Mapping a collaborative cartography of the encounters between the neurosciences and early childhood education practices

ABSTRACT

This paper takes its starting point in a shared problem of concern, formulated in terms of what might be produced – or not – as effects of encounters between neuroscientific research and preschool practices. The aim is to show what emerged in collaborative encounters, in what is theorized and practised as Deleuzo–Guattarian-inspired cartography mapping exercises. During regularly scheduled staff ‘reflection meetings’, an invited doctoral student enacted, participated, and documented these encounters with preschool staff at three preschools in the same area outside Stockholm, Sweden. Two major lines of articulation, converging around a core problem, were collaboratively constructed and put on this ‘map’. These were then actively put to play to be disrupted and deterritorialized, making ways for new diverging lines and potential reconfigured forms of literacy practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational neuroscience
• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
• cartography
• deterritorialization
• collaboration
• matter of concern
• praxiographical fieldwork
• early childhood education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 As a response to a mutual request of exchange, a bi-monthly network was created in 2015 organized by Stockholm University in collaboration with the municipality preschools. The idea was to exchange experiences, knowing, and perhaps to develop new ways of thinking and doing, at the interface between the neurosciences and early education. http://www.buv.su.se/om-oss/evenemang/förskoledidaktiska-rum

2 Informed consent was received from all 23 staff working in the preschools, as well as from all guardians of the 85 children in the subdivisions. Typically, the staff of a subdivision in a preschool consists of 1–2 educated preschool teachers (3.5 years of higher education), and 1–2 staff that might have training from high school as nursery staff. Staff work in non-hierarchical ‘flat’ teams where everyone performs the same tasks and have the same working hours. Educated teachers have the responsibility to plan and evaluate the practices.