Location
Informed consent in research with children
This training has been organised by the Education, Childhood and Youth (ECY) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this training is aimed at ECY Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend.
This training session is aimed at students who want to understand the complexities of negotiating informed consent in research with children and young people. It will take the form of a conversation between Prof Priscilla Alderson and the ECY pathway director Michael Gallagher. The session will then open out into a Q&A session.
Priscilla has spent decades researching and writing about children’s consent, including consent to medical treatment and participation in research. She is one of the leading experts in this challenging and contested area.
The session will develop conversation, reflection and discussion around some of the key issues regarding consent for social researchers working with children, including:
- the history of consent and children’s rights
- notions of consent in medical versus social research
- debates around capacity, age and maturity
- power relations, agency and consent
- suggestions for good practice
An initial conversation between Priscilla and Michael will take place for around 45 minutes. The session will then open out into a Q&A format where participants will be able to ask questions.
Pre-reading
Attendees are recommended to read some of Priscilla’s writing on informed consent with children, e.g.
The Ethics of Research with Children and Young People | SAGE Publications Ltd
Priscilla Alderson
Priscilla Alderson is Prof Emerita in the Institute for Education at UCL. She began working in advocacy for children during the 1960s and trained and worked as a schoolteacher. Her first degree was in English 1973 at Birkbeck London University. Her PhD was in Sociology, 1988, with the title “Parents' Consent to Paediatric Cardiac Surgery” at Goldsmiths London University.
Priscilla has worked in research since 1984. She has designed and conducted 40 research projects reported in over 300 publications. Her areas of expertise focus on children’s moral agency in schools and hospitals, disability and long-term illness, ethics and rights, and more recently critical realism.
Her life and work are recounted in interviews in Key Thinkers in Childhood Studies (2014) and Journal of Critical Realism (2023).
This event will be accessed via a Zoom link. Students who book onto this course will be sent a link before the event via email. Please note that part of this event will be recorded.
