Ways of seeing: using the Mosaic approach to listen to young children’s perspectives

Abstract

The Mosaic approach was developed during a research study to include the ‘voice of the child’ in an evaluation of a multiagency network of services for children and families. The process is explained in detail elsewhere (Clark and Moss, 2001; Clark, 2003). A second study, Spaces to play, adapted the Mosaic approach to listen to young children about their outdoor environment (Clark and Moss, 2005). This chapter will refer to case studies from this second study in order to illustrate the complex, multifaceted and sometimes surprising process of listening to young children. The Mosaic approach was developed in the context of research. But subsequent discussions with practitioners through conferences and workshops have led to its use by early years practitioners. This illustrates how the distinctions between research and teaching can blur. The distinction is also questioned in Reggio Emilia1. Discussing the roles of the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia and a team of American researchers, one of the researchers comments that “the actions of instruction, assessment, documentation and research come to contain each other. They cannot be pulled apart in any practical sense; they are a piece. No dichotomy between teaching and research remains” (Seidel, 2001, p 333). While within the Reggio schools, they emphasise the teacher as researcher, engaged in a constant process of constructing knowledge about children and learning: “That is why [Rinaldi says] I have written so often about the teacher as a researcher…. [I]t’s not that we don’t recognise your [academic] research, but we want our research, as teachers, to be recognised.

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