The honour, which includes a $5,000 bursary,\u00a0is particularly meaningful for Donison because it acknowledges children\u2019s rights as the driving force in her work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis award recognizes that my work supports children\u2019s right to play and also children\u2019s right to have a say in matters that impact them directly,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Laurel-Award-Pic-edited-750x1050.jpg\")
Donison, shown after the award ceremony.<\/p><\/div>\n
Donison\u2019s dissertation research is focused on children aged 30 months to four years and their perspectives and experiences of their outdoor play space at an urban child care centre.<\/p>\n
She wanted to branch out from existing research on outdoor play and children, which is often done in ideal natural settings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere we are, we have fake grass, we\u2019re near a busy road and there\u2019s a gas station right beside us, so children connect to nature through the fence \u2014 they watch ducks that gather in large puddles and snails on the other side\u2014 and even connect with the weeds growing at the side of the building in between the cracks.\u201d says Donison. \u201cThey water the weeds, and when the maintenance crew comes to pull them, we have to say no because those are the children\u2019s plants \u2014 something that they can care for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because the children at the centre come from many backgrounds and have different levels of verbal ability, Donison uses various forms of art to let them share their thoughts.<\/p>\n
Donison used the award bursary to support her data collection through the purchase of child-sized digital cameras and other art materials. The cameras, in particular, give her a child\u2019s-eye view and help her to see what the children are focused on and how they experience their surroundings.<\/p>\n
Her experience as an early childhood educator and long-standing relationship with the child care centre \u2014 which is not far from where she grew up \u2014 have supported her work with the children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe children I\u2019m working with are some of our most vulnerable children who are often excluded, so this research is an opportunity to voice what\u2019s really happening \u2014 not me voicing it, but them voicing it,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m putting all these pieces together to help elevate their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Rebecca Raby, Interim Associate Dean in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Donison\u2019s supervisor, says it was \u201cfantastic\u201d to see Donison\u2019s work being recognized.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaurel has consistently advocated for very young children to be heard and seen as legitimate social participants through organizing conferences, co-researching and publishing on children’s early experiences of the pandemic and now through her own dissertation,\u201d says Raby. \u201cI\u2019m excited by the rich, textured data she has been collecting with the children so far \u2014 especially how the children\u2019s engagements have been changing with the seasons \u2014 and I have no doubt that Laurel\u2019s research will be especially valuable for advocating for children\u2019s access to outdoor play areas and informing what those play areas look like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donison, who says she has learned so much from the children, thinks we would all be better served by more research that lets children share their perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are methods we can use to learn about children\u2019s experiences directly from them, so I think it\u2019s about taking those chances, like incorporating a variety of different arts-based methods, going beyond that and trying out different things, stepping away from that belief that young children don\u2019t participate in research,\u201d she says. \u201cThey can and want to be listened to, and they have something to say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Children\u2019s voices matter most to Laurel Donison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":85577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[188,55,1,5,38],"tags":[45,12670,607,522,8988,1532,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85575"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85591,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575\/revisions\/85591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}