Drawings, Photos, and Performances: Using Visual Methods with Children

What supports and services post COVID-19 do children with disabilities and their parents need and want, now and into the future?

Introduction

Children and youth with disabilities and special healthcare needs, and their families, have been uniquely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the voices of children themselves are still not well represented in the existing literature.

Methods

This qualitative descriptive study used a combination of visual methods and interviews to learn about the experiences of Canadian children with disabilities (n=18) and their parents (n=14) during the COVID pandemic and into the post-pandemic period. Data collection was carried out between January and July 2023. The aim was to identify the supports and services children and families need at present and moving forward.

Results

Families' pandemic experiences were complex and nuanced. For many, the pandemic complicated and disrupted everyday activities and supports. These disruptions were largely buffered by parents. However, some families also identified unexpected benefits. Key themes pertaining to present and future needs included the need for services that are flexible; consistent; conducive to relationship-building; comprehensive; coordinated across sectors; and designed to support the needs of the whole family.

Discussion

Implications for policy and practice are outlined.

Moving in musicking: the evolving pedagogical practice of the artist-facilitator within asylum seeker centers

The field of community music has been continuously expanding during the last years alongside the need for experienced musicians who can carry out music activities for culturally diverse groups. Based on previous studies, we identified a need for research-based practices for training musicians and music teachers who wish to facilitate community music projects. We believe that it is important to incorporate reflexive practice in order to inform the planning of the workshops, but also to support the needs of the participants. The article examines the evolution of the pedagogical practice of the artist-facilitator in active music making with children, during a series of movement-based musical workshops at an asylum seeker center in Netherlands. We used an exploratory case study integrating Action Research, in order to focus on the artist-facilitator's pedagogical practice, the participatory role of the children and the content of this type of workshops. The researchers describe the adopted pedagogical approach based on a set of guiding principles and key components that supported the design and content of the workshops. Based on a cyclical process (plan-act-observe-evaluate), the findings from every cycle were incorporated in the next one by analyzing the video footage of the workshops and the immediate reflections of the artist-facilitator. Data analysis revealed a set of recurring themes that reflect crucial aspects of the artist-facilitator's practice. Furthermore, a set of pedagogical implications are proposed that can be directly implemented within the practice of artists-facilitators who wish to engage in activities with children at asylum seeker centers.

Childhood growth and education migration among ethnic Tibetan children from Nepal

BACKGROUND

Ethnographic work among high altitude populations has shown that children are highly mobile-the most recent expression of this is the educational migration of children born at high altitude to boarding schools at lower altitudes. The impact of these patterns of migration on size for age are unknown.

AIM

We investigated the association between growth in weight and height and educational migration in ethnic Tibetan children living in and out of their natal communities.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

Five hundred and fifty eight children ages three to sixteen from the Nubri Valley, Nepal participated in this study. Three hundred children were living in natal villages and 258 were attending boarding schools in Kathmandu. Height, weight, and skinfold thicknesses were collected and matched to demographic data from the community.

RESULTS

There was no association between altitude of family residence and size for age z-scores. Males had lower z-scores than females; z-scores for both groups declined with age. Differences in size for age among children in boarding schools were associated with two factors: sex and type of boarding school (individual sponsor or group funded). Individuals attending individually sponsored schools had greater size for age compared to children in group funded schools or in their natal villages; younger children in collectively funded schools were smaller than village peers.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite popular perceptions, educational outmigration in Himalayan communities may not be associated with improved child growth outcomes and investment in community level schools may be a practical solution for improving child growth and physical and mental health.

Care in Ruination: Accessing Children's Critiques of Health Through Playwriting

Using two plays written by girls and boys, I discuss how children from low-income urban neighborhoods in Honduras reflected on the slow process of privatization of the Honduran national health system. The children peppered their narratives with motifs suggestive of ongoing processes of material and social deterioration under capitalism, while paying attention to the different social mechanisms through which care could be mobilized. The plays speak to the value of incorporating children's perspectives on topics of health-disease processes that circle political, economic, and social tensions, and the importance of incorporating new ways of producing knowledge through artistic mediums.

An Exploration of the Practical and Ethical Issues of Research Using Multi-Visual Methods with Children Affected by Chronic Pain

This paper intends to encourage further reflection on the research methods and approaches used to enhance the voices of children with chronic conditions. Visual methods (e.g., ‘draw, write, and tell’ and photo elicitation interviews) have been described as the most appropriate ways to develop research with children as they allow room for children to share their lived experiences in their own terms and to actively participate in the research process, by giving them the opportunity to act as co-researchers. In fact, the use of these methods also contributes to empowering children and mitigating the power differences that exist between the adult researcher and young participants. Drawing on an ongoing study on the experience and management of chronic pain in childhood, this paper provides insights on the usefulness of using these multi-methods to address (potentially) sensitive topics with a (potentially) vulnerable group. The ethical and methodological challenges faced by the researcher when conducting research with ill children in the healthcare context are addressed. The paper looks at the dilemmas of studying chronic pain in childhood and highlights the ways in which multi visual methods can help children in the meaning making of chronic pain.

Negotiating Closed Doors and Constraining Deadlines: The Potential of Visual Ethnography to Effectually Explore Private and Public Spaces of Motherhood and Parenting

Pregnancy and motherhood are increasingly subjected to surveillance by medical professionals, the media, and the general public, and discourses of ideal parenting are propagated alongside an admonishment of the perceived "failing" maternal subject. However, despite this scrutiny, the mundane activities of parenting are often impervious to ethnographic forms of inquiry. Challenges for ethnographic researchers include the restrictions of becoming immersed in the private space of the home where parenting occurs and an institutional structure that discourages exploratory and long-term fieldwork. This paper draws on four studies, involving thirty-four participants, that explored their journeys into the space of parenthood and their everyday experiences. The studies all employed forms of visual ethnography, including artifacts, photo elicitation, timelines, collage, and sandboxing. The paper argues that visual methodologies can enable access to unseen aspects of parenting and engender forms of temporal extension, which can help researchers to disrupt the restrictions of tightly time bounded projects.

A 'snapshot' of physical activity and food habits among private school children in India

Concerns about increasing obesity in poorer parts of the world, including India, have often been premised in terms of global shifts in activity levels and caloric consumption. Lifestyle changes have been documented in large cities, but we do not know whether these changes are reaching young people in less urban locations. This study used photo journals to explore children's perceptions of their food and activity habits in a remote Indian city. Children expressed interest in active pastimes, learning, and health, and indicated traditional, modern, local, and global influences in their lives. Findings offer context for research and interventions.

From informed consent to dissemination: Using participatory visual methods with young people with long-term conditions at different stages of research

Research with young people suffering from a long-term illness has more recently incorporated the use of visual methods to foster engagement of research participants from a wide age range, capture the longitudinal and complex factors involved in young people's experiences of care, and allow young people to express their views in multiple ways. Despite its contributions, these methods are not always easy to implement and there is a possibility that they might not generate the results or engagement initially anticipated by researchers. We hope to expand on the emerging discussion on the use of participatory visual methods by presenting the practical issues we have faced while using this methodology during different stages of research: informed assent/consent, data collection, and the dissemination of findings. We propose a combination of techniques to make sure that the research design is flexible enough to allow research participants to shape the research process according to their needs and interests.

The narrated, nonnarrated, and the disnarrated: conceptual tools for analyzing narratives in health services research

While analyzing the narratives of children receiving pediatric oncology treatment and their parents, we encountered three ways to look at their narratives: what was narrated, nonnarrated, and disnarrated. The narrated refers to the actors (characters) and events (scenes) individuals decided to include in the narration of their experiences, the nonnarrated are everything not included in narration, and the disnarrated are elements that are narrated in the story but did not actually take place. We use our reflection to illustrate how an integrative analysis of these different forms of narration can allow us to produce a holistic interpretation of people's experiences of illness. This approach is still in the early stages of development, but we hope this article can promote a debate in the field and lead to the refinement of an important tool for narrative analysis.