Moving beyond utilitarian perspectives of infant participation in participatory research: film-mediated research encounters

Percolating spaces: Creative ways of using digital technologies to connect young children's school and home lives

“…The “dynamic multiplicity” (ibid) of space is imbued with different trajectories, thus diverse participants are playing roles in intersecting scales of temporality. This approach to evidence and documentation of children's interaction with technologies is intentionally different from “utilitarian” research approaches that often perpetuate adult‐child hierarchies and power relationships (see Elwick & Sumsion, ).…”

Babies’ engagements with everyday things : An ethnographic study of materiality, movement and participation

“…It has further been argued that there is a lack of critical discussion on the concept of babies' perspectives or what the concept of children's perspectives could mean in baby research (Elwick et al 2014b, Johansson & Emilson 2010. The idea that babies have the right to be 'heard' is also, according to Elwick & Sumsion (2013), connected to an understanding of babies' participation as a method or tool for accomplishing certain goals, such as representing babies' own views. While guided by good intentions, this approach might obscure issues connected to how participatory research is done with babies in practice, they argue (Elwick & Sumsion 2013).…”

“…The idea that babies have the right to be 'heard' is also, according to Elwick & Sumsion (2013), connected to an understanding of babies' participation as a method or tool for accomplishing certain goals, such as representing babies' own views. While guided by good intentions, this approach might obscure issues connected to how participatory research is done with babies in practice, they argue (Elwick & Sumsion 2013).…”

‘Baby-cam’ and researching with infants: Viewer, image and (not) knowing

“…For instance, although Sandy was not physically present as the educator watched the baby-cam images, there seems little doubt that the images enabled the educator to feel as if Sandy's gaze was upon her. Nevertheless, as flagged earlier, although Merleau-Ponty's work reminds us that infants are always potentially present and participating in film-mediated research encounters through viewers' perceptual-sensory experience, viewers' 'practices of looking' can diminish or deny that participation (Elwick and Sumsion, 2013b; for discussion of this idea in relation to face-to-face research encounters, see also Elwick et al, 2014a). This returns us to Marten's (2012) question of how researchers' or, in this instance, the viewers' bodies became skilled through the mediation of the technologies used in the research process described here.…”

“…Participatory research for infants in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings is often located in utilitarian approaches where infant participation is intertwined with the ideas and practices of knowing and representing infants' experiences and thought processes (Elwick and Sumsion, 2013b). However, concerns that such approaches may obscure and perpetuate the ever-present realities of power that exist in infancy research (Elwick et al, 2014b;Johansson and Emilson, 2010;Sumsion, 2014) have led to calls for the need to revisit, broaden and deepen conceptualisations of infant participation.…”