Periodic Reporting for period 5 - FORTITUDE (Project Fortitude: Improving children's legal capability)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-07-01 bis 2025-05-31
On paper, children and young people (‘children’) are both empowered and protected by laws and international rights instruments, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). In practice, however, we know that millions of children live at risk of violence, abuse, and neglect.
This project has aimed to create game-based resources to empower and enable children who are at risk to enforce their legal rights independently, so increasing the likelihood of them accessing support and securing protection from harm.
As well as targeting children at risk, this project has aimed to create resources which strengthen all children’s capability to deal effectively with the many law-related issues that they encounter in their everyday lives.
To achieve these aims, the research team has worked with children to create a game called Law Yeah! which is available as a digital game for players aged 3-15 years, and as a board game for players aged 7 years and up.
The development of the Law Yeah! game was informed by a framework for developing children’s legal capability, created by the research team in this project.
A key feature of this framework is that it takes a scenario-based approach, and begins with children learning about how the law or the UNCRC applies to a specific situation. It is only later that they learn about the law, legal institutions and the UNCRC more generally. This turns the more usual approach of legal learning upside down.
The digital game has been created in open source software to facilitate further development. The board game assets are also modifiable. Both games are being made available for researchers to access and adapt for free use in other populations.
This project has aimed to create game-based resources to empower and enable children who are at risk to enforce their legal rights independently, so increasing the likelihood of them accessing support and securing protection from harm.
As well as targeting children at risk, this project has aimed to create resources which strengthen all children’s capability to deal effectively with the many law-related issues that they encounter in their everyday lives.
To achieve these aims, the research team has worked with children to create a game called Law Yeah! which is available as a digital game for players aged 3-15 years, and as a board game for players aged 7 years and up.
The development of the Law Yeah! game was informed by a framework for developing children’s legal capability, created by the research team in this project.
A key feature of this framework is that it takes a scenario-based approach, and begins with children learning about how the law or the UNCRC applies to a specific situation. It is only later that they learn about the law, legal institutions and the UNCRC more generally. This turns the more usual approach of legal learning upside down.
The digital game has been created in open source software to facilitate further development. The board game assets are also modifiable. Both games are being made available for researchers to access and adapt for free use in other populations.
Work started in May 2019, and we worked with over 100 children, gathering information from them through mapping, and storytelling. Through these activities, we identified domains (e.g. home, school, park) which provided the contexts for situating law-related scenarios. We also started work on the legal capability framework.
Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the project had to be suspended from December 2020. Work started again in January 2022, and the project also moved to the University of Sheffield. Academics at University College London were unable to continue work on the project, so handed over to a team at Nottingham Trent University.
After the project started again, we continued to work on developing the legal capability framework, engaging with the literature in critical pedagogy, and social psychology. We also worked with over 350 children on diamond-sorting legal scenarios, developing characters, and storyboarding. Drawing on this work, the research team developed ‘gamified’ measures to assess children’s levels of legal knowledge (multiple choice questions), skills (situational judgement tests), and confidence (psychometric scale, linked to the UNCRC).
These measures were applied in evaluations conducted by the research team, consisting of a small-scale qualitative case study involving 3-6 year olds, and a larger post randomized control study for children aged 7 years and over, based on a realist evaluation approach exploring the effects of play in school and in home settings.
For the younger children, engagement with the game was associated with improvements in knowledge of their rights in the majority of cases, but there was less convincing evidence that skills and confidence were impacted. For children aged 7-11 years, the evaluation indicated that repeated game play at school (but not at home) improved children's knowledge and skills in relation to their rights and the law.
Levels of knowledge improved most notably when the game was played on a whiteboard, as part of a teacher-led session. However, independent play (on individual devices) was also effective for developing knowledge, and this was also the most effective context for improving skills. There was some improvement in confidence, but not to a degree that was statistically significant.
Due to only 27 participants (of a possible 141) completing the pre- and post- tests, findings from the 11-15 year old age group were not included in the evaluation. Analysis of the available data indicates that levels of skills and confidence improved as a result of repeated play, but there was no impact on knowledge. However, further exploration is necessary with this age group to establish definitive findings.
A highlight of the project was working with two child advisory boards in Sheffield schools, one primary and one secondary. The children in the primary school setting met with the Sheffield team regularly, to be updated on progress, and to give advice on research activities. The young people in the secondary school setting were studying digital game design and offered advice on that aspect of the project in particular.
Later in the project, two more child advisory boards were recruited to help specifically on the design of the board game content. Members of these groups were already Rights Ambassadors in their schools (one primary, one secondary).
Work in progress has been presented at academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed journal articles. Further articles are under review, and/or in draft. We have returned to some of the schools who took part in the project, to share the research findings with participants, and we have facilitated large-scale Law Yeah! game-play sessions with school pupils (c. 250 primary, and c. 300 secondary).
Two of the child advisory boards attended a dissemination event at the University of Sheffield, to showcase the digital game and the board game to staff and students. The research team also delivered an online dissemination event, sharing the project findings with the scientific community, and external stakeholders.
Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the project had to be suspended from December 2020. Work started again in January 2022, and the project also moved to the University of Sheffield. Academics at University College London were unable to continue work on the project, so handed over to a team at Nottingham Trent University.
After the project started again, we continued to work on developing the legal capability framework, engaging with the literature in critical pedagogy, and social psychology. We also worked with over 350 children on diamond-sorting legal scenarios, developing characters, and storyboarding. Drawing on this work, the research team developed ‘gamified’ measures to assess children’s levels of legal knowledge (multiple choice questions), skills (situational judgement tests), and confidence (psychometric scale, linked to the UNCRC).
These measures were applied in evaluations conducted by the research team, consisting of a small-scale qualitative case study involving 3-6 year olds, and a larger post randomized control study for children aged 7 years and over, based on a realist evaluation approach exploring the effects of play in school and in home settings.
For the younger children, engagement with the game was associated with improvements in knowledge of their rights in the majority of cases, but there was less convincing evidence that skills and confidence were impacted. For children aged 7-11 years, the evaluation indicated that repeated game play at school (but not at home) improved children's knowledge and skills in relation to their rights and the law.
Levels of knowledge improved most notably when the game was played on a whiteboard, as part of a teacher-led session. However, independent play (on individual devices) was also effective for developing knowledge, and this was also the most effective context for improving skills. There was some improvement in confidence, but not to a degree that was statistically significant.
Due to only 27 participants (of a possible 141) completing the pre- and post- tests, findings from the 11-15 year old age group were not included in the evaluation. Analysis of the available data indicates that levels of skills and confidence improved as a result of repeated play, but there was no impact on knowledge. However, further exploration is necessary with this age group to establish definitive findings.
A highlight of the project was working with two child advisory boards in Sheffield schools, one primary and one secondary. The children in the primary school setting met with the Sheffield team regularly, to be updated on progress, and to give advice on research activities. The young people in the secondary school setting were studying digital game design and offered advice on that aspect of the project in particular.
Later in the project, two more child advisory boards were recruited to help specifically on the design of the board game content. Members of these groups were already Rights Ambassadors in their schools (one primary, one secondary).
Work in progress has been presented at academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed journal articles. Further articles are under review, and/or in draft. We have returned to some of the schools who took part in the project, to share the research findings with participants, and we have facilitated large-scale Law Yeah! game-play sessions with school pupils (c. 250 primary, and c. 300 secondary).
Two of the child advisory boards attended a dissemination event at the University of Sheffield, to showcase the digital game and the board game to staff and students. The research team also delivered an online dissemination event, sharing the project findings with the scientific community, and external stakeholders.
An innovative feature of the digital Law Yeah! game is that it applies to a wide age range (3-15 years). Because ‘all the learning is in the game’ another groundbreaking feature of the game is that it can be used as a teaching resource in schools, without the need for teacher-training.
The development of a legal capability framework for children has moved beyond the state of the art in the field. This is partly because it turns the more usual approach of legal learning upside (as explained above).
However, another groundbreaking feature of the framework is that it introduces ‘baseline legal capability’; the ability to recognise a problem is a problem, seek help and escalate. This applies to all people of any age, including those with low literacy levels and/or additional learning needs.
Importantly, the framework also addresses the final objective of the project, which was to develop a specification for the development of interventions in other populations. This includes game-based interventions, and more traditional learning methods.
The Children’s Rights Confidence Questionnaire is a significant achievement of the project. It has been designed to measure levels of self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and self-determination (autonomy, competence and relatedness), linked to the UNCRC.
Because it links to the UNCRC, it has potential for use in other contexts internationally. However, further analyses of the evaluation data are being carried out, to explore whether the CRCQ needs further refining to enhance its psychometric properties, before it is made more widely available.
The development of a legal capability framework for children has moved beyond the state of the art in the field. This is partly because it turns the more usual approach of legal learning upside (as explained above).
However, another groundbreaking feature of the framework is that it introduces ‘baseline legal capability’; the ability to recognise a problem is a problem, seek help and escalate. This applies to all people of any age, including those with low literacy levels and/or additional learning needs.
Importantly, the framework also addresses the final objective of the project, which was to develop a specification for the development of interventions in other populations. This includes game-based interventions, and more traditional learning methods.
The Children’s Rights Confidence Questionnaire is a significant achievement of the project. It has been designed to measure levels of self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and self-determination (autonomy, competence and relatedness), linked to the UNCRC.
Because it links to the UNCRC, it has potential for use in other contexts internationally. However, further analyses of the evaluation data are being carried out, to explore whether the CRCQ needs further refining to enhance its psychometric properties, before it is made more widely available.