09.00-09.45
09.45-10.00
10.00-10.15
10.15-11.15
. Per Olav Tiller
Discussion
Coffee break
William Corsaro
11.15-11.30
11.30-12.15
Discussion
Randi Dyblie Nilsen
12.15-12.30
12.30-13.30
13.30-14.30
Discussion
Lunch
.
Stuart Aitken
14.30-14.45
14.45-15.30
Discussion
Borgunn Ytterhus
15.30-15.45
15.45-16.30
Discussion/Coffee
Anne Trine Kjørholt
16.30-17.15
.
Jens Qvortrup

Children ’ s perspectives have been a crucial part of the academic discourse in the 20 year history of the Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB). Throughout seminars, reports and informal talks at the centre, the concept has been on the agenda in various ways and with different topics and perspectives. The discussions which have taken place and which are reflected briefly below, illustrate the complex character of the concept. They also illustrate challenges in terms of approaching and doing empirical research as well as theoretical reflections about children’s social status in general.
As early as in 1983, the journal Barn (no 2) published a paper by Per Olav Tiller about children’s participation in research, Barns medvirkning i forskning om barns levekår.
This article intended to focus emancipation and democratic rights for children within a research perspective which emphasised childhood as a legitimate research field. In this respect, cultures of childhood, life quality, experience and human network were regarded as a field of study in its own right.
Another publication from the 1980s is entitled Ethnographic approaches to children
’ s worlds and peer cultures (1989) and was edited by Sigurd Berentzen. This publication was a result of a symposium organised by William A. Corsaro, assisted by Jenny Cook-Gumpers and Sigurd Berentzen in 1987. The purpose of this symposium, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and NOSEB, was to bring together an international group of ethnographers of childhood who had made contributions to th e understanding of children’s social worlds and peer culture. This report emphasises the complex and changeable character of children’s social world and argues for the usefulness of a comparative and broad ethnographic approach in the understanding of chil dren’s orientation in the world.
The journal Barn , no 1, 1991 Om barneperspektivet contains contributions from some researchers who, during an internal seminar at NOSEB, discussed the concept from different angles. In this discussion, one of the most pervasive arguments was that child perspective is not a perspective on children, but rather refers to how the world looks like from the perspectives of children. Further arguments were that research, which emphasises observation of and talks with children, is supposed to present the socio-cultural system with a new and critical view. Other arguments are that child perspective should not be viewed as a universal phenomenon, independent of cultural conditions and that children should be recognised as informants.
Barn no 4, 1991, was a special issue about children as informants, based on a seminar about this topic. Participants at this seminar, which was funded by NORAS (Norwegian Council for Applied
Social Science), the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs and NOSEB, were researchers who had experiences from using children as informants in their research. By this publication, the centre took one step further in problematising and questioning the concepts of child perspective and children as informants. On the basis of a national seminar, arranged by NOSEB, various researchers discussed methodological approaches and challenges, including questions about ethics, validity, values and interviewing children. This special issue has been highly prized and a popular issue of the journal, particularly among Norwegian child researchers.
Above all, these early discussions and the perspectives they raised, have formed the basis of focusing children’s perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches in childhood research. This seminar aims to continue these discussions. The group of researchers, engaged in these perspectives today, has increased from the period which is described above. This seminar brings some of these researchers together.

External lecturers
Per Olav Tiller is a former senior researcher at NOSEB. He is Professor of Social Psychology and has been the leading figure in the discussions about children’s perspectives in research in Norway from the very beginning of the centre’s history. In addition to extensive numbers of lectures and publications about children’s lives and children as informants in social research, he has put childhood on the agenda also as a historical phenomenon. One example is the self-biography about his own childhood, Møllenberg på Rosenborg og Bakke (Pax 1998). Among his early publications are books and articles about changes in the family, father absence in sailor families, such as Father absence and personality development of children in sailor families (Munksgaard 1958). Other publications are Å vokse opp i Norge (Universitetsforlaget 1983), Hverandre - En bok om barneforskning (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag 1989). Some of his numerous articles are re-published in
Studier av barndom (Høyskoleforlaget 2000).
William A. Corsaro is currently a Fulbright senior researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research. He is Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He specialises in the areas of the sociology of childhood, children’s worlds and peer cultures in a cross-cultural perspective, and early childhood education. Corsaro has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork of children’s peer cultures and educational processes in pre-schools and elementary schools in the United States and Italy for over 30 years. He has lectured at several universities in Western Europe.
Among his numerous publications are “We’re Friends, Right?” Inside Kids’ Culture (Joseph Henry
Press, in press), The Sociology of Childhood (Pine Forge Press 1997), and Friendship and Peer
Culture in the Early Years (Ablex 1985).
Stuart C. Aitken is engaged as Professor II at the Geography Department and NOSEB from the spring 2003. He is Professor at the Department of Geography, College of Arts and Letters, San
Diego State University. Aitken is a profiled researcher in the field of inter-disciplinary childhood research. He was editor from 1997 - 2000 for The Professional Geographer and is commissioning editor for North America for the journal Children’s Geographies (which published its first edition just recently). As a geographer, he has conducted a great number of studies about children’s places and children’s place in society. An early publication is the article Children ’ s Characterization of
Place (Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Yearbook 1988, Vol 50, 69-86). More recent publications are Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity (Routledge
2001), Children’s Spaces and Moral Panics (2003 in preparation) and A Child’s Place in Society
(Barney, Hansen and Janelle 2003).
Registration fee: NOK 200 (which includes lunch), to be paid upon arrival.
Registration no later than April 7 th to:
Norwegian Centre for Child Research, NTNU, 7491 Trondheim, tel: 73 59 62 44, fax: 73 59 62 39, e-mail: noseb@svt.ntnu.no
(Please feel free to register by e-mail.)
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