Doing collaborative deconstruction as an ‘exorbitant’ strategy in qualitative research

This paper aims to challenge qualitative research from within our own spaces and practices, by putting to work deconstruction as an ‘exorbitant’ and collaborative methodological strategy. During a seven month period, PhD students used their research-data aiming at doing deconstruction as collaborative processes of writing and talking, rather than treating deconstruction as an object of philosophical study or applying theory to practice. The process was constituted by a turning, bending and twisting of your own analysis, questioning it and trying to displace the meanings of it: in order to identify how and why you do the analysis you do, and foremost, what other analysis might be possible. A piece of interview-data featuring a six-year-old boy is used as an example. A strong desire among the participants was to do better justice to our data using this strategy. The (im)possibilities of doing justice in deconstructive analysis are thus discussed

Editorial

This guest-edited Special Issue of RERM celebrates the enormous contribution that Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones made to the field of educational research over her life time

Development and Postdevelopmentalism in Studies on, to, with, for, by Young Children

This open access book directs its attention to a desire for inter- and transdisciplinary, reciprocal collaborations in studies concerning young children. It focuses on the possibilities and obstacles in collaborative forms of inquiry involving those stakeholders and actors whom the research concerns, specifically the participating children. The backdrop of the discussions and theoretical investigations is the inter- and transdisciplinary project Enhancing Children’s Attention. Within the framework of an evidence-based intervention, this project performed multiple qualitative forms of inquiry, including emergent forms of collaborations with children. The book provides a discussion on how young children’s development, learning, and lives are understood in the developmental sciences, and in the humanities and social sciences. It specifically addresses scholars interested in postdevelopmental, posthumanist, new materialist, and postqualitative approaches. The book proposes a displaced form of postdevelompentalism for future collaborative forms of inquiry with a focus on multiple forms of knowledge and knowing

Notions of agency in early literacy classrooms: assemblages and productive intersections

Agency and its role in the early literacy classroom has long been a topic for debate. While sociocultural accounts often portray the child as a cultural agent who negotiates their own participation in classroom culture and literacy learning, more recent framings draw attention from the individual subject, instead seeing agency as dispersed across people and materials. In this article I draw on my experiences of following children as they followed their interests in an early literacy classroom, drawing on the concepts of assemblage and people yet to come, as defined by Deleuze and Guattari and Spinoza’s common notion. I provide one illustrative account of moment-by-moment activity and suggest that in education settings it is useful to see activity as a direct and ongoing interplay of three dimensions: children’s moving bodies; the classroom; and its materials. I propose that children’s ongoing movements create possibilities for ‘doing’ and ‘being’ that flow across and between children. I argue that thinking with assemblage can draw attention to both the potentiality and the power dynamics inherent in the ongoing present and also counter preconceived notions of individual child agency and linear trajectories of literacy development, and the inequalities this these concepts can perpetuate within early education settings

Editorial

This guest-edited Special Issue of RERM celebrates the enormous contribution that Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones made to the field of educational research over her life time

Guided portfolio writing as a scaffold for reflective learning in in-service contexts: A case study

Language is widely recognized as an inescapable mediating tool for professional learning, and with this text we want to contribute to a better understanding of the particular role that guided writing can play in in-service professional reflective learning. We analysed one pre-school teacher’s written portfolio, the construction of which was guided to scaffold deep thinking about (and the transference of theory into) practice during participation in an in-service program about language education. Our case study shows that the writing process sustained robust learning about professional knowing, doing and learning itself: The teacher elaborated an integrative ethical understanding of the discussed theory, fully experienced newly informed practices and assessed her own learning by using theory to confront her previous knowledge and practices. Throughout the portfolio, the learning stance revealed by her voice varied accordingly. The study illustrates the potential of guided writing to scaffold reflective learning in in-service contexts.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal. PEst-OE/CED/UI1661/2011] through CIEd (Centro de Estudos em Educação). PEst-OE/CED/UI0317/2014] through CIEC.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Curriculum in early childhood education: critical questions about content, coherence, and control

A continuing struggle over curriculum in early childhood education is evident in contemporary research and debate at national and international levels. This reflects the dominant influence of developmental psychology in international discourses, and in policy frameworks that determine approaches to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Focusing on early childhood education, we argue that this struggle generates critical questions about three significant themes within curriculum theory: content, coherence, and control. We outline two positions from which these themes can be understood: Developmental and Educational Psychology and contemporary policy frameworks. We argue that within and between these positions, curriculum content, coherence, and control are viewed in different and sometimes oppositional ways. Following this analysis, we propose that a focus on ‘working theories’ as a third position offers possibilities for addressing some of these continuing struggles, by exploring different implications for how content, coherence, and control might be understood. We conclude that asking critical questions of curriculum in early childhood education is a necessary endeavour to develop alternative theoretical frameworks for understanding the ways in which curriculum can be considered alongside pedagogy, assessment, play, and learning

Early childhood pedagogies: spaces for young children to flourish

This paper introduces the Special Issue of Early Child Development and Care focused on Early Childhood Pedagogy. It opens by considering past and present discourses concerning early childhood pedagogy, and focus is given to established philosophical underpinnings in the field and their translation to contemporary guidance, alongside research and policy. It is argued that early childhood pedagogy is a contested, complex and diverse space, yet these factors are entirely appropriate for supporting young children to flourish as valued individuals in different contexts. Building on this argument, it is posited that it may be more appropriate to discuss early childhood pedagogies rather than early childhood pedagogy. The paper goes on to critique a range of established early childhood pedagogies, before introducing 18 papers from across the world that make exciting new contributions to the discourse. It is intended that this collection will inspire new debates and fresh endeavours concerning early childhood pedagogies

Ready, steady, learn: school readiness and children’s voices in English early childhood settings

Internationally, school readiness is increasingly the rationale for early childhood education and care. This is the case in England, yet the statutory English Early Years Foundation Stage framework for children 0-5 years also requires practitioners to listen to children’s voices: discourse indicates dissonance between school readiness and listening to children’s voices so this paper discusses an intrinsic case study that investigated beliefs and practices of 25 practitioners in the English midlands regarding school readiness and listening to children’s voices. In survey responses and semi-structured interviews, practitioners indicated they listen to – and act on – children’s voices but are confused about school readiness; their beliefs and practices align more strongly with social pedagogy than pre-primary schoolification. Findings carry messages for policymakers regarding the need for coherent policy concerning the purpose of early childhood education and care, with practitioner training and a framework aligned fully with that policy. A larger study is indicated

Karen Barad’s Quantum Ontology and Posthuman Ethics: Rethinking the Concept of Relationality

This article focuses on Karen Barad’s quantum ontology and her attempts to reformulate the concept of relationality. The aim is to show how Barad’s work articulates a new kind of empiricism for the social sciences, by reclaiming the creative and speculative force of experimental practice and by recentering the philosophical problem as a source of inquiry. Relationality is redefined through discussions of diffractive apparatus, more-than-human performativity, and the “polymorphous perversity” of the matter-meaning mixture