Using video to investigate preschool classroom interaction: education research assumptions and methodological practices

This article reports on the use of video to collect dynamic visual data in education research and proposes that using visual technologies to collect data can give new insights into classroom interaction. Video data unveil how young children use the full range of material and bodily resources available to them to make and express meaning, forcing a reconsideration of Vygotskian accounts of the relationship between thought and language by producing grounded evidence for a pluralistic interpretation of the construction and negotiation of meaning. In addition to challenging language-biased approaches to classroom interaction, using video to collect data also forces a reexamination of established methodological practices. Drawing on data from ESRC-funded ethnographic video case studies of 3-year-old children communicating at home and in a preschool playgroup, this article discusses methodological and ethical dilemmas encountered in the collection and transcription, or representation, of dynamic visual data, arguing that visual data gives insights into aspects of communicative behaviour previously unaccounted for in early years education research.