Transcript 'Hey, I'm nine not six!' A small-scale investigation of looking younger than your age at school , by Anna Carlini and Emma Barry aged 10

Hey I’m nine not six! What it’s
like to look younger than your
age
Anna Carlini and Emma Barry
Why we chose this topic
• We’d noticed that two girls in our year who
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looked very small for their age seemed to be
treated differently
We wondered if there were special reasons for
this and if so why this was
We were curious about whether being small
affected their behaviour
And whether other people behaved differently
towards them
We thought about ethics
• How the girls would feel about being
‘observed’
• Whether our research would make things
worse for them
• Whether it might make things better
because more people would understand
Getting consent
• We talked to them about what we wanted to do
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and why
We talked to them about how they felt about
being in our research
We talked to our teacher about what we wanted
to do
We talked to them about changing their names
when we wrote about our findings to protect
their identity. We chose Kaz and Rose as names
How we collected our data
• We observed them for two weeks in the
playground and recorded everything into a
dictaphone
• We interviewed them about some of the
things we had seen
• We interviewed them about how they felt
about being small for their age particularly
about advantages and disadvantages
Here is an extract from our observation data…
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… She’s yelling louder than the others.
She’s crouching down,
She’s yelling more.
Yelling more loudly than the others.
Yelling even louder.
She’s crouching down again.
Kaz is hanging onto people,
She’s gripping onto them.
Yelling loudly again.
Still yelling loudly.
More yelling loudly.
More loudly than the others.
More loud yelling.
She’s being picked up and carried like a baby by one of the group.
Someone else has picked her up now.
Someone else has picked her up and is rocking her.
They are holding her by her middle and swinging her around.
Kaz is hanging onto people.
The group are playing tag. Every time Kaz tries to run someone catches her.
Kaz is gripping onto them, hanging on their arm.
She is still gripping onto them.
Kaz has to stand still because she’s caught.
She’s yelling more loudly than the others to get free. The others aren’t yelling to be got free.
Someone has come straight away to get her free.
Kaz is being hugged now.
More hugging.
More hugging.
No-one else in the group is being hugged.
No-one else in the group has been hugged for the whole of break time. …
Analysing the data…
• We looked for themes and patterns in our
observation notes
• We looked to see if there were any
similarities or differences between the two
girls
• We did the same from the interview data
We found some themes
• There were a lot of similarities in their
behaviour
• The similar themes we noticed were…
1. Being treated like a cuddly doll:
e.g.
• Being hugged a lot
• Being picked up
• Being swung round
2…. Attention seeking: e.g.
• hanging on to people
• gripping on to hands and arms
• clinging
• yelling lots and lots and lots
3. Small physical size: e.g.
• Crouching down
• Ducking
• ‘hiding’ behind other people
Interview findings
• They didn’t like being ‘babied’
• They didn’t like younger brothers or sisters
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being thought older than them
They didn’t like being bullied by children who
were younger than them
But they did like being able to get into
adventure playgrounds when peers were refused
because they were too big
…And… they did like being given a lollipop in the
chip shop!!!
Final thoughts
• Although this was only a small study we think
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we learnt a lot about what it’s like to be much
younger than your age
We think that adults might not have found out
the same sorts of things that we did because the
girls might not have told them what they told us
and..
Because we understand better than adults what
goes on in the playground so our observation
was different
Thank you for listening….