Why the playworker’s mind-set is ideal for research with children: Child researchers investigate education rights in Nicaragua

This chapter draws on my experience as a PhD researcher investigating children’s perceptions of human rights in school in Nicaragua’s coffee-growing zone to claim that, for a researcher such as myself coming from a playwork background, the ability to hold on to a playworker mind-set offers a distinct advantage when it comes to doing research in partnership with children. To develop this argument, I return to my playwork roots in England in the 1970s, and recount how from those roots grew the Article 31 Children’s Consultancy Scheme in the late 1990s, then how in 2001 I took these ideas with me to Nicaragua, where they gradually developed into the research methodology now known as “Transformative Research by Children and Adolescents” (TRCA). The TRCA approach is introduced, showing how its epistemology, values and methods reflect its playwork-inspired origins, and how it has subsequently developed through practice. I used TRCA as the main research methodology in my 2012-15 doctoral research project, where I obtained striking (and unexpected) findings on children’s perceptions about their right to play. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how my ability to hold on to a deeply-rooted playworker mind-set was a factor in making such findings possible. It also explores how this playworker mind-set may be advantageous for other researchers seeking to cut through the preconceptions and prescriptions of the adult professional world to engage more fully with children’s ways of thinking, and so get closer to a real understanding of children’s own experiences, perceptions and agendas.