Made Not Only in Words: Reading Child-Researcher Relations through Exit Artifacts and “Are You Leaving?” Letters

• In Event: Writing (Righting) Ethnographic Exits: Methodological Insights on Leaving the Field from Elementary Literacy Researchers

Abstract

Writing researchers have long recognized the relationship between one’s writing and being in the world as a dialogic space of relational learning (Vossoughi et al., 2021; Volosinov, 1973; Yagelski, 2009). Taking this supposition seriously, we ground our understanding of children’s writing from a critical sociocultural perspective (Lewis et al., 2007): texts are situative and imbricated as ideological artifacts (Street, 1984). That is, texts signal a communicative message - one to be interpreted by the reader and address - and underscore their' situative, cultural nature.

Rather than viewing textual forms of exiting or “goodbye” letters as mundane artifacts or seeming inconsequential icons, we argue that these texts are relevant to theorizing the relational site of “the field.” Reading children’s texts as ethical learning sites, we showcase how they operate as critical signs and sites of subject-subject relations. Individually, we interrogate how the researcher understands and takes up child participants and how they are framed in leaving the so-called site; collectively, we requalify what textual objects are worthy of further analysis.

Primary data sources included child-produced artifacts presented to Author1 and Author2 across a series of studies they completed individually. Specifically, Author1 contributed artifacts from two studies in PreK through third-grade classrooms in public and private elementary schools across the Midwest and Northeastern United States since 2017. Comparatively, Author2 provided artifacts from 2014 to 2025 from 1st through 4th-grade children enrolled in a Midwestern elementary school with which she partnered. Notably, all artifacts we reviewed in our analysis were part of what Delamont and Smith (2023) term “planned and scheduled exits” (p. 11); most coincided with the conclusion of a traditional academic school year.

Independently, we scoured our data to identify child-produced artifacts related to our exits from the field. Then, we collaboratively reviewed and coded them. Throughout this process, we tended to the artifacts' form (e.g., mode) alongside the children’s message (e.g., content), their means of delivery, and the timing of when these compositions were shared during the study.

In this presentation, we offer excerpts from the broader data corpus via analytic snapshots representative of the diversity seen in the children’s compositions. We present findings as a series of “stacked stories” (Burnett & Merchant, 2016), with each author highlighting how artifacts signaled new insight surrounding subject-subject relations (e.g., child-researcher, research-context), indexed relevant child-centered data, and timestamped the study.

From (de)constructing meaning evident in more traditional communications like teacher-prompted farewell letters (Figure 1), child-researcher collaborative wordless illustrations (Figure 2), and child-produced 3-D designs (Figure 3), we showcase a series of exit artifacts to emphasize and trouble the often-overlooked relationality of children’s work with researchers. Additionally, we highlight how children’s compositions prompted critical reflections about how our bodies and being were essential parts of fieldwork. Simultaneously, we examine children's sometimes emotional responses when we departed (Delamont & Smith, 2023).

Authors

• Jon M. Wargo, University of Michigan

• Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto