The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) offers a vision of the child as an individual and as a member of a family and community, with rights and responsibilities appropriate to his or her age and stage of development (UN, 1989; Fabian and Dunlop, 2006). Clearly influenced by the UNCRC, Ireland’s National Children’s Strategy, entitled Our Children – Their Lives, published by the Department of Health and Children in
2000, states that consulting with children is increasingly perceived as each child’s human right. In terms of current policy and early years discourse (Fraser et al, 2004), the notion of the
child as a researcher is emphasised, encouraged and valued.
In order to provide for pre-primary children’s meaningful contribution to this study, the Mosaic Approach was utilised (Clark and Moss, 2011). This method was developed with three-year-old and four-year-old children in an attempt to find practical ways to respond to the voice of the child. Children’s representations of their world through visuals (such as photographs, maps or drawings) can be combined with interviews and/or observations in order to gain a deeper
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Methodologyunderstanding of their lives. In this way, children are co-constructors, with adults, of meaning, in an integrated way that combines verbal and visual methodologies.
By seeking the child’s voice, this study sought to include a reflection of what matters most to children when going to primary school (Dockett and Perry, 2002). Thus, following a review of the various parts of the ‘mosaic’, it was decided, given the age profile of the pre-primary children in this study, that child conferencing and ‘draw and tell’ were the most appropriate strategies to use for exploring their views.
Child conferences (Clark and Moss, 2011) were undertaken with children who were availing
of the FPSY scheme. Dupree et al (2001) describe child conferences as a particular form of
informal structured interview, devised for the express purpose of finding out about young children’s views. While child conferences mirror discussion groups, they are inherently flexible and responsive to children’s needs (Clark and Moss, 2011), combining opportunities for children to talk in a structured way or through a play-based approach (Clark et al, 2003).
In this study, 10 child conferences were undertaken with 57 children, and between four and six children participated in each conference; all were conducted within the children’s pre-primary settings. The researchers utilised a semi-structured discussion format (see Appendix 3),
together with the children’s commentary on their drawings (see below) to collect data related
to the children’s perspectives on starting school.
Drawing is increasingly recognised as an important means of expression for children (Lewis,
1995; Malchiodi, 1998), including those who do not have the vocabulary or developmental ability to express themselves. It is therefore also appropriate for children with special educational needs or for children from diverse cultures (Holliday et al, 2009). Drawing is
much more than a simple representation of what children see before them; like writing, it can be better understood as one way in which children make sense of their experiences, and express and communicate their thoughts, beliefs and ideas (Cherney et al, 2006; Trautner
and Milbrath, 2008; Einarsdottir et al, 2009; Lambert et al, 2014; Dyson, 1998; Anning and
Ring, 2004). Drawings were therefore used in this study to engage pre-primary children in discussions about their awareness of, and understanding of, primary school, and to augment the research findings.
Participating children were encouraged to talk about their drawing and to share their meaning with the researchers – ‘draw and tell’. This occurred in two ways: where children were
facilitated in expressing their ideas through imagery and visual spatial memory, and where children described the drawing’s characters, objects, events, sequencing, graphic details or other relevant characteristics (Wright, 2013).
3.3 Phase 2: Quantitative research instruments
This section provides the rationale for the chosen sampling format and for developing and administering an online survey. It also presents details of the construction of the survey instrument, which comprised a self-administered questionnaire.
Phase 2: Sampling
As it was not practical to collect data from every single primary school (N=3,299) or pre-primary setting (N=4,201) in Ireland, samples of the entire population of primary schools and pre- primary settings participating in the FPSY were selected. A probability sampling technique was used to ensure that findings from the quantitative analysis could be generalised to the larger population of primary schools and pre-primary settings.
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Probability sampling
Babbie (2012) holds that while the number of people selected in a sample is important, it is less important than how people are selected. Probability sampling is the best way of ensuring that
the sample represents the population at large, is free of researcher bias, and that the resultant research will stand up to scrutiny (Sekaran and Bougie, 2010; Babbie, 2012). Probability sampling entails drawing the sample in such a way that every member of the population has a known, non-zero probability of selection. This requires, firstly, a list of the entire population (which acts as the sampling frame) and, secondly, selection from this list using methods of random selection. In the version of probability sampling used here, which comprises simple random sampling within a proportionally stratified sampling design, every school and pre- primary setting for inclusion in the study has a known and equal probability of selection (Sekaran and Bougie, 2010). Selection from the DES sampling frames was carried out using random numbers generated by the website www.random.org6
In order to improve the representativeness of the samples, and thereby increase the precision of estimates derived from them, random selection took place within a stratified random sampling design. In this study, proportional stratified sampling was used – in other words, the number of items selected from each stratum was proportional to the total number in that stratum.
With a complex questionnaire covering many different topics or variables, it can be difficult to identify appropriate stratifying variables. In addition, information on all desirable stratifying variables may not be available in the sampling frame. For the sample of primary schools, the
stratifying variables chosen were (i) composition (boys/girls/mixed gender); (ii) level of needs (mainstream/special schools); (iii) socio-economic grouping (DEIS/non-DEIS); and (iv) size of settlement in which the school is located (city, large, medium or small town, or rural area). Information on the first three attributes was obtained from DES sources. The assignment of primary schools to settlement categories was based on geocodes for all schools, which were obtained from the All-Island Research Observatory (AIRO) based in NUI Maynooth. Using the geocoding information, schools were mapped and assigned to settlement categories on the basis of settlement boundaries defined by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for the 2011 Census of Population. For the pre-primary settings, there was no geocoding information
readily available, and neither gender composition nor level of needs is a relevant stratifying variable. This sample was stratified on the basis of ownership/management structure (private/ community) only, which might be considered a proxy variable for socio-economic status. Finally, the sample size was determined. It was decided to sample 500 schools and 500 pre- primary settings. In implementation, the sample size for primary schools was slightly smaller, at 496 (477 mainstream schools and 19 special schools). The reason for this is rounding effects when determining the number of schools in each stratum of the sample.
From the sample of 500 pre-primary settings and 496 primary schools contacted, the response rate was 29.6% (n=148) of pre-primary settings and 23.8% (n=114) of primary school settings. The dropout rate was 7.4% (n=11) in pre-primary settings and 5.3% (n=6) in primary school settings. With the proliferation of Internet usage, electronic surveys have become a valuable tool for obtaining information from respondents living in different parts of a country; this is facilitated by the ease of access to such surveys, coupled with their low cost (Evans and Mathur, 2002; Bryman, 2008). Furthermore, online surveys can be ‘administered in a time-efficient manner, minimising the period it takes to get a survey into the field and for data-collection’ (Evans and
Mathur, 2002, p. 198). Consequently, for this study an online survey was considered an efficient method for building on the qualitative data gathered in Phase 1 of the study.
6 www.random.org is operated by Randomness and Integrity Services Ltd. and provides a service to generate truly random numbers. The random functions built into most statistics applications normally generate pseudorandom numbers.