In this paper we will focus on the child-centered research methods that we apply in the SIPP-project across five European countries: Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. In 1989 the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was enacted and today the Convention has been ratified by 192 countries around the globe. According to the convention, children have the right to be heard, have influence and participate. Parallelly, within the last decades, a stronger focus on child-centered methods in research in childhood and children’s everyday lives has emerged. Today, in pedagogical and educational research, children are more often recognized as social and cultural actors who create and influence their environment. To a greater extend, children are involved as informants and participants based on the logic that children are experts in their own lives (Morrow & Richards, 1996; Clark & Moss, 2001; Clark & Statham, 2005; James, 2007; Alderson & Morrow, 2011; Punch, 2002). Accordingly, the development of various research methods that can involve children and provide accurate insight into and knowledge about their perspectives increases (Fjordside et al., 2016). This is also the case with the cross-European SIPP-project. Both practitioners and researchers, in collaboration with children involved in the project, try out new involving methods, that can capture the children’s understandings and experiences with social inclusion and participation. In the presentation we will provide examples of the many different actions and methods that we carried out, such as children taking photographs of their favorite places and sharing their thoughts on the images, children sharing thoughts and experiences with pen pals, children drawing central elements related to their understandings of friendship, children taking notes about social inclusion in “research diaries”, children doing animated films about friends and inclusion, children taking charge of conflict solution themselves by seeking common agreements, children doing surveys and participating in various forms of children’s-counsels, etc. We will discuss the potentials and pitfalls of such involving methods and touch on central ethical aspects too. Often children are eager to participate and involve in tasks and activities. But how do we ensure that various forms of participation are available so that all children have the opportunity to connect? And to what extend is it legitimate for children to choose not to partake in the involving acts of the participatory approaches promoted by the well-intentioned practitioners and researchers?

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