ABSTRACT

The ethics of the participation of children in research have attracted the attention of childhood researchers for thirty years. By analysing central scholarly work in childhood sociology and in early childhood education research, the aim of this paper is to unfold, but also queer how ethics are articulated within literature that discusses children in research. Through the methodology of tracing-and-mapping, a map is constructed that displays how children in research are articulated in relation to the prepositions on, to, with, for and by. The map shows how these prepositions form a value scale, underpinned by certain philosophical assumptions about ethics. By relating this to a randomized control trial (RCT) study performed in Swedish preschools, the paper highlights the fact that it is not necessarily more ethical if the research is done by children, than on children. This contributes to a renewed and extended reflection on ethics, that throughly problematize a placing of research on a ‘scale of ethics’ – ranging from bad to good.

摘要

儿童参与研究的伦理学已经吸引了童年研究人员30年的关注。通过分析儿童社会学和儿童早期教育研究中的核心学术工作，本文的目的是揭示，但也质疑在研究儿童的文献中如何阐明伦理学。通过跟踪和映射的方法，地图构成，即显示了如何儿童研究有关铰接到介词上，以，用，用于与通过。该地图显示了这些介词如何形成价值量表，并以关于道德的某些哲学假设为基础。通过将其与瑞典学龄前儿童进行的一项随机对照试验（RCT）研究联系起来，该论文强调了一个事实，即由儿童进行的研究不一定比对儿童进行的研究更具伦理道德。这有助于重新思考和扩大对道德的反思，从而彻底地将研究问题置于“道德规模”上，从坏到好。