Materializing fiction: teachers as creators of play and children as embodied entrants in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of verbal and visual presentations of a Swedish version of a pedagogy of play as presented in educational broadcasts during the early 1990s and late 2000s. The analysis shows how fiction materializes discursively and through material props in the play activities and how fiction becomes an agentive force making both human and non-human bodies act in new ways. Thus, when the fictional and real mingle in materializations, new ways of being and becoming in adult–child relations are made possible. It is argued that professionals take positions as insecure and vulnerable players being looked at by the children, and the children take positions as engaged onlookers of the professionals’ play. In the concluding discussion, the implications for how adult–child relations are played out in new and complex ways, potentially transforming traditional dichotomous understandings of adult–child relations and positions in preschool, are further developed.

KEYWORDS:

• A pedagogy of play
• materializing fiction
• adult–child relations
• the child as ‘embodied entrant’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anne-Li Lindgren is a professor of Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden, where she is director of the Early Childhood Education section. She is also a member of the scientific committee at the Agency for Swedish Cultural Policy Analysis. Her current research focuses on childhood visualizations and child cultures in early childhood education in historical and contemporary perspectives.

ORCID

Anne-Li Lindgren http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0499-1345

Notes

1. In the episodes of Lekpedagogik and Akta er Mårran kommer, the same film clips were sometimes used but with different voiceover commentaries, as demonstrated here.