This qualitative research synthesis aims to describe and identify ethical opportunities and challenges in interviewing young children in early childhood education and to explore interviewing as a means to bring forward children's experiences of participation and inclusion. These objectives have been studied through two different research cases in the Finnish early childhood education and care settings with active learning approach. The identified opportunities were supporting to show emotions, respecting diversity and special needs, enhancing the competence and agency of children, stimulating humor, playfulness and imagination, and generating meaningful encounters and feelings of empowerment. The challenges were building trust, identifying experiences from imaginary stories, listening attentively, responding to difficult life situations of children, and addressing power distribution. The paper highlights the possibilities for promoting children's inclusion and participation through ethically considered interviewing and seeing research process as a chance to give them experiences about competence, involvement and becoming listened to by adults.Keywords: early childhood education, ethics, qualitative methodology, social learning Corresponding author, 1) anna-leena.lastikka@helsinki.fiLastikka Anna-Leena & Kangas Jonna
86Research on small children's lives has involved a lack of equality between adult and child participants. It is common to study children exclusively through adults' perceptions, treat children as objects of research, and exclude them from the research process (Christensen & James, 2008). Einarsdóttir (2007) argues that earlier research on children was carried out through assessing and observing children's competencies and development. James and James (2012) suggest that if children are not included in the research focusing on their everyday life, it will result in an obfuscation of the relationship between adult and child.Moreover, this approach will make it more challenging to ascertain the diversity and multivoiced aspects of childhood, as well as individual perceptions and experiences that help children build their understanding of their environment and interactions.Recently, it has become evident that the present research methodology of early childhood education cannot dismiss the interaction and relationships between researchers and children.The focus has shifted from regarding children as objects (Christensen & James, 2008) progress in developing suitable research methods (Crivello, Camfield & Woodhead, 2009;Fattore et al., 2012;Karlsson, 2012), there is still a need for research to explore and develop substantive research ethics, methodologies, and methods towards democracy and participation (Mockler & Groundwater-Smith, 2015). Clark (2011)
87dominated by reflections on informed consent and protection of participants. Therefore, there is an obvious need in research to explore and discuss ethical issues more deeply throughout the research processes. Moreover, the interview method has...