Using the community of inquiry for interviewing children: theory and practice

ABSTRACT

Involvement of children in research processes requires various ethical considerations. In particular, while interviewing children, a researcher needs to take into consideration the power imbalance between a researcher and children as well as among children. This article suggests a possible way of mitigating potential risks, drawing on the idea and practice of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) as an interview method. CoI is the practice of group dialog for knowledge-making, where participants talk about a common topic by sharing their lived experiences in a cooperative manner. This article shows that CoI allows children to act as both interviewers and interviewees, which helps children in reflective knowledge-making while at the same time mitigating the ethical concerns of interviewing. To illustrate how CoI can help achieve these goals, this article draws on the empirical research conducted with a group of junior high school students in Japan.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• ethics
• interview
• power imbalance
• the community of inquiry

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deep gratitude to John Dryzek and Selen Ercan for their insightful comments and suggestions on the previous versions of this article. I also thank Nicole Curato, André Bächtiger, and John Min for their comments and suggestions.