Exploring Children’s Responses to Contemporary Biographies About Women, 2020

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These data were generated as part of an ESRC-funded PhD research project undertaken by Louise Couceiro at the University of Glasgow. The project sought to explore how 8 children (aged 7-10) in the UK responded to and engaged with four biographical compendiums about women published between 2016 and 2020. Research was undertaken in two phases. Four participants engaged in the first phase and four engaged in the second. In each phase, participants took part in individual interviews and group reading sessions. The transcripts comprise online Zoom interviews with participants (n=7) and group reading sessions with participants from the first phase (n = 2). As part of the consent procedure, participants chose whether to grant permission for their de-identified data to be included in this archive.

‘Extraordinary Women’, ‘Visionary Women’ and ‘Fantastically Great Women’: Exploring Children’s Responses to Contemporary Biographies was a PhD research project (2019 - 2023) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P000681/1) and carried out by Louise Couceiro at the University of Glasgow. Children's biographies about women have proliferated rapidly since the late 2010s, but very little is known about children's engagement with such texts. This project sought to explore how eight children (aged 7-10) in the UK engaged with four biographical compendiums about women published between 2016 and 2020. Due to distancing measures implemented to prevent the spread of Covid-19, data was gathered through online and creative methods. Participants engaged with group reading sessions and individual interviews via Zoom and undertook some arts-based activities in response to the texts. The project's findings illuminate the myriad of complex and insightful ways participants engaged with the texts, and present possibilities for how educators, practitioners and interested adults might utilise these texts to facilitate conversations with children about feminism and other social justice issues.