Eliciting children’s/young people’s (Group) engagement with scenarios as participatory research practice for exploring and extending responses to climate change

Abstract

In this article I provide an account of my use (in a particular context) of a ‘post qualitative inquiry’ approach, with my recognition that ways of approaching issues to be explored with participants, and the method of exploration, carry social and ecological consequences. The research was initiated in a school in South Africa with a sample of ten (Black) Grade 9 children (aged 14–15). Groups of two to three children engaged with a number of scenarios supplied by me (‘business as usual’, ‘small changes’, and ‘sustainable future’) concerning possible responses to climate change. In each group the children worked together towards jointly creating options for unsettling the ‘business as usual’ scenario while exploring the other scenarios as alternatives. The article concentrates on the justification for using scenarios as a basis for inviting the children to discuss together their responses to climate change, with a view to the research inputting into their visioning and their understandings of possibilities for agency (individual and collective). It also concentrates on my intent to strengthen the notion of collaborative visioning, which is in keeping with Indigenous understandings of relational knowing. The research was intended, inter alia, to contribute to the children’s appreciation of this way of learning.