Abstract
Scholars of early childhood education have urged qualitative researchers to adapt their methods for use with young children. However, unjust social imaginations of childhood (e.g., who is considered a “child”) play out in qualitative research, particularly for young children who are made most vulnerable by intersecting oppressions (e.g., racism, linguicism, ableism). Extending Morrison’s metaphor of “the white gaze,” we argue that qualitative research is often framed through an “adult gaze,” which presumes children’s worth in terms of who they will ultimately become and differentially imagines who is considered a child in the present. Informed by theoretical understandings from the fields of critical childhood studies and early literacy studies, we consider how qualitative researchers might disrupt the adult gaze and honor multiply marginalized children by centering their wholeness, orienting toward their agency, and creating space for their brilliance.
Keywords
I want to say to children, tell me what you think and what you see and what you dream so that I may hope to honor you. —June Jordan (1977/2016, p. 18)
Qualitative research, “an interpretive and naturalistic approach . . . that endeavors to make social life more known through a series of analytical representations” (Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021, p. 6), has historically served the needs of adult researchers (Yoon & Templeton, 2019), whose methods often privilege conventional ways of communicating (e.g., oral interviews, text analysis). Early childhood scholars (e.g., Graue & Walsh, 1998) have urged researchers to make child-centered methodological adaptations (e.g., incorporating play, drawing). Yet in research and society, intersecting oppressions (e.g., racism, linguicism, ableism) perpetuate unjust social imaginations of childhood, including who is recognized as a child (Dumas & Nelson, 2016) and whose expressions are considered legitimate (Collins, 2011). Indeed, children who are multiply marginalized by intersecting oppressions (e.g., multilingual children of color; children of color with disabilities) are rarely positioned as children who have things to say about their worlds.
Inspired by poet June Jordan (1977/2016), we seek to honor young children—particularly those who are multiply marginalized—through qualitative research. We ask: How might researchers center children’s wholeness, positioning them as full, multidimensional beings? How might researchers orient toward children’s agency—their ability to make things happen? How might researchers create space for children’s brilliance, including how they creatively express and/or resist meaning?
In this conceptual article, we argue that qualitative research is often framed through an adult gaze, shaped by intersecting oppressions. Drawing on theoretical understandings from critical childhood studies (James & Prout, 2015) and early literacy studies (Dyson, 2013), we highlight our own and others’ research to demonstrate how we might honor children. Throughout, we raise unanswered questions and suggest ways forward for researchers working with multiply marginalized young children.
The Adult Gaze in Qualitative Research
Extending Morrison’s (1992) metaphor of the “white gaze,” or literary presumptions of a white reader, we argue that qualitative research is often framed through an adult gaze, 1 which presumes children’s worth in terms of who they will become (Uprichard, 2008). Indeed, education research has frequently sought to measure children’s development and preparation for their work as adults (Galman, 2018), positioning childhood as valuable primarily in relation to adulthood and leading to schooling that reinforces this perspective.
Building on Black feminist understandings of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), we argue that the adult gaze also determines who is imagined as a child in the present (Dumas & Nelson, 2016). Indeed, racism—structural processes and expressions of power benefiting whiteness (Omi & Winant, 2014)—and particularly anti-Blackness render childhood unimaginable for Black boys (Dumas & Nelson, 2016) and construct children of color as problems to be “fixed” in research (Howard, 2013). Linguicism—discrimination based on languages people do or do not know (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2015)—devalues multilingual children of color’s expressions (Flores & Rosa, 2015) and perpetuates deficit representations (e.g., positioning multilingual children as “at risk”; see Soto-Boykin et al., 2021). Ableism—the (de)valuing of people’s bodies, minds, and behaviors based on notions of ability (Lewis, 2022)—fuels exclusion of disabled children of color’s perspectives within research (Beneke, 2021). Together, these oppressions reinforce deficit perspectives about children’s identities, languages, and/or capabilities in qualitative research.
We collaborate across disciplinary silos to foreground the experiences of children made most vulnerable by the adult gaze, highlighting their rich and nuanced experiences. Emily, a bilingual white and Cuban American woman, is an early childhood language and literacy scholar. Maggie, a scholar of early literacy and disability studies, is a white woman who was labeled with a disability as a child. Hailey is a Black, nondisabled woman and scholar of early childhood inclusive education. Our cross-disciplinary analysis deepened our understandings of childhoods and meaning-making while also surfacing tensions around the limitations of language. Throughout this article, we cautiously use the term “multiply marginalized children” because we do not seek to label children through lenses of oppression—a concept underscored in language and literacy studies (García, 2009). Simultaneously, we recognize how naming oppressions is necessary to dismantle them—an understanding underscored by disability justice scholars and activists (Andrews et al., 2019). We acknowledge and honor this tension through interdisciplinary approaches that center children.
Informing Perspectives
Critical Childhood Studies: Agency and Social Action
Critical childhood studies is a field of study in which researchers recognize how children actively and agentively construct meaning (James & Prout, 2015; Luttrell, 2020). In contrast to dominant perspectives that have characterized children as “incomplete” beings in development, researchers who take up this perspective view children as already whole (Cannella, 2010) and as social actors in the present and future (Uprichard, 2008).
When researchers apply critical childhood studies to their methods, they open powerful possibilities to center children’s voices. Indeed, elevating children’s voices is “not simply . . . about letting children speak; it is about exploring the unique contribution to our understanding of and theorizing about the social world that children’s perspectives can provide” (James, 2007, p. 262). Thus, children are understood as “active interpreters and inventors of culture” (Luttrell, 2020, p. 23), with insights to share.
Simultaneously, scholars warn that a focus on the “voices of children” writ large “risks glossing over the diversity of children’s own lives” (James, 2007, p. 262). That is, by conceptualizing children as a monolith, researchers may reinforce the overwhelming whiteness that has dominated early childhood scholarship (Pérez, 2007) and disregard how children’s experiences are impacted by intersecting oppressions.
Heeding James’s (2007) call to honor the diversity of children’s experiences, we drew on ideas from critical childhood studies to consider how researchers have recognized multiply marginalized children’s action and agency and used these insights to construct the provocations and questions posed herein.
Early Literacy Studies: Expansive Ways of Making Meaning
Drawing on scholarship in early literacy studies, we also considered expansive understandings of children’s meaning-making. From sharing songs to passing notes to composing virtual worlds via digital tools, children use multimodal texts—forms of symbolic media (Dyson, 2013)—to make sense of their environments. To adults, these texts (e.g., scribbles) may seem unconventional, yet children’s expressions represent lived, emotional, and/or embodied experiences (Sipe, 2002; Teale & Sulzby, 1986).
When applied to research methods, understandings of meaning-making in children’s worlds offer expansive ways of conceptualizing “data.” Indeed, scholars have argued that the tools of literacy research may uniquely support methodological innovation, including with children (Rogers et al., 2016). We assert that early literacy researchers’ broadened understandings of texts can support particularly expansive conceptions of data in research with young children.
Insights from early literacy studies facilitated our analysis of the ways researchers have honored children’s expressions beyond conventional English and/or printed text. They also helped us recognize how researchers have positioned the things children care about (e.g., cartoons) as texts themselves, worthy of analysis.
Toward Honoring Multiply Marginalized Children
We brought theoretical understandings from critical childhood studies and early literacy studies into conversation with qualitative methods to explore how researchers have disrupted the adult gaze and honored multiply marginalized children. Together, these perspectives draw attention to children’s wholeness, agency, and brilliance. First, they position children as whole beings who construct childhood on their own terms (Nxumalo, 2021) and through expansive means (Dyson, 2013), including when intersecting oppressions attempt to fragment their identities (Lorde, 1984). Next, these perspectives highlight how research methods can orient toward children’s agency as children use symbolic media to act on their environments (Yoon & Templeton, 2019). Finally, with recognition that children make meaning of identities and power relations (Boutte et al., 2011), these perspectives illustrate how qualitative researchers can create space for multiply marginalized children’s brilliance as they express understandings of and/or resistance to oppressive messages in their worlds.
Honoring Multiply Marginalized Children Through Qualitative Research
Through a series of provocations, we highlight how existing research has honored children through researcher stance, study design, and data generation and interpretation. We also raise unanswered questions and identify future directions for centering children’s wholeness, orienting toward their agency, and creating space for their brilliance in qualitative research.
Centering Children’s Wholeness in Researcher Stance
Centering children’s wholeness—the recognition that children are multidimensional beings whose meaning-making extends beyond school spaces and exists amid power relations—is fundamental to a researcher stance that honors multiply marginalized children. We define stance as theoretical and axiological commitments that researchers translate into methodological practice. Centering children’s wholeness in stance can include (a) cultivating genuine relationships and (b) expanding understandings of data.
Cultivating genuine relationships
Qualitative researchers are commonly encouraged to take “least adult” (Mandell, 1998) stances during observations, minimizing their authority and following children’s leads. However, such stances can inadvertently overlook power dynamics (Atkinson, 2019) because researchers can never fully divest from authority conferred to them by their age and other intersecting identity markers. Researchers can instead pursue genuine relationships (Paris, 2011), honoring children’s wholeness while recognizing their own privileged adult status.
Researchers might ask themselves, “How can I subvert my power as an adult while honoring multiply marginalized young children’s unique knowledge and lived experiences?” In a multisited ethnography, Kwon (2021) developed relationships that honored participants’ multilingual knowledge and transnational experiences as young children. At the time, Kwon was pregnant, anticipating the birth of her own Korean American child. She asked Minsu, a multiracial 8-year-old, for advice on how she might raise her child like him—with knowledge of Korean language and history. Instead of minimizing her adult experience as a future mother, Kwon positioned Minsu as someone with important knowledge to share because of his identity as a multilingual and transnational child.
Researchers can also cultivate genuine relationships by asking, “How might I understand this child beyond deficit-based framings imposed in early learning settings?” In a longitudinal case study, Quast and Taira (2021) cultivated relationships with James—an autistic Chinese American child. Although James’s literacy skills were pathologized at school, the researchers made methodological choices to understand James beyond deficit framings. For instance, they observed and interviewed James through multimodal means (e.g., drawing, maps) at home, in school, and in community spaces (e.g., church), providing more nuanced insights into James’s experiences.
Thus, rather than attempting to divest from their power as adults, researchers can create new kinds of adult-child relationships rooted in a deep respect for children’s multidimensional identities. As they engage with these ideas, researchers can continuously contend with their positionalities (Boveda & Annamma, 2023), making decisions based on the particularities of their embodied privileges in relation to child participants.
Expanding understandings of data
Education researchers’ questions often focus on the future. Yet children are actively constructing the present, beyond school conventions. Researchers can take up stances that center wholeness through expansive understandings of data, acknowledging how young children construct meaning in the present through wide-ranging means.
Researchers might ask: “How are children expressing knowledge beyond normative expectations?,” disrupting pervasive developmental goals rooted in intersecting oppressions (Beneke & Love, 2022; Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018). In a study of disability and race talk during preschool read-alouds (Beneke, 2021), Maggie expanded observations of children’s literary meaning-making beyond spoken word and toward embodied engagements. As she observed a Black preschooler using his body (e.g., rolling) to resist discussing a picture book in which a disabled character shared his name, she wondered if the child’s embodied resistance might be understood as a refusal of ableist discourses used to pathologize Black communities. While rolling on the floor may seem at odds with normative literary meaning-making, such expansive understandings allow researchers to recognize children’s embodied expressions as both legitimate (Sipe, 2002) and, potentially, as refusals of broader oppressions.
Researchers might also expand understandings of data by orienting toward the “stuff” of childhood, asking: “How might attuning toward children’s engagements with seemingly inconsequential artifacts (e.g., YouTube videos, found objects) support understandings of their meaning-making?” Such stances acknowledge children’s wholeness across multiple spheres, even when these data sources may seem insignificant to adults. Using photovoice methods, Templeton and Vellanki (2022) explored children’s encounters with urban spaces, positioning the content of children’s photographs (e.g., soda bottles) as data. They highlighted a photograph taken by a child named Saryu, which depicted her experiences traveling by car to celebrate Diwali, illustrating Saryu’s understandings of the city through liminal (e.g., transit) rather than fixed spaces. In another example, when Brownell (2018) noticed a Mexican American child named Jairo integrating cartoon references in his classroom-based writing, she sought to understand these influences. Rather than viewing Jairo’s composition vis-à-vis conventional developmental goals, Brownell spent hours watching the cartoon series, expanding her data corpus and orienting toward Jairo’s out-of-school meaning-making.
With examples like these in mind, researchers can expand their data sources in ways that position multiply marginalized young children as whole. Still, there are further questions to pursue. For instance, how can researchers ethically ensure that children consent to treating “the stuff” of childhood as data (Rogers et al., 2016)? As they consider such questions, researchers can maintain axiological commitments to positioning children as whole and express that stance through methodological decision-making.
Orienting Toward Children’s Agency in Design
Orienting toward children’s agency—how they act on their worlds—can support qualitative researchers in designing studies that honor them. Design is a process of reflexively planning and carrying out research (Maxwell, 2013). By orienting toward children’s agency in design, researchers can not only document how children express meaning about their worlds but also seek children’s insights into studies themselves. Researchers can orient toward multiply marginalized children’s agency in design by (a) reshaping researcher-participant relationships and (b) creating opportunities for children to co-construct data records.
Reshaping researcher-participant power dynamics
Qualitative researchers enter children’s spaces (e.g., classrooms, playgrounds) with theoretically informed and carefully determined observation plans. However, researchers rarely consult children and their communities in design decisions, inadvertently reinforcing hierarchical researcher-participant relationships. Researchers can orient toward children’s agency by positioning them and the people in their lives as design consultants who have a say in how researchers enter, engage with, and represent their communities.
Researchers might ask, “How can I prioritize expansive expressive forms to consult children in study design?” In an ethnographic study of bilingual education policy implementation, Dorner (2015) began interviews by asking multilingual children whether they would prefer to participate in English or Spanish and followed their leads. Dorner also subverted traditional researcher-participant power dynamics, offering children opportunities to interview her across these languages. In another study focused on designing technologies with and for Deaf children, Korte (2022) consulted Deaf preschoolers who used their emerging knowledge of sign language to offer ideas. Thus, Korte honored Deaf children’s identities and abilities, even as these children were in the process of language learning.
Reshaping power dynamics also requires that researchers recognize children as inherently interconnected beings, resisting hyper-individualistic understandings of childhood perpetuated by the Global North (Orellana et al., 2001). Researchers can ask, “How might I partner with children’s communities in design, positioning agency as collective?” (Campano et al., 2020). In a virtual case study of children’s written and artistic meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, Emily and Maggie partnered with families to adapt their study design. For instance, when Lili, a 6-year-old multilingual child with Down Syndrome, put her head down to resist talking about her experience, Emily asked Lili’s mother, Carmen, for alternatives that might engage Lili. Carmen wondered whether the questions were overly abstract; she also stated, “Pero sabe ella” (But she knows), emphasizing that Lili was actively making meaning of the pandemic in her own way. Emily made in-the-moment design adaptations, suggesting that Lili might try playing with dolls. This led to a rich episode of play between Lili and Carmen in which Lili made masks for her dolls and storied experiences of pandemic care.
As researchers seek children’s and their communities’ guidance in design, they might partner with stakeholders to learn about children’s needs and preferences. For instance, they might partner with teachers during instructional routines (e.g., circle time) to invite children’s input on design choices (e.g., asking, “Where could a researcher sit to learn more about your writing? How might you show you’d like privacy?”) through multilingual and multimodal responses. Although these invitations would not replace traditional consent and assent procedures, they would offer children and those who care for them more active roles in shaping how researchers enter their communities. Through such work, researchers might begin to reshape researcher-participant relationships, underscoring children’s agentic roles in research processes.
Co-constructing data records
When qualitative researchers design documentation practices, they often seek to generate thick description (Geertz, 1973) of children’s experiences. Yet children are also observing and documenting their worlds. By inviting young children to co-construct data records (e.g., fieldnotes), researchers can support children’s agency, augmenting study findings.
Researchers might ask, “How can I disrupt traditional hierarchies about who constructs knowledge and invite children to document their worlds?” In an ethnographic study of a first-grade writing classroom, Dyson (2013) collaborated with Tionna, a 6-year-old Black child, asking her to transcribe her peers’ talk and share details surrounding their hand-clapping games. Tionna’s transcription helped Dyson more deeply understand literacy practices deemed “unofficial” in school. Indeed, positioning children as co-investigators can help researchers honor them and deepen findings, disrupting adult-child hierarchies as well as racial and ability hierarchies that would position predominantly white nondisabled adult researchers as sole knowledge generators.
Furthermore, researchers can ask, “How might children co-construct data records in ways that honor their innovation?” When Axelrod (2016) observed Soraya, a multilingual child, pretending to take fieldnotes in a Head Start classroom, she invited children to record observations surrounding language practices and ideologies via symbols and scribbles. The children’s data record enriched Axelrod’s ethnographic findings; for instance, a child illustrated an invented word, helping Axelrod understand her intentions and affirm her innovation as a skilled language user.
As they collaborate with children in design, questions remain about how researchers might position children’s participation as a generative experience. Researchers might ask, “How can I honor children’s inquiries and observations in ways that enrich their understandings of the world beyond the adult gaze?” Said differently, researchers can critically question what children stand to gain from partnering in their projects and adapt their designs in ways that might benefit them.
Creating Space for Children’s Brilliance in Generating and Interpreting Data
Creating space for multiply marginalized children’s brilliance—the creative ways they make, express, and/or resist meaning—can support researchers in generating and interpreting data that honor them. Data generation, using theoretically informed methods to document engagement with participants (Garnham, 2008), is inherently interpretive given that researchers make moment-to-moment decisions based on their analyses of interactions in context. Creating space for multiply marginalized children’s brilliance throughout data generation and interpretation can include (a) taking the complexity of children’s expressions seriously and (b) attuning to how children make meaning of identities and power relations.
Taking the complexity of children’s expressions seriously
Qualitative research is dominated by methods that prioritize normative forms of communication. Indeed, children’s expressions are often positioned as developing toward conventional forms underlaid by the adult gaze. However, multiply marginalized children’s communicative practices often extend beyond prevailing expressive forms, offering fundamentally different insights into their experiences than conventional expression allows.
Researchers might ask, “How can I disrupt predominantly oral and written data generation practices to create space for children’s brilliance?” In a study exploring translanguaging practices of nonspeaking multilingual children and their families, Padía (2022) reimagined qualitative interviews. Padía first observed participants in locations of their choosing. She took fieldnotes regarding their meaning-making tools (e.g., augmentative and alternative communication, sign language) as they interwove Spanish, English, and technology. Padía’s observations highlighted children’s and their families’ communicative brilliance; their complex interactions at home guided her interview approach with children themselves (e.g., responding using symbols). Through this work, Padía disrupted assumptions that interviews must be conducted orally—and deepened understandings of nonspeaking multilingual children’s communicative strategies.
Researchers might also ask, “How can I take the complexity of children’s expressions seriously in interpretation—not only as progression toward dominant communicative norms?” In a case study of multilingual second graders’ poetry (Machado & Hartman, 2019), Emily worked with professional translators to learn more about how children had written in languages beyond English (Cunningham, 2019). Translators suggested that the children’s writing was unconventional and did not “mean anything” in a single language. However, Emily considered these insights alongside children’s discussions of their work and beyond monolingual norms. This process revealed how children creatively encoded across languages (e.g., repurposing English letter-sound correspondences in Urdu) through metalinguistic processes made possible by their multilingualism.
As they generate and interpret data with children whose expressions defy normative conventions, researchers might ask: “How might I draw on communal, artistic, and/or technological resources to better understand the complex ideas children are communicating?” “How might I reject hegemonic communicative norms throughout each stage of analysis and writing, creating alternative ways of interpreting and presenting data?” In reframing methods of data generation and interpretation, researchers must also consider how multiply marginalized children’s expressions may be perceived by others as they are particularly vulnerable to having their lives and experiences taken up in unanticipated ways by those who read scholarship. Thus, researchers might continuously consider how to represent children’s meaning-making in ways that showcase their brilliance and center their intentions, potentially through nontraditional means.
Attuning to children’s understandings of identities and power relations
Although young children make meaning of injustices in their worlds (Boutte et al., 2011), their understandings of power are often underestimated in research. Creating space for multiply marginalized children’s brilliance requires researchers to attune to their understandings of identities and power relations, including resistance to intersecting oppressions. Through data generation and interpretation, researchers can highlight how children resist (and refuse) power hierarchies.
To understand how multiply marginalized children make sense of their own and others’ identities, researchers may ask, “How are children resisting deficit-based views imposed on them to determine how they want to be seen and treated?” As she explored culturally sustaining pedagogies in public preschools, Hailey noticed bilingual children of color using Spanish with peers but responding in English or silence when teachers co-opted the language to enforce classroom management procedures rooted in Eurocentrism, linguicism, and ableism. By noticing how children made meaning of raciolinguistic power relations (Flores & Rosa, 2015) in their classroom, Hailey disrupted understandings of children as unknowing and positioned early childhood classrooms as inherently political spaces.
Researchers might also ask, “How are children claiming joy as a strategy of resistance?” In a place-based study, Nxumalo (2021) attended to children’s engagements in the natural world. Interpreting a photo of Simone, a Black girl, splashing in a puddle, through understandings of Black futurity, or “a performance of a future that hasn’t happened yet but must” (p. 17), Nxumalo noted how Simone refused anti-Black discourses of conformity through joyful movements. Like Nxumalo, researchers might consider how children playfully assert identities, communing with other beings as resistance and refusal to intersecting oppressions.
By attuning to children’s understandings of identities and power relations, researchers can learn from their brilliance in collective work toward educational justice. Researchers might ask, “How can I learn from children’s ideas about what a more humanizing education might be?” Taking up such stances throughout data generation and interpretation can create space for children’s brilliance, helping us all learn from their insights.
Conclusion
I want these things for children because I want these things . . . for all of us. (Jordan, 1977/2016, p. 18)
We want recognition of wholeness, agency, and brilliance for Minsu, James, Ethan, Saryu, Jairo, Lilly, Tiana, Javier, Soraya, Simone, and so many other children not represented here because we want these things for all of us. Countless young children have historically been denied such humanizing treatment in education research and are all too often understood in ways that fracture their identities, limit their potential, and disregard their meaning-making and expression.
We know that this is not the only way. Indeed, qualitative research is uniquely positioned to center young children’s wholeness, orient toward their agency, and create space for their brilliance. We must continue to strive for these ideals in our efforts to advance justice through education research—and to craft representations of young children that honor who they are in this moment and in the future.
