ERIC Number: EJ1025858
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0951-8398
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Available Date: N/A
Infants as Others: Uncertainties, Difficulties and (Im)possibilities in Researching Infants' Lives
Elwick, Sheena; Bradley, Ben; Sumsion, Jennifer
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), v27 n2 p196-213 2014
Increasingly, researchers are trying to understand what daily life is like for infants in non-parental care from the perspectives of the infants themselves. In this article, we argue that it is profoundly difficult, if not impossible, to know how infants experience their worlds with any certainty and, indeed, whether they do or do not possess well-worked out "perspectives" on their experiences. Three key difficulties are discussed: firstly, the difficulty of interpreting non-verbal expressions and behaviour; secondly, the difficulty of knowing whether researchers' constructions of the "infant's perspective" align with the infant's experiences of their world; and, thirdly, the difficulty of providing opportunities for infants to disrupt researchers' predetermined categories of understanding, meanings and expectations. Because of these difficulties, we argue that research endeavours to understand infants' experiences in non-parental care should be seen as sites of ethical rather than epistemological practice.
Descriptors: Infant Behavior, Infant Care, Caregiver Child Relationship, Nonverbal Communication, Researchers, Ethics, Participatory Research, Criticism, Research Methodology, Epistemology, Vignettes, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
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