Frames within frames: Research, education and play in linguistic ethnographies of early childhood education and care

Abstract

This article explores how teachers, children, and researchers jointly construct different definitions of a situation, i.e. establish different frames during fieldwork in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Drawing on two distinct linguistic ethnographies, one in Limburg/the Netherlands and one in South Tyrol/Italy, we zoom in on how we as ethnographers and our participants enact a variety of frames across situations, focusing on the frequently reoccurring research frames, educational frames and play frames. Our analysis shows that these different frames are constantly layered in our interactions in the field, and that dynamic researcher positionings emerge as a result. This insight challenges the common practice to break down researcher positionings into one static role in academic discourse. As a meaningful alternative, the paper suggests a detailed account of the interactional co-construction of frames with participants, accompanied with insights from the researchers' lived experience.