Lecturer: Peter Čerče, Science and Research Centre Koper
The Horizon 2020 project ‘Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe’ (MiCREATE) aims to gather the stories of migrant children to support their needs and aspirations when it comes to integration. European countries and their education systems encounter many challenges due to ethnic, cultural, linguistic diversity, and MiCREATE aims to:
- improve knowledge about children’s experiences of life in new social environments
- explore school peer dynamics
- help teachers and educational staff to work with diversity
- develop child-centred tools for stimulating migrant integration
- design child-cantered integration policy recommendations.
In the MiCREATE project, I am responsible for the Data Management Plan (DMP) and help solving ethical issues in relation to Research Data Management (RDM). Ethical issues in data management are one of the main challenges in the MiCREATE project, as most of the qualitative research data result from interviewing a particularly vulnerable group, namely migrant children.
For the MiCREATE data management plan (DMP), we consulted with (national) experts in the field in the preparatory phase of the project. We met with the Slovenian Social Science Data Archive (ADP), who directed us to the CESSDA Data Management Expert Guide (CESSDA DMEG). We found the CESSDA Guide to be a very helpful tool, offering a wide variety of advice, tips, and examples from experts in the field.
In preparing the initial version of the MiCREATE DMP, we were using the DMPonline tool, offered in the CESSDA DMEG. The DMPonline turned out to be very helpful for the consortium of fifteen partners from twelve different countries.
I was particularly grateful for the way that the CESSDA DMEG is structured. It is fairly easy to find your way around, even though quantity of information can be intimidating. That said, Research Data Management in itself is such a vast field of expertise, that trying to find what you need in the enormous amount of information available online seems like mission impossible. On top of that, you sometimes have to work your way around many partners from various different countries.
