Main Study Data and Methods

Stages of the methods:

1. Pedagogues were invited to a series of online focus groups to discuss children's rights and the different ways we can hear children's voices.
2. They were asked to contribute to a toolkit of activities that they knew children enjoyed and created opportunities for children to express themselves
3. A toolkit of activities was created and sent to all participating kindergartens
4. Pedagogues and children selected a toolkit activity that they were comfortable with and that children enjoyed doing
5. When engaged in the toolkit activity, pedagogues stepped back and paid particular attention to what the children were saying and doing.  The toolkit activities enabled children to include different aspects of their lives such as home, interests and community.
6. Pedagogues captured the different ways children expressed themselves through video, drawing, artefacts and reflective accounts.
7. More online focus groups were held through this process to enable pedagogues to reflect, for questions to be answered and for pedagogues to feel supported and part of a research community.
8. Pedagogues sent the data they had generated to us (a group of English and Hungarian academics) and we used thematic analysis to analyse the data.
9. Themes based on the data were identified.  These themes and the rationale behind them were shared with the Vojtina Puppet Theatre.  They reflected on the themes, looked at all the data relating to each theme and devised an outline of a story.
10. The story was taken into the participating Kindergartens and shared with the children.  They were encouraged to give verbal and non verbal feedback through drawings.
11. The script was developed based on the children's feedback and scenes began to take shape.  
12. A preview of the puppet show, reflecting the themes based on the data was performed at a conference of the research project on the 20th October 2022.
13. The full puppet show will be premiered at the world Children's Rights Day in November 2023.