SOME ALTERNATIVE METHODS
FOR CHILD RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATION
Drawings and Collages
Individual Drawings
Drawing can be used most effectively as a warm-up exercise during the problem identification phase. At first try to use materials that you have a lot of so that the children feel free to make "mistakes". Features of children's drawings can be cut out for use in a collective collage of children's concerns or ideas.
Storyboards
Most children are familiar with comics. A sequence of annotated drawings is called a "storyboard" by the film industry. This method offers great potential for those children who have restricted writing abilities. It can be used in the problem identification phase as a way of telling stories from their everyday lives. It can also be used later in a project to describe their research process to others. To get them started you can provide them with a sequence of open boxes on a sheet of paper and one or two examples of storyboards.
You can also offer yourself as an annotator of their drawings. Rather than taking away from the significance of their work, it adds to it. Simply write alongside features on their drawing what they tell you. By enabling them to complete a storyboard, they are able to proudly exhibit it, use it in a publication with their peers or mail it to children in another community.
Collective Drawing
This is an excellent "warm-up" activity for any group. It can also be used as a central technique for the collective expression of a group's desires. The material resources needed are a piece of cardboard or large sheet of thick paper or canvas on a wall, paint or markers. Each participant can make some kind of graphic addition to the whole. The subject of the creative expression can either be left open, stressing its "warm-up" nature or it can be focused.
Collage Making
Collage making involves the cutting out, arranging and sticking down of images that can be taken from a variety of sources. In collage, children feel less limited by their technical abilities than when they draw. The method seems to increase their visualizing capabilities. Also, the possibility of contrasts of scale, such as a sheep as large as a public housing tower, can have symbolic and metaphoric potential which children often do not feel free to express in drawing. A mixture of expressive forms - photos, colors, words and drawings, is almost always richer in content than the use of only one means of expression. In some cases, children who do not usually write can create word collages by cutting out words from magazines. Collage making is more easily done in a group than are drawings. The process of choosing images, cutting, pasting, and positioning, etc. can contribute to the goal of collaborative work.
Figure 3: Children in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, making a collage as part of a Neighborhood Futures Project (photo credit: Ray Lorenzo).
The following range of materials is ideal, but children should free to improvise:
- Wide array of sources of images (color magazines, comic books, unwanted brochures, reports, and cut-outs from children's own drawings, etc.)
- Fine and wide-tip colored markers or crayons.
- Watercolor paints, scissors
- Glue
- Loose 3-D parts that are relatively flat (e.g. industrial remnants: plastic, wood, glitter, cloth pieces)
Model Building
Models-are an ideal tool for communication across a wide range of age ranges on planning and design projects. If you have plenty of time children can build everything themselves with clay, paper or cardboard. Unfortunately it is very time consuming if the participants do the entire model making. For an environmental design project, like a schoolyard, you can prepare in advance cardboard templates representing trees, shrubs, seats, different layouts for games and so on. For the design of green space you can work outside in soil with natural elements. Sticks, flower petals and stones are excellent for the design of alternative garden layouts. The materials should be diverse. There should be some that allow great flexibility in their meaning to allow the child to openly discuss a wide range of themes.
Figure 4: A. Children in a school near Cuzco, Peru, learn from mothers in the community how to use mud to build their traditional houses. B. Children in Harlem, New York City, displaying their model of suggestions for the design of a plaza on their street in order to obtain the reactions of other residents to their ideas.
Observational Surveys
Surveys are a straightforward and satisfying kind of research activity for facilitators and teachers to work on in any culture and with children of all ages. They also build upon the great fascination children seem to have with collecting and mapping and, if designed well, they can excite children with the opportunities they provide for detective work. With remarkably little effort, children in any community can collect information that that community has never seen before and express it in map and graphic forms. In this way, parents clearly see that the children's involvement in their community fits with traditional notions of the kinds of skills that should be learned in school. Thus, it is a good way to begin a new program in a school that does not have a record of community research.
The best kinds of surveys to begin with are those that record physical data on a form. The example below is a form for recording pollution designed with children in the National Program of Working Children in Ecuador. Questionnaire surveys are more challenging. They are discussed under "Interviewing", below.
Figure 5: A survey form used by the National Program of Working Children in Ecuador
Interviews
Interviewing is a basic technique for any community research project. It is extremely valuable for helping young children to understand that different people can have very different ideas about the same environment or issue. Young children are commonly intimidated by the idea of interviewing adults. It is true that adults, particularly in certain cultures, often find the idea of a child interviewing them strange. If a child is well prepared however, a successful interview can dramatically change the opinion of an adult about children's capacities. Also, children quickly discover that they can become the collectors and providers of information. For children with limited writing abilities, the use of a simple tape recorder in the interview can enable them to obtain a complete record. Analyzing the information from this record can subsequently be valuable for the development of their literacy skills and the information may be recorded in graphic form onto charts, maps or tables. (For further tips, go to Interviews in the Case Studies).
The National Program of Working Children (PMT) prepared the interview form reproduced below in Ecuador during the problem identification phase of children's research. It is a good example of designing a form for pre-adolescent children. It is clear, both to children and to adults, through the content of the questions why it is that the interview exchange should be taking place. The form was designed to have a minimum number of questions yet still reveal useful information to get children started on the identification of problems in the community. Its appealing graphic quality, which can in fact be colored in by children, makes it an attractive, yet inexpensive, document.
Figure 6: Interview form from the National Program of Working Children (PMT), Ecuador.
Questionnaires can be used to collect information from large numbers of people. They have mainly specific "closed-choice" questions rather than the "open-ended" ones used in interviews. They are most useful later in a research process when children have identified specific questions such as: "Which of the issues on this list do you think is the most important problem in your community?" or "Which of the following ways do you usually dispose of your garbage?" Unfortunately, few adults are likely to be willing to fill out a questionnaire that is left with them. Children can instead using the questionnaire forms to interview people.
Case Studies and Examples
Review the available Case Studies that detail the kinds of projects children have completed.
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