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In this chapter, I focus on two methodological issues involved with conducting ethnographies of very young children; establishing a researcher role in preschool classrooms while simultaneously gaining access into children’s culture and the trust of adult gatekeepers involved (i.e., teachers). Drawing on my participant observation experiences in 10 preschool classrooms (over 470 hours and 19 months of observations), I challenge the use of the friend role (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988) and least-adult role (Mandell, 1988) in research with young children. I examine how teachers mediate the researcher’s role in participant observation of children in preschool classrooms demonstrating the importance of establishing a middle manager role between teachers and children when conducting participant observations. I also discuss strategies used to overcome adult’s mediation of the researcher’s role, and strategies for simultaneously gaining teachers and children’s rapport in participant observation research in ways that formulate positive relationships with adults and children. I demonstrate the importance of researcher reflexivity of children’s and adults’ assessments of researchers’ roles in the field, highlighting how researchers’ impacts on children are not dependent on the times they are present in the field. Instead, I show that children continue to critically assess researchers’ positionality and roles in the field, often times seeking the help of adults (i.e., parents and teachers), further stressing the need for researchers to negotiate an understanding of their roles with both adults and children prior to and while in the field.

Constructivist grounded theory method (GTM) as outlined by Kathy Charmaz has its explicit roots in the American pragmatism and symbolic interactionism primarily developed at the University of Chicago during the early and mid-twentieth century. Symbolic interactionism considers people as active and interpretative agents who co-construct selves, identities, meanings, social actions, social worlds, and societies through interactions. Charmaz argues that symbolic interactionism is an open-ended theoretical perspective that fosters studying action, process, and meanings, with a focus on how people co-construct and negotiate meanings, orders, and actions in their everyday lives. In this chapter, I argue that constructivist GTM, including its theory-method package built upon symbolic interactionism and the Chicago School tradition, can be further combined with the new sociology of childhood to study children's social worlds and negotiated meanings, orders, and actions.

This chapter outlines methodological difficulties and ethical dilemmas encountered during my fieldwork at a high-poverty, high-minority U.S. inner-city school. Using a qualitative research design informed by the “new” sociology of childhood and constructivist grounded theory, I conducted child-centered research at the school for four months, including participant observations and interviews with 50 students. This chapter argues that good ethnographic research not only depends on solid research design but also requires researchers to be flexible, adaptable, and diplomatic. Especially regarding the “least adult” role, the dilemma of objectivity, lying in interviews, and the ethical predicament of students sharing sensitive information, I argue that ethnographic studies often require the researcher to act more like a diplomat maneuvering the stormy waters of contradictory interests than the objective observer described in the methodological literature. First-hand accounts of research exploring children’s own perspectives are scarce. Particularly difficulties and dilemmas encountered in the field are often mentioned only in passing, if they are mentioned at all. Novice researchers thus struggle to find information to guide their own endeavors and may set themselves up for frustration if they expect their research to be as predictable as the methodological literature suggests. The paucity of discussion of real-life difficulties encountered in the field also hinders scholarly dialog and obstructs the advancement of methodological and ethical questions surrounding research with children. This chapter hopes to help fill this gap.

This study aims to explore how power dynamics affect research with children, focusing on how the projected and perceived role of the researcher and the use of participative techniques, can mediate power relationships between the researcher and child, and impact children’s agency.

The research formed part of a wider study on children’s digital device use, with children aged 4 to 11 in a UK school. Eight pairs of children participated in buddy interviews, completing several creative and arts-based activities using a choice of equipment and materials, including PlayDoh, LEGO and most innovatively, Minecraft.

The study found the researcher’s projected role, and children’s interpretation of this, impacted the power relations in the interviews. A consistent projection was challenging however, and it was necessary for the researcher to adapt their role according to children’s needs and behaviour. Offering children a choice of activities was an effective power sharing strategy, and children’s absorption in these tasks provided a wealth of data from observations and children’s on-task “chatter”.

Using Minecraft as a participative method enabled the children to use their superior technical abilities to take power in the interview, and show their own personal geographies virtually in 3D, and offers potential for other qualitative researchers in conducting research with the agentic child.

The purpose of this study is to explore rural children’s own perspectives on health, well-being, and nutrition to better understand how they approach, navigate, and make sense of these topics.

This study uses a qualitative ethnographic research design theoretically informed by the “new” Sociology of Childhood and methodologically informed by constructivist grounded theory. This ongoing study with fifth-grade students in an elementary school in a small rural school district in central Illinois consists of ethnographic observations conducted at the school, in-depth interviews with students, and participatory tools that seek to involve students more fully in the process of data collection.

Preliminary findings of this pilot study suggest that many aspects often discussed in the context of childhood obesity, especially in rural settings, including knowledge or education about healthy eating, increasing physical activity levels, or access to healthy foods, are complex and multifaceted and do not easily lend themselves to standard interventions. Findings also indicate that children’s ideas about healthy eating deviate from their own eating practices.

Conceptualized as a grounded theory study, the research is not intended to be generalizable or reproducible. Instead, the study seeks to develop hypotheses directly from the field and study participants’ views and voices. These perspectives will inform a more in-depth study of childhood obesity in rural settings planned for 2019.

Findings from this pilot study will inform innovative, informed interventions that are guided by children’s own experiences and perspectives. Study findings will also be of benefit to practicing pediatricians and other child health professionals as they understand how to better think about and address challenges of health and weight management of patients and their families.

Purpose – This chapter draws on tenets of the “new” sociology of childhood, which posit that children are affected by social structures in the same way that adults are, to formulate an explanation for the black–white test-score gap.

Methodology – It builds on an analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes, which recorded the experiences of early elementary school students in a racially homogeneous school in a low-income African-American neighborhood.

Findings – The case is made that the children were oppressed by adults in the school. Being in school was almost a wholly negative experience for children. Students' active strategies to protect the self were ineffective, which led to their shutting down emotionally. Like adults in similar social contexts, children's energy was devoted to self-protection rather than to being a student.

Conducting research with children and youth has become increasingly challenging in recent years. At times these difficulties come in the form of restrictions by Institutional Review Boards, funding agencies, and parents. Additionally, changes in youth culture and behavior, specifically regarding online activities and digitally mediated communications, impact the access that researchers have to children and youth communities in significant ways. In this chapter, I propose that the use of an emerging methodological technique, digital ethnography, may provide researchers with new data sources on children and youth culture. Digital ethnography combines ethnographic techniques of observation, participation, and interview with content analysis to collect rich data about online behavior, norms, expectations, and interactions. This technique not only provides researchers with sources of data that allow insight into youth culture by acknowledging the increasing importance of online and digital interactions in youth culture but may also address some of the concerns raised by IRBs and other interested parties about conducting research with children and teens. This chapter provides practical and ethical considerations of this method, as well as a discussion of limitations of data collection and access as it highlights new ways of studying youth culture, using emerging data collection techniques in innovative research projects.

How can researchers develop methods that are both child-centered and grounded in the “epistemology of racial emancipation” given the unique challenges associated with conducting research with young people and white people? The purpose of this chapter is to examine the use of an innovative child-centered visual research method within the context of a larger ethnography focused on how white children come to form ideas about race in America. As part of a broader ethnographic study, white children between the ages of 10 and 13 were presented with photographs of celebrities. Children were asked questions about how to racially classify these popular culture icons, an activity that led to further discussion about race and racism in America. Drawing upon photographs of popular cultural icons and celebrities is one strategy for approaching uncomfortable topics with children in way that is less intimidating and that also brings new data to the study. Children made this aspect of the interview their own, bringing their unique perspectives to bear. This chapter discusses at length unique methodological issues, strategies, and innovations involved in research with white children about race. This chapter makes original contributions to the field of developing innovative, child-centered methods for conducting research with children and youth as well as existing scholarship on whiteness, privilege, and the social reproduction of racial ideology/racism.

Qualitative researchers have reflected on their role and position while conducting fieldwork in youth settings; yet, researchers have missed an important aspect of social identity – their own membership and status in higher education. As researchers coming from university institutions, we cannot ignore that we hold knowledge about and familiarity with higher education. Such knowledge can be helpful to a young person’s future, especially in the current period of expanding higher education. What dilemmas and issues emerge when considering the possible role of college coach in fieldwork with adolescents? I draw upon insights by feminist and activist scholars, as well as sociological work on institutional agents and college coaches, to discuss my encounters with African American students in a study of college counseling in a public high school serving urban students. I analyze my temporary and situated role as a college information source in a school with low counseling resources. In doing so, I push researchers to consider university status as a salient identity and point of negotiation in interactions with adolescents in the field.