Subjects, objects or participants? Dilemmas of psychological research with children

Woodhead, Martin and Faulkner, Dorothy (2008). Subjects, objects or participants? Dilemmas of psychological research with children. In: Christiansen, Pia and James, Allison eds. Research With Children: Perspectives and Practices. London, UK: Falmer Press / Routledge, pp. 10–39.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203964576-8

Abstract

As a novice researcher in the early 1970s one of us (Martin) was assigned the task of carrying out psychological tests on 4-year-old children in a nursery school. The aim was to measure the impact of ‘cognitive style’ on socially disadvantaged children’s learning. The study was part of a wider programme of experimental intervention research to test (at that time) contested claims about the long-term outcomes of preschool education (Woodhead 1976). The site of fieldwork was a nursery school on a new housing estate. The head teacher had allocated a small room where I could test the children undisturbed. In the days leading up to the research I familiarized myself with nursery routines and with the children who had been selected as subjects of the research – as well as observing their behaviour as they worked on jigsaw puzzles, scrambled over the climbing frame and played in the home corner.