Leaking and Containing: Researching With Children and the Sketchbook

Abstract

Working with the concept of “leaking,” two art education researchers explore methodological and philosophical approaches to researching with children. Thinking with their individual studies in early childhood classrooms, the authors consider how conventional methods and methodology might leak when encountering the relations of children, classroom, materials, teacher, researcher, and so on. In both of their fieldwork, the notebook intended for field-note taking began to leak, becoming a sketchbook where the researcher and children could engage in collaborative thinking, making, and doing. This leaking provoked a (re)consideration of research with children as a site in which proficient and equally capable participants conjoin to explore the possibilities of research. The emergent events surrounding the sketchbook allowed to rethink the liminal space of researcher positionality, methodology, methods, children’s art, and childhood.