Content uploaded by Sabina Savadova
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sabina Savadova on Dec 08, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
International Journal of Early Years Education
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/ciey20
Living Journals: introducing a new digital
participatory approach to study young children’s
digital media practices
Sabina Savadova
To cite this article: Sabina Savadova (23 Sep 2024): Living Journals: introducing a new digital
participatory approach to study young children’s digital media practices, International Journal
of Early Years Education, DOI: 10.1080/09669760.2024.2405530
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2024.2405530
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 23 Sep 2024.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 136
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ciey20
METHOD
Living Journals: introducing a new digital participatory
approach to study young children’s digital media practices
Sabina Savadova
Moray House School of Education and Sport, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
ABSTRACT
Researching daily activities of young children poses
methodological challenges that necessitate diverse approaches
for eective inquiry. This method article introduces a new digital
participatory research method – Living Journals – to study young
children’s everyday digital media practices at home in Azerbaijan.
Employing this method, mothers actively produced multimodal
data in situ, responding to prompts sent by the researcher, which
were subsequently turned into journals in print and digital
formats. Utilising these journals, participant families were
encouraged to provide commentary on their respective journals
and those of other participating children. This method has a
significant capacity to yield metatextual, multivocal, multimodal,
and multifunctional data, thereby enhancing the richness of the
dataset and facilitating nuanced interpretations. Delving into the
intricacies of the method and its advantages, the article
elaborates on its procedures, significance, and limitations. The
method emerges as a valuable approach, oering a participatory
and contextually sensitive means for remotely generating data,
allowing researchers to develop textually and visually rich datasets.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 4 September 2023
Accepted 12 September
2024
KEYWORDS
Living Journals; participatory
methods; digital methods;
Azerbaijan; young children
and digital media
Introduction
This article introduces a new digital participatory research method – Living Journals –
for studying young children’s daily lives and interactions in their own environment.
The method was specifically developed for a study investigating young children’s
digital media practices in Azerbaijan. The Living Journals approach was employed to
minimise researcher’s on-site presence during data generation. Distinct from previous
publications describing study findings (Savadova 2023b), here, the focus is on detailing
methodological aordances of the Living Journals approach, its significance, and limit-
ations. Thus, this article diverges from traditional empirical research; rather, it serves
as a methods article introducing a new participatory digital method.
Researching daily practices of young children poses methodological challenges, par-
ticularly concerning access to their homes (Aarsand 2016). Researchers have employed
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)
or with their consent.
CONTACT Sabina Savadova sabina.savadova@ed.ac.uk 1.14 St John’s Land, Holyrood, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, UK
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2024.2405530
diverse strategies to surmount these challenges, leveraging digital tools, such as cameras
and mobile phones initially, and subsequently, smartphones and iPads. For example,
mobile phone diaries were developed to investigate children’s interactions with digital
technologies facilitated by mothers (Plowman and Stevenson 2012). As technology
advanced, smartphones and iPads were employed to study young children’s lives (e.g.
Arnott, Grogan, and Duncan 2016). Despite the technological advances, methodological
challenges persist in researching young children’s digital media practices at home and
beyond (Poveda 2019). To address these challenges, the approach oers new methodo-
logical aordances for researchers to explore young children’s lives while minimising
direct intervention.
This article provides a comprehensive introduction to the method, oering detailed
insights for researchers considering its application in future studies. A step-by-step
guide to the implementation of the Living Journals approach is presented, followed by
an in-depth discussion on its significance and potential limitations. In the end, the
article introduces the implications of the Living Journals approach and oers recommen-
dations for future research.
Background
Participatory research empowers individuals by enhancing their sense of agency. It builds
relationships, fosters dialogue, and promotes joint learning, particularly recognising and
amplifying the voices of children and young people (Graham and Fitzgerald 2010). As
such, participatory methods aim to include diverse ways children and young people com-
municate, focusing on inclusivity and minimising power dierences. Researchers are
invited to view participants, particularly children and young people, as experts in their
own lives and collaborate with them to tailor methods that accommodate their strengths,
contexts, and diversity to uncover their unique insights (Coyne and Carter 2018). With
the availability of diverse multimedia tools and social network platforms, there is an
increasing number of digital tools and social platforms for children and young people
to share their experiences. Researchers are encouraged to use creative, visual, and
multi-method approaches to encourage children and young people to convey their
experiences, accommodating their diverse skills, backgrounds, identities, and personal-
ities. For example, in the past, researchers have used various digital media tools to
study young children’s perspectives on the matters aecting their lives (Clark and
Moss 2011; Hadfield-Hill and Zara 2024). After the COVID-19 pandemic, with the
sudden move of research to digital platforms, more of such tools were introduced in
childhood research (Cuevas-Parra 2020).
The Living Journals approach adds to the literature on digital participatory research by
utilising aordances of WhatsApp application to generate rich and diverse data from
afar. The method draws inspiration from the mobile phone diaries method by
Plowman and Stevenson (2012), the ‘A Day in the Life’ method developed by Gillen
and Cameron (2010), and the Video-Cued-Ethnography (VCE) method by Tobin,
Wu, and Davidson (1989). However, this method diers from the predecessors by
aording research participants, specifically mothers in this context, the exibility to
convey messages through diverse modes, including text, audio messages, pictures, and
short videos. Additionally, the interactive feature of participants’ commentary on their
2 S. SAVADOVA
journals and those of others, highlights commonalities and disparities within depictions
of daily lives.
Ecocultural theory
The Living Journals approach is underpinned by contextualist ecocultural theory, which
places participants’ day-to-day activities and their communications with others in the
centre of their daily lives (Tudge 2008). Contextualist ecocultural theory calls for study-
ing individuals and their interactions within their specific context (Weisner 2002). My
research was focused on young children’s everyday digital media practices in their
own settings. Accordingly, the formulation of prompt questions was guided with this
focus. Prompt questions were structured to elicit information about children’s activities,
location, companions, and emotional states. This methodological approach facilitated
acquisition of ecocultural insights into children’s daily activities, with a deliberate
eort to minimise researcher intervention in their natural settings.
Despite the research focus being on children’s digital media practices within their
daily lives, mothers were asked to capture children’s daily activities at designated times
as they were occurring without specifying this intention. The aim was to investigate
digital media practices as naturally occurring phenomena within the framework of eco-
cultural theory rather than draw participants’ attention to the specific focus of the
research. Thus, the method enabled a discreet examination of children’s day-to-day
activities. Leveraging digital tools from a distance oered aordability and minimal
researcher intrusion during the data generation. The method also facilitated recording
children’s daily digital media practices by their mothers, both at home and beyond,
owing to the cost-eectiveness and exibility inherent in the approach.
The present study
This qualitative study delved into young children’s digital media practices in a home
setting in Azerbaijan, a transcontinental post-Soviet country located at the intersection
of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Through snowball sampling (Parker, Scott, and
Geddes 2019), I identified five families, each with a five-year-old child, and invited
them to participate in this multiple case study. The data generation included 15 family
visits in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and the Living Journals approach conducted
from afar. The Living Journals approach serves as a valuable method for researchers
interested in remotely studying participants’ everyday lives. Given the scope and aim
of the present article, I will only briey summarise the study’s findings and mainly
focus on the new method developed for this research.
In the current article, the method allowed for the inclusion of fathers in the data gen-
eration process, significantly enhancing it and resulting in rich, insightful and multimo-
dal data that encapsulated the perspectives of all family members. The present study also
yielded three primary empirical contributions. Firstly, the method unveiled fathers’ per-
spectives on digital media, revealing the extent of their involvement in their children’s
digital activities and highlighting varied parental roles in mediating these practices.
This was possible because fathers were asked to comment on their own child’s and
other participant children’s journals separately, since they were not involved in
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION 3
developing the journals. Secondly, the case studies illustrated how family dynamics
inuenced children’s engagement with digital media. Lastly, study findings revealed a
new parental mediation strategy – subterfuge – which parents use to indirectly limit
young children’s access to and use of digital devices by attributing restrictions to inani-
mate objects (Savadova 2023b). As mentioned above, the current article maintains a
methodological focus, and therefore there is no further elaboration on its empirical
findings. Instead, the emphasis is on explaining the Living Journals approach, its aor-
dances, and limitations.
Living Journals approach
The research design for the study included fieldwork and remote data generation through
the Living Journals approach developed for this study. The study aimed to explore young
children’s digital media practices within their home settings through the research ques-
tion: How can we explore young children’s digital media practices within their family
context? The aim in formulating this research question was to find a digital participatory
methodological approach to investigate young children’s daily digital practices from a
distance, while minimising the researcher’s presence in the field and avoiding any
additional interference in participants’ daily lives.
The fieldwork lasted three months in Baku, including three visits to each of the five
participant families. Each family visit covered several activities and included mother
and participant child. After concluding this initial fieldwork phase, the data generation
process was extended through this method remotely from the United Kingdom. The
Living Journals approach comprised of three distinct phases:
Phase 1
The first phase involved asking mothers to share photos or 30-second video clips of their
children, prompted by messages sent through the WhatsApp application at specific
times. In addition to visuals, mothers were asked to address the following brief questions:
Where is your child? What is your child doing? Why? With whom is your child? How is
your child feeling? This data generation process spanned a week each time, including
three weekdays and one day at weekends. It was conducted twice within one year:
once during the academic term in April and another during school holidays in
August. The visual content received from mothers consisted of brief videos and
images portraying children’s daily activities as well as digital interactions. Additionally,
textual and audial messages contained mothers’ responses to prompt questions and pro-
vided further elaboration on the captured activities. I have provided a detailed account of
the quantity and content of the received visual, textual, and audial data in another pub-
lication (Savadova 2023a).
Phase 2
In the second phase, journals were created for each child, employing a combination of pic-
tures, texts, stills from video clips, and transcribed audio responses, presented in both
digital and paper formats (Figure 1). The digital journals featured playable videos,
4 S. SAVADOVA
whereas the paper format featured stills from the videos. Physical copies were distributed
to families, and the digital form was utilised for online discussions with families, with
names pseudonymised. Consent was sought from both mothers and children before
sharing their journals with fathers and across other participant families.
Phase 3
The third phase encompassed online discussions involving mothers and children
together and fathers separately centred around the created living journals. The inclusion
of fathers separately was inuenced by ethical considerations and methodological intent,
fostering a fresh perspective on the children’s activities due to their absence in the initial
data generation process.
During these discussions, all the participant families’ living journals were shared with
one another through screen sharing on the MS Teams application to facilitate the
exploration of similar and diverse digital media practices within the cultural context.
The tangibility of the living journals enhanced the recall and discussion of daily activities
depicted therein. Similar to Video Stimulated Recall (VSR) participants were able to
observe their activities as ‘outsiders’ to provide rich insights (Rowe 2009). Thus, the
Figure 1. Sample pages from participant children’s living journals.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION 5
discussions of living journals departed from conventional interviews, and they oered
families an opportunity to reect on children’s daily activities compared to responding
to interview questions.
Experience Sampling Method
I used the Experience-Sampling Method (ESM) in the study, which oered a valuable
avenue to document individuals’ experiences within their contexts (Hektner, Schmidt,
and Csikszentmihalyi 2007). ESM has previously been administered by collecting partici-
pants’ self-reports at repeated intervals through various means such as texts, pagers,
digital tools, or applications (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 2014). While ESM has seen
limited application in research with young children (Lämsä et al. 2017; Plowman and Ste-
venson 2012; Rönkä et al. 2017), its integration with modern digital tools and the invol-
vement of participants as proxy researchers present opportunities for educational
researchers to adapt the method for in situ life study, thereby reducing their physical
presence in the field. In the present study, ESM proved instrumental in examining indi-
vidual lives of young children, particularly because their lives are often shielded from
observation, and participants may not always discern the patterns through which con-
texts inuence their behaviour.
Data analysis
The diverse nature of data within the living journals necessitated a exible data analysis
approach. An iterative data analysis approach was applied during this process, to high-
light the significance of identifying both similarities and disparities across cases. All
the generated data, including visuals and transcriptions of the journal discussions,
were uploaded onto Dedoose, a mixed-methods data analysis software, to code and
analyse within individual cases and subsequently across the entire dataset. I employed
inductive thematic analysis which facilitated studying perspectives of each family, high-
lighting changes and similarities within and across families (Braun and Clarke 2021).
Each participant family’s data was initially analysed separately and subsequently across
cases.
Ethical considerations
The ethical complexities arising from the method were carefully navigated through con-
tinuously seeking consent from the mothers and children, thoughtful engagement with
families, and a considerate approach that prioritised children’s well-being and established
family dynamics within homes. All ethical procedures adhered to the guidelines set by the
British Educational Research Association (BERA 2018). Ethical approval was obtained
from the University of Edinburgh. All the participants’ identities are anonymised, and
pseudonyms are used.
Throughout the research, continuous and ongoing consent was sought from parents
and children. Children’s consent was deemed essential for all aspects of the process, con-
sidering that their images and videos were captured by their mothers and subsequently
utilised to create journals. The present study included fieldwork in Baku and digital living
6 S. SAVADOVA
journals method. The fieldwork lasted three months and involved three visits to each
family, incorporating various methods and activities with mothers and children. I have
detailed the fieldwork and its methodological approaches elsewhere (Savadova 2022).
During the family visits in Baku, I explained the concept of living journals to the partici-
pant children, alongside their mothers, and obtained their assent. I conducted three
extended family visits to each family during the fieldwork; therefore, children were
already familiar with me. Also, prior to starting the data generation for the living jour-
nals, I recorded a video of myself explaining the living journals and their implications,
which I then shared with the mothers to watch together with their children to renew
their and their children’s consent. Mothers confirmed their and children’s interest in par-
ticipation. I also sought children’s and mothers’ consent for creating the journals and
their potential use in the publications and conference presentations.
In addition to mothers’ perspectives in the first phase, I sought to actively involve
children in data generation. The children were encouraged to contribute pictures or
videos of themselves through a short video I recorded and shared with mothers to
watch with their children. Mothers were responsible for their children’s use of What-
sApp and thus children were oered to send responses under the supervision of
their mothers. While the recommended age for WhatsApp is over 13, this did not
apply in this study. Because data generation during the fieldwork revealed that children
were used to sending pictures or videos through WhatsApp application to their family
members and friends. Mothers were the mediators between children and me, so they
were aware of our communication and my request. While doing so, I emphasised to
the children the importance of obtaining their mother’s permission beforehand. My
intention was to avoid disrupting any power dynamics between children and their
mothers regarding access to and uses of digital technologies at home. Only a few chil-
dren took the initiative to send pictures or videos with their mothers’ permission. This
emerged as a methodological limitation, as I had aspired to incorporate all children’s
active participation in all phases of the data generation. Nevertheless, during discus-
sions of the created journals, children were still encouraged to comment on their jour-
nals alongside their mothers. This approach enabled the inclusion of children’s voices
and perspectives in interpreting the generated data. Still, during the first phase, I
remained attentive to the videos and pictures received after each prompt, alert to the
cues of potential discomfort in children (Arnott et al. 2020). I was prepared to intervene
and halt the data generation process if any discomfort or negative sentiment was per-
ceived from the visuals or mothers’ messages. Prioritising children’s satisfaction and
contentment over the data generation, I aimed to ensure that the method did not
impose any unwarranted intrusion into their lives.
Mothers’ involvement in the first phase in selecting the visual materials was carefully
navigated, acknowledging their authority to represent their children’s daily activities.
Mothers also actively communicated their perspectives on their children’s daily activi-
ties during the data generation. In the second phase, prior to the creation of the actual
journals, renewed consent was sought from mothers and children through their
mothers. Children and mothers were also consulted to identify any specific visuals
they preferred not to be included in the journals. All the participating mother and chil-
dren unanimously granted consent for the use of visuals and messages. In the third
phase of the approach, consent was rearmed with mothers and children prior to
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION 7
sharing journals with fathers and other families. This precautionary approach mitigated
potential conicts from sharing information with fathers and other participant families.
After securing consent from each family, the journals of other families, featuring pseu-
donymised names, were presented through screen-sharing on MS Teams to ensure the
privacy of the participant families.
Significance of the method
Given the significance of understanding children’s everyday lives and interlocutors
within ecocultural theory (Tudge 2008), the method enabled me to focus on their every-
day lives from a distance, minimising direct interference. Focusing on everyday activities,
this method accentuates children’s daily lives and interactions, often overlooked and con-
sidered unimportant or ordinary by research participants (Brownlie 2019). Since this
article is a method article, its primary emphasis lies in the methodological approach, cri-
tically scrutinising its significance and limitations. Accordingly, this section delves into
its methodological potentials rather than empirical findings of the study. Overall, the
Living Journals approach holds the following advantages (Figure 2):
The Living Journals method also contributed to the dataset by facilitating the creation
of multimodal, multivocal, metatextual, and multifunctional data.
Multimodal: In the initial phase, mothers, utilising smartphones, could respond to
prompts through text, audio messages, or visual formats such as pictures and short
video clips. This approach allowed participants to make meaning of their children’s
complex everyday practices by communicating them in dierent ways, which led to a
detailed understanding of their practices (Flewitt 2011). Multivocal: In this study,
parents and children provided insights into their family lives, enabling an exploration
of how children interact with technologies. This approach increased the multivocality
of the data, capturing a range of perspectives from the research participants.
Figure 2. Advantages of the Living Journals approach.
8 S. SAVADOVA
Incorporating these diverse voices enriched the data and improved the interpretive
process (Tracy 2010). Metatextual: As a step of the Living Journals approach, participants
were also asked to reect on their journals as well as the journals of other participant chil-
dren. Participant families gained insights by reecting on their lives in the context of
others’ experiences, enriching generated data with metatextual depth. Multifunctional:
The created journals are tangible and used to facilitate more data generation. Like any
other pictures and videos of the children, these can also serve as memories to be
shared with the participants’ extended family and friends, solely based on the mutual
decisions of the parents and children. In this study, participant mothers recognised
the living journals as valuable keepsakes, shareable with extended family and friends.
This reveals multifunctionality of the journals: storing analysable data, prompting
further data generation, representing research outputs for funded projects, and serving
as meaningful ‘gifts’ expressing gratitude to participants for their involvement.
Limitations of the method
Limitations of the method included non-inclusion of children in data creation to a
desired level, potential performativity in mothers’ responses, and resource-intensive
setup and interpretation. First, despite attempts to actively involve children in data gen-
eration through the submission of pictures or videos, the response was minimal, hinder-
ing the inclusion of children’s perspectives in the first phase. However, children were still
interested in sharing some of their favourite activities through their mothers. As such,
mothers sometimes sent pictures or videos even when not prompted and told me that
the participant child wanted their mother to record that activity and send it to me.
This limitation was mitigated by inviting children to comment on journals during discus-
sions. Second, relying on mothers as proxy researchers might raise questions about per-
formativity, as they had sole control over the shared content. However, this control was
deemed valuable in the original study, representing mothers’ perspectives on desired
childhoods. Third, the method might be resource intensive, requiring participants to
possess smartphones and internet, and it could pose challenges for participants, and
researchers lacking funding to provide these resources (Colom 2022).
Implications and recommendations for future research
The Living Journals approach has implications for future research in remote data gener-
ation on participants’ daily lives. First, as discussed above, the method creates multimo-
dal, metatextual, multivocal and multifunctional data, enriching the textuality and
visuality of the generated data. The method enables remote data generation, thereby
minimising researchers’ physical presence in the field (Savadova 2023a). Researchers
can adopt this approach as a participatory method, engaging children and young
people in both data generation and interpretation, thus providing them with more
agency in the data generation process (Coyne and Carter 2018).
The method enabled me to gain insights into the digital media practices of young chil-
dren. Due to their time in preschool, direct observations of their activities within edu-
cational institutions were not possible. Diverse cultural contexts and lifestyles across
various settings introduce complexities in approaches towards digital media uses
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION 9
(Edwards et al. 2017; Plowman 2015) thus, future research can delve into these settings
using a dierent range of participatory research methods with children, which would
enhance our understanding of how children interact with digital media in their everyday
contexts across several settings.
Although the method incorporated the active participation of children and parents, its
potential could be further refined in future research. Encouraging children to capture
images autonomously and fostering increased involvement in generating and selecting
visual content could enhance the eectiveness, meaning, and depth of the approach. Cor-
respondingly, this approach would facilitate a more comprehensive exploration of chil-
dren’s perspectives on their activities at home and beyond.
Conclusion
The Living Journals approach represents an advancement over its predecessors and
introduces enhanced techniques for studying young children while minimising
researcher presence in the field. This approach also eliminates the necessity for continu-
ous presence of a camera in children’s environments. Given the significance of investi-
gating children’s daily experiences within the framework of ecocultural theory, this
new method facilitated a study of their daily lives from a distance. Notably, the
primary advantage of this approach lies in its capacity to operate without researchers’
being physically present in the research setting. Then the living journals were devised
in digital and print formats. These journals served as both outputs of the research and
treasured mementoes for parents. They facilitated supplementary discussions with par-
ticipants, thus enriching the study by introducing an additional layer of in-depth and
comprehensive data.
By getting involved in the data generation process, participants assume the responsi-
bility of generating data. Through the deliberate detachment of the researcher from the
data generation process, this method empowers researchers to amass intricate and multi-
faceted data encompassing both visual and textual dimensions. The method’s distinctive
visual and personal attributes transcend conventional text-based research depictions,
enriching the data with vitality and creating multimodal, multivocal, metatextual, and
multifunctional data.
The Living Journals approach capitalises on the capabilities of WhatsApp, as an
avenue for generating data. Executing this method from a remote location proves par-
ticularly useful when travel is constrained, as seen during the recent COVID-19 pan-
demic, or when entry to research sites is otherwise limited (Colom 2022).
Consequently, this method can address the recognised need for expanding research to
the Global South. Given the predominant concentration of research in the Global
North, this approach eliminates geographical obstacles that might otherwise discourage
researchers from investigating settings beyond their own due to mobility and other
considerations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
10 S. SAVADOVA
Data availability statement
Data can be made available by the author on request.
ORCID
Sabina Savadova http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5254-5921
References
Aarsand, P. 2016. “Children’s Media Practices: Challenges and Dilemmas for the Qualitative
Researcher.” Journal of Children and Media 10 (1): 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.
2015.1121894.
Arnott, L., D. Grogan, and P. Duncan. 2016. “Lessons from Using iPads to Understand Young
Children’s Creativity.” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 17 (2): 157–173. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1463949116633347.
Arnott, L., L. Martinez-Lejarreta, K. Wall, C. Blaisdell, and I. Palaiologou. 2020. “Reecting on
Three Creative Approaches to Informed Consent with Children Under Six.” British
Educational Research Journal 46 (4): 786–810. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3619.
Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2021. “One Size Fits All? What Counts as Quality Practice in (Reexive)
Thematic Analysis?” Qualitative Research in Psychology 18 (3): 328–352. https://doi.org/10.
1080/14780887.2020.1769238.
2018. British Educational Research Association Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research. 4th ed.
London. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-
educational-research-2018
Brownlie, J. 2019. “Out of the Ordinary: Research Participants’ Experiences of Sharing the
‘Insignificant’.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 22 (3): 257–269. https://
doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1535880.
Clark, A., and P. Moss. 2011. Listening to Young Children: The Mosaic Approach. London, UK:
National Children’s Bureau.
Colom, A. 2022. “Using WhatsApp for Focus Group Discussions: Ecological Validity, Inclusion
and Deliberation.” Qualitative Research 22 (3): 452–467. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1468794120986074.
Coyne, I., and B. Carter. 2018. Being Participatory: Researching with Children and Young People:
Co-Constructing Knowledge Using Creative Techniques. Cham: Springer.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., and R. Larson. 2014. “Validity and Reliability of the Experience-Sampling
Method.” In Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology: The Collected Works of Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, edited by Csikszentmihalyi M, 35–54. Dodrecht: Springer.
Cuevas-Parra, P. 2020. “Co-researching with Children in the Time of COVID-19: Shifting the
Narrative on Methodologies to Generate Knowledge.” International Journal of Qualitative
Methods 19:160940692098213. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920982135.
Edwards, S., M. Henderson, D. Gronn, A. Scott, and M. Mirkhil. 2017. “Digital Disconnect or
Digital Dierence? A Socio-ecological Perspective on Young Children’s Technology use in
the Home and the Early Childhood Centre.” Technology, Pedagogy and Education 26:1–17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2016.1152291.
Flewitt, R. 2011. “Bringing Ethnography to a Multimodal Investigation of Early Literacy in a
Digital Age.” Qualitative Research 11 (3): 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794111399838.
Gillen, J., and C. Cameron. 2010. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Research: A Day in
the Life. Basingtoke: Springer.
Graham, A., and R. Fitzgerald. 2010. “Progressing Children’s Participation: Exploring the Potential
of a Dialogical Turn.” Childhood 17 (3): 343–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568210369219.
Hadfield-Hill, S., and C. Zara. 2024. Being Participatory Through the Use of App-based Research
Tools. Being Participatory: Researching with Children and Young People: Co-constructing
Knowledge Using Creative, Digital and Innovative Techniques. Cham: Springer.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION 11
Hektner, J. M., J. A. Schmidt, and M. Csikszentmihalyi. 2007. Experience Sampling Method:
Measuring the Quality of Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications.
Lämsä, T., K. Jokinen, A. Rönkä, and P. Poikonen. 2017. “Childhood Reproduced: Images of
Childhood Represented in Children’s Daily Lives in Home and Day-care Settings.” Journal of
Family Studies 23 (2): 161–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2015.1106334.
Parker, C., S. Scott, and A. Geddes. 2019. SAGE Research Methods Foundations. London, UK: Sage
Publications
Plowman, L. 2015. “Researching Young Children’s Everyday Uses of Technology in the Family
Home.” Interacting with Computers 27 (1): 36–46. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwu031.
Plowman, L., and O. Stevenson. 2012. “Using Mobile Phone Diaries to Explore Children’s
Everyday Lives.” Childhood 19 (4): 539–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568212440014.
Poveda, D. 2019. “Researching Digital Literacy Practices in Early Childhood: Challenges,
Complexities and Imperatives.” In The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early
Childhood. 1st ed., edited by O. Erstad, R. Flewitt, B. Kümmerling-Meibauer, and Í Pereira,
45–64. Routledge.
Rönkä, A., E. Sevón, E. Räikkönen, and T. Hintikka. 2017. “Manuscript: You Have a Message from
Illi! The Mobile Diary in Researching Children’s Daily Experiences.” Child Indicators Research
10 (2): 505–523. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9386-y.
Rowe, V. C. 2009. “Using Video-stimulated Recall as a Basis for Interviews: Some Experiences
from the Field.” Music Education Research 11 (4): 425–437. https://doi.org/10.1080/
14613800903390766.
Savadova, S. 2022. “Living Journals: Young Children and Digital Media Practices in Azerbaijani
Families.” PhD, University of Edinburgh.
Savadova, S. 2023a. “A Living Journals Approach for the Remote Study of Young Children’s
Digital Practices in Azerbaijan.” Global Studies of Childhood 13:64–78. https://doi.org/10.
1177/20436106211034179.
Savadova, S. 2023b. “Subterfuge: A Parental Strategy for Mediating Young Children’s Digital
Media Practices in Azerbaijan.” Learning, Media and Technology 1–14.
Tobin, J. J., D. Y. H. Wu, and D. H. Davidson. 1989. Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China, and
the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tracy, S. J. 2010. “Qualitative Quality: Eight “Big-Tent” Criteria for Excellent Qualitative
Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 16 (10): 837–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121.
Tudge, J. R. H. 2008. The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in
Diverse Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weisner, T. S. 2002. “Ecocultural Understanding of Children’s Developmental Pathways.” Human
Development 45 (4): 275–281. https://doi.org/10.1159/000064989.
12 S. SAVADOVA
