Methodology for an international collaborative project

This chapter details the methodology of the cross-national, cross-cultural collaboration that gathered the perspectives of 152 young children on the gender of their teachers from Australia, Brazil, China, England, Israel, Norway, South Africa, Türkiye, and the USA. We present the study design, data sourcing, data collection, and data analysis activities used within each in-depth case study. Researching with children necessitates innovation, flexibility, and reflexivity in data collection methodologies. Therefore, case studies were developed using the Mosaic approach to inform child data collection. In addition, parents were either surveyed or interviewed, and directors were also interviewed. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model framed the contextualization of the case studies and guided analysis of the data collected from children, teachers, and directors. Emphasis was placed on the autonomy of each country team to select culturally appropriate data collection and analysis methods, while adhering to general parameters that were determined by the entire group through collaborative discussions. Our international research team - representing Global North and South with a time zone span of up to 16 hours - met periodically via Zoom to discuss project stages and offer collegial feedback. Mutual learning and enrichment resulted from these meetings, enhancing motivation and enabling consistency while retaining researcher autonomy.