Abstract
ABSTRACT This article builds on a qualitative study of interactions and negotiations with respect to existential questions in an ECEC department with children from 3 to 6 years of age, as part of a larger empirical study on the same topic. In the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research’s 2017 curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), there is a stated requirement that the staff shall explore and wonder at existential questions together with the children. This article highlights how a walk through a local graveyard with its material artefacts functioning as cultural tools may open a new context for interaction and negotiation regarding death as an existential issue. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mediated action and Bakhtin’s theory of multivoicedness form the framework for the interpretation together with Wartofsky’s three-level theory of artefacts. The method employed to establish the data was participated observation with a handheld video camera.
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