‘Place’ as conceptual centre: a methodological focus on the bodily relations, movements and expressions of children up to three years of age in kindergarten

Karin Hognestad,Marit Bøe

doi:10.7577/rerm.489

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how attention on ‘place’ can be productive in methodology concerning the bodily relations, movements and expressions of children up to three years of age who are enrolled in kindergarten. While research that has adopted a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach has contributed to important knowledge concerning young children, we propose re-thinking methodology that takes children’s bodily relations, movements and expressions into concern. Using ‘place’ as a lens, we show how power relations are interrupted and allow for alternative ways for the researcher to relate to data. Inspired by Somerville (2010), elements of place are situated at the centre of the research analysis. The three key elements of place that are put to work are as follows: our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; place learning is local and embodied; and place is a contact zone for cultural contact. The paper is part of a research project which explores how place can be more explicit in educational practices to strengthen kindergarten as a learning arena. We seek to explore how place relations work and what they have the possibility of producing in the analyzing process.

Highlights

In Norway, researching young children has been strongly influenced by a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach (Bae, 2004; Greve, 2005; Løkken, 2000)
Agency has been thought of as a property that is owned by the individual subject, and the subject has been understood as the subject-of-will (Davies, 2010)
Young children’s bodily relations, movements and expressions in the world require openness to what might happen, and they demand a broader understanding of being in the world

Summary

Introduction

In Norway, researching young children has been strongly influenced by a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach (Bae, 2004; Greve, 2005; Løkken, 2000). Young children’s bodily relations, movements and expressions in the world require openness to what might happen, and they demand a broader understanding of being in the world This gives ways to develop a re-thinking of subjectivity and an acknowledgement of the material environment and landscape as active agents in the process of being (Davies, 2010; Hultmann & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Sandvik, 2010; Somerville, 2007, 2010). An interesting discovery in this discussion was when we related the relational materiality approach to the national curriculum When opening up this wider understanding of being, in a plane of immanence, we were able to think differently about how pre-school teachers could be active in children’s processes of learning (MER, 2011). This way of reading body/place relations has the potential to open us up to new ways of understanding the disciplinary body

Place that provides opportunity for exploration

Findings

Is place pedagogy the same as what Nordin Hultman talks about?