Reflexivity and visual technology in research: young children’s perspectives of paternal engagement in the home environment

Abstract

Although existing notions of reflexivity address the positionality of researchers, they rarely consider the processes through which methods and methodologies can come about. This study builds children’s reflexivity into the research design. Drawing on footage from a pilot visual ethnography of paternal engagement in home environments, we show first, that at one level, building children’s reflexivity into data collection and analysis, allows us to look at the relationship between the child, technology and the subject of their images; thereby establishing a position from which their perspective is produced. We found that their age and the particular visual technology used, shaped how the children positioned themselves and in turn, the kind of representations we gathered. As this was a collaborative study with a film maker and also involving discussions of film findings with teachers; a more general level reflexive analysis allowed us generate different viewpoints from which their perspectives were produced.