TY - JOUR
T1 - A mobilisation of motherhood, babyhood and childhood sensing pasts
T2 - Life diaries as creative and speculative force of experimentation
AU - Michelle Schofield, Lindsay
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2024/5
Y1 - 2024/5
N2 - In recent years, the theoretical lens of new materialism(s) and surge in feminist thinking has opened up new ways of understanding the complexities of motherhood, babyhood and early childhood. This surge in post-qualitative and feminist inquiry towards the troubling of dominant early childhood abstractions and norms, as well as resistance to human-centric perspectives offers new possibilities to engage both ethically and politically in an affirmative exploration of motherhoods, babyhoods and early childhoods. Through communicating the methodological nuances in two early childhood physical spaces this article is a (re)assembling of the fibrous, slippery and friable fragments of an earlier inquiry. The first of these spaces was a baby room in an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) setting in the United Kingdom (UK), and the second was Higher Education (HE) Undergraduate (UG) Early Childhood Studies (ECS) teaching and learning environments, again in the UK. There were also a number of virtual, past and present, material, ephemeral and ethereal research sites that seem disparate, yet connected. The transversal methodology held bodies in the middle of the research, allowing things to creep in and creep out. A mobilisation of motherhood, babyhood and childhood sensing pasts produced neologisms, such as mothersick, Bowlb(arbar)ian and (gh)host(ile)(ly) which conjure transversality and spacetimemattering in all that I do in the HE ECS classroom and ECEC environments. Memories, histories and (her)stories – severed encounters shared and assembled. Cuts that brought pain to the surface(s) and bodies become ambiguous, unnerving, raw and exposed. Through the article, it is argued, powerful psychological developmental theories that reverberate through human and nonhuman bodies haunt student and pedagogue bodily knowledges and histories. It is suggested that ethically, HE pedagogues have a duty of care to think beyond the immediate teaching and learning classroom and consider how we touch the lives of UG ECS students, in unknown but often imperceptible and sensed ways.
AB - In recent years, the theoretical lens of new materialism(s) and surge in feminist thinking has opened up new ways of understanding the complexities of motherhood, babyhood and early childhood. This surge in post-qualitative and feminist inquiry towards the troubling of dominant early childhood abstractions and norms, as well as resistance to human-centric perspectives offers new possibilities to engage both ethically and politically in an affirmative exploration of motherhoods, babyhoods and early childhoods. Through communicating the methodological nuances in two early childhood physical spaces this article is a (re)assembling of the fibrous, slippery and friable fragments of an earlier inquiry. The first of these spaces was a baby room in an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) setting in the United Kingdom (UK), and the second was Higher Education (HE) Undergraduate (UG) Early Childhood Studies (ECS) teaching and learning environments, again in the UK. There were also a number of virtual, past and present, material, ephemeral and ethereal research sites that seem disparate, yet connected. The transversal methodology held bodies in the middle of the research, allowing things to creep in and creep out. A mobilisation of motherhood, babyhood and childhood sensing pasts produced neologisms, such as mothersick, Bowlb(arbar)ian and (gh)host(ile)(ly) which conjure transversality and spacetimemattering in all that I do in the HE ECS classroom and ECEC environments. Memories, histories and (her)stories – severed encounters shared and assembled. Cuts that brought pain to the surface(s) and bodies become ambiguous, unnerving, raw and exposed. Through the article, it is argued, powerful psychological developmental theories that reverberate through human and nonhuman bodies haunt student and pedagogue bodily knowledges and histories. It is suggested that ethically, HE pedagogues have a duty of care to think beyond the immediate teaching and learning classroom and consider how we touch the lives of UG ECS students, in unknown but often imperceptible and sensed ways.
KW - assemblages
KW - early childhood
KW - feminism
KW - intricacies
KW - new materialism
KW - posthuman
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U2 - 10.1177/14782103231179775
DO - 10.1177/14782103231179775
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85162980952
SN - 1478-2103
VL - 22
SP - 559
EP - 573
JO - Policy Futures in Education
JF - Policy Futures in Education
IS - 4
ER -