your blog, and how people are finding your blog – either through referral links or through search engines. The stats page shows you the terms people are typing into the search engines that bring up your blog in the results. Some of these are quite intriguing. Some are plain odd.

• I get hits from people searching for ‘Armenian mafia’ almost every day…
• Lots of people find me after searching for Parisian street names, such as ‘Rue du Bac’ and ‘Rue Tiquetonne’…
• Someone once googled ‘impenetrable sentences’ which was a phrase I used in an early entry, complaining about some of the unfathomable academic texts I was reading… clearly someone else thinks similarly about these to me…
• Lastly, I am slightly alarmed by the search engine query ‘how do I polish my clarinet?’ Is this a euphemism, do you think?

Let’s finish today with a photo.

Sarajevo rooftops. Spires and mosque domes and pitched roofs all on top of each other, covered in a layer of powdery snow. Only the merest hint of colour warms the picture. I love this city.

Honesty and ethics in research

Honesty in research is a many-layered thing, and while on one level it is simple – the truth is the truth is the truth – on another it is complex and requires much thought and deliberation. Honesty with others about what you want to do and why, honesty with the research participants, honesty with yourself as you describe, analyse and write up what happened…

Yesterday at the University of Melbourne visiting academic Martin Woodhead of the Open University, UK gave a presentation about the Young Lives research project. This is a huge longitudinal study into the lives of children in 4 different countries, at 20 different sites in each country. It uses both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry, started in 2002 and will track the lives of the children involved over a 15-year period.

You can read more about Young Lives – An International Study of Childhood Poverty here.

Some time in yesterday’s presentation was spent discussing the data gathering methods that are being used by the qualitative research team in the field. Life course draw-and-tell. Visualising and drawing ‘well-being’. Body mapping. Community mapping. The methods were engaging and hands-on, and encouraged forth what sounded like candid and significant responses from the young people involved.

So much so, that the children asked the researchers if they were “coming back again next weekend?”

They weren’t; great care had been taken to explain to the communities the nature of the research, its time-frame and how it would be conducted, and how the researchers would only be there for one weekend. But the children had had a wonderful time and wanted that these people from outside, who were so interested in their lives, and encouraged them to draw and talk and express themselves freely and creatively, would come again, and again.