‘Overspills’ of research with children: an argument for slow research

We take on the challenge posed by Horton and Kraftl [2006. “What Else? Some More Ways of Thinking and Doing ‘Children’s Geographies’.” Children’s Geographies 4 (1): 69–95, 71.] that research be ‘slowed down’ through methodological and theoretical routes to acknowledge seemingly trivial details in children’s lives. Based on an ethnographic study in an Australian preschool focusing on children’s place-making in a globalizing world, this paper discusses one event in the home corner to exemplify what we understand as and how we enact methodological slowness. The event is revisited by recognizing the role of the unexpected, the troubling and paying attention to data that overspills the research engagement in conducting ‘ideally preset qualitative research’. Research engagements not only reflect but also produce children’s lives. Researching ‘the global’ is ‘doing the global’ as the frames, practices and traditions of research itself are part and parcel of the so-called answers we produce. As result, a more nuanced and complex understanding of how ‘the global’ is made and circulated by children surfaces.