This paper builds on the European project MiCREATE - Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (822664 — MiCREATE — H2020-SC6-MIGRATION-2018-2019-2020/H2020-SC6MIGRATION-2018). The project aims at supporting the inclusion of migrant students through a child-centered approach (Clemence, Riggs & Augoustinos, 2014). Specifically, its objective is to identify and respond to the specific needs of migrant children and translate them into policy measures for education professionals and policy makers. To respond to this objective, a series of actions are carried out aimed at exploring the migratory phenomenon and its impact on the educational system from multiple perspectives, among which the analysis of the media and political discourse, the collection of evidence in the educational context and the inclusion of the perspectives and experiences from children.

Research with children was tackled through a multimethod approach, which combined  the traditional methodology of observation and interviewing with the use of art-based methods. Its specific goals were to build an understanding of the children’s experiences and everyday life from their own perspectives, by specifically examining four main aspects: educational system, migration experiences, perceptions about their present and future and family and wider community. For the purpose of this research, we will focus specifically on reflecting on the limits and potential of the art-based methods employed to support children’s self-narration.

Several studies have used visual methods and artistic approaches when carrying out research with migrant children and youth (Guruge et al., 2015; Kirova & Emme, 2008; Moskal, 2017; Vecchio, Dhillon & Ulmer, 2017; Zhang-Yu et al., 2020). Research in this field showed that students' self-exploration through art-based approaches facilitated children’s narrations about themselves and helped researchers in delving into their realities and experiences (Zhang-Yu et al., 2020). At the same time, the multimodal nature of art-based techniques have been recognized as beneficial in multi linguistic and multicultural educational contexts (Chappell & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2013). This research is opening paths for a rich experimentation on art-based techniques for working with children (e.g.  drawings, photographs, videos, mental maps, performance, poems, photovoice, quilting, digital storytelling, etc.). At the same time, it is opening relevant standpoints to stimulate researcher’s reflections and critical analysis of these practices. 

Starting from this perspective, our research aims at contributing to the discussion on designing art-based techniques for researching with children, by specifically employing a reflexive methodology to examine the different art-based techniques used in the field work carried out in 3 primary schools of Barcelona. To this end, the present communication will be structured in three parts. First, we describe the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of using art-based methods to support children’s self-narration in a multicultural school environment. Second, we will focus on contextualizing the research and describing the specific art-based methods employed during the field work in schools. Finally, our discussion will focus on two aspects. On the one hand, we will reflect  on the affordances that each of the employed techniques offered to support (or not) the process of self narration in children. On the other, we will discuss the strengths and complexities entailed in multimodal data produced through art-based practices. Through the self-examination and self-reflection on our practices we aim at keeping the quest for methodological appropriateness in human science “in a state of crisis, where methods and assumptions are continuously questioned “(Polkinghorne, 1983).

The research described in this communication build on the fieldwork carried out with a total of 59 children between 10-12 years-old from 3 different primary schools located in Barcelona. All participating schools were public and were selected according to their migration rate (greater than 40%) and the availability to participate in the research. As part of a broader methodological design, the field-work included classroom observations, interviews and focus groups with different members of the educational community and with children. In order to facilitate the unfolding of the focus groups with children we employed different art-based techniques to scaffold their self-narrations and dialogue during the activity. Specifically, we employed the following techniques: use of evocative cards, family maps, interactive storytelling, lines of life, the backpack of experiences and emotions, puppet creation. Each of these techniques aimed at investigating from different viewpoints key aspects of the realities and experiences of the participating children, such as: experience of newly arrived children in the school, experiences on trips and displacements they have lived; perceptions about their present and future, perceptions about their family and wider community. A total of 10 different researchers, with different backgrounds and at different stages of their academic career, participated in this fieldwork. The wide variety of employed techniques and the amount of researchers involved in the project offered a fertile ground to stimulate the debate and reflection on the limits and potentials of the employed techniques and on broader methodological considerations about art-based methods for researching with children. These considerations were organically shared during different meetings related to the field work and mainly addressed the affordances of the different employed techniques and the complexities entailed in the multimodal data produced. This communication will, therefore, build on the shared reflections around the employed approaches to build a coral narrative aimed at tracing the possibilities, tensions and complexities entailed in art-based practices to support children’s self-narration.

The outcomes of the fieldwork and the shared reflections on the employed techniques allowed identifying some specific strengths and tensions that art-based methods can offer when working with children in multicultural contexts. On the one hand, the multimodal nature of the activities allowed going beyond the limits of verbal and written language by enabling different ways of communicating, some of which may suit them more than others. At the same time, the produced artifacts worked as scaffolding devices in facilitating dialogue, both with the researchers as well as among peers. Furthermore, the open-ended nature of the activities offered students the opportunity of setting their own limits and carrying out their self-narration at their own pace, hence offering researchers with resources to delve into complex topics without being too invasive. Finally, the self-reflective practice on the fieldwork allowed acknowledging the affordances offered by the different employed resources and using this knowledge as an instrument to guide researchers in the definition of the most appropriate techniques to be employed in future research. On the other hand, however, also some specific limits and tensions emerged. First, even if the obtained multimodal data allowed analyzing meanings that are expressed through multiple resources, they nonetheless presented specific challenges related to their analysis and the complexities related to transforming multimodal data into actionable knowledge for guiding the design of specific educational interventions. At the same time, the multi-layered nature of the obtained data also entails specific difficulties related to bringing back the research to participants and exposing the results to them. Finally, the variety of experimented techniques offered a certain methodological richness to the research but, as a counterpart, it made difficult the tasks of achieving a broader and common view to the outcomes of the fieldwork.

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