Huber, J. (2020). Letting children know we are listening to them: Attending to children’s everyday ways of knowing, being, doing, and relating as key in the relational ethical responsibilities of coming alongside young child co-researchers in narrative inquiry. In T. D. Smith & K. S. Hendricks (Eds.), Narratives and Reflections in Music Education: Listening to Voices Seldom Heard (pp. 33-49). Cham: Springer International Publishing. ISBN: 978-3-030-28707-8.
Chapter Abstract: I was deeply humbled by the opportunity to share an earlier version of this chapter as an invited keynote at the 2018 NIME6 Conference, particularly given the conference emphasis on Listening to Voices Seldom Heard. Over the past three and one-half years I have been privileged to come alongside a young girl and family of Métis ancestry as we have together engaged in narrative inquiry. Early in the inquiry I asked local Cree Métis Elder Gloria Laird to guide and think with me. As I shared with her during one of our visits my tensions around beginning to co-compose interim research texts with this young child co-researcher, she shared this teaching: “Children and youth want to know that we, as adults, are listening to them; it is important for us to let them know we are listening.” Pondering this teaching, I slowly understood that the everyday forms, materials, processes, and practices that shaped this young girl’s and my relationship and our day to day living of our inquiry also needed to shape our co-making of interim research texts. This chapter shows how my awakening to my need to attend to her everyday ways of knowing, being, doing, and relating was key in shaping the relational resonance she experienced as we co-composed and negotiated interim research texts. I see relational resonance as central in my relational ethical responsibilities alongside this young child and her family and future child and family co-researchers whom I may come alongside in narrative inquiry. (Abstract reproduced with permission © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2020).
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