Examining Child-Led Tours and Child Standpoint Theory as a Methodological Approach to Mitigate Asymmetrical Adult-Child Power Dynamics in Ethnographic Research: A Child-Led Tour of Elfish Antics and Sensorial Knowledge

Brief History of Child-led Tours

Building on work developing child-led tours as a research method (Hart, 1979; Manassakis, 2020), the first author enacted such a tour. Child-led tours were first described by Hart (1979), as an ‘accidental’ methodological discovery during ethnographic fieldwork. During relationship-building and participant-observation, Hart had conversations with children when they were engaged in play, and they would often invite him to engage in their play. Hart realized that mobile conversations revealed “aspects of their play which would not have been discovered through interviewing” alone (1979, p. 31).

Over time, child-led tours have evolved alongside diverse theoretical underpinnings variously named child-led tours, mobile interviews, child-led special place tours, and walking tours. Child-led tours have been considered an engagement process (Clark, 2017; Clark & Moss, 2011; Hart, 1979), a ‘collaborative arts project for consciousness-raising’ (Phillips & Hickey, 2013), public pedagogy (Phillips & Hickey, 2013), and a task-centered research method (Barriage, 2018). Further, individual child-led tours and child-led group tours with children and adults(s) should be differentiated as they have unique rationales and ranges of use (Halpenny, 2020). Child-led group tours with children and adults are tours where children and adults provide their perspectives about a place or space. For the purposes of this paper, individual child-led tours or mobile conversational interviews will be described in the next section, and its conceptualization will be preferentially used for understanding child-led tours as an ethnographic method.

Child-led tours as a method have been utilized within children’s geographies research (Green, 2012), including exploring outdoor spaces use (Merewether, 2015) and understanding risky play (Hinchion et al., 2021). Child-led tours have been used in understanding early childhood settings (Manassakis, 2020; Roscoe, 2020) and kinship care arrangements (Shuttleworth, 2023). Even though child-led tours are well-established in early childhood research and multiple authors assert that child-led tours can be used in health research (Hart, 1979; Johnson et al., 2014), the authors found limited peer-reviewed evidence of the practical application of child-led tours in health and wellness research.

In this paper, the authors describe exploratory work for AM’s dissertation – where conducting one child-led tour was for the purpose of refining methods, gathering data on ethical protocols and practices, and solidifying the necessary critical ethnographic methodological child standpoint framework to ground her dissertation work. The authors detail a child-led tour with ‘lessons learned’ for enacting meaningful participation of young children in child-led tours within qualitative, ethnographic research. The question guiding the inquiry process was: Does ‘walking, talking, and seeing’ through child-initiated data gathering enable meaningful child participation and co-learning between the child participant and adult researcher? Drawing from child standpoint theory, the claim that children are an oppressed group was considered as a lens through which to further inquire into how qualitative methodologies can be expanded to explicitly guide research that can redress unequal power dynamics between adults and children that prevent children’s meaningful participation within research. In the following section, described is the child-led tour method, the transcript of the mobile tour, the reflection and analysis of the child-led tour, and insights regarding ethics and qualitative rigor within the child-led tour.

What is a Child-Led Tour?

Child-led tours resonated with AM’s overarching research goal, which is to enact relational research approaches that can attend to the unique lived experiences and characteristics of research participants. As the research context often inadvertently impacts children’s responses, the child-led mobile interview tour intentionally occurs in spaces significant to children, such as schools, daycares, hospitals, or playgrounds (Hart, 1979). The child-led tour involves one child taking an adult researcher (and often an adult guardian) on a tour. The child-led tour acts as a ‘prompt’ to facilitate a child’s participation, purposefully centering their perspectives about the quality and safety of their environments (Johnson et al., 2014). The immediacy of being in a space while talking about it is developmentally appropriate for young children because it reduces the need for abstraction (Johnson et al., 2014).

Further, children with (dis)abilities that impact gross motor, fine motor, attention, and communication skills may be able to participate in child-led tours due to the built-in structure of the tour; children have access to multiple ways to communicate while not being dependent on one form such as often experienced during sit-down interviews, or arts-based, and performative modalities (Johnson et al., 2014; Urbina-Garcia, 2019). While arts-based methods such as photos and drawings are typically considered appropriate to use with young children to elicit their expressions (Ponizovsky-Bergelson et al., 2019), these methods may limit participation for some children due to children’s diverse interests and abilities. For instance, young children in general, and particularly children with neurodiversities, may find it challenging to sit and focus for periods longer than 5 minutes. Travelling tours are positioned to provide a child-led stream of spontaneous movements, comments, and emotional responses that might not emerge through adult-driven, sit-down discussions (Johnson et al., 2014; Urbina-Garcia, 2019). Thus, child-led tours are posited to be child-friendly, engaging, and fun and increase the meaningful participation of young children with diverse abilities. Child-led tours may also interest older children, including youth with (dis)abilities.

Additionally, child-led tours attempt to disrupt the power imbalances between the researcher and research participant, including the exacerbated effects of child and adult asymmetrical relationships (Johnson et al., 2014). Inviting children to lead and direct the tour provides them with some authority and control over the situation by enacting what and how to express meaningful information (Johnson et al., 2014; Urbina-Garcia, 2019). Children as young as 3 years old can engage in child-led tours (Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2015). The child-friendly nature of the method allows the research participant to direct the researcher’s attention to meaningful spaces and objects and their emotional and evaluative responses to them (Johnson et al., 2014).

By decentering adult-centric objectives and beliefs, and centering children’s ideas and experiences, the child-led tour has the potential to elicit rich data that can positively impact children’s everyday lives (Urbina-Garcia, 2019). Furthermore, learning about children’s environments can help us better plan and design spaces and programs with and for children. Congruent with insights and recommendations from the sociology of childhood (James & Prout, 1990; Qvortrup, 1987, 2009; Qvortrup et al., 2009) and child standpoint theory (Fattore et al., 2016; Medina-Minton, 2019), child-led tours are a strengths-based method that recognizes that children are knowledgeable, active agents, and experts concerning issues that affect them (Johnson et al., 2014; Urbina-Garcia, 2019).

Pre-Ethics Engagement: Inquiring into Ethical Protocols and Practices

Pre-ethics engagement, or community engagement, has been lauded as a “potential approach to strengthen the protection of, respect for, and empowerment of participant communities, and to improve the relevance and quality of research” (Bull et al., 2013, p. 2). Based upon the guidance from the first author’s research partners where child-led methods were proposed as potential ways to undertake ethical research that addresses generational power and agency, this inquiry was created through critically considering how child-led tours and child standpoint theory can enable meaningful child participation. The inquiry approach was developed further by drawing on work led by Indigenous scholars and researchers on pre-ethics engagement that focuses on the critical work that takes place before a study is implemented with Indigenous communities. Guided by principles of inquiry, learning, and relationality as foundational to refining methodology, the authors drew upon recommendations for pre-ethics engagement (see University of British Columbia, 2023; Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, & Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2022).

Thus, this inquiry did not require institutional ethics approval as it was considered non-research related. However, the authors consulted with the university ethics for any ethical considerations to be accounted for when writing this reflective manuscript. The participant and his family were engaged and informed at every step of the process, including manuscript submission. This manuscript explores ethical concerns and insights to encourage further reflection and meaningful action concerning ethical practices within child-led methodologies.

Recruitment

At an outdoor parent-child gathering, AM told a group of parents about her research interests, including the importance of child participation in health research. The child (and family) who were recruited to participate are well-known to AM as they are family friends. The parents have conducted research and are knowledgeable about the research process; due to the parents’ interest in research, they suggested to AM to ask their son to participate in the child-led tour to ‘put theory into practice.’ As AM provides occasional childcare for the family, including pick up and drop off at daycare, voluntary participation was sought by making explicit that the child’s involvement or non-involvement would not impact the reciprocal and occasional child-care duties the families share. AM organized a child-led tour within a daycare setting as this is a common, significant space that may impact children’s health and wellness.

Consent Process

The one-on-one mobile child-led tour was guided by Felix, ³ a pre-school aged boy at his daycare. AM completed a verbal assent process with Felix, and consent process with Felix’s guardians. Felix showed excitement about his participation in the child-led tour and agreed to participate. Felix’s guardians were interested in whether the child-led tour would provide insight into Felix’s daycare experience, as Felix rarely shared his day-to-day experience with them, and they were unable to enter his daycare due to COVID-19 policies. ⁴

As Felix continually tells his parents he ‘wants to be a scientist when he grows up,’ Felix and his guardians were looking forward to Felix’s engagement with a child-led experiment. Felix understood that he was helping AM learn about how to work with, and learn from, young children by hearing about their experiences. As Felix’s parents are aware of Felix’s tendency to disagree or say “no” reflexively, they encouraged AM to take time to allow Felix to process his participation and assent.

Child-Led Tour Transcript

Due to COVID-19-related protocols, we enter the side of the building that leads to the playground. One of Felix’s teachers is raking the sandbox, making sure the area is safe for children to play in. Felix wants to stay outside, but I remind him that we are here early so that he can give me a tour of his daycare. He assents and we enter the narrow entryway, where little yellow and blue rain jackets and tiny multicolored rain boots line the wall.

Felix: Our umbrellas go here. [He takes our umbrellas and puts them in an overstuffed umbrella holder. Before taking off his rain boots and jacket, Felix peers into the main daycare room]. Everything is empty!

Felix is running over a wooden bridge and around a big maple tree with his friend Alexa ⁵ by the time I put my jacket on. They are both laughing heartily, having a good time. After running in circles a few times, I asked Felix if he would like to take me on a tour of the outside playground.

Felix: Yes! [He leads me to the garden plot and plucks a green leaf from a black felted barrel full of herbs. He smiles and puts the herb in his mouth, impishly looking at me to do the same].

Continued and Renegotiated Assent: “I Don’t Want a Tour…What is a Tour?”

Child standpoint theory highlights that assent and participation in research are underpinned by oppressive power relations—adults typically determine if, when, how, and which children can participate (Medina-Minton, 2019). For children under the age of five, assent is typically obtained from children and consent from their guardian(s) before the child participates in a study. Children should be informed that participation is voluntary, meaning that the child can leave at any point even if they had previously given assent. Process assent/consent is a relational ethical obligation to pay attention to young children’s non-verbal cues and expressions to determine their ongoing willingness to participate (Dockett, Einarsdottir, & Perry, 2012). When conducting research with young children, seeking informed assent may require creative strategies (Dockett, Perry, & Kearney, 2012), such as a pictorial assent form alongside a written form that the guardian explains (Truscott et al., 2019).

The child-led tour had been explained to Felix multiple times over a few days; he had a few days to have his questions answered regarding the child-led tour and to provide an answer regarding whether he wanted to participate. Despite the ongoing conversations and his initial enthusiastic assent, Felix needed to be reminded about the tour’s purpose right before and during the tour. Felix showed his agency and autonomy by requesting information about the tour, what it is, and why he arrived at his daycare so early. Felix showed interest and agency in obtaining information so that he could make an informed decision about participation. However, as the adult (and occasional caregiver) with power and with the suggestion from Felix’s parents, AM did not listen to his requests for nonparticipation. In fact, AM did not maintain continuous assent during the process; rather, she treated assent like an outing to the grocery store where the child did not have the power to determine when they would go home. For instance, Felix asked AM six times to go outside, but she did not listen to his request, deflecting and redirecting Felix until she had enough information for her purposes.

During the tour, AM re-directed and gave Felix limited choices to assent/dissent in order to meet her adult-centric motivations and priorities. Felix’s requests for nonparticipation, or perhaps participation outside, were not fulsomely met. Listening to the interview became uncomfortable for AM because the goal was to learn how to reduce asymmetrical adult-driven power dynamics. Listening to the audio recording and analyzing the transcription made it clear that asymmetrical power dynamics animated the child-led tour, punctuated by moments of acquiescence and resistance from Felix.

In Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s book Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, Simpson (2011) troubles taken-for-granted adult-child interactions about choice, assent, and participation, and portends the potential for decolonizing interactions between children and adults in everyday life that enables shared power and non-authoritarian decision-making. As a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, Simpson argues that children’s lack of power is common in settler parenting repertoires. For instance, she notes that young children are often allowed “to make choices only when they don’t matter (would you like to wear your red pajamas or blue one’s?)” (Simpson, 2011, p. 133). While Simpson’s observation is from a Anishinaabe parent standpoint, her observations underscore cultural norms in Western colonial contexts that may also animate research relationships that influence children’s experiences of choice, assent/consent, resistance, and compliance. For instance, as a proxy to determine Felix’s ongoing assent, AM asks, “Do you want to take your rain pants off or do you want to keep them on?” Did this question help determine Felix’s assent to participate and/or did it provide a constrained choice and tokenized gesture regarding assent and participation?

The idea of young children’s assent may need to be troubled. Regarding the nightly routine, Simpson (2011) states that her children “detected the manipulative and non-authentic nature of the ‘choice’ and of course chose to sleep naked, or wear all of their pajamas to bed” (p. 133). Simpson’s children participated in getting ready for bed; however, their resistance and agency set new parameters for their nighttime participation. They, however, did not assent to the question asked. Simpson’s wise reflections based upon her Elder’s teachings, her worldview, and her experiences may be pertinent for untangling how dominate Euro-centric communication strategies and power hierarchies with children may impact children’s meaningful and active participation concerning choice and consent/assent in Western approaches to qualitative research.

During debriefing with Felix, AM’s initial reading of the perceived negative asymmetrical power dynamics was less obvious to Felix, perhaps, as Simpson notes, young children are used to limit-setting and acquiescing due to limited power in their everyday lives. Palaiologou (2014) argues that the assent/consent process is a “top-down adult-invented approach to ethical practice with children under five” that does not counter or address asymmetrical power relations between adults and children (p. 700). In retrospect, AM recognized the need for a responsive ethical algorithm, to ascertain processual assent that could consider inconsistent responses across time in order to facilitate rather than hinder participation. As Felix’s parents had alluded, Felix’s initial reaction to choice was typically non-affirmative and resistant but would often change quickly and dramatically to that of assent and participation.

To avoid the illusion of participation, a processual, pictorial assent process may have been helpful to advance Felix’s understanding concerning participation and will be a strategy used for AM’s ongoing research. A pictorial assent process may improve factors affecting comprehension and another means to evaluate the child’s comprehension. While this child-led tour was a pre-ethics engagement process, not a research project, and was impacted by engrained caregiver-child dynamics, AM still should have employed continuous assent and provided ongoing information in order for Felix to participate, renegotiate his inclusion meaningfully, and/or request nonparticipation.

Ebb and Flow of Control: Questions and Engagement

Within Western cultures, children are often sustained in an infantile state to ensure caregivers continued power and control, making it easier for them to provide care and parent (Medina-Minton, 2019). The ebb and flow to Felix’s participation, resistance, and non-participation often aligned with when AM exercised power by ‘allowing’ him to lead or when she took leadership. In effect, AM attempted to gatekeep his participation as a form of control (Medina-Minton, 2019). Although this tour is animated by child and caregiver dynamics, there may be parallels to adult-child relationships in general and during other research practices. In fact, “the interviewer often assumes a parental or educator role when they control children’s behavior” (Ponizovsky-Bergelson et al., 2019, p. 2). Thus, this ‘run-through’ child-led tour became a cautionary tale for AM and illuminated the unequal power dynamics that may arise during future child-led tours.

Research with young children typically encounters ebbs and flows of participation, renegotiation, and disinterest (Palaiologou, 2014; Truscott et al., 2019). Felix began leading the tour by acknowledging, “Our umbrellas go here.” However, his participation waned when AM asked too many questions or became directive. For instance, Felix had to ask AM, “Why do you keep saying, ‘what is this, what is this, what is this!?!” to assert his dislike of her approach. There were even times when AM cut him off or redirected the conversation. At one point, AM’s response sounded dismissive when he explained to her where the other children’s shoes were stored. These unequal power dynamics and controlling behaviours negatively impacted his fulsome participation and the researcher’s ability to fully learn about the daycare setting.

Felix understood that he was supposed to lead the tour, but AM was having a hard time relinquishing control, including overtly ignoring his withdrawal of assent to participate. After AM acknowledged the mistake of asking too many questions, Felix regained control and started to lead again by directing attention to something that might be novel to AM: a CD player. However, AM became wrapped up in her thoughts and ruptured that connection again by redirecting the object of focus to his clothing bag. Felix responded by going to another room and drawing AM’s attention by using negative language (i.e., “I don’t like this room!”). Felix was continually trying to engage AM in a child-led way by renegotiating his leadership and active participation. Even though AM narrowly focused on her priorities and attempted to control the direction of the tour, the built-in mechanisms of the method provide opportunities for resistance and for the assertion of agency, power, and control by the child.

Palaiologou (2014) argues that an “ethical commitment to research with young children should move beyond not harming children (and getting their consent)” to creating responsible relationships involving children with research (p. 691). Child-led tours provide built-in mechanisms for children to disengage, re-engage, negotiate, and assert their power and assent to participate in the research. The child-led tour may be one way to initiate and maintain respectful relationships between adults and children in a supportive research space, alongside ethical algorithms for processual assent.

Power Leading Questions: Adult-Driven Priorities and Niceties

Standpoint theories argue that power differentials exist between those in power and oppressed groups (Medina-Minton, 2019). A child standpoint theory helps illuminate how children are an oppressed group vis-à-vis adults and how articulating their experience and position can identify and remedy unsupportive and unhelpful power dynamics (Medina-Minton, 2019). AM’s adult-driven priorities (i.e., getting enough information to meet her goals and being respectful of the daycare staff) hindered the potential for a genuinely child-led experience, which negatively contributed to the asymmetrical power dynamics as a caregiver-child duo and an adult-child ‘research’ group. For instance, AM became very wrapped up with an adult-driven agenda because she was a guest in the daycare space and stretching COVID-19 protocols. AM did not want to offend the daycare staff, so at the beginning of the interview, she focused on adhering to their rules (e.g., indoor daycare shoes only, getting him out of his rain gear) rather than on the purpose of the assignment, allowing Felix to guide and lead.

Further, the way AM asked questions made it seem that she did not trust Felix to provide useful information; AM often provided leading and close-ended questions that undermined her learning in this context and his essential contribution. For example, when Felix told AM that “It’s so empty” she responded by asking him if he meant, “Does it look clean? Does it look different because the other children haven’t played here yet?” AM reflected that she would not ask a close-ended, leading question during an adult-to-adult interview: through her leading and rapid-fire questions, she diminished Felix’s ability to respond in a meaningful way. AM did not provide Felix time and silence to answer questions meaningfully or thoughtfully. As a result, Felix provided short answers.

Ponizovsky-Bergelson and colleagues (2019) analyzed 420 adult-child qualitative interviews and concurred that well-trained adult researchers still tend to ask close-ended questions. “This tendency may be related to adults’ view that children cannot articulate sophisticated opinions and construct new knowledge but rather report knowledge learned from adults” (Ponizovsky-Bergelson et al., 2019, p. 6). These biased ‘tendencies’ and practices through asking close-ended question may reduce children’s agency and ability to contribute to knowledge generation and concomitantly reproduce unhelpful beliefs concerning children and their participation in matters that impact them. Applying insights from child standpoint theory that features children’s oppression vis-à-vis adults may remind the adult researcher of the need to continuously scrutinize their biases and reflect upon and improve their relational ways of communicating with children. Further, a child standpoint theoretical framework alongside child-led tours may encourage adult researchers to see a child’s resistance as an enactment of agency and participation, thereby reframing and resisting dominant developmental discourses that privilege neoliberal views of agency that leave little space for seeing children as active participants in constructing the world.

Listening to the interview and engaging in an analysis process right after the interview enabled reflection upon the asymmetrical power dynamics and how they negatively contributed to Felix’s participation. Like other adult researchers engaged in qualitative research with children (see Ailwood, 2011, p. 24), AM felt a profound sense of failure regarding her interview process. However, with further analysis the authors recognized that the child-led tour method provided built-in opportunities for Felix to reengage and reassert his agency and power despite AM’s unconscious unwillingness to let go of her power during the interview process. For example, Felix ran into another room and then called AM to join him to reengage in the child-led tour.

AM reconnected with Felix post-tour to operationalize the reflexive learning and let him know that she values his experiences and knowledge. This small gesture seemed to make a significant impact upon Felix and his willingness to reengage in a discussion about the tour. Ponizovsky-Bergelson and colleagues (2019) emphasize that adult researchers should repeatedly provide different forms of encouragement throughout the research process to child participants, including compliments, repeating the children’s answers, agreeing, and showing non-verbal signs of agreeableness such as nodding. For instance, during debriefing AM asked Felix open-ended questions and did not rush his answers. He was able to answer clearly and confidently. For instance, AM explained that she had looked through the tour recording and was uncertain what he meant by “everything is empty.” Felix explained that the room was empty of children and teachers and that even when one teacher arrived, it still felt empty. As noted by other researchers, child-led tours can be fast-paced with multiple forms of data, having a quick follow-up interview may help the adult researcher clarify missing points and gain further insight from the child.

Double Consciousness & Developmental Novelty: “This is Not a TV”

As with other standpoint theories, Medina-Minton (2019) asserts that child standpoint theory reveals that children have a double consciousness. ⁷ “In the double consciousness of childhood, the child observes adult society developing an awareness of what they want or don’t want to achieve or become” (Medina-Minton, 2019). A childhood double consciousness perspective allows children to observe the adult world while maintaining connections and collaborating with other children who are also developing their ideas and thought processes (Medina-Minton, 2019). By engaging in double consciousness, children enact and construct unique and differentiating abilities, awareness, consciousness, and self-identification (Medina-Minton, 2019).

Jean Piaget’s theories about stages of development are often a part of healthcare providers’ education regarding psychology, development, and the pediatric population. Children between the ages of 2–6 years old are stated to be in the preoperational stage (Piaget, 1952). Within this stage, children are on a ‘search for representation’ where they learn how to move from concrete to abstract thought (Piaget, 1952). As Felix is within this stage, AM felt a child-led tour was optimal to provide a concrete environment to foreground his lived experiences. During the tour, AM was confused by why he showed particular ‘novel’ items rather than explaining his everyday experiences. AM thought that she had made the intentions of the tour clear during the assent process. AM wondered if the questions posed to Felix were too abstract given they were in the daycare at an irregular time.

Further reflection upon the interview concerning his developmental stage provided insights regarding his epistemological and ontological orientation. For example, he continually pointed out aspects of the daycare that were unique for that day (e.g., the daycare space was empty, a solitary forgotten, stuffed animal, misplaced Magna tiles, tiny shoes that were not on feet). Many of these strange concrete objects were out of place and seemed novel and funny to him. For instance, shoes should be on children’s feet, and favourite stuffies should be in children’s arms. AM did not understand this nuance during the interview and failed to follow Felix’s lead and interest. The juxtaposition between the everyday and novel was lost on AM. She was so embedded within her developmental stage and interests that she failed to understand his unique onto-epistemology and what he was trying to convey.

Despite AM’s epistemological limitations, Felix did engage in the child-led tour based on his developmental understanding and perhaps his double consciousness. For instance, he wanted to provide AM with a tour but not bore her with everyday items that she already knew about. Unlike Piaget’s underestimation of children’s abilities, including their propensity for egocentrism (Trawick-Smith, 2019), Felix appeared to consider AM’s perspective by trying to engage her and pique her interest. For instance, he showed AM the CD player because he had never seen her with one. Additionally, he was excited to share his garden with AM because he knows she does not have an herb garden at home. As AM knows his caregivers are constantly telling Felix not to eat or lick outside vegetation during a pandemic, Felix shared his knowledge that some green plants within a city landscape are safe and enjoyable to eat.

At an early age, children learn that adults ask them “test questions” to assess their knowledge rather than engage in a dialogue where adults may learn from children (Brooker, 2001; Ponizovsky-Bergelson et al., 2019). Children take part in this unequal power dynamic due to expectations surrounding manners and respect (Brooker, 2001). Through the child-led tour, Felix may have been asserting his power by not engaging in obligatory banter regarding things he already knew AM knew and concerning things he had no interest in discussing (e.g., pictures of him playing with playdoh, books). Through his double-consciousness and with the newfound knowledge of the tenets of a child-led tour (i.e., children are leading the tour), Felix attempted to deflect this unequal power arrangement and reassert his power and leadership within the tour.

When children are provided opportunities to direct and guide adults during knowledge generation, it redresses power dynamics and hierarchies between children and adults in research. Child-led tours provide opportunities for resistance of these hierarchical power dynamics. The strength of a child-led tour coupled to a reflexive child standpoint theoretical orientation is that it can make explicit adult’s epistemological biases and the tensions between children’s and adults being in the world and collaborating. As a result, child-led tours may support co-learning between adults and children with active participation of children during knowledge gathering. Further, this framing may make Western, medicalized and taken-for granted scientific assumptions of childhood and knowledge of children explicit and allow for the reimagining of children’s agency, power, and capacity for knowledge generation in situ. A child standpoint orientation underlines that children are human beings and human becomings who are knowers and experts in their own lives and capable of knowledge co-construction (Fattore et al., 2016).

Engaging the Whole Self in Research: An Elf licks a Candy Jar

Parents and caregivers provide children guidance surrounding developmental challenges, supporting their health and well-being (Medina-Minton, 2019). When adult-driven beliefs and ideologies about children impinge on children’s voices and agency, children experience oppression (Medina-Minton, 2019). Children need to be supported in asserting their power so that they do not feel powerless on issues that impact them (Medina-Minton, 2019). Within research, there is a tension between providing the right amount of guidance and support without impinging upon children’s rights as agentive beings.

Analyzing and reflecting upon the child-led tour reinforced that analysis needs to extend beyond what is verbally recorded to how the child engages in place and space. Thus, there is weaving back and forth between participant observation and an embodied interview process. Felix is a very active child, and AM knew that an active approach to an interview would be ideal to engage him. His running, licking, eating, prancing and twirling like a mischievous elf provides insight into what activities he enjoys.

A child-led tour has the potential to support an embodied interview approach by using multiple senses which could lead to a fuller understanding of children’s perspectives. This position makes sense as “children believe that knowledge of reality comes directly through our senses and what others tell us” (Weinstock et al., 2020). In leading the tour, Felix allowed the duo to engage other senses like olfactory, gustatory, tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive. These senses are typically excluded from research in sit-down interviews where auditory and visual senses are privileged. Felix was showing AM what he knows about his daycare through engaging in an embodied sensorial tour. AM did not anticipate that a child-led tour could privilege other senses and ways of knowing. As such, AM had valorized the potential textual contribution that this approach could offer, thereby instrumentalizing the child-led tour merely to engage the child to get adult-approved textual information. The analysis process allowed AM to understand that child-led tours can enable a much richer understanding of a child’s experiences, knowledges, and ideas.

An Intersectional Child Standpoint: “I Don’t Like This Thing.”

Taking a cue from child standpoint theory, AM purposively did not use intersectional feminist theory to support her original analyses because she thought it would undermine the attempted child-led nature of the inquiry. AM did not want to politicize Felix’s lived experiences based on Felix’s parents’ concerns with his development and behaviour; she did not want to focus the daycare tour on parental assumptions based upon Felix’s intersecting identities, but on Felix’s interaction and voiced concerns with his environment and her engagement with Felix. However, without having an intersectional focus during the analysis, other elements such as the interconnections among age, gender, and ability and the relational processes that connect them (like ageism, ableism, colonialism, racialization, racism, and gender biases) and the layout and policies of the daycare were effaced into the background.

For example, Felix mentioned that he did not like the puzzle room during the tour, explicitly drawing AM’s attention by pointing to the ‘advanced’ puzzles. AM looked at a wall shelf of toddler puzzles, but he drew her attention back to the 24–70+ piece puzzles by putting his hand on the advanced puzzles. During debriefing, AM asked him to clarify what ‘thing he disliked.’ He explained that he dislikes the puzzle room because he must sit down for long periods; he elaborated that so many puzzles, chairs, and a big table make it difficult to move his body in that space. The layout of the daycare, the ‘no running inside’ policy, his developmental age, gender, racialized positioning, strengths, needs, privileges, and abilities impact how he feels in the daycare space. Child standpoint theory by itself did not help the authors understand those intersecting interconnections.

Although not systematically documented, AM observed Felix’s facial and body language and movements. Based upon their prior relationship and caregiving/receiving history, AM knew that he did not like puzzles and probably the puzzle room. AM wanted the tour to support his self-esteem, evinced by her agreement to count chairs and focus on one of his strengths (counting) rather than his challenge (sitting still for long periods). However, this protectionist stance may have decreased further knowledge about his experiences and concerns with the puzzle room, or the childcare facility in general.

Without a profound relationship with the child, it will be challenging to understand intersectional factors and ways to support safety during research. Research with young children should equally prioritize relationships with adult gatekeepers and children to ensure safe and engaged participation (Truscott et al., 2019). Or, as Urbina-Garcia (2019) states, while adult researchers may never “…fully understand children’s perspectives, it is possible for researchers to implement intuitive strategies by reflectively adapting their methods to honor children’s diverse needs.” An intersectional, child standpoint informed child-led tour has the potential to elicit rich research findings while maintaining a relational and reflexive approach to engaging children in research.

However, enacting child-led tours with a child standpoint and an intersectional framing are not straightforward nor without friction. Intersectional feminist theory focuses on the potential overlapping and simultaneous forms of oppression to understand inequities and injustice in local contexts (Collins & Bilge, 2020; Crenshaw, 1991), whereas child standpoint theory focuses on one main axis of identity. Within childhood studies there is a debate whether focusing on diversity politicizes childhoods (Alanen, 2016; James, 2010; Konstantoni & Emejulu, 2017). Within intersectional theorizing, there is debate whether intersectionality can ‘travel’ to other disciplines due to the hegemonic preference to silence the calling out of racism, patriarchy, sexism, and racialization within contemporary colonial social realities (Cho et al., 2013; Konstantoni & Emejulu, 2017, p. 8). A child standpoint, intersectional framework draws attention to the challenges of accommodating distinctive, resistant knowledge projects that share common spaces.

Yet, a child standpoint, intersectional framing may more closely align with intersectional resistance traditions and communities that birthed intersectional epistemologies, but whose power lay outside of academic institutions to coin and theorize those knowledges (See Collins, 2019; Combahee River Collective, 2014). As children are predominantly excluded from institutions of higher learning, an intersectional child standpoint framework might make explicit the structural dimensions of epistemic power and encourage self-reflexivity and collaborative action to remedy those power differentials in knowledge production and mobilization that create and maintain epistemic injustice.

An intersectional child standpoint praxis may move beyond epistemic silencing, political uniformity, and the homogenizing of childhoods, reminding researchers of the diversity of children and childhoods. A child-led tour with an intersectional child standpoint framework may centre the need for epistemological plurality and provide insights regarding how to foster inclusive engagement in sensorial knowledge generation for and with diverse children with diverse childhoods. As a result, some intersecting structural and interpersonal power dynamics may need decolonizing to enable children’s active and meaningful participation in matters that impact them. As Collins states, “Intersectionality is not just about ideas and not just about power; rather its critical inquiry taps the recursive relationship of knowledge and power as organized via epistemology and methodology” (2019, p. 123). A child standpoint, intersectional theoretical framework may invite methodological innovations in relation to the structures of power that shape how research is conducted and highlight the intersecting dynamics that shape the way children understand their lived experiences and themselves.