Researching with children: lessons in humility, reciprocity and community

The author assumed that her experience as a qualitative researcher accustomed to interviewing adults, and formerly as a teacher of young children, would be an adequate enough basis for undertaking research with children. She describes her first experience at a child care centre, when after a week, deflated and dejected, she retreated from the centre with little meaningful data, her stance as researcher severely challenged and disrupted. In this article she describes how she responded to that challenge when she returned to the centre the following year in the hope of continuing the project. The article explores how a sense of humility, reciprocity and community seemed to contribute to establishing productive relationships with children and in negotiating potentially problematic pivot points arising from power differentials between adults and children.