Self portraits of young children as art-makers

This research investigates the experience of being a young child who draws and art-makes. The study will investigate children's art experience in their home, early childhood setting and school as they move from pre-school to school. Robbins (2005) suggests that a major issue with dominant research methods is that children are frequently portrayed as anonymous and decontextualised with little apparent likeness to children’s everyday lives. The challenge then is to undertake research with children that can be related to real children, in real contexts, leading real lives. This challenge is made more problematic when filtered through traditional methodological, ethical approval and PhD submission processes. This paper documents my journey to find appropriate theoretical and research approaches that honour the visual narrative of young children's lived art experiences. In particular this paper weaves together salient features of narrative inquiry, phenomenology and visual ethnography, under a socio-cultural historical perspective to propose a way of working collaboratively with young children. Ethical issues are discussed, not as an adjunct to good research but as a basic pedagogic concern as we develop portraits of young children as art-makers.