Play-based methods evidencing young children's experiences of family life

Description

This paper will consider play-based methods utilised to explore young children's experiences of family life as means for documenting children's voices. Family is a universal concept and experience for children across national borders. Much of the research around family conducted with children focuses on family composition and membership (e.g. Castren and Widmer 2015, Mason and Tipper 2008), but less is known about family-as-activity (Clark and Kehily 2013) and as a verb (Morgan 2011) where the practices of and within the family provide meaning and insight into how families relate and not just who they are related to. This paper explores such practices from the standpoint of young children, aged 3 to 4 years old, focusing on what families do on a day-to-day basis, on the everyday and the mundane. The research took place in three early childhood settings in the North of England, UK. Through sensory play-based activities with loose-parts resources children engaged in recreating what they do with their families, activating conversations about family practice. Children’s sense of self within the family and their positioning was documented by developing 'I-poems' using the Listening Guide (Gilligan 2015).
The research reported in this paper builds on existing early childhood practice and resources familiar to young children to offer novel ways of listening, documenting views and experiences. The research aim was to develop, test and disseminate innovative methods for listening to young children. This was achieved by enabling young children to articulate their understandings and experiences of family practice through play-based research methods and working in partnership with the participating early childhood settings to embed methods for listening to young children into practice alongside focus on (re)building partnerships with families following the Covid-19 pandemic. Children were supported to express views for themselves through play-based methods and a process of analysis foregrounding their voices.

Period	30 Aug 2024
Event title	European Conference on Educational Research 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	Nicosia, CyprusShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International