Big data: and the micropolitics of entanglement in the Earth’s becoming

Abstract

This paper addresses the entanglements of the earth’s becoming in a multi site cross hemisphere study of the infinite moments of young children’s world making, recorded in multimodal videos, still images, and children’s productions. The postqualitative project was informed by new materialist and posthuman theorising. The researchers conducted their research at seven different early learning centres in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, and Finland. At the end of the project the researchers came together to make sense of the data across all sites and realised that their postqualitative data was BIG and that their ‘little big data’ was generated in the context of the increasing impact of ‘big Big Data¹.’ We discuss our approaches to posthuman and new materialist big data in order to create a conversation between the two and to highlight the alternative methodological processes we developed to make sense of large bodies of postqualitative data.

Keywords:

• Big Data
• postqualitative research
• micropolitics
• entanglements
• Earth’s becoming

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the extensive review comments from the anonymous reviewers who have assisted in brining this paper to its final form.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We refer to our ‘little big data’ throughout this paper by using lower case for big data in contrast to upper case for ‘big Big Data’ to differentiate between the two.

2 Michelle Jeffries was the second researcher who helped to collect this data, and was also involved in the categorising and sub-categorising of the data.

3 The audiovisual footage was to function only as one kind of material in the study. Other materials, or data, were for instance interviews and observation, also inside the kindergarten. For the scope and focus of this paper, however, only the video materials are highlighted.

4 The camera had to be enclosed in a water and dirt proof case that covered also the microphone and so the sound quality was poor.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the funding received from the Australian Research Council that made this project possible, and the support of a larger collective including Michele Jeffries, Anna Vladimirova, Sarah Crinall, and Abigail Hackett.

Notes on contributors

Margaret Somerville

Margaret Somerville is a professor of Education at Western Sydney University. She is interested in alternative and creative approaches to research and writing, with a focus on relationship to place and planetary wellbeing. Her research has been carried out in collaboration with Aboriginal communities, educational practitioners and doctoral students.

Annette Woods

Annette Woods is a professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She researches and teaches in the areas of literacies, social justice, school reform, and curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. She is a chief investigator in the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child formed in 2020 at QUT.

Iris Duhn

Iris Duhn is Associate Professor at Monash's Faculty of Education. She has a long standing interest in environmental education with young children. Her particular interests are methodologies that invite re-thinking and un-doing.

Pauliina Rautio

Pauliina Rautio is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, in Finland. She leads a research group AniMate, currently engaged in Environmental Humanities and Education, specifically the critical qualitative inquiry of child-animal relations. Her other fields of expertise and interest include Childhood Studies and Environmental Education.

Sarah Powell

Sarah Powell is Lecturer in the School of Education at Macquarie University. Her teaching and research focuses on creativity, movement and music with young children, initial teacher education, and the continued professional development of teachers

Alison McConnell-Imbriotis

Alison McConnell-Imbriotis is an ethnographic researcher and educator with a background in transformative and experiential learning. She has experience working in government advisory roles as well as teaching research and Drama at Western Sydney and Macquarie University. She currently works with disenfranchised and disengaged secondary school students.

Sarita Galvez

Sarita G´lvez is an academic at Monash University. She is interested in water-based pedagogies, Indigenous knowledge, embodied learning and Andean poetic epistemologies. She leads the Creekulum program along the Merri Merri Creek on the lands of the Kulin Nations, Australia.