Keywords

1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to conceptualise researcher’s positioning within a multi-age digital educational experiment across four family settings. The cultural historical theory informed our development of a methodology which used digital tools within a Conceptual PlayWorld intervention (Fleer, 2017) to create motivating conditions for collective family participation in STEM learning.

There is limited methodological work detailing the design and implementation of educational experiments, and we know even less about how this type of research translates to a digital space. COVID-19 created a crisis for researchers working with families to support children’s learning in early years. Physical distancing norms, which have persisted across the timespan of several years, continue to create a methodological crisis, affecting the ability of researchers to collect data capturing children’s interactions across various institutions. Zoom and other similar online tools replaced face-to-face interaction. Continuing research in these new societal demands requires reflexive clarity about the role of the researcher. The methodological framework presented in this chapter provides new opportunities of data collection and continued support to families.

2 The Researcher’s Role in Creating a New Activity Setting

As described by Prabhat Rai and others in Chap. 12, our use of Hedegaard’s (2008c) holistic approach for understanding children’s development meant that we considered the child’s individual activity as a dialect with the institutional practice of their various family activity settings, one of which was the digital setting which the researcher created with them. According to Hedegaard (2023), it is not possible for a researcher to access a child’s first perspective, rather, it is only possible to grasp a relational perspective which identifies the interaction between the child and the adults who mediate their activity settings. This is because a child develops through relationships with others, and therefore should not be viewed as an object of study. In this double perspective (Hedegaard, 2023), where the focus is on analysing child-adult intersubjectivity, researchers are able to count themselves as a significant adult in the activity setting and interpret how their contributions mediate the child’s intentional orientation. Later in this chapter we describe how the researcher framed her participation in the digital activity setting as a dual social role (Hedegaard, 2008a, b, c), with one role being to mediate the digital activity setting in order to generate data about how children develop STEM understandings, and the other to interpret the nuances of this data.

Motivated by investigating children’s STEM concept formation, the role of the researcher was to create a digital activity setting which would provide new conditions for development. In this new activity setting the researcher was a distal participant, however, it is important to explain that whilst there was a physical distance between the researcher and the families, the motives of both were aligned. This cohesive relationality was achieved through the process of the researcher understanding the motives of family members, and using digital tools in ways which would ensure these motives were responded to and aligned with their own motive. Examples provided below outline how, through using digital tools to respond to family motives, the researcher perforated institutional boundaries and ‘entered’ the activity setting.

3 The Researcher’s Dual Social Role

A social scientist must conceptualize their own participation in the researched activities including their intentions. This is because it is important to remember the aim of the research when within the research setting, which is complex when the researcher takes on a dual role (Hedegaard, 2008a). The first role is for the researcher to participate in activities where they notice the motives, projects and intentions of others. In this study, the researcher fulfilled this role by being a storyteller. As well as this, there were several data collection sessions outside the Conceptual PlayWorld intervention where the researcher would enter this role. There was also communication with families which took place between sessions. It is important to note that these interactions played an important role in building the research/family relationship which enabled the effectiveness of the overall methodological model. The second role is that of a researcher who conceptualises the observed motives, project, intentions and activities as their object of study (Schutz cited in Hedegaard, 2008b). As will be unpacked in the following section of this chapter, because of the interactional nature of the methodology in this study, the researcher observed motives, projects and intentions of research participants in real time, considering these forces as demands which would influence the process of working conceptually within the digital methodology. In this study the researcher’s role also expanded to taking some of the pedagogical responsibility away from parents.

4 The Researcher’s Use of Theoretical Concepts as Methodological Design Principles

The key theoretical concepts used as methodological design principles in this study were crisis (Dafermos, 2022), motives and demands (Hedegaard, 2008a, b, c) and leading activity (Vygotsky, 1966).

4.1 Crisis

As discussed in prior chapters, the concept of crisis has different meanings and applications across disciplines. As the name suggests, it is almost always used to describe a difficult situation or challenge, a theme which is consistent in this study. Our understanding sits within the cultural historical theory where we are guided by Dafermos’ (2022) conceptualisation of the concept as helping us study a contradictory process, change or development. We live in times of unprecedented problems, and this study, which took place during COVID lockdown, demanded that we collect data in family settings which we were not able to enter in person. Our consideration of crisis is therefore methodological, because we used it to solve the problem of how we could generate data capturing children’s sustained engagement in a series of Conceptual PlayWorld interventions through Zoom interactions. The ‘opposing force’ (Dafermos, 2022) in this methodological crisis is that traditionally in an educational experiment, “the researcher is positioned within the activity as a partner with the researched person. This way, it is possible to examine how children contribute to their interactions with adults and other children within the family” (Hedegaard, 2008a). The study demanded that we design our methodology to enable us to use Zoom technology to position ourselves within the Conceptual PlayWorld and interact with children, capturing their responses to the intervention.

Dafermos (2022) stresses that crisis should not be seen as a static, isolated concept, but rather as part of a system of concepts. This is because crisis as a concept alone is not sufficient to understand the complexity and dynamics of the study of human development. Through viewing crisis as being dialectically related to other concepts, methodological frameworks can be developed which provide for the “dynamic interplay of past- and future-oriented temporalities”, the reconstruction of which involves “the possibility of rethinking the past, re-imaging the future and changing the present” (Dafermos, 2022, para. 73). In this study, motives and demands together with leading activity were employed dialectically as a system of concepts to design the digital intervention.

4.2 Motives and Demands

In Chap. 12, the editors of this book acknowledge how the crisis situation led to the creation of new demands placed on families. For example, when preschools and childcare centres closed their doors, demands were placed on parents and significant adults to replace these experiences whilst also managing the existing demands of caring for young children. Within the context of this increasing demand being placed on families, a variety of demands were also placed on the researcher as they navigated their new role as a distal participant. Hedegaard’s analytical concept of demands (2008a, b, c) created the shifting internal framework of this methodology. The psychological demands placed on the researcher influenced the methods she used to progress through the methodological process of developing family pedagogy.

4.3 Leading Activity

Vygotsky’s theory of leading activity (1966) was used as a third methodological design principle in this study. Leading activity refers to the predominant activity, which is specific to a child’s cultural age period, through which the most important psychological and social developmental changes occur. With her knowledge of this concept, the researcher considered the different cultural age periods of siblings Mia (18 months) and Kai (three years), and how she could intentionally utilise specific digital tools to coordinate the shared attention of these two children who had distinctly different leading activities.

Like other toddlers, Mia’s activity reflected her desire to receive instant gratification through the process of resolving problems immediately (Vygotsky, 1966). The researcher observed this when analysing digital data capturing interactions between Mia and her mother at home. For example, in a series of vignettes capturing an interaction where Mia and Kai are playing with a balloon, patting it back and forward between each other and laughing, we then see a pattern begin to emerge where Mia cries with frustration everytime Kai runs away from her with the balloon. Anna responds to this tension by reminding Kai to share the balloon with Mia, a demand which Kai meets. Vygotsky (1966) explains that any delay in filling a desire is very difficult for a child under the age of three, and that “ordinarily, the interval between the motive and its realisation is extremely short” (p. 78). In this example, we see that even though Mia initially feels frustration that Kai has taken the balloon, Anna mediates this situation by asking Kai to return the balloon to Mia which ensures that the interval between the motive and its realisation is short. Throughout this interaction we also notice that Anna and Mia share a focus on the balloon. Anna tells Mia to throw the ball up in the air, and as Mia does this, both mother and child laugh in delight. The researcher’s interpretation of this data led her to see that Mia’s leading activity was object-centred joint activity (Vygotsky, 1978). This activity is triadic in that it involves the child, an adult and an object of shared attention, which in this instance was the balloon. Later in the chapter we explain how the researcher used digital tools in her role as a storyteller to mediate object-centred joint activity with Mia.

In contrast to his younger sister, Kai showed an emerging understanding that his desires would not always result in instant gratification, or gratification at all for that matter. In the example of the balloon, we see that even though his motive orientation is to run away with the balloon and play with it alone, when the demand is placed on him to throw it back to Mia, he does exactly this. Vygotsky (1966) explains that children in this cultural age period develop imaginary play with the purpose of creating illusionary realisations of their desires. Once these realisations are created, the child experiences a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Understanding that Kai’s leading activity was play utilising the psychological function of imagination, the researcher considered the ways digital tools could be used to mediate imaginary play with Kai.

Regardless of the cultural age period, leading activity is a social action which a child forms when interacting with another person. The activity is oriented toward the external world and enables them to develop new mental processes and motivations which replace their current activity so that development can move forward. Given our intention to ensure multi-age engagement in the Conceptual PlayWorld, the researcher would need to utilise her knowledge of object-centred joint activity and collective imaginary play as tools to inform methodological practice. With this goal in mind, she planned how digital tools could provide these mediations, and how they could be placed within the narrative of ‘Sheep in a Jeep’ and the broader Conceptual PlayWorld intervention where play partners solve problems together (Fleer, 2017). The following narrative illustrates an example of how this was achieved.

The researcher asked Kai to assist in the solving of an imaginary problem which required an imaginary solution. In this particular instance, all play partners were sheep on a farm who travelled up and down steep hills in a jeep. It had started raining which had caused the jeep to become stuck in mud, and as it did not have a roof, it began filling with water. This would not be a positive outcome for the sheep with whom the children had built empathy for. Kai responded by stating:

I am hulk … hulk is super strong … hulk is green and purple

Kai externally embodied the representation of strength in his arm movements as he prepared to manoeuvre the imaginary jeep. This interaction shadows Vygotsky’s explanation of children in their third year of life who feel the need to act like an adult. Kai then turned to his mother Anna and explained that he wanted the researcher to be ‘spiderman sheep’ who would take on the role of helping ‘hulk sheep’ to push the jeep to safety. This interaction again reflects Vygotsky’s thinking being that the child’s inability to perform real adult activity leads them to create “an imaginary, illusory world in which the unrealizable desires can be realized”. The child invented a new imaginary persona for the researcher to assist them in the task which they could not realise themselves.

To ensure that Mia was also engaged in the collective imaginary situation, the researcher had been in contact with Anna prior to the session and arranged for a blanket to be brought to this particular Conceptual PlayWorld. When it started to rain in the imaginary scenario and Kai began pushing the jeep to safety, the researcher modeled to Mia how a blanket could be used as shelter if placed over her head. Taking this cue from the researcher, Anna placed the blanket over Mia’s head and in doing so mediated object-centred joint activity, the blanket serving as the object which both Mia and Anna were focusing on, and then activity being to position themselves underneath it to keep dry in the rain. In this example, the researcher used the concept of leading activity in response to a demand which was placed on her in the process of researcher family collaboration (Table 15.1).

Table 15.1 The digital tools provided on the zoom platform, when mediated by the researcher, were utilised as an opportunity to enhance children’s engagement in the intervention, which was the overarching motive of the researcher
Full size table

5 Responding to the Changing Family Context

In this study, the object of inquiry (children’s home practices) underwent a transformative change and it was important that the digital educational experiment be responsive to this changing context of family.

6 Conclusion

It is anticipated that this study will contribute to the cultural historical theory of human development through the conceptualization of a new methodological model which can be utilized by researchers collecting data in family settings through zoom. Whilst historically there has been a common thread of methodological demands placed on researchers collecting data within the dialectical-interactive approach (Hedegaard, 2008c), the demands placed on the researcher working with families in a digital Conceptual PlayWorld intervention are new and different. Depending on the demands placed on the researcher in the specific intervention, this methodology can be adapted to guide the researcher through the process of researcher/family collaboration.

In presenting this framework, we have tried to make a few points clear. The first is that the relationship formed with the family must extend beyond the interactions within the conceptual play. The researcher had several interviews with the mother in this family before meeting the children on zoom. This provided the family the opportunity to build a sense of trust and rapport with the researcher and feel comfortable inviting her into their family home for the digital intervention. Ongoing communication with the family throughout the study between zoom sessions also provided the researcher opportunity for additional data collection in the form of societal, institutional and individual perspectives and the building of relationships with the family.

Another important aspect of this study is the use of Fleer’s (2019) concept of coalition of practices. Fleer’s research in kindergarten settings pushes back against the longstanding literature about digital learning where a binary exists between play with digital devices and play without digital devices. Fleer argues that digital tools should not be separated from existing learning programs, as doing so limits our ability to understand how practices change and new developmental possibilities are afforded with the introduction of digital devices. Moreover, Fleer stresses that digital devices cannot be separated from broader learning contexts, reporting that as new social needs arise within imaginary play scenarios, digital practices coalesce these problems which lead to children developing new motive orientations which afford developmental possibilities. Throughout interactions with the family in the study reported on in this chapter, the researcher did not highlight unnecessary attention to the meeting being online, but rather positioned themselves to focus on disintegrating the binary of real and digital forms. In line with Fleer’s (2019) research, the digital device served a coadjuvant for enhancing everyday family practices, enabling new ways for children to learn and develop.