The growing acknowledgement of the value of listening to children's views and experiences in social research, popularly termed as "listening to their voices," brings with it methodological consequences. Regarding children as expert informants about their own lives carries with it the simultaneous call for researchers to be experts in developing and employing appropriate strategies that can effectively elicit the insights that children can bring to a research topic. With younger children, the use of participatory methodologies has been foregrounded as the key to unlocking their potential to contribute rich and useful perspectives to inform research into their lives. This article explores the usefulness of employing preschoolers' drawings within the context of a co-construction process to facilitate the children's construction of ideas and reinforce their voices in research. The case is made that the quality of the dialogical engagement is as important as the drawing itself, and both visual images and the verbal exchanges are central to the children's meaningmaking process. In the co-construction process, both adult and child are (ideally) equal players and the resulting dialogical process plays a major role in the constitution of the phenomena. The role of the researcher as the co-constructor can be a challenging one because it entails engaging and supporting children's views and the expression of these views. The discussion and illustrations from the first author's research projects contribute to the literature base on positioning preschool children as valid social actors in their communities.

Existing studies on peer rejection are predominantly quantitative in nature and do not adequately engage children's voices and provide a comprehensive view of the peer rejection phenomenon. There are also limited studies at the preschool level, especially in the Singapore context. This study addresses these limitations by presenting insights into what constitutes a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. The objective is to investigate the subjective perceptions of the rejection phenomenon as experienced by different preschool children, and to draw out the essential characteristics of these experiences. A qualitative collective case study methodology informed by phenomenology was employed. It utilized in-depth individual interviews and children's dialogic engagement with their drawings to elicit the meaning of experiences from eight preschool children from four to seven years old. Seven major themes and 31 sub-themes emerged from the data, illustrating the complexities of the children's perceptions. They demonstrate that the children were capable of identifying and appraising their peer rejection experiences in terms of attributions, coping mechanisms and effects. The study reveals that peer rejection appeared to be an inevitable component of peer interactions, predisposing them to a host of adverse consequences. Although there are common elements, the personal construction of experiences led to diversities existing within the phenomenon, illustrating the uniqueness of some of the experiences. The implications for appropriate pedagogical practices to help preschool children cope more effectively with peer rejection are presented.

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