My first academic conference presentation: a gift that has kept on giving
By Daniel Gatura Kuria
It is still mind-blowing to me how much I was able to gain from a one-day conference and the realisation of all that I learnt keeps getting clearer with each passing day, activity, reflection and interaction. When I saw the call for abstracts for the British Early Childhood Education Research Association (BECERA) conference and the theme on Encouraging Ethical Encounters with Young Children, I was first excited as I had always wanted to present and write something with regards to research ethics from our Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) study. I however initially hesitated since our research participants were mostly older than 8 years. After discussions with Dr. Fiona Scott and Dr. Shabana Roscoe, we agreed that we could still present discussions from families that either had a focus child or a sibling within the early childhood age group. The email confirming the acceptance of our paper came in just before Christmas and has surely been a gift that has kept on giving.
Preparing the paper for the conference was a great opportunity to work alongside my exceptional colleagues and friends Dr. Fiona Scott and Dr. Shabana Roscoe who have immense expertise in ethnographic and young children’s digital play research. Our paper, titled “Is he going to have to play it every day? Does it have violence?” Navigating myriad ethical issues during ethnographically informed research looking at children’s and families’ digital play at home”, was an opportunity for us to discuss the various ethical challenges we experienced during the UK side of the RITEC study. One of the key issues we raised was the dilemma to have a balance between ‘procedural’ and ‘relational’ ethics to ensure safety of the institutions, participants and researchers while still conducting relevant research. Additionally, studying children’s experiences in ‘the context of the home’ could now mean studying an almost infinite range of digital and non-digital ‘spaces’. We must draw some boundaries, but it’s important that some research ‘safely’ crosses those boundaries too. For more on our research, see our mini site at: http://bit.ly/4aikfjy
Another highlight from the conference were the numerous connections that other presenters had to my PhD research and my recently started graduate teaching assistant job at the University of Sheffield School of Education. The keynote address, delivered by Prof. Laura Lundy, on children’s participation coincidentally connected to my lecture the following day. Her discussion of the UN Convention on Rights of a Child (UNCRC), specifically article 12 on Children’s participation was illuminating with a clear emphasis of how all the articles should work together as opposed to against each other. The Lundy model of SPACE, VOICE, AUDIENCE and INFLUENCE, brought the article to further light and with practical considerations that I shared with the students during my class. We should aim to ensure that children and young people have a safe and inclusive space to voice their opinions, which are given the due weight and acted upon.
During the poster presentation session, I found myself drawn to the work by Sole Scuderi on pedagogical documentation affording children agency. Having written about pedagogical documentation (PD) in numerous essays and as part of my PhD proposal, I was surprised at how I had previously not seen the link between the two. Often, PD is talked about with connection to adults' use of them to make children’s learning visible and for future teaching and learning experiences. Following this enlightenment, I reached out to Sole to include this discussion in my lecture on multimodality and bring a connection between multimodality and children’s right to participation.
As I prepare for my PhD confirmation review, I have begun thinking of how ethics should not only be thought about with regards to the data collection phase but also aspects such as the choice of topic, the choosing and use of literature and use of the findings. The EECERA ethical guidelines, highlighted by Prof. Pascal, advocate that early childhood research should have an ethic of respect for the child, family, community and society; democratic values; justice and equity; knowing from multiple perspectives; integrity, transparency and respectful interactions; quality and rigour; academic scholarship; social contribution; human rights and global sustainability (Bertram et al., 2025). By adopting a holistic approach to ethics, the seriousness given to safeguarding the participants, institutions and researchers through ethical reviews will also be placed on all aspects of research aiming to make it impactful and sustainable to the communities involved.
Lastly, it was a pleasure meeting Clare Daniels and Katie Freeland with whom we presented alongside the same symposium, Carmel Ward, Dr. Nathan Archer, the organisers and all the other early childhood practitioners. Looking forward to further interactions and advocacy for early childhood education, care and research.
References
Bertram, T. et al. (2025) ‘EECERA ethical code for early childhood researchers’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1350293X.2024.2445361 (Accessed: 21 February 2025).
Lundy, L. (2007) ‘“Voice” is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, British educational research journal, 33(6), pp. 927–942. doi: 10.1080/01411920701657033.
Lundy, L., Murray, C., Smith, K. & Ward, C. (2024). Young children's right to be heard on the quality of their education: Addressing potential misunderstandings in the context of early childhood education. British Educational Research Journal, 00, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3968
Scout foundation, Lundy model retrieved from https://sfni.org/scouters/sfni-training-resources-old/the-lundy-model-enabling-meaningful-participation-of-children-young-people/