Using an ecocultural approach to explore young children's experiences of prior-to-school care settings

This paper contributes to the discussion around methodologies effective in gathering the perspectives of young children for the purposes of research. It describes ecocultural theory, a theoretical model that has grown out of anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, and argues for the benefits of applying an ecocultural approach to interviews with children, guiding qualitative analysis of interview data, and the development of practical strategies built on research findings. The value of this approach to research with young children is demonstrated with examples from a study which examined the prior-to-school care experiences of 8 four-year-old children.