Child-Centered Multimethod Design: An Approach to Social Representations in Childhood Education

Abstract

ABSTRACT For decades, research has made children be known mostly through adults’ observations, powers, and narratives. However, during the last years, the recognition of children as social subjects with their own rights has led to the advent of child-centered research approaches that intend to grant relevance and validity to their voices. Some of those initiatives are the Mosaic approach, the creative-participative techniques, and the arts-based approach. This article offers a multimethod research proposal based on the draw-and-tell conversation technique and the principles of Mosaic approach, both applied to tackle children’s social representations toward childhood education. This is part of a research project aiming to explore the representations of childhood and education within different educational actors. This article presents the designed instruments, the protocol, and the results obtained from the application of the methodological proposal. It is concluded that this multimethod design is a valuable tool to carry out future studies on young children within the frame of recognition of children’s rights, as well as children’s agency and participation capacities in the social construction of reality.