Föränderlig tillblivelse: Figurationen av det posthumana förskolebarnet

Abstract in English

In a time when the pursuit of equivalent quality is high on the Swedish ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) policy agenda, teachers’ responsibilities for evaluating educational practice, based on documentations of individual children’s development and learning, is emphasised. To aid teachers in this work, the Swedish National Agency of Education published and distributed a support material promoting ‘pedagogical documentation’ as a tool and a method for documentation and evaluation, framed within a so called postconstructionist/posthumanist theoretical framework. In the support material, the (social) constructionist approach, previously associated with the tool pedagogical documentation, is criticised for having an excessive focus on interpersonal interaction and the constitutive power of language. Instead, an understanding of the world that acknowledges the force and impact of nonhuman subjects and material objects on children’s subjectification and knowledge construction is called for. The theoretical ideas that are expressed in the support material corresponds to what broadly has been explained as a “material” turn in the humanities and social sciences. Against the backdrop of the alleged material turn, not only is the superior position of language being questioned, but also the unique and ontologically superior position of the human mind. The theoretical stance taken by the National Agency of Education can be considered unique and raises questions concerning the meaning and aim of theoretical intervention through research and policy, and of its subsequent consequences. The overall aim of the dissertation is to critically examine the figuration of the posthuman child in both a Swedish and international context of early childhood education. Part of this work involves investigating how posthumanist concepts and ideas travel, how they are picked up in policy and how posthumanist theory is being translated to fit the framework of early education. This inquiry concerns fundamental questions about the making of the preschool child in the intersection between educational research, educational policy and pedagogical practice. In the different studies of the dissertation, Claudia Castañeda’s (2003; 2014) interpretation of the concept ”figuration” is being used as an analytical tool for “unpacking” the practices, knowledge and meanings, that are built into the posthuman child as figure.