Spitting open the sky: eruptions of difference in an early years classroom

Abstract

Diffracting a research project in a UK primary school, this paper concerns feminist materialist orientations to odd-ness as a relational, distributed, and affective form of “thinking-feeling”. It suggests that attuning to affect as it moves through a context resistant to disruption, involves becoming “bad researchers”; bad for composing an unruly research problem, for embracing a transgressive methodology, and for writing in willfully inconclusive ways. It comments too on the dangers of embracing badness as an identity if used to conceal rather than acknowledge ongoing inequalities between researchers and children and between privileged researchers and others routinely marginalised.

Keywords:

• Childhood
• difference
• affect
• school
• inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Holmes

Rachel Holmes is Professor in the Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University. Holmes co-leads ESRI's Children and Childhood Research Group and has authored numerous studies of early childhood education.

Amanda Ravetz

Amanda Ravetz is Professor Emeritus, Manchester Metropolitan University. Ravetz's work explores the interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design, and theories and practices of observational cinema. She is the author (with Anna Grimshaw) of Observational Cinema (2009) and co-editor of Collaboration Through Craft (2013).