Towards an Innovative Inclusion: Using Digital Methods with Young People

Abstract

This chapter outlines an innovative research project undertaken in 2013, which employed digital methods in order to enable children and young people to contribute to a countywide enquiry into educational attainment and provide them the opportunity to express their views on their educational experiences. Until relatively recently, childhood was neglected by mainstream social research and, while societal attitudes have moved away from the fifteenth-century proverb that ‘children should be seen and not heard’, young people’s views are still largely ignored in educational reform. Recent developments in children’s rights to participation have, however, provided a catalyst for developing enhanced child- centred and, arguably, more creative research methods. These have begun to supersede previous research approaches which accorded criticism for conceptualizing children as incompetent, unreliable and incomplete, as mere objects to be studied (Hill et al., 1996).