Horses in the sandpit: photography, prolonged involvement and ‘stepping back’ as strategies for listening to children’s voices

This paper first describes how activities using photographs of an early childhood education centre, and children’s own photographs of that environment, were found to be effective ways of enabling young children (aged from two to four years old) to share their thoughts about their experiences. However, in reflecting on the data, it was recognised that two other features had contributed significantly to a deeper understanding of children’s perspectives. One was the prolonged and sustained data‐collection period, and the other was the intellectual process of ‘stepping back’ from the research agenda which allowed other, less overt, messages to be ‘heard’ in the data. The data were gathered as part of a wider ethnographic study investigating the scope and boundaries of curriculum in an early childhood education centre.