Abstract:
This workshop aims to promote critical engagement with questions of data sharing, archiving and re-use of qualitative research materials in the sociology of education. It follows an earlier workshop which was held at the University of Melbourne with the support of a Sociology of Education SIG Competitive Grant in August 2018. In this coming workshop, we will report on our continued work in this space, and in particular, our partnership with the Australian Data Archive to develop a new website and community of practice, Studies of Childhood, Education & Youth (SOCEY) (seehttps://socey.hasscloud.net.au [https://socey.hasscloud.net.au/]). This website provides a portal to a new archival repository of qualitative research project data and, once established, will be supported by appropriate metadata, contextual material and methodological and ethical discussions on for instance, data re-use and recontextualisation. It aims to strengthen researcher engagement in curating data collections for future use by others as well as provide a first port of call for parties interested in finding out more about the experiences of children and young people. The aim is thus to strengthen ways of communicating existing and new qualitative research datasets and to demonstrate their relevance to external parties. Such a shared website also shows the type of research that has already been completed or underway, intersections across studies and what we already know, and gaps and silences demanding new work or attention. In this workshop, we discuss the processes we took in developing the new repository and in archiving the projects housed within it. We also discuss our experiences seeking feedback on the new website from partners in the policy and community sectors, and invite workshop participants to engage with questions around the opportunities and challenges data sharing and archiving present for sociology of education and youth researchers.