ETHICAL RULES TRANSLATE IN ETHICS IN RESEARCH? RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN IN INSTITUTIONS AND IN CITIES

Abstract

The theme of research ethics with children has been in evidence in the academic field. In the Brazilian context, some factors help explain this relatively recent visibility: the recognition of children's participation rights, the emergence of childhood social studies, and the intense debates surrounding the revision of norms on ethics in research with human beings. Articles reporting on child research increasingly cite ethical norms. Is it possible to state that research is more ethically oriented? We argue here that such statement is not simple and bring to this discussion the results of the analysis of 258 articles and 59 theses / dissertations that report research with children in the areas of anthropology, education, psychology and sociology. We rely primarily on social studies of childhood and Bauman and Ricoeur's approaches to ethics. It is noted that many texts mention - in a specific paragraph or footnote - only the approval by the ethics committee, the confidentiality and / or consent of those responsible. Being "even" with the rules may release researchers from dealing with doubts and dilemmas, so typical of the ethical stance. The researcher, moreover, remains protected by having done what, according to the law, needed to be done. The text comments on differences in this regard found between areas of knowledge, research topics and between research carried out in institutions and broader contexts, such as public space and cities. With regard to the use of public spaces and urban territories to make the child co-author of the research emerge, we have produced new visibilities and invisibilities. Among these, research with children has erased their interdependencies and fundamental aspects of their webs of coexistence.