Children, Youth and Environments
Vol 13, No.2 (2003)
ISSN 1546-2250

Children Becoming Social Actors: Using Visual Maps to Understand Children's Views of Environmental Change

Natasha Blanchet-Cohen
International Institute for Child Rights and Development
University of Victoria

Doug Ragan
Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement Canada

Jackie Amsden1
Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement Canada

Citation: Blanchet-Cohen, Natasha, Doug Ragan, Jackie Amsden. “Children Becoming Social Actors: Using Visual Maps to Understand Children's Views Environmental Change.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.
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Abstract

This article discusses using visual maps, a participatory action research technique that captures spatial and cultural data, to represent the views of children on environmental issues. It describes the experience of coding maps created at the United Nations International Children's Conference on the Environment in Victoria, 2002, by 400 children ages 10 and 12 years old representing 60 countries. While there are challenges to using visual maps as research data, we show them as providing an opportunity to validate children's knowledge. Maps indicate that children have many ideas of what is required for environmental change and that they call for change both at a systemic and individual level. However, they view themselves more likely to prescribe for change rather than carry it out themselves. More broadly, the analysis speaks to the value of children's active involvement in research and development.

Keywords: children's worldviews, child-appropriate research, environment, mapping

Introduction

As a result of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other national and international developments, researchers and policymakers have recently begun to pay more attention to the implications of carrying out research with children and youth, and to the variety of ways to meaningfully involve them in matters that affect their lives. It is now commonly recognized that working with children requires adapting conventional research methods and creating new ones. This call for creativity has encouraged researchers to explore different approaches and mediums, such as action research and other participatory methods (Christensen and James 2000; Greig and Taylor 1999; Punch 2002). Supporting children's participation is now a prominent goal of international organizations as they work toward solutions to issues that have a bearing on children's experiences in the future, such as environmental care. Creating spatial and cultural maps with children and youth is one way to learn about how they conceive of environmental problems and their solutions.

In this article, we discuss mapping as an example of a child-friendly research tool for providing quantitative and qualitative data. While recognizing the challenges and opportunities in using maps for understanding children's worldviews of environmental change, this case study points to the need and value of involving children as social actors in research and development processes. If children are to be recognized as having a unique outlook on environmental issues, adult researchers and development practitioners need to find ways of supporting this perspective beyond a rhetorical standpoint. The process described in this paper is a step in that direction.

Mapping as a Research Tool

Most people envision “maps” as sophisticated drawings designed by specialists that locate resources, territories, and peoples in a geographic context. Maps have tended in recent times to represent the values of dominant power structures, being used by nation-states and companies to delineate boundaries and ownership. Traditionally, though, maps have had a broader meaning. Indigenous peoples have used maps to illustrate stories, songs and dreams related to places (Aberley 1993). People have used branches and leaves to draw maps in the sand, on animal hides and on wood. As Brody (1981) describes in Maps and Dreams , for the Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia, Canada, the boundaries between real, spiritual and imaginary realms converge in maps. Maps are talismans that provide form to social reality; they model the world, reflecting what “our senses ‘see' though the filters of environment, culture, and experience” (Aberley 1993, 1). They take on many forms, portraying the physical, social, spiritual and cognitive realms of a given place and people.

Mapping, researchers have recently asserted, is an innate human tendency (see Blaut et al. 2003). As Sobel (1997) explains, “Mapmaking, in the broad sense of the word, is as important to making us human as language, music, art, and mathematics. Just as young children have an innate tendency to speak, sing, draw, and count, they also tend to make maps” (2). Children as young as four years of age can depict their community, using blocks, cardboard paper, or sand; environmental planners have successfully used maps of different media to elicit children's ideas and interests. In many regards, maps are an ideal medium for children to spatially express the relationships between organisms and their environment (Hart 1997). The children's maps provide valuable information for discussing safety issues, planning for play areas or assessing a child's geographical range. Mapmaking also presents the advantage of not requiring language or literacy skills, making the process appropriate for children of different ages and cognitive capacities. The nature and quality of maps change as children mature; generally, by age 11, children create fairly abstract maps depicting an increasingly wide geographical range that includes special places far from home (Matthews 1992; Sobel 1997).

Increasingly, those working in the community development field use maps as a medium for community members to describe their current situation and to envision their future. Kretzman and McKnight (1993) see mapping a community's assets and the existing and potential relationships between these assets as a starting place for community development. Maps help individuals and groups identify community assets and assemble new structures of opportunity. Youth organizations such as Environmental Youth Alliance (www.eya.ca ) in partnership with the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement (www.tgmag.ca/centres/) have lately been using community asset mapping as an effective tool for engaging youth in dialogue about issues affecting the places they live, or the groups they belong to. They have further been exploring ways of using data gathered from community asset mapping as a basis for bringing about changes in youth services and policies.

A key aspect of maps is that they are relational– they represent the relationships between spatial/physical elements, cultural values and abstract ideas. For example, a road map represents the relationship between physical places in the form of distance, and cultural relationships in the form of the naming of streets and landmarks. A spiritual map can represent relationships between individuals or groups and spiritual realms or beliefs. Often a primary relationship expressed in maps is that between the creator of the map and the given topic, such as a neighborhood or schoolyard, which makes them an interesting tool to explore the issue of perspective. In child-created maps, a child offers a glimpse into his or her worldview, where the boundaries between the emotional, social and cognitive perspectives merge. It is in this context that we describe the research tool used with the participants at the International Children's Conference on the Environment as a visual mapping activity.

Context for the Mapping Activity

The United Nations International Children's Conference on the Environment (ICCE) took place in Victoria, British Columbia, in May 2002 as a response to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (see www.icccanada2002.org). The ICCE was founded on the idea that children should be active participants in making decisions that affect the future of the planet. Conference objectives included giving children a chance to collectively voice their concerns about the environment. The United Nations Environment Programme (see www.unep/org) sponsored the ICCE, which was locally organized by representatives of the government of Canada, the Environmental Youth Alliance, the University of Victoria, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and TetraPak Canada, Inc. Children also took an active role in the planning of the conference: the planning committee selected an 11-member “junior board” of 10- to 12-year-old youth six months prior to the conference to ensure that young people had a voice in the programming. An important objective of the 2002 ICCE was for the children to develop recommendations that they could present to world leaders at the World Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002.

The ICCE organizing committee distributed information about the conference and application materials both nationally and internationally. They selected interested participants between 10 and 12 years of age on the basis of a 500-word essay describing their school or community group's environmental project and how it is making a difference; an environmental problem in their community and how they and other children are helping to solve it; or a plan to create an environmental group in their school or community and mobilize children to become involved. Some participating children raised money to pay their own travel expenses and conference fees, while others received sponsorships from the conference committee. A total of 400 children representing 60 countries around the world attended the conference.

Two authors of this article, Natasha Blanchet-Cohen and Doug Ragan, sat on the planning committee as representatives of the Institute for Child Rights and Development at the University of Victoria, and the Environmental Youth Alliance, respectively. We considered the ICCE to be a unique opportunity to carry out research with children on environmental issues. Our first challenge was finding the venue in which to carry out the research in a conference setting.

Along with other conference organizers, we decided to conduct the research while the children met in their “friendship groups.” Lee-Anne Ragan, of the local organization, the Community Works (www.rpsinc.ca), developed the idea of friendship groups to facilitate dialogue and friendship-building between conference participants. At the conference, the same group of 15 to 20 children met each day in their friendship groups for approximately an hour and a half. Two community members trained by the Environmental Youth Alliance in mapping and facilitation techniques convened the 25 friendship groups with the objectives of

  • giving the children a safe space in which to meet other conference delegates and to reflect on the conference and what they had learned;

  • creating a space for collective decision-making on the environmental challenges they were proposing to themselves and the world;

  • offering opportunities for the delegates to research how they perceived the environment, and how they affect and interact with it.

Both adult and youth ICCE planning committee members approved of creating visual maps as the primary tool to achieve these objectives.

Procedure for Mapping Activity

We designed two simple mapping activities that met the needs of the children, the conference and the research. On the first day of the conference, the mapping activity facilitators provided a large sheet of paper on which all of the children in each friendship group indicated how they came to the conference, relating how they first heard about it, how they traveled to the conference, and some of the adventures they had on the way. The activity helped children in each group understand each other's unique and diverse trajectories towards a common geographical location. The maps obliged the children to re-examine their notion of distance, as participants from Victoria had the same space in which to tell their stories as those from Kenya. Further research could be done on these maps, to gain insight into children's perception of space and the experiences and ideas they value. As shown in Figure 1, these maps also visually represented and captured a range of information, most notably the emotional state of the children. The activity also promoted bonding between the children: it created a space in which children could initiate personal ties, making the conference environment less intimidating, and initiating long-term relationships and connections that, we hoped, would contribute to the development of international social capital.

Figure 1. Our Journey

The second mapping activity took place on each of the remaining days of the conference. Each day, the activity focused on one of the conference themes: climate change, resource conservation, healthy communities, and water. Facilitators in each friendship group provided the participants with a piece of paper approximately the size of a 12-year-old child. One member from the group volunteered to lie on the piece of paper while others traced his or her outline. Facilitators then asked the children to draw or write about an environmental issue of import to them, and to describe how they addressed the issue in their own lives, inside the child's outline on the paper. They then asked the children to draw or write about ways they wanted world leaders to address the environmental issue, using the remaining space on the paper outside the shape of the child. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. Group Map

We intended the exercise to allow for the expression of the relational tension between personal and collective responsibility regarding environmental issues. Not all of the groups created maps that illustrated that tension, however. Some facilitators did not make the distinction between what to express inside and outside of the child's outline, and we found it difficult to achieve consistency in facilitation and equal levels of participation among children in the 12 to 13 concurrent friendship groups, with 25 volunteers and approximately 200 children at a time. Nonetheless, the children made many connections between their own experiences and those of others, and experienced the relational aspect of mapmaking in a variety of ways, from relating to others working on the same piece of paper to conceptualizing their ideas and expressing them on their own maps.

Researching Children's Visual Maps

The remainder of this article discusses the process of analyzing the data we collected from the maps, some of the challenges of interpreting the data, and our results. When we first designed the mapping activity, we did not think extensively about how the maps would be used beyond the conference, but we realized during the conference that the children's maps were a rich source of data.

Others also realized that the children's maps contained important information worth analyzing. Two months after the conference, we met with four of the child participants, several friendship group leaders, and other researchers (see Figure 3). The group had a clear interest in understanding what motivates children to take action and bring about change in the environment. We examined the maps, developed a coding system for the qualitative data they contain, and came up with a central research question. We refined our methods through a yearlong process of meetings and discussions. The children in the group initially helped identify coding categories, but adult researchers took the lead in refining them. Given the nature of the data, we decided to focus on answering the question, how do children view environmental action as it relates to themselves and their communities? Our coding categories speak to that question.

Figure 3. A Research Team

Coding Categories

As we analyzed all of the maps, several themes emerged from the children's words and pictures. After long deliberations, we chose ten final coding categories, each of which attempts to categorize a different theme of environmental action and/or change illustrated in the children's work. The categories reflect varying degrees of children's understanding of the resources and actions necessary to care for the environment.

  1. Initiatives. This category brings together all statements that call for concrete action, for new initiatives, or the adoption of new techniques or technologies. It brings together statements such as, “Have more trash cans in parks”; “Dig trenches so farm waste doesn't run into rivers and lakes”; “World leaders should start a way to dump trash somewhere else than the ocean and also find a way to recycle the trash dumped on the land and ocean”; “Provide more health care [nurse, hospital bed, first aid cross]”; and drawings of wind generators. As reflected in these examples, while some statements are simple ideas, most require more than an individual child for their implementation.

  2. Value statement. This category brings together statements that call for deeper action, involving an ethical, or value change. It includes phrases such as, “People should have an equal amount of water”; “World leaders can stop wasting so much money on the military and instead help the environment”; and “I think that governments that have plenty of water and are wasting it should share it with other countries where people are dying from thirst.” These phrases reflect a systemic understanding of the global structures that go beyond the individual. We found an underlying critique of the present power structure and a call for transformation in the maps. This category also includes phrases such as, “Listen to kids,” as a suggested value change.

  3. Thinking. This category includes all of the children's ideas about our environmental needs that do not call for action, such as, “70 percent of the human body is water”; “This person is coming from a very cold country and he is feeling very hot because the climate has changed [sweating person, sun]”; or “I need food, water, exercise. And environment.”

  4. Affective. This category connects statements and ideas that reflect an emotional connection to the environment. A number of the coded elements on the maps are drawings of hearts, and statements that refer to love “I love [graphic of heart] the animals that live in it”; and “No more nice rainbows (rainbow over water).”

  5. Doing. This category refers to statements that mention existing activities being carried out by individuals, communities or countries. These include: “I put a bottle of water by my toilet pump because the water rises to a certain level in your toilet and the bottle of water takes up room saving a little of water each time you flush!”; “I shut off lights that are not being used! I try and take only what I need not what I want!”; and “ In my school, we have a project for saving the Mana that is a little wetland and all the water of my school comes from it.” The actions described are already taking place, as illustrated by the children's use of active verbs.

  6. Policing. This category of statement deals with imposing laws, fines or regulations to deal with environmental problems. Statements include, “Enforce world wide laws of pollution so that we cannot just travel to other countries and pollute their water”; “The world leaders could also ban the owning of any type of weapon. Another thing they can do is stop or ban fast cars. So speeding cannot occur.” Some are severe punitive calls, such as, “Allow death sentences for environmental law violators.” These statements reflect children's belief in the value of order and rules as a solution to environmental issues. The environmental action called upon requires enforcement at the institutional level.

  7. Lifestyle choices. This category includes statements that address personal behaviors that children may or may not have already begun to practice, such as, “Turn the tap off when you're brushing your teeth”; “Try not to use aerosol sprays and not drive cars and don't contaminate”; “We can cycle, walk and car pool to save oil used by cars”; and “Put a small bucket [under the tap] while you wait [for] the water get hot.” These are personal actions anyone can do, that do not require change at the systems level.

  8. Education awareness. This category encompasses actions rooted in education or raising awareness. It includes statements such as, “I think they have to make announcements on the T.V. so the people can hear and they will not pollute the water more”; “Put up signs to educate people about how bad global warming is and how it might affect their community”; and simple directives, such as, “Educate.” The underlying theme of these actions is making more information available to the public.

  9. Stop doing. These statements call for the termination of specific actions, both at the individual and societal level. For example, this includes such statements as, “Stop dumping garbage waste into water source”; “Do not clear-cut!!! Myself and other children need fresh air so please stop clear-cutting it's bad for our climate!!!”; and “I would tell the world leaders… as a concerned Bahraini girl, I would like you to stop selling chlorofluorocarbons which harm the ozone layer intensely.” These statements deal with actions but are stated in the negative, indicating a reactive stance regarding current practices.

  10. Bad. This category was added to capture the tone of desperation in various statements. Elements included here feature dramatic and severe words, such as “die.” “Without water, all humans and animals would die!”; “Our life is at stake, so I think we should act now!” These statements emphasize children's sense of urgency for environmental change.

The categories reflect the children's wide range of perspectives on the nature of environmental change. We can illustrate the categories in a progression from less to more action, beginning with the absence of action, “Thinking,” and ending with “Doing” (see below). We categorized “Stop doing,” “Choice,” and “Policing” under the same level of action, as they refer to changing current behaviors, or enforcing regulations that already exist. Initiatives and education involve a greater degree of action because of their novelty and the level of collaborative effort required. Value statements require widespread, deep felt action, ending with the category “Doing,” which describes operationalized actions.

SLIDING SCALE

Challenges in Coding

We experienced several challenges in analyzing the map data according to our coding system. First, t he task of entering each written or drawn element found on the maps into an Excel file was extremely labor-intensive. To make the project manageable, we decided to code only half of the 80 group maps and half of the 60 individual maps that the children created over the course of the conference. The coded group maps contained 1,753 categorized items, and the individual maps contained 489 items used for the research.2 We also encountered a number of challenges because of the nature of the maps. For instance, it was impossible to code the group maps in a way that differentiated the ideas of one author from another. Too often, it was difficult to determine the beginning and end of a statement, and whether or not the whole statement was made by the same author. To overcome this challenge, we decided that each new idea would be coded separately, regardless of the author. We also agreed that both visual and written statements would be coded in the same way. For example, we coded a graphic with a stop sign under the “Stop doing” category, in the same way that we would code a statement with the word “stop” in it.

Once we determined the boundaries of the phrase or drawing, we had to code the item in its context. To focus on a single keyword or segment of a graph would have been misleading. For example, if a child wrote or drew the symbol for “reduce reuse recycle,” we considered it as a directive for an overall attitude change, hence a “Value” statement. However, we considered statements such as “reuse sheets of paper, reduce plastic,” as calls for personal behavioural change, and hence fell under the “Choice” category. We attempted to consistently code the overall meaning provided by the group of words or drawings. For cross-verification, different researchers verified the coding.

Results of Map Coding

We found that most (88 percent) of the statements children made on the maps have to do with forms of action. As illustrated by Chart 1 (below), children most often expressed ideas about “Initiatives” (20 percent) and “Choices” (18 percent). The categories “Bad” and “Doing” had the fewest entries, making up only 5 percent and 7 percent of the coded statements, respectively.

Chart 1.Environmental Statements by Category

The low percentage of statements about children “Doing” environmental activities may suggest that children are somewhat overwhelmed by the world's environmental issues. They seem to have more ideas about environmental changes that need to take place than the capacity or willingness to carry them out. This finding is further supported by coding the data according to whom the action addresses. While most of the children's statements (64 percent) do not address anyone in particular, children portray themselves as part of the solution in 13 percent of the statements, and portray themselves as fully responsible for environmental action in only 10 percent of the statements. In the remaining cases, their statements address world leaders (10 percent), or others (7 percent).

This finding suggests that children who attended the conference are affected by a world curriculum that discourages taking ownership of environmental issues and acting upon them. As environmental educators have pointed out, children are left overwhelmed and disempowered by the emphasis in environmental education on information and alarming statistics. It is this desperation that is expressed in their statements coded under “Bad” that deal with the urgency of environmental issues for survival.

The children also demonstrate an understanding that addressing environmental change involves fundamental shifts in social values. This is interesting in the context of other research with children. Wals (1994) carried out action research with children, age 12 to 13, living in the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Detroit, Michigan, to discern their perceptions of nature and environmental issues. As in our research, he found that students understand complex environmental phenomena, and include new technologies and changing lifestyle habits (such as reducing, reusing and recycling) as part of the solution. Unlike the children in our sample, however, Wals' subjects did not articulate a critical analysis of the wider challenges to environmental action, such as the distribution of wealth and natural resources or questions about the precepts of capitalism. This suggests that children in the United States, at least in Wals' limited sample, feel able to take personal action to improve the environment, while the children in our sample express more concern about the underlying collective reasons for environmental problems—issues that they themselves cannot directly ameliorate.

Another study with children in the United States by King (1995) analyzes 325 drawings by children age 5 to 15 made to reflect what it means to them when someone says, “You have to save the planet.” King's categories of children's environmental concerns are similar to ours, but the distribution of responses somewhat different: “Everything's Okay” (10 percent); “Taking Personal Action” (47 percent); “Calling for Action” (21 percent); “Depicting the Problem” (9 percent); “Indicating the Problem Makers” (10 percent); and “Recasting the Problem” (less than 3 percent). The different distribution of our results from King's is clearer when some of the categories are merged. As shown above, we have merged the categories according to the level of action as described earlier. This provides the following order of results: “Stop doing, Policing and Choices” (36 percent); “Initiatives and education” (27 percent); “Thinking, affective and bad” (18 percent); “Value change” (12 percent); “Doing” (5 percent). Our results, while emphasizing that personal action is essential, put greater emphasis on providing new ideas of practical things that can be done to address environmental issues, such as “plant trees to prevent soil erosion.”

Differences between our results and those of King and Wals can be accounted for by the age of the respondents, and the different contexts. Children attending the ICCE conference were in many ways environmental leaders, selected to attend the conference because of their environmental activities or desire to undertake action. They were also in an international conference that encouraged them to think about global issues and change. This is very different from the Detroit children Wals worked with. Our findings point to the potential for children to creatively address environmental issues and understand their complexity.

Individual Maps

We also coded and analyzed maps that were made by the children individually, on which they indicated their gender, age, and country of origin (see Figure 4). In this sample, we found no significant difference in the distribution of responses per category according to gender. We did find some differences in responses according to the country of origin.

Figure 4. Sample Individual Map

Given the sample size per country of origin, we decided to compare results according to whether they were from developed or developing countries. The greatest difference in response is a lower percentage of participants from developed countries providing “Initiative” statements: 23 percent of participants from developing countries as opposed to 14 percent of those from developed countries discussed initiatives. On the other hand, it is valuable to note the common emphasis on “Value statements” and “Stop doing,” suggesting that children agree on the need for fundamental value change to occur within both developing and developed countries.

The results point to children's different views of agency in environmental action and their perceptions of their roles as social actors. Children from developed countries in this sample identify the importance of the “collective” effort (16 percent) most frequently when prescribing environmental actions, and specify the importance of individual efforts in only 9 percent of the cases. Children from developing countries also identify the collective (18 percent) most frequently, but almost as frequently the individual (14 percent) as the agent of change, suggesting a greater sense of the power of the individual.

This finding is further confirmed by an analysis of the data according to whether we found the items inside or outside the outline of the child on the map paper. Ideas written outside of the image indicate an action that the world is responsible for, while an idea inside the image is an action of which the individual child takes ownership. Children from developing counties express a much more equitable responsibility for initiating change between the collective and individual than children from developed countries. Children from developing countries illustrated an almost equal split, with 52 percent of their ideas outside the image, the rest within the image. Children from developed counties, on the other hand, placed 43 percent of their action ideas within the image, with 57 percent of their ideas outside of the image. This suggests greater emphasis on the collective rather than the individual. It is important to keep in mind that these responses apply to our sample only; further research is necessary to see whether or not this result can be generalized.

Benefits of Mapping for Youth, Conference and Research

Another significant contribution of this research is showing that visual maps can be an effective research tool for working with young people. We identified several advantages of using maps, as identified in this case study:

Overcoming language barriers. The mapping activity provided an opportunity for children to express themselves through the medium of their choice, whether drawings, symbols or language. In working with children for whom English was not a native language, this was particularly valuable. Many of the maps had more than one language on them, combined with pictures and symbols.

Fun. The issues being discussed at the conference were serious, and some of the morning plenary sessions were lengthy; children needed to have fun in their friendship groups. With mapping, children were having fun, contributing to the conference, and reflecting on the issue areas. In the conference evaluations, children identified the friendship groups as one of their favorite parts of the conference.

Not intimidating. There was no pressure on the participants to express themselves. This was important for many children, who felt overwhelmed by the foreign culture and context. Literacy and drawing ability were also not important, as children had the option to engage in whichever way they felt most comfortable.

Empowering. While they did not have to contribute, we made space for everyone to participate. The children expressed a sense of empowerment in the environment. Feeling empowered is important for adults, but even more so for children whose voices are often neither heard nor considered (Lansdown 1995).

Community-building. The maps helped build a sense of belonging in the group, as they shared their ideas on the same piece of paper. Gradually, the children also shared their stories and opinions.

In each of the above five benefits of mapping, the relational nature in the creation and the subsequent representation of the maps is key. Whatever the ability of the children, the maps provided a space to represent themselves and their relationship to the other children. We could have used traditional research methods, such as interviews and surveys, but maps provided for broader forms of expression and engagement, which were particularly appealing for children from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The relational map then became the basis for a collective understanding of the issues and the newly created community.

Mapping is a fun way to engage a diverse group of children and encourage them to share their knowledge. In doing so, they not only get to learn more about themselves, but also the people around them. In this way, mapping is as much about the process as it is about the end goal.

In addition to providing a space for the children to connect with each other, the mapping provided a rich data source for gathering information from all participants on what they viewed as the most important global environmental issues and solutions. Several children subsequently reported the findings to world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, September 2002.3

Often, participants feel that the recommendations or resolutions resulting from a conference do not represent their collective voice. There is often no process in place for collecting the information from all participants, processing it and summarizing it. In this case, the maps recorded and communicated each delegate's voice. We gave all participants the same time to write or draw on the maps. The facilitators then used the maps as a basis for group discussion. The information distilled from the maps provided the points for each friendship group to report back to the junior board members each evening, who regrouped the statements and selected common points for each theme. The junior board members then presented the points to the conference participants in the plenary session on the following day. Two elected conference representatives presented this summary to the world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Mapping thus became a central part of the conference content and process. It provided a basis for expressing knowledge and establishing connections and relationships. Most importantly, it allowed the children to structure their thoughts in ways that built on their skills and that would reach world leaders.

Mapping is also a valuable tool for data gathering, as the results of this analysis have demonstrated. The many different categories that emerged from this data reflect the potential of mapping to draw out children's perceptions openly within loosely pre-determined parameters. Not only does this allow children to explore their knowledge and feel comfortable to participate in the research process, but it also provides a more comprehensive picture of their thoughts than most other methods.

Recent research on children and youth engagement suggest that relational processes such as mapping can both initiate and sustain involvement of children and youth, and this engagement can lead to positive health outcomes, such as increased self-esteem.4 The Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement has demonstrated that meaningful youth engagement benefits the youth and the communities in which they live. Through engagement, youth may gain a sense of empowerment as individuals and make healthy connections to others, which result in reduced risk behaviors and increased positive activities. In addition, these relationships contribute towards levels of trust, feelings of reciprocity, and overall social capital (http://policyresearch.gc.ca/page.asp?pagenm=v6n3_art_18).

In addition to the social benefits of these behavioral changes, the community benefits through the energy, ideas, processes, and knowledge that children bring to organizations, activities, and their relationships with adults. The nature of the mapping activity allowed the children to engage more fully in the conference, their community, and the world.

Implications

Our experience at the International Children's Conference on the Environment has shown that visual maps are an effective research tool with children. Not only is it fun and meaningful for them, but they provide a rich source of data for further analysis. In reflecting on the value of mapping as a research tool, it is also important to point out some of the limitations of the approach taken to analyze the visual maps. An important limitation relates to the fact that the children were not involved throughout the data analysis. They were involved in initially identifying the coding categories but were not part of refining them or coding the data itself. While we used the visual maps as a participatory action research technique in the first phase of the research, this aspect may have been lost as we began to place greater emphasis on categorizing the data in a systematic way. This speaks to one of the challenges of doing research with children. We were strongly committed to the perspective that youth are social actors, and that we need to play a supportive role in finding ways for youth to express their perspectives in ways that can have an impact on society. In the process of emphasizing systematic data analysis, it is uncertain that we have remained entirely true to this vision.

Nonetheless, the research process described in this paper has some implications for the larger topic being advocated today that calls for greater involvement of children in environmental issues. According to this data, children have a comprehensive understanding of environmental issues. The children offer a wide range of innovative ideas to address environmental concerns, as well as sophisticated analysis of some of the underlying causes of environmental problems. However, a significant number of responses indicate that the children do not feel personally responsible to undertake the actions they prescribe. Instead, they address society as a whole.

While this finding may be a disappointment for those eager to show that children as social actors are agents of change, it may also remind us that children are products of societies that have not recognized them as social actors. International forums are a place where children can share their perspectives and establish social bonds, and this in itself is extremely worthwhile. It is important that children be given status as social actors within international and local policy fora, for as this research and subsequent actions have demonstrated they have many ideas that are both practical and future-oriented. At the same time, it is essential to continue fostering engagement at the local level. Providing children with space in their local community and internationally to take on environmental issues will lead to greater social inclusion. This is central for children to realize their potential in being leaders of change at the local and global levels.

Natasha Blanchet-Cohen has been the program director for the International Institute for Child Rights and Development at the University of Victoria (www.uvic.ca/iicrd) for the past 6 years. Her research has focused on children and the environment and youth engagement. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on the nature of environmental action in middle childhood.

Natasha Blanchet-Cohen
IICRD/CFGS
PO Box 1700
Victoria, BC
V8W 2Y2
Email: nbciicrd@uvic.ca

Jackie Amsden studies communication at Simon Fraser University and coordinates action research projects at the Environmental Youth Alliance. Her most recent project engaged a group of Vancouver youth concerned with the accessibility of local youth clinics, entitled the Youth-Friendly Health Services Project.

Doug Ragan is a senior manager of the Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA), a non profit focused on the improvement of the physical and social environment through the engagement of youth and communities (www.eya.ca). The EYA is a core partner in the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement (www.tgmag.ca/centres/). Doug has a Masters in Management for the Voluntary Sector from McGill University.

Endnotes

1. This research results form a partnership between the International Institute for Child Rights and Development and the Environmental Youth Alliance. We would also like to acknowledge support from the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement and the 2002 International Children's Conference.

2. We would like to thank Carolyn Mason, International Children's Conference, for helping enter the data.

3. These issues and solutions were reported to the WSSD plenary on September 2nd, 2002. The children's comments were reflected in the conference political declaration. http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/documents/documents.html.

4. The longitudinal study undertaken by the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement looked at and tracked the effects of engagement on youth who came to conferences on a broad variety of social issues. See www.tgmag.ca/centres.

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