Exploring the role of emotional reflexivity in research with children

This paper explores how emotions mediate the research process. I draw upon a collaborative ethnography with children in a primary school to make a case for the practice of emotional reflexivity in research. More specifically I explore this in the context of a series of den-building research workshops I initiated with the young participants. Drawing upon a series of vignettes, I illustrate how reflecting upon and through my emotional responses to video data captured by children during these workshops gave presence to my movements through the data, thus recognising moments when meaning-making was entangled with prominent memories I had of the field and hidden shifts I made whilst interpreting the data. I suggest that as researchers we can use emotional reflexivity to recognise, on the one-hand, how our personal histories influence our research engagements, and on the other, how the spaces and places we inhabit as researchers shape our thoughts and feelings. I will show how emotional reflexivity offers opportunities for researchers to engage with their own relational emplacement during fieldwork and to use this awareness to develop their understandings of children's lives.