Negotiating Consent: Neoliberalism and the Politics of Conducting Research With Young Children

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamics of negotiating entrance into a research site located in Ontario and provides critical insights about how dominant neoliberal discourses informed processes of acquiring consent to conduct research with young children and interactions between a school board’s research advisory committee and the researcher. The paper highlights the ways in which neoliberal entanglements operated in complex and contradictory ways that drew on, asserted, and reinscribed a myriad of dominant discourses operating within education through sanctioned and officiated language and processes. Moreover, the paper explores the multiple meanings of these entanglements, the practices they produce, and how they can shape researcher reflexivity.