Young visual ethnographers: Children's use of digital photography to record, share and extend their art experiences

This paper discusses how visual ethnographic research, involving childinitiated digital photography, provided rich insights into how children experienced art across multiple contexts of home, preschool and school. Using Vygotskian perspectives, this paper outlines how visual ethnographic approaches, where children were equipped with digital cameras, promoted collaborative research relationships, provided a site for accessing and sharing children’s perspectives, and linked various contexts of children’s experiences and ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll, 2000, p. 177). In addition, digital photography acted as a mediating device (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978) and as such heightened consciousness of the art experiences, afforded a site for art-making and promoted dialogue on interpersonal and intrapersonal planes. The child participants became co-researchers and used the camera to record, share and extend their art experiences.