ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises the value of listening as an essential part of establishing respectful relationships with young children and of accessing and sharing their meanings. It draws on and explores material generated through the Mosaic Approach in order to better understand listening to children as an active process of receiving, interpreting and responding to communication. The chapter highlights the researcher’s role as facilitating ‘internal listening’ and ‘multiple listening’. Wesley Clark draws attention to five key principles central to effective listening to children, including respect, openness and collaboration, honesty, patience and timing, and imagination. Engaging children in conversations occurs as a natural part of early childhood education. The ‘child-to-child’ technique has been pioneered in international development as a tool for conveying information to children as well as for discovering their views. Group child-led tours are extremely valuable but they have a different rationale and range of uses to individual child-led tours.
