Movement and Experimentation in Young Children's Learning: Deleuze and Guattari in Early Childhood Education
Abstract
In contemporary educational contexts young children and learning are tamed, predicted, supervised, controlled and evaluated according to predetermined standards. Contesting such intense governing of the learning child, this book argues that the challenge to practice and research is to find ways of regaining movement and experimentation in subjectivity and learning. Vivid examples from Swedish preschools - involving children, teachers, teacher students and educators and researchers - are woven together with the theories of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, bringing important new concepts and practices to the early childhood field. This ground-breaking book investigates three key areas: • the need to focus on 'process' rather than 'position', as positioning of any kind, such as learning goals or developmental stages, hampers movement. • working with methods that recognise science's inventiveness and productivity, demonstrating how the events in which children take part can remain open ended and in movement. • Re-considering the dichotomy between the individual and society as a 'cause and effect' relationship, which immobilizes subjectivity and learning and hinders experimentation. Challenging dominant ways of thinking, Movement and Experimentation in Young Children's Learning offers new possibilities for change and provokes a re-evaluation of the educational system's current emphasis on predetermined outcomes and fixed positions. This book provides researcher and students with a sound theoretical framework for re-conceptualising significant aspects of movement and experimentation in early childhood. Its many practical illustrations make this a compelling and provocative read for and student taking course in Early Childhood Studies.
... Reference was made specifically to the work of Osberg and Biesta (2008) and three texts available in the Contesting Early Childhood series, namely: Hillevi Lenz-Taguchi (2010a); Liselott Marriet Olsson (2009);and Margaret Sellers (2013). These three books, as well as the Deleuze dictionary (2010), enabled the researchers to engage in a reading of Deleuze within the scope of early childhood education. ...
... Things are constantly 'in progress', with participants 're'-negotiating, making connections and responding in ways that are both similar and disparate (Sellers, 2010). The concept of 'becoming', from Deleuze, involves the learner seeing themselves in the light of ability and possibilities, not linked to any fixed identity (Olsson, 2009;Sellers, 2013;Lenz Taguchi, 2010b). ...
... I noticed him observing others on several occasions (for example, on 13/8/12, 12/9/12 and 17/9/2012). What I observed was that, by being immersed in a practice of the Community Artist continuously recognising and responding to children's initiations and ideas, he himself became an instigator of new 'lines of flight' (Olsson, 2009;; Lenz Taguchi, 2010b). I witnessed a very empowering moment (17/9/12), the very moment of this boy becoming aware of the rest of the group following his newly invented move. ...
This article captures some of the observations in the TRLI project,
Move, Act, Play, Sing (MAPS), in which three Community Artists,
practicing in the areas of Music, Dance and Drama, visited three
‘Reggio inspired’ centres for fortnightly and sometimes weekly
sessions for a period of 3-4 months at each centre. MAPS was a
collective exploration of the Arts, involving children, teachers and
parents, responding to children’s individual subjectivities (Olsson,
2009; Osberg & Biesta, 2007; 2008). Like the work of the artists,
teachers and children, we, as researchers, had opportunity for
seeing this open-ended practice as constantly changing. This paper
examines dance episodes that took place in one and how each
session can be interpreted from two perspectives. The examination
of the same episode opens new potentialities as we apply
Deleuzean theory to the research context. Each view of the activity
reveals new insights into the work of the project and points to
Deleuzean philosophy being put to work.
... Conversely, multidisciplinary interactions support cross-pollination of ideas and raising multiple awareness of different perspectives. Deleuze and Guatarri [1] identify the 'space in-between' as a place where teammates negotiate shared goals and understandings. An optimal space in-between lays the foundation for effective experiences that value multiple perspectives while fostering group and individual agency through an openness to failure. ...
... This 'space between the codes of disciplines' may cause individuals within disciplines to see identity lines, yet also become more supple in their thinking across disciplines. Deleuze and Guattari called this space the 'space in-between', which is free from ownership and territories and a place where all members of the group have a voice [1]. So, how is the 'space in-between' developed? ...
... Educational Framework Group Construct 1) Experimentation: Experimentation, the "playing around with ideas" or the opportunity to "try it out" in an interaction [1] also lends itself to supporting a healthy Space In-Between. 2) Movement: In addition, Deleuze and Guattari describe the 'Space In-Between' as having opportunities to experience movement, and experimentation. ...
... Several studies on this subject have argued that children's subjectivities can be both inherently creative and radically expressive (Olsson, 2009;Stockton, 2009;Hargraves, 2020). However, as the existing research also demonstrates, the developmentalist and neoliberal demands of curriculum and the determinate nature of socialising processes serve as a continual foreclosure of the child's capacity to express themselves indeterminately and to become-otherwise from the norms that can foreclose their potential (Biesta, 2013;Rose, 1999;Fendler, 2001). ...
... This is not to completely discount form, but to resituate it as cocompositional with movement; not only to ask what form is but how it comes to be in the first place in a more processual and relational sense. Though a relatively nascent field, the research literature is already beginning to demonstrate how such a framework is especially useful for research with children on the cusp of verbal language, where paying attention to material things (a dumper truck, a stick, some mud) and play spaces (a tyre-hill, a climbing frame) may better illustrate the complex flows of power working to shape how bodies become subject to normativising identity formations and, importantly, how they may become-otherwise from the felt imperatives to conform (Olsson, 2009;Lenz Taguchi, 2010;Sellers, 2013;Renold and Mellor, 2013;Lyttleton-Smith, 2015;Fournier, 2019). ...
... That is, a practice that children, "repeatedly engage with for no external reward or motivation such as money or outside recognition" (Rautio, 2013, p. 394). Olsson (2009) makes a similar point when they examine a child learning to walk, an activity that is fundamentally about the child increasing their capacities to move through joining their (human) body with other (non-human) bodies. This encounter transforms and softens the boundaries between the child and the puddle, creating experimental subjectivities, new modes of being and becoming that disconnect and reconfigure individuality. ...
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of Scotland for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in collaboration with Early Years Scotland. April 2022. i Declaration I declare that this thesis is entirely my own and has not been previously submitted for another PhD or comparable award. Word count (excluding ancillary data, reference lists, appendices)-73,025 Shaddai Tembo April 2022 ii Abstract This doctoral thesis examines the formation of children's subjectivities, related to the metaphysical conditions of being and becoming a subject, within fully outdoor early childhood provision in Scotland. The role of outdoor play provision has been made central in recent years by the Scottish Government as part of the broader expansion of Early Learning and Childcare (Scottish Government, 2017a; Scottish Government, 2017b; Education Scotland, 2019c; Scottish Government, 2020a). This enhanced focus raises questions around how children form their subjectivities in such spaces and how this may differ from what is known about subjectivity within conventional indoor provision. Further, while the existing knowledge base on subjectivity in childhood is derived mainly from the intellectual progress made through the fields of social constructionism (Foucault, 1978), performativity theory (Butler, 2004; 2006; 2011) and developmental psychology (Piaget, 1948; 1957), concerns have been raised regarding the extent to which such frameworks may give primacy to the human, and the logics of humanism, over and above the non-human world (Barad, 2007; Dolphijn and Tuin, 2012; Braidotti, 2013). Such concerns warrant special attention in relation to entirely outdoor environments, where these approaches may underplay the significance of ontological and ontogenetic matters that contribute toward the formation of subjectivity. This study applies a sociomaterial metaphysical framework to propose an alternative way of understanding how subjectivities come to form in early childhood environments, bringing together Spinozist (2002) monism and insights from process philosophy (Massumi, 2002) in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) concepts of the assemblage and affect. Methodologically, a ethnographic approach, inspired partly from the postqualitative field of scholarship, is employed to gather data on children's subjectivities at Wood Fire, a fully outdoor early childhood setting. The findings of this study reveal the novel materiality and relationality of fully outdoor early childhood provision through which subjectivities are informed , and also point toward the ways that social and cultural determinacies continue to affectively orientate children's desires in the absence of clearly demarcated material spaces. Thus, these findings a demonstrate more expanded understanding of how we, humans, are produced as individuals in specific encounters through processes of 'affective sociomaterialisation'. Through the presentation of data in textual, visual and cinematic modes, practitioners are encouraged to re-evaluate the role of outdoor provision through a sociomaterial metaphysics that challenges conventional knowledges about how children's subjectivities are formed. Practically, this carries implications for how the materiality of outdoor environments is understood to contribute to the child's sense of self on more expansive terms. iii
... (pp. 178-179) As suggested by Olsson (2009), using diffraction, experimentally we can create new ways of seeing to disrupt and re-configure our safe and fixed ways of understanding how our practice and who we are as educators and researchers "becomes with" the encounter itself and contributes to a material production. By diffracting the traditional boundaries that separate educator, learner, theory, and practice, from the material, we as passive observers and documenters are combined with the pedagogical method we use and the children and material that are part of the encounter. ...
... Using the perspective of the more-than-human, it forces us beyond traditional rational boundaries to see and see again in open and restless ways where theory and practice are experimental and our movement towards becoming educator is never fully complete (Olsson, 2009). At the same time, we also must see the human together with the tool and material and cultural intentions as entangled. ...
... To grasp the situated educational assemblages involving students, children, and teachers as well as materiality, post-anthropocentric and Deleuzian approaches have been used (Everth et al., 2023;Ringrose, 2011). Olsson (2009) explores preschools' attempts to regain movement and experimentation by seeing subjectivity and learning as an assemblage where everything is interacting and continuously changes. She encourages teachers to be on the lookout for what relational fields children are caught up in and try to latch on to these along with them, which in turn gives them the space they need to explore. ...
... As shown in this paper, exploration can be understood in terms of how things like gravity, athletic shoes and the spine choreograph movement. A dancemblage invites teachers and learners alike, when they plan and perform creative dance classes in PE or PETE, to listen carefully (Olsson, 2009), to tune in (Illeris, 2023) and to be attentive to (Günther-Hanssen, 2020) how materialities co-act during class. By considering dancemblages, teachers, students, and pupils are provided means to engage with materialities as they come into play. ...
Materialities play a crucial role in both the educational practice of physical education (PE), and in physical education teacher education (PETE). This article explores how, often unnoticed, materialities, human as well as non-human, play part in movement exploration in creative dance in PETE. The methodological point of departure is a pedagogical unit in creative dance enacted as part of an optional dance course in a Swedish PETE program where movement exploration was studied. In the unit, students and a teacher collaboratively explored movement and movement assignments, including the use of materialities. In order to understand how materialities ‘co-act’ in movement exploration during class, this article provides a post-anthropocentric and Deleuzian approach. The concept dancemblage is introduced both as a way to analyse materiality and as something to work with in pedagogical practice. Moreover, the article suggests that by recognising dancemblages in creative dance teaching, teachers can be given a tool to further learn about learners’ explorations and to become open to divergent understandings about what it means to participate in creative dance.
... This required a constant repositioning of our identities and destabilising of our professional assumptions and valued perspectives on, for example, the centrality and importance of children's points of view. Attending to movement as opposed to 'positioning' -a linear approach that is highly influential in early childhood pedagogy (Olsson 2009) -was a key practice in distancing ourselves from the rationality that neo-liberalism privileges, compelling us to eschew measurement, standardisation, pre-determination, efficiency, and universality in favour of experimentation (Olsson 2009). ...
... This required a constant repositioning of our identities and destabilising of our professional assumptions and valued perspectives on, for example, the centrality and importance of children's points of view. Attending to movement as opposed to 'positioning' -a linear approach that is highly influential in early childhood pedagogy (Olsson 2009) -was a key practice in distancing ourselves from the rationality that neo-liberalism privileges, compelling us to eschew measurement, standardisation, pre-determination, efficiency, and universality in favour of experimentation (Olsson 2009). ...
... This negotiation fosters an adaptable sense of belonging that transcends a simple binary choice between identities (Sánchez & Kasun, 2012). This study illustrates that immigrant children's identities are in a continuous state of becoming, shaped by their unique interactions, spatial awareness, and literacy practices in the classroom setting (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987;Olsson, 2009). For example, Jisoo's expression of herself in mapping with gold shining colors strengthened her sense of belonging within the classroom community, while Sarah's experience as the only fourth-grader in a fifth-grade class allowed her to express her Korean identity with comfort, marking her presence within a new yet affirming space. ...
While immigrant children's identity negotiation and their sense of belonging are increasingly highlighted, existing literature remains largely focused on language abilities and identity struggles, often emphasizing rigid definitions of "identity" grounded in biology, language, and culture. Drawing on findings from my dissertation, this comparative ethnographic case study examines the fluidity of identity through literacy practices that help children construct meaning and foster belonging. By analyzing how 10-year-old students' literacy practices interact with physical and social environments at school, I discuss shared expressions of emotions, power dynamics, the role of language, and variations in the use of cultural materials. These moments of ongoing identity negotiation are captured through the concept of Deleuze and Guattaris' "becoming," underscoring the need for inclusive practices that value diverse literacies and cultivate a sense of belonging among all students.
... According to educational research, the role of materials in preschool has changed during the past decade. Several Swedish researchers, such as Lenz Taguchi (2010), Hultman and Lenz Taguchi (2010) and Olsson (2008) among others, linked the materiality turn in philosophy to pedagogical research. This turn has been followed up in Norwegian preschool research, with reference to post humanist theory (e.g., Barad, 2007Barad, , 2008, where the relationship between the human being and matter is formulated as intraactive, and the dynamic space between the material and the human individual, meaning is created (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). ...
In Nordic kindergarten, activities with materials have had a significant position historically. The Norwegian term “forming” includes both the material-based craftwork and the art area. Research shows that creative activity with materials constitutes a smaller part of the content in the kindergarten than before. The aim of this article is 1) to provide a historical overview of the subject forming, 2) to put this retrospectively into an epistemological context that points towards 3) an actualization in relation to the UN Sustainability Goals and children’s right to expression according to the UN Convention. The article is based on an ethnographic study in kindergarten and an article on the topic written in Norwegian (Carlsen, 2015, 2022). The discussion illuminates how the anchoring of forming in natural and cultural materials is lifted into a sustainability perspective and how a shift in theoretical perspectives opens new understandings and contributes to the kindergarten’s content.
... Recent shifts across the world make it ever more important that the diversity and richness of the people and its children be celebrated rather than ¶ homogenised or ¶ standardised. We have wonderful examples now of infants' and toddlers' imaginations and thinking expressed in ways that are rhizomatic as well as fluid, unpredictable (Ollsen 2018). This work rethinks the notion of infants as helpless and in need of protection, or as infancy as the least able stage of development, or simply as innocent, malleable and without agency. ...
... However, their practices help to disrupt ideas of normative development towards the more mature, rational, autonomous adult through reconsidering how we value encounters between younger and older children and their 'age-appropriate' learning environments. We, in line with others (e.g., Lenz Taguchi 2010, Murris 2016, Olsson, 2009), see a need for an alternative and more profound ontological shift involving the disruption of streamlined educational spaces and troubling normative ideas of time and linear development. Hence, to reanimate the critique of developmentalism a de/reconstruction of pedagogical practices involves both an analysis of childhood discourses, power and ideology as well as imagining and theorising alternative futures in close proximity to the field of practice. ...
Despite numerous critiques of the pioneering works of developmental child psychology, these key ideas continue to resonate within the field of ECEC (early childhood education and care). This article seeks to re-animate the critique through a closer look at two current tendencies within the Nordic countries: a growing and increasingly strict age segregation of kindergarten children; and a minor oppositional movement of family groups gathering children from one-to-six years of age. Looking towards Piaget as one of the main pioneers of developmentalism, we question whether strict age segregation is justified based on his theories – a close re-reading of two of Piaget’s major works would suggest not. Through reflections of kindergarten teachers working with age-homogeneous groups, we trace other discourses that developmentalism is entangled with. The analysis and deconstruction of the teachers’ reflections point to the need to explore age segregation within a neoliberalist political context and further, show how this results in institutionalised othering. Through mobilising an agential realist reading we explore how narratives of kindergarten teachers that work with age-heterogeneous groups might inspire alternative ways of thinking/practising, and re-energise the critique of developmentalism.
... Previous studies (Anderson et al. 2002;Bell et al. 2018;Birch 2018;Olsson 2009;Piscitelli and Penfold 2015;Yates et al. 2022) have shown the exciting potential of museum spaces to offer children and families an experience of exploration and discovery. By choosing their own paths, making their own meanings, and encountering new things, museum visitors can feel both a sense of individual agency and connected to the experiences, cultural practices, and emotional worlds of others. ...
... Several teacher educators have interrogated the logic and ethics of anthropocentrism in education and have given examples of decentering the human by resisting "following the child" only (Blaise, Hamm & Iorio, 2017;Lenz Taguchi, 2010;Murris, 2016;Nxumalo, 2016;Olsson, 2009;Taylor, 2013). Drawing on the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari, Haraway and Barad, they have given concrete examples of how pedagogies and research methodologies, such as multispecies ethnography, rhizomatics, modest witnessing, or diffraction can work in the university classroom, outdoor outings and on field trips. ...
... This, in turn, upholds the notion of "normal" development in children. Olsson (2009) highlights this by perceiving that early childhood educators frame learning as "tamable" and that it is possible to achieve predetermined goals through pre-set standards. ...
The pedagogical approach activated in this study is centred around the concept of the "assemblage of desire" put forth by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). This approach views education as a transformative practice that stages a pedagogical act, shifting the focus from transmitting information to embracing encounters, relationships, innovation, and difference. The roadmaking curriculum event manifests this approach, where a group of children, educators, and a researcher work together towards a shared goal through the force of desire and experimentation. The main protagonists in this event are a small group of 3 to 5-year-old children (Jason, Ella, Jessica, Scott, Brian, Chris, and James) and their educator, Pritti. This study highlights the collaborative nature of a curriculum inquiry, where all participants become co-inquirers, immersed in the experiment, and constantly exploring new problems and connections. Furthermore, this approach recognizes the importance of educators' ethical and political responsibility in viewing education as a transformative practice.
... To do so, I approach my work with a commitment to the pedagogy of listening and the ethics of encounters (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Rinaldi, 2006). These approaches invite me to consider pedagogical documentation as resistance against the normalization and totalization of educational practices that have become increasingly reductive and simplified in terms of measurable knowledge and outcomes (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Olsson, 2009). ...
Pedagogical documentation is an ethical and creative event composed of ongoing communication and processes of re-living and re-enacting experiences. The re-living and re-enacting indicate how documentation is a practice that is not just interested in creating a record of what happened but a generative process and an active engagement that helps to shape educational realities.
... I could realize how much each reality is singular, always slightly irreducible (or differently reducible) to the codes developed elsewhere. I also coded data considering affects, which pointed to the virtual (Olsson 2009): "glowing data," intensive points, events, and moments of subjectification (MacLure 2013a, 2013b). ...
Everyday Life Ecologies: Sustainability, Crisis, and Resistance is about the complex, sticky, but also open socio-material relationalities that make up daily existence. It looks at how their established flows are disrupted by multiple capitalist crises (environmental, social, economic), opening opportunities for transformation, or foreclosing horizons of change. Rather than advocating “responsible behaviours” or lifestyle change, this book politicises everyday assemblages, showing their embeddedness in capitalist relations and highlighting acts of resistance that embody alternatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Northeast of Italy, this journey engages in a wider dialogue with political ecology, new materialisms, and emerging mobilisations that centre on socio-ecological reproduction.
This blended pilot-empirical and theoretical manuscript documents a reflective journey undertaken by a group of early childhood teacher educators located across different regions of the United States as they examined their course design, materials, and syllabi construction. Grounded in reflective practice, intersectionality, and critical pedagogy, their collaborative endeavor necessitated profound self-examination and recognition of oppressive structures inherent within the field and reproduced throughout course syllabi, thereby perpetuating societal inequities inside and outside the classroom context. Their iterative, evolving effort resembled a reflective consultation group, marked by continuous self-reflection, challenging assumptions, and transforming actions, vividly portrayed in their vignettes. A nonlinear spiral model emerged as a visual representation of the multiple entry points into an ongoing process-highlighting access points that encourage curiosity and interrogation of academic syllabi and course content. The inclusive nature of this inquiry invites faculty members and practitioners to confront racism, ableism, and other systems of domination, amplify marginalized scholarship, and redefine early childhood education-related fields, including the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health landscape. It also underscores the imperative of sustained introspection and collaborative action in nurturing equity.
This study examined the philosophy of Sozo Kurahashi—referred to as the “Fröbel of Japan” and the “father” of Japanese Early Childhood Education and Care—by focusing on the poetic descriptions of his and other teachers’ interactions with children in his essays. It also compared these descriptions with specific scenes observed by the author in a kindergarten. Specifically, this study focused on his usage of the term kokoro-mochi (state of heart). He used this concept to convey three main ideas: (1) a child’s state of heart is very faint and extremely short-lived; (2) it exists separately from the rationale behind something; and (3) paradoxically, teachers tend to neglect children’s present state of heart, despite loving and educating them. From his perspective, adults tend to overlook children’s present feelings, because they see the present as the determinant of the future while educating them. Kurahashi seems to emphasize that children should not be viewed from a third-person perspective, but should be engaged with through a second-person perspective. Furthermore, Kurahashi encouraged teachers to empathize with each child’s state of heart. Therefore, he highlighted the need to engage with children in the present, caring for their being, responding to their feelings, and respecting their creativity in spontaneous play. His philosophy provides insights into the attitudes toward children.
1 sanichtom@tpu.ru 2 mma1252@tpu.ru Аннотация. Рассматривается постгуманистическая теория как основание по выработке наиболее адекватных представлений о грамотности в условиях развития IT. Осуществляется экспликация потенциала постгуманизма в формировании теории грамотности в условиях распространения субъективности за пределы человеческого вида под воздействием смарт-технологий как одного из наиболее совершенных воплощений IT. Выявлен теоретико-познавательный потенциал постгуманизма в исследовании грамотности, проявляющий себя в радикальной открытости данного подхода в отношении изучения влияния IT на организацию новых социальных и образовательных практик, а также новых практик грамотности. Ключевые слова: постгуманизм, грамотность, смарт-технология Благодарности: исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда № 24-28-00316, https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-00316/ Для цитирования: Чмыхало А.Ю., Жаркова М.А. Постгуманизм как теоретическая основа осмысления грамотности в условиях развития смарт-технологий // Вестник Томского государственного университета. Философия. Социология. Политология. Abstract. The presented study is dedicated to clarifying the issue of the possibility of forming the most adequate concept of literacy, which will take into account the role of IT in the life of modern society, as well as new discourses and social practices that have arisen as a result of its influence. Smart technologies are among the most advanced embodiments of IT. A specific feature of these technologies is a significant degree of autonomy from humans, i.e., the ability to respond to the environment in a way that promotes their
Karen Barad’s agential realism proposes a way of analysing the relations of human and non-human agents in the field of early childhood education (3–6 years) and helps researchers to question colonialising practices in childhood. The performative agency of time and space offers a different way of perceiving children’s relationships with school. The diffractions carried out in this paper reflect the analysis of a vignette occurring in an early childhood school in Spain. Our analysis highlights the non/silenced bodies of the children and their passivity/activity in the de/control of the space-time of the school. This study underlines the ephemeral, non-linear and unpredictable nature of the material-discursive intra-actions in the classroom. The resulting narrative of knowledge building in childhood leads to a posthumanist performativity that compels educators to rethink the processes of de/colonisation that should take place in childhood education involving the material relationality of time, space and children’s bodies.
The contributions in this volume address the need to expand the discourse on the relationship between culture, schooling, and children’s learning experiences and each chapter provides a unique piece that broadens the understanding of these connections. Several themes emerge: parental beliefs and cultural models shape children’s schooling and learning experiences and social interactions with peers and teachers; quality early childhood education, play-based approaches, and playful learning are important to children’s school success and development; cultural variables intersect with other forces such as historical events, oppression, socioeconomic status, and political ideologies in complex ways to shape children’s learning experiences; and schools are contexts for academic and cultural learning. Together the chapters weave a story that views learning as an activity that takes place within cultural contexts and highlights the macro and micro forces that shape children’s everyday learning experiences. The chapters in this volume acknowledge and situate children’s learning experiences within the historical events, economic conditions, political ideologies, parental belief systems, cultural models, and national policy initiatives that influence children’s schooling and learning experiences. Some of these works honor the experiences of Indigenous, newcomer, and first-generation children and children of underrepresented communities. The vital role that policymakers, teacher educators, schools, and classroom educators play in these endeavors emerges throughout the volume.
This essay brings together three intergenerational colleagues, two RECE founders, and a mid-career colleague, engaged in reciprocal mentorship, collaborative projects, and research focused on child care, critical policy studies, and global childhoods. We explore our encounters with RECE and how we have engaged with, been influenced by, and found various collaborative spaces through our reconceptualist/RECE experiences. In our dialogue, we discuss how we came to engage with reconceptualist scholarship and consider one of its tenets, reciprocal mentoring. We reflect on how the DAP debates have and still play a role in our scholarship, how naming and countering deficit discourse influence our work in early years policy, and the ways children’s voices, experiences, and participation rights need to be centered. We conclude by discussing current projects and future possibilities in our shared and individual work, exploring the implications for scholar activism and the future of reconceptualist work in early care and education.
Posthumanist inquiry reframes our understanding of education and social life. In decentering the human, posthumanist inquiry focuses on relation with/in humans and more-than-humans and involves thinking with and philosophizing what would not be seen as data in other forms of qualitative inquiry. What is ‘critical’ here is an imagining beyond that of critique. In this chapter, Candace Kuby thinks/writes into being a discussion of her long lasting work with an elementary teacher, Tara Gutshall Rucker, and her students. Literacy is rethought with posthuman theories as relational ethics. Literacy is a desiring, a creating with/in the relation thought around: (1) Becoming, Togetherness, (2) Unknown, Uncertainty, (3) Be(ing) Otherwise, and (4) Ethics and Justice.
What do a lunch table, a battle and a mirror have to do with prison architecture and the young imprisoned body? Through a close reading of three different events, the article analyzes action-forces in play in Youth Units 1 in Norway. Action-forces spotlight the power and energies that are produced in meetings between objects, people and subsequent discourses. The article draws attention to how architecture becomes through meetings between people, things and the way people talk. All this affects the young imprisoned body. The lunch table, the battle and the mirror are all events played out in various spaces within the prison illustrating various connections between prison architecture, action-forces and the imprisoned young body. The article is a contribution to methodological and analytical reflections regarding prison architecture illustrated through examples from an ongoing study of Youth Units in Norway 2 .
هدفت الدراسة إلى التعرف على تأثير برنامج تعليمي باستخدام القصة الحركية على بعض المهارات الحركية الأساسية للصف الأول، تكونت العينة من 56 تلميذا من مدرسة الفيحاء بمحافظة الداخلية، واستغرق التطبيق تسعة أسابيع خلال العام الدراسي2016/2017م، وللتحقق من فرضيات الدراسة تم استخدام المنهج التجريبي وبناء برنامج تعليمي باستخدام القصة الحركية، واجراء اختبارات قبلية وبعدية للمهارات الحركية الأساسية (الجري، الوثب، الرمي، اللقف، التوازن الثابت، التوازن المتحرك). وأشارت النتائج إلى وجود فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية عند مستوى 0, 05 بين المجموعة التجريبية والضابطة في القياس البعدي في المهارات الحركية لصالح المجموعة التجريبية، وجود فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية عند مستوى 0, 05 بين القياس القبلي والبعدي للمجموعتين التجريبية والضابطة في المهارات الحركية لصالح القياس البعدي ماعدا مهارة الجري، وتعزى هذه النتائج إلى تأثير البرنامج التعليمي باستخدام القصة الحركية، وتوصي الباحثة معلمات الحلقة الأولى بأهمية استخدام القصة الحركية في عملية التدريس.
Mathias Urban turns to the idea of an intellectual home. Despite being continuously rendered invisible, irrelevant, or non-existent, “reconceptualist” scholarship has become an intellectual home for many; its physical manifestation a travelling conference, 25 years on the road to date. Inspired by Fernand Deligny’s ideas and practices, the chapter explores how such a non-space (U-Topos) can nurture the hope (Freire) and affirmation (Braidotti) needed to effectively change the world. This chapter is an invitation to move (!) beyond the recent inward turn of post-critical scholarship.
El presente trabajo se construye alrededor de dos ejes centrales: el aprendizaje rizomático y la era posdigital. El aprendizaje rizomático asienta sus principios en la construcción del conocimiento a partir de las aportaciones del alumnado en tiempo real, con la finalidad de entender la comunidad como currículo. Por su parte, la era posdigital se entiende como la coyuntura en que la tecnología digital es una necesidad social impuesta. Partiendo de que la educación, pese a ser pública, no es gratuita, la digitalización aumenta la brecha socioeconómica entre elalumnado con acceso a herramientas digitales y el que no. Así, se propone la posibilidad de contradigitalización:usar la tecnología digital como una herramienta emancipadora más. Esto es, cuando sea posible, utilizarla de manera competente y equitativa. Ahora bien, cuando esta situación no pueda darse debemos contar con una práctica posdigital que comprenda el sistema-mundo con las mismas o similares posibilidades. Para ello,aprendizaje rizomático y era posdigital serán presentados como núcleos inherentes a la producción de la propuesta pedagógica viniente: la posibilidad de establecimiento de una pedagogía posdigital. Como sustento filosófico se presenta una revisión de literatura de los dos ejes mencionados desde la obra de Deleuze y Guattari,exponiéndose un acercamiento rupturista con las posiciones digitalistas de la educación tecnocapitalista actual.
At a time of converging and existential crises, the paper argues for, and examines the meaning of, a democratic culture and politics as first practice as necessary conditions for the transformative change needed for survival and flourishing. While acknowledging that such change needs to be comprehensive, including all education, the paper considers in particular the meaning of democratic culture and politics as first practice for early childhood education, and some of the processes that might bring them about.
This paper explores how educational commons, in which education and learning are shaped by the members of the educational community in terms of equality, freedom, and creative participation, contribute to addressing inequalities, empowering democracy, and enhancing inclusion. The discussion focuses on the crucial debate around public formal education and the potential for radical democratisation it offers through three case studies carried out in formal and non-formal educational settings in Thessaloniki, Greece. The research was conducted in three different types of education centres: a public kindergarten, a self-organised autonomous libertarian educational community, and an after-school programme of a primary school where Workshops for Nurturing and Developing Environmental Resilience (WONDER) were implemented by the environmental organisation Mamagea. Through patterns of commoning practices, like peer governance, co-creation of knowledge, and peer learning, the case studies aimed to establish the prerequisites for the co-creation of a community that offers pupils and students, teachers, and educators the chance for self-formation and equal participation. The article makes the case that educational hierarchies and governance models can be reconfigured in order to incorporate the democratic values of solidarity, equality, self-organisation, and self-formation even in structures that are still tailored to formal schooling. The article argues that educational commons can make a decisive contribution to tackling inequalities, and the commons logic can grow effectively in school education under specific conditions. The pedagogical practice is shifted in educational commons in ways that balance out contemporary enclosures based on several inequalities.
The concept of assemblage, drawing on the posthuman theorisations of Deleuze and Guattari, delineates a dynamic and new materialist approach to an event. In this approach, desires, material agency and (de)(re)territorialisation emerge as key concepts, and open ways to understand the school classroom in early childhood as a territory where lines of flight challenge the boundaries of normative education. This paper focuses on a classroom assemblage and aims to cartography the material relations between human and non-human bodies, where (de)(re)territorialisation forces are constant. We draw on diffractive ethnography in order to think-with-theory, making use of a vignette and a diagram containing its material relations. Our analysis highlights the agentic relations of matter in the assemblage, the role of desire as a dynamic force and the ever-changing flow of (de)(re)territorialisations that emerge in it. This study shows the complexity of material experience in early childhood, where desire and deterritorialisation frame creative and unexpected processes that defy the idea of education and classroom activities as linear processes controlled by adults. On the contrary, the cartography depicted in this research supports an idea of education as a space for the emergence of creative lines of flight, material relations and non-linear meaning-making.
The provision of early childhood education (ECE) in Indonesia, often focuses on the children’s learning experience and overlooks the complexity of the learning process in children's activities. Children’s games, for instance, are seen as a learning tool to achieve particular learning objectives and developmental tasks. Therefore, without negating children’s roles in the games, this article proposes a new way of understanding learning in the context of children’s games. A new materialist concept of intra-active pedagogy is applied to unpack the complexity of learning processes. The discussion in this article is looking at jamuran, a Javanese game involving embodied movements. This will include an analysis of a case study of a multi-age classroom with children aged six to 7 years old. By reading narratives of the game diffractively, new insights emerge in understanding learning as joining forces and continuous movements of game elements. Interestingly, these insights align with the Javanese philosophy of laku in seeking knowledge. The implication of this finding at the micro-political level is that more attention should be paid to the active role of materialities in a learning event. At the macro level of ECE policy in Indonesia, it encourages revisiting traditional philosophies from a new perspective like new materialism. This would also be expected to create a space for negotiating global-local intertwining views in looking at the learning process in ECE settings.
This chapter presents the trajectory of children’s rhizomatic learning processes through a curriculum inquiry around a forest. The forest inquiry in this study began with teachers noticing that children have created special connections and relationships to some places in the nearby forest. Working with French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari’s (A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) concept of the rhizome, curriculum is explored as becoming with worlds (social and material worlds) through multiple connections, spontaneity, relations, and encounters. Instead of approaching curriculum based on a pre-planned series of activities focusing on a linear way of achieving predefined outcomes for development, curriculum is conceptualized as unpredictable becoming. The children, teachers, and researcher are in this process of becoming in continuous movement and rhizomatic connections that bring new potentialities and open up the possibilities of transforming our worlds and ourselves as well.KeywordsEarly childhood pedagogy and curriculumDeleuze and GuattariRhizomatic learningPoststructuralismAffectBecoming
This article weaves together a series of encounters between young children, trees, and mycelium within the multispecies worlds of Birrarung Marr, an ancient Aboriginal meeting place in the city of Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Using creative ethnographic methods, it focuses on children’s involvement in an immersive theatre-making project exploring the intricate subterranean networks of communication and care between She-Oak trees and rhizo-mycelial networks in the local area. Weaving ethnographic description and careful engagements with Indigenous philosophies, the concept of pluriversality is evoked to consider how multispecies worlds are variously assembled, stolen, sustained, exhausted, regenerated, and interwoven along Birrarung Marr. Disrupting Western developmental models of childhood, the article argues that children’s animistic understandings of multispecies relations can inform responses to climate change which are sensitive to the intricate dependency relations that sustain life.
Focusing on three ‘Instagram-ready’ art installations, this article suggests that a special kind of consumer – the ‘creative child’ – is being developed at the intersection between immersive art spaces and social media technologies. Using a multi-method approach blending ethnography in art exhibitions and netnography on Instagram, the study elaborates on how a consumer ‘becoming’ – a never-ending process of forming the self – emerges from affordances of these environments that foster the elements of childlike creativity: imaginativeness, emotiveness and playfulness. It argues that ‘becoming’ goes beyond the social media performance of the self. Through approaching adult consumers as ‘creative children’, the study illustrates how the consumer is enabled to tap into creativity in novel ways, and how following the therapeutic ethos and reconnecting to the ‘inner child’ can create a sense of an open future, full of possibilities.
The purpose of this study was to understand how beliefs, understandings, and pedagogical practices of early childhood educators affect, and are affected by, their relationships with children, classroom team members, parents, and colleagues, as they create an inclusive culture in a pre-kindergarten classroom. To explore this research problem from multiple perspectives, integral theory was selected as the conceptual framework, and a multi-methods exploratory sequential design was employed using integral methodological pluralism. Data about educational experiences, culture, behaviors, and systems, were collected from five early childhood educators in pre-kindergarten classrooms in four urban schools, followed by a questionnaire of classroom practices, document analysis, and a focus group. Findings revealed that important factors for creating an inclusive classroom culture included: early childhood educators' positive beliefs toward inclusion; a social constructivist theoretical perspective; and the ability to build strong relationships with children, parents, and colleagues.
This article presents a negotiating practice that demonstrates the importance of the interplay of visual, verbal and linguistic signs. As such it discusses the relationship between identity and a signifying practice in a Swedish preschool, as children and teachers negotiate meaning. With emphasis on the relationship between building identity and having access to discourses, the notion of identity is troubled among these children, the teachers and within the research practice. A negotiating practice unfolds thanks to a documentation practice that also forms the research material: photographs and conversations made and used within the children's work in a seven month-long creative process.
This essay argues that sense depends on the circulation of nonsense. A realisation of the reciprocal relation can result in a micro-level praxis that helps us, as educators, to free ourselves from the polarisations that have occurred in the field of literacy, such as the phonics/whole language debate, replacing the antagonism with a more generative pragmatics.
This article is part of alarger project exploring the continuity betweentwo philosophical positions – that of Frenchpoststructuralist Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)and John Dewey – that appear at first sight tobe separated by time, place and culture. Thescope of the present paper is necessarilylimited and focuses on one aspect of theproject, namely: the problematics ofsubjectivity, or subject formation, inDeleuze's philosophy. Deleuze's position isestablished as pragmatic by virtue of itssharing the value allotted by Dewey toexperiential and experimental inquiry inphilosophy. By drawing initial parallels with anumber of selected Dewey's excerpts, this paperaims to open up a space for the imaginarydialogue between two philosophical thoughts soas to consider a possibility for applyingDeleuze's philosophy to educational theory andpractice in the context of current debates andin a manner continuous with the Deweyan legacy.The paper concludes by affirming Deleuze'splace in the contemporary scholarship on Dewey.