Digital Methodology Beyond the Everyday: Analytical Model for Interpreting Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Preschools

Recently research on inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream settings has advanced. But approaches for studying inclusion in the living laboratory of a preschool are still limited. Certainly, it is a delicate job for researchers to capture pre-schoolers’ perspective and their contribution in their development through everyday participation in an early childhood setting. This chapter discusses how digital methodology enable researchers to accumulate everyday experience of children with disabilities along with their peers in a mainstream long day care centre and to interpret beyond the everyday practices. In this process, we felt it is essential to use appropriate theoretical or analytical tools to bring deeper dimension in analysis and to address interpretation challenges. This chapter argues both the digital methodology and cultural-historical analytical tools make it possible to develop new understanding of inclusion and to understand how participant children created roundabout ways for their inclusion in the preschool practices. A model accompanied by five key principles are presented, and a working example illustrates the kind of data generated.