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There is a need to reflect on both the processes and outcomes of the range of approaches aimed at promoting children's engagement in research, with the specific intent of listening to children's voices. This article considers some of the ethical tensions we have experienced when engaging children in research about their prior-to-school and school environments and their perspectives of the transitions between these environments. Examples from projects conducted in Iceland and Australia are drawn upon to illustrate these tensions and, to reflect on the strategies and questions we have developed to guide our engagement with children. This article raises issues rather than offering simple solutions. We suggest that there are a number of contextual and relational variables that guide our research interactions, and no "one best solution" applicable to all contexts. Our aim in sharing these tensions is to stimulate further debate and discussions around children's participation in research.

Much of the current rhetoric in areas of child and family research and in early childhood education emphasizes the importance of listening to children in research that has a direct impact on them. Despite this, there remain qualms in some research contexts and amongst some researchers about the reliability, validity and generalizability of children's research input. This article argues that engaging with children as research participants requires a commitment to, and the facilitation of, listening to and hearing their accounts in research. Drawing on research conducted in both New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, this article adopts the stance that children are active and effective participants in research. It examines selected protocols that stand to support such engagement. Specifically, it considers issues of ethics and research protocols, mechanisms of engagement, principles of co-construction of the research interaction, the analysis and dissemination of data, and negotiating the research space. This article contributes to methodological understandings of research with children. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Starting school is an important time for young children, their families and educators. Data gathered from interviews and questionnaire responses from approximately 300 parents, 300 educators and 300 children have been used to describe the most important issues for children, parents and educators as children start school in New South Wales, Australia. Using grounded theory, a series of categories of responses was devised that reflected the issues raised by respondents. These categories related to: "knowledge" needed to start school; elements of "social adjustment" required in the transition to school; specific "skills" to be mastered; "dispositions" conducive to a successful start to school; the "rules" of school; "physical" aspects of starting school; "family issues"; and the nature of the "educational environment". These categories and the relative value attributed to them by the different groups of respondents form the basis of this article. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 1 note.)