Challenges of researching children in teacher education: Contributions from Sociology of Childhood

Abstract

In many countries, in line with a theoretical framework that has gained prominence since the 1970s, teacher education has been centered around research-based formative strategies. Research involving children as learning subjects has played a crucial role in the training model adopted by the University of Azores, and in some curricular units, the conceptual frameworks in Sociology of Childhood contribute to the students' understanding of the otherness of childhood and to absorbing this understanding into their pedagogical action. This article focuses on the description and analysis of real situations in which students and university professors were involved and uses them as a starting point to discuss the challenges arising from the relationship that researchers and children establish, reflecting on relational and contextual factors that can make this process more complex. The many challenges include the way in which the images of childhood, created by society, can influence the researcher-child relationship and produce obstacles to the free expression of a child's identity. We also reflect on how adults who control the access of researchers to different school contexts can affect the knowledge on children that we aim to assemble, a knowledge that is permanently challenged by the incompetence of adults who ignore how infant cultures manifest themselves.