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In this chapter, we used a research-based case study titled “The Desirable Prince Meeting” to explore how interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives on the child can be used to prompt critical reflection on socially just equity praxis in early childhood education. We argue that using multiple theoretical perspectives to analyze teaching and learning can generate and drive critical reflection on equity praxis more effectively than using a single perspective that presents a single truth about teaching and learning moments.

This review article seeks to draw on experience in the UK to describe the different forms that arts in health activity can take and to examine the challenges for research in this field.

A case study is used to describe the kind of arts in health project that intends to enhance the social capital of its community and to show how difficult it is to measure the effects of this work using conventional measures of health improvement. However, those who are responsible for providing funding for arts in health are increasingly demanding results that indicate a measurable health gain from the projects.

A literature review of the evaluation of arts in health projects in the UK has shown that few aim at direct health improvement but rather at intermediate indicators of health gain, such as raising awareness of health issues and social activity and participation. This suggests that artists instinctively locate their work as having value within a social model of health where improvements in social inclusion and social cohesion are the important indicators which may go on to lead to long‐term improvements to the health of the community in which they are working.

Understanding the nature of this work has implications for the kind of research appropriate to measure its effect and the timescale required for such research.

Volume 13 of the Advances in Early Education and Day Care series marks twenty years that the series has attempted to provide a forum for current scholarship that might further our thinking about early childhood education and care. This, my ninth volume as series editor, is intended to serve the continuing intent of the series to provide multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on a field that by its nature requires diverse perspectives. Early childhood practices have drawn on ideas from child development, curriculum studies, social work, nursing, sociology, anthropology, and other fields that inform us about children, their care, and the settings in which we implement our programs. Advances has always attempted to respect the necessary diversity of perspectives that can inform the field, and to support work that may not fit in a tidy disciplinary nook.

This article draws on longitudinal research into the establishment of co‐principalships. It discusses this innovative approach to school management in relation to women’s negotiations of their motivations, aspirations and strategies for career advancement and work/life balance. Longitudinal case studies of three primary school co‐principal initiatives were carried out between 1995 and 2000. Repeat interviews and observations with co‐principals, board chairpersons and school staff were conducted. Interviews were also undertaken with parents; students; and representatives of state education agencies, national governing boards, principals’ associations and teacher unions, alongside analysis of school and state policy documents. The resulting case study narratives described how each co‐principalship was initiated and either established or dis‐established. A discourse analysis of these narratives then examined how links between discourse, knowledge and power were being negotiated and challenged, as the new subject position of “co‐principal” was being constructed in New Zealand. This article analyses the significance of the similarities and differences in the women’s career backgrounds, motivations and strategies for moving into management positions. As they initiated their co‐principalships, the women variously went “against the grain” and/or co‐opted elements of the new public management corporate executive model for school leadership, which was introduced within the radical state restructuring during the late 1980s and early 90s in New Zealand.

The authors draw on Howard and Thomas-Hughes' (2020) framework for quality assessment of co-produced research, to interrogate our assumptions and processes and to reflect on our project. They consider if they achieved our planned outcomes around developing practice, enabling a range of voices and perspectives within their research, and enacting change within the university museum.

The authors’ early years residency programme explores the potential of collaborations with community groups to transform knowledge and practice through action research. As museum educators, the authors find synergy between the participatory pedagogies underpinning their practice and the co-construction of knowledge within action research. Both are committed to enabling diverse interpretations within a collective and supportive framework. Within their project, practitioners from the museum and playgroup worked collaboratively to collect video footage, photos, children's artwork and reflective journals and memos.

The process of action, observation and reflection revealed much about the authors’ different perspectives and they found variations in both pedagogy and practice. Although the authors had a shared commitment to providing high quality, memorable, exciting opportunities for the children, the exploratory nature of the project meant that they did not agree what these experiences might look like in advance, and so they had different understandings of what they saw.

Although the authors’ methodological framework was designed to make their research collaborative, structural challenges and the contexts of the art museum and university reinforced long established hierarchies. While some felt supported by the research process and the prestige of working with a university museum to gain legitimacy for their practice, others were disempowered by these same structures. The authors consider their obligations as practitioner-researchers to become aware of the role they play in maintaining, as well as challenging, hierarchies and assumptions.

Young children in museums is a growing area of study and this practitioner-led action research project develop a new strand of enquiry within this field. Through this research the authors can collaborate with community partners to record, analyse and make visible the many different ways in which young children experience the museum. As research led institutions, university museums are ideally placed to develop research in partnership with local public bodies and community groups. However, future work in this area would benefit from a more explicit consideration of the constraints implicit within the institutions within which they all operate.