Childrens Interests, Inquiries and Identities Curriculum, Pedagogy, Learning and Outcomes in the Early Years (Helen Hedges) (z-lib.org)(KVTM)

36 Practices and policies

Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2020, p. 2). A focus on children and childhood in studies of
developmental psychology began in the 1920s due to three main influences. The
first was that studying children’s development became a topic of scientific interest
on public policy agendas. The second was that theorists such as Freud identified
early childhood experience as an important influence on later personality devel-
opment. The third was the nature–nurture dualism debate.

Western child development theories therefore formed a substantial basis of
understandings about children’s development. For example, long-standing under-
standings of children’s cognitive learning were dominated by Piaget’s work; Erikson
and Freud were influential about emotional development. These theories became
known as age- and stage-related theories that described norms and progressions in
children’s developmental domains. With development viewed as occurring naturally,
learning is assumed to follow. These theories are “weapons of mass seduction in ECE
across the globe … by default, mitigating against overt teaching and instruction”
(Grieshaber, 2008, p. 508).

Child development theories remain a strong basis and rationale for early childhood
practice. Related studies validated the long-standing commitment to child-centred
practices and a wide range of play activities for children to choose. Amos Hatch
(2020) summarised this situation as follows:

Curriculum in many early childhood contexts has been taken to mean setting
up stimulating environments and following the lead of the child. Early child-
hood curriculum has emphasized child-centered approaches and child-initiated
activity. In this discourse, curriculum is said to emerge from the interests and
developmental capacities of children.

(pp. 52–53)

The relevance of Western child development theories, the premise that develop-
ment leads learning, and the applicability of individually focused, stage-based, and
norm-based theories have been criticised for some time. Equity and inclusion
questions were raised, and the cultural appropriateness of these theories in under-
standing children’s diverse experiences, particularly in countries experiencing the
effects of global migration, critiqued (Burman, 2001, 2008; Cannella, 1997). Child
development also suffered from overgeneralisations and findings not borne out in
non-Western cultures. Cross-cultural studies, for example, found that constructs
such as object permanence were evident at different ages in different cultures
(Rogoff et al., 2018).

A serious problem was that Western norms from child development studies were
used on a taken-for-granted basis in policy interventions that assumed a deficit
view of linguistically and culturally diverse children. Research in disciplines such as
anthropology and sociology have now challenged, enriched, and extended theo-
retical understandings about the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of learn-
ing contexts. Sociocultural theories enable researchers and teachers to view
children, learning, curriculum, and pedagogy in a different light.

Practices and policies 37

Furthermore, Amos Hatch (2020) argued eloquently that child development
theories were also not a basis for decisions about the content of early childhood
curricula and associated teaching. Echoing Bereiter’s (2002) critique that there is a
greater than necessary distance between children’s interests and intellectual subject
matter, Hatch stated:

Curriculum content, the substance of early childhood education, cannot be
logically identified based on knowledge of child development theory; that is,
figuring out what subject matter knowledge should be taught does not follow
from understandings of what children are like at particular ages and stages. This
helps explain why descriptions of developmentally appropriate early childhood
curriculum are so often devoid of serious consideration of the intellectual
content children should be expected to learn.

(p. 55)

Hatch also maintained that, if Vygotskian ideas such as learning leads development
were taken seriously, curriculum content would be more prominent; reference to
the subject matter development of children’s interests to which Hatch, Bereiter
(2002), and Dewey (1913) refer. Few scholars have followed this line, however,
with Marilyn Fleer (2010) a notable exception in bringing together play, learning,
and development from a sociocultural perspective, and connecting this with subject
matter development (e.g., Fleer, 2011, 2019).

Despite critiques, concerns, and alternatives, the influence of child development
theory as a primary basis for policy and practice continues widely internationally.
For example, Elizabeth Wood (2020) criticised policymakers for selective use of
developmental theory and related research in the English curriculum. She states
that child development theory continues to imply norms and progressions reflected
in atomised academic outcomes expectations.

Framing play as a mechanism to foster learning

Moreover, Wood’s (2014) three modes usefully frame and problematise under-
standings of the different ways play is a mechanism for learning and pedagogy. Wood
describes child-initiated play as Mode A. This style aligns with the influence of child-
centredness and child development studies to theorise play as a natural childhood
activity that supports children’s exploration and discovery of their world. Learning
occurs instinctively through child-initiated goals, interests, and motivations.

Adult-guided play is Mode B. This approach draws on Vygotskian notions of
play as foundational to children’s learning and socialisation. Blending the assump-
tions of Mode A of the intrinsic value of children’s play for their learning and
development with the potential contributions of mediation in advancing learning,
Mode B encourages a focus on pedagogical relationships and an exploratory and
educative view of play, including explicit encouragement of language and con-
ceptual development. In this way, children retain some of the benefits and

38 Practices and policies

freedoms of child-centredness, and have some agency in the direction and pace of
their learning through Mode B-type engagements and interactions that foster learning
more explicitly. This approach is evident in the relational pedagogy argued as central
to empowering children’s interests in this book (see Chapters 6, 7, and 10).

In Mode C, play is a vehicle for achieving academic learning outcomes
defined by curriculum policy that prioritises policy interpretations of school
readiness. This method puts the onus on adults to intervene in play to direct
children’s thinking, intentions, and activities towards those that help them to
achieve academic outcomes. Wood identifies the pedagogical goals of Mode C
as more instrumental and technicist than Modes A and B in that play activities
are planned with adults’ subject-driven curriculum objectives in mind. In
addition to narrowing the possibilities for children’s learning to those prescribed
by the curriculum, Mode C carries the risk of children becoming disengaged in
learning, and losing—amongst many possibilities besides positive dispositions for
learning—playfulness and joy in their everyday life interactions, and the creative
and critical thinking capacities needed in contemporary societies.

In Wood’s context, England, there have been various iterations of the curricular
document. These iterations have shifted towards policy emphases that are more
academic and instrumental, as the impact of neoliberalism has been keenly felt in
England (Moss & Roberts-Holmes, 2021). Wood was analysing the 2008 and 2012
versions of the English curriculum document in her 2014 chapter. Since then,
there have been two revisions, in 2017 and 2021. These surely create confusion for
teachers—keeping up with the pace of changes, understandings that differentiate
the versions, and associated advice on implementation. In addition, there is little
opportunity due to pressures of time and immediate responsibilities for teachers to
think outside the curriculum and locate recent research that might help them to
reflect on, or resist, neoliberally oriented Mode C moves and academic emphases.
Such shifts also disempower children from determining their own agendas and
identifying as capable learners with strong interests.

Wood’s modes demonstrate many of the debates, tensions, and possibilities inherent
in discussions of early childhood practice and policy. Challenging questions arise,
about play and its purposes and emphases in curricular policy documents, and the ways
children and teachers are positioned. Next, I explain the role that children’s rights and
childhood studies’ perspectives have played in drawing attention to children’s cap-
abilities. These perspectives challenge simplistic application of play, child-centredness,
and child development to practice and policy.

Children’s participation: rights and childhood studies’ perspectives

Participation is central to the sociocultural research and theory outlined in Chapter 2.
The concept of participation places children centrally as competent and supported
learners in their everyday lives, who develop multiple interests. This positioning of
children is quite different to that reflected in the child development influences out-
lined thus far that position children as participants whose development and learning

Practices and policies 39

are somewhat left to chance. Two further influences on shifts towards contemporary
views of children as capable learners have contributed to debates about policies and
practices in early childhood education: the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Children (UNCROC) and childhood studies founded in sociology as a
discipline.

Participation rights

Participation rights are central (alongside protection rights) to the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Children (UNICEF/UNCROC, 1989). The con-
vention comprises 54 articles that list children’s entitlements to political, social,
cultural, language, and economic rights, founded on their right to participation as
citizens in communities and cultures. There are currently 120 signatories, with the
United States of America a notable exception.

Article 28 refers to the provision of primary and secondary education, but not
specifically to early childhood education. This oversight may reflect the history and
expectations of child rearing and socialising to be the primary responsibility of
families. Parents are children’s first educators, acknowledged prominently in
sociocultural theory. Increasingly, though, governments have invested in early
childhood education, shifting some responsibility to teachers.

Much scholarship has traced policies and practices internationally that have
responded to the convention (e.g., Višnjic´-Jevtic´ et al., 2021). Children’s rights to
belong, to inclusion, to be well educated, to contribute, and to be considered as
citizens from a young age, are prominent in research and scholarly writing. These
rights align with views of children as capable and competent learners with interests.

Article 12 of the UNCROC is often cited in relation to research and education:
children’s rights to express their views on what matters to them, and their rights to
have these views listened to and taken seriously. These rights mean that adults—
whether parents, teachers, or researchers—need to provide the conditions and
supports for children to be able to communicate their ideas and wishes. Here is a
connection to the interpretations of interests presented in this book: children’s
interests deserve respect, and analytical understandings.

Childhood studies

Around the same time as the UNCROC was published, the terms sociology of
childhood and childhood studies became more common as researchers moved to
question developmental psychology and to place children more centrally in
research and education (Broström, 2006). Childhood studies draws on the dis-
cipline of sociology to recognise childhood as a social construct. Such studies align
with sociocultural theory as they view children as inherently competent and com-
municative from birth, and research children’s experiences in particular contexts. In
doing so, childhood studies shows the diversity and complexity of children’s
experiences, but also goes further in analysing the structural enablers and constraints

40 Practices and policies

of experiences. Childhood studies brings together understandings of childhood
experiences with the political, historical, cultural, economic, social, and ethical
drivers that influence these experiences.

From a childhood studies’ perspective, the ideas of children as social actors and the
metaphor of child voice with the right to be “heard” in terms of what matters to
children often accompanied research and education. The term social actors connects
with agency, a concept central to this book discussed shortly. I avoid using what I
consider the highly problematic term child voice. The idea of voice implies some-
thing authentic about children’s views that researchers cannot guarantee, and may
overlook sociocultural features pertaining to interactions (Flewitt et al., 2018). Adults
filter and interpret children’s views. The voice metaphor has served its purpose of
drawing attention to the neglect of children’s views, but has had its time. My
reflection and decision are examples of Broström’s (2006) call to reflect on ethical
dimensions of participation and raise questions about advocacy for children.

To be ethical, adults must enter a child’s world with respect, humility and cau-
tion. … [These] should lead us to take a step back, rather than a step forward, in
our work with children, creating greater distance between ourselves and the
children we hope to understand more fully. … Perhaps it would benefit chil-
dren … to be left alone or protected from well-meaning adults who want to
study them, lobby for them, and enhance their opportunities for participation.

(p. 250)

Ethics, caution, and reflection are followed up further in the next chapter about
participatory methods.

Over time, several researchers have proposed models of children’s participation.
Nadine Correia and colleagues (2021) present and analyse several models, showing
how each comes from a different standpoint: developmental, sociological, educa-
tional, sociocultural, and from social policy. Of significance, in their own model,
Correia et al. identify seven concepts as central to children’s participation: power,
empowerment, autonomy, involvement, democracy, citizenship, and agency. The
discussion offered around these concepts aligns strongly with the UNCROC’s aims
and sociological perspectives; here I tie their discussion with children’s interests.
Empowerment involves exercising power to enable children to pursue their learn-
ing and interests. By encouraging children to make choices, that is, select and
follow interests, participation is also about autonomy: developing independence
and self-regulation. Involvement is about whether or not children can choose to
spend time in activities of interest and become fully engaged in them. Such deci-
sion-making represents children having agency.

Children’s agency

Agency is discussed widely in the scholarly literature from sociocultural, sociological,
and education perspectives, and is central to interests. Vygotsky (1978) argued that,

Practices and policies 41

without a capacity to organise, relate to, and distinguish between experiences, that
is, to have agency, humans would be powerless to act on what was important to
them in their lives. Agency is therefore recognised through action, observable in
the capacity to act with initiative, commitment, creativity, and effort within the
socioculturally mediated contexts of human interactions (James, 2009; van Lier,
2008).

In relation to agency and teacher mediation, there are further debates in the lit-
erature about the role and power of adults. For example, attaching purpose and sig-
nificance to the choices of activities that children select in early childhood settings as
their interests assumes (as noted earlier) that the provision of resources and equip-
ment allows children to represent their interests. Agency is also observed when
children show resistance to adult structures, norms, instructions, and expectations,
and/or when children assign new or innovative meanings to adult expectations and
engage with each other accordingly (Corsaro, 2018; Esser, 2016). The role of adults
shifts from transmitters of knowledge to co-constructors of understandings with
children (Broström, 2006), a role tension that surfaces when policy agendas of school
readiness creep in.

Thus far, I have described the problematic, long-standing influences of child
development theories and child-centredness in guiding early, limited, definitions of
children’s interests revealed through their engagement in play activities. Children’s
rights and childhood studies support understandings of children’s interests as
diverse, and originating in participation in their families, cultures, and communities;
the latter includes early education settings. Next, I turn more explicitly to research
on children’s interests and associated implications for early childhood practice.

Children’s interests: from activities to projects and playworlds

As noted in Chapter 2, both experimental and naturalistic studies of interests have
focused on the choices made by children of activities offered to them (e.g., Cremin
& Slatter, 2004; Gmitrova et al., 2009; Johnson et al., 2004; Renninger & Woz-
niak, 1985). These research findings about choices became evidence for the estab-
lished practice of offering children a well-resourced play environment from which
to select activities, a default setting for curricula built on children’s interests.

Both researchers and teachers apparently failed to realise that children could
choose only from the activities made available to them. Cannella (1997) long ago
argued that choice for children was an illusion. Cannella noted that teachers con-
trol the choices children have, and how representative these are of their families
and contexts beyond Western norms. Teachers also have the power to choose
what to notice, recognise, and extend when children make their choices (see
Chapters 5–7), and how much time is devoted to play opportunities. Teachers’
own interests and related knowledge likely influence what choices are available to
children and ways these include intellectual substance (see Chapter 8).

As an important proviso, a wide choice of thoughtfully selected and culturally
appropriate play activities is a foundational cornerstone of an early childhood

42 Practices and policies

environment that enables children to express and represent their interests. None-
theless, the activities likely mean something more to children and require closer
and more in-depth analysis of interests.

I noted in Chapter 2 that interest was widely accepted as an intuitive phenomenon
and so only recently defined more carefully. The same fate has befallen the term chil-
dren’s interests in early childhood education, a term that, as noted in Chapter 1, has
been ill-defined, under-theorised, and taken-for-granted. The earliest paper I located
addressing identifying and using children’s interests in education is that of Doris Young
(1955). Young drew attention to the significant role teachers play in understanding
what children’s interests are, and suggested there was insufficient guidance about how
to understand and apply the mantra of building curriculum on children’s interests. This
oversight was reiterated by Birbili and Tsitouridou (2008), who noted that multiple
and ambiguous understandings of interests left teachers confused about its value and
application in education, leading these authors to critique children’s interests as an
under-theorised “catch phrase” (p. 143). In short, there has been little research focused
on children’s interests, and what there is confirms that teachers view interests in tra-
ditional ways influenced by child-centredness and child development theory.

Maria Birbili’s (2019) later research is the only paper unearthed that, along with
Hedges et al. (2011), explicitly asked questions about how teachers understand and
define children’s interests, and the sources of any understandings used in practice.
As I explain in Chapter 5, teachers in my study aligned interests with activities,
reflecting the entrenched belief, influenced by child-centred philosophies and the
applications of child development theories they had studied in their teacher edu-
cation. Birbili’s work in Greece found that teachers held a range of ideas about
what the concept of children’s interests meant for teaching practice. Teachers
believed interests would be observable during children’s play or when children
asked questions about teacher-led topics of focus. However, they often applied
Wood’s Mode C-type pedagogy to utilise children’s play to achieve curriculum
goals. They also had some understanding of the importance of inspiring interest in
children, and using their own interests and knowledge in the curriculum. Birbili
concluded that teachers needed more knowledge in order to shift the rhetoric of
children’s interests into understandings and practices meaningful for children.

In one approach that may be more meaningful for children, Joy Cullen (2003)
suggested that children’s interests were interpreted in practice in

the narrow sense, as in a traditional play-based program where children self-
select activities, presumably on the basis of their interests; or in the strong
sense, where children’s interests are identified by teachers and parents and
extended through sustained project work.

(p. 280)

In using the word “presumably,” Cullen hinted that interpreting activities as
interests was perhaps problematic. Cullen’s use of the words “strong sense” implied
a connection to more substantive ideas of interests.

Practices and policies 43

Project work is an approach that connects with children’s sustained topic interests.
These interests align with Lindfors’ (1999) information-seeking inquiry acts, and are
an example of where children show an interest in content learning relevant to their
interests. Project work is one type of emergent curriculum, a term coined by Elizabeth
Jones and John Nimmo (1994) in an argument for teachers to resist the teacher-
directed and often pre-packaged curricula creeping into usage in the USA (these
remain problematic, see Mueller and File, 2020). Projects and emergent curriculum
have also become well-known through the Reggio Emilia approach (see Chapter 7).
Emergent curriculum approaches encourage teachers to develop curriculum that is
relevant to what children find interesting and meaningful in the realities and contexts
of their lives. Projects usually focus on a topic over time, involve children generating
complex questions, and some conceptual learning is commonly involved. These
form part of a larger curriculum where time for play activities is also valued (Helm &
Katz, 2016).

However, Jones and Nimmo cautioned that “emergent” does not mean that
everything emanates from the children. Emergent curriculum arises dynami-
cally, not only in response to children’s interests, but also includes teachers’
interests, things in the physical environment, people in the social environment,
serendipity, living together (e.g., conflict resolution, caregiving, and routines),
and values as a number of possible sources. All these sources are consistent with
a sociocultural interpretation of interests. An interpretation of emergent as
emerging is not included in their ideas: these terms appear to be conflated and
used interchangeably in early childhood practice.

In discussing the value of projects, Judy Helm and Lilian Katz (2016) make an
important distinction between academic learning and intellectual learning, components
they view as complementary. They suggest that academic learning comprises:

Elements of education, or tasks, that typically are carefully structured,
sequenced, and decontextualized small bits of information and discrete skills,
often requiring instruction by a knowledgeable adult (e.g., a parent or a tea-
cher). The academic tasks in the early childhood curriculum usually address
facts and skills that the majority of children are unlikely to learn spontaneously
or by discovery, though, under favourable conditions, many children do so.

(p. 5)

Helm and Katz (2016) describe intellectual learning as comprising dispositions that
include being able to make sense of experiences and observations; theorise and
analyse; and find things out empirically. They suggest that:

the most important intellectual dispositions are inborn in all humans and are
likely to be fairly robust in very young children. For example, the dispositions
to make sense of experience, to be curious, and to be empirical can be
observed in virtually all very young children, regardless of family income and
environment. Intellectual dispositions deserve explicit attention in curriculum

44 Practices and policies

planning and teaching methods so they can be manifested, appreciated, and
thereby further strengthened and developed.

(p. 5)

These kinds of outcomes are evident in children’s learning engagements with their
interests (see Chapters 5–10).

Maria Birbili (2007) argued, in a similar vein, that teaching children facts about
topics such as plants and animals could be organised around larger, related, trans-
ferable concepts (e.g., evolution) in curriculum, where facts become central to
understanding concepts. In this way, she recommended a shift from a focus on
activities to enabling children to experience concepts in multiple exploratory ways
and consider these experiences in light of their interests and prior knowledge.
Teachers can help children express and communicate their ideas through support-
ing the development of their language and inquiry skills.

Marilyn Fleer exemplifies the value of play in her efforts to make conceptual learn-
ing more explicit for young children. In doing so, Fleer has drawn attention to the
importance of imagination that Vygotsky promoted (see Chapter 2). With a focus on
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, partly in order to address gender
inequities in these learning areas (Fleer, 2021), Fleer has worked with the idea of chil-
dren’s playworlds (Fleer, 2019). Playworlds are a mechanism to develop play experi-
ences beyond the usual activities found in early childhood settings, and to incorporate
concepts (Fleer, 2011) as Birbili envisaged. For example, an imaginative playworld can
support science learning. In Fleer (2019), teachers used a selected story to inspire chil-
dren, involve them in imagining adventures, thinking about situations and possibilities,
and then using a range of equipment to support the related science ideas that arose. In
this particular article, teachers and children explored microbes in their environment,
using microscopes and magnifying glasses to study the contents of their compost bin
and samples of pond water from the outdoor play area. Fleer noted that:

for playworlds to develop scientific narratives, some key pedagogical char-
acteristics were important. The teachers needed to build a scientific narrative
which would allow children to role-play scientific ideas, such as being micro-
scopic. The role-playing allowed the children to consciously think and
embody what they were experiencing. A wondering discourse was needed for
broadening or widening the scope of the imaginary situations. Further, the
teachers’ introduction of a cultural device needed to closely mirror what the
children were scientifically experiencing, so that it drove or enriched children’s
imaginings. In these collective scientific imaginary situations, emotionally
charged situations appeared to help focus attention and engagement on the
science concepts being explored.

(p. 1272)

Projects, concepts, and playworlds are important contributors to practices that
enable interests’ development. They draw on various sociocultural concepts

Practices and policies 45

championed by Vygotsky and align with curiosity and inquiry as intrinsic to
interests (see Chapter 2). They also have the potential to align with the seven
concepts Correia et al. (2021) identify as central to children’s participation: power,
empowerment, autonomy, involvement, democracy, citizenship, and agency.

Towards a definition of children’s interests

I also argue there is a more fundamental need to think about framings for children’s
interests themselves in order to be more selective and analytical about interests, to
locate what motivates children’s engagement with sustained interests, and re-think
and re-imagine further what curriculum and pedagogy might comprise.

Deliberately avoiding the word “activities,” the definition of children’s interests I
took into my first project is “children’s spontaneous, self-motivated play, discussions,
inquiry, and/or investigations that derive from their social and cultural experiences.”
By spontaneous I mean the natural and unconstrained way that children play when
they can make choices and adults do not direct their time. Self-motivated captures the
energy, ambition, agency, imagination, creativity, and dynamism associated with
interests-based play. I included discussion, inquiry, and/or investigations to indicate the
multiple and multimodal ways that infants, toddlers, and young children might
express and explore their interests. These could be inclusive of the ways interests
are encouraged in the three approaches outlined above as projects, concepts, and
playworlds. The phrase that derive from their social and cultural experiences indicates
the sociocultural theoretical underpinnings prominent in my research that explain
children’s interests.

In defining children’s interests in this way, I sought to address the ill-defined,
taken-for-granted, and under-theorised criticisms the term has suffered from.
However, I did not wish to place boundaries around the concept but, like Vinti-
milla and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2020) with regard to pedagogy, I sought to invite
engagement with meanings and inspire further thinking. I offer my own deeper
interpretations of children’s interests from research engagement in Chapters 5–10.
Before that, however, it is time to establish where considerations of interests, and
the roles that children and teachers play in related practices, are situated in early
childhood policy internationally.

Policy and early childhood education

Practice and policy connections are often complex, contested, competing, and
conflicted. In the last 50 years, provision of early childhood education has grown
internationally for educational, demographic change, and economic reasons. To
justify their investment, policymakers often take control, and align their expecta-
tions with funding and accountability provision. An eclectic and at times selective
and confusing mix of research, policy, theory, ideology, popular wisdom, and
assumptions have therefore guided policy. Curriculum and pedagogy are also con-
tentious because clarity and coherence within policy documents are problematic;

46 Practices and policies

and guidance about content and outcomes of children’s learning—including
attention to children’s interests—is, at best, inconsistent (Wood & Hedges, 2016).

Policy, play, and pedagogy

Apart from a few notable exceptions internationally, most early childhood
education globally sits outside the compulsory provision of primary and sec-
ondary education. Alongside policymakers, in a neoliberal, market-driven effect
(Moss & Roberts-Holmes, 2021), parents selecting their children’s early child-
hood provision can have sway on competing, desirable goals and outcomes.
Parents have limited memories before formal schooling, so commonly recall
and emphasise academic approaches and outcomes, believing school readiness is
the way children will get the best start in life (Ross, 2000). Teachers may be
unsure how to explain the connection between play and learning outcomes to
families (e.g., in Canada, Fesseha and Pyle, 2016).

England is an example of a country where one might expect progressive views
and approaches given its location close to the influence of European ideas on
Western education provision. Yet, Cathy Nutbrown (2018) and Elizabeth Wood
(2020) alleged that, in England, policy and pedagogy are increasingly narrowed and
constrained. The value of play is questioned, and mechanisms such as a “good level
of development” and “early learning goals” (Wood, 2020) divert teacher attention
and time from play to academic learning. Both Nutbrown and Wood suggest that
selective attention to research, a long-standing commitment to child development
as a foundation, limited funding, and a lack of commitment to fully qualified tea-
chers are reasons for this situation. A tension is also clear in their scholarship
between what research suggests is meaningful for children, often related to their
interests, and what teachers feel compelled to do to achieve expected policy out-
comes that secure ongoing funding and good evaluation reports, perpetuating a
culture of performativity promoted by neoliberalism.

Similarly surprisingly, Scandinavian countries have a history of progressive
education founded in play, and educational and social policy and values that
foreground children’s well-being. Nevertheless, neoliberal influences, and the
threat of school readiness hovering via teacher-directed foci on academic out-
comes, have concerned scholars for some time—Wagner and Einarsdóttir
(2006) described this as an “invasion”—and continues to do so (Pramling et al.,
2019). In contrast, Asian countries with a history of more teacher-centred,
transmission approaches are seeking to include more play into their curricula.
Efforts to blend Confucian heritage with Western, child-centred values and
practices have highlighted the tensions with attempts to transfer ideas to different
contexts, and led to hybridised curricular approaches (Sumsion, 2019; Yang et al.,
2020). Research on changing teacher knowledge and practices has shown the
importance of ongoing professional learning and support (Fleer et al., 2020), and
that interpretations remain particular to context, influenced by long-held cultural
knowledge (Sumsion, 2019).

Practices and policies 47

These examples illustrate the complexity of central debates about play, learning, and
development in early childhood education practice and policy that are coming under
scrutiny as neoliberal mechanisms of assessment, evaluation, and accountability
permeate the sector. It is impossible to do justice to the vast literature on early child-
hood policy documents, curricular approaches, and comparative studies that add fur-
ther to broader debates and tensions internationally (e.g., see Garvis and Phillipson,
2020; Garvis et al., 2018). Instead, I return to a focus on children’s interests.

While many curricular documents internationally purport to place children’s
interests centrally, there are often competing policies that counteract this focus. In
countries such as England, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Estonia, the stated academic
outcomes expected of children in curricular documents create tensions for teachers
who want to respect the centrality of interests (Nutbrown, 2018). As Nutbrown
points out, such policies come from attempting to predict what children will need to
do in the future, rather than respecting who children are in the present and getting
to know them well to provide a responsive curriculum.

Policy and teacher professionalism

Another policy that competes with an authentic focus on children’s interests and
reflects long-standing beliefs about the purposes of early childhood education as
care outside the home, is the lack of commitment by policymakers in many
countries to advocate for fully qualified teachers. Early provision associated with
childcare and socialisation pre-dated—and still pre-dates in some countries—a shift
from oversight by social welfare policy to educational policy. A consequence of this
legacy is that there are multiple different names for this educative role. Policy
documents commonly use terms such as practitioner, adult, or caregiver to describe
their workforce, words that perpetuate rhetoric, and do not do justice to the
myriad roles these people play in the lives of children and families worldwide.

This nomenclature is often coupled with working conditions unaligned with the
salaries and non-contact time of teachers in primary and secondary sectors. Early
childhood relies on “the commitment of a female workforce … [who are] …
scandalously poorly paid … indicative of the low value placed by society on this
important work” (Moss & Cameron, 2020, p. 220). An agenda for increasing
professionalism, reflected in recent studies of teacher knowledge, agency, and
identity, is a growing field of early childhood research (e.g., Campbell-Barr, 2019).

Curricular and pedagogical decision-making rests with teachers. Throughout this
book there is an ongoing theme of the importance of well-educated and knowl-
edgeable professional teachers who are encouraged to develop deep, analytical
understandings of children’s interests, and who can advocate for children and action
their rights to a relevant and meaningful education. This commitment to profes-
sional knowledge goes well beyond initial qualifications. I choose to use the word
teachers throughout this book quite deliberately. Acknowledging early childhood
teachers as professionals and leaders would add new dimensions and expectations
about a grounding in professional knowledge, the dispositions for ongoing

48 Practices and policies

learning, reflection, and inquiry, and expectations of educational leaders to support
and fund these activities. Increased professionalism would improve children’s
experiences and outcomes in line with contemporary and re-imagined views of
learning, curriculum, pedagogy, and outcomes expressed throughout this book.

Meanwhile, because of these insufficient or competing policies, those working in
educative positions often do not have sufficient professional knowledge to either
understand or know ways to recognise and provide interests-based play and learning
that meets academic and/or intellectual outcomes, or the capacity to advocate for
this approach with policymakers and parents. All of these debates and tensions reflect
competing and contested positions on the purposes of early childhood education.

Policy and the spectre of school readiness

My brief foray into curricular policies internationally suggests that these are also heavily
conflicted in the ideas they express with regard to curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and
outcomes. Investment in school readiness as a main purpose appeals to many govern-
ments and parents, a goal included subtly in more progressive jurisdictions with an
emphasis in policy on “pathways” and efforts towards a “seamless” education
system. The term school readiness has invited further critical debates about children’s
capabilities, the age of starting school, and associated pedagogies and policies
(Bingham & Whitebread, 2018).

The debate about school readiness reflects a focus on neoliberal, human capital
theory as a rationale for economic investment in early childhood education, heavily
influenced further by powerful international organisations, such as the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that has produced several
reports on early childhood education with a view to influencing policy. From a
human capital perspective, the purpose of early childhood education is investing in
preparation for later education and life chances, often resulting in programmes and
policies emphasising academic outcomes and preparation for school. The term Baby
PISA has even entered the lexicon (Pence, 2016) to reflect the narrow academic
focus of specialist programmes, measurable assessments, and a connection with
international comparison testing regimes in primary and secondary schooling. Baby
PISA refers to an assessment that the OECD is attempting to introduce to early
childhood education, one that has met great resistance.

Debates over which outcomes to emphasise are long-standing and continuing
(see Le et al., 2019). Much of the literature that has reported on long-term out-
comes of studies has placed cognitive (i.e., academic) and non-cognitive outcomes
separately, and debated which might be most important to emphasise for which
groups (e.g., Heckman & Karapakula, 2019; Heckman et al., 2013). Yet, as
Heckman et al. (2013) themselves noted, little is actually known about the
mechanisms used in early childhood education to investigate the long-term effects
of either kinds of outcomes.

A human capital perspective also views children as future productive con-
tributors to the economy who will cost less to health and social budgets. Recently

Practices and policies 49

these positivistic, neoliberal, and economic imperatives have also used “seductive new
narratives associated with advances in neuroscience” (Sumsion, 2019, p. 644). Some of
this research is appealing, but may be being used selectively or be misrepresented in
policy initiatives to justify existing practices, and maintain an interventionist approach
to early childhood provision.

In this way too, a human capital approach limits understanding of the potential
contributions of early childhood to children’s learning and development. The
research on long-term outcomes of early childhood education does not capture
children’s individually and collectively rich capabilities and learning; rather it
measures children against so-called typical or desirable outcomes and progressions
that ignore the critiques of child development theory outlined earlier. While
some intervention programmes have shown long-term value relative to life
course outcomes, scholars have realised that not all claims may be valid. For
example, studies collected insufficient data about control group children’s home
experiences and education, or the quality of their subsequent schooling experi-
ences, and features that could be scaled-up or emulated in other programmes
were unable to be specified (Farran & Lipsey, 2016). Further, claims made may
not be so relevant in today’s world in order to continue to influence policy
(Ansari & Purtell, 2018; Farran & Lipsey, 2016).

Emphases on academic outcomes are perhaps unsurprising, too, when we
remember that Paradise and Rogoff (2009, see Chapter 2) stated that the intellectual
demands of informal learning are under-recognised and undervalued. These demands
are also complex to identify, appreciate, encapsulate, and assess. This may be another
reason school readiness discourses are compelling.

Contemporary child development research and theories also mean we are better
aware of the way that the narrowly defined, measurable outcomes used commonly
in school readiness are Western-oriented, denying context and understandings of
children’s ways of knowing and learning. They do not take account of the highly
variable ways in which children learn, overlooking what might be their interests
and strengths. In addition, there is plenty of evidence that school readiness pro-
grammes suffer a fadeout effect, likely related to children experiencing didactic
teaching rather than learning to be a learner, that is, develop a positive identity as a
learner (e.g., Marcon, 2002).

Towards an alternative framing: capability theory

The human capital and cost–benefit analyses foci of economists such as Heckman
have been questioned and critiqued. An instrumental view of education reduces
the richness and complexity of learning and ignores the effect of context. Much
research on learning indicates that learning is broad, complex, and holistic, and is
not time bound or coherent in ways measured by many academically focused
outcomes measures (see Chapter 2). It certainly does not allow for the way that
identity development is prominent in analyses of children’s interests in my research,
a matter taken up further in Chapter 9 in relation to the long-term outcomes of

50 Practices and policies

concern to human capitalism. A broader and longer-term view of outcomes is
necessary to capture children’s rich learning capabilities as they occur in the present
alongside consideration of the future.

A different framing for achievement, and a more comprehensive view of out-
comes, can capture the delicate and powerful interplay of children’s rich learning
capabilities in social and cultural contexts. Cary Buzzelli (e.g., 2015, 2018, 2020)
argues that the capability approach developed by another economist, Amartya Sen
(1985, 1993, 1999), and further developed by Martha Nussbaum (2011), offers a
more comprehensive mechanism for considering the contributions of early child-
hood education to children’s learning and development.

Sen’s work aligns with Rogoff’s discussed in Chapter 2 in that it seeks to shift the
direction of debate about human development to identifying capability and oppor-
tunity as central to human potential. Similarly, both participation and agency (as
discussed in Chapter 2 and here), are critical to discussions of capability. Participation
enriches children’s capacity to act with agency, make decisions, and take opportu-
nities to enact their own ways of learning, knowing, doing, and being. A capabilities
approach accounts for what a person is able to do and be, with support, in their
particular social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. This support comprises
what are termed conversion factors, particular enablers and constraints that affect an
ability to achieve goals. These may be personal (e.g., literacy skills and knowledge),
social (e.g., policies, expectations, and relationships), or environmental (e.g., organi-
sational features). For example, becoming literate involves multiple personal and
social opportunities to read and write, and having access to reading materials.

As Nussbaum puts it, the capabilities approach “holds that the key question to
ask … is ‘What is each person able to do and be?’” (p. 18); this point aligns with
my earlier arguments on children’s interests. The approach focuses on the oppor-
tunities and resources available to people to take up those opportunities: “[i]t thus
commits itself to respect for people’s power of self-definition” (p. 18). In this way,
capability theory shares a value with human capital theory, that of economic suc-
cess for societies as a foundation for well-being. Coupled with a rights perspective,
capabilities are critical to human flourishing, and have both instrumental and
intrinsic value (Robeyns, 2006).

Capabilities represent freedoms and functionings—functionings are knowledge,
abilities, and skills able to be expanded so people can make choices in their lives
and be empowered to realise those choices. Following the earlier example, being
literate then means one can choose to read a book, and can interpret symbols on
maps. A capability approach is also ethical: “it asks, among the many things that
human beings might develop the capacity to do, which ones are the really valuable
ones, which are the ones that a minimally just society will endeavour to nurture
and support?” (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 28). I argue that children’s interests ought to be
one of the valued capacities to develop given their multiple benefits for children’s
learning and well-being.

Sen highlighted well-being and agency as central to his theory, and discussed the
importance of education, respect, and dignity for humans. However, he did not

Practices and policies 51

identify a particular set of capabilities. This is likely to be partly in a wish to avoid
global comparisons of capabilities to develop average well-being measures, and
partly to enable different societies, or fields of study, to develop their own discus-
sions and debates.

Sen’s work invites diverse applications, for example academic or policy-oriented,
theoretical, empirical or applied (Robeyns, 2005). In developing Sen’s ideas,
Nussbaum identified 10 capabilities she deemed central. These could be applied to,
and revised in, different contexts. Her selected capabilities also illustrate that well-
being goes beyond the material aspects of life:

live a long life;
have bodily health;
have bodily integrity;
be able to use the senses, imagination, and thoughts;
have and express emotions;
be able to make good choices in life (termed “practical reason”);
care about and engage with other humans;
care about and live with animals, plants, and the world of nature;
to play; and,
have political and material control over one’s environment.

Nussbaum’s capabilities are themes in keeping with both the ethos of early childhood
education discussed in this chapter and much of the recent research on children’s
interests and learning (Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7). These capabilities also reflect the
democratic and values-driven emphases of many curricular policy documents.
Bringing together the new principles for children’s learning proposed in Chapter 2,
children’s rights, and childhood studies, suggests that children can be considered to have
their own capabilities as children rather than as future adults. This perspective is offered in a
growing body of empirical work that has begun connecting capability theory with
children’s lives and early childhood education internationally.

Capability theory therefore has the potential to underpin, foster, and act on
sociocultural and childhood studies’ views of children as competent learners, whose
rights, agency, and well-being are paramount in the early years. Buzzelli (2020)
argued that this theory, and associated early childhood scholarship, have the
potential to change the discourse to provide new normative language for perspec-
tives on children’s development and learning, deriving from scrutiny of curriculum,
pedagogy, and assessment. Framing a series of “what if?” questions, Buzzelli asked
whether “learning activities allow children freedom to pursue interests to their
fullest while acknowledging the moral and legal responsibilities of teachers to
determine boundaries of children’s freedoms in pursuit of their own well-being?”
(p. 166). For Buzzelli, morality also includes the early childhood field reflecting on
beliefs and practices that influence children’s abilities to use resources to achieve
their goals, and moving away from simplistic binaries that have dogged the field. As
Buzzelli stated, this is “challenging and daunting work” (p. 168).

52 Practices and policies

A capabilities approach accounts for the contributions of human capital to life
opportunities and well-being through a “broader and richer description of children’s
agency and critical thinking abilities, which has implications for assessment practices”
(Buzzelli, 2015, p. 208). This theory supports an emphasis on respecting children’s
interests and ways of knowing and learning, and therefore holistic rather than
atomised and measurable progression outcomes. Deeper interpretations of chil-
dren’s interests aligned with capability theory offer a fruitful avenue for redirecting
assessment, outcomes, and school readiness debates.

Summary

Early childhood practice once had a clear and simple path. Beliefs about play and
child-centredness, and children’s naturally unfolding capacities through child
development theories, meant that a well-resourced, activity-rich play environment
with little teacher input was recommended. Criticisms of these ideas as Eurocentric
and not accounting for cultural diversity in development, learning, beliefs, and
practices has drawn attention to a broad range of children’s evolving capabilities as
learners through research across contexts aligned with sociocultural and childhood
studies perspectives.

Since governments began significant policy investment in early childhood
education, attention has turned to the expected outcomes of early childhood
provision, often related to academic school readiness. Still influenced by child
development theories, many curricular documents emphasise outcomes that
appear to have measurable progressions translated into disciplinary knowledge expec-
tations. Yet, Hatch (2020) is clear that these are not what child development theory
can offer, and that other sources need consideration for the intellectual content of
curriculum. In addition, increasing emphases on school readiness programmes have
shown fadeout effect, and that a positive identity as a learner is more valuable than rote
learning of decontextualised and discrete pieces of academic knowledge (e.g., Marcon,
2002). Farran and Lipsey (2016) contended that the outcomes “knowledge base was
dangerously weak” (p. 15).

To close the chapter, I offered capability theory as an alternative to human
capital theory to create new possibilities that address debates and tensions in prac-
tice and policy. Capability theory is interdisciplinary and can offer a fuller and more
holistic perspective on the contribution of early childhood education to children’s
lives and well-being. I highlighted the way children’s interests and capabilities
might be central to developing the kinds of economically successful—but also
democratic and values-driven societies—reflected in most policy emphases. I
describe these interests and capabilities in later chapters.

Shifts in child development theory from psychological to sociocultural perspec-
tives and childhood studies may appear as a trajectory. However, as Alan Prout
(2005) argued, we do children and ourselves a disservice if a sociological perspec-
tive of childhood is counterposed to a natural or biological one, and the notion of
children as social actors who have agency is used to eclipse or ignore the biological/

Practices and policies 53

developmental child. Prout acknowledged that the legacy of combining psychology
and sociology means we have appreciation of children’s biological, developmental,
and sociocultural learning to bring together. For example, I referred in Chapter 2 to
children’s lack of life experience that means they have a partial and seemingly dis-
organised understanding of the world, a point taken up in Chapter 7. Biological
understandings of memory development have implications for research consent and
dissemination plans (Chapter 4). Sociological understandings of children as capable of
expressing what matters to them have implications for projects designed to get close
to understanding children’s interests (Chapter 4). Sociocultural and sociological
implications ensure we can also get to the heart of what matters to children,
including a focus on their interests represented in their play (Chapters 5–7).

Bringing together different perspectives helps with reducing the generalisations
one perspective may encourage and “engenders a necessary tentativeness and humi-
lity concerning the limits of our insights” (Sumsion & Goodfellow, 2012, p. 315).
Ways to get closer to understandings of children’s interests through ethical research
are therefore needed, and are the focus of the next chapter.

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4

UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN’S
INTERESTS

Relational, ethical research

Introduction
Towards the end of a year of fieldwork, I was sitting at a morning tea table with a
small group of children. A child who had just joined the setting asked me, “Are
you a kindy teacher?” Imogen, aged almost 3 and a focus child in my research,
shook her head profusely and responded quickly, “Nah nah nah, she take more
photos and write in books.” The child then asked me, “Whose Mum are you?”
Imogen responded again on my behalf, “Nah nah nah, she got big kids.”

What is a researcher? What does a researcher do differently to a parent or teacher?
These questions, considered from a child’s perspective, are helpful in guiding
researcher decision-making, from conception to dissemination, throughout an
empirical study that involves children under 5 years old. In early childhood settings,
children may welcome and enjoy the presence of a new adult, one who perhaps has
more freedom and time for them than do teachers with multiple responsibilities. Some
children are curious about these adults, observe them intently, and ask questions to get
to know them. This is evident in Imogen developing understandings about ways I was
different to other adults in her life.

However, children’s understandings of what research is, what data are, how
data will be generated and interpreted, and the implications and ramifications of
their interacting and playing with researchers, will necessarily be limited. Any
understandings on their part will be ongoing, cumulative, developmental, and
retrospective. This is a good example of viewing children as both capable and
agentic, but limited by biological capacities such as memory development. Ioanna
Palaiologou (2019) notes researchers can take account of both considerations
“and accommodate them as important and complementary, rather than compet-
ing, and seek ways to make them part of reflexive critical thinking on how we
conduct research with children” (p. 41).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881-4

Relational, ethical research 59

The past 30 years has seen a rise in qualitative methodologies. Interpretivist
research and qualitative methods are now well established and accepted. Research
including infants, toddlers, and young children as participants has flourished during
this time. To understand concepts such as children’s interests, and engage in
research conversations about children’s lives, we have to get close to their experi-
ences. Our goal, then, is to undertake thoughtfully designed, worthwhile, robust,
and trustworthy research that draws from multiple disciplines, and to address power
relationships and interpretation as ethical and moral imperatives. Aligned with these
ideas is advocacy—bringing to the fore children’s perspectives that might not
otherwise be recognised in practice and policy.

In these ways, we move towards Bruner’s (1983) hope that

psychology would fuse with anthropology and sociology, and such more
humane fields as linguistics. … Psychology is almost always the richer for
being combined in new amalgams of learning: it needs rich context. … I had
also hoped that psychology would find enough self-confidence to address …
issues of human values.

(p. 280)

The theoretical shifts from viewing children as individuals undertaking decontextua-
lised progressions of learning to children’s learning being deeply embedded in social
and cultural contexts, and changing views of children’s development and capabilities
outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, have in turn created strong winds of change in the
methods used to study early childhood education. These methods build on—and cri-
tique in doing so—a rich history of child development and social sciences research.
Such shifts in theory and research are in keeping with values of empowerment and
relationships common in early childhood curricular documents, and blend the dis-
ciplines Bruner identified: psychology, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics.

This chapter takes a position aligned with images of children as active partici-
pants, and capable learners and communicators. Whatever the methodologies and
methods used by researchers, children have rights to be treated respectfully in
research activities. While cognisant of children’s biological constraints, research
must enable children to show their knowledge and capabilities in their families,
communities, and cultures.

Methodology involves consideration of the theories underpinning selected
methods, and ought to align across a project. The methodologies and methods
discussed in this chapter align with the sociocultural theories and argument pro-
moted in Chapter 2: that children’s informal learning in all contexts is rich and in
depth, involves their participation in a wide range of activities and practices, and is
grounded in values, inquiry, and knowledge building in matters of interest. I
therefore locate this chapter on research with children within a participatory para-
digm to connect with the arguments of the previous two chapters: that participa-
tion is fundamental to the powerful relationship between interests and informal
learning, and to harnessing this relationship in play-based early childhood

60 Relational, ethical research

education settings. Methods are embedded in naturalistic research. In these studies,
data are generated rather than collected or gathered: fieldwork involves constant
decisions about where to place oneself and associated research tools, and who and
what to listen to or observe.

Qualitative methods therefore concurrently require detailed attention to
researcher decision-making. Methods, ethical principles, processes, and practices
that sit alongside these—and the dilemmas and debates yet to be resolved—are the
substance of this chapter. Methods that treat children as knowledgeable, capable,
and agentic are now de rigueur, but suffused with challenges that researchers may
not always perhaps consider or report.

Participatory research

I use the term participatory rather than qualitative deliberately to signify two key
ideas. The first is that participation is a word that recognises children’s interests,
agency, and capabilities in their everyday lives, and so seeks to reduce a power
differential between adults and children as researchers attempt to understand chil-
dren’s perspectives (see Palaiologou, 2019). The second is that associated methods
involve the active participation of researchers in trying to understand children’s
everyday lives; in the case of my research, their underlying interests and inquiries.

Contemporary participatory research draws from ethnography, acknowledging that
significant periods of fieldwork are vital to developing relationships that empower
participation and therefore get as close as possible to children’s worlds and under-
standings. Ethnography (from the Greek words ethnos meaning people and graphia
meaning writing) is rooted in anthropology and sociology as disciplines, and focuses
on studying people in their natural environments. Ethnographers traditionally devoted
significant time to these studies, including living within communities and writing
extensive field notes and reflections in order to provide deep insight into people’s
everyday lives.

Ethnography became used in educational research through studies that made efforts
to understand the disparities between children’s home and education experiences,
without explanations relying on deficit discourses of linguistically and culturally diverse
children’s backgrounds promoted by normative, Western views of development. An
early example of this was the funds of knowledge studies of the 1980s—collaborations
of different expertise, led by anthropology professor Norma González, literacy professor
Luis Moll, and teacher Cathy Amanti—studies that pointed to the value of involving
teachers in research partnerships (see González et al., 2005, and Chapter 5).

Ethnography is a flexible and generative methodology that celebrates complexity
and includes researcher reflexivity. There are five distinguishing fundamental attri-
butes of ethnography: understanding culture; interpreting findings with respect to
historical, political, social, cultural, and economic influences; iterative (re)engagement
with research questions, assumptions, theories, and methods; having empathy for
participants through building strong relationships and commitments; and valuing
story-telling as a way to find meaning (Harrison, 2020).

Relational, ethical research 61

Experienced early childhood researchers, Rosie Flewitt and Lynn Ang (2020),
identify seven characteristics of ethnographic research that echo Harrison’s attributes.
These are useful for novice and experienced researchers to consider in relation to
designing and understanding their work:

1. Ethnographers usually bring a strong sociocultural theoretical framework to their
research. The research questions are refined as understandings are ascertained.

2. Research involves naturalistic, everyday contexts.
3. Multiple, connected methods generate data; commonly observation field

notes, interviews, analysis of documents, and photographs of artefacts.
4. Researchers are largely participant observers. They are reflective about their

own assumptions and decisions in influencing what is observed and inter-
preting the findings.
5. Ethnography is in depth and iterative; emerging patterns and themes are
revisited in successive phases of the project.
6. Findings reported are highly descriptive, and are aligned with underpinning
theory.
7. Findings represent participants’ lives, experiences, beliefs, and practices as
interpreted by researchers; hence researchers must be self-aware and reflexive
about their decision-making in the project.

Many qualitative studies draw on common ethnographic tools and methods to
engage with participants periodically over shorter timespans. For this reason, I dis-
tinguish ethnography from the typical participatory research largely reported in
qualitative research. Participatory research can occur when researchers engage reg-
ularly in the everyday, formal, and informal experiences of children in their families
and communities, including in their early childhood centres. Such research is
organic and develops in iterative phases as data are analysed, participants collaborate
in, or at least verify, interpretations, and research questions are refined. In my
fieldwork, I commonly immersed myself in children’s play, interests, and learning
on a once-weekly basis to accommodate the teaching demands of my university.

Accordingly, methods originating in ethnography are methods that lend them-
selves well to participatory research when used thoughtfully and in tandem:
observations, field notes, interviews, and researcher journals. Additional methods
responsive to children’s participation have evolved over time. These are also out-
lined later, including those I have used in my research programme on children’s
interests. At this point, I return to the key question posed earlier of what and who
a researcher is from children’s perspectives by outlining the values and conduct of
participatory researchers.

Researcher role and reflexivity

Within participatory approaches, relationships, respect, and reciprocity are key
values as researchers work to gain access to children’s lives and the insights children

62 Relational, ethical research

offer about their experiences. In considering ways children might understand the
roles and responsibilities of a researcher, Bill Corsaro (1985, 2018) has gone to
some lengths in various projects to describe his efforts to differentiate his role as a
researcher from those of teachers or parents. I adopted and adapted his approaches
in my fieldwork to involve myself in children’s play, and in attempts to enable
them to understand my role, intentions, and methods. I tried not to act with
children in ways Corsaro describes as typical of adults, such as initiating interactions
or standing above them. Instead, I commonly positioned myself for reasonably
lengthy periods of time nearby children and waited for them to initiate an inter-
action. Once I established a few key relationships with children in each setting,
most then accepted me, commonly as a person whose activities were intriguing,
and as a resource provider and/or extra playmate.

In studies focusing on children’s interests, I needed “to gain insight into what
mattered most to them” (Corsaro, 1985, p. 28, italics in original). My participant-
observations were, at times, of individual children interacting with cultural tools
in the play environment; but more frequently in “interactive episodes” (Corsaro,
1985, p. 22) between child peers and teachers and children. My field notes
recorded observations of children’s interests and inquiries, ways in which children
enacted their interests, and when these interests were noticed, recognised, and
engaged with by teachers. What I participated in and recorded depended on
where I happened to be positioned at the time, noted in a separate column in the
field notes along with thoughts, questions, and tentative interpretations. In the
main, I chose to be where a large group of children and teachers were; but,
increasingly over time and as focus children were identified, I spent time with
those children at their invitation.

This kind of participant observation has been described as “least adult,” a way of
being with children that encouraged acceptance by them through adopting a
“friendly, non-authoritative, marginal role” (Mandell, 1991, p. 39) and engaging with
them in their activities. While this approach largely worked for me, it created dilem-
mas on occasion that Mandell described as children role testing and rule stretching. In
one instance, teachers announced it was time to tidy the play environment; the
expected practice was that children and teachers did so together. A 4-year-old girl,
Jamie, who had been deeply absorbed reading with me for some time said quietly
“Let’s not do that. I didn’t do that once and nobody noticed.” I was torn: Jamie clearly
indicated she knew my role was not that typical of a teacher or parent, and pedago-
gically I support children being able to engage with their interests uninterrupted.
However, I was also ethically bound to not change the environment children experi-
ence, including doing anything that caused issues for teachers. As a compromise, Jamie
agreed we would put the book we were reading in my research bag rather than put it
back on the bookshelf as would be expected. Through this action, she could be
assured it would be available to her to read with me again the next day.

Dilemmas such as this one with Jamie are examples of the importance of
reflexivity, a term that encompasses self-awareness of researcher actions and deci-
sions during a project, and ways these influence the project’s values, data

Relational, ethical research 63

generation, and interpretation (Musgrave, 2019). Reflexivity goes beyond being
reflective to include a researcher applying to themselves the same critical frame,
methods, or analyses used in relation to their research topic, participants, and
data. Reflexivity is also important because it fosters attention to the importance
of ethical practices throughout a project. Reflexivity is also used in-the-moment
as a form of ethical praxis in making judgements during participatory research
(Palaiologou, 2019), and in hindsight to consider dilemmas and think of future
possible actions in similar situations.

I now further address the question of what a researcher does that is different to a
parent and/or teacher. Entering the lives of others for research purposes is a privi-
lege. The experience of a researcher or research team, and the mentoring of stu-
dent researchers and new team members in ethical practices, are critical to ensuring
good experiences and positive outcomes for all participants, particularly children.
Attention to ethics throughout a project is essential to enabling children’s ongoing
understandings and participation. Hence ethical approvals, and associated principles
and processes, are addressed next, before discussion of participatory methods
applied to studies with young children.

Ethical approvals

Gaining approval from overarching bodies is a vital first step. These bodies may
include universities and educational organisations that focus on protection, rights,
risks, principles, and outcomes. The value of an approval process typically lies in
requiring an application that has encouraged researchers to think carefully and
clearly through the aims, value, and design of the project, what is being asked of
participants, and the application of ethical principles and practices that sit alongside
the project. All of these need to be expressed in jargon-free ways that are accessible
to a lay audience, helpful later in explaining a study to potential participants.

Educational settings often gain unqualified approval from parents to use
children’s data for assessment and reporting purposes. Special efforts need to be
paid to explaining to parents—and sometimes educational leaders and teachers—
how and why research purposes are different and require explicit permissions.
Tiered permissions through overarching organisations, principals, or head teachers,
through to teachers, families, and then children themselves, take time. Consent also
involves opportunities to meet potential participants personally to go beyond the
formality of an information sheet, and talk about and question what participation
involves. All need to understand there is no obligation to participate.

In increasingly diverse communities, matters of consent must clearly address
considerations of social and cultural sensitivity. Understanding cultural values is
critical to all other principles too. For example, we have known for some time that
collective values may outweigh the capacity of individuals to give consent (e.g.,
Suaalii & Mavoa, 2001). This is where a face-to-face group meeting with potential
participants, including with information and consent sheets translated into repre-
sentative languages, can build respectful relationships. More than one meeting may

64 Relational, ethical research

be needed to build trust, for families and children to understand the relationship
between their children’s education and the research, and that a decision to parti-
cipate or not, or later withdraw, will not affect their educational provision or
outcomes.

Above all, considerations of ethics occur throughout a project, from design to
fieldwork to dissemination. In the absence of a specific and fulsome guide to
ethical decision-making where young children were primary participants in
research, Cullen et al. (2011) posed a series of questions at each phase to guide
researcher decision-making. For example, five questions related to the planning
phase that reflect respect, relationships, and reciprocity are:

Are the research topic and questions appropriate for the age group?
Are the data-gathering procedures appropriate for this age group?
Are the children able to give consent/assent?
Do the procedures make good use of children’s time?
Who benefits from the research?

Applying ethical principles to studies with children

“[A]pplying ethics principles in practice is a complex and dynamic process that
requires critical reflection throughout” (Flewitt & Ang, 2020, p. 31). In a similar
vein to Cullen et al., in building an ethical stance prior to undertaking a project,
Flewitt and Ang (2020) offer a series of questions about the research topic, parti-
cipant selection, consent processes, approaches to relationships, assessing risks, data
storage, and confidentiality.

There are a number of prominent and well-accepted ethical principles enshrined
in guidelines and approvals processes discussed in the literature. Those focused on
in this section pertaining to children’s participation are voluntary participation and
informed consent, ensuring benefits for participants—or at the very least, absence
of harm—and considerations of confidentiality.

Voluntary participation and informed consent

External researchers enter settings as outsiders. They need to build trusting and
respectful relationships with participants while abiding by ethical principles and
processes. If researchers are already known to a setting, they need to clearly dif-
ferentiate their research role, purposes, and activities. In ethical protocols, for chil-
dren aged less than 5, the first level of consent rests legally with parents. This has
caused dilemmas for me. A research journal noted the following incident:

I was talking and playing with children in the outdoor playground and taking
occasional photos. A child whose parents had not agreed to her participation
was clearly conscious that I had not taken a photo of her. She asked me to
take one of her skipping. In a digital age, I could have done so, and

Relational, ethical research 65

immediately deleted it, ensuring she did not feel left out. Aware of reminding
children I was a researcher though, and thinking about ethics, I explained that
as I wasn’t a teacher I needed special permission from her parents and that I
didn’t have that. She looked crestfallen. I said I could still play and talk with
her though, and I made a special effort to do so for the rest of that morning.

As a tenet of informed consent, project information needs to be offered in ways
participants can comprehend in order to voluntarily agree to participate or not.
Therefore, researchers need to make the effort to offer sufficient information to
children and gain their consent for participation in research projects in child-
friendly ways, and be alert to ongoing consent or assent throughout (Harcourt &
Conroy, 2005; Hedges, 2002). There appears to be no international agreement on
an age where direct consent is required, and suggestions that an age in itself is a
relic from age-related child development views contrary to images of capable
children. However, few would argue that there are no practical considerations
related to children’s understandings, maturity, and experience that affect the ability
of young children, particularly those aged less than 3 years, to give true consent to
research. Accordingly, some researchers use the word assent instead in relation to
children’s involvement as informed participants.

Involving children directly in consent moves beyond parental consent as proxy,
is respectful of their rights, and an indication of the kind of relationships and
interactions researchers want with them. Children can be involved in researcher
consent processes. Child-friendly participant information may take the form of a
picture book, or a one- or two-page visual in poster form that includes diagrams
and photos of the project topic, the researcher, and the outcomes. Outcomes
might be explained through use of examples from previous projects to illustrate
what might happen with data generated. Forms of consent can include children’s
drawings post-information, use of emojis or other diagrammatically friendly
notions of assent and dissent, and spaces for children to write their name—often
this may be in early notation form for infants and toddlers. There is growth in
interest in researchers sharing their approaches and some useful and detailed advice
now in the literature (e.g., see Arnott et al., 2020).

Children can also be involved in a researcher’s explanation and preparation for
data generation, such as by taking photos and videos of each other with the
researcher’s equipment. As Imogen’s experience and explanation of me as a
researcher illustrated at the beginning of this chapter, these experiences may assist
understanding of the scope, purpose, focus, and intensity of these tools and methods.
However, they may still possibly leave children uncertain as to the difference
between a researcher, teacher, and parent when it comes to consenting for activities
such as the usage and dissemination of the data generated.

A common expectation of the consent process is to enable potential participants
to ask questions, ostensibly about the research. As Liz Chesworth (2018) illustrated,
children may instead use this as an opportunity to ask questions to get to know and
build a relationship with this new adult. In Chesworth’s case, a child asked her

66 Relational, ethical research

whether she had any pets. An in-depth conversation took place that provided early
insights into the child’s interests. At some point that I had neglected to note in my
journal, Imogen must have asked me about my children. After my visit and inter-
view at her home, she asked me when she could come and visit my house and play
with my children, indicating the kind of interest in my life that I had in hers, and
an expectation of reciprocity.

Researchers also need to be alert for ongoing voluntary participation, that is
assent and dissent, throughout the project. The latter is particularly pertinent where
studies involve infants whose parents have given proxy consent for their children’s
involvement. Explicit indications may be built into the research, such as Ches-
worth’s (2018) use of “thumbs up, thumbs down” signals use by children to indi-
cate permission to film them each time. Ongoing vigilance, conversations, and
observation are important as children may indicate both verbal and non-verbal
assent and dissent throughout the project. In addition, one time of dissent may not
mean the child actually wants to withdraw participation from the project; it may
simply mean they have other priorities at that time.

In one project, I received a sharp reminder about dissent well into the fieldwork.
I was observing a focus child, Caitlin, and her friends playing a game they had
imaginatively developed characters and a script for, loosely based on a children’s
television programme. Harry asked Caitlin a question I found difficult to hear, so I
asked him “What was that about?” He put me in my place by replying, “I was
talking to her, not you.” I had inadvertently interrupted their game. Although
Harry usually assented to my research activities, that assent did not extend to this
instance. Such “interactional errors” (Mandell, 1991, p. 42) disrupt the flow and
process of both children’s play and the research.

Benefits for participants

Another fundamental principle in codes of ethics is that of minimising harm. In the
case of children in early childhood settings, usual application is to disrupt the
normal environment as little as possible. However, I argue that this principle is
inadequate on its own and that a more important parallel is to ensure the project
adds value to children’s experiences.

A researcher in an early childhood setting has the privilege of spending time in
more lengthy interactions with children than most teachers, and, therefore, is in a
position to inform parents and teachers of children’s play, interests, and learning. In
one project, I chose to concentrate on 16-month-old Aidan for a whole morning.
I followed his choices, actions, behaviours, and language (Hedges, 2011). As a
gesture of reciprocity for participation, I rewrote my field notes into the form of a
letter from him to his parents. I gave them the letter and the photos I had taken.
They were delighted, responding that they had gained insights into him that would
benefit their interactions with him at home.

At a broader level, given that the purpose of research is to increase understandings,
sharing data with participants during a project, and later, findings with teachers,

Relational, ethical research 67

professional organisations, researchers, and policymakers can prompt reflection, and
improve the educational experiences of children. A range of dissemination modes can
help access to findings, along with being a researcher who is responsive to ongoing
contact for support (see the “Disseminating research” section in this chapter).

Confidentiality

Anonymity means that no setting or participant is identifiable, and is a legacy cri-
terion from quantitative designs involving methods such as surveys. I argue that
there can be no such thing as anonymity in qualitative research, particularly where
researchers have spent a long time in a setting, or where funders like to name the
settings and teachers involved in research partnerships. Even where visual images
are not used, and descriptions of contexts and settings are as generic as possible,
there will be a large number of people—teachers and their leaders, parents, families
and community members, children and siblings, and visitors to the settings—who
know that research has taken place there. They will likely recognise descriptions, as
may others, and not be aware of the project’s ethics.

Privacy considerations are instead paramount in the principle of confidentiality,
and related considerations and practices. Where topics of study are sensitive and
participants may be embarrassed or compromised, children can select their own
pseudonyms to explain how confidentiality can work. Images of children used in
dissemination can be pixelated or line drawings used instead, and voices on videos
altered. However, these actions risk losing the range of non-verbal communicative
features that research with young children draws on in analysis. Moreover, these
practices can be confusing to children who are used to seeing photos and videos of
themselves in multiple venues, find it perplexing that their faces have been blurred
out, and want to use their own name.

In much participatory research, a principle of crediting participants for being part of
a project, through use of the names of centres and people, is also possible (Cullen et al.,
2011). I have used credit to honour the values of respect, relationships, and reciprocity,
and to acknowledge the length of time spent together on a project. Credit might
happen where findings are about the kinds of practices that help to move the field
forward. Credit respects children’s experiences and understandings too. However, I
always offer the option of pseudonyms, for example, where child protection concerns
occur, and out of respect I choose to give pseudonyms when describing less than
positive children’s experiences or teaching practices. I have realised recently that
research data are often used long after a researcher has left the field, so the principle of
credit requires further consideration in relation to dissemination.

Methods to understand interests

I now shift to considerations of methods that enable us to get closer to under-
standing children’s interests while also keeping ethical principles in mind. In doing
so, I reiterate that these methods need to be used flexibly within naturalistic

68 Relational, ethical research

approaches, and in the changing and dynamic contexts of children’s experience.
Otherwise, they risk being imposed, thereby not honouring relationships
developed and reducing a power differential inherent in adopting a “least
adult” persona. In this way too, a researcher is open to unexpected encounters
with children that provide insight into children’s worlds (Chesworth, 2018).

Methods used and adapted for children’s participation can be child-friendly, and,
in line with enacting the role of a researcher, made sufficiently clear to children
that these are different to what teachers and/or parents do with them. Adults,
namely parents, other family members—I have found grandparents insightful—and
teachers, are critical to researchers’ understandings and interpretation through both
direct involvement as participants and validating findings and interpretations.
Naturally, my focus here is on methods, ethics, and children’s involvement in
projects. Moreover, I continue to use the term participatory rather than child-centred
or child-friendly or child voice, terms used in much of the literature. This is partly to
avoid the assumptions of child-centredness (Chapter 3), and partly to indicate that
the methods, strategies, knowledge, and skills a researcher draws on are not dis-
similar to those required for adult participants. It also acknowledges that inter-
pretations lie ultimately with researchers.

Any good research project utilises a range of methods so that findings can be in
depth, justifiable, and meet qualitative research criteria such as validity and trust-
worthiness. Clark and Moss (2001) coined the term mosaic approach to indicate a
range of methods that enable children to show researchers what is important to
them. More recently, the term multimodal is frequent in descriptions of approaches
that do not rely on fluency in oral language to get close to children, do not assume
verbal language is central to children’s interactions, and seek to locate patterns in
modes of meaning making shaped in, and by, particular contexts (see Flewitt &
Ang, 2020). The following methods support such approaches.

Observations and field notes

A cornerstone of ethnographic research is participant observation, the act of closely
watching while making efforts to keep participants at ease. While in some projects
it may be possible to be an uninvolved observer, in studies with children that is
almost impossible once relationships are established, and children are informed
about the project. Hence, almost full participation in children’s experiences is a
likely positioning for many researchers of early childhood education.

Observations may be continual over time, or episodic at intervals over a time-frame.
Researchers write field notes of these observations with a focus on insights for the
research. Notes may be about people, places, activities, conversations, interactions,
materials and resources, significant and critical events, and sometimes thoughts and
impressions, to write up later in a research journal. In my studies I used small note-
books to make brief notes about my observations; notes that were memory aids and
written up in more depth immediately after each observation period. Many researchers
now bring an iPad or laptop on-site to facilitate the writing of field notes. The physical

Relational, ethical research 69

act of constantly taking notes can also act as a way to separate researcher and teacher
roles and assure children’s ongoing assent.

Children are often fascinated by these researcher actions and behaviours as part
of understanding the researcher’s role. In one project, a number of children wanted
to both understand what I was doing and then to help me “record” data. This
meant allowing children to write in my notebook and take photos with my
camera. Aidan began to greet my arrival with “Pen! Pen!” as if that were my name.
He would write in my notebook, smile, give the tools back to me, then invite me
to play and interact with him. Imogen eventually wanted her own notebook and
pen to use whenever she wished, and would sit beside me at times during field-
work describing verbally what children were doing in front of us and “writing” in
her notebook. Children wanted to use my camera to take photos: the only time it
was dropped in the sandpit was by me. These data were critical in realising that a
new interest was stimulated by a researcher’s participation in the setting, and that
interests can be revealed when children take their own photos. I discuss visual
observation methods next.

Visual methods for observation

Photos and videos are ubiquitous in many children’s life experiences now, including
in parents’ ongoing recording and sharing via social media means, and in teachers’
assessment practices. Visual methods have therefore unsurprisingly become very
popular as a way of recording research observations. These methods enable less reli-
ance on memory and interpretation as part of field observations. In addition, they
may facilitate recordings of features such as cultural celebrations and artefacts to be
more accurate and authentic than field notes.

Participatory researchers have therefore added new tools to their research toolkit
as technology has permitted. Visual methods are particularly useful for studies with
infants and toddlers. The use of video cameras has further multiple benefits. These
include enabling the fine-grained and embodied communications of children such
as facial expressions and body language, any non-verbal responses, and silences, to
become visible in visual data in ways not captured by interview transcripts or
written field notes. Video data can be viewed multiple times to develop deeper
analyses and interpretations of children’s experiences.

Enabling children to take their own photos is straightforward in an era of digital
cameras. Photos provide insights into places, people, events, and material items
adults might overlook as interests. Some time ago, DeMarie (2001) reported on
children’s experience of a trip to the zoo. She gave children disposable cameras to
take photos of what interested them on a trip to the zoo. Within the 3- to 5-year-
old cohort of her study, DeMarie expected most would be of animals. She was
fascinated to find photos of other children, shoes, and cracks in the footpath among
these photos.

However, the increased use of visual methods is fraught with ethical concerns.
Various projects have had children wearing cameras themselves to provide unique

70 Relational, ethical research

insight into their experiences. The methodological, technical, and ethical con-
siderations of equipment such as “baby cams” researchers place on children’s heads,
or audio or visual recording equipment placed in vests children wear, raise important
questions of consent. The equipment is designed to be unobtrusive and essentially
the child participant forgets it is there, clashing with a principle of ongoing assent.
This equipment could also be annoying or distracting to children. Hence, these
methods and features are still ripe for ethical debates (Sumsion et al., 2011). Video
methods with young children are particularly illustrative of the consent and assent
issues discussed earlier, and the question permeating this chapter of children’s ability
to distinguish researchers from other adults. In their study in Iceland, Hrönn Pálma-
dóttir and Jóhanna Einarsdóttir (2016) addressed these challenges, noting different
ways children approached, included, or rejected a researcher, often depending on the
value children perceived the researcher brought to particular play situations being
video-recorded. Finally, the safe storage of such identifiable digital data is a key
privacy issue.

Interviews

Interviews are vital in participatory methods. These may include ongoing informal
conversations, although this risks participants being unaware that what they say is
becoming data. Formal interviews typically occur after a researcher has been in the
field for some time, thereby developing relationships that foster trust and depth in
data, and having a basis of understanding of participants’ lives and experiences in
order to raise topics and inquiries that address the research questions.

Drawing on these ideas, interviews with children ought to occur after a researcher
has built relationships and be an opportunity to value children’s perspectives. To help
redress the power balance, they might occur with familiar peers or family members
present, who also have insights on children’s interests. They might be held in educa-
tion settings and children’s homes, and at times when children are alert and keen to
talk. To be more natural, they might occur when children are playing, and engaged
with more as a conversation than as questions and answers. Many researchers use sti-
mulated recall interviews, whereby they use photos, video episodes, and/or artefacts to
stimulate conversations. They need to take care that such stimuli do not risk putting a
pre-determined lens on potential findings.

For both interview and video methods, some researchers advocate being
unobtrusive about the devices used, and placing these where children are less
aware of them in order to engage naturally, and unable to touch or interfere with
them (e.g., Holmes, 2019). As with the use of “baby cams” and “vests,” I find
myself ethically compromised by such suggestions as they might deceive children,
and as noted earlier, compromise ongoing assent. Research methods occur with
particular equipment. Children can familiarise themselves and interact with this
equipment as part of ongoing assent and dissent, with a right to know that what
they are doing and saying is part of research activities. The examples of Aidan and
Imogen earlier illustrate this point.

Relational, ethical research 71

Playful methods that engage children

Research with children can be playful and inviting, using methods that allow children
to choose when to participate and when to leave. These methods also mean that a
researcher needs to be alert to whether children are assenting to research activities, or
enjoying time with a different adult, or simply trying something new. Certainly, by
embedding methods in children’s play there is less risk that they are imposed or that
they limit children’s engagement in their everyday activities (Chesworth, 2018).
Child-led tours, play and games, making books together, and other methods are also
options, often part of a mosaic approach. Again, I suggest that the tools of research
need to be visible, and children reminded these are research activities to establish
clarity about teacher and researcher actions and behaviours.

Arts-based methods have become popular. Children’s drawings and photos,
alongside dialogue about their foci, can show their existing interests and stimulate
others. Children can reveal their interests in socio-dramatic play and through other
drama, music, creative (e.g., playing with playdough or building with LegoTM),
and dance activities. In all cases, taking photos or copies of children’s work as data,
ensuring originals remain the children’s, is ethical practice. However, many dis-
cussions of the use of arts overlook a critical point. In order to apply arts-based
methods, and analyse what results, a researcher needs advanced understanding of
the methods of inquiry and artistic techniques adopted in order to analyse and infer
meaning from the data (Biffi & Zuccoli, 2019).

Visits to children’s homes

Visits to family homes are invaluable for insights. These are most appropriate after
relationships are established, and the research focus understood, so families do not
perceive that they will be judged. In their own environments, participants are more
at ease, and the power balance redressed as a researcher enters as a learner and
guest. In my experience, children were thrilled to greet me, took me on a tour of
everything important to them in their home environment, and were happy to
participate in an interview with a parent to talk about themselves. Equipment and
resources related to interests outside the early childhood setting were also visible. In
another project, teacher-researchers were also made welcome in homes and found
the visits equally insightful, at times challenging their prior thinking about children
and their families (see Chapter 5).

Home visits are not without dilemmas. Older siblings who are not participants
may dominate conversations and override the participant child. It may be difficult
to honour children’s enthusiasm to spend time with the researcher and to ensure
the research aims are achieved. Our teacher-researchers chose to visit homes in
pairs to mitigate successfully some of these possibilities. It is also possible that the
research may uncover, for example, family violence, where there is an ethical and
legal obligation to report concerns. The back-up of an institutional body for advice
and support is critical in such situations.

72 Relational, ethical research

Leaving the fieldwork setting

Eventually sufficient data are generated and it becomes time to leave the research
setting. After a long period of fieldwork, it is respectful of the relationships developed
to leave the setting at a mutually negotiated time and with children’s knowledge. In
one project, a child due to begin school soon had developed a particularly close
relationship with me. In discussion with her teachers and mother, I agreed to
undertake three weeks further of attendance and data generation so her leaving and
mine coincided.

While a gradual withdrawal has been suggested in the literature, this could be
viewed as not treating children as competent to understand the fieldwork is com-
plete. Children’s experience of child peers and long-term visitors in education set-
tings is that they attend intensively and then exit. An exit with full knowledge of
the children is most appropriate. Leave-taking as part of a group time may be
possible and has been my experience.

Researcher feelings after such a long period of fieldwork are rarely discussed in
the literature. I found it an emotional experience to leave three settings after
being the primary researcher there for a long time. In most projects, the teachers
and I have transitioned into a collaborative professional relationship as we analyse
and disseminate some data together. While relationships with teachers are often
ongoing and relatively easy to maintain, those with children and families are not.
Moreover, children have a number of important adults in their lives. Coupled
with children’s biological memory limitations, the transitory ones—such as
researchers—are soon forgotten.

Analysing data and interpreting findings

Both during, and more intensively, after leaving the field, data analysis and inter-
pretation beckon. Ethical considerations are also involved in this highly interpretive
process. Analysis and interpretation are inevitably focused on locating answers to
research questions. Findings from participatory studies provide rich descriptions of
experiences, activities, beliefs, practices, and values. These are connected with
conceptual and theoretical framings to identify the meanings and patterns present.
The emphasis on participatory methods in this chapter has alignment with the
theories offered in Chapter 2 and the views on children’s capabilities in Chapter 3.
While it is possible to use elements of theories selectively, it can be confusing and
problematic to do so if the epistemological assumptions underpinning these are
different (Sumsion et al., 2011).

Interpretations are therefore deep and justifiable, but also tentative and partial. In
my experience, partnerships in research between researchers and teachers, where
family members are participants as well as children, hold the most promise for
getting closest to deep understandings of children’s interests. At a minimum,
referral of findings for participant feedback and for validation is useful. Full colla-
borative analysis would be too time-consuming for participants. This is valuable,

Relational, ethical research 73

however, for small pieces of data to allow for multiple views to become apparent.
Methods and skills for undertaking validation with children aged less than 5 years
appear to be absent in the literature. My efforts have involved use of significant
photos and short, written explanatory texts on posters. However, by the time I
have reached this point children had often moved on to school settings, and those
who were infant and toddler participants had forgotten me.

Interpretation continues well beyond the duration of the fieldwork and often
after researchers have lost touch with some participants. I was reminded of this
when, by chance, the mother of a focus child in one project became a colleague.
This provided some of the research team with opportunities to revisit and gain
deeper insights into her child’s interests, leading to a publication co-authored with
the parent. This dialogue continued as I engaged with newer sociocultural concepts
(see Chapter 6). This leads us to ethical decisions about dissemination.

Disseminating research

The aim of disseminating research is to achieve influence and change on teacher
knowledge and professional learning, policy and practice, and research under-
standings and procedures. Multiple modes of dissemination are valuable, and range
from publicly accessible blogs, policy implications pieces, presentations, through to
publications. These assist engaging directly with teachers, student teachers, parents,
professional organisations, researchers, and policymakers.

It is increasingly common in collaborative projects to co-present and co-author
outputs with teachers. If we want to gain understandings of their lives and interests,
letting children’s experiences speak for themselves is vital. How might children then
be an active presence in dissemination? We can ensure that photos and videos, use of
their words, photos and drawings and so on are used extensively in dissemination,
while also acknowledging there is inevitably an adult interpretation drawn.

With the rise in use of video material, material that is almost impossible to de-
identify, its use in dissemination needs further debate in a digital world. I have always
kept research video data tightly controlled and not enabled its sharing via means or
recordings that others could access and use out of context. Angela Eckhoff (2015) goes
further than me in using only a text description at times in order not to violate con-
fidentiality. Eckhoff rightly points out, “young children cannot fully understand how
the images … can live on in my research writings for many years to come. The per-
manency of images and longevity of decisions is an elusive concept for young chil-
dren” (p. 1622). In contrast, Maggie Haggerty (2020) describes ways that she gained
consent for video observations to be used in publication, and processes for editing
these in line with participants’ wishes. She made efforts to encourage parents and tea-
chers to be advocates for children in this process, but noted some dilemmas arose
about whose wishes to prioritise. A more recent suggestion is to create databases of
visual data for secondary analysis that would store material in perpetuity. This move
raises many ethical issues, and is a provision yet to engage deeply with the critiques of
secondary analysis (Hammersley, 2010).

74 Relational, ethical research

Future directions

Participatory research has evolved to gain insights into children’s everyday experi-
ences. Changes are evident in recent discussions of innovative methods and ethics
prevalent in the literature. In addition, there have been recent broader shifts to
involve children as direct collaborators, but little of this has occurred yet with
children aged from birth to 5 years.

Alongside continuation of the time- and relationship-intensive approaches of
ethnographically inspired participatory research, recent explorations collectively
described as post-qualitative or post-human provide avenues for further exploration of
children’s interests and the curriculum and pedagogy that foster or ignore them.
Post-humanists draw attention to the materials and objects inherent in the activities
children experience in early childhood education contexts. Where my research has
focused attention away from these in order to shift the field to deeper under-
standings of children’s motivations and intentions, and has drawn on sociocultural
concepts to do so, as I noted in Chapter 2, post-human and neomaterialist theories
could bring new insights into the patterns and current theorising of children’s
interests. I welcome these new directions. Whatever the methodologies and
methods used in early childhood research endeavours, we must keep in mind four
cornerstones of early childhood research: systematicity, critical reflection, an
empirical focus, and a commitment to ethics (Flewitt & Ang, 2020).

Summary

This chapter has addressed methodologies and methods suited for application to
research with children aged less than 5 years. Ethnography and its spin-off into
participatory methods have been described as those most suited to in-depth
research that has the potential to get as close as possible to children’s lives and
interests. Values of respect, relationships, and reciprocity are foundational to such
research.

The methodologies and methods, and related ethical considerations and debates,
work to empower children’s participation and foster children’s understandings of
what it means to consent to research with an adult whose actions and practices are
different to parents and teachers. What is most important is that a research project
develops rigorous, justifiable, and transparent decision-making processes, and is
reflexive about these throughout a project. The field of participatory research with
children is still developing.

What is communicated less in this chapter is the delight of participatory research
with children. Being with children to get closer to understanding their lives,
interests, and thinking can be a joyful experience. Their actions and thoughts are
often unpredictable, their relationships and insights quite different to adults, and
their understandings and meaning making unexpected. Taking time to engage with
children in their lives and worlds to get closer to understanding their interests is a
privilege and a pleasure.

Relational, ethical research 75

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5

DEEPER UNDERSTANDINGS 1

Funds of knowledge as a framing for interests

Introduction
Powerful and authentic learning occurs in family homes, communities, and cultures.
Children are curious about, intrigued by, and interested in, many people, places, and
things. They use play as a mechanism to explore these interests. As I began to
research children’s interests, observed children’s play in early childhood settings, and
got to know children and families, I realised there was something deeper happening
than the widely accepted interpretation of interests as activities or topics. Teachers
commonly responded to both of these interpretations of interests with more related
equipment and experiences, rather than exploring deeper motivations and connec-
tions. Hence, I sought to recognise the people, places, knowledge, and values that
are inherent in interest stimulation and ongoing engagement.

To be more selective and analytical about interests beyond activities, and to locate
what motivates children’s engagement with deep and sustained topic-related interests,
we need to think about framings that align with the ways children learn, and the
emphases of a capability approach on agency and well-being within the contexts of life
experiences and opportunities. I explained, in Chapter 3, my definition of children’s
interests as “children’s spontaneous, self-motivated play, discussions, inquiry and/or
investigations that derive from their social and cultural experiences.”

The concept of funds of knowledge resonated with teachers in one project (Hedges
et al., 2011) because it is a framing consistent with the long-held value of partnerships
between families and early childhood settings in sharing knowledge about children
and fostering their learning. Funds of knowledge is a well-researched example of social
and cultural experiences embedded in children’s lives. These funds of knowledge are
sources of informal, interests-related learning rich with possibility, and promoted
through authentic, collaborative, community participation. When adults recognise and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881-5

78 Funds of knowledge

value this learning, they deepen their knowledge of children and can respond to their
interests in empowering ways.

Funds of knowledge became a first significant explanation for children’s interests,
and a way to apply an analytic frame to observations of children’s play activities in
order to establish what is meaningful to children that I took into subsequent projects.
The questions frequently posed of whose and which interests curriculum might be
built from are helped by distinguishing what matters for children. This chapter
explains funds of knowledge as a source of interests that matter for children and
reflect developing capabilities. I also outline issues related to funds of knowl-
edge if applied uncritically to curriculum and pedagogy to show that, like
activities, it should not be understood at a surface level. Rather, it requires
teacher knowledge, commitment, and reflection.

Beyond activities

As I noted in Chapter 3, I do not wish to deny the importance of activities and
their provision in family homes or education settings. Studies of interests in chil-
dren’s homes contribute to understanding the importance of activities for children.
For example, different interests are sparked, and some continued, due to the
choices that parents make about the kinds of toys and activities that are available to
their children, and whether or not parents engage with children during their play
with these (Neitzel et al., 2019). These points have contemporary relevance to
what happens in education settings where teachers effectively pre-select what
children can choose from (see Chapter 3). In addition, children may have different
interest orientations when playing: sometimes children are focused on an object
itself, sometimes they are more interested in the socio-dramatic play the activity
affords, and sometimes they are property or concept-oriented. These orientations
are at times influenced by whether the materials and activities are somewhat
structured (e.g., a jigsaw puzzle) or have creative potential (e.g., crayons and paints)
(Neitzel et al., 2019).

Yet, in my research projects, the taken-for-granted rhetoric of interests in early
childhood has revolved almost entirely around children’s activity choices, represent-
ing a legacy of child-centredness, developmental psychology, and associated studies.
Initial responses to my carefully worded and non-leading interview questions about
interests in my first project evoked responses from teachers, parents, and children that
were all about activities. For example, one teacher stated that “Danyela comes in
every day and wants to paint and that’s her big thing … the same with Safiya, she
loves painting as well and playdough.” Across settings there were shared under-
standings: Imogen likes to play on the swing (early childhood setting and home) and
ride her bike (home), Tom is always building with MobiloTM (early childhood set-
ting)/LegoTM (home), and Lucy likes to draw and write (early childhood setting and
home). Children themselves stated interests as activities with Lucy also saying, “I like
to draw, paint and write words.” Only on occasion were topics of interest men-
tioned, often related to animals and pets.

Funds of knowledge 79

A focus on activities invites potentially superficial approaches and responses in
what is offered to children in early childhood education. Many “cute idea[s]
enthusiastically endorsed by practitioners” (Jalongo, 1996, p. 67) find their way
into provision, such as colouring water for water play to make it look attractive, or
creating volcanoes in a sandpit with vinegar and baking soda. The conceptual
learning potential of these activities is rarely realised. Other activities such as
worksheets copying letters as writing preparation are likely examples of “mindless
busywork” (p. 67). Dewey (1938) suggested such ideas risk being noneducative and
miseducative. Jalongo states that cute activities also insult children’s intellects, equate
simply doing something with learning, and undermine teacher professionalism and
educational equity. In short, cute ideas trivialise learning. They rarely inspire interest
and may diminish the possibility of the activity itself connecting in any way with
children’s experiences or interests.

Christine, a teacher, noted that interpretations of interests as activities in early
childhood education represent a legacy of misunderstandings that “we still have
today unless we make a huge big effort to change.” Learning in the early years can
involve children using play to recreate, practise, and represent their interests. In
order to change, teachers need to be persuaded of the value of being more analy-
tical about children’s interests beyond the activities themselves. For example, when
I interviewed Olivia and Imogen’s mother about her children’s interests, she told
me they enjoyed baking and cooking with her to prepare family meals or to host
social occasions. I observed that this interest was enacted using sand, water, and
family play resources and equipment at the centre, and ways the sisters demon-
strated and collaborated in quite sophisticated play. Teachers noticed this play but
attributed it to the play areas themselves, rather than what it might represent. Liz
Chesworth (2016) noted the same issue with Ellie, a child in her study. Ellie’s
teacher said Ellie frequently “chooses to play with the play-dough, it’s a big interest
for her and has been for some time” (p. 301). When Chesworth visited the family
home, Ellie and her mother discussed their baking together at home.

Sociocultural perspectives have the potential to offer a persuasive, alternative, con-
nected, and more in-depth framing of interests across home and education contexts.
These ways to interpret interests more deeply align with views of children as capable
learners who have agency. Interests are stimulated through children’s participation in
the everyday sociocultural practices in families and communities to which children
have most access. These interests are recreated and represented during play. I explain
next the concept of funds of knowledge and its applications in early childhood as one
significant framing for children’s interests.

Funds of knowledge

Sociocultural theories explain ways that children participate intently and learn
during family, community, and cultural activities and practices. Diversity of, and
within, families and cultures is now a global theme. Therefore, educational research
has been searching for some time for culturally sensitive, equitable approaches and

80 Funds of knowledge

constructs to guide the education of children from a range of linguistically and
culturally diverse backgrounds. Funds of knowledge research speaks back to the
neoliberal and deficit discourses permeating education (Chapter 3), seeking a way
to recognise and value capabilities.

Funds of knowledge is a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical concept
that appreciates the range of learning, relationships, and knowledge that children
build in families. The concept is dynamic; it changes with each relationship in each
family and evolves to new circumstances and cultures. It has strong alignment with
capability theory, and valuing children’s agency (Chapter 3). Locating children’s
funds of knowledge requires research methods that get closer to understanding
children’s experiences and motivations (Chapter 4).

Funds of knowledge: theory

“The concept of funds of knowledge … is based on a simple premise: People are
competent, they have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that
knowledge” (González et al., 2005, p. ix, italics in original). Funds of knowledge is
a term coined by anthropologist Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez (1988), who identified
mutually supportive networks of families in Mexican communities in Arizona,
USA. Funds of knowledge described the knowledge, skills, goods and services,
shared and exchanged, within and among these families. These funds were critical
to reciprocal social and economic cooperation and support in situations where
families experienced disempowering political and economic circumstances.

The original funds of knowledge project in education was a partnership between
academic and teacher-researchers who brought anthropology, education, and lin-
guistics expertise together. The project explored languages and literacy practices in
everyday household activities in bilingual Mexican–Latino communities in Arizona
in the 1980s in order to improve primary (elementary) education and student
outcomes (González et al., 2005). Previously, responses to educational achievement
concerns had taken a deficit perspective of children’s home experiences and adop-
ted an interventionist approach based on Western norms. Instead, funds of
knowledge approaches explore the rich, implicit, and intuitive knowledge and
lived experiences of families and cultures that can be drawn on in educational set-
tings to enhance learning. A wealth of studies and scholarship, across contexts and
domains, has followed this study.

Funds of knowledge were defined as the knowledge, skills, and strategies that are
foundational to household functioning, development, and well-being. The parti-
cular activities and practices that families undertook were viewed positively. For
example, children might regularly observe a parent writing a shopping list or
reading a recipe. In this way, children gradually develop early knowledge of lit-
eracy embedded in specific family routines and practices around the preparation
and sharing of meals, and contribute actively to these. Home and car maintenance
is another example. Adding a conceptual element to the social and economic
support central to funds of knowledge, Vélez-Ibáñez identified that “information

Funds of knowledge 81

and formulas containing the mathematics, architecture, chemistry, physics, biology,
and engineering for the construction and repair of homes and mechanical devices”
(p. 38) were present in such examples.

Children, like families, risk experiencing structural and political oppression unless
closer attention is paid to their life circumstances, what matters for them, and what
empowers their participation in families and communities. Early childhood educa-
tion services are one important community setting. In Hedges et al. (2011), I report
on a project that employed participant observation, photos, teacher interviews
(individual and group), and home visits with children and their families during a
year of fieldwork. Children’s interests were sparked by, and engaged with, family-
based funds of knowledge in the following categories:

participation with parents in household and domestic tasks such as meal pre-
paration, car maintenance, and running a market stall;

parents’ occupations, for example, school teaching, administering a small
business, and raising children;

parents’ interests, talents, and leisure activities, such as reading, boating, and
playing sport;

parents’ language, values, and beliefs, for example, promoting literacy or music;
grandparents’ occupations, leisure activities and interests, such as art apprecia-

tion and managing money;
adult relations’ and family friends’ interests, and occupations, for example,

fishing and engineering;
siblings’ and cousins’ activities, interests, and language, such as riding bikes and

playing video games;
holidays and other community experiences, for example, travel and dance classes.

In addition, to explain other interests, and in arguing that funds of knowledge are
also developed outside homes, I located centre-based funds of knowledge in peers’
interests and activities, and teachers’ interests, language, experiences. Peers’ interests
included discovering the value of friendship and ways friends can influence each
other, and involved testing out expectations of turn-taking, sharing, and fairness in
ways different to interactions that included teachers. As Corsaro (1985, 2018) has
long reminded us, peer cultures are powerful. As well as these being a source of
positive learning and influence, they also have the ability to both resist and subvert
adult agendas, and exert a form of peer control over each other.

Peers’ funds of knowledge and peer cultures were brought together in Ches-
worth’s (2016) research. Children selected video episodes from those Chesworth
had recorded over a period of eight months. Children, parents, and teachers
viewed these episodes and Chesworth recorded responses. In their collaborative
play, children drew on shared funds of knowledge to enrich and transform play
materials. However, children with expertise were, at times, also frustrated with
other children who did not share their knowledge and rejected their contributions
and participation. Like my study, Chesworth argues that, if teachers had known of

82 Funds of knowledge

the lens of funds of knowledge to interpret children’s play, they would have sought
deeper understandings of children and the dynamics of their play beyond incidental
insights from conversations with families.

Teachers’ interests included their own funds of knowledge from music,
cooking, and gardening. I take up the matter of the place of teachers’ interests
in Chapter 8 where I argue that, while remaining focused on what matters to
children, a sociocultural curriculum ought to go beyond the long-held beliefs
about child-centredness as a principle of early childhood education, and enable
teachers to include their interests in curricular provision.

I also showed ways that children’s interests were sparked by community-
based funds of knowledge, specifically cultural events and popular culture.
Cultural events included birthdays, farewells, celebrations such as the Lunar
New Year and Diwali, and the presence of a researcher (see Chapter 4).
References to popular culture were the most numerous in the findings,
including television programmes, movies, technology-based games, and fast-
food restaurants. The interest, however, was in the actions, behaviours, and
values popular culture gave access to (Hedges, 2011). Popular culture blended
with other funds of knowledge in Chesworth’s study as children enacted a
birthday party and used their imaginations concurrently to add to the event. In
short, in both studies (Chesworth, 2016; Hedges et al., 2011) we argue on the
basis of extensive evidence over a long period of time, that a funds of knowl-
edge lens would strengthen understanding and enactment of curriculum and
pedagogy built from children’s interests revealed in their play.

A contemporary community example of ways we see funds of knowledge
embedded in children’s play is in children’s understandings of ways families have
functioned and looked after their well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many social media sites have offered examples of children’s family play scripts
that have incorporated frequent hand washing and use of hand sanitiser. Social
distancing and mask wearing has been practised in their representation of going
to cafés and restaurants. As children observed new work practices of parents, they
recreated home offices and participated in Zoom meetings. These are new
knowledges and practices, a transformation of participation (Rogoff, 2003).

Funds of knowledge: methods

Visits to family homes help teachers to see how children’s interests are inspired by
their participation in everyday practices in their families and, in turn, can be
recognised and fostered in an education setting. A funds of knowledge perspective
shifts the balance of power towards families as experts while the visiting teachers
and/or researchers are positioned as learners.

In the original project, individual teacher-researchers visited the homes of two or
three primary school age students, and sometimes community settings, up to three
times, at times negotiated with families. These visits occurred well into the school
year so initial relationships and trust were already established. Teachers gathered

Funds of knowledge 83

information about the knowledge families used in their daily lives, and asked about
the job histories and everyday household practices of families. Sometimes these
meetings were recorded, at other times field notes and photos were taken.

A related, subsequent method was that teachers shared their visit findings with
each other during study groups. Dialogue between the teachers was important to
the success of the project in conceptualising the connection between households
and schools to re-develop curriculum and pedagogy.

These visits and study groups were transformative. As one of the teachers
involved in the original funds of knowledge project Marla Hensley (2005) noted,
by visiting even one home, teaching practice might be transformed because of the
experience in ways that benefit all children. Assumptions were overturned, new
knowledge and insights gained, and new-found respect for diverse families
attained—all benefiting classroom practices.

While originally, individual teachers visited families and communities, in a project
I co-led, pairs of teacher-researchers visited 20 children’s homes across two settings.
The family visits that teacher-researchers undertook in our study were similarly very
powerful, including in ways unanticipated by the academic and teacher-researchers’
expectations about deepening understandings and making connections across con-
texts (Cooper et al., 2014). The visits were transformational by challenging teachers’
assumptions, making invisible barriers about communication and understandings
explicit, and enhancing parent-led communication with the centres (see “Hunter’s
funds of knowledge” section). The visits also made visible the implicit and unre-
markable way families might consider their funds of knowledge expertise (see “Zoe’s
funds of knowledge” section). Teacher discussion supported changes to the early
childhood setting (see “Funds of knowledge: pedagogy” section).

Within funds of knowledge, the agenda of home visits and positioning of tea-
chers as learners is in stark contrast to the history of home visits in early childhood
education. Home visits in New Zealand were an historical practice; visits were
largely made before a child began kindergarten, focused on children’s and families’
backgrounds in terms of well-being, and were designed to assist transition to early
childhood settings (May, 2013). In the United States, home visits were traditionally
made to impose a school agenda on children and families rather than to locate
family strengths (Whyte & Karabon, 2016).

Whyte and Karabon asked their participant teachers to specifically choose a child
who was different to them and undertake three home visits in each of four years of
a professional development programme. Teachers expressed the same kinds of
anxieties, nervousness, and excitement that our teachers had initially. They con-
sidered ways to reduce any power balances further by sharing aspects of their own
personal stories, another useful strategy. Similar to our findings, teachers confronted
their assumptions about families, came to understand culture as something repre-
sented in everyday lives, and became consciously aware of a need to resist talking
about their own teaching practices at the visits. Anxieties were alleviated by the
benefits of the visit, the wish to connect more strongly with children and families,
and a shift to strengths-based beliefs about family practices.

84 Funds of knowledge

In our project, too, even where teachers already had strong relationships with
families, they noted how much the relationships grew and ways children benefited
from the deeper learning teachers gained. In New Zealand, there is a limited amount
of non-contact time for teachers. Therefore, some of their prior concerns about visits
were about the amount of time taken from teaching and assessment activities to
engage with visits (see “Funds of knowledge: pedagogy” section). Other responses
we had from the teaching community when presenting about the value of the visits
included “we talk with parents every day” and “we ask parents about events at home
verbally and via documentation.” They told us about the common practice to invite
families into the setting for shared events and talk informally there. Some had more
formalised teacher–parent interviews following the practices of schooling. Projects
internationally have tried to locate ways to encourage families to share their knowl-
edge and practices, for example by filling a shoebox with important items (Hughes &
Greenhough, 2006) or children taking photographs of family and community events
to discuss in the education setting (Feiler et al., 2006).

Teachers who have engaged with the kinds of home visits prompted by funds of
knowledge methods have been converted. They have realised that none of these
other approaches are as powerful or transformative as home visits. Concerns have
been counterbalanced by the richness and depth of experience and knowledge
gained as examples in this chapter will illustrate shortly. The gains broaden to
include teacher attitude change that benefits all children.

An aspect of funds of knowledge research that needs future attention is the
experiences of families. While teachers/researchers attempt to disrupt normal
power relationships and foster trust, reciprocity, and acceptance, what are families
thinking and feeling? How do families’ own memories and experiences of educa-
tion affect their understandings of the purposes of visits, however positively these
are framed by teachers? Do they see the value of visits or do they feel put-upon
and judged? Do they themselves also need to make an effort to “shatter invisible
power boundaries” (Whyte & Karabon, 2016, p. 218)?

Funds of knowledge: pedagogy

The strengths-based view of children and families in the concept of funds of
knowledge, and the method of being a teacher-researcher, both position teachers as
potential agents of change. The pedagogical goal of a funds of knowledge approach
is to recognise and incorporate family-based knowledge and expertise in educational
settings in order to improve outcomes for children. During a home visit, Marla
Hensley (2005) asked about a guitar she noticed. She learned that the father in the
family played guitar and keyboard, and wrote songs and poetry. Subsequently,
Hensley asked the father to write some children’s songs and create a musical that tied
in his knowledge of music and of gardening. Another parent she visited had a
background in dance and was asked to help choreograph the musical. Several other
parents participated in costume-making workshops. Children performed the musical
five times.

Funds of knowledge 85

Another way that funds of knowledge can be recognised is when children use
their agency to mobilise their funds of knowledge across education and family
settings. In schooling, children might call on these as a bridge to assist learning
when teachers are teaching content such as literacy. In early childhood education,
recognition of mobilising can likely only occur when teachers have visited family
homes so they themselves can interpret children’s play-based interests more deeply.

Within play-based early childhood settings, funds of knowledge is, then, an
important way in which children’s interests can be recognised, engaged with, and
extended. An early, significant, application to early childhood education occurred
in Mari Riojas-Cortez’s (2001) study. As a teacher, Riojas-Cortez was aware that
culture was being interpreted at a surface level in her school. As a researcher, she
researched the funds of knowledge in the socio-dramatic play of 4–5-year-olds.
She analysed these in order to locate ways for teachers to become more culturally
responsive at a deeper level by using the related cultural resources in a classroom.
While the teacher in her study had some intuitive and piecemeal understandings of
children’s funds of knowledge, through interviewing parents (in a mix of family
homes, the school, and community office settings—Riojas-Cortez, personal email,
March 9, 2021) this knowledge became richer for application to the classroom.

One obvious response to greater awareness of funds of knowledge is to consider
the quality and extent of resources and equipment in play environments. This
specifically means to consider whether children can see themselves and their
families reflected in the opportunities and resources they have access to, and
therefore are empowered to have a sense of belonging through understanding that
their knowledge and practices are accepted. In one project, I observed a Chinese
girl walking a doll around in a small toy stroller. I was aware that she had a newly
born baby brother at home, so I asked her about him. She explained to me ways
that her mother cared for him, including that she carried him in a sling all day, but
said she could not do this at the centre, as there were no slings. As noted in
Chapter 3, teachers’ power to determine what is available for children affects
choices and opportunities for inclusion.

Multiple pedagogical changes occurred in one centre in the co-led project.
Teacher-researchers’ experience of visiting several inner-city apartments and
shared living spaces prompted changes to the layout of their centre. Teachers
adapted the formerly open-plan learning and teaching environment layout to
smaller spaces with fewer resources to reflect the apartment-style living and
shared family spaces. In addition, in keeping with the original study, they invited
parent expertise as a contribution to the curriculum: a mother was invited to
share her artistic knowledge with children.

Teacher-researcher Lindy reflected honestly and critically on what she had
learned in relation to these matters:

Jessica has grown up in the inner city, where both her parents have apart-
ments. At [centre] Jessica displayed a fervent flair for the arts. Knowing Jessica’s
mother was an artist, one reason we wanted to visit was to see how her art had