Seeking space for entanglements with young children in immanent material relationality

Abstract

This paper explores haptic, affective, sensory and relational interconnections between a child (Erik) and objects, materials and a researcher-practitioner (Christina) at a nursery school in Manchester , United Kingdom (UK). In doing so, it draws upon a Post-humanist theoretical framework. Observational material was collected over the period of a school year. The discussion involves a diffractive three-way 'thinking together' conversation between the authors about what emerges as we attempt to listen to Erik's voices. Improvisation in moments of physical sensation and action with objects, materials and Christina becomes a vehicle for tentative openings and immanent possibilities for all enfolded in the encounter. These are entangled, however, with national and international neoliberal expectations regarding literacy, numeracy and school readiness. We conclude that 'dissenting from within' is a necessary ethical practice if we are to offer something more optimistic for children's becomings than acquiescence in the development of human economic capital.

‘It’s not cardboard, it’s a house’: cartographies of agentic assemblage in the early childhood classroom

“…Therefore, a posthumanist education may offer ways to host spaces for emerging creativity, children's relationality in a material way, and knowledge as a nonlinear agent. Our article expands and takes to educational settings propositions about children's present relations with matter and their potential to their future selves, involving an iterative process of becoming (Barron, Taylor, and Macrae 2020). This may help researchers and educators to acknowledge material relations as a source of meaning making in early childhood, encouraging them to provide children with scenarios where material-discursive practices are recognised and positively considered (Barad 2003).…”

“…Children are not only passive recipients of content, but they also become active agents in the meaning-making processes (Hackett 2021), where they embrace human and non-human bodies. Nevertheless, children's assemblages with nonhuman agents have been generally neglected, prioritising human logic and cognitive proficiency (Barron, Taylor, and Macrae 2020).…”