Sue Nichols
Sue is an educational sociologist with an interest in connecting living and learning experiences across contexts. She enjoys researching interactively with children, young people and practitioners. Sue draws on semiotics, place-based approaches and network theories to develop understandings of complex social phenomena. Her most recent book is Learning Cities: Multimodal explorations and placed pedagogies.
Session
For research to be genuinely representative of our social landscape, researchers need to be able to engage participants whose cultures and languages represent the diversity of Australia’s population. Yet social science research methods are not always equally or inviting or meaningful to everyone. Language barriers, unfamiliarity with research processes and caution interacting with strangers may all impact on recruitment and participation. This presentation will report on two projects which engaged successfully with socio-culturally diverse youth participants, each using participatory visual or media-based approaches. Insights from young people whose experiences are often rendered invisible owing to barriers to their participation in research will be shared.