Jane Bone

Everyday Spirituality: An Aspect of the Holistic Curriculum in Action:

Early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand includes different philosophical perspectives, may be part of the public or private sector and aims to be inclusive and holistic. The early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, supports these aims. Aspects of the curriculum that are holistic may be conceptualized in diverse ways and this qualitative research focused on the spiritual. Case studies were constructed in three different settings — a Montessori casa, a private preschool and a Rudolf Steiner kindergarten. This article concerns one of these settings and discusses the first day back at the Montessori casa after a two-week break. The concept of everyday spirituality is introduced and three narratives retell moments of everyday spirituality that occurred throughout the day. Three themes are addressed in some detail. The discussion is informed by Derridas notion of hospitality and by different perspectives about the role of spirituality in educational contexts.

Breaking bread: spirituality, food and early childhood education

The spiritual aspect of early childhood education is supported by the early childhood curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Whāriki. Research in three different early childhood settings presents new perspectives on the everyday experiences of children in terms of spirituality. Each setting formed a case study that included the voices of children, parents and teachers. Focusing on the practices that surround food and eating, this narrative account takes the sharing of food as a starting point for analysing the spiritual experiences of young children and the metaphor of ‘breaking bread’ is used. It is proposed that the concept of everyday spirituality informs the practice of teachers in each context and working with young children involves considering issues of equity, culture and well‐being.

Creating relational spaces: everyday spirituality in early childhood settings

SUMMARY This research addressed the question of how the spiritual experience of young children might be supported in early childhood educational settings. Qualitative case study research took place in three different contexts: a Montessori casa, a Rudolf Steiner kindergarten and a private preschool. Children aged 2½–6 years, their parents and teachers participated in this multi‐method study. Thematic analysis was supported by the use of writing as a means of discovery. This paper introduces the concept of spiritual withness. Evidence from the data includes a video and a poem that supports interpretations of intersubjectivity and understandings of the self/Other and I/Thou. The research showed that certain educational communities construct spaces for relationships that support shared understandings of spirituality as part of a holistic approach to education. Paper presented at 17th EECERA Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 29th August‐1st September 2007 RÉSUMÉ: Cette étude porte sur la façon de soutenir l’expérience spirituelle des jeunes enfants dans les stuctures de la petite enfance. Cette étude de cas qualitatif a été réalisée dans trois contextes différents: une maison Montessori, un jardin d’enfants Rudolf Steiner et une école maternelle privée. Des enfants de 2 ans et demi, leurs parents et leurs enseignants ont participé à l’étude. L’analyse thématique s’est appuyée sur l’écriture comme moyen de découverte. Cet article introduit la notion de ‘withness’ (être avec). Une vidéo et un poème ont été inclus parmi les données pour favoriser les interprétations de l’intersubjectivité et la compréhension du moi/autrui et du je/tu. L’étude montre que certaines communautés éducatives construisent des espaces relationnels favorables à la compréhension partagée de la spiritualité, faisant partie d’une approche holistique de l’éducation. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Untersucht wurde die Frage, wie spirituelle Erfahrungen junger Kinder in frühkindlichen Bildungseinrichtungen unterstützt werden können. Qualitative Fallstudien wurden in drei unterschiedlichen Kontexten durchgeführt: Einem Montessori Kinderhaus, einem Rudolf‐Steiner‐Kindergarten und einer privaten Vorschule. Kinder im Alter von 2½ bis 6 Jahren, ihre Eltern und Fachkräfte nahmen an der multimethodalen Untersuchung teil. Thematische Analysen wurden durch die Verwendung von Schreiben als Mittel der Erforschung gestützt. In diesem Papier wird das Konzept des spirituellen Miteinanders eingeführt. Die Ergebnisse der Studie schließen ein Video und ein Gedicht ein, das Interpretationen von Intersubjektivität und des Verständnisses des Selbst/des Anderen und des Ich/des Du unterstützt. Die Untersuchung zeigte, dass bestimmte pädagogische Gemeinschaften Räume für Beziehungen konstruieren, die ein geteiltes Verständnis von Spiritualität als Teil eines ganzheitlichen Ansatzes von Bildung unterstützen. RESUMEN: Esta investigación se pregunta como las experiencias espirituales de los niños menores pueden ser apoyadas en los contextos educacionales de la primera infancia. Casos de estudios cualitativos fueron llevados a cabo en tres contextos diferentes: una casa Montessori, un kindergarten de Rudolf Steiner y una pre‐escuela privada. En este estudio multi‐método participaron niños de 2,5 a 6 anos de edad, sus padres y sus maestros. El uso de la escritura como medio de descubrimiento apoyó los análisis temáticos. Este artículo introduce el concepto de atestiguación espiritual (spiritual withness). Evidencias del material incluyen un video y un poema que apoyan interpretaciones de ínter subjetividad y comprensiones del Yo/Otro y del Yo/Tu. La investigación muestra que ciertas comunidades educacionales construyen espacios para relaciones que apoyan comprensiones conjuntas de espiritualidad, como parte de una estrategia educacional holística.

Exploring trauma, loss and healing: spirituality, Te Whāriki and early childhood education

Attention to spirituality is proposed to be a means of restoring and supporting well‐being in early childhood educational contexts. In Aotearoa, New Zealand, the spiritual dimension is included in the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki. This holistic approach to education supported research in three different early childhood settings: a Montessori casa, a private preschool and a Rudolf Steiner kindergarten. Narratives (re)produced from the qualitative case study data are included in the article to show that young children experience and overcome adversity in their early years. The discussion is framed by the cultural theories of everyday life and attention to philosophical perspectives that encompass the spiritual. Spiritual withness, spiritual in‐betweenness and the spiritual elsewhere are introduced as spiritual and transformative spaces in these settings. This account combines research, theory and pedagogical perspectives. It describes the concept of everyday spirituality as an ameliorating factor in these stories of loss and recovery.

Metamorphosis: Play, Spirituality and the Animal

Animal- and bird-becoming is an aspect of play as metamorphosis connected to spirituality in early childhood settings. The reconceptualisation of play presented here is supported by research that explored the spiritual experiences of young children in different early childhood contexts. Qualitative case study research carried out in Aotearoa New Zealand included children, teachers and families. The concept of ‘everyday spirituality’ that emerged from this inquiry is informed by post-structural philosophical perspectives. Transformative spaces of spiritual withness, the spiritual in-between and the spiritual elsewhere construct everyday spirituality in these settings. Four narratives contribute to a bricolage about play as metamorphosis. This aspect of play challenges human/non-human animal binaries, and celebrates unfixedness and infolding: both features of the spiritual. Deleuzian concepts support the discussion and connections are made to the posthuman(ist) condition.

Spirituality and child protection in early childhood education: a strengths approach

In recent international and Australian early childhood curriculum guidelines and child-protection policies, the need for teachers of young children to foster spirituality has been highlighted. However, what this might mean in practice has not been widely explored. This article addresses the more controversial issue of spiritual abuse and the right of children to protection in terms of spiritual development. We present a critique of current definitions taken from research and policy documents. Qualitative data provide the research background. Vignettes are presented to give examples of what spiritual harm might look like in practice. Finally, a strengths-based approach is introduced and strategies are suggested in order to explore the potential of the Strengths Approach (a social justice approach originating from social service practice) to aid early years’ teachers to create spiritually protective learning environments. This approach recognises and values children’s holistic development and wellbeing and supports them to appreciate, engage with and question the world around them with a resilient spirit.

Drawing out critical thinking: testing the methodological value of drawing collaboratively

Early childhood research has long established that drawing is a central, and important activity for young children. Less common are investigations into the drawing activity of adults involved in early childhood. A team of adult early childhood researchers, with differing exposures and familiarities with drawing, experimented with intergenerational collaborative drawing with colleagues, students, family members and others, to explore the effectiveness of drawing as a research process and as an arts-based methodology. This testing prompted critical thinking into how drawing might facilitate research that involves young children, to operate in more communicable ways, and how research-focused drawings might occur in reference to a research project.

An uneasy assemblage: Prisoners, animals, asylum-seeking children and posthuman packaging

Events in Australia have acted as provocations to thinking about the consequences of becoming a ‘package’ and then being processed. The image of the human, as prisoner, together with narratives about the child and the nonhuman animal as package, are used here in order to understand the world we share with others. These disparate elements are gathered together to form an uneasy assemblage. Thinking through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, a posthuman performative methodology is used to create this assemblage with its flows, images and stories. Posthumanism presents a challenge that recognizes the possibility of being in the world in a connected/entangled/knotted way. The work of Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe and Karen Barad underpins the theoretical and methodological perspective. Drawing on evidence from the media, the internet, human and animal rights work and visual representations, this work considers what it means to be packaged, commodified and de-humanized/de-animalized. Once packaged certain experiences become normalized and the (re)packaging of people and animals proliferates and emerges in new iterations. This article argues that by following the flows that circulate around the packaged animal or human everything changes, and becoming part of the assemblage invites active engagement with the unease that emerges. In this process our response-ability is called into question along with aspects of a relational ethics.

Environmental dystopias: Margaret Atwood and the monstrous child

ABSTRACT The future of childhood is often described in terms of utopian thinking. Here, the turn is towards dystopia as a fertile source of wild imaginings about the future. The dystopian literary fictions featured here act as a message and are projections of an uneasy future requiring a reader to see the present differently. Such projections make reading dangerous as they create an alternative world often disorderly and dismissive of contexts that are familiar and safe. In these scenarios, the child is often a key figure. In the work by Atwood (Oryx and Crake; The Year of the Flood; MaddAddam), the world is an environmental nightmare. The focus is on MaddAddam, in which the child is an object of desire and both monstrous and redemptive. A reading of MaddAddam as a posthuman text is undertaken and it is argued that Atwoods dystopia creates a discourse of monstrosity (both weird and beautiful) that contaminates thoughts about the child/children/childhood and the future.

Voluntourism as cartography of self: A Deleuzian analysis of a postgraduate visit to India:

Volunteer tourism takes place within neoliberal globalisation and reflects inequalities of privilege and mobility. This qualitative research examined the experiences of young female voluntourists who visited Delhi as part of a trip organised by an Australian University Postgraduate Student Association. The aim was to investigate the motives and potentialities embedded in their experience through interviews and journal contributions. Conceptualisations of mapping (cartography) and territorialisation informed the analysis. We found that participants mainly engaged with the experience on a superficial level within the known territory. This reflects ‘soft global citizenship’ as participants were uncritical about their interactions with the host community. Voluntourist experiences have the potential to destabilise the self in a process of deterritorialisation, and we contend that this is where change occurs. We bring the philosophical theorising of Deleuze and Guattari and their notions of territorialisation and cartography to the field of tourism and argue that their geophilosophical ideas lead to fruitful insights around negotiating volunteer expectations, tribulations and potential transformations.