Video and Multi-moment Snapshots: Transforming the way we produce and analyse data

In the field of early childhood education, video supported research into caregiver-child interactions during shared book readings have often focused on capturing the shared reading experience itself so that researchers may analyse the recording at a later date (for example, Baker, Mackler, Sonnenschein, & Serpell, 2001; Bus & van Ijzendoorn, 1997; Hindman, Skibbe, & Foster, 2014; Pellegrini, Brody, & Sigel, 1985). Though this approach allows for multiple viewings of the event and is therefore superior to researcher observations and note-taking, such a practice continues to leave itself open to narrow interpretations of a moment in time, falling short of transforming the way in which researchers produce and engage with their data. This paper explores the affordances of using video-based research to capture a multiplicity of moments, along with multimodal representations when producing data related to adult-child book readings. Rather than inadvertently capturing an out of the ordinary event, a fleeting/evolving opinion or identifying or misrepresenting themes that are unintentionally overly biased by researchers’ deeply established understandings, multi-moment snapshots allow researchers to identify more deeply developed, consistent and clear opinions, practices and understandings, when analysing the data that has been produced.Our research made use of more than one ‘moment’ to create a comprehensive collection of information for the purpose of analysis. This research used three video moments to produce data: (1) caregiver-child interactions during 4 shared book reading sessions, (2) interviews with caregivers directly following each of the reading sessions, and (3) video-stimulated discussions with caregivers within two months of the final shared book reading. Findings showed that using one moment allowed us to identify patterns and emerging themes across the three different moments. Multimodal data production afforded by the video recordings allowed for more in depth analysis of caregivers’ and children’s interactions during book reading sessions (gesture, facial expressions, body language, visual representations of artefacts referred to and used, etc.) as well as caregivers’ perspectives gained from interviews and video-stimulated reflective interviews. This paper will highlight the affordances of using video-based research as a means of capturing the multimodal elements of an experience, which can contribute to the analysis and interpretation of data. We expand on the focus of multimodal however, to suggest that when coupled with a multiplicity of moments, video-based research can be a means of pursuing richness via a method that has been criticised for its narrow subjectivity.