Answering the world: young children’s running and rolling as more-than-human multimodal meaning making

Abstract

This paper makes a case for a view of young children's meaning-making in which human actants are not separate from, but deeply entwined in, a more-than-human world. In order to interrogate the more-than-human processes through which multimodal meaning-making emerges, we focus on meaning-making through running and rolling that we have observed in early childhood settings in Finland and the UK. In doing so, we rethink the process of bringing-into-relation that underpin multimodal literacy practices. Ingold's notion of correspondence is offered as a generative way to conceptualize the interplay between human and nonhuman elements as they 'make themselves intelligible to each other' (p.97). We show how posthuman theory offers the possibility for reconceptualising emergence and intentionality, within young children's meaning-making. ARTICLE HISTORY

Heterotopic Place-Making in Learning Environments: Children Living as Creative Citizens

“…An intense debate on early childhood's learning environments is emerging, along with a plethora of innovative experiences where ECE teachers struggle to create stimulating learning environments (Adlerstein, 2017;Cortés et al, 2020;Cavallini et al, 2017;Hackett & Rautio, 2019;MacRae et al, 2018;Marsh et al, 2018). Though research approaches and philosophical stances widespread into opposed assumptions, there is ample consensus on learning environments as creators of children's possibilities for interaction, participation, and meaning-making (Hohti, 2016;Nordtømme, 2012).…”

“…This paper points out a posthumanist view of early childhood education (ECE) citizenship, in which children's heterotopias or unexpected creation of 'other spaces' (Foucault, 1986) than those given within the kindergarten, enact authentic participation in a shared community and a more-than-human world (Hackett & Rautio, 2019). We reconceptualize the relationship between two and three-year-old entanglement with the world and their lived citizenship through place-making by drawing on Foucault's heterotopology.…”

“…Our citizenship stance grounds on a posthuman premise (Hackett & Rautio, 2019;Murris, 2016Murris, , 2017b. It acknowledges children as relational and entangled (Hohti, 2016;Hacket & Rautio, 2019) competent meaning-makers with their own voice.…”

The Blue Car in the Forest: Exploring Children’s Experiences of Sustainability in a Canadian Forest

“…Child/nature/matter are not separate entities, rather the multiple agentic forces "wrap around one another" (Ingold, 2013, p. 105) in processes of mutual becoming. Hackett and Rautio (2019) explain that "children (or humans in general) do not experience themselves as neatly outlined units but as moving and continually responding, bodies in correspondence with the world" (p. 1022); meaning-making processes from body/matter "experiences of alterity" (p. 1022). [407] 15(4), 2019…”

What is documentation doing? Early childhood education teachers shifting from and between the meanings and actions of documentation practices

“…In order to do this, I take Elfström Pettersson's (2015Pettersson's ( , 2018 findings that the materials involved in documentation practices can intra-act to condition narratives and provide a vantage point for reflection, but I extend that focus to the powerful performativity of the documentation itself. In addition, I build from Rautio's (2014) theorisations of child-matter intra-actions and Hackett and Rautio's (2019: 1029) study of language and body relations to enquire about the intra-activity in between documentation-teacher-classroom-child. Barad (2007) posits that agency is something that is coproduced intra-actively (rather than interactively) between the human and non-human.…”