Abstract
This paper explores the methodology of portraiture as a participatory approach to research with young children. At its core, the study is rooted in the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), which affirms children’s rights to express their views in matters affecting them and to have those views taken seriously. In particular, the research is framed using Lundy’s (2007) model of voice, which provides a practical framework for realising Article 12 of the UNCRC. According to Lundy, meaningful participation by children requires four key elements: Space (children must be given the opportunity to express a view), Voice (they must be facilitated to express their views), Audience (those views must be listened to), and Influence (those views must be acted upon, where appropriate).
By applying Lundy’s model, this paper examines how portraiture can serve as a methodology that realises each of these dimensions. The research aims to demonstrate how portraiture creates the space for children to participate authentically, uses creative methods to facilitate their voices, ensures their perspectives are heard by adults, and explores how their insights can influence both practice and understanding for their educators.
Drawing on a larger study that investigated the presence and perception of joy in early childhood settings (Little& Karaolis, 2024), this paper shows how children can be positioned not as subjects of research but as co-creators of meaning. The study sought to understand how the concept of joy could address the many challenges impacting the field of early childhood education. We wanted to learn from the educators and the source of their joy, the children. Portraiture, with its emphasis on narrative, context, and collaboration, is well-suited to support this participatory agenda. In this paper, the following sections examine the methodology of portraiture, discuss its alignment with the principles of Lundy’s framework, and explores its potential to elevate young children’s voices in educational research.
The Research Methodology of Portraiture
Portraiture is a qualitative research methodology developed by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot when she began her inquiry into High Schools in America in 1983. It blends rigorous social science inquiry with the evocative power of narrative and aesthetics to “paint with words” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). This approach is distinct for its attempt to capture the richness of human experience, not through abstraction, but through deep contextualisation, lived experience, and storytelling. It is a method especially suited for research with populations whose voices are often marginalised, such as young children or individuals with disabilities. Portraiture, in its flexibility as a research methodology, enables the views of children to “be acted upon, as appropriate” and to have influence in both the research process and final product of the portrait (Lundy, 2007, p. 933). As a form of narrative inquiry, portraiture is designed for and accessible to a range of audiences and can communicate the research story beyond the walls of academia (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2016).
Portraiture’s core elements—Context, Voice, Relationship, Emergent Themes, and Artistic Whole—guide the researcher in constructing layered, holistic narratives that go beyond simple description. • Context situates the research in its physical, social, and cultural environments. • Voice includes the voices of participants and the interpretive voice of the researcher. • Relationships underscore the mutual influence between researcher and participants. • Emergent Themes are patterns that arise through data interpretation. • The Artistic Whole integrates all these elements into a coherent, compelling portrait.
Unlike traditional qualitative methods that may seek objectivity or distance, portraiture embraces subjectivity and researcher presence as valuable. The researcher (or portraitist) uses diverse tools—observations, interviews, visual data, and creative expression—to co-construct meaning with participants (Brenna, 2023). In our study, this meant exploring the perspective and presence of joy in early childhood education. Children and adults were invited to be part of this research.
Portraiture has been applied across many disciplines: in higher education (Gaztambide-Fernández et al., 2011), K–12 schooling (Chapman, 2005, 2007), educational leadership (Hackmann, 2002), healthcare (Cope, 2018; Kloester et al., 2022), and disability and identity research (Rodríguez-Dorans, 2023). Despite its reach, it is not without critique. Scholars have questioned the lack of clearly prescribed procedures, especially in data analysis, raising concerns about transparency and rigour (Brunker, 2019; English, 2000). Brunker (2019) notes that the openness of the method—particularly in data interpretation—can be a barrier for researchers seeking methodological certainty. Yet, for others, this flexibility allows for creativity, innovation, and to empower the participants.
My initial application of portraiture, as part of my PhD, introduced me to participatory research with young children—an approach grounded in the belief that children are “experts in their own lives” (Clark & Moss, 2005, p. 5). Participatory research rejects hierarchical, adult-centric knowledge construction. Instead, it positions children as co-creators of meaning. This stance aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2015), the Early Years Learning Framework (AGDE, 2022), and particularly Lundy’s (2007) model of voice, which emphasises: • Space – Children must be given the opportunity to express their views. • Voice – Children must be supported to articulate their perspectives. • Audience – Their views must be actively listened to. • Influence – Their views should have impact and inform decisions.
When meaningfully enacted, participatory research fosters numerous benefits for children: increased self-confidence, empathy, autonomy, critical thinking, and communication skills (Clark et al., 2014; Pinter, 2019). For researchers and educators, it also generates more authentic, grounded insights and can strengthen advocacy efforts and foster relationships with the children and young people in their studies (Coyne & Carter, 2024). In this study, participatory research is defined according to the UNCRC Principles of Ethical and Meaningful Child Participation (United Nations [UN], 2009) it is voluntary, transparent, respectful, relevant, child-friendly, inclusive, safe, accountable, and involves knowledgeable adults.
Methods aligned with this approach include photovoice, drawing, drama, puppetry, storytelling, walking tours, and the Mosaic Approach (Clark & Moss, 2005). These methods make space for different communication styles, especially for very young children or children with disabilities who are often excluded from mainstream research. Yet, despite the growing use of participatory methods, children’s voices remain underrepresented, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds (Tiefenbacher, 2023).
Lundy’s (2007) conceptualisation of participation has informed numerous studies in education and is used widely to inform policy and practice. Ward et al. (2024) outline the potential of each of the elements in the model for active listening and authentic engagement of all children in matters that concern them, including young children. Correia et al. (2022) highlight the organizational and relational work necessary for children’s participation. Other studies have drawn on the model to understand how girls perceive themselves in sport (Vilgeus and Kneck, 2025) and in primary schools in Africa (Long & Grant, 2024).
This paper examines portraiture as a methodology that can bridge these gaps, drawing from participatory principles, while offering a narrative form that centres children’s experience. Portraiture offers a powerful way to engage with Lundy’s model: creating the physical and social space for children’s expression; facilitating their voice through multimodal, creative tools; positioning their contributions before an audience; and ensuring their views have influence within the research process and product.
Methods
The larger study (Little & Karaolis, 2024) explored the research question: How do early childhood educators perceive and practice joy in their work with young children? We wanted to understand the presence of joy in early childhood settings and learn how to promote joy and well-being. The study blended action research and the methodology of portraiture. It involved data collection methods such as interviews, drawing, puppetry, observation, and walking tours to co-create research with young children and their educators. The research comprised three preschool classrooms, involving 50 children aged three to five years old and their 14 educators. Data collection activities took place over six weeks at two different centres, with this researcher visiting each centre for up to four hours per week. The findings revealed that creative practices facilitated joy, expression, and belonging, and that teachers’ awareness of joy was transformed. Observing children engage with puppets was one example that assisted educators in reconnecting with joy and helped children express their joy and the parts of their lives that mattered to them.
Ethical Considerations
The study gained ethical approval from the University of Sydney (2024/HE000680). Consent was obtained in writing from educators, parents, and guardians, with participants being informed of their right to withdraw at any time. As
At its essence, portraiture aligns with a social model of disability (Oliver, 2013), one that recognises disability not as a deficit but as a product of social and structural barriers. Lawrence-Lightfoot, (2025, para. 5) describes how she “wanted the written pieces to convey the authority, wisdom, and perspective of the subjects, but I wanted them to feel—as I had felt—that the portrait did not look like them, but somehow managed to reveal their essence”. In this study, children were not treated as subjects to be ‘observed’, but as participants whose expressions—verbal, embodied, artistic—were valued on their own terms. Inclusion was not an intervention but a collaborative way of being. This paper argues that portraiture, when used in participatory research with young children, is not only methodologically rigorous and ethically sound—it is also a powerful means of fulfilling children’s rights to be seen, heard, and valued in research.
The study recognises disability as a social construct, an identity that is created by the societal, social and environmental barriers experienced by people with disabilities (Oliver, 2013). The inquiry did not view the children or adults from a distance, nor seek to trial an intervention to “fix” or “solve” the many problems in the early childhood profession. Instead, the researchers sought to learn about the participants day-to-day experience, including the people, places and things that elicit joy. This paper is concerned with one of the research findings, the potential of portraiture as a participatory research method for engaging young children. It is explored by one of the researchers, drawing on the Lundy Model of Participation (2007) to demonstrate how the elements of this framework correspond with the fundamental principles of portraiture, illustrating how Lundy’s (2007) model of voice can be realised for all children.
Findings
Space/Context
In portraiture, the space for all children can be realised by the context, that is, the setting, the time, and the physical space in which the study takes place. Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis write, “Portraits are designed to capture the richness, complexity, and dimensionality of human experience in social and cultural context, conveying the perspectives of the people who are negotiating those experiences”, (1997, p. 3). . Early childhood programs in Australia are also part of a broader context, an educational setting that focuses on the development of young children. Early childhood education is also a site in which broader issues of inclusion and children’s ‘voice’ play out, where there are dominant views about children, views that affect practice and the experience of young children. The context described in this research was three preschools, a natural and familiar physical space for the research participants. This choice enabled the children to share their views as it was an environment in which they were comfortable, one in which they had practised sharing their ideas with adults and were encouraged to engage with adults in conversations. This context is an ideal space to invite children into an interaction to reveal their ideas, the platform for joint meaning making to take place, such as the setting below:
A Place for Children
The early childhood centre is a large federation-style house that sits on the corner of a wide, tree-lined street in an affluent part of Sydney. A fancy bakery, with outdoor seating, is at the end of the road, and a mixture of single-level homes and art deco apartments surrounds the building. The area is busy with pedestrians, many walking their poodles of all sizes, labradoodles and spaniels. One dog is seated at a coffee table and being fed small amounts of what appears to be a croissant. I take all this in as I hurry to the centre and am greeted by the centre director with a welcome smile and an invitation to follow her to the preschool room. The interior of the building is warm, and cosy. A rich smell of what I think is lasagne floats out of the tiny kitchen. As I turn towards the preschool room, I can hear children’s voices as they call out to their teachers.
In the preschool room, a small group of children is learning Spanish on the mat with a visiting teacher. The rest of the class is outside; they are in the sandpit, with their teacher at a table, cutting out shapes, playing with large cardboard boxes, and edging their way carefully along a balance beam. Caring adults are standing by, watching or offering word of encouragement For the most part, it appears that the children initiate the conversation with adults; they make requests, show them an object found in the yard, or my case, come over and ask me, “whose Mummy are you?”. There is talk of dinosaurs, of windmills, and of the lava in the veggie bin. The teachers seem interested and listen, inviting the children to extend their play with different objects and reminding them to use materials safely.
Portraiture and the element of context enable space through deeper consideration the factual information about the research location. It allows the researcher to take the reader into the world of the study and the attitudes, voices, and belief systems that shape it. Lawrence- Lightfoot (Lawarence-Lightfoot, 2025, para 5) refers to “the actor’s role in shaping and defining context.”. In this way, the element of context contributes to the participatory nature of the research process by illuminating the actions of the children and sharing with the reader the personal or relational aspects of the children’s world and the researcher’s world. The identity of the participants emerges from this context, selected because of the space it offers for the participants and the researcher’s voice. In the example above, the reader is made aware of the children’s world, the quality of the relationships, and to view of the child as capable and valued.
Voice/Voice
Voice in portraiture and voice in the Lundy model (2007) are both concerned with the ideas or interpretation of the researcher and ensuring the voices or dialogues of children are facilitated and heard. Lundy (2007) highlights how children must be supported to express their views through a range of forms, not limited to the spoken word. In portraiture, voice is facilitated through the data collection utilized. In our study, arts-based methods (Coyne & Carter, 2024) were utilised to give children a voice and assistance in sharing their views. Puppetry enabled the children to participate, to express their ideas and their feelings. The puppet motivated the children to be engaged and removed many barriers to participation, including the position of an unknown researcher. The researcher was playful, more of a friend to the puppet, and this added to the children’s sense of safety and desire to communicate their thinking. The puppet was an interesting addition to the children’s daily routine, a new visitor that elicited their curiosity and as we see later, their care and love of play.
As shown in the excerpt below, my [researcher, in the field] voice was also present, attempting to capture the numerous views and experiences of the children as well as my own. In portraiture, Voice is not a singular concept as it includes multiple perspectives and responses (Carter, 2025).
On a chilly Wednesday morning, children in the preschool room joined me on the mat. It took very little time for everyone to settle. I had the pleasure of joining the children for Circle Time last week, spent time with them outside, and introduced myself again as “Olivia, a researcher from the University of Sydney”. One boy remembered me and added, “You wrote lots last week”. I smiled, impressed by his observation, and checked if that was okay; he nodded. I invited the children to help me explore the meaning of the word joy, explaining that I wanted to learn about the people, places, and things that brought them joy at preschool. The children’s perspectives were central to our research, especially since their educators had identified them as a source of joy. I also asked the children if they knew what a university was—just to be sure.
The views of the children were central to our research, especially because they had been identified by their educators as a source of “My Daddy said it is the biggest one, Sydney University”, said one child. “The best one”, added another.
Sydney Uni should be very pleased, I thought.
I then introduced the children to a friend of mine, a Bilby (puppet) named Joy, who was hoping to find out the meaning of her name. I asked them if they would be willing to help her.
When I first applied for ethics approval at the University, the committee raised concerns that the children would not understand the meaning of the word “joy”. I responded that I believed they would, and it was a mistake to underestimate the knowledge of young children.
The children reminded me of their capacity for meaning making and of the joy they feel, see, and can express. When the puppet Joy asked each child, individually, about Joy, every child responded. Some children used their words and said, “When everything is nice” “Happiness” “Being Happy” “Love” “Being Loved” “Happy” “Friends” “My friend Freddie” “Mummy and Daddy” “My sister” “Being grateful for everything you have”.
The last comment caused educators to hold their breath and exchange glances of delight.
The children communicated their joy with the puppet by touching her gently, patting her, and asking about the bandages on her whiskers (because I forgot to remove the protective packaging). I explained that she had fallen and hurt her cheeks. “Two times”, asked a boy, astonished that she had fallen twice. They helped Joy wake up when she fell asleep, and they played her favourite game. They expressed their feelings through smiling, by playing with joy longer than the 30 minutes we had planned, and by watching her intently. One child wanted to keep touching her and then shared this pleasure by smiling at her friend. The children also reached for one another, looked at their teachers when they interacted with Joy, and the circle grew smaller and smaller, until Joy and I were surrounded by a group of children, all wanting to be close to her in this experience.
In portraiture, the researcher is a central part of the research story and is permitted to share their responses, feelings, and position within the context of the study (Carter, 2025). The role of the researcher has an additional dimension in portraiture, and moves beyond the traditional preoccupation with the “identification and documentation of social problems” (Lawrence- Lightfoot & Davis, 2002, p. xvi). In portraiture, the aim of the researcher is different; it is to depict the lived experience, the ‘goodness’ (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1987) of the participants and to listen “for” a story (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 2002, p. 12). In listening “for” a story, the researcher is not listening “to “a story; they are active and engaged in the making of the story. In this study, I was far from passive; I was active, engaged in the data collection process and the shaping of the stories of the three kindergartens “with” the children. In this approach, I facilitated the children’s voices through the art form of puppetry, and as with Lundy’s model (2007), the children were enabled to share their view of joy in words, through actions, and in their relationships. Their voice merged with my voice to form what Lawrence- Lightfoot describes as the collaborative process because “the portraits are shaped through dialogue between the portraitist and the subject, each one participating in the drawing of the image” (Lawrence- Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 3). To create this portrait, the participants must be given an audience and have their views listened to by adults.
Audience/Emergent Themes
Lundy is clear in her conceptualisation of voice on the importance of children being listened to and given the “right of audience” (Lundy, 2007, p. 937). In portraiture, the process of data analysis and the element of Emergent Themes provide children with a platform to be fully heard. As a researcher, one must listen for the research themes with the children. Lawrence- Lightfoot (2025, n.d.) describes this element as the process of “listening for a story”. This involves more than the act of listening and documenting the recollections of others; it is active, involved and asks the researcher to seek patterns, shapes, “metaphor” as well as “light and shadows” (2025, para 10).
The researcher listened “for” the children’s story and applied “dramaturgical codes” (Saldaña, 2018), theatrical terms to analyse the participants’ experiences, their objectives, conflicts, tactics, attitudes, emotions, subtexts, props, and strategies (drama activities). This process allowed the researcherto return to the research context and hear the children again, to examine their words and actions within the context of a preschool community and triangulate them with the written reflections of the other adults present in the room.
Dramaturgical coding is helpful when “telling other people’s stories as well as your own…crossing borders and reaching out to enable and empower the voices of this world to be heard” (Saldaña, 2018, p. 2044). The researcher could hear the voices of the children; they had an audience, and through portraiture, I could listen closely to their words and their actions, to what was spoken and unspoken. I could hear their joy.
Influence/Artistic Whole
Theaspect of influence in portraiture was a fit for the community involved in the research, the children, their families, and the educators, and invites a conversation about the possibility of creating more joy in the early years of schooling. This form of research offers children the potential of influence by allowing others to see the moments and experiences that bring them joy, and by having a positive impact on the classroom environment as well as the educators. The children revealed the joy they found in playing, friendship, family, their teachers, and puppetry.
The portraitist seeks “to record and interpret the perspectives and experience of the people they are studying, documenting their voices and their visions–their authority, knowledge, and wisdom” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. xv). The approach was used to share the wisdom of the children and also to give them influence in the research process. The researcher came to the study with a hypothesis, with a research plan, and with the data collection tools, and was able to be responsive to the children, to adjust the plan, and allow them to influence the data collection methods and research activities. One example was accepting the children’s offer to take Joy on tours around the preschool. The children delighted in showing the puppet the places where they felt joy. Another example was the selection of games we played to create joy with friends in small group activities. It was a reciprocal process, child led and not adult-directed; a socially engaged practice, created together.
In writing the portrait, the artistic whole, the researcher has attempted to tell how children experience joy and discovered many dimensions in early childhood. Children experience joy as a feeling or an emotion, which shows on their faces, through their bodies, and often in their words. The children also told the researcher how joy emerged through interactions, relationships, connections, and play. Small or large group embodied learning enabled joy, as did opportunities for the children to show their autonomy and introduce the researcher to places and people in the preschool that they found special. They showed joy when they greeted their educator in the morning, throwing their arms around them and happily waving their parents goodbye. The interactions with children brought educator’s immense joy.
Conclusion
Participatory research honours the rights of a child to have their voices heard about matters that concern them (UNICEF, 2015). This paper demonstrates how portraiture methodology effectively upholds children’s rights in research through Lundy’s (2007) framework of space, voice, audience, and influence. By dismantling participation barriers, this approach allows children’s authentic voices to emerge within the research narrative. The inherently participatory nature of portraiture positions children as active contributors rather than passive subjects, enabling them to shape the narrative through both data collection and research activities. As Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) affirm, “the portraits are shaped through dialogue between the portraitist and the subject, each one participating in the drawing of the image” (p. 3). Ultimately, portraiture’s inclusive framework honours all children, ensuring diverse perspectives are captured and respected within the research process.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.