Immigrant techniques in the Land of Social Sciences A report about the use of special techniques in a research with immigrant and native born children

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present the process of epistemological and methodological analysis that allowed the inclusion of research techniques somehow exceptional in Social Psychology, in the study of the relations between immigrant and native born children in a primary school. The specific techniques were the free association of words, and groups of movement and drama, best known in clinical psychology. This implementation receives its rationale in the frame of an ontological-epistemological perspective, the research’s purpose and questions, and thespecific characteristic of children as subjects in an inquiry. The above mentioned techniques produced rich as well as specific information, and were part of a system of triangulation employed in order to assure scientific validity.