When undertaking research with young people in educational contexts researchers are likely to encounter many challenges. This paper is a discussion of the barriers encountered by a researcher who sought to capture the educational journeys of excluded young people. The study aimed to move beyond young people simply participating in research to…

This article discusses the potential of mixed-method social network analysis (MMSNA) as a methodology for designing and conducting studies that address questions of interplay between human agency and social structures in educational settings. First, we discuss a rationale for using MMSNA referring to the theoretical calls for better understanding…

Our purpose in this article is to examine the subjective processes of researchers while becoming conscious during the investigation of infants and toddlers (I/Ts) in educational settings. Based on the intertwining between Cultural-historical Psychology and Ethnography in Education, we followed a group of I/Ts at a Brazilian Early Childhood…

Young offenders' perceptions of their educational experiences are little researched not least because of methodological and ethical challenges. These include being difficult to access, questions on their reliability as interviewees and their 'doubly vulnerable' position, due to the secure locked context and their age. This article draws on…

Despite a growing number of Second Language (L2) researchers working in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic settings, issues related to these uniquely situated researcher identities have only scantily been addressed. In order to close this gap, we investigated three U.S.-based Korean female researchers in L2 studies. We sought to understand (1)…

This paper examines the values of the CHE principles of Connectivity, Humanness and Empathy as a guiding framework for maximizing the ethical and methodological advantages of semi-structured interview research practices. The authors draw from two separate educational studies and apply the CHE principles to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of…

Educational research teams are increasingly recognized as an optimal configuration for addressing more complex mixed methods research problems; however, their development is often approached as a conventional research collaboration rather than an integrative one. An approach informed by complexity theory provides the practical guidance for…

In qualitative educational research, the languages spoken by the participants and the researchers can greatly impact the quality of the data collected. This paper will explore the advantages and disadvantages of being an insider researcher by virtue of speaking the same language(s) as the participants. Whether the researcher is a linguistic…

Qualitative education research is an inherently complex landscape, presenting the qualitative researcher with constant ethical and reasoned decision-making. Presented as a narrative dialogic, this paper traces and juxtaposes the method stories of two qualitative researchers who focused their work around education phenomena, but in different…

In the pursuit of my doctoral research on the institutional history of the art department at Central Technical School (CTS) in Toronto, Canada, I amassed a collection of oral histories from 20 current and former CTS art instructors and students, recorded across the country. As an instructor in the CTS art department in addition to being its…

Drawing on insights from reflective research accounts in the social sciences, this paper attends to the complexities of conducting cross-boundary educational research. Cross-boundary research is defined as any type of inquiry that is conducted across cultural and/or structural boundaries, including but not limited to race, class, gender, language,…

This article engages with methodological concerns connected to insider education research and the "race-symmetry" shared between the researcher and teacher participants. To do this, race critical reflexive strategies are utilized to show how and why this practice productively contributed to the knowledge about race making constructed in…

This paper addresses some fundamental methodological and ethical issues confronting non-Chinese researchers undertaking research in Hong Kong Chinese society. Among other things, it considers problems pertaining to data collection, the challenges of data interpretation, and the implication that this has for research. Whilst the issues are by no…

The tales we tell here focus on the ethical issues arising from our research practice with vulnerable young participants and those for whom research has been inextricably linked with European imperialism and colonialism. The importance of relational obligations, temporality and potential for a continuing narrative approach to ethical research…

This paper focuses primarily on the methodological considerations of a study investigating the interactions of pairs of disabled and non-disabled children working together on computer-based tasks, in mainstream primary schools in Cyprus. Twenty dyads of pupils (each pair comprising a disabled child and a non-disabled peer), were observed and…