title: Talking Circles as a strategy for listening to children's voices in school age care
Creators: name: Smith, Kerry M
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: child participation
subject: school age children
subject: realist evaluation

description: There is a paucity of literature on the evaluation of programs addressing collaborative conversations with school age children. This study presents and discusses an exploratory evaluation of the ‘Talking Circle’ approach to listening to the voices of children in a school age service in Brisbane, Queensland. In particular, it uses a realist (evaluation) approach to understand ‘what works, how, for whom, in what circumstances and to what extent’ (Pawson &amp; Tilley, 2004, p. 2) in relation to the use of Talking Circles. It asks the questions: 1. What mechanisms facilitate or hinder the use of the Talking Circles guide? 2. What contexts can affect the implementation of the Talking Circles guide? 3. What are the outcomes that form between the identified contexts and mechanisms? It therefore emphasises causality and the way Talking Circles influence the outcomes of the conversations. Talking Circles were developed with the aim of assisting educators to facilitate resilience and leadership skills of school age children. The Talking Circles concept was first developed to help undergraduate students to ‘get to know’ children better by using a conversational process. It was premised on the notion that listening to the voices of children and providing opportunities for them to present and negotiate their identities, would increase both children’s agency and the development of trusting relationships between adults and children (Cartmel, Casley &amp; Smith, 2017). This thesis is informed by a review of the literature, and with the benefit of expert opinion, informed by relevant substantive theory and child-participatory literature. It will examine what has been put forward considering listening to children’s voices within a child’s rights framework. Based on a realist approach, conversations were held with 13 children and two educators from one school age care site and an educator from another site. Data collected from the children and educator perspectives of the Talking Circles process were analysed to find what the mechanisms of the intervention are (in this case the Talking Circles) and the context in which these may be triggered (the conditions in which the Talking Circles are effective), and how these mechanisms bring about certain outcomes (the improvements to children being listened to); consistent with context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) configurations (Pawson &amp; Tilley, 1997). In developing an initial program theory (step one) the developers of the Talking Circles guide were interviewed. The data from this interview, the literature pertaining to listening to children’s voices and the developer’s rationale around the Talking Circles process, including the guide, informed the initial hypothesis regarding how Talking Circles work. This initial program theory was tested by implementing the Talking Circles at two school age care services and then refined based on the results of the evaluation and ensuing CMOs. Based on the CMOs found, a set of four recommendations to inform the broader sector of early childhood and school age care community about the implementation of Talking Circles is presented. It is further concluded that the Talking Circle approach is consistent with best practice principles for children’s participation in conversations with educators.