Nina Rossholt

The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer's Gaze: Focusing on the Youngest Children in Preschool

This article discusses theoretical, methodological and analytical strategies for researching the material subject. The discussion relates to discursive practices in a preschool setting with children of one and two years of age, where the material subject includes both bodily and discursive practices. Using critical ethnography research, the author follows studies of lived life connected to body/place relations. When the body is the main focus in writing, it may be possible to understand how children at this age relate to each other in complex and multiple ways. From observations, the author deconstructs two events. These relate to how actions and movements are situated not only in language, but also in bodily practices amongst children. The body is a site for negotiation with pleasure, pain, other bodies, space and visibility. Working with bodily practices transforms how power is performed, and whose interests are silenced, marginalized or excluded. From a Foucauldian perspective, this is about knowledge/power relations. From a Deleuzean perspective, body/place relations transform how we may see, feel and think otherwise.

Food as Touch/Touching the Food: The body in-place and out-of-place in preschool

The article explores the need to eat as a biological and social practice among children in a preschool in Norway. The children in this preschool are aged from one to two years of age, and some of them have just started there. Different events from mealtimes relate to Derridas concept of touch and Groszs notion of bodies in‐place and out‐of‐place. How food touches the children and the practitioners is further discussed through a consideration of body/place relations, which are both material and reflect pedagogical discourses. Its overall context is not only touching the food in a concrete sense, but also food as touch seen as a philosophical concept. Analyzing touching relations around the table including movements in materiality, bodies and discourses of eating may empower the youngest children in a preschool setting.

Masticating ‘quality’ and spitting the bits out

This article considers what the repercussions are when the concept of ‘quality’ is examined within the epistemological and ontological theoretical shifts that are afforded by post-humanism. In particular, Braidotti’s configuring of thinking as ‘nomadic activity’ and the need for ‘process ontology’, together with Massumi’s ideas relating to ‘activist philosophy’, create the necessary conceptual space for thinking differently. The article takes as a point of departure ethnographic data that has emerged from the twin locations of Norway and England, which broadly centres on some of the practices, habits and mundanities that are associated with Norwegian and English children (aged between two and four) eating food whilst attending their barnehagene or ‘preschool’ setting. It is within the milieu of eating that the authors take up the challenge of confronting ‘quality’, where they question whether it is possible to put to one side a universal standard so as to consider other potentialities. Inevitably, the authors conclude with more questions than answers.

Thinking in/through movements; Working with/in affect within the context of Norwegian early years education and practice

Abstract This paper draws on data undertaken with very young children within the context of Norwegian kindergartens. Specifically, the paper focuses on non-human and human movements. Mine included, that are undertaken in time and space. Following I argue that as the researcher I am always already entangled in inquiry and that there is no beginning. As a consequence, I cannot offer an account concerning movements that are predicated on humanist notions of linearity. Moreover, by immersing myself in process ontology, my efforts are not directed at using a presumed mastery where I both recognize and use a priori categories in order to render data intelligible and/or to reduce data to common sense. Rather, by paying careful attention to human and non-human bodies, and by being sensitive to and immersing myself within affect and movement, I draw attention to elements within the kindergarten which while, present are very often ignored by researchers and in so doing I disrupt traditional approaches to qualitative research. By effectively positioning myself in a post-human logic both the researcher and the research are open to different potentialities, potentialities where through thinking-feeling the peculiarities and differences of the empirical can be taken into account.

Po/etisk pedagogisk ledelse for kvalitet gjennom skriving mot immanente vurderingspraksiser og tvilens og kroppens vitenskap og metoder

Artikkelen handler om po/etisk pedagogisk ledelse og kvalitet i et posthumant perspektiv. Den handler om kroppslig kunnskap og viten. Ledelse mellom og omvendt. Sentralt star et onske om a utvide var forstaelse av kritikk, oke dybden i- og styrking av vare analytiske blikk. Det innebaerer en bevegelse fra hermeneutikk til immanente teorier for ledelse og kvalitetsvurdering. Det er en vitenskapeliggjoring og diffraksjon av pedagogikken hvor naturvitenskapelige, human, - og samfunnsvitenskapelige aspekter sidestilles i prosess ontologisk samtidighet.

“In-Betweens Spaces”

This chapter draws on a Doctoral work1 aiming at exploring the possibilities and potentials in children’s encounters with reusable materials, different analogue and digital tools. The chapter also explores the agency of reusable materials, where we argue that it offers different perspectives in terms of children’s aesthetic explorations.