‘MIÚDOS CO(N)VIDA’: DEVELOPING RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC COVID-19

The Covid-19 pandemic is a powerful example of how our rights and, in particular, children’s rights are reconfigured. In order to ensure that, in a pandemic context, children’s voices were not kept invisible, we developed some research strategies, which assumed an innovative character, given the contingencies resulting from the lockdown situation. This text aimed to reflect on the ethical and methodological challenges in research with children, taking into account the pandemic and confinement, rethinking strategies and the process of building knowledge with them and about their lives. © 2022, Centro de Estudos Educacao e Sociedade - CEDES. All rights reserved.

The subjective well-being of children in times of confinement

The pandemic crisis motivated by COVID-19 dissemination has had a massive reach without borders, leading to feelings of vulnerability and insecurity, which cross social classes and generational groups. In the case of childhood, crisis situations are particularly impactful in the exercise of their basic rights. Aware of this reality, we consider essential to re-centre and to contribute with knowledge produced from children's voices, in order to characterize their subjective well-being in times of pandemic. In this paper we will present a reflection on childhood and the concept of subjective well-being, which will support the data analysis resulting from a research that had the aim of characterizing such subjective well-being. For this purpose, we applied an online survey – “Questionnaire on the well-being of children in a time of a pandemic” –, in order to access children's perceptions of their well-being regarding the dimensions of health, education, relationships with family and peers and satisfaction with life. We also developed several “Thematic Debates”, in collaboration with “Rádio Miúdos”, which were held with children. From the data analysis and discussion, it was possible to disseminate knowledge about their daily life, among children, in the family and in the community, and to understand their worries and hopes about health and family, their level of satisfaction with life and with relationships, in a pandemic situation. © 2022 Research Centre in Education. All rights reserved.