Exploring children's perspectives: Multiple ways of seeing and knowing the child

Abstract

This article focuses on human development in the early years, and the challenges for teachers and researchers in seeking to explore young children's perspectives. The current interest in listening to children's voices sits within competing developmental discourses about infants, toddlers and young children, which emphasise both their capability and confidence as well as their immaturity, especially with regard to oral language. Their "voice" can be heard and seen differently by teachers, researchers and families, who filter it according to their own perspectives and their image of the child. Drawing on a range of contemporary New Zealand studies, we discuss some key issues such as whether children need speech to have a voice? And in what ways can we gather children's perspectives in research and education? To explore children's perspectives and hear their voices requires skilled and flexible researchers and teachers, who watch and listen carefully whilst being mindful of their filtering/interpretive gazes. This takes time and patience and requires multiple ways of gathering data in order that the child is heard authentically.

Discourses on gender in early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting: Equally discriminated against

“…Children also choose the techniques and methods used to narrate the themes, participate in the analysis and interpretation of the research data, and create research reports (Kellett, 2005); 3) The act of performing research is a process in which relationships, mutual understandings and meanings develop between children and adults, which can be contrasted with research that is carried out on children where the child is only used as a resource for data collection (Clark & Moss, 2001); 4). Unlike the positivist depiction of data collection as a neutral fact-gathering process that takes place independently from the researcher, research with children is an active and inter-subjective process (Alldred & Burman, 2005;Peters & Kelly, 2011). According to Mac Naughton et al (2008), by recognizing the child as an active participant in the research process, we accept three key ideas: "young children can construct valid meanings about the world and their place in it; young children know the world in alternative (not 'inferior') ways to adults; young children's perspectives and insights can help adults to understand their experiences better" (Mac Naughton et al, 2008, p.15).…”

“…Although any attempt to understand the child's perspective is always subject to the adult's interpretation -how adults make sense of what children tell them (Bronfrebrenner, cited in Pramling Samuelsson, 2004) -our understanding develops as we attempt to hear what the children are saying. According to Pascal and Bertram (cited in Peters & Kelly, 2011), researching the child's perspective is a process that is "complex, challenging and multi-layered involving a profound paradigm shift in the values, actions and thinking of researchers and practitioners" (p.27).…”

The Voice of the Child in Early Childhood Education Research in Australia and New Zealand: A Systematic Review

“…The typology that evolved from the review of the Category 3 and 4 articles provided a conceptual framework for understanding the 'quality' of the voice of the child in current ECE research. The typology excluded adults 'speaking for children' as described by Peters and Kelly (2011) because I believed consulting parents and teachers on what the child's perspective was should be counted as an adult's voice. Obviously, the pseudo voice (Type 1) should not be counted as the voice of the child at all, although it was certainly valuable for the research in other senses.…”

“…Furthermore, the analytical procedures showing how the interview data translated into the voice of the child were either not reported or not sufficiently reported in the articles. Peters and Kelly (2011) discussed occasions of researchers 'filtering and shaping children's voices' (p. 23) even when the child was spoken to directly, which reminded me that some of the voices of the children reported in the articles might have been 'filtered' or 'shaped' by the adults. I was wondering about the boundary between such 'filtering and shaping' and 'coconstructing' for the co-constructed voice (Type 4).…”

Giving voice to children in research: The power of child‐centered constructivist grounded theory methodology

“…As mentioned earlier, without children's explanations, the images would have been meaningless (Peters & Kelly, 2015). By giving children the option to draw or photograph what they like and allowing them to have their say on it, they become an active part of the coconstruction process.…”