E Kay M Tisdall
Biographic Data
| ID | 933534 |
|---|---|
| NAME | E Kay M Tisdall |
| GIVEN NAMES | E Kay M |
| FAMILY NAME | Tisdall |
| SIGNATURE | TISDALL E K M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8967-6426 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 551 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Combining insights from ontological insecurity and moral panics
Children are ambivalently positioned as both threats and redemptive agents to adult hopes and dreams. Bringing together concepts from ontological insecurity and moral panics, this article analyses media discourses in the United Kingdom on young children’s learning and development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Three themes are discussed: how children’s learning deficits become the subject of concern, how claims behind this discourse are …
Young people’s resistance within and against unjust systems
This article establishes a dialogue between the fields of participatory action research, social innovation and social entrepreneurship, by presenting learning from two projects with young people in Colombia and critically situating it within intersectional, intergenerational and international power relations. We suggest that social innovation and social entrepreneurship should be considered as avenues to change and transformation as possible outc…
Reframing payment practices for co-research for children and young people
Children and young people are increasingly involved in social science research as co-researchers. In such roles they can take on a range of responsibilities from developing research questions and methods, to undertaking fieldwork and analysis, to knowledge exchange. As co-research with children and young people becomes more common, significant ethical concerns have arisen about how to pay them fairly for their involvement. Yet, there is no consen…
Which children, whose childhoods? How the Covid-19 pandemic has amplified epistemic power struggles in early childhood education
Global intersecting crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, and the shrinking of civic space, increasingly unveil and amplify deep systemic inequalities. A growing body of literature shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the learning and development of young children, especially for those already experiencing inequalities. This article draws on a critical discourse analysis of a literature review commi…
Children’s agency in organised sport
Sport has rarely been addressed in childhood studies’ research, while sport research has only started to call attention to concepts from childhood studies. This article brings both fields together, to explore children’s practices of agency and potential consequences for their wellbeing in organised sport. Such insights are timely, with widespread efforts to increase children’s engagement in sport for its physical and mental health benefits, while…
A tale of two Youth Expert Groups ( YEGs )
This paper explores how research advisory groups can be a vehicle for youth activism. It draws on our experiences with young activists, aged 15–26 years, in India and Brazil, who were advisors on a research project focused on youth livelihoods in cities. These young people played a vital role in supporting youth researchers, identifying research themes and developing engagement and advocacy strategies. Through this paper, we explore how the Youth…
Rethinking child and youth activism in challenging times
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study
Applying co-production principles in research
Co-production, a form of collaborative working, is guided by principles including valuing all participants, building on individual strengths, blurring distinctions between roles, delivering benefits for all participants, building support networks and supporting people to deliver work themselves. This article explores how co-production is understood by young people and researchers and how co-production principles can be applied within a research c…
Child-Led Research with Young Children
Child-led research is gaining increasing attention. Such research involves children leading throughout the research process, from research design to dissemination. Child-led research has tested adult-centric research assumptions, with debates in the literature about researchers’ expertise and responsibilities. If these debates are testing for child-led research undertaken with older children and young people, they are even more so for young child…
Reimagining institutional ethics procedures in research partnerships with young people across Majority/Minority World contexts
While institutional ethics are crucial, their application on the ground often creates tensions with what is considered ‘ethical'. This paper reflects on the dissonances between formal institutional ethics and community-based research. The focus is on a project involving young people from India and Brazil, where they actively contributed as co-researchers and advisors. The project's international collaboration encompassed partners from Majority an…
Conceptualising quality early childhood education
Early childhood has increasingly been acknowledged as a vital time for all children. Inclusive and quality education is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with the further specification that all children have access to quality pre‐primary education. As early childhood education (ECE) has expanded worldwide, so have concerns about the quality of ECE provision, including whether its pedagogy is culturally meaningful and conte…
Children, childhoods and bilingualism
This special issue brings together scholars from a range of disciplines and contexts concerned with children,1 childhood and bilingualism; that is the ability to communicate in two or more languages with any degree of proficiency, from minimal to advanced (Grosjean, 2010). Language is fundamental to human culture and personhood and a key part of identity at an individual, family and community level. However, language may also be used at a nationa…
The Impact of the Covid‐19 Global Health Pandemic in Early Childhood Education Within Four Countries
The recent Covid‐19 global health pandemic has negatively affected the political and economic development of communities around the world. This article shares the lessons from our multi‐country project Safe, Inclusive Participative Pedagogy: Improving Early Childhood Education in Fragile Contexts (UKRI GCRF) on how children in communities in Brazil, Eswatini, South Africa, and Scotland have experienced the effects of the pandemic. This article be…
Children’s human rights under Covid-19
Policy responses to COVID-19 have had dramatic impacts on children’s human rights, as much as the COVID-19 pandemic itself. In the rush to protect the human right of survival and development, new policies and their implementation magnified the challenges of taking a children’s rights approach in adult-oriented systems and institutions. This article explores these challenges, drawing on learning from the independent Children’s Rights Impact Assess…
Children’s rights impact assessments in times of crisis
Policy responses to COVID-19 have illuminated how children and young people’s human rights were all too often side-lined by adult concerns. With mounting queries during the first ‘lockdown’ in Scotland (March 2020), the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland asked the Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland to undertake an independent Children’s Rights Impact Assessment of COVID-19 emergency public health measures on children a…
Investing in activism
This article draws on child activists' experiences in Bangladesh and Ghana, who mobilised to stop potential child marriages from their respective Child Forums and Children's Parliaments. Case studies were undertaken with 75 child activists, 10 girls whose child marriages had been stopped, and 22 adult stakeholders. The children's activism disrupted intergenerational relations - unsettling adults' attitudes towards children - and depended on such …
Young People’s Participation
What do children think of their own bilingualism? Exploring bilingual children’s attitudes and perceptions
Aims and objectives: This paper explores children’s experiences and perceptions of their own bilingualism in two contexts in Scotland, UK: a primary school with a high proportion of children using a language other than English at home; and a primary school where the language of instruction is an indigenous, minority language, Gaelic. Methodology: The paper draws upon data gathered from multiple qualitative methods, including interviews, group act…
Beyond the familiar challenges for children and young people’s participation rights
Over the last 30 years, remarkable efforts have been made to understand and support children and young people's participation rights outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Despite these efforts, challenges remain consistently the same, such as tokenism, lack of sustainability, and accountability. This article reviews the progress and challenges for children and young people's participation. It then considers the potenti…
Challenging undue influence? Rethinking children’s participation in contested child contact
Despite the widespread ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children continue to struggle to have their participation rights recognised and supported. This is evident within family law, where despite sometimes progressive and strong legislation, children’s views are often not heard, nor given due weight, when parent-child contact is contested within the courts. This paper explores barriers to children’s partic…
Transforming children’s rights? Dilemmas, challenges and implementation
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has now been in place for over thirty years and is widely ratified. However, as the UNCRC is operationalised, a number of practical, conceptual and ethical issues have emerged . For example, questions arise concerning children’s capacity and competence to make autonomous decisions, their involvement in dispute resolution and the relationship between the rights of children and those of their par…
Manipulation and Domestic Abuse in Contested Contact – Threats to Children's Participation Rights
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has catalysed numerous jurisdictions to introduce new legal provisions to support children's participation rights when child contact is contested. Despite this, children's participation is frequently limited in practice, especially in contexts where children are perceived as vulnerable to a parent's manipulation, even if there are allegations of domestic abuse. While “resist and refusal dyn…
Children and Young People’s Participation Rights
Children and young people’s participation is an ever-growing demand. Thirty years on from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s adoption, however, fundamental challenges continue for participation that are widely recognised cross-nationally but remain stubbornly consistent. As a way in to considering the children and young people’s participation literature more generally, all articles referring to participation in their titles were ident…
Involving child and youth advisors in academic research about child participation
Challenges for children’s participation
Not so 'new'? Looking critically at childhood studies
The 'new' sociology of childhood emerged over 20 years ago, arguing for the social construction of childhood to be acknowledged and for the recognition of children and young people's agency and rights. Other disciplines joined this growing academic area, from children's geographies to law, so that the phrase 'childhood studies' has become a popular label. Policy and practice both influenced, and were influenced by, childhood studies, particularly…
Children and Young People’s Participation Rights
Children and young people’s participation is an ever-growing demand. Thirty years on from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s adoption, however, fundamental challenges continue for participation that are widely recognised cross-nationally but remain stubbornly consistent. As a way in to considering the children and young people’s participation literature more generally, all articles referring to participation in their titles were ident…
Conceptualising children and young people’s participation
Children and young people’s participation in collective decision-making has become a popular policy and practice concern. Yet challenges persist, such as tokenism, limited impact and unsustainability. This article examines ways to address these challenges and realise children and young people’s participation, particularly in child protection contexts. Conceptually, the article investigates three popular ideas – vulnerability, social accountabilit…
Research with children
This paper identifies a number of significant gaps between the principles of good practice in research with children and the practical realities of conducting a research project with children. The context of the discussion is an ongoing research study of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The paper argues that conducting research with what is a hidden (and in many ways secret) population throws into sharp relie…
Exploring children and young people's relationships across Majority and Minority Worlds
First paragraph: How can we learn from research and practice in both Majority\nand Minority World contexts? How can we challenge the current academic area of\nchildhood studies, with new and revised theorisations around children and young\npeople's agency and relationships? This special issue addresses these questions,\ncapitalising on the intensive seminar series funded by the UK's Economic and\nSocial Research Council. The series, titled 'Explo…
Is the Honeymoon Over? Children and Young People's Participation in Public Decision-Making
Children and young people's participation in public decision-making is now firmly on international and national agendas. This article concludes the special issue on such participation, by discussing three central issues for children and young people's participation: what is counted – or discounted – as legitimate forms of participation; the potential usefulness of theorisations of governance, citizenship and social capital; and how the roles of a…
Reflecting on Children and Young People's Participation in the UK
The article interrogates how children and young people's participation in public decision-making has been promoted in the UK. It considers critically the reasons typically (and persuasively) put forward for such participation, which can be categorized as: the promotion of children's rights; alignment with consumerism and service user involvement; enhancing democracy; and developing children's well-being and development. Each of these reasons can …
Seeing the Invisible Children and Young People Affected by Disability
This paper presents a brief review of literature relating to children in families with a disabled member, including the 'young carers' and disability studies literature, and relevant works from the social psychology and sociology of childhood. Key themes identified in the literature are then illustrated by findings from two exploratory research studies that sought to explore the experiences and service needs of children in families with a disable…
Agency, autonomy and self-determination
Children’s agency has become a popularised conceptual and practical concern, following the rise of the ‘new’ sociology of childhood and the wide-spread ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The promotion of children’s agency captured adults’ wish to recognise children in their own right, that children are social actors in their families, communities and societies, and that their participation rights need to be promoted. Ho…
Children’s Wellbeing and Children’s Rights in Tension
Children’s wellbeing has moved from an academic field of interest to a policy and practice framework, internationally and in many countries. Children’s wellbeing tends to be twinned casually with children’s rights but recent Scottish legislation – the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 – has put children’s rights and children’s wellbeing in tension. This provides an opportunity to consider the concepts critically. The article scrutinis…
Child-Led Research
Over the last twenty years, childhood studies has challenged the schooled and developmental models of childhood. The children's rights agenda has combined with academic childhood studies, to emphasise that children are and can be social actors and to seek ways to recognise and support their participation rights. For those who promote the participation of children and young people, there is considerable enthusiasm to involve them in all research s…
Children’s rights to participation and protection in international development and humanitarian interventions
This introduction provides the rationale for the special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights on the topic of the children’s right to participation and protection in international development and humanitarian efforts. It summarises selected contributions relating to an international conference entitled ‘Facilitating Child Participation in International Child Protection’ that took place 5–6 October 2015 at Ryerson University in Toron…
Children, Family and the State
Beyond the familiar challenges for children and young people’s participation rights
Over the last 30 years, remarkable efforts have been made to understand and support children and young people's participation rights outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Despite these efforts, challenges remain consistently the same, such as tokenism, lack of sustainability, and accountability. This article reviews the progress and challenges for children and young people's participation. It then considers the potenti…
Challenging Competency and Capacity
Galvanised by the un Convention on the Rights of the Child, many jurisdictions have introduced or strengthened children’s rights to participate in family law proceedings. Yet, the research and legal literature continues to show difficulties in implementation. According to the literature, decisions makers frequently view children as insufficiently competent or lacking in capacity to participate in proceedings or for much weight to be given to the …
Cross-disciplinary conversation in childhood studies
Antisocial behaviour legislation meets children's services
The balance between children, parents, and the state shifts in its nature over time and indeed is not necessarily consistent in, nor across, policy arenas. This paper examines one such shift, where the introduction of antisocial behaviour legislation has clashed with that of children's welfare services. The Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004 reifies distinctions between deserving and undeserving children, between good and bad parents, …
Involving child and youth advisors in academic research about child participation
Challenging undue influence? Rethinking children’s participation in contested child contact
Despite the widespread ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children continue to struggle to have their participation rights recognised and supported. This is evident within family law, where despite sometimes progressive and strong legislation, children’s views are often not heard, nor given due weight, when parent-child contact is contested within the courts. This paper explores barriers to children’s partic…
Children’s Participation
While Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has encouraged children’s participation in collective decision-making, the literature is replete with the challenges as well as successes of such participation. One challenge is adults’ perceptions of children’s competence and competencies. These are frequently used as threshold criteria, so that children viewed as incompetent or lacking competencies are not allowed or supported to par…
Children's Rights and Children's Wellbeing
Children's rights and children's wellbeing are often casually paired together in both academic literature and policy discussions, but they differ conceptually, methodologically and politically. This has become particularly evident in Scotland, where 'landmark' children's legislation in 2014 has set up a clash between statutory requirements for children's rights and children's wellbeing. This article utilises the Scottish example to wrestle with t…
The Transformation of Participation? Exploring the Potential of ‘Transformative Participation’ for Theory and Practice around Children and Young People's Participation
A wave of interest, policy and activities in children and young people's participation has passed through many countries over recent years. As participation activities have proliferated, so have challenges arisen as people have sought to translate the rhetoric of children and young people's participation into realities. Working across collaborators in Brazil, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom, this article draws on the collaboration's in…
Children in Society
Challenges for children’s participation
The relevance of ‘competence’ for enhancing or limiting children’s participation
Recent debates about children’s participation rights, formulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, primarily focus on ‘effectiveness’ of implementation. However, children’s participation remains problematic, its limited impact on adult power in decision-making or on the nature of decisions made persists, and implicated in both are reservations about children’s competence as participants. In respect of this, we analysed conceptualis…
Why Not Consider Citizenship
The transition from school to ‘adulthood’, for young disabled people, is generally considered difficult by the relevant literature and service providers in the field. The present transitional models, however, both lack a consensus on the criteria for a ‘successful’ transition and fail to incorporate the young people into the debate. The young people can be treated with little respect and given little control in transitional decisions, particularl…
The Children Act 1989 and the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 a Comparative Look
Over a period of six years, children's legislation has been revised across the UK. The Children Act, which largely applies to England and Wales, was enacted in 1989 and implemented in 1991. Northern Ireland and Scotland had to wait several years for their parallel legislation; it was not until 1995 that the Children (Northern Ireland) Order and the Children (Scotland) Act were passed by Parliament. Much can be learnt from comparing the different …
Constructing the ‘Transitional Problem’ for Young Disabled People Leaving School
Children's best interests versus public safety
No Abstract
Picking up the pieces
Children in Society
Seeing the Invisible Children and Young People Affected by Disability
This paper presents a brief review of literature relating to children in families with a disabled member, including the 'young carers' and disability studies literature, and relevant works from the social psychology and sociology of childhood. Key themes identified in the literature are then illustrated by findings from two exploratory research studies that sought to explore the experiences and service needs of children in families with a disable…
Research with children
This paper identifies a number of significant gaps between the principles of good practice in research with children and the practical realities of conducting a research project with children. The context of the discussion is an ongoing research study of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The paper argues that conducting research with what is a hidden (and in many ways secret) population throws into sharp relie…
Listening to the views of children? Principles and mechanisms within The Children (Scotland) Act 1995
Great emphasis is now placed on consulting, listening to and hearing the views of children and young people. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995, along with its parallel legislation the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 and the Children Act 1989, were critical in establishing this principle in UK legislation. However, practical questions remain about how to consult children and young people effectively and consistently. This article is based on…
The Moral and Political Status of Children
Making a difference? Bringing children's and young people's views into policy‐making
As the participation of children and young people in policy decision‐making has spread in the UK, participation work is facing hard questions on its translation from principle to effective practice. The participation literature has been largely self‐referential in its consideration of policy influence. This paper considers the potential usefulness of the UK literature on policy networks, which categorises the relationships between government acto…
Moving the participation agenda forward
This article sets the scene for the other papers in this Special Issue on children's and young people's participation, by outlining the nature of the ESRC Seminar Series from which all are derived and by developing the main themes discussed at the seminars. The focus of this Issue is participation by children and young people as this relates to differing notions of social exclusion and inclusion. This article critically examines participation in …
Social support and children affected by parental HIV
While HIV and AIDS continue to decimate the population of sub-Saharan Africa, HIV remains an issue of major concern for those working with children and families throughout Europe. The combined impact of intravenous drug use by young adults and heterosexual transmission means that increasing numbers of children and young people in many countries in Europe are growing up in families where one or both parents is HIV positive (EuroHIV Report Citation…
Children in Need? Listening to Children whose Parent or Carer is HIV Positive
International attention is being brought to the global HIV/ AIDS epidemic. In contrast, HIV and AIDS risk being forgotten issues for those living in Scotland. Yet in 2002, numbers of reported infections have begun to rise. Children and young people are even more likely to be affected by parental HIV now, as parents live longer and are able to have more children. Very little is known in Scotland about affected children and whether current service …
Children, Family and the State
Children, Young People and Social Inclusion
This book presents a novel interpretation of the nature, causes and consequences of sex inequality in the modern labour market. Employing a sophisticated new theoretical framework, and drawing on original fieldwork, the book develops a subtle account of the phenomenon of sex segregation and offers a major challenge to existing approaches.
Children, young people and social inclusion
Listening to children and young people affected by parental HIV
This study, conducted between 1999 and 2002, set out to explore the experiences of children and young people in Scotland with a parent or carer with HIV. The study had three elements: a postal survey of health and social work agencies, interviews with twenty-eight children and young people and a postal survey of schools. The study found little recognition from statutory agencies of the needs of affected children, whether in health, education or s…
Risk and HIV
Sex education is back on the agenda. Recent years have seenthe re-emergence in Scotland of a pro-abstinence lobby in the media, ostensibly influenced by the conservative movement in the United States. The rhetoric touched a cord with those concerned by Scotland’s high levels of teenage pregnancies and increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (Scottish Executive 2003a). It also provides a backdrop to our discussion of HIV educati…
Antisocial behaviour legislation meets children's services
The balance between children, parents, and the state shifts in its nature over time and indeed is not necessarily consistent in, nor across, policy arenas. This paper examines one such shift, where the introduction of antisocial behaviour legislation has clashed with that of children's welfare services. The Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004 reifies distinctions between deserving and undeserving children, between good and bad parents, …
Children's and Young People's Participation in Public Decision-Making
Is the Honeymoon Over? Children and Young People's Participation in Public Decision-Making
Children and young people's participation in public decision-making is now firmly on international and national agendas. This article concludes the special issue on such participation, by discussing three central issues for children and young people's participation: what is counted – or discounted – as legitimate forms of participation; the potential usefulness of theorisations of governance, citizenship and social capital; and how the roles of a…
Reflecting on Children and Young People's Participation in the UK
The article interrogates how children and young people's participation in public decision-making has been promoted in the UK. It considers critically the reasons typically (and persuasively) put forward for such participation, which can be categorized as: the promotion of children's rights; alignment with consumerism and service user involvement; enhancing democracy; and developing children's well-being and development. Each of these reasons can …
Researching with Children and Young People
Introduction - E. Kay M. Tisdall, John M. Davis & Michael Gallagher Ethics - Michael Gallagher Data Collection and Analysis - Michael Gallagher Group Work Toolkit - Louise Hill, Michael Gallagher & Claire Whiting Involving Children - John Davis Dissemination - or Engagement? - E. Kay M. Tisdall
Policy Change under Devolution
Children's policy has emerged from the shadows of family and education policy over the last decade throughout the UK. The decade has also seen political and policy transformation, with the change of government from Conservatives to New Labour in 1997 and the latter's delivery on its promise of devolved administrations. Devolution has accompanied claims and attempts to move from ‘government to governance’, to recognise and support partnerships and…
Political science (55 works) · Sociology (50 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (48 works) · Law (37 works) · Psychology (36 works) · Law (33 works) · Public relations (21 works) · Social science (21 works) · Human rights (19 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (18 works)