ABSTRACT
This chapter uses an account of two educational research projects, both involving English children just starting school, to illustrate some of the issues to be considered when interviewing young children for research purposes. In both the projects described in the chapter, interviews with 4- and 5-year-olds, some of whom had English as an additional language, played an important role. The first project used action research strategies in an effort to foster autonomy and independent, reflective learning among children in their first year of school. The second, undertaken as a full-time postgraduate research project, was an ethnographic study of the home and school learning of children of the same age. Ethical issues are especially important in the case of interviews, which are a far greater intrusion into the subject’s life than ‘passive’ research methods such as observation. Reliability and validity of evidence needs careful scrutiny in all projects, and should be considered equally, when the evidence of young children is involved.
