ABSTRACT

The importance of children’s perspectives is now well-established and there has been much attention afforded to appropriate methods for listening to children within the research. Whilst language-based research methods, such as interview, remain commonplace, children’s representations are increasingly included as data in educational research. Photographs, drawings and tours have been used alongside the traditional tools of observation and interview to illuminate children’s understanding of their school experiences but more are needed. This paper reports on an addition to this repertoire of tools, small world toys, and finds that valuable insight can be gained through using them as a data collection method. Drawing on research into children’s lived experiences of school, it outlines the affordances and key principles of this method. It argues that capturing the process as well as the outcome is key in using small world toy representations and that using them in collaboration with other methods is needed in order to gain rich, reliable data. It concludes that whilst ethical praxis is key in using any method to research children’s perspectives, crafting new and bespoke methods to more authentically hear and take account of children’s perspectives should be an important and ongoing endeavour of researchers in this field.

摘要

现在，儿童观点的重要性已得到充分确立，并且在研究中已广泛关注了适当的方法来听取儿童的意见。虽然基于语言的研究方法（例如面试）仍然很普遍，但是儿童的表现形式却越来越多地作为数据纳入教育研究。照片，素描和游览已与传统的观察和访谈工具一起使用，以阐明儿童对他们学校经历的理解，但还需要更多。本文报告了工具，小世界玩具的全部功能，并发现可以通过将它们用作数据收集方法来获得有价值的见解。它以对儿童在学校生活经历的研究为基础，概述了这种方法的可负担性和主要原则。过程和结果是使用小世界玩具表示形式的关键，并且需要与其他方法配合使用它们以获取丰富，可靠的数据。结论是，尽管道德实践是使用任何方法研究儿童观点的关键，但制定新的定制方法以更真实地听取和考虑儿童的观点应该是该领域研究人员的一项重要且持续的工作。