Concluding thoughts

Our collective reflections indicate that temporal lenses are particularly valuable for highlighting onto-epistemological approaches to research with children that centres on the diversity and complexity of their experiences. Through slow reading and careful revisiting of data across multiple projects, we have become more aware of children’s engagement with multi-layered timescapes. Children’s literacy, ecological, placemaking and media experiences do not have to be rushed or driven by linear and essentialist notions of development, progress, and time. Rather, we recognise that they can be slow, uneven, and multidirectional. For children, time is reflected in their embodied changes and encounters with growth, ageing and finitude that shape how they experience and understand the world and how others respond to them. In turn, when temporal conditions support rather than constrain children’s attentiveness to themselves and others, children can reflect, imagine alternatives, create, and resist. In doing so, they can access and explore a variety of ways of living, being and learning in relation to their own as well as the world’s past, present, and futures.

By carefully exploring children’s experiences and interactions beyond isolated moments, and by taking into account their identities, histories, and contexts, we may develop a deeper sensitivity to childhood and time. We also recognise that time is a privilege and that it is not distributed evenly. Engaging in dialogic reflection with our international colleagues over an extended period, while revisiting our past research through new lenses, has been a privilege for all of us. Being with children and listening to them, whether in research or everyday situations, is another such privilege. When approached with empathy and responsiveness, it can help us move from witnessing to with-ness. Our contribution therefore lies not only in the outcome, but in the process itself. As such, the collective both demonstrates and advocates for slow, collaborative and caring childhood scholarship and, by extension, for time equity.