{"id":7960,"date":"2018-05-07T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/?p=7960"},"modified":"2018-04-26T16:18:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T16:18:32","slug":"can-citizen-inquiry-be-inclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/?p=7960","title":{"rendered":"Can citizen inquiry be inclusive?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jessica

Jessica Carr, The Open University.<\/p><\/div>\n

Are people with learning disabilities regularly excluded from decision-making processes which may have a direct impact on them? <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently published research that explores this important issue (Carr, 2018<\/a>), with the aim of contributing to wider discussions about how we build capacity to ensure that citizens have access to, and agency within, research (Holliman, 2017<\/a>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In my Masters, I facilitated a study that used citizen inquiry methodologies to engage adults with learning disabilities through the use of participatory research approaches (Nind, Seale et al. 2016<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The research explored how people with learning disabilities understand citizen inquiry and what levels of support are required for future work in this area.<\/p>\n

A group of six citizen inquirers, from the Monday night social group at the Yellow Submarine Charity<\/a>, engaged in a project that they designed. The project ran over four 1-hour sessions.<\/p>\n

We used the citizen inquiry platform \u2018NQuire-it<\/a>\u2019 developed by the Open University to support the various research phases project (Scanlon et al. 2010<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The sessions were aimed at gaining data on how the citizen inquirers understood this technologically- and face-to-face supported approach through ethnographically-informed observation and a focus group.<\/p>\n

Through the analysis of the data, I found that the citizen inquirers understood the project in two main ways; what they believe a citizen to be and how the project made them feel. <\/p>\n

\"Citizen

Citizen Inquiry \u2013 as understood by the citizen inquirers.<\/p><\/div>\n

The participant\u2019s responses were generally positive, but identified a need for future research into their understanding of citizen inquiry and how capacity could be built to support the diverse needs of people with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n

Whilst people with learning disabilities are often excluded from decision-making processes, the inclusive nature of this research and the way in which citizen inquiry worked allowed for the citizen inquirers to have a level of control over the research process, thereby gaining autonomy in their decision-making.<\/p>\n\n

References<\/strong>
\nCarr, Jessica (2018). How do people with learning disabilities understand citizen inquiry?<\/em> MRes thesis The Open University. Online: http:\/\/oro.open.ac.uk\/53815<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Holliman, Richard (2017). Supporting excellence in engaged research. Journal of Science Communication<\/em>, 16<\/strong>(5) pp. 1\u201310. Online: http:\/\/oro.open.ac.uk\/52439<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scanlon, E. Scanlon, Eileen; Kerawalla, Lucinda; Twiner, Alison; Mulholland, Paul; Collins, Trevor; Jones, Ann; Gaved, Mark; Littleton, Karen; Blake, Canan and Conole, Grainne (2010). Personal Inquiry: scripting support for inquiry learning by participatory design. In: Computer-Based Learning in Science<\/em>, 7-10 Jul 2010, Warsaw, Poland. Online: http:\/\/oro.open.ac.uk\/25108<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nind, Melanie; Seale, Jane; Chapman, Rohhss and Tilley, Liz (2016). The Conundrum of Training and Capacity Building for People with Learning Disabilities Doing Research. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities<\/em>, 29<\/strong>(6) pp. 542\u2013551. Online: http:\/\/oro.open.ac.uk\/45694<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Acknowledgments<\/strong>
\nThis research was supported by the Institute of Educational Technology<\/a> at the Open University. I\u2019m grateful to the Yellow Submarine Charity<\/a> and the citizen inquirers for their contributions, advice and guidance. My supervisors offered support through the process: Jane Seale, Richard Holliman and Eileen Scanlon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are people with learning disabilities regularly excluded from decision-making processes which may have a direct impact on them? I\u2019ve recently published research that explores this important issue (Carr, 2018), with the aim of contributing to wider discussions about how we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,7,9,1],"tags":[236,235,229,66,234,237,232,231,233,230,75,63],"class_list":["post-7960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evaluation","category-projects","category-publications","category-uncategorized","tag-agency","tag-building-capacity","tag-citizen-inquiry","tag-citizen-science","tag-decision-making","tag-ethnography","tag-focus-group","tag-inclusive-research","tag-learning-disabilities","tag-participatory-research","tag-postgraduate-research","tag-scientific-citizenship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7960"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7976,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960\/revisions\/7976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}