Key content: The research fairy and the researcher together with teachers enable a new way of working and researching through digital technology, addressing the challenges brought out by the COVID-19 pandemic.

1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected educational research, which brought crises for cultural-historical researchers who needed to maintain active participation in the research activities (Hedegaard, 2008c). As argued by Hedegaard (2008b), participating in research activities requires the researcher to have a doubleness role—a researcher and a participant. Based on this crisis of active participation, this study illustrated how two researchers collaborate across geographical limitations to conduct a cultural-historical study through Zoom. To be specific, a cultural-historical educational experiment was collaboratively conducted by two researchers, emphasising the collaboration between researchers and teachers and aiming to promote children’s learning and development in a theoretical way within naturalistic settings (Hedegaard, 2008a). Within the educational experiment, a play pedagogy named Conceptual PlayWorld (Fleer, 2018) was introduced to teachers to promote children’s conceptual learning through play. This approach provides a new way for children to learn concepts in play by encouraging young children to go on imaginary journeys, meet and solve challenges, and learn STEM concepts (Fleer, 2018). Considering children’s interests, two story books named Breg’s Tornado (Boy, 2006) and The Snail and the Whale (Donaldson, 2003) were selected to conduct Conceptual PlayWorlds in two Chinese kindergarten classrooms respectively. According to the stories, children and teachers set up imaginary situations within a farm and the ocean and entered into imaginary situations as story characters to solve conceptual problems. This chapter begins with the background of this study, followed by the advantages of digital technology and cultural-historical studies using the digital visual methodology. Finally, drawing upon the theoretical concepts of crises, this chapter discusses how digital tools were used for researchers collaborating across geographical limitations to conduct a collaborative educational experiment from a methodological point of view.

2 Advantages of Digital Technologies and Early Childhood Education Studies Using Digital Visual Methodology

Digital technology is used widely in research, and it is approved to be a useful tool to promote teaching, learning as well as research processes (van der Linden et al., 2022). Firstly, digital technology played an important role in supporting children’s remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic (Timmons et al., 2021). Additionally, digital technology, such as video coaching, has been shown as an effective way to support teachers’ positive pedagogical behaviour changes and pedagogical reflection (Körkkö et al., 2019; Şahin et al., 2022; van der Linden et al., 2022). Finally, digital technology was also found to be a useful tool to support the research process, which includes analysing data from a non-vocal process (Shrum et al., 2005), conducting big data analysis (Körkkö et al., 2019), and enhancing research findings and the dissemination process (Walker & Boyer, 2018).

Taking the advantages of digital tools into account, researchers have begun to theorise digital visual technology as a research tool from a cultural-historical perspective. A cultural-historical methodology aims to expose the dynamic processes of development and reflect the conceptions of dialectical thinking and knowledge by exploring various types of social conditions (Hedegaard, 2012; Fleer et al., 2020). By capturing the complexity of dynamics in children’s social situations, digital visual technology provides a holistic and connected way of researching young children’s learning and development (Fleer, 2014a). For example, Fleer (2014b) showed how digital video observations can be examined iteratively through the example of a toddler learning to walk. In this example, walking was not only viewed as physical action, but also as an emotional and cognitive activity from the holistic development view. Consequently, when digital technology is conceptualised through cultural-historical theory, how activity settings shape individuals and how individuals contribute to demands and conflicts in the activity settings can be examined differently (Fleer, 2014b). This allows children’s development to be captured holistically, commonly termed the wholeness approach.

A digital visual methodology was identified as a useful tool to study children’s learning (Li, 2014; Ma et al., 2022), teacher pedagogy (Disney & Li, 2022), family dialogue (Monk, 2014) and researcher’s positioning (Quiñones, 2014). However, it is unclear how digital technology could be used as a “relational” tool to promote and maintain the relationships between researchers, as well as between researchers and research participants. Hedegaard (2008b) argues that the researcher “enters into a social situation with other persons where she (sic) has to understand what is going on as a participant in everyday practice (p. 202)”. While the COVID-19 pandemic brings crises in participation for the researchers who are off-site, the digital visual methodology has demonstrated its advantages in promoting communications. Through showcasing two researchers’ collaboration in conducting an educational experiment, this chapter explores how the digital visual methodology is used for communications and interactions with participants.

3 Theoretical Discussion

The cultural-historical concept of crises was used to analyse the dialectical relationships within the educational experiment. In a cultural-historical educational experiment, researchers must conceptualise their own participation as part of the researcher’s activities and actively explore the research question (Hedegaard, 2008a). Within this collaborative educational experiment, a multi-layered dialectical relationship is generated, which is the dialectical relationship between the research fairy and the imaginary situation, and the dialectical relationship between the two researchers.

3.1 Relationship Between the Research Fairy and the Imaginary Situation: Researcher’s Active Participation through Digital Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic brings crises for the researchers to maintain a doubleness role in cultural-historical research, especially the participating role in the educational experiment. According to Vygotsky (1998), a new developmental period occurs when an individual experiences conflicting intentions, which leads to crises. However, there is an increased awareness in contemporary cultural-historical activity studies that the concept of crises should be expanded outside the bounds of psychology as a discipline (Dafermos, 2022). The definition of crises has been extended to an aspect of the lives of individuals and social groupings, as well as their existential conflicts, cultural differences, subjective resources, and vulnerabilities (Goulart, 2022). From this perspective, a crisis can be viewed as either a trigger for change or a component of changing reality. In this study, the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic are regarded as crises that promote the research innovation process. With the support of digital technology, two researchers collaborated with teachers to implement the Conceptual PlayWorld in an educational experiment. After the collective discussion and planning, one researcher collected digital data on-site, while the other researcher joined the Conceptual PlayWorld as a fairy through Zoom, building relationships with children and teachers off-site.

As shown in Fig. 3.1, the role of the research fairy was generated from imagination in the Conceptual PlayWorld, where the researcher played the role of a fairy and interacted with children. Vygotsky (2004) argued that “imagination is not just an idle mental amusement, not merely an activity without consequences in reality, but rather a function essential to life” (p. 13). The collective imaginary space maintains children’s involvement and engagement in play (Fleer & Peers, 2012). In addition, it creates an effective way for researchers to communicate with children. As a research fairy, the researcher brought magic and new dramatised problems to the Conceptual PlayWorld sessions. For example, the researcher understood that children (sea snails) want to have a submarine to help the land snail go on an adventure with them. Therefore, she entered one of the Conceptual PlayWorld sessions as a research fairy and invited children to find the submarine which was parked on the beach. This further made the Conceptual PlayWorld more dramatic and brought the researcher closer to the children. Later in the stimulated recall interview after this Conceptual PlayWorld session, the research fairy communicated with children based on the imaginary adventure in the submarine. Imagination is a collective historical experience that children can be lifted into with more experienced play partners or through the social actions of adults (Fleer, 2011). Therefore, children were eager to share with the research fairy about their experiences in the submarine. For instance, children shared with the fairy that they loved to be the snails because it was playing. While the children shared their experiences, they also asked the research fairy a series of questions, such as where did the research fairy live? Did the fairy have magic? Why is there a horn in the fairy’s head? Since the researcher could maintain an equal position with children in the imaginary situation, the role of a fairy promoted the researcher’s participation in the cultural-historical study.

Fig. 3.1
Left. A photo of a woman with a filter of reindeer horns on her head. In her background there is an underwater photo of corals and fishes. Right. A photo of children smiling.

The research fairy interacted with children

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In summary, there is a dialectical relationship between the research fairy and the imaginary situation. Dialectics is a way of thinking that focuses on examining each concrete object or individual in relation to other objects and individuals, as well as its internal contradictions and changing nature (Dafermos, 2015). As shown in fig. 3.2, the research fairy’s role came from the imaginary situation and created a collective imaginary situation in which children could take part. Meanwhile, the research fairy brought dramatic information and created more communication opportunities which further enriched the imaginary situation. The relationship between the research fairy role and the imaginary situation shows the internal interdependency in addressing the participating role in the COVID-19 background. This dialectical relationship makes full use of the role of imagination in children’s leading activity of play and creates opportunities for researchers to interact with children through digital tools when researchers experienced crises in pushing forward the research process in the COVID-19 background.

Fig. 3.2
A cyclic chart of the dialectical relationship. The imaginary situation allowing researcher being a part of the research process as an imaginary role of the fairy. The research fairy joined the Conceptual PlayWorld and interacts with children in the role of a fairy, which enriched the imaginary situation.

The dialectical relationship between the research fairy and the imaginary situation

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3.2 Dialectical Relationships Between Researchers Within a Real Situation

Dialectical logic would seek to conceptualise the contradiction of the general and the particular together as a synthesis (Fleer, 2014a). For example, it is not possible to think about methodology development unless put in relation to general research background. The multiple crises as a result of the increasing social contradictions and asymmetries in a rapidly changing world may provoke interest in dialectics as a way of conceptualization of contradictions (Dafermos, 2018). COVID-19 brings a crisis to the research process, while digital technology creates conditions for researchers to enrich the cultural-historical methodology, which promotes remote data collection and analysis during the pandemic period.

3.2.1 Collaboratively Bringing Forward the Conceptual PlayWorld Implementation

Digital technology allows both researchers to maintain their role as researchers in the educational experiment (Hedegaard, 2008a), where a dialectical relationship between the two researchers was built and supported data collection beyond physical distance. Dialectics as a way of thinking emphasises internal, essential connections between people rather than a separated individual and an abstract consciousness (Dafermos, 2018, p.7). In this study, the concept of dialectics was used to understand the interrelation between the two researchers and how the relationship between the researchers influences the research process. In this research, researcher A physically entered the research setting to observe, and interact with participants, which allowed her to take an on-site perspective in the data collection process. In contrast, researcher B (the research fairy) was taking an off-site perspective in the data collection process. The digital technology allows two researchers to collect data from on-site and off-site perspectives in a dialectical way. For example, after the data was collected, researcher B watched the data from an outsider perspective and proposed the idea of changing the classroom environment (building a hot air balloon) to create a more imaginative environment. This motivated the two researchers to think about how they could create an imaginary situation based on the physical space in the classroom. As an insider in the data collection, researcher A knew that, given the physical environment of the research site, a hot air balloon would be too big for the classroom. Based on this, researcher A proposed that a magic blanket might work to support children and teachers to enter and exit the Conceptual PlayWorld. The idea kept developing while researchers and teachers collaboratively designed the Conceptual PlayWorld. Considering the class scale, it was hard to find a blanket that could contain 30 children. Therefore, we decided that a magic rope could be used as a sign for children and teachers to enter into the imaginary situation.

3.2.2 Inspiring the Data Analysing Process

Following dialectical thinking, the current study focuses on the examination of researchers in their mutual connections, movement and development (Dafermos, 2015) and explains how the mutual connections between researchers support data analysis. In the educational experiment, all the activities were video recorded to help researcher B, who was physically outside the research site, got a holistic view of the research context. Digital data became an important support for the researchers’ collaboration in data analysis through the knowing and re-knowing process (see Fig. 3.3). The two researchers dialectically supported each other to develop a deeper understanding of teachers’ practice and children’s learning within the Conceptual PlayWorld. After the second Conceptual PlayWorld session, researcher A briefly introduced how the second session went and told researcher B: “I noticed two boys in this session. One is Liu, the boy who said he did the rainbow experiment, the other one is Lu, the boy who cried in the first session”. Researcher A helped researcher B to develop a basic sense of this activity. After carefully examining the children in the data, researcher B added her interpretation: “I found that these two teachers have cooperated with each other very well, and they have demonstrated how they could use different positioning to promote children’s concept learning”. As argued by Pavlidis (2010), dialectics as a way of thinking grasps and represents the developmental process of a concrete object in its interconnections with other objects. Following dialectic thinking, digital technology supported the two researchers’ mutual dialogue and built the interconnections between the researchers through the knowing and re-knowing process.

Fig. 3.3
A schematic of a process. The steps are as follows. 1. Researcher A knowing, on site. 2. Researcher B knowing, mutual dialogue. 3. Researcher B re-knowing, video recording. 4. Researcher A re-knowing, mutual dialogue.

The knowing and re-knowing process between two researchers

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In this chapter, the dialectical thinking brings the on-site and off-site research perspectives together as a synthesis in this collaborative experiment. Digital technology as a rational tool provides possibilities for both researchers to understand the research question within the cultural context, which promotes the tool validity (Fleer, 2014a) in the collaborative educational experiment. In addition, through digital technology, both of the researchers maintain the role of researchers and participants in the collaborative cultural-historical educational experiment. Particularly, the ethical validity of data is strengthened by the active relationships between the research fairy and children (Fleer, 2014a). Cultural-historical methodology seeks to understand a research question in relation to the cultural context (Fleer, 2014a). The knowing and re-knowing process illustrates two researchers within the same cultural community but take different perspectives in the data analysis process (on-site and off-site perspective), which promotes cultural validity in a dialectical way (Fleer, 2014a). Through digital technology, the two researchers are able to maintain relationships with the participants, and collaborate during the data collection and analysis process. In summary, this chapter presents a new perspective to conduct a collaborative educational experiment through digital technology with researchers on-site and off-site during the crisis of COVID pandemic.