SCYPHeR Grand Round with Dr Julie Ellis and Dr Caron Carter: Co-production and Children's Voices

We are happy to invite you to the next session in our SCYPHeR Grand Round series. The Education and Skills Centre at Sheffield Children's Hospital is accessible via the Damer Street entrance. You can also join on Microsoft Teams. We will be providing light refreshments to those who join us in person. 

Our speakers will present their research on Co-production and Children's Voices. Please see below for more details.

Dr Julie Ellis

School of Education and iHuman, University of Sheffield

Co-producing research with disabled and chronically ill people - Dr Julie Ellis and Dr Kirsty Liddiard 

Co-production is a collaborative approach that values experiential knowledge and lived experience.  It fundamentally challenges the hierarchical ways in which most knowledge is produced and instead puts ‘principles of empowerment into practice, working “with” communities 

and offering communities greater control over the research process’ (Durose et al. 2012: 2). In  practice this is not easy, and often researchers who commit to the principles of co-production - centring equity, accessibility and reciprocity in their work - have to ‘feel’ their way through the research process and navigate an external research environment wary of the unknowing and uncertainty which is an inherent (and productive) part of co-produced research. 

To support others engaging in or aspiring to undertake co-production, our talk will offer reflections from our own experiences of working on two co-produced, qualitative research projects. Living Life to the Fullest (ESRC) explored the lives, hopes, desires and contributions of disabled children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening impairments, and the second, is a current study, Cripping Breath (Wellcome Trust) which centres the lived experiences of people who have had their lives saved and sustained by ventilatory medical technologies. We will discuss practical aspects of co-leading research with communities of disabled and chronically ill people (such as collaborative data analysis and writing for publication), and acknowledge the important ways in which working in this way disrupts our ‘comfortable’ academic ways of understanding (and engaging in) knowledge production. 

Dr Caron Carter

Childhood & Early Childhood Education 

Researching children’s friendships: methodological opportunities and challenges.

Caron Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Early Childhood Education and Postgraduate Research Tutor in Education at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield. Prior to joining Sheffield Hallam University in 2007, Caron was a teacher for eleven years, firstly in a Primary School and then later in two Nursery Infant Schools. During this time, she had five years as a Deputy Headteacher and one year as an Acting Headteacher. Caron has been a Vice-Chair of Governors at a Junior School for over six years, being the link Governor for Safeguarding and Inclusion. She is also a member of the National Association of Pastoral Care of Education Executive Committee (NAPCE), Assistant Editor of the International Journal of Pastoral Care in Education and the lead of the Childhood and Early Years Research Cluster at Sheffield Hallam.

Caron has a long-standing interest in children's friendships, and she has written papers on friendship contributing new ideas, methodologies, and knowledge to the field to influence both practice and policy. Much of Caron's work has involved looking at ways to develop a listening culture through creative participatory methods, providing opportunities for children’s views and perceptions to be heard and to exercise their agency. A critical element of this activity is ensuring that her research impacts on school and setting practice. Caron is currently focusing her research on how schools and settings support children's friendships and wellbeing in ‘new times’. She is also part of a team from Sheffield Hallam University working on funded projects focusing upon improving outcomes for children in specific areas including friendship, wellbeing, play and transitions. Caron also has a podcast series entitled ‘Children’s Friendships Matter’. For links to the podcast series visit this website and for more information about Caron’s work see LinkedIn and her University profile.