Screen-age researchers: hybrid participatory ethnography together with 8–9 grade students

With connected screens, human sociality and digital technology has hybridised in most domains of everyday life, including education. This article addresses methodological and ethical challenges in investigating hybrid situations containing students’ screen-mediated communication, both within and beyond the classroom. Drawing on two-year long fieldwork in a multi-sited participatory research project involving students aged 14–16 at four lower secondary schools in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, we employ a participatory hybrid ethnographic approach. Three different but intertwined student positions in relation to the research task emerged: as co-researchers, as informants and as learners, contributing to insights from the students’ perspectives. The study highlights the importance of continuous informed consent, student agency, and context-sensitive methods in ethically sustainable research. We argue that methodological flexibility is essential for capturing the complexity of hybrid social practices and for developing participatory research practices that are responsive to both student perspectives and diverse educational settings.