Balancing Voice and Protection in Literacy Studies with Young Children

One of the tensions in conducting participatory literacy research with young children is finding the balance between protection and voice. In this paper, we describe how we sought to create participant-centred research techniques within the evolving design of a yearlong action research study with kindergarten students. Through weekly classroom read-alouds of social class-themed children’s literature, the larger project explored how children connected and critically responded to issues of poverty, privilege and inequality. How did our research techniques simultaneously balance ‘protecting’ children as ethical guidelines ask us to do, allow us to report our findings in ways that describe the rich data we collected, and create space for children to express and develop their voices and perspectives? We identified three issues that were salient to us in our research project with kindergarten students: using participant-centred research techniques, treating assent as an ongoing process and capturing the complexity of context while protecting children’s identities. We look beyond the minimal requirements of research review boards as we explore some of the ethical issues that arise for us as teachers and researchers when we conduct literacy research with young children. We conclude with a discussion about how literacy researchers are uniquely poised to contribute to the scholarship on ethics with young children.