I am Nadine Correia, a researcher at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal. I am particularly interested in children’s rights, namely children’s participation rights, and my PhD focused on children’s right to participate in early childhood education. I am currently working on a project that aims to investigate this right also in primary school and family contexts, and for this reason I applied for a TAV visit to University College Dublin. More specifically I wanted to visit the School of Education and the School Lives project. For that purpose, I submitted a proposal titled Children’s voices, participation practices, wellbeing, and engagement: From good practices to unexplored associations.
I visited the School of Education in February 2023, and for three weeks I was hosted by Professor Gabriela Martinez Sainz. We had the opportunity to discuss our research interests and projects, but also some ideas for potential collaborative work. During my stay, I had access to the qualitative and quantitative data dictionaries of the School Lives project, which gave me a broader understanding about the variables included in the project, and which can be useful to inform my work. Based on this information, I prepared abstracts and very initial outlines of two joint papers:
(a) a qualitative paper comparing policy documents in Ireland and Portugal, and a
(b) quantitative paper, based on longitudinal data, exploring the associations between children’s voices, school cultures and practices, and children’s wellbeing and engagement.
I also participated in meetings of the VARIE (Voice, Agency, and Rights in Education) research group, much aligned with my research interests and work. I had the opportunity to present my previous (i.e., PhD, PARTICIPA Erasmus+ project) and current work (i.e., HEAR project), and attended presentations of PhD students from the School of Education. This exchange was useful to share my research and to know more about the research conducted within the group, the main topics and methods addressed. I also took this time to know more about relevant documents, guidelines, and child rights institutions in Ireland, and about the research conducted at the School of Education. The contact with other visiting researchers, namely from Italy and Spain, was also particularly enriching.
Finally, I had the opportunity to explore the interesting city of Dublin, its history, and main cultural attractions. I am willing to receive the authorization to access to data of the School Lives project, to have some productive exchanges on longitudinal data management and analysis, and to be able to work on the proposed papers, in close collaboration with researchers from the School of Education.
