Training Teachers-as-Researchers’ Ethnographic Eyes to Interview Children by Jue Wang

Scholars in recent years have called for an emphasis on listening to children’s ideas and connecting with children through creative approaches to interviews (Clark 2017; Holmes 2019). To engage children in research, researchers have proposed effective, child-friendly interview methods, such as storytelling (Davis 2007; Eisner et al. 1990), art-based methods (Leavy 2020; Blaisdell et al. 2019), and interviewing children in highly constrained settings (Morrison 2013; Percy 1995). Although existing scholarship forwarded an examination of the various challenges of interviewing children and stated how to maximize opportunities to encourage children to express their voices (Ponizovsky-Bergelson et al. 2019) using innovative interview techniques, studies have often excluded the importance of training preservice and in-service teachers to conduct in-depth interviews.

In this article, I explore how teachers can adopt ethnographic approaches to interviews as they work with children in the classroom and propose implications for teacher education and professional development, including the idea of training teachers as researchers (Shagoury & Power 2023; Dadds 2020). The value of teachers-as-researchers centers on practicing teachers’ utilization of research as well as encouraging teachers to inquire, engage, and lead action research (Avgitidou 2020). I am using the term “teachers-as-researchers” to affirm teachers as capable thought leaders who can initiate improvised interviews and use informal findings from their interactions with children to inform their teaching skills. I will also explain the significance of interviewing children and explore suitable methods to gain insights into children’s discourse. The methods are suggested as a meaningful approach to inspire practitioners to recognize the significance of developing valuable interview skills, increase their knowledge of opening up conversations with children, and sharpen their ability to interpret interview responses for further curriculum and pedagogy planning. These objectives have been investigated through reviewing the author’s ethnographic field study with children, in-service teachers’ concerns about interviewing children, and pre-service teachers’ discussions on leading child study inventories.

The Significance of Interviewing Children

In one example of the importance of interviewing children, an in-service teacher, Ms. Wu (a pseudonym), participating in my field study, responded that “my students [first graders] are too young to be interviewed. Some of them barely follow my instructions, so I am not expecting them to share much in an interview. Their responses will probably be irrelevant to my questions.” The same questions were also asked to other teachers in the elementary school, and only the PE teacher endorsed that “interviewing children is a useful way to open up dialogues with them, and I love to lead informal interviews.”

As the above instance showed, Ms. Wu moved away from connecting with children through interviews as she viewed children as passive recipients of adult communications. However, the main concern arising is not a consequence of these first graders’ inability to clearly interact with adults, but is due to the lack of equality between adults and children (Davis 2007). It is common to understand children only through adults’ perspectives, assuming children are “empty plates” who may not contribute to the reproduction of children’s culture and society (Corsaro 2017). In order to confront such issues, teachers need to shift from viewing young children as objects (Christensen & James 2008) to acknowledging them as social agents (Corsaro 2017) who can actively engage in meaningful interactions. As Ayers & Alexander Tanner (2010) shared in their work, “When we look at our students we need to ask, ‘Who is this person before me? What interests and experiences does she bring? What are his areas of wonder?’” (p. 20). Teachers, especially primary school teachers, should be encouraged to reflect on their own biases regarding children’s capability and be aware of the significance of conducting organic interviews with children as a way to explore children’s discourse and sharpen their ability to design curricula tailored to children’s specific needs.

Adopting the Least Adult Role: Leveling Power Relations Between Adults and Children

The above scenario also relates to the fact that adults may assume they have knowledge or experiences that are superior to those of children. Adults may become incapable of understanding children because they project previous schema, exert privilege, and exercise domination over children. Therefore, children sometimes are limited in expressing themselves because of adults’ superior status during daily lesson delivery, and this may lead to incomplete and/or inauthentic understanding of them. Thus, teachers-as-researchers, especially those who work with young children, should not only offer opportunities for children to express themselves, but also empower them for a fuller participation in the school community as well as in the larger society (Boyden & Ennew 1997; Punch 2002).

Here, during my field study and a series of discussions with pre-service teachers, we adopted Mandell’s (2003) “least adult role” to create more meaningful dialogue with children, which means that teachers-as-researchers embrace children’s cultures and enter children’s worlds (Zhu et al. 2021; Henward 2015; Randall, 2012). One of my pre-service teachers proposed striking a balance between “being a strict teacher” and “becoming an older sister”. Taking a “sister” role to fit into children’s worlds would reduce adults’ superiority and facilitate establishing trust for interviews as adult-child relationships are transitioned to an involved, less-judgmental, and more equal status. The use of this approach will also bring about a sense of empowerment for children by listening to them share their stories and observing their actions of agency (Anna-Leena & Jonna 2017), resulting in a thorough, reflexive, and permeable recognition of children’s lived experiences.

Talk-in-interaction: Creating Mutual Understanding

Goodwin (2006) introduced a talk-in-interaction approach to explore young girls’ negotiation of their social life in her ethnographic study. Rather than only depending on observations, talk-in-interaction stresses giving voice to children in various natural settings and interpreting observations of children’s mutually created activities (Goodwin 2006). Starting in 2016, this method has been consistently demonstrated and employed in “children as readers and writers” projects in my undergraduate literacy methods courses at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Idaho. My preservice teachers use this interactive approach to conduct semi-structured interviews with their child partners in local schools. It allows my preservice teachers not only to carry out interviews in academic learning time, but also during lunch, recess, and other activities. Embedding questions in children’s routines and games enable them to capture more “on the fly” moments to document children’s literacy practices. According to the reflections from preservice teachers, by adjusting to children’s discourse patterns and allowing more flexible interview time and settings, children felt less stressed answering questions and expanded their responses with more details. More importantly, such organic interviews privilege children’s own knowledge constructions as well as explore mutual meanings that go beyond the literacy environment to larger sociological issues (Tobin 2000).

Materials: An Avenue to Expression and Thought Processes

Children are complex, three-dimensional, and dynamic individuals who self-disclose “at their own pace and in their own words” (Greenspan 2008, p. 2). Skilled teachers-as-researchers should be able to encourage children to share their learning experiences, such as goals, concerns, and preferences. During the opening of an interview related to children’s textual practices, preservice teachers are recommended to integrate books, documents, and objects as materials to warm up conversations. These resources provide opportunities for children to reveal information, interact with teachers, and to engage in social discourses.

Haraway (2016) sheds light on the significance of materials, explaining that materials (children’s books, written prompts, pictures, photos, etc.) allow children to resonate with the material nature of objects, interweave their internal and external understandings, and reshape their identities through a material’s circulation. Drawing from Haraway’s theory, materials can be used as prompts to ask open-ended questions, because young children tend to have challenges responding to those questions (Villa et al. 2007). For instance, we used artworks (see Figure 1 and Figure 2) that a child created to elicit information about his understanding of picture reading and writing skills. When creating the maps, the child was provided with guiding questions to evoke his expressions and improve descriptive writing through oral practice. The conversations around these child-created materials offered us a vision into how children narrate their stories, how to interpret their worlds, and what their lived experiences are. Besides smoothing the dialogue around picture comprehension, the map inspired the child to use directional words to tell a story of his neighborhood, what is interesting to his family, and where they spend time out of school. This conversation provided a venue for improvised teachable moments, training pre-service teachers in “in the moment” mini-lesson design. Materials also served as a platform for in-depth interaction between teachers and children, paving the way to explore the hidden curriculum inside the materials.

Conclusion

In summary, interviewing children is suggested as a useful and authentic approach by which to listen to children’s voices and establish mutual meaning, as well as to grant access to negotiate differentials in power relations to better understand children’s discourse. As Malaguzzi (1993) explains beautifully, “things about children and for children are only learned from children” (p. 51). Featuring constructive implications for promoting dynamic and credible interviews, this paper has the potential to improve teaching effectiveness and curriculum design by inspiring the transformation of teachers into teacher-researchers. I recommend that training in ethnographic interview methods become a part of teacher education programs and be incorporated into professional development opportunities for in-service teachers. Increasing the accessibility of training in interview methods would allow as many teachers as possible to improve their skills in interacting with students.

Throughout my journey as a practitioner and a teacher educator, conducting interviews has convinced me and my pre-service teachers that children’s perspectives must be centered for teachers to adequately respond to their needs. Commenting on this, the early childhood educator and participatory educational researcher Jane Murray (2019) suggests, “if educators are to optimize children’s well-being, development and learning, and enhance their chances of experiencing positive lifetime outcomes, they must find ways to listen actively to children’s views, and to understand and respond to them, however they may be expressed.” (p. 3).

About the Scholar

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