How to conduct ethical research with young children: Insights from a reflexive collaborative autoethnography

This collaborative ethnographic study explores the dynamics of conducting research with young children focusing on data collection at kindergartens, where working with vulnerable populations requires distinct ethical and methodological adaptations. It addresses the adjustments necessary to maintain research integrity while adapting to practical obstacles and cultural contexts. Drawing on insights from a study examining young children’s positive experiences and well-being in Kazakhstan, the article presents data gathered from (1) individual reflections, (2) collaborative face-to-face reflection session, (3) autoethnographic individual journal entries capturing co-author-coparticipants’ emotions and feelings related to data collection, and (4) informal WhatsApp discussions among researchers after data collection sessions. Adopting Gibbs’ (1988) reflective writing model, this study captures the research team’s evolving process, the challenges they confronted, and the lessons they learned. Our main focus is on synthesizing our experiences to offer valuable insights and practical guidance to researchers entering similar contexts where empirical research involving human participants, particularly young children, is relatively new and emerging. The study examines how the researchers describe their experiences in early childhood educational settings and emphasizes the importance of culturally sensitive approaches to enhance data collection and ethics practices. These insights contribute to early childhood research and offer broader guidance for culturally responsive research practices involving human participants in similar emerging contexts.