When Children Own the Research Instrument: The Flipside Workspace Field Research Case Study from the Blue Blocks Erdkinder Environment

When Children Own the Research Instrument is a field research observation case study on a visit to Flipside Workspace in Hyderabad — a co-working space that supports neurodivergent individuals and their mentors. The study guides the mentors through three phases: predicting student behaviour the day before the visit, logging real-time observations during the visit using a structured coding system, and tracking which questions students actually asked versus the ones they had prepared. At its heart, the study is curious about one thing — whether children who design their own interview questions bring a kind of raw, unfiltered curiosity to a research encounter that adult-designed instruments simply cannot replicate.