re(con)ceiving children in curriculum - mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming

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Re(con)ceiving children in curriculum: Mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming

Margaret Anne Sellers

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at

The University of Queensland in May 2009

School of Education

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Declaration by author

This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published

or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly

stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis.

I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical

assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial

advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis

is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my research higher degree

candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for

the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have

clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award.

I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University

Library and, subject to the General Award Rules of The University of Queensland, immediately

made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968.

I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the

copyright holder(s) of that material.

Statement of Contributions to Jointly Authored Works Contained in the Thesis

No jointly authored works.

Statement of Contributions by Others to the Thesis as a Whole

No contributions by others.

Statement of Parts of the Thesis Submitted to Qualify for the Award of Another Degree

None.

Published Works by the Author Incorporated into the Thesis

None.

Additional Published Works by the Author Relevant to the Thesis but not Forming Part of it

Honan, Eileen & Sellers, Marg. (2008). (E)merging methodologies: Putting rhizomes to work. In

Inna Semetsky, Nomadic education: Variations on a theme by Deleuze and Guattari. Educational

Futures Series (M. Peters, Series Editor), Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers.

Sellers, Marg & Honan, Eileen. (2007). Putting rhizomes to work: (E)merging methodologies,

NZRECE, Vol.10.

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Sellers, Marg. (2007). Monad, nomad: where to with this poststructuralist philosophising? An open

letter to Jeanette Rhedding-Jones. Reviewing ‘Monocultural constructs: A transnational reflects

on early childhood institutions’ (by Jeanette Rhedding-Jones). Transnational Curriculum Inquiry

4 (2) 2007 pp. 56-59 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci

Sellers, Marg. (2007). Book Review, Early Childhood Education: Society and Culture, by Angela

Anning, Joy Cullen and Marilyn Fleer, 2004, 226 pages. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (2)

2007 pp. 65-69 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci

Honan, Eileen & Sellers, Marg. (2006). So how does it work? – rhizomatic methodologies, AARE

Conference proceedings, Adelaide, November 2006.

Sellers, Marg. (2005). Growing a Rhizome: Embodying Early Experiences in Learning. NZRECE,

Vol.8, 29-42.

Gough, Noel, John Chi-kin Lee, Julianne Moss, Warren Sellers, Marg Sellers and Francisco Sousa.

(2004). 'Commentaries and conversations on "Laboured breathing" (Low and Palulis) and

"Letter to my sister" (Luo), Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 1 (1) 2004.

http://prophet.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/issue/view/7

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Acknowledgements

Although generating much of the work of this thesis-assemblage has been a solitary journey there

are many who have contributed to its happening. For their love, support and encouragement I offer

my heartfelt thanks.

That my mother’s educational opportunities were cut short against her will at the end of primary

school has urged me on. This doctoral journey is in memory of her. My Dad has always believed in

me and I am grateful for this and for his ever-loving support.

Warren, my partner in love, life and educational endeavours has been always by my side, sharing

ideas in the light of early morning conversations and with me in darker moments. Journeying as

nomad~rhizome has been a joy-full experience of bringing our creativity and understandings of

philosophy and curriculum together.

Constant companions as I sat at my computer have been my children, never further away than a txt,

phone call, email or Skype. I thank them all for keeping me in touch with the(ir) world(s) when I

was lost in books, papers and my own thoughts.

Steadfast in her guidance and support has been my principal supervisor, Eileen Honan, passing over

my foibles, forthcoming in advice, critiquing my understandings, never doubting my rhizo journey

and always available. My to-ing and fro-ing through the middle has been challenging for us both.

Conversations with my associate supervisor, Noel Gough, have been invaluable to my thinking

outside the outside milieu(s) I was always already negotiating.

Colleagues from Whitireia – Rachel, Janet, Kaye, Belinda, Jayne, Gill, Thomas, Rose, Bella,

Le’autuli, Manu and Viv – have expressed enduring interest in my rhizomatic conversations. My

appreciation goes to Whitireia Community Polytechnic for study leave in 2008 and to Heather, Kim

and Catherine from the library for meeting my frequent interloan requests.

Lastly, I extend my gratitude to The University of Queensland School of Education team for their

support and hospitality during my times on campus during 2008, and to Terry Evans and his team

from Deakin University where I began my candidature. I acknowledge also the financial support

from The University of Queensland Research Scholarship awarded to me through 2008-2009.

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Abstract

Tradition and convention dichotomises children and curriculum and this is challenged by

re(con)ceiving children in curriculum. My study generates ways for thinking differently about

children’s complex interrelationships with curriculum by working with the philosophical

imaginaries of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I use an assemblage of imaginaries, namely:

rhizome, plateaus, multiplicities, nomad, de~territorialising lines of flight, smooth spaces,

becoming, milieu, monad and singularities, all of which disrupt traditional and conventional thought

in various ways.

Working with children to share their understandings of curriculum, demonstrated in their curricular

performativity of becoming~learning, becomes a complex methodological endeavour, which

inextricably (rhizomatically) entwines researching and researcher/participants and research. What I

call the assemblage of the thesis is thus as much about researching rhizomatically as about young

children’s understandings of curriculum and Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries help bring these

together. Rhizome and becoming are two imaginaries that feature frequently in the discussion and

in the methodology, with plateaus comprising the condition and expression of the ‘thesis’ cum

assemblage. However, as plateaus work non-linearly, the conventional notion of a chaptered thesis

is rendered sous rature. Hence the thesis-assemblage becomes a milieu of plateaus that can be read

in any order, rather than a conventional linear sequence of chapters containing specific sections of

the research process. Continuing with generating a milieu (while simultaneously disrupting

linearity) both the literature review and rhizoanalysis occur in various plateaus, and the rhizo-

methodology is played out throughout.

Bringing my understanding of Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries of rhizome and becoming into

theories about children and childhood and bringing the notion of rhizome together with young

children’s curricular performance opens possibilities for conceiving children and curriculum

differently, and for receiving these into reconceptualist curricular conversations. A poststructuralist

feminist theoretical approach works to destabilise developmental perspectives of children and

childhood as well as the adult|child binary, and recognises curriculum as a complex endeavour. The

interconnected processes of rhizo inquiry, rhizomatic methodology and rhizoanalysis engage with

emerging understandings of researching complexity and further disrupt modernist, arborescent

thought.

Data for the study were generated in a kindergarten during a two-week period by moving

rhizomatically with the activity of children’s play while video recording their games. Mostly I

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operated the camera, with the children preferring to be performers in these spontaneous video plays,

but periodically various children took the camera and recorded activity of their choosing, thereby

generating another dimension to the data. As and when requested by the children, they watched the

videos of themselves at play, with opportunities for replaying sequences and engaging in

conversation about their becoming~learning. These review sessions were recorded on a second

video camera, contributing to an intensifying multiplicity of data. To continue generating this data

multiplicity, I approached the rhizoanalysis in several ways – through conventional transcripts,

visual notations and by juxtaposing interactive pieces using the literature, transcriptions from the

data and my commentaries. For example: data were juxtaposed with philosophical imaginaries; data

from both cameras were read alongside one another; data of the children playing were used to

inform the methodology as well as the methodology being used to inform the rhizoanalysis;

transcriptions were turned into storyboards and some play episodes were mapped pictorially.

Determining conclusions is not the purpose of a rhizomatic research multiplicity. Instead I leave off

with thoughts for the reader about ongoing and opening processes of thinking differently around

curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming and children as dynamically becoming(s)-child(ren).

Rhizomatically, these link to data used to explain map(ping) play(ing), children performing

curriculum complexly, children’s expressions of power-fullness and children performing rhizo-

methodology. These data demonstrate young children’s sophisticated understandings of their

doing~learning~living. As well as opening possibilities for adults to understand children’s

understandings, the data open possibilities for children’s understandings to inform adult

understandings of curriculum, as practiced, theoretical and philosophical, that is, for receiving

children into curriculum.

Keywords

early childhood, children, reconceptualising curriculum, Deleuze, rhizome, becoming, play,

research methodology, power.

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC)

220202 History and Philosophy of Education, 60%

130102 Early Childhood Education (excl. Maori) 40%

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Map 1: Mapping milieu(s)

Plateau starting pages

Plateau contents .............................................................................................................................. iix

Preceding echoes~foreshadowing.....................................................................................................1

Reconceiving curriculum~mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming .........................................................23

Children performing curriculum complexly.......................................................................................47

Rhizo~mapping................................................................................................................................83

Children and childhood ....................................................................................................................93

Play(ing).........................................................................................................................................120

Rhizomatically researching with young children ............................................................................148

Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full .....................................................................................184

Rhizoanalysis.................................................................................................................................201

Children playing rhizo~methodology..............................................................................................216

Aftrwrdng .......................................................................................................................................230

References ....................................................................................................................................238

Appendices ....................................................................................................................................261

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List of Maps, Figures & Storyboards

Map 1: Mapping milieu(s) ................................................................................................................ vii

Map 2: Negotiating the plateaus through leafing interests................................................................ xi

Figure 1: Rhizome~multidimensional, a-centred. ............................................................................11

Figure 2: The Internet, ceaselessly establishes connections. .........................................................11

Figure 3: Freely flowing rhizomatic plateaus and structured linear thinking. ...................................13

Figure 4: Te Whāriki’s woven mat of principles and strands. ..........................................................33

Figure 5: Puawānanga (Aotearoa New Zealand native clematis)....................................................43

Figure 6: Felted fabric as matting – showing tangled threads. ........................................................43

Figure 7: Lines of flight~shifting plateaus of play(ing) segueing through Willy Wonka~monster~

bear~Goldilocks. .......................................................................................................................79

Figure 8: Surfer’s movements superimposed on Stella Nona’s novice steps. ...............................115

Figure 9: Play (movement between) becomes spandrel (spaces between). .................................135

Figure 10: Picturing sphere eversion .............................................................................................136

Figure 11: Responses in the consent booklets of two children......................................................166

Figure 12: Reviewing area showing position of second camera on tripod.....................................176

Figure 13: The scene of the pending confrontation. ......................................................................192

Figure 14: Rhizomatic flows of power-fullness. .............................................................................196

Figure 15: Intersecting lines of flight~mapping (a) curricular milieu(s). .........................................207

Figure 16: Messy map of another possible rhizo-imaginary. .........................................................209

Figure 17: Merging images and text. .............................................................................................211

Figure 18: Arborescent tracing. .....................................................................................................217

Figure 19: Burrow~rhizome produced by crustaceans in the Middle Jurassic period....................217

Figure 20: De~territorialisation always already at on(c)e on the same plateau~plane ..................219

Storyboard 1: Chocolate Factory .....................................................................................................49

Storyboard 2: Monster Game ..........................................................................................................58

Storyboard 3: Goldilocks..................................................................................................................67

Plateau contents

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Plateau contents

Introducing the plateaus as they appear in the thesis-assemblage:

Preceding echoes is a foreshadowing exercise. It opens with a letter to Marcy, the two year old who

was the inspiration for this research. Then follows an explanation of the Deleuzo-Guattarian

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) imaginaries put to work throughout the dissertation. I also present my

feminist poststructuralist subjectivity here.

Reconceiving curriculum works with literature towards generating a different way of conceiving of

curriculum – curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming. Flowing through the conversation, I explore

historical philosophies affecting early childhood curriculum, a genealogy of reconceptualising early

childhood curriculum, influences of developmental psychology and sociocultural approaches on

early childhood curriculum and an unravelling of Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), the

Aotearoa New Zealand national early childhood curriculum statement. Linking to this plateau, are

the Children performing curriculum complexly and Rhizo-mapping plateaus.

Children performing curriculum complexly presents a complex milieu of children’s curricular

performances from the data. It works with a data snippet to foreground how we might receive

rhizomatic understandings of children’s curricular performance into adult conceptions of

curriculum. This plateau negotiates a chaoplexy of three games unfolding simultaneously in the

sandpit, considering them separately and then together.

Rhizo~mapping presents mapping as a way of making sense of children’s doing and learning

with/in/through their curricular performance. Opening with Deleuzo-Guattarian understandings of

mapping, I (re)think children’s map making and their play with maps as rhizomatic performance. I

explore snippets of data that illuminate the children’s map(ping) play(ing) towards generating an

understanding of curricular milieus.

Children and childhood works through historical, essentially modernist, images of children and

childhood in the literature and discusses lingering affects of these. Some contemporary

poststructuralist subject positionings of children are presented, including affects of these on

conceiving their childhood(s). This opens to ‘becoming’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and the

associated imaginary of becoming-child(ren) towards generative ways of conceiving children and

childhood.

Plateau contents

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Play(ing) reviews theoretical understandings of play in the literature and then play-fully presents a

poietical juxtaposition for thinking about children’s play. A tripled juxtaposition of a transcription

of three children at play, a transcription of these children then (re)viewing the video of their game –

a (re)play – and my rhizo-interactive commentary.

Rhizomatically researching with young children presents a complexity of methodological and

ethical issues, including challenges around child/adult power relations, which manifest in issues of

consent and data generation. Researcher responsibility opens to participant-children becoming

responsive and response-able. This plateau also maps the nomadic flow of processing through the

research. In thinking and working rhizomatically there is a sense that everything is always already

happening, that the methodology and analysis intermingle from the research design through writing

the thesis-assemblage. Flowing nomadically through the literature, data generation, rhizoanalysis

and the writing meant following and generating lines of flight that become the linking machinic or

‘glue’ that draws the assemblage of plateaus together.

Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full presents flows of power-fullness surrounding

child~participant-adult~researcher relationships within the data. Discussion of the Māori

whakamana and Deleuzian and Foucauldian understandings of power relations opens to disrupting

the notion of empowerment. The data show that Tim, in his expressions of power-fullness, makes

empowerment redundant.

Rhizoanalysis is a conversation that introduces the process of the analysis and offers some

concluding thoughts about how I processed with/through it. It is about about rhizo-methodology

and working (with) the data. The rhizoanalysis is the inquiry of the research and happens through

all the plateaus. As with many plateaus, where it sits relative to others is arbitrary; it could just as

well be read alongside Preceding echoes as where I have chosen in this moment to locate it page-

wise.

Children playing rhizo-methodology shows that not only does the methodology inform the data

generation, it also shows that the data informs the methodology. In the play(ing) of their game,

three girls make perceptible their tacit understandings of nomad~rhizome and how it works.

Aftrwrdng~curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming (re)turns to the idea(s) for (re)conceiving

children and curriculum through thinking differently, the plateau closing with a second letter to

Marcy.

Plateau contents

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The plateaus are written so that they can be read in any order (as explained further in Preceding

echoes, p. 7), according to the reader’s interests and in response to lines of flight that emerge in the

reading. The following table offers four possibilities, with the suggestion that Preceding echoes be

read first (Map 2). However, I invite the reader to choose her/his own pathway, one that resonates

with personal interests as they are now and as they arise in the reading.

Understanding Children & Childhood Curriculum

o Preceding echoes

o Children & childhood

o Play(ing)

o Children performing curriculum complexly

o Rhizomatically researching with young children

o Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full

o Children playing rhizo~methodology

o Reconceiving curriculum

o Rhizo~mapping

o Rhizoanalysis

o Aftrwrdng

o Preceding echoes



o Rhizo~mapping

o Play(ing)





o Rhizoanalysis

o Aftrwrdng

Research Methodology The thesis-assemblage as presented

o Preceding echoes



o Rhizoanalysis

o Rhizo~mapping



o Play(ing)



o Aftrwrdng

o Preceding echoes



o Rhizo~mapping


o Play(ing)



o Rhizoanalysis


o Aftrwrdng

Map 2: Negotiating the plateaus through leading interests.

Preceding echoes~foreshadowing

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starting up the rhizome with foreshadowing ideas

This is not a conventional introduction that spells out exactly what this dissertation is about. It is

merely a recording of a dynamically changing mass of Preceding echoes that segue into the

Aftrwrdng. In starting up the rhizome that has become this thesis-assemblage, my endeavour was to

understand more of young children’s conceptions of curriculum through something of a

reconceptualising exercise. But very early on, I realised that mine was a reconceiving endeavour,

which suggests more of the ongoing processes of rethinking curriculum than arriving at thoughts

that may be constituted as reconceptualist. Although aware that curriculum means different things

to different people involving traditional discourses around the what, how and why, my interest was

more with, so what? how come? and what if? from/with/in understandings of curriculum as

processing, as a lived experience of currere, as always already becoming. My understanding is that

curriculum processes around us. Rather than make it happen, we put it to work, or work it, as

curriculum-ing.

As I regard young children’s understandings of the world as no less significant than those of adults,

my approach needs to receive children, their childhoods and their understandings into adult

conceptions of curriculum. Thus the venture of re(con)ceiving children in curriculum becomes an

adventure, a play-full exploration that works with young children’s curricular performance as

expressed through/with/in play and their playing, in their play(ing). And, the thesis-assemblage

becomes a(n) (ad)venture involving playing around/with the literature, both play-fully and in the

sense of play as imperceptible, rapid oscillation. Play in both these understandings belies linear

progression, hence my ‘need’ for plateaus and not chapters and sections. Eventually I learn to play

with the literature, as in the Play(ing) plateau. Play(ing) with the methodology comes easier as

poststructuralist thinking opens (to) possibilities1 in its deconstructing project of disturbing the

rationale of modernist thought.

Data generation was a play-full adventure with the children in one kindergarten; the rhizoanalysis

became more and more adventurous and play-full as I processed through the data and the writing of

the thesis-assemblage, in some moments working with poietic inscriptions of ideas and style.

1 Throughout the plateaus I use the expression ‘opens (to) possibilities’ to suggest that I am opening to possibilities and that there are possibilities to be engaged with.


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Curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming appeared from/with/in shadows of my thinking and

working with re(con)ceiving children in curriculum became a play-full (ad)venture with/of

becoming.

Writing these introductory ideas – introducing Preceding echoes – is also a less serious venture than

modernist realms necessitate of me, but in my poststructuralist musing, I discover that this

‘introduction’ also becomes an after-wording exercise of concluding thoughts as I explain some of

the processes negotiated. As I contest that thought~thinking2 is linearly ordered and exacted

through sequential steps and stages –neither linear progress nor construct – to write an introduction

that is as ‘valid’ at the ending as it was at the beginning is a concretising task. This thesis-

assemblage has resisted concretising all the way through, it has slipped and slid, continually tipping

traditional thought and thinking off balance, creating an a-order and (dis)harmony of chaos and

complexity. So now as I come to (re)organise my introduction, it wants to be nothing like it was at

the commencement of my doctoral journey, or even in the middle. The introduction ‘itself’ has

become a changing mass of ideas that can only be recorded as part of the ever-changing

(ad)venture. There are, however, questions that were useful throughout. The most important of

these being, how do Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries work with understandings of curriculum and

with children’s curricular performance? Other significant questions that have morphed through

various permutations are: How do children perform curriculum? How does children’s curricular

performance contribute to reconceiving curriculum?

So, within spaces of the rhizome of this thesis-assemblage, the introduction also becomes the

conclusion – ‘becomes’ as in both developing into and enhancing. And, foreword becomes

introducing ideas become concluding thoughts become after wording thinking becomes Aftrwrdng;

and, txt-ese becomes useful for suggesting a different (in)complete assemblage that this ‘thesis’ has

become. I now pause within these beginning introductory ideas to present the thesis-assemblage,

not to write it, as that has now happened…flowing from this pause with writing~reading the thesis-

assemblage is more milieu as introductory ideas become the Aftrwrdng of the ending…

Note: Referred to in the following letter for Marcy is, Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996),

the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood national curriculum statement.

2 Words joined with a tilde are used throughout to signal conditions that always already co-exist.


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before beginning~a letter for Marcy

Dear Marcy

It has taken nearly five and a half years to write this letter, to bring together the thoughts and

thinking of ideas and inspiration, perceptions and conceptions, visions and suspicions, suggestions

and intentions, images and imaginings, words and pictures, reading and writing, consciously and

unconsciously in a way that befits my memory of you. The day I met you, you became every child

in every early childhood setting everywhere; in my mind’s eye, you became the children of many

world(s), due unconditional respect from adult worlds. Working with/in western understandings – I

can do no other as this is my heritage, my subjectivity – you became a ‘severalty’ of children that I

wish to embody within incipiently different approaches to curriculum, to living~learning and

learning~living.

You continue to inspire me to think how I might think differently about children, childhood and

curriculum and how I might think differently about thinking (differently). You will be over seven

years old now and it’s hard to imagine that you were not yet three when our paths crossed, our

lines of flight criss-crossing through the milieu(s) of our learning. As I write this, to assure myself

you were that young~old, I (re)turn to my research journal. In August 2003, I wrote about your

alerting me to the powerlessness of infants, toddlers and young children in some early childhood

settings to eat, sleep or play when and how they want; also about the beginnings of a reconceiving

of curriculum towards receiving young children’s understandings of themselves and the world(s)

around them. It was these thoughts about how you were (mis)understood by your teachers that

opened me to re(con)ceiving children in curriculum as my PhD (ad)venture.

Research journal, August 2003: Today Foucault likely turned in his grave. Foucault

deconstructed surveillance, among other aspects of power, by analysing the relationship

between discipline and punishment in prisons. Prisoners are watched over relentlessly;

surveillance is everywhere, limitless, oppressive. While such disciplinary surveillance is an overt

form of power, Foucault maintains that the notion of self-discipline, as promoted within the

individualism of psychology, is a covert form of surveillance invented by bourgeois society to

ensure and maintain cohesion. We have developed an individualised form of power exercised

through the surveillance of individuals by themselves in such a way that they develop self-

discipline – effectively we are then governed from within.

Valerie Walkerdine (1992) relates such discipline and surveillance to schooling, in that the child

becomes the object of psychological theory and pedagogic practice, ‘surveilled’ by teachers,

themselves responding to the same threat from above. Even when play is considered to be a

child’s work, the child is under the watchful and total gaze of the teacher, who is held

responsible for the development of each individual. ‘The teacher is there to help, to enable, to


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facilitate. Only those children with a poor grasp of reality, those poor pathological children, see

her power’ (p. 20).

Not knowing the pin to open the entrance door, I waited to be admitted into the custom built,

privately owned early learning centre where you were – there was no one in sight, but at the

push of a button the manager appeared. It felt like a corporate office and a prison, spacious with

large grand managerial desk, designer reception and staff areas leading into a wide corridor

that tracked through the building, giving views through large, well-appointed internal windows of

all areas where the children were cared for and played. Surveillance abounded, of both staff

and children; even the cook was exposed to the view of passers-by. These were open plan

spaces with (in)distinct boundaries that allowed (un)restricted flow from one area to another of

children and teachers. I sensed something of the ‘reality’ of Foucault’s notions of discipline and

control, particularly of surveillance, and sensed Walkerdine’s assessment of what this means for

teaching practice and children’s learning. Walking into a room of under threes seated at two

large round tables, I saw the children seemingly ‘listening’ to a story but apparently disengaged

from the reading, the reader, and the surroundings. You were doing a puzzle at another table

and, as was soon to become apparent, you exemplified Walkerdine’s facetious elaboration of a

poor pathological child.

You might have been listening to the story being read as you worked on the puzzle, but that was

not an issue. In your resistance to join the group, you were labelled ‘a problem’ and ‘disruptive.’

But, I couldn’t help wondering if, in your poor grasp of reality, you were the (only) one who

recognised the power and control you and your peers were subject to, that you were the one who

appreciated your surroundings as oppressing you as a person and your learning, learning that was

meaningful to your ‘under three’ year old understanding of what you desired to know.

Although I think of this as your story, Marcy, it is not a story you actually told me, rather it is my

storying of your way of connecting with the world in the short time I was part of that. As alluded to

above, when I was ushered into your secured, (in)secure world, it was like entering Foucault’s

vision of panopticon. In the under threes’ room, I saw a group of children seated around a large

round table waiting for a story to be read before morning-tea. The teacher overseeing the group

was finding it difficult to sustain the children’s interest in the book. Admittedly my arrival was a

distraction, but none of the children were seated for easy engagement with the teacher or the

book, and I suspect that the food smells wafting from the kitchen were focusing their attention on

food and eating, not on books and reading. Your attention was definitely elsewhere. Unnoticed by

the teachers, you were engrossed in doing a puzzle, but once spotted you were ordered to join the

group. Unsurprisingly, you refused despite further commands. By now, I was sitting on a small

chair nearby and, before I could anticipate your next move, you hurtled across the room and


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planted yourself on my knee. Without thinking, I put my arms around you and you settled into

listening to the story. For a moment, it seemed that the problem had been resolved. You were

complying – you had abandoned the puzzle and had implicitly agreed to come and listen to the

story.

But in the same moment, I realised that your terms of compliance were unacceptable, that you

were required to sit at the table. I also realised in that moment that I was complicit in your

resistance, in your preferred way of listening to the story and in what was later referred to as your

disruptive behaviour. As I gently lifted you to the floor, my heart sank. Your expression of engaging

with curriculum, your curricular performance, were denied by the teachers and I was now party to

that. The puzzle was not to be completed; the chair at the table took precedence over the knee. It

was not so much ‘dis-empowerment’ that you experienced, but that the flow of your power-fullness

was quashed; Foucault’s notions of power as force, as affect, through institutions of control and

surveillance were illuminated. The implications for you and your learning were projected

irrevocably and indelibly onto the screen of my understanding. Although I had only just happened

upon the situation, knew nothing of you and little of the context, as an outsider~observer, it

appeared that you were resisting co-operating with a more powerful adult regime and, despite

signalling a level of compliance by jumping onto my knee, your attempt to compromise was

deemed unacceptable. The teachers might have justified their teaching practice by pointing to

prescribed learning outcomes outlined for you, aligned to Te Whāriki principles and strands. Yet, I

suspect your reading of Te Whāriki might be different, perhaps one of affirming your expression of

what curriculum meant for you, enabling your flows of power-fullness and privileging your desires

as a young human being to be heard, respected, understood and valued.

With this last thought, I close this long-overdue letter of acknowledgment and appreciation,

knowing that you may never read it, but, recorded in the annals of educational research, it may

contribute to (an) opening (of) early childhood curricular worlds authentically respectful of young

children elsewhere. I am ever hopeful that it will kindle some interest in opening (to) ways of

thinking, incipiently different from the dominating ways that have got us thus far in early childhood

education, curriculum, education and the world at large. I am hopeful that my PhD (ad)venture will

become a way of opening (to) de~territorialising early childhood curricular spaces, through/with/in

understandings of young children, such as yours, Marcy, can flourish. It is for you, Marcy, and

young children of other worlds, that I would risk these spaces.

With respect always,


6

P.S. Marcy, the thesis-assemblage that follows is but a postscript to this letter and although the

language may not be yours, I trust the sentiments expressed therein make your heart sing.

beginning~a note for the reader

Nothing ever ‘begins,’ it only has tentative links to what has gone before and what is yet to come –

threads (e)merging from/with/in heterogeneous space-times of past~present~future in mo(ve)ments

of middles. Uncertainly, the middle of this thesis is a processing through questions-without-

answers, any pending ‘answer’ embodying another question, signalling partiality, decentring expert

authority, speeding up the intensity. And, an ‘ending’ is but a momentary pause of speed, ebbing

only until the flow again picks up speed, back/through/in/to the middle…(sigh)…so (deep breath)

how, where do I start with my desire to generate mo(ve)ments towards conceiving of early

childhood curriculum that welcomes young children as young people with views, opinions and

understandings that are regarded as significant as those of adults to generating curricular

performances authentic to the worlds children live~learn with/in and to social, ethical, political

operations of wider worlds? This big question becomes a big picture in a never beginning~ending

middle of ideas, difficult to negotiate, or so it seems. Yet, it seems I am not alone in this

muddling~middling quest that has no specific start point. Quoting Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari

(1987) explain: ‘Those things which occur to me, occur to me not from the root up but rather only

from somewhere about their middle. Let someone then attempt to seize them, let someone attempt

to seize a blade of grass and hold fast to it when it begins to grow only from the middle’ (p. 23).

But, they continue, ‘Why is this so difficult?’ (p. 23). They go on to say that it is only a matter of

perception: ‘It’s not easy to see things in the middle, rather than looking down on them from above

or up at them from below, or from left to right or right to left: try it, you’ll see that everything

changes’ (p. 23). So, I try it, I just try negotiating the middle, from anywhere…I start with fore-

shadowing ideas in preceding echoes and it becomes something of a never-ending story…as the

aftrwrdng tells…

preceding echoes~foreshadowing the thesis~assemblage

The (ad)venture of this research is in bringing Deleuzian philosophy together with conventional

images of young children and their childhood(s) and their performance of curricular understandings

towards generating a web of connections that celebrate generative thinking. In bringing Deleuzo-

Guattarian philosophical imaginaries, often referred to as figurations, to the research and

simultaneously working to understand how these work, this thesis moves outside a conventional,

chaptered dissertation. Throughout the thinking, reading, writing and carrying out of the research, a


7

variety of imaginaries is used to perturb linearity towards generating an assemblage, a collection of

conversations about connecting ideas presented as plateaus that have neither beginning nor end,

origin or destination. Like rhizome, an assemblage is heterogenous, is always in the middle,

unconcerned with points, made only of lines of movement and speed (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

From these opening moments, thesis is thus sous rature, the assemblage being comprised not of

sequential chapters, but of plateaus to be read in any order. Explaining how the thesis-assemblage

works, in terms of its expression (presentation and form of the document) and the content

addressed, reflects Deleuze’s (1995) interest in inquiry being functional or practical – ‘how

something works’ (p. 21). This (opening) plateau of Preceding echoes discusses how to go about

reading the plateaus comprising the thesis-assemblage, my use of Deleuzian imaginaries and my

subjectivity and its affects on the research.

As to the reading of the plateaus of thesis-assemblage, Map 2 (see p. xii) provides an overview of

possible readings according to leading interests, namely: conceptions of children and childhood;

philosophy of curriculum; or, research methodology. A fourth reading is as the plateaus are

presented. Familiarity with Deleuzian philosophy may further influence the reading otherwise. In

saying this, I am not claiming familiarity with Deleuze’s entire body of work; rather, I work with

imaginaries that inspire me to think differently, to think outside modernist logic and reason about

learning, living and the world. The fourth option of reading the thesis-assemblage is my preferred

option at the time of submission – in other moments the ordering maybe different. My choice of

presenting the plateaus follows my line(s) of flight through the research processes and the project

itself. While there was an opening line of flight, processing with/through the writing was not

linearly straightforward, rather, it involved much to-ing and fro-ing in many directions, often all-at-

once, as I (re)turned to (re)work various pieces, expressions and characterisations.

The mapping of the milieu(s) – the plateau map – became a way of my linking the plateaus…and…a

map to show the assemblage to the reader. Although linking the plateaus is arbitrary, my choice of

presentation is intended to illuminate particular characteristics of the connections. For example, in

my reading of the data the children’s curricular performance of their games demonstrates their

understandings of curriculum and also links with their mapping of their play(ing) of these games.

Hence, Reconceiving curriculum is followed by Children performing curriculum complexly and

Rhizo~mapping. I note that explaining the rhizoanalysis of this thesis-assemblage may have been

useful to the reading earlier on, but as it took the writing of the other plateaus for me to articulate

how I was making the rhizoanalysis work, I have assumed a more meaningful reading similarly

emerges later in the assemblage, hence my presenting the Rhizoanalysis plateau towards the end.


8

Children playing rhizo~methodology appears in a later moment of the thesis-assemblage as a way

of foregrounding the children’s always already, tacit understandings of what this research project

set out to explore and as a way of communicating that what I was interested in researching the

children were (already) doing with/in their curricular performance. This plateau demonstrates not so

much what young children know but how much we can learn from them and is positioned to

acknowledge the significance of what they have to tell of curriculum and research. The Aftrwrdng is

but a summary of that which the children so lucidly demonstrate with/in the data and is there to

satisfy thesis-writing expectations. In some ways I would have rather left the reader with the

images, imagining and imagery displayed by the children in their tacit, but working, understandings

of Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries.

Although I prefer the presentation of this fourth option, following lines of flight that rise up in

moments of reading is appropriate to any reading by any reader. When Deleuze (1995) is asked, ‘So

how are your Thousand Plateaus arranged?’ he replies, ‘It’s like a set of split rings. You can fit any

one of them into any other. Each ring, or each plateau, ought to have its own climate, its own tone

or timbre’ (p. 25). The (ad)venture has been to make all these plateaus work singularly and together,

acknowledging a refrain of ideas risks repetition, although as circles of convergence each

(re)connecting is in different space-times of thinking and brings with it other concepts interrupted,

such ‘repetition’ opens (to) other understandings.

introducing imaginaries

In presenting Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical concepts as imaginaries, I move outside the notion

of metaphor, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is transferred to an object or action so

that something is regarded as representative, suggestive or symbolic of something else. Deleuze and

Guattari (1994) explicate a concept as a multiplicity, having several components inseparable within

it. It is irregularly contoured in such a way that it is (only ever) a fragmentary whole: ‘Only in this

condition can it escape the mental chaos constantly threatening it, stalking it, trying to reabsorb it’

(p. 16). This concept is fluid, always already relating to other concepts, partially overlapping in ‘a

threshold of indiscernibility’ (p. 19), each resonating singularly and together as ‘centres of

vibrations’ (p. 23). It is this non-totalising movement that resists metaphorical representation.

In response to the Deleuzo-Guattarian project of thinking differently – to ‘think reality outside of

representation’ (Due, 2007, p. 9) – I refer to Deleuze’s (1994) notion of the ‘image of thought’, in

which philosophy emerges from an image of what it is to think, of what we do with/in thinking and

what thinking does. ‘Imaginary’, as a concept per se, then becomes a way of working (with)


9

complex thinking, different from the common understanding of ‘imaginary’ existing in the

imaginative mind’s ability to be creative, inventive and resourceful. This understanding of (a

Deleuzian) imaginary also differs from the Lacanian psychoanalytical imaginary, which, as a

function of being, ‘is found wherever we are deceived into believing that the word has become

identical with what it represents’ (Clark, 2004, p. ¶ 2). Warren Sellers (2008) explains his use of

imaginary as a ‘characterising affect rather than a mental image referencing some thing, situation or

circumstance’ (p. 8), ‘to avoid leaving any totalised major construct in mind’ (p. 269). He perceives

rhizome as imaginary, rather than metaphor or traditional trope, as it is impossible to ‘seize’

rhizome as an entity – ‘any attempt to represent it as such fails as soon as it is tried’ (p. 206). So

that ‘rhizome as imaginary in thinking’, in its conceptual inseparability simultaneously also

conceived as ‘imaginary as rhizome’, works to ‘reveal notions of understandings that are not

otherwise conceivable’ (p. 206).

To illuminate that which may be unthinkable in a representational mode, Braidotti and St.Pierre

work to avoid metaphorical thinking in relation to Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical concepts, and

talk instead of figurations. Although there is slippage here into an emblematic or allegorical

symbolism, Braidotti (2000) also resists the notion of metaphor and instead uses the term

‘figuration’ to characterise a ‘conceptually charged use of the imagination’ (p. 170) for thinking

differently. St.Pierre similarly works with Deleuzian ‘figurations’ as a way of thinking outside a

familiar use of language, as a way of opening (to) different questions that might affect

understandings of educational theory and practice. St.Pierre (1997a) says:

A figuration is not a graceful metaphor that provides coherency and unity to contradiction and

disjunction; rather, it is a “politically informed map” (Braidotti, 1994c, p. 181), a cartographic

weapon, that charts a “line of flight” (Deleuze & Parnet, 1987, p. 125) into turbulence masked by

the simulacrum called coherence. A figuration is no protection from disorder, since its aim is to

produce a most rigorous confusion as it jettisons clarity in favour of the unintelligible…Thinking

with a figuration is “living at a higher degree, at a faster pace, in a multidirectional manner”

(Braidotti, 1994c, p. 167). Thinking with a figuration may also lead to a seeming impasse where

the desire to understand what is “really going on” must be sacrificed, and the researcher must

learn not to balk at the task of working bewilderment for all it’s worth. (St.Pierre, 1997a, pp.

280-81)

Not understood as pure imagination opposed to reason or as fantasy, imaginaries (figurations)

function in spaces of transitions and transactions, as unstable and contingent, opening (to)

possibilities for creating a different kind of work and for thinking and writing differently; of


10

‘explor[ing] possibilities immobilized for so long by [modernist] fixities’ (St.Pierre, 1997a, p. 281).

The imaginaries presented by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) that I open with here – rhizome, plateaus

and assemblage~multiplicity – together in their complex relationships explain the expression and

the content of the thesis-assemblage; and, when necessary to the conversation, these imaginaries (as

rhizomatic operations) are further explicated throughout. Alongside these, the imaginary of nomad

informs and performs the process of the research and its writing, intermingling with

de~territorialising lines of flight and smooth spaces. Others, such as milieu, becoming,

singularities, and monad are introduced into the discussion throughout in the moments they are put

to use. To avoid overly fracturing the discussion, some are merely footnoted in passing. In using

these imaginaries, I do not prefer any one as central, rather I present them as working together

with/in complex arrangements that vary in different moments, with explanations of one drawing

on/in others, often not yet explained. Various researchers (and readers), consider one or another to

be of leading significance to their reading, writing, research methodology and emerging

understandings of the moment. For example, for Stagoll (2005), difference and becoming are key;

for Boundas (2005), ‘intensity is a key notion’ (p. 131); Braidotti (1994a) claims rhizome is the

leading figuration, although later says the central figuration is ‘a general becoming-minority, or

becoming-nomad, or becoming-molecular’ (Braidotti, 2001, p. 392). As Colebrook (2005) says:

‘Each definition of each term is a different path from a text, a different production of sense that

itself opens further paths for definition’ (p. 3). Thus, the order in which I present my understandings

of imaginaries I use, relates to my (e)merging understandings of how they work and how I put them

to work in this thesis-assemblage. Working with/in a middle~muddle of rhizome, it does not much

matter which one I open with, so I have chosen the one that first caught my attention.

rhizome

Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizomatic approach to thinking~reading~writing perturbs

conventional order/ing, sequencing, categorising and linearity, including that represented in/by the

(metaphorical) tree of knowledge. The arborescent thinking of the tree of knowledge utilises

concepts of branches and roots through which we ‘receive’ knowledge from the past, develop it

within the present and pass its fruits on to future generations. Such arborescence supports binary

logic, representing linearly ordered systems of thinking (Alvermann, 2000), which are fixed and

rooted so that what is beneath the surface mirrors what is above. Although there is opportunity for

thought to divert and digress, it happens genealogically, through ‘a logic of tracing and

reproduction’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 12). Tracing involves continuous repetitions of

structural patterns already present, and reproduction is the continuous reconstitution of the closed

structure or fixed entity. Both tracing and reproduction produce more of the same by following a


11

sequentially ordered process through links between points and positions that are restricted to a

particular place, reaching conventionally logical and coherent conclusions.

Figure 1: Rhizome~multidimensional, a-centred. (Drawing by Warren Sellers)

Figure 2: The Internet, ceaselessly establishes connections. (Source: http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/gallery/isp-ss.gif)

In contrast, heterogeneous connectivity characterises the complexity of a rhizome, rhizomatic

thinking and research methodologies, such as rhizoanalysis. A rhizome is comprised of ceaseless

interrelational movements – flows of connections – among numerous possible assemblies involving

both the disparate and the similar. Etymologically, rhizo- means ‘combining’ and in botanical terms

a rhizome is a prostrate or subterranean root-like stem, which assumes diverse forms, from multi-

directional surface extensions (kikuyu grass) to thick, swollen tuber-like masses (iris, root ginger).

Because the botanical rhizome moves horizontally and expands multi-dimensionally, its points of

regrowth, its shoots and roots, are chaotically a-centred, taking on a complex existence, as it spreads

outwards (extending), inwards (expanding), upwards (shoots), downwards (roots) (Figure 1). In

terms of thought and thinking, the Deleuzian rhizome maps processes that are ‘networked,

relational and transversal’ (Colman, 2005b, p. 231). A rhizome familiar in abstract or virtual terms,

but also ‘real’ and actual is the Internet (Figure 2).

Together, these two images illuminate the complexity involved in working rhizomatically. They

open (to) a chaotic or differently-ordered approach to thinking, writing and analysing research data,

for example, as thoughts and ideas shift, (re)turn, (re)form (unlikely) connections, move in

unexpected directions, perform surprises. ‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the

middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo… proceeding from the middle, through the middle,


12

coming and going rather than starting and finishing’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25). Simply put,

‘the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and…and…and…”’ (p. 25); ‘a rhizome may be

broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines’

(p. 9). Ants are an animal rhizome that defies being rid of – the rhizome collapses momentarily,

perpetually ‘prolonging itself, breaking off and starting up again’ (p. 20); any part of a rhizome may

be connected to any other.

Thinking rhizomatically thus opens (to) endless possibilities for approaching any thought, activity

or concept, towards generating and assembling many and various ways of being and operating in

the world. However, diverging from the conventional and familiar is challenging for reader and

writer as rhizo-thought is concerned with flow and movement rather than with fixed endpoints or

stable, specific conclusions. What matters to generating plateaus in this thesis-assemblage is the in-

between-ness of flow and movement, rather than the points of connection or their positions of

location. Recording this somewhat elusive flow calls on an amassing of open(ing) imaginaries,

which in themselves, defy discrete explanations; how they are understood is very much the reader’s

prerogative. Deleuze and Guattari avoid assigning any one meaning to their imaginaries, preferring

they ‘reverberate’ through ‘shifting contexts in which they are put to use’ (Lorraine, 2005, p. 207),

thereby characterising non-totalising fragmentary wholes. Final definitions are beyond reach;

expressing possibilities for future uses is what matters, such as: ‘What new thoughts does it make it

possible to think? What new emotions does it make it possible to feel? What new sensations and

perceptions does it open to the body?’ (Massumi, 1987b, p. xv). Thinking and writing

rhizomatically is, and performs, an open system that is ceaselessly converging and diverging as

thoughts continue to simultaneously emerge and merge, or (e)merge. For example, writing as a

method of inquiry (Richardson, 2000b) or travelling as nomad, ‘in the thinking that writing

produces in search of the field’ (St.Pierre, 2000b, p. 258). In this nomadic~rhizomatic way I

negotiate my writing and processing3 of this thesis-assemblage.

A rhizomatic approach to my writing, thinking and academic inquiry involves other Deleuzo-

Guattarian imaginaries and explaining plateaus comes next. Plateaus disturb, disrupt, decentre,

disperse, destabilise, and dispense with the linearity of conventional academic writing. Cognisant of

the interplay among imaginaries, rhizomes generate plateaus, rhizomes and simultaneously plateaus

work rhizomatically. Generating plateaus becomes an endeavour of intensities.

3 Processing, as in to go along or through. In working generatively, processing is more appropriate to the thesis-assemblage than progressing, which communicates linearly additive forward movement and advancement.


13

plateaus

Deleuze and Guattari use Bateson’s expression of ‘plateau’ as a ‘continuous, self-vibrating region

of intensities’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 22) constituted so as not to develop any external end or

final climax (p. 158), rather, ‘a plateau is reached when circumstances combine to bring an activity

to a pitch of intensity that is not automatically dissipated in a climax’ (Massumi, 1987a, p. xiv).

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe plateaus as ‘any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities

by superficial underground stems’ (p. 22), through connections that ‘defy the imposition of external

constraints’ (Lorraine, 2005, p. 207) and intensify the rhizome. As with rhizome, plateaus are

always in the middle of intensities.4 Plateaus are open systems comprised of dynamic spaces in flux,

of in-between-ness – intermezzo – with/in which numerous possible pathways and connections

(may) exist and (may) be explored. Marc Ngui (2005), in his exceptional visualisations of passages

from A Thousand Plateaus, depicts (Figure 3) how freely flowing plateaus (green ovals) work in

contrast to structured linear thinking and writing (brown boxes).

Figure 3: Freely flowing rhizomatic plateaus and structured linear thinking. (Drawing by Marc Ngui, 2005)

Working rhizomatically or writing with/in plateaus means being always already processing through

middles, blurring any possible bounding of (the) continuously (e)merging plateau(s). This disturbs

any sense of culmination or end point; as rhizome, a plateau is never a complete or definitive entity.

Plateaus are never wholly formed, they are recursively (re)constitutive so that we can only ever talk

about some of a rhizome or some of a plateau (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 9) – (a) rhizome is

4 Intensities do not work additively with the multiple, rather, working multi-dimensionally, they generate a multiplicity, whereby many ‘intensities catalyse the actualisation of the virtual, generating extension, linear, successive time, extended bodies and their qualities’ (Boundas, 2005, p. 132).


14

made of plateaus is made of (a) rhizome is made of plateaus… spreading multi-directionally,

intensifying multi-dimensionally. Thus, being always in the middle, amidst everything, generating

and generated by circles of convergence, ‘[e]ach plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be

related to any other plateau’ (p. 22). There is an always already connecting or forming of linkages

towards creating something unpredictably and incipiently different. A(nother) plateau emerges

when connections outside of external constraints are put into play, these plateaus becoming

intensities that reverberate according to their unfolding, not determined by conventional boundaries

(Lorraine, 2005).

In this thesis-assemblage, although plateaus do not have to be read in any particular order, as each

one works as a reflection of the fragmentary whole assemblage, the reading is likely eased by first

engaging with this plateau that explicates the opening imaginaries, through/with/in which I expect

some budding ideas will unfold. Creating an assemblage, as a gathering of plateaus rather than a

series of linearly ordered chapters, opens (to) an (e)merging of such possibilities and (to) spaces for

their becoming. Plateaus become both expression and content. Becoming-plateaus becoming-

assemblage; this assemblage of plateaus becomes the thesis-assemblage becomes (an)

assemblage(s) of plateaus…

An aside: As noted above, discussing any one imaginary involves others. ‘Becoming’ for

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in not about serial progression or regression; it is about and is

rhizome, producing nothing other than itself (pp. 238-39); plateaus are intensities of becoming.

Semetsky (2006) describes becoming as dynamic processes through/with/in which an

assemblage ‘changes in nature as it expands its connections’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 8).

Becoming is thus characterised by the production of events, in which every instant is unique ‘in

a continual flow of changes…in an ongoing cycle of production…For Deleuze, the present is

merely the productive moment of becoming’ (Stagoll, 2005, pp. 21-22). Becoming ‘should [thus]

be qualified’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238), such as in becoming-child, becoming-world,

becoming-imperceptible or becoming-assemblage. This is elaborated in the children and

childhood plateau.

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) explain their writing as a circular exercise, in that lines were written as

seemed appropriate to a heterogenous space~time block of ‘coexistence and succession’ (p. 329);

not in a prescribed linear progression, but within fluid temporal and spatial moments. Following a

flow of ideas meant moving freely in their thinking from one space~time~plateau to any other,

processing without concern for completing the discussion in one space before moving to another,


15

making circles of convergence so that reading the plateaus can start anywhere and be linked to other

plateaus at will – the plateaus are be(com)ing and (re)constituting and forming an assemblage,

making connections between various multiplicities. Assemblage, already mentioned, now appears

for explication, along with multiplicity. As assemblage and multiplicity seem inextricably

intertwined, so I discuss them together.

assembling multiplicities~multiplicitous assemblages

For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), a multiplicity is not a multiple entity of discrete parts; it is ‘not a

collection of units that remain the same’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 59). Rather, multiplicities involve

continuous multi-dimensional expansion, generating and bringing together an infinite variety of

thoughts, thinking and ideas, many times over. An assemblage can then be considered as the

increasing dimensionality of a multiplicity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), any assemblage generated

from/through its connections with/in a multiplicity (Colebrook, 2002). In the moment a multiplicity

emerges, it simultaneously irrupts into a web of proliferating fissures, which converge in (another)

space (Massumi, 1992). Multiplicities are rhizomatic, multi-dimensional intensities, which are

always-already changing. An assemblage is then characterised as multi-dimensional movement, a

multiplicity changing as it attracts and repulses connections with other multiplicities, changing and

altering through lines of flight and deterritorialisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 8-9).

Understanding multiplicity depends on its workings and by various movements through it, cutting

across and carrying it away, opening to other assemblages. It is territory and its connections that

make the assemblage, with connections constituted by lines of deterritorialisation, opening the

territorial assemblage onto other assemblages (pp. 504-05).

The thesis-assemblage becomes an assemblage through heterogeneous processes of connectivity

and interactivity, changing in nature as linkages expand, working towards creating an ever growing

fragmentary whole (Colebrook, 2002). This assemblage works with re(con)ceiving young

children’s curricular performance (in one early childhood setting) in curriculum. The assemblage

includes variously overlapping plateaus, which will merge differently for different readers in

different readings. The plateaus include discussions of: (Re)conceiving curriculum, children’s

curricular performance, images of children and childhood, play(ing), discourses of power and

feminist~poststructuralist research, researching with children and rhizomatic research.

Intermingling throughout are connections to the literature, data and rhizo-methodology. So while

any plateau generates an assemblage as it works to bring together various fragmentary intensities of

the complex whole, the gathering together of plateaus, whether related or disparate, generates more

of the assemblage, multiplicity or rhizome…of plateaus generated with a multiplicity emerging as


16

an assemblage appears. This opens (to) unexpected, disparate, productive connections towards

creating nascent ways of thinking and learning~living.

Appropriately located in the middle of discussing imaginaries, nomad (e)merges from/with/in

rhizome and plateaus.

inquiring~thinking~reading~writing as nomad

Modernist thought presents as fixed, grounded and stable, with subject and object operating in a

separated inside and outside. Nomad thinking disturbs the linear rationale and logic of such

essentialised thought, enabling open systems of thinking to come into play in affirming ways, even

when its object is (seemingly) negative. There is no limit to what can be thought, at least for those

willing ‘to put their imaginations to work’ (Gough, 2006a, p. xiv) as thoughts roam freely, wander,

flow outside familiarity towards generating ever-expanding territories of difference and passages of

thinking. Movement and territory under negotiation are entwined – each exists with/in the other, in

open or smooth spaces as matter-flow. There is no anchoring or assignable reference point, nor are

there confining boundaries. In nomadic mo(ve)ment5, one can rise up, move to, and array oneself in

any other space (Coleman, 2002). When working nomadically to explore spaces for possible

happenings of things different and perhaps incipiently different, questions about truth and meaning

are cast aside in favour of, how does it work? and, what new thoughts now become possible to

think? (Massumi, 1992). Within nomadic spaces of rhizomatic inquiry of this research, following

St.Pierre (2004) other questions include: What exists here in the space of the play and in play-

space? What else might there be in these spaces? What other spaces might there be other than the

physical surroundings and the enacted play? What might happen in those other interactive spaces?

Nomad thought rides difference (Massumi, 1987a); it works by: ‘travel[ling] in the thinking that

writing produces’ (St.Pierre, 2000b, p. 258), processing from/through (the) middle(s), coming and

going rather than starting and finishing, moving back and forth through a middle~muddle of ideas

and through a complexity of dimensions. Nomad thought opens (to) multi-dimensional readings of

texts and data by skirting around the text, entering pleats, and folding one text on/in/to another,

(Richardson, 2000a). It resonates with laying-down-a-path-in-walking and negotiating enactive

spaces of possibility for mindful awareness through back-and-forth communication among inner

and outside worlds of lived experience and knowing oneself (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993).

Nomad thinker works to understand interrelationships of text, topic and writer (Richardson, 2000b).

5 Mo(ve)ments meaning both moments and movements.


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In the inquiry of thinking~reading~writing, St.Pierre (2000b) understands this as (re)turning to

spaces already worked – mental spaces, textual spaces and theoretical spaces – in itself challenging

as such spaces have inevitably changed, and continue to change with each engagement. However,

continual (re)visiting and (re)turning to spaces of/within plateaus becomes a way of opening (to)

hitherto unnoticed possibilities. As St.Pierre intimates, any concluding thoughts or after-wording

turns out to be but a preface of preceding echoes as a need~desire to negotiate more (of the)

middle(s) becomes apparent. This rhizo~nomadic inquiry involves deterritorialisation (continually

(re)negotiating boundless spaces), destratification (generating undefined and undefinable smooth

spaces) and lines of flight composed of unlimited ‘directions in motion’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 21) of both thought and thinking; it embodies notions of connection and heterogeneity,

substantive multiplicity, nonsignifying rupture, and mapping and tracing (p. 21); it is about creating

a network of a-centred interconnections (Morss, 2000). All becoming a mass of middles, clusters of

plateaus, arrays of multi-dimensional movement.

de~territorialising lines of flight

Lines of flight are about how things connect and ‘evolve in creative mutations’ (Lorraine, 2005,

p. 144); they are about (e)merging, about movement towards change (Parr, 2005).

Deterritorialisation is ‘the operation of the line of flight’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 508),

foregrounding the ‘creative potential of an assemblage’ (Parr, 2005, p. 67). It is the movement of

leaving a territory that simultaneously becomes a re-territorialising movement, when a territory is

established once more – like the surface of a mobius strip, these movements happen on the same

plane, they are not polar opposites. Lines of flight are thus dynamic mo(ve)ments of

de~re~territorialisation that operate through/with/in creations, conquests and changes of

territorialities, continually making (dis)connections. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) explain, a

rhizome~plateau~multiplicity~assemblage is:

made only with lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of

flight or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes

metamorphosis, changes in nature. These lines, or lineaments, should not be confused with

lineages of the arborescent type, which are merely localizable linkages between points and

positions. (p. 21)

While every assemblage is composed of connecting territories, it is also composed of lines of flight

or lines of deterritorialisation that cross through it and carry it away from its current form (Deleuze

& Guattari, 1987, p. 504). Lorraine (2005) recalls Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) work of/in A

Thousand Plateaus as a deterritorialising performance. She points to their deliberately designing the


18

content and expression of the book to foster lines of flight in thinking – both theirs as writers and

those of readers. Lorraine (2005) explains these lines of flight as:

…thought-movements that would creatively evolve in connection with the lines of flight of other

movements, producing new ways of thinking rather than territorialising into the recognisable

grooves of what “passes” for philosophical thought. Interpretations, according to Deleuze and

Guattari, trace already established patterns of meaning; [in contrast] maps pursue connections or

lines of flight not readily perceptible to the majoritarian subjects of dominant reality. Deleuze

and Guattari wrote their book as such a map, hoping to elicit further maps [of continually

(dis)connecting lines of flight], rather than interpretations from their readers. (pp. 145-46)

However, not all lines of flight are productive with potentially altering qualities. There is a danger

that a line of flight can become a line of destruction, reconstructing rigid lines of segmentarity

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

smooth nomadic spaces

Smooth spaces operate as ‘an open space throughout which things-flows are distributed’ whereas

striated spaces are concerned with ‘plotting out a closed space for linear and solid things’ (Deleuze

& Guattari, 1987, p. 361). The nomad operates within smooth spaces and is oriented to an

understanding of speed and movement rather than being confined in coded (striated) spaces, which

are defined by positions and points. Smooth spaces are characterised by passages and passaging in-

between, with ‘points’ becoming relays to be passed through in mo(ve)ments of speed and slowness

– ‘the life of the nomad is the intermezzo…points [forming] relays along a trajectory’ (p. 380).

Nomadic mo(ve)ment is not so much about moving from place to place, being positioned in one

oasis and then another. It is about speeding~slowing through open spaces of shifting ‘points’;

following ‘rhizomatic vegetation’ (p. 382), for example, that appears in different places according

to the rains, so that passages of crossings are constantly changing. The nomad arrays her/him/self in

open spaces, moving ‘while seated’ and being ‘only seated while moving’ (p. 381) rather than

‘entrenching [her/himself] in a closed space’; s/he ‘can rise up at any point and move to any other’

(Massumi, 1987a, p. xiii). However, smooth spaces operate in conjunction with striated spaces,

each continually affected by passages of de~re~territorialisation of the other – ‘[s]mooth space is

constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being

reversed, returned to a smooth space (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 474). This suggests that the

smooth spaces of rhizo~poststructuralist thinking, for example, can never be completely devoid of

the attention of/to modernist trappings, lurking in the shadows.


19

But, foregrounding a rhizo~poststructuralist approach, as St.Pierre (2000b) is awake to, my

passages through thought and thinking of this research are a nomadic journey of travelling while

seated. In some mo(ve)ments I become lost in shifting space~times (in a desert of research and

writing) of a middle~muddle of the territory (with data and rhizo-methodology being like sand

dunes). Spaces (of data, writing and text) are continually shifting with/in various mo(ve)ments,

generating imaginaries that are constantly unfolding in a never-ending thesis-assemblage. The

opening imaginaries of rhizome, plateaus and assemblage along with nomad, deterritorialisation,

lines of flight and smooth spaces explain something of my performance of a rhizo approach to the

research and the thesis-assemblage. More of this unfolds throughout the telling of this rhizo-

research story, in the data, methodology and literature, throughout the various plateaus. Important to

the story now is acknowledging my subjectivity.

my subjectivity

I speak and write as whitened, female Aotearoa New Zealander of European origins. As pākehā6,

that is non-Māori, I acknowledge my relationship with Māori, the indigenous people of my

homeland. This is significant: as citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand I am classified New Zealand

European, but in Europe I am not European as I was not born there, I am Caucasian; in the US I am

white; in Australia I am kiwi; in Aotearoa New Zealand I choose to be pākehā. I grew up in an

upwardly mobile working class family and have operated in a middle class world most of my life.

My feminist beliefs and poststructuralist thinking affect my living~learning. In everyday living and

working, I understand myself as woman~wife~mother~daughter~grandmother~early childhood

teacher~teacher educator~student. In these I am representative of both dominant and minority

positionings – dominant in my whiteness and as teacher; a minority as woman and working in early

childhood. In different moments, any of my subjectivity situated-ness may come to the fore. This

web of interconnectedness is a multiplicity of complex, ambiguous and contradictory experiences

characterised by overlapping (dis)continuities, always already rhizomatic and embodied. I thus

consider my subjectivity as fluxive, provisional, partial and in continuous conditions of becoming,

such as becoming-woman becoming-feminist becoming-poststructuralist thinker becoming-

researcher – the lack of commas here indicating the interconnectedness of rhizomatic flows of

becomings.

6 Pākehā translates as ‘non-Māori’, meaning non-indigenous New Zealanders, but is commonly understood as the dominant, white majority of European origins. However, working with a non-indigenous understanding, includes all cultures not Māori, such as Asian, African, American, European, and Melanesian etc.


20

Another aside about becoming: I am aware that the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of becoming-

woman is controversial for some feminist scholars. Although my attention in the thesis-

assemblage is with becoming-child(ren), Deleuze and Guattari (1987) say that becomings

‘always pass through a becoming-woman’ (p. 291). Braidotti (1994a) expresses ambivalence to

this idea, which she ascertains neutralises gender dichotomies to overcome sexual difference; by

dissolving the subject ‘woman’ towards transformatively processing ‘becoming-woman’, a

gender-free becoming, ‘woman’ disappears into the forces that structure her. Similarly, Grosz

(1994a) says Deleuze and Guattari ‘fail to notice that the process of becoming-marginal or

becoming-woman means nothing as a strategy if one is already marginal or a woman’ (p.188).

Citing Irigaray (1985), Grosz says also that becoming-woman, paradoxically, ‘prevents women

from exploring and interrogating their own specific, and nongeneralizable, forms of becoming,

desiring-production, and being’ (Grosz, 1994a, p. 189). However, Braidotti (2001) admits that

she bends Deleuze for her own needs as she works with the idea of the ‘subject as the plane of

composition for multiple becomings’ (p. 410). She approaches subjectivity in terms of a

‘constructive paradox’, in which becoming is central to the project (p. 395).

(Re)turning to the position from which I speak, in this research, I also occupy the dubious position

of speaking for young children. As adult articulator of the project, I work to (re)present children and

their childhood(s), the stories they communicate of their curricular understandings and to illuminate

their becomings through/with/ all of these. However, even in thinking I can speak for/about them, I

am by extension co-opting their ‘voice’ and risking (mis)appropriation. The approach I take to

researching with children inevitably means I must say something, although knowing what I ‘know’

in this moment7, I would likely choose to do it differently another time, by writing the children into

the research in ways so that their words and activity does more of the talking.

In attempting to dynamically alter the way I think about thinking, in particular towards thinking

differently (from the ‘norm’) about children, childhood and curriculum, I work with/in an array of

connections among a multiplicity of (im)personal force-affects embodied throughout all the

plateaus. Throughout the thesis-assemblage, I work with an understanding of poststructuralist

feminist theories to deconstruct the pervasive scientific orientation of developmental influences

towards presenting young children as equitably power-full players in curricular performance and as

equitably knowledgeable theorists of adult conceptions of curriculum. In working Deleuzo-

Guattarian philosophy into early childhood education, Olsson (2008) explores different ways of

7 In the closing moments of writing the thesis-assemblage.


21

thinking about subjectivity and learning, ‘presenting movement as flows of belief and desire, [this]

constituting the starting point of all change in subjectivity and learning’ (¶ 3). She foregrounds

processes of children’s desires for their learning ‘rather than trying to predict, supervise, control and

evaluate them according to preset standards’ (¶ 3) that impede movement. In using inventive

methodologies, she demonstrates processes of subjectivity and learning as being inseparable from

the undertaking of the research itself. She says that ‘one must find another logic for how to treat

what takes place in between constructed and imagined entities such as individuals and

societies…[so that] children through their own collective desires produce new realities in the

classroom’ (¶ 5). Confronting the individual|society binary, which she contends immobilises

subjectivity and learning, resonates with my challenge to the adult|child binary (as blocking

children’s expressions of learning~living) and reflects feminist challenges to oppression of women

that link with oppression of children and their childhood(s) (Alanen, 2005; Firestone, 1972). Taking

different approaches, such as Deleuzian philosophy inspires, the modernist univocal approach to

discourses of the child and childhood is collapsed, giving way to other (re)presentations, which

affirm a multiplicity of differences among child(ren), childhood(s) and conceptions of adulthood; a

‘positivity of differences’ (Braidotti, 1994b, p. 164). Olsson’s approach also resounds as

‘performative utterances’ as young children’s expressions of ‘rhizovocality’ (Youngblood Jackson,

2003, p. 707) and opens (to) possibilities for working with my dilemma within this research of

needing to articulate the children’s expressions of their understandings within their childhood(s);

hopefully, as authentically as is possible, from/with/in my adult understandings, through my

subjectivity, using my adult(erated) perceptions.

reading~writing the thesis-assemblage rhizo-nomadically with/in/through plateaus

Generating plateaus rhizo-nomadically, rather then developing chapters linearly, is the

methodological work of this thesis-assemblage and is relevant to its reading. Through rhizomatic

writing and in the process of writing the rhizome, as writer~reader~text I/you become an

assemblage of ongoing change and alterity, as a multiplicity of passages are illuminated for

approaching any idea, thought or concept and negotiating such spaces as they appear. All are in

flux, in constant processes of becoming; a collection of (in)discrete plateau-like (non-)entities

connected temporally and spatially towards forming (a) fragmentary whole(s), always already

(e)merging. This is not about adding things at the boundaries of the

thinking~conversation~discussion~writing, rather, it is about intensifying dimensions (from)

with/in (a) middle(s) towards generating plateaus of intensities and intensities of plateaus.

Assembling this assemblage is about writing about things as they arise in my thinking~reading –

not so much following through one area without interruption. Eruptions/irruptions are to be


22

followed; plateaus (e)merge, and are negotiated as they are appear. Ideas do not necessarily claim

any hierarchy in the thinking, they merely move from the shadows and are illuminated

alongside/with/in the reading~writing~thinking journey. Following lines of flight, I flow in and out

of boundless territorial spaces, cutting across and carrying away rhizomatic thought and thinking,

exploring ‘spaces in which something different might happen’ (St.Pierre, 2004, p. 287),

dis/con/junctions accumulating into a-centered masses of understandings.

Having opened possibilities with/in/for the writing~reading of the research journey, the option is

now open for negotiating the plateaus as they are presented or following other lines of flight.

Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa.

Let us keep close together, not wide apart.

May we experience togetherness in our journeying through the plateaus, as a reading~writing~

thinking assemblage of multidimensional extra/inter/textual experiences, always in conversation

about (our) difference.

Reconceiving curriculum~mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming

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opening this reconceiving curriculum plateau

In the work of this plateau I bring reconceiving into play for thinking differently or turning about

how curriculum is conventionally conceived, to generate another way of conceiving of curriculum –

as (a) milieu(s) of becoming. In the recursivity of reconceptualising curriculum where re implies

ongoing processes at work, a modernistic, structured expectation lingers that a new concept will

eventually be arrived at. My endeavour is not structured in this way or intended as a corrective

mechanism and I do not pretend to such a directly reconceptualising exercise per se. Rather, in my

reconceiving, I work towards al(l)ways thinking differently about curriculum. I thus negotiate some

aspects of early childhood curriculum, involving conversations about historical philosophies

affecting early childhood curriculum, a genealogy of reconceptualising early childhood curriculum,

influences of developmental psychology and sociocultural approaches on early childhood

curriculum and an unravelling of Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), the Aotearoa New

Zealand national early childhood curriculum statement.

In recent decades, an extensive body of scholarship has emerged generating diverse possibilities for

reconceptualising early childhood curriculum, away from a technicist focus on the curriculum. This

has been influenced by work from poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial perspectives within

sociological, psychological and critical theories in particular. Works that mark turning points

include: Silin (1987; 1995), from a philosophical perspective, explores the predominant knowledge

base that has historically informed early childhood curriculum, challenging the recent reliance on

psychological considerations – misconstrued for educational goals; Kessler and Swadener (1992)

situate their queries about early childhood curriculum as sociology of curriculum; Bloch’s (1992)

critical feminist perspective queries the emphasis of positivist traditions, such as developmental

psychology, on early childhood research and practice; Miller (1992) brings a feminist

autobiographical understanding to the conversation; Jipson (1992) enacts a feminist form of

pedagogy; Cannella’s (1997) critical perspective deconstructs economic and political concerns and

promotes social justice for young children, and with Viruru opens these to postcolonial

understandings (Viruru & Cannella, 2001).


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Interdisciplinary scholarship is extensive with critical work overlapping and represented (among

others) by:

• Early childhood cultural studies (Cannella & Kincheloe, 2002; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence,

1999; Grieshaber & Cannella, 2001; Yelland, 2005);

• Feminist perspectives (Hauser & Jipson, 1998), including identity (Davies, 1989) and

sexuality (Robinson, 2005; Surtees, 2005);

• Developmental psychology (Cannella, 2005; Walkerdine, 1998/1984) including critiques of

developmentally appropriate practice (Bloch, 1991; Hatch, Bowman, Jor'dan, Morgan, Hart,

Soto, Lubeck, & Hyson, 2002; Jipson, 1991; Swadener & Kessler, 1991; Walsh, 1991);

• Sociological perspectives (Prout, 2005); ethics and politics (Cannella & Viruru, 2004;

Dahlberg & Moss, 2005);

• Professionalism (Lubeck, 1996; Stott & Bowman, 1996) and classroom practice

(MacNaughton, 2000; Ritchie, 2001).

During the twentieth century three models of education dominated, with differing interpretations of

curriculum (Stott & Bowman, 1996). One requires a passive child, socialised in a uniform school

culture through indoctrinating her/him with a standardised and lock-stepped curriculum. Another

assumes a biologically driven child doing what comes naturally, with biological readiness

determining curriculum goals and methods. A third promotes education as progressive, as a

transforming experience in which learner and teacher share control of the process by working

equitably. Over the past fifty years or so, the conversation about curriculum has turned from a

reliance on understandings of the major technical paradigm towards critically questioning what

curriculum is – how curriculum understandings evolved and how curriculum became what it is –

and how it is enacted. The what and how of curriculum has thus been traditionally understood in

many ways: as a course of study; as material or artefacts used in a course of study; as intended

learning outcomes; with a focus on process; as being synonymous with education; about design and

planning; about development of materials; about instructional strategies and saleable packages;

about instruction and evaluation (Pinar, 1975a, p. 400).

Historically, curriculum has been imbued with shifting meanings. The word ‘curriculum’ derives

from the Latin infinitive currere, meaning to run: ‘a running, a race, a course’ (Egan, 2003, p. 10).

In this understanding, the activity of the process is foregrounded, as in to ‘run the racecourse’

(Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000, p. 329). In the mid 1970s, in a critical response to these

artefact-oriented approaches, Pinar (1974, 1975b) with Grumet (Pinar & Grumet, 1976) called on

the notion of currere to bring the context of learning into the conversation as well as the lived


25

experiences of the learner. They use currere to refer to a method and theory of reconceptualising

curriculum as educational experience:

[Currere] describes the race not only in terms of the course, the readiness of the runner, but

seeks to know the experience of the running of one particular runner, on one particular track, on

one particular day, in one particular wind … Educational experience is a process that takes on

the world without appropriating that world, that projects the self into that world without

dismembering that self…. (Grumet, 1976b, p. 36, italics added)

In the 1970s, the scholarship of Pinar and Apple marked the emerging interest in reconceptualising

curriculum. Using an autobiographical perspective, Pinar (1974) foregrounded the significance of

understanding the nature of personal educational experiences, working ‘multiplexed directions’

(Marshall, Sears, & Schubert, 2000, p. 218) that involved phenomenological, psychoanalytical,

deconstructional, and autobiographical understandings. Apple’s (1979) ideological critique of

curriculum uncovered ramifications for institutions, particularly the interplay among education and

power in schools and texts (Marshall et al., 2000). Both Apple and Pinar were passionately

committed to the emerging reconceptualist field, but their differing perspectives distanced them

from each other.

Early childhood education scholars who engaged with this reconceptualist challenge as

anthropologists, sociologists, feminists, historians and early childhood educationists included Beth

Swadener, Mimi Bloch, Shirley Kessler and Janice Jipson (Beth Swadener, personal

communication, July 31, 2008). Notable others were: Sally Lubeck, Daniel Walsh, Jonathan Silin

and Joseph Tobin (Lambert & Clyde, 2000). Their work opened the ongoing critique of

developmental approaches to understanding children’s growth and learning and to curricular

practices. Drawing on poststructuralist~feminist theory and working with Deleuzo-Guattarian

imaginaries, I work to further deconstruct the scientific orientation of developmental influences on

early childhood curriculum towards generating curricular understandings that welcome children and

their understandings as equitable play(ers) in/of curriculum. Also, linking to this plateau are the

Rhizo-mapping and Children performing curriculum complexly plateaus, which respectively present

mapping as a way of making sense of children doing learning and the complex milieu of children’s

curricular performances from the data.

once upon a time, curriculum was…in western understandings…

Two thousand years ago in classical times, Cicero used curriculum to mean a relatively

contextualised living and learning process, viewing the temporal space in which people lived as a


26

container within which things are studied (Egan, 2003). However, despite this metaphorical linking

of temporal space (container) and intellectual pursuits (content – the what), pedagogical issues such

as method and instruction (the how) were not questioned. Centuries later in the pre-print medieval

world it remained a given that the master taught the novice, and by the end of the nineteenth

century, curriculum was still understood simply as content – the syllabus. The what of curriculum

was the focus; pedagogical processes of how received less attention.

However, questions about pedagogical processes of how evolved, how best to teach having

combined practical and theoretical implications. This is evident in the theoretical and practical work

of Rousseau, Itard, Seguin, Montessori and Dewey, for example, much of which was interested in

developing methods and procedures for the education of abnormal and disadvantaged children that

informed teaching within normal schooling. 8 As schooling became more universal, it became a

political necessity and economic concern to ask fundamental curriculum questions about what it is

important to know and what knowledge is worthwhile (Marshall et al., 2000, p. 220). What children

should be taught and how that should be taught have thus become contested issues from both

practitioner and policy-maker perspectives alongside academic discussion drawing from

psychological, philosophical, sociological, political sub-fields. Despite extensive questioning of

curriculum through the past two thousand years, Egan (2003) is bold enough to say that nothing

much has changed in how curriculum is understood. Tracings of what and how pervade.

historical westernised philosophies of early childhood education

While the notion of childhood emerged during the sixteenth century (Ariès, 1962), the seventeenth

and eighteenth century pedagogical treatises of Comenius, Locke and Rousseau are commonly

regarded as significant indicators of an emerging awareness of early years education and

curriculum, although Plato’s legacy two thousand years earlier records his ideas and thinking about

education of the young (Silin, 1995; Wolfe, 2000; Yolton, 1998). Plato promoted the value of

educating young children with a concern for what they were to be taught (values) and how (stories

and poetry were the method of their earliest education), towards creating a Utopian state. Comenius

(1592-1670) advocated sense-based learning for children up to six years old, addressing both the

what and how of learning, in terms of method and materials. His social agenda as a bishop

promoted education for the greater good of society. In 1690 Locke (1632-1704) published an essay

8 I use the terms ‘abnormal’ and ‘normal’ as in the times and work referred to. Contemporarily, they are contestable terms challenging an implied deficit of children and raising ideological questions such as: Who decides how ‘ab/normal’ is defined? For what reasons? Which children are perceived as needing intervention? How are these children to be managed?


27

containing a rudimentary developmental psychology, tracing development from infancy to

adulthood. Play was important to learning, education being a pleasurable experience towards a

better society. Locke was more concerned with the how than the what, with virtue a more important

outcome of education than any subject-specific knowledge. Rousseau (1712-1778) appreciated

childhood as a specific period in life, in which infancy (the first five years) was to be lived as fully

as possible, the focus not on preparation for the next period. In addressing individual differences,

motivation, stages and learning styles, his work heralded the child study movement and presaged

child-centred education. The what of education was determined by the child being allowed to grow

and develop naturally; the how was by means of this natural flow of experiences facilitated by the

teacher, but very much dependent on the child’s desire to learn. His educational philosophy is less

about specific techniques of the how and more about a processual how that ensures children absorb

information and understand concepts (the what).

In 1835, Froebel established a school for young children called Kleinkinderbeschaftigunganstalt (an

institution where young children are occupied), but, as his ideas developed about children growing

and learning, he renamed the new institution Kindergarten (kinder, child; garten, garden)

conveying his sense of a nursery where young plants are nurtured. This Froebelian Kindergarten

later became a catalyst for the development of early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Froebel had great respect for children and childhood and in his Kindergarten children’s cognitive

capacities were cultivated through an ordered programme designed ‘to awaken their abilities,

stimulate their mental activities and produce an inner organization’ (Wolfe, 2000, p. 82). He

believed that early education, in which children were actively involved in a quest for knowledge,

was significant to achieving a better society.

The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life…To lead children early to think,

this I consider the first and foremost object of child training…Knowledge acquired in our own

active experience is more living and fruitful than that conveyed only by words. (Froebel, 1908,

p. 55)

Through Froebel’s work, we see an emerging role of child study (through observations documented

by the teachers he employed) in early childhood education and the beginnings of formulated

developmental stages with implications of readiness for constructing knowledge (Silin, 1995). He

believed that children progressed through infant (0-3 years), child (4-7 years) and boyhood (8-10

years) stages – never girlhood – and that successful completion of each stage was essential for

attainment in the next. He coined the term early childhood to describe the infancy and child stages,

considering that play in early childhood was central to learning and to adult life:


28

…play at this time is not trivial, it is highly serious and of deep significance…the spontaneous

play of the child discloses the future inner life of the man. (Froebel, 1908, p. 55)

However, the potential for working with the child’s interests, spontaneity and free play were limited

by his ordered programme and didactic approach. Froebelian curriculum focused on the what

(prescribed by his teaching resources called ‘gifts’ and ‘occupations’), achieved through the how

(working with the gifts and occupations).

The work of Dewey (1859-1952) promoted the progressivist belief that early childhood curriculum

should be built on psychological principles, which in turn should inform teaching as more than just

methods of presenting facts (Silin, 1987). Alongside Froebel’s rationalist thinking for education,

Dewey’s democratic ideals have influenced early childhood educational approaches significantly in

Aotearoa New Zealand, in particular the Kindergarten movement. Dewey’s experimental

Laboratory School was a learning community in which home and school were an integrated whole,

with teachers, children and parents involved as co-educators. The child’s interest in any given

subject was crucial – ‘It is not a question of how to teach the child geography but first of all a

question of what geography is for the child’ (Dewey, 1897, quoted in Wolfe, 2000, p. 206). The

teacher’s role was to ascertain what the children’s interests were and to furnish them with

opportunities and conditions to carry active investigations through extended periods of time. This

was not child-centred learning as such, as teachers and their subject knowledge were integral.

Dewey’s was not a traditional content-oriented curriculum; curriculum was both content and

process, the what and how integrated in ways meaningful to the student. Knowledge was a by-

product of processes of learning, being inseparable from the activity that produced it. Curriculum is

thus understood as experience and subject matter and interactions with people and the environment;

there was no place for rote learning. Also, play was central to this process of learning by doing,

requiring children to think about actions and processes of the world they live in. Dewey’s view of

curriculum was that activity (the how) and subject matter (the what) needed to be considered

equally, to avoid a false dualism.

linking Dewey and Deleuze

For Dewey, subject matter was neither stable nor prescriptive; he understood content (the what) as

being in flux, constantly changing and situated contextually:

Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the

child’s experience; cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see


29

it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are

simply two limits which define a single process. (Dewey, 1943, p. 11)

Dewey thus conceives of curriculum as emerging from the experiences of the child, the child’s

experiences becoming curriculum. This converges with the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of becoming,

as the child becomes curriculum, curriculum becomes the child so that curriculum and child are

always already becoming – becoming-curriculum, becoming-child – recursively changing and

embodied within each other. How the what manifests and what the how is, or how they both work,

blurs in/to/with/in territories of child and curriculum. Both curriculum and child manifest as fluid

and diverse, intensifying through/with/in processes of (dis)continuities, or of de/territorialising.

Dewey’s work is commonly understood as a series of related projects of logical, progressive

development (Wolfe, 2000), also that the whole experiential situation precedes the process of

knowing (Semetsky, 2006). But, in encouraging teachers to connect the interests of the children to

everyday activities in the adult world, teaching in a Deweyan way becomes less of a linear exercise

and more like ‘laying down a path in walking’ (Varela, 1987, p. 48). For example, an excerpt from

the Program of Group III (Age Six) (Mayhew & Edwards, 1966/1936) tells the story of a learning

journey as these children negotiate a (rhizomatic) pathway through subjects related to curricular

areas of the natural/living world, technology (woodwork, cooking) and through social worlds, with

peers, teachers, the school community and the outside community. Over an extended period of time,

this particular group of children moved through an array of connected topics that grew out of a farm

project. In this one can see the complexity of curriculum in action and children’s curricular

performance. The learning activity happened over more than a year, although as Mayhew and

Edwards’ narrative closes, there is a sense that the sheep/wool exploration was barely beginning.

Reflecting what had already happened, ongoing exploration may have involved spinning, weaving,

dyeing, knitting, crocheting, sewing, textiles, other fabrics, clothing, plays, costumes, fibres, goat

hair, mohair and so on…

As well as the extent of the topics (the what) investigated and how the project evolved through the

children’s desires and explorations, what is inspiring is how it worked. The project had grown

through a year, although ‘the project’ documented had grown out of earlier ‘projects’, which begs

the Deleuzo-Guattarian inspired questions: Did projects ever actually begin and end? If so, where?

And, is it possible to define beginnings and endings anyway? It seems the project described was

part of an ever growing, multi-dimensional, middle of intensities – a milieu of becoming. There was

no attempt to curb the direction or extent of the children’s learning desires or to take over in any


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way and the narrative suggests that the teachers were as engaged with the project as the children,

quietly waiting for moments when their knowledge could enhance what was already happening –

embodied learning of works in progress. It appears that this fluid approach to learning and teaching

continues, as The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools website states: ‘The curriculum of the

Laboratory Schools is by no means set in stone. It changes. It evolves. It is a work in progress’ (The

University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, 2008-09)..

Semetsky (2006) identifies an affinity between Dewey and Deleuze’s work, bringing Dewey’s

‘naturalistic epistemology and aesthetics’ and Deleuze’s ‘conceptual space’ of becoming together to

address the relevance of one to the other in education (p. xxi). She demonstrates a continuity of

thought between them in relation to the experiential and experimental nature of their respective

philosophical inquiry, such as their common understandings of teaching and learning as a ‘research

laboratory’ (p. 119). The virtual interaction (of her making) between them also illuminates ‘the

presence of an organizing vital force which is “free, moving and operative”’ (Dewey, 1925/58,

quoted in Semetsky, 2006, p. xxiv) akin to the Deleuzo-Guattarian (1987) nomad, rhizome,

de~territorialising lines of flight and smooth spaces of assemblage~multiplicities. In this, Semetsky

recognises ‘a living spirit’ in their works, implying that each ‘lives in his works’, and, I infer, in the

works of the other (p. xxiv).

reconceptualising early childhood curriculum

The 1970s marked a significant turning point in the characterisation of curriculum, both

conceptually and methodologically as supporting structures were reconceived, turned back on

themselves, revealing an abundance of rich experiences previously concealed (Grumet, 1999). This

work represented a reaction to the Tylerian tradition (Tyler, 1949), which promoted a technicist

model with clearly defined subject areas, and limited curriculum to overt behavioural objectives

(Kincheloe et al., 2000). Scholars dedicated to reconceptualising curriculum understood curriculum

as being complex, beyond Tyler’s rationale (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995). They

worked to (re)shape the curriculum field by illuminating philosophical, historical and political

dimensions of learning~teaching (Kessler & Swadener, 1992; Marshall et al., 2000), promoting

curriculum not as a sequence chart or a list of objectives, but as processual, interdisciplinary

experience involving theoretical, social and cultural phenomena, through which ‘all life experiences

are valued for their potential to inform and inspire learning’ (Kincheloe, et al., 2000, p. 325). Pinar

(1974) and Apple (1979) provided significant challenges to conventional approaches to curriculum

(as mentioned above) and from Grumet’s (1976a) autobiographical perspective, reconceptualising

became a reflexive project, placing conceptual understandings alongside lived experience. These


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exemplify the shift from practical interests in the development of curriculum to a theoretical/

practical interest in understanding curriculum (Pinar et al., 1995), which was not only about

developing alternatives to the curriculum, but about reconceiving ideas about mapping the field of

curriculum. Reconceptualising is then, not so much a paradigm shift but more about shifting ground

(Marshall et al., 2000, pp. 195ff.).

This philosophical shift in reconceptualising curriculum – from a focus on a technicist development

of the curriculum towards developing philosophical understandings of what curriculum means in

practical and theoretical terms – was also attended to by early childhood educationists as they

reconsidered and re-imagined (other) ways of thinking about early childhood curriculum. From the

early 1980s, critical theories of curriculum, ideology, power and knowledge in curriculum, as well

as historical questions about curriculum formation and the inherent power relations, appear in early

childhood research and literature. Contributions from those interested in early childhood education

included in the UK: David’s (1980) radical social ideas that questioned teacher-student

relationships and foregrounded links between home and school and Walkerdine’s (1998/1984)

critique of developmental psychology, which emphasised child-centred pedagogy. There were also

contributions from the USA, such as: Suransky’s (1982) dissertation on the erosion of childhood;

King’s (1992) work foregrounding the significance of context in children’s play, disrupting

dominating developmental analyses; and Ayers’ (1992) contribution in bringing teacher’s

autobiographical accounts of their teaching experiences into scholarly conversations, of researchers

and policy-makers. Annual curriculum theory conferences from 1983 through the early 1990s were

a prime forum for reconceptualist work in the USA and Marianne Bloch (personal communication,

August 5, 2008) notes that the discussion opened here was significant to reconceptualising early

childhood education.

From within this reconceptualising project, many early childhood curricularists, practitioners and

researchers confronted the reliance on psychological considerations, commonly misconstrued as

educational goals that silence sociological and philosophical perspectives (Silin, 1995). While

developmentalism loses some of its hold, governmental economic and political agenda override

critical concerns (Cannella, 2005), concerns all-too-frequently left in the shadows by (pre 1970s)

dominant bodies of thought. Contributions to the conversation from critical sociological and

feminist perspectives of curriculum, include the works of Miller (1982, 1999), Davies (1989) and

Silin (1995). Critical decolonising research that works to make audible all voices has also informed

the endeavour (Bishop, 2008; Smith, 1999, 2008; Soto & Swadener, 2002; Swadener & Mutua,

2007). Issues of power, diverse lived experiences of children and indigenous knowledge are brought


32

into the curriculum conversation (Bishop, 2008; Grieshaber & Cannella, 2001; Quintero, 2007;

Reedy, 2003; Ritchie, 2001; Ritchie & Rau, 2003). The perpetual question resounds – Whose

knowledge is privileged? (Bloch, 2007) – and another sounds – Who chooses what research

methodology? (Rhedding-Jones, 2007).

a reconceptualising project ~ Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa

In the early 1990s, early childhood curriculum was being revisited in Aotearoa New Zealand and,

although distanced, in effect contributed to the reconceptualist project underway worldwide.

Although with a somewhat different initiating agenda, the early childhood curriculum national

statement that was developed, Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa9

(Ministry of Education, 1996) happened through a governmental initiative, as part of the education

reforms of the late 1980s. In 1988, the government established a working group to investigate the

mission of early childhood education (Department of Education, 1988) and in 1990 Helen May and

Margaret Carr won the tender to develop curriculum guidelines for developmentally appropriate

programmes. Their proposal represented a re-conceptualisation of the previously dominant

westernised approach to early childhood curriculum development, presenting content, process,

context and evaluation as interdependent (Te One, 2003).

In extensive consultation with the sector and informed by Māori understandings of development

and pedagogy gifted by Te Kōhanga Reo10, the bi-cultural curriculum model (Te Whāriki) was

developed that embodied tikanga Māori.11 This document presented (as) a sociocultural approach

and despite the contract brief requiring developmentally appropriate guidelines, specifics of these

were sidelined, and the westernised brief was essentially displaced. Te Whāriki embodies a Māori

philosophical approach, opening ways for diverse cultural understandings and socially just practice,

similar to reconceptualist concerns in the UK and the USA. The principles (empowerment~

whakamana, holistic development~kotahitanga, family and community~whānau tangata, and

relationships~ngā hononga) underpinning the model represent parallel, complementary Māori and

western understandings, as do the interwoven strands (well-being~mana atua, belonging~mana

whenua, contribution~mana tangata, communication~mana reo, and exploration~mana aotūroa).

(Figure 4) 9 Commonly referred to as Te Whāriki. 10 Te Kōhanga Reo are early childhood Māori immersion programmes established in 1984 to promote and nurture Māori language (Te Reo Māori) and culture (tikanga Māori). 11 I use the term bi-cultural with caution. Although Te Whāriki is understood as a bi-cultural document, I acknowledge Durie’s (1998) concern with the term. He talks in terms of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) for all cultures, reflective of cultural values and beliefs.


33

Figure 4: Te Whāriki’s woven mat of principles and strands. (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 13)

An approximate literal translation of Te Whāriki is that it is a woven mat; and the subtitle He

Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa translates approximately into ‘the strands of

the woven web of knowledge for the children of New Zealand.’ However, a Māori perspective

works not so much with a literal understanding of the words, but more with whāriki as a metaphor

for bringing together or interweaving various topics and issues around the scope for education of

young children in Aotearoa New Zealand (Thomas Tawhiri – Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Raukawa –

personal communication, December 22, 2008). An accepted pākehā12 academic explanation is that

Te Whāriki provides a metaphorical mat, for all to stand on, of interwoven principles and strands

for diverse early childhood programmes to work with – to weave differing perceptions of children

and their communities in ways that create their own curriculum patterns in the fabric (Podmore &

May, 2003). This considers learning as complex and functional understandings of knowledge and

12 That is, non-Māori, but commonly understood as the dominant white, western.


34

skills attached to specific sociocultural contexts, ‘rather than a staircase of individually acquired

skills’ (May & Carr, 2000, p. 163), all too frequently considered preparation for schooling. It values

early childhood learning in itself, encouraging formative rather than summative procedures. Te

Whāriki thus becomes a curriculum space whereby all languages and cultures can thrive

authentically, not just as add-ons (Mara, 1998). The weaving of principles and strands together

express ideals and aspirations for young children and possibilities for working respectfully across

cultures, weaving people and cultures together. However, some scholars argue that there is a need

for more critical engagement with implications of the sociocultural ideals for teaching practice

(Cullen, 2003; Duhn, 2006; Edwards & Nuttall, 2005), towards furthering possibilities for Te

Whāriki as a catalyst for change.

In this presentation of curriculum as principles and strands, Te Whāriki is not a prescriptive,

definitive document, rather, it provides direction; content is not specified and proposed learning

outcomes are indicative only. It is curriculum without ‘recipes’, a ‘dictionary’ of possibilities (May

& Carr, 2000). However, the articulation of learning outcomes (i.e. examples of experiences that

help meet these outcomes) and key curriculum requirements for infants, toddlers and young

children slip back to western developmental theory and achievement expectations. From my

observations, these learning outcomes in particular are all-too-often diligently adhered to, without

the critical concern Cullen (2003) expresses a need for. As Cullen notes, many programmes reflect

those of the 1980s and early 1990s when the developmental discourse dominated. So while Te

Whāriki represents significant changes in thinking about curriculum and what it means for children

and their childhoods, it also represents the difficulties of trying to think and speak differently within

the worlds of educational theory and practice, in which modernist concepts and language pervade.

But, the problematic then arises of how to articulate these in ways relevant to the everyday worlds

of teachers. For the moment there seems no alternative other than promoting ongoing practitioner

critique and reflexivity and trying to work other ways of thinking into our repertoire.

Ongoing reconceptualising of curriculum works to disrupt the pervasiveness of modernist,

developmental modes of thinking within early childhood curriculum (See, for example: Cannella,

1997, 1998; Cannella & Kincheloe, 2002; Cannella & Viruru, 2004; Grieshaber & Cannella, 2001;

Jipson & Johnson, 2001; Kincheloe, 1997; Yelland, 2005). There is, however, no one way towards

reconceiving curriculum by way of this reconceptualist task, rather it is multidirectional and

multidimensional, being continually critiqued and revised, emerging from collective conversations,

and using new inventions and new languages (Cannella, 1997, pp. 160-61), such as readings of

Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy may open.


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introducing reconceptualising

Reconceptualist work has revealed that what we think we know about children and curriculum is

affected by the values and biases of those who dare to speak and theorise about these issues. Lubeck

considers this a somewhat risky enterprise: ‘To reconceptualize is to be angry and to dream’

(Lubeck, 1991, p. 168). More pragmatically, however, Cannella (2005) considers that

reconceptualist work questions overt and hidden agendas of particular knowledges, circumstances

under which certain beliefs evolved, how ‘truths’ have been constructed and who has been/is

supported, hurt, privileged, disqualified (Cannella, 2005). In questioning what we do, why we do it,

whose interests are served, and the (un)intended consequences of these, we begin to understand

what is missing and what could be. The implications of these questions, such as, critiquing

ideological assumptions, desiring change for a greater good, appreciating a misfit of educational

curriculum with processes of living, imagining difference and responding passionately and

creatively to personal ideals, are intermingled (explicitly and implicitly) throughout this thesis-

assemblage.

The political agenda (both personal and societal) about curriculum does not, however, deter an

ongoing general curricular focus on how and what. In considering issues of method and procedure

(the how), a considerable philosophical challenge arises:

The difficulty in admitting the question, how, into curriculum matters is that there becomes little

of educational relevance that can be excluded from the curriculum field. This means that one can

do almost anything in education and claim plausibly to be working in “curriculum”. (Egan, 2003,

p. 69, italics added)

Yet, should this be problematic as Egan implies, given the complexity of the world we live in? For

example, currere (Pinar & Grumet, 1976) complexifies curriculum through its autobiographical

experiencing that includes the contextual as relevant to the postmodern condition with/in which we

live.13 Similarly, Grumet (1999) characterises the nature of curriculum as inextricably entwined

relationships of living and learning.

currere for reconceptualising

Currere (Pinar, 1974) breathes life back into traditional views of curriculum, considering

curriculum as living and lived experience that learners engage with, towards enhancing the knowing

13 Furthering currere, Warren Sellers invents the notion of c u r a to explicate contextual inclusiveness as a performance of merging living and learning, as living~learning, as embodying ‘continuous~various~diverse~learning experiences that are always-already occurring’ (Sellers, W., 2008, p. 207).


36

and knowledge of their inner and personal worlds. In exploring the nature of experience, it is not

about content and differs from process. It is about existing in educational contexts, involving a shift

in ‘cognitive insight’ as well as ‘affective insight’ (p. 167). Teachers must also learn how to become

students of currere, to become students of them/our/selves. As reflexive practitioners, we seek to

understand our own learning processes as we attempt to unravel young children’s understandings

about their learning as we learn alongside young children.

The significance of the educational journey is with engaging with the nature of the experience,

educational and otherwise. For example, we might ask of ourselves as teachers~students – at the

same time considering how it might be for young children – questions similar to those Pinar (1974,

pp. 152-3) asks: How does it feel to be uprooted from my daily life, geographically, socially,

psychologically? What is my experience of this place, its people, of other children~learners~

teachers? What emotions are evoked? When? Why? How do I respond? What do my responses tell

me? Do I actually want to make this particular learning journey? Did I have a choice? What about

my peers~teachers~students~colleagues, their motives and interest in me? What can we learn from

each other? These kinds of questions, requiring a reflexive response to inner experiences, work to

inform currere, moving away from a purely what-how agenda, foregrounding the ‘nature of my

existence within the educational context’ (Pinar, 1974, p. 155). Pinar maintains that this approach –

of studying the experience of the educational journey and the journey of the educational experience

– is a more apt interpretation of curriculum when considering the Latin derivation, currere. This

links to Deleuze and Guattari’s urge to work rhizomatically with mapping as another way of

thinking, one that disrupts a linearly ordered, rational approach. Mapping is conceived as:

open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant

modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an

individual, group, or social formation…it always has multiple entryways…the map has to do

with performance…. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 12)

Interestingly, currere, (Pinar, 1974) as a way of reconceptualising curriculum, emerges only a

moment before Deleuze and Guattari’s (1976) imaginary of rhizome, with both offering an/other

approach(es) to thought and thinking about curriculum. In presenting the learning~teaching~

curriculum assemblage as contextual, with complex and generative possibilities, Pinar’s

autobiographical approach critiques the dominating scientist, technicist conceptions of curriculum.

Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical discourse around the activity of thinking differently perturb

the logic and rationale of modernity’s arborescent thought and open (to) (poststructuralist)

possibilities for thinking curriculum otherwise/other ways, although Deleuze and Guattari refused


37

the label poststructuralist. However, Pinar was a dedicated reconceptualist and the reconceptualist

project continues along with the Deleuzo-Guattarian project of thinking differently –

‘Reconceptualization is never finished; it is not a doctrine or an end point, but constant critique

from which new constructions emerge’ (Cannella, 1997, p. 161).

Reconceptualising is a continuous, never-ending process, never complete with questions never fully

answered; it is about working with incipiently different thinking of other ways of thinking. I believe

there is a multiplicity of multidirectional and multidimensional ways and spaces, with/in which

reconceptualising work can move. These spaces are characterised, partially, by the biases and

values we lay open as we admit our own histories, culture, contextual and temporal experiences to

the conversation, in the process, ‘respecting and valuing multiple realities and possibilities’

(Cannella, 1998, p. 173).

(re)turning to ‘what’ and ‘how’

While the historic undermining of the centrality of content may be conceived as potentially

problematic to traditionally modernistic views of curriculum, it is worth noting that the Te Whāriki

(Ministry of Education, 1996) definition of curriculum for early childhood education in Aotearoa

New Zealand contextualises the almost-anything-claim-to-plausibility. The documentation of Te

Whāriki affirms diversity, stating that everything surrounding learners and learning matters and

simultaneously avoiding specifics of what and how, and curriculum is described as:

the sum total of the experiences, activities, and events, whether direct or indirect, which occur

within an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development…curriculum is

provided by the people, places, and things in the child’s environment; the adults, the other

children, the physical environment, and the resources. (Ministry of Education, 1996, pp. 10-11)

This inclusive understanding of curriculum as experiential is a commonly accepted, albeit variably

practised, characteristic of early childhood curriculum Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a working and

pertinent response to Egan’s (1978) philosophical challenge to curriculum, in which he posits a

(supposed) general failure of nerve, vision and direction by contemporary educationists:

To know what the curriculum should contain requires a sense of what the contents are for. If one

lacks a clear sense of the purpose of education, then one is deprived of an essential means of

specifying what the curriculum should contain. More commonly now, this problem is stated in

terms of the accumulating pace of change, making decisions about a content-based curriculum

meaningless. Who can specify what skills will be needed in the future? This manner of stating


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the problem exemplifies the failure of nerve: it suggests we have no control over the future; we

cannot make of it what seems best to us. (Egan, 1978, p.70, original italics)

However, I would argue that the question, ‘who can specify what skills will be needed in the

future’, does not require a content related response, though complicated it may be. Rather

curriculum needs to respond to complex and ecologically sustainable issues of living~learning and

to do otherwise lacks nerve, vision and direction. We demonstrate considerable nerve and vision

when we are willing to say ‘no’ to prescribing curriculum and ‘yes’ to opening (to) possibilities for

rethinking what curriculum means, to change our perspective(s), to open to incipiently-different

ways of thinking about curriculum(ing), to (re)visit the (ongoing) (re)conceptualising curriculum

endeavour. So, as Egan (un)intentionally points out, making content-based decisions about

curriculum as it relates to the learning of young children in particular appears redundant. The

questions: How does curriculum work for young children? How do young children make

curriculum work? open curricular possibilities for now and the future.

Egan (2003) does allude to curriculum being understood as functional, in saying that ‘knowing what

the curriculum should contain requires a sense of what the contents are for’ (p. 14, original italics,

underline added), or what do children want to do with the what? To take this part of the challenge

seriously, we need to take young children seriously and openly receive their curricula performances

as expressions of their understandings. Adults may not know best. Considering what young children

(may) do with/in curriculum is significant to understanding how it (may) work(s) for them.

It is feasible that young children’s ideas about the what/how needs of their own learning could be as

relevant and appropriate to their future lives as any adult predictions, whether educationists,

politicians or parents. Their conceptions of curriculum could well inform, or even comprise a more

visionary approach. In 1986, Schubert states that ‘every individual in the final analysis must direct

his or her own learning. Thus, every person, regardless of his or her age, is in charge of his or her

own self-education…be they children, adults, or entire communities’ (1986, p.6). Assuming ‘every

person’ includes young children – Leavitt (1994) would also include infants and toddlers – this

opens possibilities for young children to be supported in growing their chosen learning capacities,

in so doing, expressing (to the imperceptive adult world) their curricular understandings. All this,

without prescriptive constraints imposed by adults – curricularists, policy-makers, educationists,

parents even – who commonly claim to know what young children’s learning should comprise and

how they should go about it. The adult world most often sees no need to question whether mature,


39

rational adults do indeed know ‘best’, oblivious to the notion that younger human beings can

participate in curriculum in a critically aware manner (Phillips, 2008).

Deleuze (in Foucault & Deleuze, 1980) adds credence to the above proposition. He believes that

young children’s (verbal and non-verbal) expressions about their learning are not listened to and the

potential impact on the educational system of their expressions is not acknowledged. In a

conversation about the nature of power-imbued reforms, he states that reforms are frequently

‘designed by people who claim to be representative, who make a profession of speaking for

others…’ (Deleuze, in Foucault & Deleuze, 1980, pp. 208-209). He asserts that if the ‘protests of

children were heard in kindergarten, if their questions were attended to, it would be enough to

explode the entire educational system’ (p. 209). This is a power-full statement. I am reminded that I

presume to speak for young children and while ever-mindful of not (mis)appropriating their

intellectual spaces, I am an agent of this adult(erated) system of power…and…from a Foucauldian

perspective, (re)conceptualising curriculum is inevitably part of this system of power…and…while I

admit responsibility for self-consciously writing reflexively, this discourse inevitably forms part of

the power-imbued system of reform that I continue in writing this thesis-assemblage. Ever-mindful

that (my) reflexivity is continuously foreshadowed by power-full systems, I am aware of ‘slip[ping]

inadvertently into constituting the very self that seems to contradict a focus on the constitutive

power of discourse’ (Davies, Browne, Gannon, Honan, Laws, Mueller-Rockstroh, & Petersen,

2004, p. 360), and of attempting not to inasmuch as it is (im)possible to do so. The conversation is

always already (im)partial.

In a study exploring how children aged six to eight years were making meaning and expressing

their understandings of their worlds through ‘graphic-narrative’ play, Wright (2007) reports that

‘many of their abstract concepts demonstrated wisdom which seemed…well beyond their years’

(p. 24). Tapping into such wisdom may not be a straightforward exercise as Moloney (2005)

considers that effective ‘hearers of children’ (p. 217) need to be well-trained and well-skilled in

operating with considerable openness, and that making sense of children’s wisdom requires a

reciprocity of ‘telling and listening’ (p. 216). Making sense of the expressions of curricular

performance of the four and a half to five year olds of this research is similarly challenging. Even

though, in scholarly terms young children have no theoretical understandings of curriculum, they

often communicate what works in regard to learning~teaching by their willingness to participate –

or not. For example, Marcy14, aged two, the child who inspired this research, demonstrated

14 See Letter to Marcy in Preceding echoes.


40

forcefully and confidently what mattered for her learning in the moment she resisted leaving her

puzzle unfinished because it was time to sit at a table and listen to a story; she even attempted a

compromise by planting herself firmly on my knee as I sat nearby. Both actions were to no avail as

I was informed that this was typical of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour. My non-developmentalist reading

was that Marcy was demonstrating her understanding of doing learning, wisdom not beyond her

years, but beyond the comprehension of the adults in the room at that moment. However,

psychological developmentalist perspectives prevail.

developmental psychology influences early childhood curriculum

Psychological interpretations of early childhood curriculum evolved through the study of child

development. These psychological influences, although supposedly fading (Prout, 2005), are

nonetheless pervasive in early childhood curricular theorising and practice, promoting western

perspectives of a universal, individual, normal child. Informed by the direct observation of children,

the child study movement aimed to utilise scientific findings on what children know and when they

should learn it as a way of understanding the means of progress in human life. Normal

developmental stages were thus universalised in child development studies, this positivist world-

view legitimising a predetermined sequence of experiences with which early childhood education

could work. Information gained from observing this supposedly ‘normalised’ child could then be

used to structure appropriate educational environments, providing for developmentally determined

interests of individualised children. But these views overlook the fact that valorising normalcy

limits possibilities for children and positions those who define what is ‘normal’ – adult experts – at

the top of a hierarchy of power.

Early childhood education became conflated with child development and learning with

development. Child study morphed into the new science of child development, which required

positivist methodology that was experimental and deemed to be rigorous, objective and

quantitatively measurable. Kessler (1991) contends that the qualities of the subsidiary concept of

development became exaggerated to the extent that it replaced education as a lens through which to

view early childhood programmes. Walkerdine (1998/1984) explains that the psychological

perspective of child development was constructed to privilege objectivist, scientific approaches and

individualism. For example15, Piaget’s maturationist view of children developing through

predictable and sequential stages was in opposition to a naturalistic view of inherited or pregiven

intelligence associated with a Social Darwinism position. Piaget’s theory evolved through the 1950s 15 Other stage theorists having significant influence on early childhood education were Freud, Gesell and Erikson, although Piaget remains the most notable.


41

when the emerging technocratic ideology optimistically valorised the scientific method of

behaviourism. Psychoanalysis also thrived at this time and alongside these, child-centredness

evolved in the 1960s within a pedagogy of child study. Then, learning theory (Bruner, 1986)

evolved, similarly describing development in universal terms, as an individual process, ignoring

culture (Rogoff, 2003). Walsh attributes the widespread acceptance of Piagetian theory in early

childhood education to a comfortable blend of Piaget’s stages of development with the romantic

maturationism of the first half of the twentieth century. However, he notes that it is curious that

allegiance to Piaget – who was neither educationist nor psychologist – remains strong despite

weaknesses in the individualistic perspective, as revealed by Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach to

development.

Vygotsky’s (1978) social constructivist perspective on development and learning posits that

individualised psychology is culturally mediated, that we learn through interaction with others, that

thought develops socially and that we are because of others. Through social interactions, a child

learns the habits of mind of her/his culture, through which s/he derives meaning and this affects the

construction of her/his knowledge, the specific knowledge acquired by children through these

interactions representing the shared knowledge of a culture. But, as Cole and Wertsch (Cole &

Wertsch, 1996) suggest, the strengths of both Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories complement their

respective weaknesses and to debate the primacy of the individual or the social serves no useful

purpose. A more recent sociocultural response to young children’s growth and learning is Rogoff’s

(1998) personal, interpersonal and community/institutional planes of analysis, which adopts these

three lenses for viewing the sociocultural complexity involved. ‘Using personal, interpersonal and

community/institutional planes of analysis involves focusing on one plane, but still using

background information from the other planes’ (p. 688), thus engaging more authentically with the

cultural nature of human development.

Despite movements to engage with sociocultural contexts, the contemporary discourse of

developmentally appropriate practice [DAP] continues to work with individuality (See Bredekamp,

1987; Bredekamp & Copple, 1997) Although DAP reflects universalism, assuming that knowledge

of children’s development determines what makes worthy practice, Damon (1998) reports that such

grand, universalising systems are no longer viable. Similarly, Soto (in Hatch et al., 2002)

recommends researchers and practitioners ‘pursue more liberal, liberating, democratic, humanizing,

participatory, action driven, political, feminist, critically multicultural, decolonising perspectives’

(p. 450). Working with diverse perspectives is to be encouraged (Edwards, 2004; Grieshaber &

Cannella, 2001), and happens by promoting the significance of both ‘the larger cultural context, and


42

the immediate local context’ (Walsh, 2005), of the early childhood setting and the accompanying

contextual beliefs and expectations. It is about recognising the function of multiple perspectives of

culture and situation (Bruner, 1996; Rogoff, 2003) and understanding that human existence does not

conform to a predetermined reality. The primacy psychology gives to individual cognition, in the

process sidelining the complexity of sociocultural contexts for making meaning of who we are, who

we have been, and who we might become, is to be challenged (Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn,

& Walkerdine, 1998/1984).

Cognitive developmental theory privileges the construct of the individual over collective

orientations, also privileging stereotypically male and deterministic assumptions that presume to

know the mind of the child (Cannella, 2005). Henriques et al. (1998/1984) disturb such

psychologically-based assumptions and associated self-understanding, challenging normative

understandings of subjectivity through the notion of embodied subjects. They claim that psychology

can renew itself only by engaging with ‘a multiple, relational subject not bounded by reason’

(p. xviii). However, despite the theoretical critique, several doctoral studies out of Aotearoa New

Zealand suggest that teaching practices are resistant to change and that developmental traditions

remain strongly influential (Dalli, 1999; Jordan, 2003; McLeod, 2002; Nuttall, 2004).

unravelling the weaving of Te Whāriki ~ generating matting towards mapping

While Te Whāriki is presented as regular, linearly ordered weaving in 1996, May and Carr’s (2000)

more recent metaphorical explanation of the whāriki alludes to complexity. In contrast to the ‘step’

model of the traditional developmental curriculum based on physical, intellectual, emotional and

social skills, which dominated western curriculum models in the past, and which arguably lingers in

early childhood practice, May and Carr say that as centres weave their own curriculum within

conversational and planning spaces, a curriculum ‘spider web’ is created. In merging this spider

web with a woven ‘tapestry of increasing intricacy, complexity and richness’ (Smith, 2003, p. 7) a

rhizomatic mapping emerges. The woven mat now appears as a matting of complex possibilities, a

curricular multiplicity continuously working to enrich children’s emerging understandings and

intensities of (their) learning.

In an earlier, tentative exploration (Sellers, M., 2005), I played with the idea of matting – echoing

Deleuzian mapping (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) – as a way of interrupting the orderliness of the

conventional weaving Te Whāriki represents. This idea of matting resonates with the metaphorical


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image Surtees (2003) presents of unruly paniculata, such as puawānanga16 (Aotearoa New Zealand

native clematis) (Figure 5) and with tangled threads of felted fabric (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Puawānanga (Aotearoa New Zealand

native clematis). (Author photo) Figure 6: Felted fabric as matting – showing tangled threads. (Source: http://www.alchemyfibrearts.com/

userimages/procart13.htm)

Surtees (2003) unravels the woven mat as she shifts possibilities for Te Whāriki to include

children’s sexuality, making visible children as sexual beings and including children whose parents

refuse heteronormativity. She que(e)ries the principle of holistic development when the ‘weft that

weaves’ (p. 146) the whāriki includes cognitive, social, physical, cultural and spiritual dimensions

but excludes children’s developing sexuality. Without arguing with Carr and May’s (1993)

metaphor of the four kauri trees used in the development of Te Whāriki – the four kauri trees being

the guiding theorists Piaget, Erikson, Vygotsky and Bruner – or the rationale for using them to find

a path through the forest of curriculum development, Surtees notes that the over reliance of

developmental, structuralist and biologically-based theories at the expense of poststructural and

humanities-based perspectives distorts our thinking about young children’s growth and learning.

Using queer theory, she says that there is space in the whāriki for the weaving of alternative threads

and suggests adding puawānanga (native clematis) to the forest to include the contribution of queer

16 Puawānanga (flower of the skies), one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s native Clematis species, adorns the upper layer of our native bush, trailing up forest trees.


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theorists: ‘Queering the whāriki in this way gives rise to endless possibilities as the previously

unquestioned dominance of the kauri is disrupted and troubled by the unruly [puawānanga’s]

weaving under, over and through the forest’ (Surtees, 2003, p. 150). The tangled network of

puawānanga provides a visible, above-ground image not unlike the network of a biological rhizome

that often exists out of sight underground although sometimes in a tangled matting above ground

(e.g. kikuyu grass), so entangled that it is hard to see what is happening. The unruly puawānanga,

while different, tells a similar story.

Te Whāriki, as a metaphorical woven mat, depicts the orderly weaving of principles and strands

into an objective construct, but it is possible to extend our reading of this complicated order (as in

Deleuzo-Guattarian tracing) to include complex rhizomatic concepts (as in Deleuzo-Guattarian

mapping). (Re)conceptualising early childhood curriculum as complex matting, as a milieu of

becoming, chaotically a-centred traversed by processual lines of flight opens possibilities for

uncovering interwoven systems that map unanticipated connections and enable a rhizomatic

exploration of ways – including those not yet thought of – for (re)conceiving early childhood.

Thinking of Te Whāriki as rhizomatous matting becomes a way for teachers, children and

researchers to appear in different curricular spaces, spaces unconstrained by conventional linear

ways of thinking and operating. In such spaces we can process through learning by continuously

asking: What else exists in these spaces of learning? In this way, complex curricular

understandings, particularly children’s, become visible.

With their roots in one place and their stems wandering through the foliage of other plants,

puawānanga are perhaps representative of a liminal space between arborescence and rhizomatic

growth, between the firmly rooted tree (of knowledge) and the wandering~rooting~shooting~

amassing systems of rhizomatous matting (of curriculum as a milieu of becoming). While useful to

seeing how rhizomatous matting works, the fixed rooted-ness of puawānanga is limiting, whereas

multi-dimensional rhizomatic flow frees opening(s) (to) a multiplicity of possibilities. Thinking of

curriculum as mapping a milieu of becoming is one such possibility.

~curriculum as (a) milieu(s)~

‘From chaos, Milieus and Rhythms are born.’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 313, original italics)

In rhizomatic thinking, the Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical milieu embodies all three translations

of ‘surroundings’, ‘medium (substance)’ and ‘middle’ (Massumi, 1987a, p. xvii). In (a) milieu(s),


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there are no beginnings or endings from which linear sequences derive, rather, middles or milieus

work to intensify the embodied multidimensionality of thought and thinking. A milieu grows and

overspills through flows that constantly radiate both outwards and inwards – ‘nomadic waves’ or

‘flows of deterritorialization’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 53) go from a centre to a periphery, at

the same time the periphery falls back upon the centre and launches forth to a new centre in relation

to a new periphery. In this way the milieu is continuously (re)constituted as it oscillates through a

multiplicity of states of interior elements, exterior milieus, differential relations of intermediate

milieus between interior and exterior conditions, as well as through associated milieus of energy

sources. As children play – a curricular performance or curricular performativity – their personal

interiority operates with an exteriority of their games, constantly (re)negotiating storylines of

intermediate milieus, and always in relation to other children playing games nearby, constituting

energy sources of an associated milieu.

In this intensifying activity, there is an interlacing of ‘active, perceptive, and energetic

characteristics in a complex fashion’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 51) as all kinds of milieus ‘slide

in relation to one another, over another’ (p. 313). Relative to curriculum, these rhizomatic milieus

can be understood as sliding among: children and adults in reciprocal relations; theories of play and

children’s spontaneous games; discourses of learning and teaching; children’s social(ising)

performance; children’s and adults’ negotiations of power-fullness; children mapping their playing

and playing their learning; historic curriculum theory and contemporary discourses represented

in/as Te Whāriki; and, discourses of children and childhood of various era. Through ‘transcoding’

or ‘transduction’ one milieu is constituted or dissipated in another, one atop the other, one alongside

the other. The work of the kinds of milieu listed above does not stay within specific boundaries; any

one is able and likely to (e)merge from/with (any of) the others. For example: as historic discourses

of childhood affect children’s expressions of power-fullness, and adult interpretations of these; or,

as theories of play affect understandings of children’s spontaneous games. The games children play

are of chaotically complex milieus (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 51).

From psychological and sociological perspectives, a game could be interpreted as a platform for

individual children to develop skills for operating in the wider social world, but rhizomatic thinking

works to illuminate it as a milieu of interiority, exteriority, intermediary spaces and associated

energy sources. These interlacing characteristics of children’s games include the storylines narrated

by the children as they play (children often talk about what they are doing), the spaces of

(mis)understandings among players about the game, which on one plane are circumscribed by the

proposed but contingent storyline and on another are reflected in a liminal space with/in/through


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which characters emerge or fade away. More of the milieu of the game includes the players, their

play-full activity and their energy forces, the physical territory of the game and the surrounding

environment, including natural resources and material artefacts. There is also the imaginative

territory of the game, the teachers and children nearby, and, possibly more. All this, remembering

that expressions and movement of the milieu are irreducible, as everything is always already

chaotically becoming with/in/of/through the children’s playing of games. Deleuze and Guattari

(1987) describe the chaos and associated rhythms of milieus thus:

Chaos is the ‘milieu of all milieus’, and while milieus are open to chaos, it is a relationship with

rhythm that subverts any risk of collapse: rhythm of the liminal spaces between milieus; rhythm

that co-ordinates heterogenous ‘space-times’; rhythm that ‘ties together critical moments’.

(p. 313)

In this understanding, rhythm is difference, not repetition; rhythm is the continual and continuous

mo(ve)ments between, between things, intermezzo, interbeing (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25).

What often presents as chaos is ‘glued’ with rhythm, rhythms of children constantly negotiating

storylines and play spaces of the game, coming and going through interiors of the game and

exteriorities of other games being played nearby and other play spaces occupied by other children’s

play(ing).

Thinking ‘milieu’ and ‘rhythm’ opens understandings of curriculum and opens possibilities for

understanding young children’s workings of curriculum. The imaginary games children play

happen within milieus, are milieus and illuminate milieus at work, becoming a curricular

performance. They weave strands of storylines through their games and games of others, all

intermingling in a milieu of ‘chaos’, spaces open within/among rhizomatic tangle of characters and

roles as they play out the storyline and explore socialising connections. Sometimes their play(ing) is

subverted, dying in one place but irrupting somewhere else. They feed off their collective

imaginings and those of games and children nearby. The forces of the play(ing), the games and their

interrelationships affect and are affected by other play and relationships around them, also the

programme and their physical territory of the setting and its culture of operating. The milieu of the

curricular performance becomes curricular performance of the milieu. In the linking plateau of

Children performing curriculum complexly, three games illuminate the complex interrelations of

the milieu(s); of the storylines of the games, the play activity, the relationships among the children

and their curricular performance. In another linking plateau, Rhizo~mapping furthers this idea of

curriculum as milieu.

Children performing curriculum complexly

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…we live curriculum before we describe it. The event and the thought about the event are never

simultaneous, never identical…Curriculum as lived and curriculum as described amble along, their

paths sometimes parallel, often not, occasionally in moments of insight intersecting.

(Grumet, 1999, p. 24)

opening the plateau

How do young children make curriculum work? In this plateau I explore children’s doing, working,

happening and noticing experiences within the spontaneous games they play, opening (to)

possibilities for envisaging and envisioning curriculum differently. My attention is with

understanding children’s desire as they do their learning in early childhood settings, moving beyond

the conventional conversations about the what (content) and the how (processes) of curriculum.

Resonating with Gough (2006a), I work towards incipiently different ‘possibilities for imaginative

thought’ to provoke ‘ethical action’ (p. xiv) around young children’s understandings of themselves

and their learning and adult ways of conceptualising curriculum. Using the expressions of young

children themselves to illuminate a machinic assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) of

children~curriculum~games, I work to receive young children’s play(ing) of their curricular

performance into the reconceiving curriculum conversation.

the complexity of curricular performativity

Complex interrelationships around play and curriculum made visible through the spontaneous

games children play come into view within the data of this research. As children perform their

understandings of curriculum they provide opportunities for enhancing adult views of curriculum,

for re(con)ceiving children in curriculum. To illuminate the complexity at play in the children’s

play and their playing out of their curricular understandings, I use images from a four minute

snippet of data to tell the stories of each of three games that are happening simultaneously and

discuss intersecting lines of flight towards understanding young children’s curricular performance.

The three games, each influenced by children’s popular culture, are referred to as Goldilocks, the

chocolate factory and muddy monsters. These games, singularly and together, ebb and flow, with

pauses and forward rushes, ‘proceeding from the middle, through the middle, coming and going

rather than starting and finishing’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25) sometimes blocking and


48

sometimes being blocked, all constituting intensities (p. 152) of the play(ing) plateau(s). Linkages

appear as lines of flight intersect, as the play(ing) traverses the plateau of each and every game

through smooth moments, through dis/inter/ruptions, through irruptions.

In untangling the threads of games, they are discussed separately, but only for ease of understanding

the inherent complexity. They are separated in the sense of untwisting, by force, the threads in the

middle of a strand of rope, for example, so that when the force is relinquished, the rope returns to its

entwined figuration. However, this is not to suggest that any sort of linearity (as in a single strand of

rope) existed in the playing of these games, rather, it is an attempt to explain the twisting backwards

that I needed to undergo to negotiate the complexity of the play space. It is in the spaces between

the threads of the games, the liminal spaces of the twisting backwards, that synchronicity of the

games is illuminated and that we can see the complexity of the children’s curricular performance.

I also work to generate a ‘group map’ of the inherent complexity, illuminating phenomena of

massification (…and…and…and… of the monster game), leadership (within the choc factory game)

and gendered-ness (Goldilocks game) through a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading. The three games both

work for themselves and also continue to make rhizome in the shadows. So, to map the movement

and gestures of the games and the players – the intersecting lines of flight part of the conversation –

I ‘combine several maps’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 14). That is, I put tracings of all three

games onto a map, bringing one into several into one again, generating a ‘very diverse map-tracing,

rhizome-root assemblages, with variable coefficients of deterritorialization’ (p. 15).

introducing the chocolate factory

In this opening set of images, I illuminate the activity of a group of six boys playing a game about

the movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, noting that the snippet is from a game that lasted

over ninety minutes. It was the dominating activity in the sandpit, with a changing group of boys

variously involved in making chocolate in Willy Wonka’s factory. The water trough is in the

sandpit and contains a muddy sand-water mix (chocolate) and, currently Callum, Rylie and Nic are

working with a tray and buckets of muddy sand (more chocolate) positioned on a low wall nearby.

Kane, pretending to be Willy Wonka, is attempting to manage the chocolate-making enterprise and

it is this leadership role that I work with here.


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Storyboard 1: Chocolate Factory


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51


52


53


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The chocolate factory ~ ’We’re making chocolatey yes yes yes yes yes’

Typical to the spontaneous games the children play, the children are operating rhizomatically,

flowing with both their own and the collective understandings of how the game should progress.

Such rhizomatic flow makes any leadership role – assumed, claimed or elected – a challenging

activity. The rhizomatically flowing leadership illustrated here is a deconstruction of children's

ways of disrupting authoritarian modernist views that see leadership as absolute. Although Kane

may have desired absolute control, he manages the fluctuating interest in his being in charge in a

style that is distinctively his own. He works the role to suit his interpretation of the game and to

optimise its continuity. For example, when Rylie and Callum tussle over the use of a particular

trowel, Kane moves to ensure they stay focussed on what matters, namely the chocolate making

(images 4 & 5).

Callum smooths the top of the sand in the tray with the back of his rounded trowel.


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Rylie: No! This is the flattening out thing!

Callum (grabbing at Rylie’s flat trowel): I need the flattening out thing for a minute.

Rylie: No-o!

Callum: I need it!

Rylie: No!

Kane walks up behind them: C’mon, let’s see about that chocolate…akkagagga…

Satisfied that they are on task, Kane returns to making odd noises. Unsurprisingly, there is a need

for some kind of consensus throughout children’s games to ensure the game continues. Achieving

this may involve dispute and Kane’s approach seemed to be as much about progressing the game as

mediation between the players. As unprofessed but seemingly acknowledged leader, Kane assures

himself everything is under (his) control, through his tone of C’mon and through drawing attention

to the task of seeing to the chocolate. This seems to be a (subtle or not so subtle?) way of assuring

himself of his control, ensuring the chocolate-makers stay focused and keeping the plot on (his)

track. However, any control he may desire is immediately mediated by referring to the plot, it is

de/territorialised by his own understandings of the game as he promotes his supervisory role by

turning attention to the chocolate. He seems to have reached the point ‘where it is no longer of any

importance whether one says I. [He is] no longer [himself]’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.3). As

‘leader’ he (e) merges from/with/in the game.

Also evident is the changing flow of leadership. While the dispute over the flat trowel did not

disrupt the game, what it does signal is Rylie’s input into the progress of the game, perhaps

reminding Kane that while he may be Willy Wonka, the chocolate makers are also concerned with

how this should happen. Any perceived leadership role is likely to change without warning, but

becomes easier to resolve when rhizomatic flow is accepted, as it appears to be by the children.

While Kane is forthcoming in exercising his leadership role, he is unperturbed about the responses

when he calls to the boys who are mixing (images 6 & 7); Callum and Rylie continue with their

mixing, while Nic responds to Kane and grabs a handful of sand. However, Kane does not

acknowledge either response, neither Callum and Rylie’s ignoring him nor Nick’s acquiescence.

Unfazed, he maintains his position on the sandpit edging, yelling to no-one in particular (image 8)

to check if anyone else wants to make chocolate. There is no obvious reply, but from Callum’s next

action we can infer a response, implicitly supportive of Kane’s announcement of his assumed

leadership and of the chocolate-making enterprise. Callum affirms the storyline that Kane has been

announcing, while publicly announcing his input into progressing the game, claiming the leadership


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for a moment, as Rylie had earlier. Callum looks at Josh (who is relatively new to the scene) and

shouts at the top of his voice (image 9). Then, the leadership again flows rhizomatically, from Kane

to Callum back to Kane, who yells in the direction of Callum and Rylie (images 14 & 15).

In this moment there is a conversational tussle between Callum and Kane. It is impossible to tell

from Kane’s intonation on the soundtrack whether his yelling is intended as statement or inquiry,

but there is a sense that it is both, that he is sending out a query while simultaneously demanding

acquiescence. In this sense, he is playing with differing aspects of the leadership role, suggesting an

understanding that as well as his (non)resistance to the leadership flow, the leadership is not a fixed

or linearly progressing activity; the energy circulates, it ebbs and flows. ‘What is important is not

whether the flows are “One or multiple”…[rather] there is a collective assemblage…one inside the

other and both plugged into an immense outside that is a multiplicity’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 23); in this moment a leadership multiplicity. Kane’s leadership is all-at-once acknowledged,

supported and challenged by, implicitly given over to and shared in all its complexity with Callum,

and Rylie also.

In the closing moments of this data snippet, Kane’s leadership becomes an activity of protecting his

territory from invaders. The girls, who have been playing nearby throughout (images 2, 12, 14, 16,

17) are now apparently too close to Kane for his liking. Two seconds after image 17, the soundtrack

records Kane growling loudly at the girls before chasing after them as they flee the territory, of their

game and the sandpit (images 21-27). As Kane stumbles~waddles after the girls, flopping his head

from side-to-side, his gait evokes images of Willy Wonka from Tim Burton’s (2005) movie,

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Willy Wonka walked with a stick and an odd bouncy

stride. It thus appears that Kane’s announcement of an idea was a Willy Wonka-type way of

chasing the girls from the physical and imaginative territory of his game.

The chocolate-makers, however, seem to take little notice of the chase occurring around the edge of

their factory, apart from Alec watching the girls race behind the trough (image 20); and a few

seconds later (image 26) as he is crouched digging in the sand, this time watching Kane run in

(images 26 & 27). Callum may also be aware of the chase as amidst the commotion he trips over

the handle of the trolley (images 26 & 27) having successfully avoided it several times throughout

the game as he gathered water from the trough (images 1, 11, 18 & 20). For Kane, expelling the

girls from the physical and imaginative territory of the game is a serious exercise. He is serious in

his intent and also in playing it out in character from the moment he growls at the girls (image 17)

until he chases after them (images 21-28) in his deliberately awkward, stumbling gait and returns


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(images 29 & 29a) satisfied that his territory is free from invaders. If his chocolate workers had not

explicitly acknowledged his leadership to any great extent, the girls fleeing the territory were doing

so – explicitly in physical terms as they race away from Kane and implicitly in terms of supporting

Kane’s authoritarian role in the chocolate factory game; explicitly as they flee the territory of the

sandpit and implicitly as they flee the territory of the game. In this moment, Kane’s leadership has

flowed beyond the performance of the chocolate factory in that he utilises the girls’ presence to

affirm his leadership as he wanders rhizomatically through the game. As expected with rhizome, in

that the ‘fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and…and…and…”’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 23), there is another dimension of complexity about the chocolate factory game. It is therefore

not surprising that within the game a monster game emerges and Kane, as Willy Wonka, segues

into monster.

introducing an (e)merging monster game

With/in and around the physical and imaginative territory of the chocolate factory game, there are

intersecting lines of flight as other games emerge from within and merge with the chocolate factory

game. A muddy monster game, involving Nic, Josh, Alec and Kane, is one such game. As this

snippet opens (images 2 & 3), Nic is working as one of the chocolate-makers and Alec is playing

alongside with a digger. Kane is prowling around the water trough positioned in the sandpit

chanting and making strange sounds. Josh wanders into the scene a little later. To begin with Kane

presents as Willy Wonka, but a(nother) rhizomatic reading presents him as emerging monster. This

monster character segues through various players as the plot evolves and in the process illuminates

the children playing out their power-fullness alongside and amongst each other. Whether the

monster theme that emerges is an aside, an entertaining deviation or a common part of such plots is

incidental. What is interesting is that it arises and that it works to enhance the chocolate factory

game and that in the process of playing out the monster theme, the children enact a complex

understanding of the Deleuzo-Guattarian conjunctive ‘and…and…and…’ (Deleuze & Guattari ,

1987, p. 25).

Note: The numbering of the images of the chocolate factory storyboard now becomes a marker for all three games in play during this four-minute play episode, so the following images in the monster game storyboard are numbered to coincide with those in the chocolate factory storyboard. Where an image that appears in the chocolate factory storyboard is used in the monster game storyboard, the number stays as 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 etc. To keep the storyboards aligned, some numbers are missing, e.g., the (e)merging monster game becomes evident in the midst of the chocolate factory game, after the storyboard sequence of the latter has opened, so the first monster game storyboard image is #2. There are also numbers inserted, where other images are significant to the activity of the monster game. For example, between images 8 and 9 in the chocolate factory storyboard, there is significant activity in the monster game; this activity is seen in images 8a and 8b.


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Storyboard 2: Monster Game


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60


61


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the monster game ~ ‘Whaaah! Bad muddy monster!’

As children play out their games in the data – as they perform their curricular understandings –

unexpected themes emerge, unexpected turns are taken, with these themes and turns becoming part

of the game or lines of flight to follow. There may be resistance and occasionally a player will

abandon both game and playmates, but in various ways these lines of flight are utilised to progress

the game. In the monster game, which segues through the chocolate factory, the monster character

is played out by a stream of players, through the interactions of Kane, Nic, Josh and Alec. In the

process of expressing their power-fullness as monster characters relative to each other, they find

ways of involving themselves in others’ storylines and ways of involving others in their own

storylines. The lines of flight they follow become ways of including other players and (their) ideas,

enriching, extending and progressing the game through an understanding of and…and…and…. The

monster is not a fixed, stable character, but flows from one to another – through Kane through Nic

through Josh and Alec through Kane. A linear understanding of curriculum is thus disrupted in that

the character/role did not disappear when the player disappeared. For example, monster-Josh carries

on from where monster-Nic leaves off. Their curricular performance also destabilises binary

understandings such as monster|victim, goodies|baddies, insider|outsider as they each segue through

all of these, at various times being monster, victim, goodie, baddie, insider, outsider.

As the snippet opens, Kane is wandering about apparently in an imaginative world of his own,

making strange sounds. Although, at first glance, he seems detached from managing the chocolate

factory enterprise, he actually isn’t, as seen when he moves in to view Callum and Rylie’s dispute

over the flat trowel. As he immediately returns to making odd noises, it appears that he may be both

Willy Wonka and becoming-monster – and…and…and…. Another becoming-monster character

evolving in this curricular performance of and…and…and… is the role played by Nic (images 3, 4

& 5), who also seems distanced from the chocolate factory even though he is mixing the sand and

water with his hands. But, like Kane, Nic is obviously engaged in the chocolate factory plot as well

– apparent when Nic is the only one to actively respond to Kane yelling, to grab a chocolate. Nic is

the only one to grab a handful of sand from Kane’s bucket, as requested/invited.

However, Nic has something else in mind to do with his muddied hands. Nic is scooping up

handfuls of wet sand. (Partly obscured by Rylie in the red shirt, image 6). Then, suddenly, he rears

up in monster mode with his hands at shoulder height, fingers splayed and slightly curled (image

8a) and confronts Josh (image 8b). In this moment, the presence of a monster, a supposedly

negative force, intensifies the play plateau, affirming the game’s progression – the unfolding plot,

characters and roles being played are supported. If Kane was shaping up to becoming the leading


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monster figure, he is now upstaged by this new monster-Nic who confronts Josh, a newcomer to the

scene. Nic on the periphery of the chocolate-making becomes insider in the monster game and

confronts outsider Josh. But, undaunted, Josh stands his ground, which opens a way for him to

become insider as well, as they each display and express their singular power-fullness. Similar to

Nic usurping Kane’s expression of power-fullness by assuming a ‘bigger’ monster role, Josh is

challenging Nic’s power-fullness by refusing to back off. Josh has now become a power-full player

as well. And, while expressing their singular power-fullness, together they become another force in

that this emerging monster game challenges the physical and imaginative territory, which until now

has been largely occupied by Kane’s chocolate-making enterprise. With this monster thread

emerging, if Kane has any ambition to be sole controller of the territory and of the chocolate

making enterprise, this is now disrupted.

But, is Nic as monster assured of ongoing power-fullness? As he moves away from Josh, in search

of another victim, Josh is raising his hands in monster mode, fingers splayed and slightly curled

(images 9 & 10). This is the moment that Callum shouts at him, Yes! Willy Wonka and chocolate

fact’ry’s here! In the chocolate factory interpretation, it is easy to assume that Josh is raising his

hands in defence. But, the monster interpretation opens to other possibilities, namely, that Josh is

not concerned about Callum’s announcement, at close proximity, deafeningly loud, directed at

him…and…that he is interested in becoming-monster, to either play alongside Nic …and… to meet

any further challenges from Nic head-on. For now, it looks as if Josh as becoming-monster is

preparing to move into monster mode himself.

Alec seems to be engaging with the monster theme as well as he becomes intent on muddying his

hands. He has moved from playing with his digger (image 8a) to observing the interaction between

Nic and Josh (image 8b) to dunking his hands in the trough (images 9 – partly obscured by Rylie –

& 10) to rubbing his hands in the sand at his feet (image11 – partly obscured by Rylie). Nic tries to

attract Alec’s attention, but failing to do so, turns back to Josh, seated in the deck (image 11) and

rushes him, hands raised.

Nic: Muddy monster!

Josh stares but doesn’t move.

Moments later, Nic leaves the scene, his monster character perhaps thwarted by Alec’s and then

Josh’s passive resistance. By refusing a victim response, both have hindered Nic progressing his

monster role, although all could have agreed to play together. So Josh’s power-fullness seems to

have overruled Nic’s. Alternatively, Nic is expressing his power-fullness in another way, by


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choosing not to continue. In a rhizomatic reading this is and…and…and…, it embraces all possible

interpretations rather than one or another. Josh and Alec then proceed to further this

and...and…and…understanding. Josh becomes leading monster and moves to progress the game by

chasing after Alec, who, although raising his muddied hands at Josh, turns (image 15a) and runs

away (images 15b & 15c). Perhaps this monster chase is a tacitly collaborative interlude with little

concern about who is chaser and chased as long as a chase happens. Josh doesn’t seem to mind

whom he is chasing and as Alec returns to the trough to muddy his hands, Josh hisses at an outside

observer (image 18). His targets expended, he sits on the deck (image 20). But Kane has now

adopted a monster mode as he goes after the girls (images 21-25) and when Josh notices this, he

rushes towards Kane-as-monster-chasing-the-girls (image 25c), although Kane remains focussed on

the girls. Josh-as-monster now fades and Kane resumes as leading monster in the closing moments

of the data snippet.

Like a ‘stream…that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle’ (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 23), the fluidity of the monster role – of who plays the part and how – not only allows their

power-fullness to flow amongst themselves, it also progresses the monster game and provides

another way for Kane to exercise his Willy Wonka-type leadership. The characters slip and slide

from one game to the other, each progressing the other. Even when rejected, for example, when

players refuse to act as victims, the play is progressed – when Nic rejected Josh’s refusal to become

victim and left the game, the play continued in his absence. The game was not disrupted, it merely

took another turn as Josh, Alec and Kane flowed with lines of flight, expressing their power-

fullness, singularly and together. Of interest is Nic, Josh’s and Alec’s peripheral involvement in the

chocolate-making that opens possibilities for flowing together with/through (an)other line(s) of

flight. A behaviourist reading, and perhaps a sociological one, may say their lack of involvement

caused them to create a disturbance to make a space for themselves in the chocolate factory game.

However, a generative rhizomatic reading views both Nic and Josh as having the space(s) to

imagine and perform other threads to the storyline. Their imaginations flowed together in a line of

flight, a line of flight that enabled them both to work as protagonist and antagonist all-at-once.

When Nic (as protagonist) rears up as a monster (image 8a), Alec skirts around him en route to the

trough, and Josh, otherwise unoccupied, is the only one left in Nic’s path. Josh does not acquiesce,

instead playing an adversarial role. Even though he steps back, he demands that Nic back off

(image 8b), signalling his opposition (as antagonist) to Nic’s monster character. But in doing so, it

can also be said that Josh became protagonist and as Nic then turned away from him, Nic became

antagonist. It was not that there was any actual opposition to the monster character, rather monster-


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Nic and the emerging monster-Josh played appositionally17 with the monster character, illuminating

the complexity of the activity unfolding. So, a monster game emerges through Nic, Josh’s and

Alec’s interactions – they engage with the line of flight, juxtaposed, playing out their power-

fullness as, in close proximity, they each adopt various ways of becoming monster.

Disrupting the claim that behaviourism would make about children’s play following unidirectional

patterns, these children’s performance of curriculum shows the multidimensionality of their

understandings. In this rhizomatic reading, Kane, Nic, Josh and Alec segue through the monster

character and the monster morphs through their singular and collective renditions of the role. There

is no sense of a dichotomous relationship of either/or-ness, of a monster game and a separate

chocolate factory, of goodies or baddies. It is about both – and…and…and…. The monster game

emerges to intensify the play plateau – until then dominated by the chocolate factory game –

becoming and illuminating other dimensions of the complexity in/of/at (the) play. Intersecting with

the chocolate factory game as a complex activity, in which Kane, Callum, Rylie and Nic enact

leadership rhizomatically, is the monster game, in which Nic, Josh, Alec and Kane express their

emerging power-fullness and demonstrate their understanding of and…and…and…. The plots both

evolve as the game progresses and evolve to progress the game.

With/in and around the games, rhizome is working and continues to work. I now turn to the girls’

Goldilocks game…furthering and…and…and…of a rhizomatically embodied gendered

performance.

introducing Goldilocks The sandpit is an area reportedly dominated by boys and their games (MacNaughton, 2000) and

when girls do enter the area, my observation during the data generation is that they often play

cooking-type games on the periphery of the boy’s activity. My intention is not to play into the

binary of girl|boy or to dichotomise their activity, rather it is to illuminate the complexity of

gendered relations played out and made visible through the girls’ engagement with their Goldilocks

game (See Davies, 2003). As the data snippet opens, Libby, Lee and Alice are focused on digging

although this soon becomes a cake-making exercise and then segues into a Goldilocks game. In the

same way that the boys are playing out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Libby, Lee and Alice

are playing with the culturally-familiar Goldilocks and the Three Bears story and this draws them

into traditionally gendered roles. The girls play at being traditional girl – passive, weak, victim,

17 Opposition signals ‘either/or’; apposition signals ‘and…and…and…’


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home-maker – as they define and narrate the actual and imaginative spaces of their game. Much of

the time they acquiesce to this image of girl, but they also break through those traditional

boundaries as Alice becomes guardian of their physical space and as they all work in the closing

moments of the snippet to progress the imaginative space of their game outside the territory of the

boys’ games and outside the sandpit. On the surface it appears that through this Goldilocks game

the girls are playing out a traditionally gendered image of girl as passive, weak and victim, but a

generative rhizo reading entangled with/in shadows underground offers another. I suggest their

flight from Kane and the sandpit can be understood as an expression of their power-fullness as

‘strong girls,’ with victim~strong girl becoming an embodied performance.

Note: The numbering of the Goldilocks storyboard images follows the pattern of the monster game storyboard above.


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Storyboard 3: Goldilocks


68


69


70


71


72


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the Goldilocks game ~ ‘We’re playing Goldilocks!’

Having selected their tools by colour and begun digging, Libby, Lee and Alice soon encounter

trouble with operating in the space they have chosen. They begin relatively close to the chocolate-

making activity (image 2), but as soon as they start to fill the bucket hanging unattended from the

pulley, the boys move them on. Apart from Lee’s momentarily defiant gesture of grabbing hold of

the bucket on the pulley and grinning (image 2a), they acquiesce to the boys’ demands by finding

another bucket and moving further away. Their digging then turns into a cake-making exercise

(image 2b) and the Goldilocks theme emerges. However, the physical territory of their game is still

not settled and they relocate to establish their home by the back fence (image 2c). While they seem

unconcerned about playing their game in close proximity to the boys, they move to the back fence,

further away from the boys’ activity. From their new home, they announce their storyline, telling

me about their game and confirming details with each other (images 5a, 5b, 5c).

They are now secure enough in their space to engage in conversation about the presence of the

boys, which now seems to be a concern, although more in relation to the imaginative space of their

game than the physical space they occupy. What Lee envisages hiding from is not altogether clear.

It could be that she thinks they need to hide from the boys in an attempt to protect the physical and

imaginative territory of their Goldilocks game…and…it could be that they are pretending they are

the bears and need to hide so Goldilocks can make her appearance. Given the challenges from the

boys to their occupation of the physical space and given their desire to progress the game, it is

feasible that they are responding both to being girls hiding from the boys –by the back fence they

are, for the most part, out of the boys’ line of sight – and bears hiding from Goldilocks –in the

imaginative space of the game if they say they are out of sight of Goldilocks, they are. In this

rhizomatic reading, albeit (im)partial, such simultaneity is considered to be generative rather than

contradictory.

Libby seems less concerned about the boys knowing what they are doing as she publicly calls

Goldilocks into existence. Alice is now assuming a guardian role as she acknowledges that

Goldilocks is to come despite the boys being there and, somewhat contradictorily to her previous

comment, Lee both accepts the boys’ presence but denies they will have any affect on their game –

…but they’re not Goldilocks. While earlier submitting to the boys moving them on, they are now

standing strong together (image 5c).

In these opening moments of the snippet the girls primarily define and narrate their physical and

imaginative spaces of their game, but it is becoming obvious that Alice is also defender of their


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space, similar to Kane’s defending the chocolate factory space. Alice has been standing guard in

their home at the back of the sandpit and surveying the scene since Libby announced they were

playing Goldilocks. Of the three, Alice is probably most aware of the boys who, one way or

another, are attempting to commandeer the whole sandpit area. Namely: Nic has passed through

their territory, clapping his muddied, soon-to-be monster hands (image 5b); Kane is overseeing the

chocolate factory activity (image 5c); and, Alec has pushed his digger in a loop in front of their

home (image 5d). Determining whether Nic, Kane and Alec were aware of the girls’ difficulty in

claiming territory in the sandpit and/or whether they were continuing to challenge this, is incidental

to the rhizoanalysis; the point is that Alice is attentive to their movements.

In this guardianship role, Alice has pushed traditional passive girl aside to become a proactive

protector of their territory – she suddenly runs towards Kane as he makes one of his announcements

(image 5e) and jumps decidedly to a halt to watch him (image 5f). Although she does not end up

very close to him, her jump is close enough to startle him in his announcement, which stops

midstream. She seems to be challenging his verbal invasion of the Goldilocks game space; in her

jump she both alerts Kane to her perception of the chocolate-making game being a potential threat

to the Goldilocks game…and…she presents herself as a threat to Kane. She now claims the space as

Goldilocks territory and ensures their safety as they progress the game.

Under Alice’s guardianship, Libby and Lee meanwhile have been preoccupied with making what

was the cake but is now porridge (image 7a), with Lee gathering water from the trough alongside

the boys (image 7b). Their game is progressing smoothly. They continue to discuss their Goldilocks

storyline, at this moment seeming to be more intent in talking about what they are going to do rather

then actually doing it. It appears repetitive, but they are confirming their understandings of how to

progress the game (image 16). More confident in the space, Libby, Lee and Alice have moved from

the far edge of the sandpit to a spot quite close to Kane (image 16), who is standing on the edging

by the pulley. Although he seems pre-occupied with his own activity (image 17), his suddenly loud

response to Libby’s closeness indicates he is very aware of the Goldilocks activity.

Unaware that the girls’ territory was about to be compromised yet again, I panned the camera away

as Libby started to speak, back to the boys at the chocolate-making activity, so where she places the

porridge bowl is impossible to ascertain. But, it is obviously too close to Kane for his liking and the

girls apparently accept his view as there is a gasp and a squeal, signalling a hasty exit. As they run

off, in the chaos that follows, on the surface it looks like the demise of the Goldilocks game, that

the girls have again acquiesced to the boys’ claim on the territory thus ending their game.


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But are they fleeing the boys’ territory and does their flight mark the end of the game? My

generative reading suggests otherwise, that in this moment of crisis a new line of flight emerges. If

we consider that Kane has morphed into bear, their flight with Kane chasing them progresses the

game albeit before the girls were ready for it, that is, before they had narrated their version of this

part of the traditional storyline. While they never explicitly identify their roles, in mixing the

porridge, they likely imagine themselves as the bears, but in fleeing the sandpit, it seems they have

all become Goldilocks. In this role, they are undoubtedly fleeing Kane’s space, but not his

chocolate factory space, rather his growly bear space. Had the intent been to escape the chocolate

factory space, Libby would have abandoned the bowl of porridge and chosen the shortest and

easiest route of escape by jumping over the edging near where they were standing and running

away from the sandpit. Instead, Libby leading and carrying the bowl of porridge, their actual flight

processes through the sandpit (image 19) as they race behind the trough (image 20), retrace their

steps (image 25a), then turn back in the direction they were first going (image 25b). Given that the

girls, until now, have largely acquiesced to the boys’ desires to dominate the sandpit with their

chocolate factory enterprise and the monster game, at first glance it appears they are continuing to

do so.

However, my rhizomatic reading, (im)partially challenged by Davies’ (2003) call to learn to think

beyond the male|female binary, is that to intensify the game to their satisfaction, they need to leave

the sandpit area – the home of the bears – and race off through the imaginative ‘woods’ that the

playground represents. Thus, if they had exited the scene via the shortest, easiest route, they could

be perceived to have become actual victims of the boys and of their Goldilocks game – a Deleuzian

reading considers flight as a creative response (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 55) – but escaping the

space in the way that they did, they become virtual victims fleeing the imaginative territory of their

game. But, is there any difference to the actuality and virtuality of these victim roles? I would

suggest both yes and no – that the actual and the virtual are intertwined and their difference and

sameness resides in the liminal space between. That is, the virtual is played out in the actual world,

the virtual being an extension of, and feeding into the actual…and…the actual lived experience is

(re)lived in the virtual or imaginative world of the game, the lived experience informing the virtual,

imaginative space of the game. So, determining where the game is situated in any moment – in the

actual or virtual worlds is confounded by it being all-at-once in both. Had the game ‘ended’ in

conventional terms, then the girls could be perceived as victims of the boys and of their own game.

But the game continued – ambiguously in both actual and virtual worlds, as (a) panicked flight.

Continuing to disrupt the conventional notion of victim, games usually continue in some form, if

not in the moment, later.


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(Re)turning to the moment, their panic seems to be chaotic in terms of them being in a state of utter

confusion and disorder, with Libby unable to decide which way to go. But considering chaos as

reflecting the complexity of the moment, her state of panic only appears random as she responds to

this new situation. In terms of continuing the storyline, the chaos was necessary. When Libby is

surprised by Kane’s growl, it is not an event she had anticipated (yet) in the narration of the

storyline. As she rushes one way and then another and then back again, dropping the porridge bowl

is of no concern as without it she runs more easily to escape the bear. They all become Goldilocks,

enacting a flight from the bears that no script or actor could better as they tacitly co-opt Kane into a

growly bear role. Kane goes after them and his gait is bear-like; he is lumbering, not oddly, but with

style (image 26).

I work with a Deleuzo-Guattarian (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) understanding that a territorial

assemblage can gather forces, at times precipitating a sudden confrontation or departure that brings

on a ‘movement of absolute deterritorialization: “Goodbye, I’m leaving and I won’t be back”’

(p. 327). Thus, my reading is that their seemingly traditionally gendered performance becomes an

expression of their power-fullness as strong girls, not weak, victimised girls. Libby, Lee and Alice

appear to be victims in the traditional image of girl, but I suggest they are embodied in this victim

role to satisfy the traditional Goldilocks storyline and to enhance their game. They engage with/in

de~territorialising. As the territory of their game connected with the territory of others, a line of

flight emerged enabling the preservation of their territory. Preservation of their territory in this

moment meant relocating themselves as characters in their game (they fled), relocating the physical

space of the game (moving out of the sandpit area) and relocating the actual storyline of the game

(Goldilocks morphed into a game of strong girls). This reading affirms the positivity of the

children’s desire – not as determination but as affect (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) – their flight not

reflecting any lack or negativity. Rather, the children were constantly (re)constituting the power-

fullness of their subjectivity through de~territorialising their game and themselves. In their flight,

they de~territorialised themselves, they de~territorialised the traditional Goldilocks storyline and

they de~territorialised the playspace they were operating in.

This Deleuzo-Guattarian affective reading sees such flight – physically exiting the sandpit and

following a line of flight with/in the storyline – as functional, productive and expressive of the force

or power-fullness of their desires as female subjects. In the following quotation (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987) drawing on ethology, flights within milieu are perceived as conquests or creations.

Since [any] milieu always confronts a milieu of exteriority with which the animal is engaged and

in which it takes necessary risks, a line of flight must be preserved to enable the animal to regain

its associated milieu when danger appears. A second kind of line of flight arises when the


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associated milieu is rocked by blows from the exterior, forcing the animal to abandon it and

strike up an association with new portions of exteriority, this time leaning on its interior milieus

like fragile crutches …the animal is more a fleer than a fighter, but its flights are also conquests,

creations. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 55, original italics; underline added)

To link this to the Goldilocks girls’ flight from the sandpit, I re-write the above quotation, openly

using phrases of the original. I consider that the milieu here is constituted by the children, both girls

and boys, the physical territory they are playing in (sandpit) and the imaginative territory (storylines

of games) that is being played out: Any milieu, such as the players, storyline and territory of the

Goldilocks game always confronts a milieu of exteriority with which the children engage. In this

moment, the milieu of exteriority is Kane, playing Willy Wonka~monster, the storylines and other

players of the boys’ games. The girls’ engagement has been with creating a space to play alongside

the boys and guarding that space. Ensuring their well-being within the space – when Alice jumps

Kane and ensuring access to the water – has necessitated the girls taking risks. But lines of flight

also needed to be preserved to ensure the girls’ physical and imaginative territory stayed safe,

regardless of the boys’ activity. They first relocated to the back fence, distancing themselves from

the chocolate factory and the necessity to take another line of flight arises when the milieu of their

game is subjected to blows from the exterior. These blows are marked by Kane’s growl and his

expression of power-fullness as WillyWonka~monster and now, it appears, as bear. The girls take

the option of abandoning the physical space, the sandpit, and strike up an association with new

portions of exteriority as they flee into another part of the playground, this time leaning on its

interior milieus like fragile crutches. The fragility of their storyline is illuminated as the storyline

segues away from Goldilocks and the sandpit to erupt in another space later. The girls have opted to

flee rather than fight, but in a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading, their flight is their creation and a

conquest. Some of the milieu, indeed the Goldilocks milieu itself, may have been abandoned, but

another was territorialised, that is, de~territorialisation.

In this sense, playing victim then becomes an expression of the power-fullness of their gendered

understandings of themselves. The girls project the kind of understanding, ‘in which all sorts of

hybrids are engendered in a joyful play of creative mutations’ (Braidotti, 1996, p. 313) as they

mutate the storyline by calling the bear into existence and then co-opting Kane (as bear) as their

reason to flee. Braidotti might call this expression of their emerging subjectivity a ‘line of evasion

from the morbid mutual dependence of feminine and masculine’ (p. 313), but maybe she would see

Libby, Lee and Alice as ‘nomadic subject[s] of collectively negotiated trajectories’ (p. 314). As part

of a further response to whether following the traditional Goldilocks storyline exacerbated any

images of gendered weakness, I cannot ignore how the game processed after this snippet – they


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went on to become ‘strong girls’ (their description of themselves), ‘saving’ (their expression again)

Ani from Kane who continued his storyline as bear~monster in the playground beyond the sandpit.

Inevitably, their segue into strong girls colours my reading of them as victim. My reading is thus

(no) more or less (im)partial and (im)plausible. Victim~strong girl becomes an embodied

performance and opens spaces of possibilities for Libby, Lee and Alice’s rethinking themselves in

curriculum and opens spaces of possibilities for educationists’ rethinking the curricular performance

of children’s games.

opening into flowing through/with intersecting lines of flight

The important thing for now is to note this formation of new assemblages within the territorial

assemblage, and this movement from the intra-assemblage to interassemblages by means of

components of passage and relay: An innovative opening of territory onto…the group.

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 325)

Within this thesis-assemblage, ‘the’ assemblage opens onto other assemblages, milieu open to

milieu, middles to middles, the multiplicity is ever-opening, ever-intensifying, like a refrain. Lines

of flight, the forces of de~territorialisation, have affected the territory itself, continually changing

and altering it, and/as the ‘territorial assemblage continually passes into other assemblages’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 325), generating (a) milieu of space-time coexistence. So while the

chocolate factory, monster and Goldilocks games form singular intra-assemblages they also

combine and move toward an interassemblage whereby they mutually and reciprocally constitute

among themselves. Re-turning (yet again) to the four minute snippet of data of these three games is

like a refrain that ‘collect[s] or gather]s] forces, either at the heart of the territory, or in order to go

outside it’ (p. 327). The refrain of the intersecting lines of flight among/through these games finds

its forcefulness inside…and…with/through these forces proceeds outside, into (an)other territory.

By working with intersecting lines of flight, I combine several maps (of the three games) to

generate a group map of them all, a map that opens to the complex ways that children make their

curricular understandings work.

intersecting lines of flight ~ chocolate factory~monster~Goldilocks

On the surface, at times the activity in the sandpit was bedlam, but through processing

rhizoanalytically through the complexity of the chaos, it becomes chaoplexy in/at play – complexly

chaotic interconnections among players…and…storylines of several games, each (e)merging with


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the others as lines of flight intersect…and…players…and…their flights traverse a multiplicity of

curricular performance (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Lines of flight~shifting plateaus of play(ing) segueing through Willy Wonka~monster~bear~Goldilocks.

Plots emerged in the playing…and…games merged as players mingled together…and…games

intensified in the boundless spaces…and…Goldilocks, the chocolate factory and the monster games

de~territorialised the others…and…to reappear in other spaces later following flowing lines of

flight. In the liminal spaces of and…and…and…, as storylines and roles segue and characters

morph, linkages emerge and the non-linear procession of the games becomes apparent.

In narrating the storyline, there are moments when various children incite others into their own

performance, calling other characters into being. For example, Lee calls as she’s running: He’s got

a really big growl! (Goldilocks image 27); this is as much statement of what has happened, as it is a

reminder to Kane to keep growling. In response Kane shouts, Mi-ine! (image 28). But most

markedly, in the seeming panic of the closing moments of this snippet, the timings demonstrate the

children’s disruption of a linearly-ordered sequential progressive game. The timings show that

things actually happened after it was claimed they were happening. For example in the timings


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listed below, Lee claims Kane is following them (42.24) before he moves off the edging eight

seconds later (42.32) and Kane announces he had a good idea, to chase the girls as bear (42.28),

eight seconds after the Goldilocks girls run off (in anticipation of being chased?) (42.20).

42.18 Libby: …put Goldilocks poison porridge he-re.

42.19 Kane: Grrrrraaaagggghhhh!!

42.20 One of the girls gasps then squeals as they run off.

42.24 Lee, as they are running: Aaahhh! He’s following us! C’mon!

42.25 The girls are now running across the back of the sandpit.

42.28 Kane, still standing on the edging: Huh! I have an idea!

42.28 At the same moment, Libby halts their escape and they stop running.

42.31 Kane then jumps down off edging.

42.32 Kane: Grraaaaghhh! and now runs after the girls.

The tacit understanding of processing through their games is seen in their interactions. The moment

Kane says he has an idea, Libby stops her flight and turns to run back towards him, perhaps to make

it a more credible chase. The girls had decided that Kane was following them and begun their flight

before he had indicated, at least explicitly, that he was about to do so. It was only as they paused to

look back at him that he jumped down and stumbled after them. The interrelationships among the

children, as players in their games, are a complex linkage, a multiplicity of lines of flight, which

assemble as a rhizomatic plateau, but only for a moment as in the same instant everything

de~territorialises. Changes are perpetual.

Play is like (a) plateau(s) of clouds sculpting skyscapes, flowing as one (as one and together),

constantly changing. No mark between growl, gasp and squeal, only a liminal merging of the one

into a(nother) line of flight, with mere glimpses, insights and moments of light. No positivist clarity

here; the most clearly it can be stated is that emergence of ‘matters of expression’ characterise the

territory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 315). The territory – this being, in one instance, the

multiplicity of the children and their respective, but merging, Goldilocks and chocolate

factory~monster games – was marked by/with territorialising expressions or signatures, the territory

rapidly constituting ‘at the same time as expressive qualities are selected or produced’ (p. 315).

Many moments in the snippet illustrate flashes of such rapidity, in particular, the rapidity with

which the Goldilocks game and chocolate factory~monster game de~territorialised each other –

Libby put the porridge bowl down ‘he-re’~Kane growled~the girls fled~Kane went after them. The

de~territorialising happened in a flash, the activity all-at-once (re)defining the territory.


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Foregrounding the intersecting lines of these games makes visible the complex environments the

children generate and their sophistication in performing (with/in) such complexity. Each storyline

grows through tangled systems (not a linear structure) involving the players of the game and

children playing in nearby games with supposedly different, yet intersecting storylines. However, it

seems that in the play(ing), each game takes on aspects of the adjacent games and simultaneously

affects the storylines of the others. Willy Wonka~monster~bear demonstrates the intermingling,

perhaps interdependency even, of all three games, storylines, players and the physical space they

territorialise in the sandpit. So, what is it that the children are telling about their understandings of

curriculum? One approach is to consider what their (modernistically imbued) views of curriculum

might be, to focus on the what and the how. But I choose to illuminate their doing (of) curriculum –

how they process though/with curriculum or how they go about ‘curriculum-ing’ or how they

perform curriculum or how they make curriculum work for their learning.

An aspect of this that emerges from the shadows is their social(ising) performance, as they play

with their close friends – those participating in the same game – and as they interact with players

nearby and with adjacent games. In this performance they are not only experimenting with their

understandings of leadership and gendered-ness, but they are demonstrating that each of the games

is more than itself (…and…and…and…), that it becomes something of the others and that each of

the players become something of the other players, players within their games and those within

other games. In contrast to conventional perspectives of curriculum that operate in terms of specific

subjects and skills, the children in this data snippet demonstrate that learning is non-linear in form

and expression and that they understand how such (rhizo) processes work. That is, any particular

curricular focus is inseparable from others. Their intrapersonal dramatic performance and oral

expressions intermingle with interpersonal expressions of social communications and with various

media representations of children’s literature – through film (Charlie and the chocolate factory),

books (Goldilocks and the three bears) and TV (monsters/superheroes) – and with their imaginative

interpretations of these.

Children thrive within the complexity of their spontaneous play(ing) and linear processes are not

necessary to the fruitful play(ing) of generative learning~living experiences. They are adept at

responding to opportunities as they present – whenever…and…however…and…whatever…and…

Indeed, linear processes obstruct generativity. When children flow freely through their ideas, the

work of their innovation, creativity and imagination is illuminated. For example, we see a

conventional approach to gendered performance interrupted through their victim~strong girls

embodied performance, which does not require the boys to agree to certain ways of operating.


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Rather, the girls’ expressions of power-fullness open (to) a generative line of flight, one that de-

territorialises the games, their subjectivities and adult understandings of (non-)gendered activity. As

the children flow freely, so any leadership subject positionings are similarly fluid, collaborative and

co-operative in varying ways. However, attempting to formalise such curricular opportunities for

the children to be ‘taught’ social(ising) performance would be challenging, despite these

opportunities working with children’s own expressions of generating their own understandings of

their own learning. In their intersecting, de~territorialising lines of flight we catch glimpses of the

children making meaning of the social worlds around them.

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Rhizo~mapping

Map-making features regularly in some games within the data. In these, each player drawing a map

is integral to the game starting up and being played out. Maps are made at various times through the

games, some before embarking on the game; others are made and re-made while the game

processes, so that, while expressing intentions and expectations for the game, these are not always

proposed in advance. These maps are an open ‘plan(e), not a phantasy’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 260) in terms of what they represent to the children and what they mean for playing the game;

they are not a prescription for the game or an authoritative statement about how it will progress.

They are pictorial representations of ideas about the game, that is, the storyline, characters and their

roles and areas in the playground through which the game might process. The maps picture the

imaginative and physical ‘plan(e)s’ (Massumi, 1987b, p. xvii) – planes the games might process

through and a plan of how the children envisage this to happen. They are assemblages the children

can operate within to (dis)solve problems, problems not perceived as an expression of lack but

rather as opportunities for reinventing the storyline, as multiplicities of the unconscious (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987). The game emerges un/consciously in the playing, as do the maps. Although the

maps are made, how they are played (out and with) is generative, becoming the game itself.

(re)thinking mapping

In Thinking about Maps, Kitchin and Perkins (in press) explore philosophical issues of space,

representation and praxis of mapping from geological perspectives, pointing to the significance of

map-making and map-reading to our thinking processes: ‘Mapping is epistemological but also

deeply ontological – it is both a way of thinking about the world, offering a framework for

knowledge, and a set of assertions about the world itself’ (Kitchin & Perkins, in press, p. 2, italics

added).

Although these authors are considering mapping in relation to geography, many of the ideas are

similar to ‘“thinking” in thought’ (Deleuze, 1994, p. 147) and relate to the mapping children engage

with in the process of playing their games. In the data of my research, children engage with maps

and mapping as they make maps of their games and play out their mapping. This becomes an

embodied performance of map(ping) play(ing), of map play and mapping their playing. It involves

recursive and multiple processes of map-making and map-reading, with the children becoming

mappers and with many possible mappings being made, as, for example, they read their own map

and maps drawn by other players in the game. Mapping is thus understood as processual, as

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embodied and dynamic; and maps as inscriptive, as ‘complex, multivocal and contested’ (Kitchin &

Perkins, in press, p. 15), rather than representations or constructions.

In map(ping) play(ing) children picture their experiences of movement through playground spaces

and imaginative spaces of their games. These movements negotiate ‘passages through vistas, rather

than an abstracted Cartesian landscape’ (Ingold, 2000, cited in Kitchin & Perkins, in press, p. 23);

they are about mobility, not location. In Deleuzo-Guattarian understandings (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987), children’s maps are always already becoming. The map does not remain fixed to the moment

of its creation, rather it constantly changes as encounters of the games are linked to the map, each

re-reading producing different meaning and contextual engagement. Co-constitutively, the maps

shape the games and the games affect how the map is performed as the games inscribe the

children’s actions and the children affect and effect the storylines of their games. As well, the

tracing of the game plan(e) is continually put back on the map. Maps are always already

representations and practices, they are a milieu of unfolding practices.

Children’s mapping is performative, as they enact the visual imagery they have created, ‘in and

through diverse, discursive and material processes’ (Kitchin & Perkins, in press, p. 21), sometimes

talking about the map-making, at other times communicating tacit understandings of the map and

the game it is about. Geographical understandings of maps as practices link functionally with

children’s map(ping) play(ing); through such mapping, curriculum as a milieu of becoming is

illuminated. In performative understandings of mapping about what maps do – rather than what

they represent and mean – maps are conceived as being ‘always in a state of becoming; as always

mapping; as simultaneously being produced and consumed, authored and read, designed and used,

serving as a representation and practice; as mutually constituting map/space in a dyadic

relationship’ (pp. 21-22, original italics). In this mutually-constituitive space, territory does not

precede the map, rather maps and territories (e)merge simultaneously – ‘[s]pace is constituted

through mapping practices, amongst many others, so that maps are not a reflection of the world, but

a re-creation of it; mapping activates territory’ (p. 22).

In the process of creating their maps, the children oscillate between personal and collaborative

decisions about ‘what to include, how the map will look, and what the map is seeking to

communicate’ (Kitchin & Perkins, in press, p. 11). Similar to those of geographical map-makers,

the children’s maps are imbued with their various values and judgements and in this sense, become

products and producers of power-fullness, although shared (essentially critical) readings among the

children work to ameliorate this. Maps as inscriptions are thus unstable and complex texts, neither

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created nor read in simple ways, rather they are open to, and require, processes of ongoing

(re)contextualisation so that the map produces and reaffirms territory rather than simply describing

it. ‘Maps do not have meaning or action on their own; they are part of an assemblage of people,

discursive processes and material things’ (Kitchin & Perkins, in press, p. 20). This opens (to)

possibilities for thinking spaces for children to (re)constitute themselves and their games as they

work to produce their maps and as they make their maps work to produce their games.

Kitchin and Perkins (in press) also explain maps ‘as unfolding potential; as conduits of possibilities;

as the sites of imagination and action in the world (p. 22). Through processes of de~territorialising,

mapping continuously remakes territory, each re-make producing differing diverse consequences.

This doubled mapping de~territorialising activity, passing also through re-territorialisation, projects

a variety of affects in a simultaneity of reciprocal flow. ‘The map is open and connectable in all of

its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification…it always has

multiple entryways’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 12). Mapping is thus always already open

performativity, opening up (to) milieus of previously unseen or unimagined possibilities of activity.

map(ping) play(ing)

Rhizomatic mapping involves a complex interplay of following lines of flight and nomadically

flowing through various territories, such as, physical or imaginative spaces, storylines of games and

relationships among players. ‘Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must

be’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). This becomes an assemblage of ceaseless and ongoing

connections that amass as an a-centered milieu of perpetual and dynamic change, without specific

end or entry points and without beginnings and endings. In rhizomatic mapping, there are no points

or positions, ‘[t]here are only lines’ (p. 9). Working with these lines, or de~territorialising lines of

flight, opens possibilities for connections between what otherwise may be regarded as disparate

thoughts, ideas or actions. In this way a network of interconnecting linkages forms – an amassing of

middles amidst an array of multidimensional movement among open systems. Generating a

rhizomatic assemblage disturbs the arborescent informed, linear progression, which can only be

retraced through the same series of points of structuration and ‘always comes back “to the same”’

(p. 12). In contrast, a rhizomatic map is ‘open and connectable in all of its dimensions’ (p. 12).

The children’s use of maps – map(ping) play(ing) – in the data shows how they make rhizo-

mapping work, as they make maps, using them as a play resource and using them to continue to

think about how to process (through) their games. In map(ping) play(ing), maps and mapping, and

play and playing (e)merge through/with/in creative and imaginary performative plan(e)s of the

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games; the games like the maps never fully formed, they are forever (e)merging. How children

make maps within the contexts of their games, and how they make their maps work within those

spaces offer glimpses or insights into their understandings of curriculum. There are various snippets

in the data that illuminate different aspects of map-making (map play) and playing out of their maps

(mapping playing) that the children engage with at Sunshine Kindergarten.

Tim and Piri opening map-making

Tim and Piri, preparing for their bad guys hunt show the significance of a map for calling their

imaginary game and its characters into be(com)ing, the maps being part of their hunting gear.

Having a map before the game gets underway is significant. The maps confirm their participation,

and become a way of discussing the storyline and communicating their expectations for the game.

Piri’s map features only a grid-like pattern; Tim draws people on his as well, namely, the bad guys

to be hunted, and Piri and himself – the hunters.

Piri rolls his map and Tim talks as he draws: We go spider hunting every day…and we’re on

a hunting trip…and we’re doing a bad people hunt today. Yeah. (He rolls up his drawing)

And this is my light sabre map.

Piri stuffs his map into the top of his waistband: Treasure map.

Tim: The treasure map. There’s my circle to turn it on. (He shows me the light sabre

‘switch’, then sings) We’re hunting, we’re hunting. (He unrolls his map) And we need

something special on it, how to know it.

Piri: I don’t.

Tim: We need to draw our, some bad guys.

Piri: Let’s go hunting.

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Tim: Not yet, Piri. First I need to draw the bad guys. They got so many bad guys. There they

are, all the bad guys are there and now we need to roll them up.

Within their mapping conversation, Tim and Piri ascertain details of the hunt. They decide that it is

a bad guys hunt, not a spider hunt but their maps do not picture any particular route to be travelled.

Their maps are about mobility through the game plan(e)s rather than any particular location.

Kane, Nadia and Bella mapping their pathway(s)

Kane, Nadia and Bella make maps part way through their game and un/intentionally, mapping their

pathways melds the group, at least momentarily. For some time Kane has been trying to co-opt

Nadia, Bella, Adam, Alec and Callum into his ideas for a chocolate factory game18. Kane has not

managed to gain their full attention, but the group is following him around the playground, albeit

with deviations as they pause to play on various equipment – ‘a social field is always animated by

all kinds of movements of decoding and deterritorialization affecting “masses” and operating at

different speeds’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 220). They each talk about their own ideas for the

game but Kane persists with his ‘overcoding’ venture of trying to control the flow of the play.

Eventually they make their way to the outdoors art area, where he, Nadia and Bella make maps.

Kane tells Nadia that his map is about where we know where to go. Nadia listens but says her map

is the map where we get lost.

Kane: So we have to go past the chocolate waterfall, back past me, and then we go up the

river, and then we go…’Scuse me, watch what the maps gonna tell you. You go past the

chocolate waterfall. Hey everybody look at the map! We go past the chocolate waterfall

18 This game happened on a different day from the chocolate factory game discussed in the Children performing curriculum complexly plateau with a different group of children.

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through the reeds, then at the river and then, ah, we head to our space rocket and then

we’re at […]. So we have to all go the right way, we have to go past the waterfall. So we

have to go a really slo-ow way. That’s going to take a long, long, long, long, long, long

time.

Nadia rolls up her map: This is the map where we get lost, OK?

Kane, rolling his map: Well this is the map.

Nadia, adding more to her map: Yeah, but this is the map where we get lost.

Kane: Mmmm and this is the map where we know where to go.

Nadia hands her map to Kane and leads the way outside.

Kane appreciates the value of the maps for communicating (his) intentions for the game plan(e) and

for ensuring they all go the right way, or his way, and that his is ‘the’ map. But Nadia brings a

critical reading to their use of maps. She seems to appreciate the diverse ways in which maps are

produced and used and that there is no one right way to do either. It seems that her map is to ensure

they do or don’t get lost, or to help them find their way if/when they do. With a continual refrain of

attempting to draw the group into his ideas for the game, Kane manages through the map-making to

‘distribute game roles and functions within the territorial assemblage’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 327), an assemblage of game~players~maps. The maps become a space of negotiation among

players, a space where Kane and his overcoding rigid lines of thought or ‘rigid segmentarity’ of

intentions for the game can come together with ‘a relatively supple line of interlaced codes and

territorialities’ of the others and with their lines of flight as they flow as nomad~rhizome,

‘ventur[ing] a fluid and active escape, sow[ing] deterritorialization everywhere’ (p. 222). Despite

thinking he was in charge, it is Nadia who continues with the smooth space of the game and leads

the way outside.

Tim and Zak’s mapping machinic

In their dinosaur spider hunt, Tim and Zak open a milieu of mapping as their maps legitimise

participation in the game, generating both conflict and a passage through. In these moments their

mapping becoming a machinic of power-fullness – as a machine of the unconscious. In the

moments that complications arise around their mapping, their maps enable them to passage through

the complexities of the game. Firstly, their maps are significant to their game starting up. When I

ask what they need to play the game, Zak says: We need a map and…. Tim adds: And the horseys.

So, they require other gear but making maps comes first; and later re-making them as the game

processes is important. The maps demonstrate the significance of having a game-plan(e) as well as

picturing the game-plan(e) itself. Although the maps announce their entry into the game, they are

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fluid, contestable and constantly being (re)negotiated – a map is ‘always detachable, connectable,

reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight’ (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 21).

However, in the moment it becomes apparent that they need to modify their maps, a problem arises

around their convoluted understandings of the hunt. They are sitting in their trolley and are using a

toy cash register to get a reading of whether it is time to hunt dinosaurs, despite Tim’s earlier

statement that it was a spider hunt.

Tim: Let’s see if it’s dinosaur time. No dinosaur time today.

Zak: Let’s see it. Oh you’re right it’s no dinosaur time today.

Tim: ‘Cos it’s Saturday, no dinosaur time on Saturdays, are there?

They now decide that they need new maps. Tim runs off to make his while Zak guards the trolley

and when he returns with his new map, without seeing what Tim has drawn, Zak runs inside to the

drawing table while Tim stays with the trolley.

Zak: Um I’m gonna make a better map for a dinosaur hunt. I made a spider map but I

don’t want a spider map…I’m going to make another dinosaur map…

Tim shows me his map with a spider on it, then, abandoning the trolley, he goes to check on Zak.

As he sees Zak drawing a dinosaur, their (mis)understandings about the game unfold.

Tim: We’re not going on a dinosaur hunt. We’re going on a spider hunt.

Zak: Uummm…um, I thought you said we’re going on a, on a dinosaur hunt.

Tim: No dinosaur hunt. Spider hunt! Do a spider one!

Zak: No-o because it’s almost finished…

Tim: Huuh! Ok I’m going to have to do a spider hunt by my self.

Zak: Well we we I wanna um…I thought you said you wanted to go on a dinosaur hunt.

Tim: No dinosaur hunt! Spider hunt!

Zak: Why do you want to go on a spider hunt?

Tim: Cos I wanna I need to go on it.

Zak has an idea about his drawing: Oh what alright it’s it’s it’s a dinosaur spider instead!

Tim squeals and jumps from one foot to the other: It’s a dinosaur spider hunt! Let’s go!

Zak beams as they run off together.

Tim: We got to go on a dinosaur spider hunt.

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thinking about children’s curricular performance

As well as being a site of conflict, their maps become a catalyst for resolution. A developmental,

behaviourist reading would likely see this as extremely well executed conflict resolution and in

these terms, Zak’s expertise is undeniable. But a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading intensifies the

(mis)understanding of the milieu, presenting both Tim and Zak as ‘expert’ at negotiating difficult

territory, of dissolving the problem. This is a moment of plugging tracings back into the(ir) map –

‘Plug the tracings back into the map, connect the roots or trees back up with a rhizome’ (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p.14). In affirming each other’s engagement with the game, Tim and Zak pause to

(re)make their hunting maps. But, the tracing – of the intended storyline – limits the game; it seems

they had different maps and intentions from the outset, but it is not until Tim approaches Zak at the

drawing table that these become apparent and an opportunity to re/dis/solve their differing

expectations opens. The tracing – the (fixed) understanding that each has – is impeding the game’s

processing and the (open) mapping enterprise. The tracing obstructs the game; an asignifying

rupture appears; and a new line of flight emerges – ‘Once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified,

it’s all over, no desire stirs; for it’s always by rhizome that desire moves and produces’ (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p.14). While (re)making the maps stymied the game temporarily, in following a new

line of flight, an acceptable variation emerged for continuing by bringing the tracing of the hunt and

two maps of possibilities for enacting the hunt together.

There are knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots…The important

point is that the root-tree and canal-rhizome are not two opposed models: the first operates as a

transcendent model and tracing, even if it engenders its own escapes; the second operates as an

immanent process that overturns the model and outlines a map, even if it constitutes its own

hierarchies…It is not a question of…this or that category of thought. It is a question of a model

that is perpetually in construction or collapsing, and of a process that is perpetually prolonging

itself, breaking off and starting up again. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 20)

In breaking off and starting again, Tim and Zak play out their (mis)understanding. Tim’s tracing

engenders its own (despotic) escape as he states that he wants and needs to go on a spider hunt;

Zak’s idea for a dinosaur-spider hunt opens out an immanent process that becomes a new mapping

for the game. His way through is not despotic, even though the new combined reading of their maps

– for a dinosaur-spider hunt – rises above the old map’s tracing. But, as the tracing is plugged into

the map, the tracing melds with the map to enhance the game, this assuring their passaging

through/with/in it. Mapping the game both is and is not disrupted; they each become a knot of

arborescence, blocking the other’s desiring a rhizomatic offshoot. In behaviourist terms, this

interruption disrupts the smooth flow of the game, but negotiating Deleuzo-Guattarian smooth

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spaces involves eruption, irruption and disruption, towards growing unexpected passages for the

game.

However, the de-territorialising refrain – ‘expressive qualities that constitute territorial motifs’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 317) – of (mis)understandings between Tim and Zak (un)surprisingly

breaks the game. They disagree over Piri joining the game; Tim invites him to participate but Zak

argues that he can’t because he doesn’t have a map. This time their disagreement is not resolvable

in the moment. As Tim walks off, he waves his map at Zak, saying: I’m gonna put this in my locker

and you can never find it! The maps are intact but the mapping that they represent breaks.

‘Childhood scenes, children’s games: the starting point is a childlike refrain, but the child has wings

already…Opening the assemblage onto a cosmic force…one was already present in the other’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 350). The game~players~map assemblage continues in a different

expression on another day as Tim and Piri take up hunting together after Zak has gone to school.19

Tim and Zak’s dinosaur spider hunt map making occurred on a Thursday; Zak left for school the

next day; and on the following Monday, Tim and Piri made maps for their bad guys hunt. The maps

were continually becoming the game, the map(ping)s both calling the games into be(com)ing along

with the players.

mapping (a) milieu(s) of curricular performativity

It is the children’s overall approach to map(ping) play(ing) that is significant to understanding their

curricular performance within the context of conventional curriculum conceptions that the adult

world imposes on young children. The children’s curricular performance of map-making and

playing out their maps constitutes a multiplicity of learning. The maps express desire for the games,

the characters, the players and their subject positionings, this desire sometimes changing as the

children process through their singular and collective expectations for the game. The maps open (to)

possibilities for the social and physical spaces to (e)merge with/in the imaginative territory of the

game. Their maps continually illuminate and dissolve problems as the children oscillate through

passages until they dis/agree to continue playing together or to con/di/verge in this game-plan(e) or

another. Through their map(ping) play(ing) we are afforded glimpses into their ways of

approaching curriculum, which seems to be more about thinking differently than any particularised

understandings. Through/with/in imaginary games, the children work with tacit learning of the

unconscious, working with their desires alongside (those of) others, imparting understandings of an

embodied unconscious with/in the multiplicity of the full body, the body without organs. This 19 In Aotearoa New Zealand children move on to school at five years of age so the group dynamics of older children in the kindergarten were constantly changing.

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disrupts cognition as a prime function of the body, disturbing the foothold of pervasive structuralist

approaches to learning and understandings of curriculum. Linear processes are irrelevant to children

operating productively in play, in informal, spontaneous learning situations and experiences. As

they flow freely with/through their ideas they (re)create generative learning experiences for

themselves and those around them. Attempting to think differently about the ways children generate

learning opportunities problematises structural, developmental and behaviourist perspectives, as

well as opening (to) glimpses of how this might happen.

Maps picture ebbs and flows of the rhizomatic movement of games and children intermingling in

(a) curricular milieu(s). There is one and there are many – child/ren, game(s) and milieu(s).

Mapping these rhizomatic formations avoids pathologising the children and opens (to) insights

about their curricular performance. Maps as fragmented wholes offer an expansive view of an

extensive milieu of space~time, in which both space and time are irreducible to a linear conception.

They picture mobility and expression of activity, with de~territorialising lines of flight flowing

through/with/in the milieu(s) mapped. The maps illustrate children’s curricular understandings as

(a) milieu(s) of becoming.

Children and childhood

93


opening the children~childhood plateau

In this plateau, I present my poststructuralist feminist understandings of children and childhood,

introducing singularities and monad, and link these to the adult-child binary. Significant to this

thesis-assemblage are (my) westernised understandings, reflecting my subjectivity as white and as

woman~wife~mother~grandmother~early childhood teacher~teacher educator~student. I then

introduce the idea of historical discourses of childhood and subjective positions of children taken up

in these, including a discussion of various discourses that position children as innocent, evil,

miniature adult, as social problem, as having rights, as rich, agentic and as produsers. After linking

these to Te Whāriki20 (Ministry of Education, 1996), I offer another understanding of children, one

of becoming child(ren).

poststructuralist understandings of children and childhood

Understandings of children and childhood are inextricably intertwined in that childhood is a period

in which children live their lives and it is a part of society; also, while childhood is a temporary

period for children, it remains a social structure. The modernist notion of the scientifically universal

child, progressing naturally through specific age-related stages of development of childhood,

promotes an individualised, homogenous child with isolated childhood experiences. However, the

concept of childhood, in poststructuralist terms, is re-presented, as socially constructed, historically

contingent, culturally situated and contextually bound (Cannella & Viruru, 2004). In these

understandings, it is impossible to define what childhood might be or how it should proceed.

Rather, a conceptual multiplicity abounds, intertwining notions of children and childhood within

historical and contemporary understandings.

…there is no such thing as ‘the child’ or ‘childhood’, an essential being and state waiting to be

discovered, defined, realized, so that we can say to ourselves and others ‘that is how children

are, that is what childhood is’. Instead, there are many children and many childhoods, each

constructed by our ‘understandings of childhood and what children are and should be’.

(Dahlberg et al., 1999, p. 43)

20 Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996) is the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood curriculum statement.


94

As a cultural (re)production, childhood is complex, fluid and contextualised and is shaped and

understood differently by singular children and the worlds they operate with/in. This illuminates the

relevance of ‘the power of discursive and interactive practices to create and sustain individual

subjectivities and social structures’ (Davies, 1994, p. 20). In poststructuralist thinking the

universally individualised child is decentred and children are viewed complexly – personally,

interpersonally and always in a particular cultural/institutional context (Malaguzzi, 1993; Rogoff,

1998).

singularities~monad

Deleuze’s (1993) understanding of singularities is useful here. Unlike the individual subject, which

is perceived to be structurally embedded in life, singularities are embodied in processes of living as

indiscrete inside~outside systems that are constantly changing – ‘a singularity cannot achieve total

self-consciousness, since if it did know itself, the self that it knew would not be the same as the self

that did the knowing’ (Readings, 1996, p. 116). Braidotti (2001) says that this singular entity is

‘collectively defined, interrelational and external; it is impersonal but highly singular…is not an

atomized individual but a moment in a chain of being that passes on…[moving] on nomadically, by

multiple becomings’ (p. 407). Conley (2005) explains a singularity is a place where ‘perception is

felt in movement…[and is characterised by] events that make it both unique and common’ (p. 252).

This inside~outside flow between a singular body and its environs disrupts any perception of the

individualised child. Monad expresses these inside~outside worlds – ‘the world is included in each

one in the form of perceptions…the monad does not exist outside of other monads’ (Deleuze, 1993,

p. 86). So, ‘within the finiteness of its own existence is expressed the infinity of the entire world’

(Sellers, M., 2007, p. 58), monad is both infinite and infinitesimal. Monad expresses oneness that

enfolds a multiplicity and a multiplicity that unfolds the oneness, continuously coming and going.

‘The monad is a mirror and a perspective onto the world’ (Dimakopoulou, 2006, ¶ 9). Singularities

and monad together then re/cite/site ‘the child’.

In that singularities ‘extend to the neighbourhood of other singularities’ (Deleuze, 1993, p. 91),

children and childhood are inextricably intertwined. Children are no longer individuals but

collectives embodied in surroundings and childhood is disrupted as an individualised, isolated

experience. Children and their childhoods link to the inside~outside, with/in a monadic~nomadic

flow.


95

subjectivity and monadic~nomadic flow

Linked to notions of the individualised child and monadic children are understandings of subject

and subjectivity. ‘The subject’ represents a modernist assumption of a logocentric, generic

individual, whereas ‘subjectivity’ illuminates the social world’s part in constituting subjects.

Subjectivity foregrounds the ‘shifting, fragmented, multi-faceted and contradictory nature’ (Davies,

1994, p. 3) of the diversity of our lived experience, always already dynamic, changing and

multidimensional with/in particular discourses and practices and always already constituted by

these – a ‘subject-in-process’ (Kristeva & Roudiez, 1980, p. 135) in various worlds. The ex-subject,

now monad, is produced in the discursive practices that make up social worlds, existing as a

multiplicity of contradictory subjectivities dispersed in a plurality of spaces. This multiplicity

disrupts any lingering assumptions of a unitary, pre-given psychological subject who is socialised

(Walkerdine, 2000). Braidotti (2001) explains such movement around subjectivity as a ‘social

imaginary, [as] a network of forces and interconnections that constitute subjects in multiple,

complex, and multi-layered ways. Subjects are…simultaneously constructed and destabilized by

interpellations that hit them at all levels [all-at-once]’ (p. 385). She works also with the Deleuzo-

Guattarian (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) figuration of nomad, or ‘nomadic subjectivity’, in which

there is ‘simultaneity of complex and multi-layered identities’ (Braidotti, n.d., electronic version, ¶

54), a nomadic~monadic flow. Disrupting the unitary subject, subjectivity is characterised as

constituted rather than constitutive, is perceived as embodied and situated, as a desiring-machine

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), fragmentary and re/cited/sited from one moment to the next, as

monadic~nomadic.

Having opened possibilities for understanding children and childhood as a monad~nomad

multiplicity within poststructuralist thinking, I turn to the modernist adult|child binary. The

dichotomous categorising of children as non-adults not only relegates children to an inferior status

in the world, it also obscures the diversity of children and childhood. It homogenises children and

their childhoods and dismisses a heterogeneous multiplicity of desire and capability. Similar to

adults’ lived experiences of adulthood, childhood is subject to societal forces and children can be

understood as power-full players in their childhoods and in society.

adult|child binary

Disrupting the modernist adult|child binary is significant to the project of (re)conceiving children

and their childhood(s). Within dichotomous thinking, society divides its members into childhood

and adulthood, with transition into adulthood the ultimate goal and adulthood claiming distinctive


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rights and privileges, but also having obligations. However, even as monad children mature into

adulthood, the inferior status of children as a group remains. For example, (middle class) adult

platitudes present childhood as a golden age in which children are to be untroubled by adult

concerns, such as work and social responsibility. Although this expresses concern for children’s

physical and emotional well-being, it subordinates children in the family, school and the wider

community and is imbued with disdaining values and attitudes towards children that are ageist

(Franklin, 2002; Vandenbroeck & Bie, 2006). But the intersections among child and adult, and

childhood and adulthood are complex and fraught with contradictions as past and present meet, for

example, adult experience as children living childhoods in an earlier time are different from

children’s experiences of childhood now (Mayall, 2002). When children are confronted with

historic adult knowledge, temporal differences ascribed to childhood and adulthood become

apparent, although exploring the space of difference opens (to) possibilities for generating both

unique and common understandings. Moss (2002) urges that we think more broadly about early

childhood across life’s course to avoid the marginalisation of young children.

In the process of subordinating children within protected social roles (Mayall, 2002), generational

boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more distinct. However, Suransky (1982)

argues that the predominating adult agenda shaped by technological and institutional imperatives is

eroding childhood; similarly, Postman (1994) believes that the division between childhood and

adulthood is disappearing. Children become ‘adult-child’ (p. 98) or ‘kidult’ (Bird, 2003, p. 45), as

through popular entertainment, news and advertising, adult information and values become

accessible to children, so that ‘behavior, language, attitudes, and desires – even the physical

appearance – of adults and children are becoming increasingly indistinguishable’ (Postman, 1994,

p. 4). But within this kidult culture, Postman notes that children’s understandings of themselves are

that they are children, the adult responsibility here being to embrace this agentic definition.

Children thus display a knowledgeable, sophisticated desire for their childhoods and for what they

would be(come) as children.

In deconstructing early childhood education, Cannella (1997) disrupts the modernist binarial

assumption that children are unable to be perceived as competent, knowledgeable and empowered

until they reach the privileged position of adult. She promotes children as ‘younger human beings’

(p. 11) and although younger still implies there is an older, more desirable position, her critique is

influential. The child is decentred as children are viewed complexly and childhood is similarly

disrupted. The corollary is that the term ‘children’ should be sous rature (children) throughout this

thesis-assemblage, but at risk of perpetuating the dichotomy, to ease the conversation I speak of


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children with the intention that this be read as young people of monadic singularity. Butler (1990)

affirms that abandoning the terms ‘children’ and ‘childhood’ is unnecessary, as to be constituted is

not to be determined. Considering possibilities for re(con)ceiving children and childhood

invites/incites also a response to the multiple voices of feminism, calling to question dominating

ideologies, knowledges and educational practices (Cannella, 2000; Mayall, 2002). The hierarchical

concept of the adult|child binary, which absents children, distorts their social positioning and

compromises their contribution, comes to the attention of feminist scholarship, which implicitly

sustains children as young people, rather than not-yet-adult.

leaving this opening conversation…

As I move to discussing discourses of children and childhood, I iterate my subjectively affected

understanding of the multiplicity of children and childhood. Children are young people of monadic

singularity living childhoods outside a mere pathway to adulthood. Children and childhood(s) are a

living~learning experience all human beings negotiate. Within this generative thinking, childhood

becomes a space-time whereby children experience life in all its complexities and ambiguities; as

an ongoing celebratory performance of living, it is not a problem in life to be resolved or worked

through. Children invite authentic21 respect.

(e)merging images and subject positionings of children in childhood(s)

Emanating from historical discourses of children and childhood are modernist images of children

and childhood and in the latter decades of the twentieth century poststructuralist understandings of

subject positionings of children and childhood have emerged. In this discussion I use the term

‘images’ to emphasise modernistically imbued perspectives of viewing children and childhood that

project representations of the external forms of children and childhood. In its use as a metaphorical

figure of speech, ‘image’ evokes a sense of likeness as it appears from the outside and is judged as

extremely typical. ‘Image’ thus provokes modernist thought, referring to a unitary and non-

contradictory self, embedded in identity. Children are thus identified as innocent, evil or as

miniature adult, for example, and as maturing within frameworks of childhood. In contrast, subject

positions work with poststructuralist understandings of subjectivity, organised in relation to various

discourses, which ‘open up, or make possible, certain subject positions through and in terms of

which we can interact with the world’ (Davies, 1994, p. 23). Reflecting the conceptual fluidity of

these ‘subject positions’ and the active ‘constitutive force of discourse’ (p. 23) on them, I further

21 I use ‘authentic’ cautiously as there is a sense that a quest for authenticity is but a contemporary rendition of the Golden Fleece myth.


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draw the understanding from an implied fixed ‘position’ to a more mobile ‘positioning’, as shifting,

fragmented, multidimensional, contradictory and always already dynamic and changing.

These historical and psycho/sociological discourses perceive children and their childhood(s) in

various ways. Historically, three sets of themes dominate images of childhood: the child as weak,

innocent and needy, requiring rescue and protection; the child as evil, monster or threat, from whom

society needs protection if order and progress are to be maintained; and the child as miniature or

embryonic adult, perceived as a redemptive agent ensuring futurity (Moss & Petrie, 2002;

Woodrow, 1999; Woodrow & Brennan, 2001). More recently, within poststructuralist thinking,

some emerging subject positionings explain children as adult commodity, agentic, younger human

beings (Cannella, 1997; Sorin, 2003), with rights (Moss & Petrie, 2002), as social problem

(Corsaro, 1997), and as ‘produsers’ (Bruns, 2007). These understandings of children and childhood

have been woven throughout different eras, with different ones dominating in different times,

influenced, for example, by changing conceptions of the roles of nature and culture. The notion that

childhood is a socially-constructed concept and not an independent reality (Cannella, 1997; James,

Jenks, & Prout, 1998) informs understandings of how images and subject positionings work,

including how they continue to be ‘shaped by culturally specific sets of ideas, philosophies,

attitudes, and practices’ (Woodrow & Brennan, 2001, p. 25) relative to any particular situation and

situation. For example, Rogoff (2003) disrupts the western discourse of child development,

illuminating how our taken-for-granted (westernised) images and subject positionings of children

and childhood are commonly perceived as natural, so that questioning them creates discomfort, and

is likely to elicit accusations of political bias (Woodrow and Brennan, 2001). Images that present

children as passive and childhood as a site of control, while simultaneously embracing aspects of

nurture and protection, limit understandings of children and childhood (Woodrow, 1999). But

considering how they work is useful to opening possibilities for their interruption, towards

furthering more recent subject positionings of children and childhood – as agentic, rich, with rights

and as produsers.

the child as weak~innocent~needy

The construction of the weak child, as opposed to the knowledgeable and all-powerful adult, is

embedded in the adult|child binary, this binary being a self-perpetuating mechanism as childhood

becomes the object of the scientific gaze and children are manipulated and regulated by the expert

adult world. In this view, children become Other/ed as weak, needy and innocent, ‘lacking (in skill

or knowledge), immature, fearful, savage, vulnerable, undefined’, unlike adults who are ‘intelligent,

strong, competent, mature, civilized, and in control’ (Cannella, 1997, p. 34). Children (and their


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childhoods) are afforded minority status as they strive to become adults through a childhood

apprenticeship that prepares them for adulthood (Mayall, 2002). This separation privileges the

functioning of adults, with children being labelled as deficient and incomplete, and in their frailty,

simultaneously protected from and denied access to adult knowledge. The emergence of child-

centred pedagogy in the 1960s proposed children as being central in their learning, however,

critique uncovers this as a patriarchal, authoritarian construct (Cannella, 1997; Walkerdine,

1998/1984) creating an illusion of freedom for children to think and act. The child-centred approach

functioned in pre-determined ways through Euro-American, male rationalism (Cannella & Viruru,

2004).

In this image, innocence readily becomes confounded with childhood ignorance, compared to the

knowledgeable state of adulthood, with children being dismissed as incapable of responding to the

realities of their lives (Cannella & Viruru, 2004). For example, children are often more

knowledgeable than adults in understanding complex and distressing phenomena, such as death and

illness and in making life/death decisions about treatment, including termination of treatment

(Alderson, 2002; Silin, 1995). The innocent child then gives rise to the needy child, an image

grounded in normalising theories of human development. With these expert-defined needs of what

is normal presented as a given (Bird & Drewery, 2000; Dahlberg & Moss, 2005), constructing a

generic child with needs that are incontestable assumes a lack. Perceived as ‘needy’ thus, harmfully,

puts the child in deficit (Bird, 2003). Although it is common for children’s needs to be defined and

managed as adults determine (Mayall, 2002), currently there is a shift from focusing on adult

perceptions of children’s ‘needs’ towards embracing children’s views of what is just (Woodhead,

2001). This links to the child with rights, discussed further on.

the child as monster~evil~threat

As the weak~innocent~needy image of children reproduces an assumed universal nature, the image

of the child as monster~evil~threat, similarly reproduces a homogeneous child and although this

monster child suggests an autonomous active position, it is regulated into passivity. The monster

child is considered to lack protection from her/him/self and thus needs to be tamed, for example, by

behaviourist psychological approaches (Green, 1984). The view of children as ‘little

devils…inherently naughty, unruly and unsocialised beings’ (Holloway & Valentine, 2000, p. 3) is

reflected in centuries old, Christian attitudes to child-rearing that work to civilise and constrain

inner, monstrous qualities, with each new generation perceived as a threat to its elders. Although,

currently the ‘threat’ of young children’s confidence and technical competence with manipulating

new technologies, particularly ICT, is affirming of children, welcoming them as ‘media sages’


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(Marsh, 2007, p. 19). However, the negativity of the monster image dominates, legitimising

intervention programmes such as the medicalising of ADHD children, whose behaviour must be

dealt with and contained.

Within early childhood settings, some practices work to constrain the monstrous, threatening child

through rules that promote conformity and routines and reinforce adult authority and power. While

the grouping of children according to age may be designed to protect toddlers from the play of more

boisterous older children, keeping them apart acts to simultaneously control both the monstrous and

the weak child. Moreover, in the monster image, adults are also assumed to need protection from

the (perceived) out-of-control child, thus the treating of the ADHD child, for example (Coppock,

2002). In the interests of maintaining the social order, the monster child is tamed, sometimes being

denied opportunities to grow in responsibility; some see extension groups in early childhood

settings where children are rewarded for performing to task within a specified timeframe as

contributing to a regulatory social order (Woodrow, 1999). Intervention in the form of regulating

the monster child and organising the needy child satisfies the normalising endeavour of

developmental theory. Ultimately, within the monster~evil~threat image the all-powerful adult is

valorised; conformity takes precedence over children negotiating their power-fullness; agency is

denied. Emanating from this (supposed) monster child is the child as social problem, which further

regulates children into passivity.

the child as social problem

Intermingling with these weak and monster images is the discourse of the child as ‘social problem’

(Corsaro, 1997), in which children are largely perceived as useless, as a threat, as needing

protection, as passive, as a marginalised out-group, as responsibility of women. While

representations of children as small, vulnerable members of society are potentially damaging,

images of children as villains, as dangerous children who prey on others are equally damaging – the

latter image promoting the political idea that such children are undeserving of participation in

society and that society needs protection from them. The child as villain, defined as social problem

– particularly children from lower socio-economic communities – is also blamed for being the

problem and is deemed responsible for social and economic problems that adversely affect her/his

life. In this modernist, simplistic cause-and-effect view children also become redemptive agents for

a better future, with childhood being a time when social problems are solvable (Dahlberg & Moss,

2005, p. 57). This justifies the need for further instruction, training and discipline – for children and

their parents – increasing their marginalisation and affirming children’s inferiority. But, if


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resolution of the threat fails, the child as social problem is deemed responsible for living out

adulthood as an unresolvable agent.

Victimising the child as a social problem spreads further into an unease about children’s everyday

safety and security in public places (Morrow, 2002; Walkerdine, 2000). As adult anxieties dominate

about children being alone in public places – being in the wrong place at the wrong time – children

are increasingly isolated from one another. An anomaly is apparent here as the universalised child

who has become public property is simultaneously expected to operate within the private domain.

Opportunities to be together and learn from each other are restricted to early childhood settings, for

example, and children lose the opportunities for sharing experiences and doing things together, in

public playgrounds for example (Corsaro, 1997; James et al., 1998; Smith, 2000). However,

enmeshed in this supposed lack of freedom are young children’s rights to protection and provision

within (potentially unsafe?) public spaces and within private spaces, albeit restrictive; even the

private space of home is not always safe (Walkerdine, 2000). Attempts to promote children’s right

to participation (Mayall, 2000) point to social, political and economic problematics. To some

extent, overprotectiveness inheres in the social problem discourse, as does sentimentalism. The

images and subject positionings discussed so far remain fundamentally problematic.

the child as miniature adult or embryonic adult

Nowhere is the adult|child binary more evident than in the image of the child as miniature adult, or

as embryonic adult (Woodrow, 1999). This view is dependent on a linear perspective and children

merely pass through a preparatory period in childhood, through developmental stages whereby

various skills, emotions and knowledge are acquired in preparation for adult life (Corsaro, 1997).

This essentialist view, reliant on stage theories of child development, anticipates specific outcomes

for childhood and conceives of childhood and adulthood as distinct historical periods. As

preparation for life and employment, childhood becomes a rehearsal endorsing social conformity;

and children become a resource, an investment for the future (Woodrow, 1999). Childhood is thus

denied as an actual process of living and children are denied status as young human beings in their

own right. Both children and their childhoods are not only marginalised, they are also colonised

(Cannella & Viruru, 2004). Piaget’s work contributed significantly to children becoming objects of

the scientific gaze that ensured their psychologised advancement into adulthood. In relation to early

childhood curriculum, this structurally developmentalist framework that inheres in the adult|child

binary both draws from and feeds into the image of the child as embryo adult, the outcome

invariably orienting towards reproduction.


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the child as commodity~consumer~produser

Emanating from the child as miniature adult are economically and politically oriented subject

positionings of the child as commodity and children as consumers and ‘produsers’ (Bruns, 2005).

The child as commodity works to benefit materialistic aspirations of/for adulthood (Sorin, 2003;

Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1997). As the ‘commodification of one set of human beings for the

consumption of another’ (Quinby, 1991, pp. 104-105 cited in Lather, 1993, p. 42) is played out,

children are at risk from exploitation along a continuum, involving being used as cute calendar

images, becoming prime consumer targets, being enslaved and economically exploited by multi-

national companies and being sold for body parts (Stearns, 2006). Similarly exploited, children in

for-profit early childhood centres are capitalised by the childcare industry; children requiring care

while parents/caregivers work are an economic asset, a unit carrying dollars, open to exploitation by

entrepreneurial, privatised, childcare companies (Snook, 2000; Woodrow & Brennan, 2001), some

listed on the stock exchange. The increasing involvement of the marketing of education and care for

young children where the child is primarily a dollar-earning unit for entrepreneurs, and secondarily

a person with rights to education and a desire to learn, renders children and childhood at risk of

exploitation. The child as commodity is objectified, lacks agency and is mis/represented by adult

acts, many of which seem not to have the best interests of the child at heart. The economic agenda

that (ab)uses children as a commodity also commodifies children as consumers.

Although positioning children as consumers suggests a move towards a more actively involved,

agentic child making choices in the marketplace, it is but a trajectory of children as commodity as

children are drawn into an essentially materialistic worldview, remaining passive players in their

childhoods amidst conflicting social trends. Smith (2000) presents this complex arrangement of

children as ‘dutiful consumers, creative thinkers, and decisive actors’ (p. 8). These perceptions

require children to be adaptable to the current era (as consumers or recipients) and open to future

revision (as creative thinkers). As dutiful consumers, children become a way to their parents’

spending power and potentially valuable life-long converts themselves to brands and products. In

reaching her/his own conclusions the child as ‘passive, malleable consumer’ becomes an active

‘questioning and creative interpreter’ (p. 7). Children as consumers are enmeshed in contradictory

experiences and demands. For example, participating in a trike-a-thon to raise money for running

their kindergarten positions young children as competent participants in the economy and as a

dollar-earning unit to be exploited. It is likely that children interpret this as a fun activity and as a

valuable contribution towards the acquisition of new resources as they enthusiastically pedal around

a circuit in anticipation of using the new resource. Consumerism takes them full circle, inviting

their (re)participation.


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Another trajectory of the commodification is of children as ‘produsers’ (Bruns, 2005; 2007), who

straddle the agentic|passive divide. Recent understandings of children as active players in

digitisation disrupt the discreteness of a producer|consumer dichotomy and affirm the ‘non-threat’

as capable users of ICT that these children pose. These ‘produsers’ actively engage in a

collaborative, participatory environment, simultaneously using and producing information and

knowledge (Bruns, 2007). In this way children are shaped to participate through interactive,

individualised modes of engagement with media technologies. Marsh (2007) reports both positive

and negative affects for childhoods as children are characterised as ‘media saps’ and/or ‘media

sages’ (p. 15). Imag(in)ing children as media saps, subject to manipulation by the media, denies

children agency and productive capabilities, whereas media sages are perceived as having a high

degree of knowledge and expertise necessary for the future. As Marsh concludes, conceptualising

digital childhoods is complex, involving both opportunities and threats, as children shape and are

shaped by digitisation.

…pausing momentarily…

The sets of images of children as weak, monstrous and embryonic adult pervade current educational

practice, as adults act on behalf of children effectively denying them agency, as children are

regarded as objects of study towards improving behaviour and as children are pushed towards adult-

imposed achievement standards and educational maturity (Sorin, 2003). While a modernist

understanding sees these actions as having positive affects for children and their progress through

childhood, a poststructuralist deconstruction resists subject positioning of children as inferior to

adults, as immature, naïve, less able, dependent and incompetent human beings. Also, from a

feminist reading, male adult society (the dominant majority) decides what constitutes learning and

development, in regard to what children (marginalised as Other) need to know and why, and how

they ought to go about it. These modernist images of children as weak, monstrous and embryonic

sustain children as essentially passive, but recent subject positioning of the agentic child (James &

Prout, 1997) and children as younger human beings (Cannella, 1997) open possibilities within

poststructural thinking for (re)conceiving children and their childhoods. It is important to note that

movement towards the agentic child has not occurred sequentially as this discussion might imply.

Rather there has been a flow22 of merging images and subject positionings of children and

22 I resist the idea of this being a continuum, as ‘continuum’ originates from the ‘concept of a technological lineage’, which although engages with variable extension, is from a given standpoint (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 405), suggesting an ordered, traceable sequence, albeit overlapping. ‘Flow’ is ‘matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as conveyor of singularities and traits of expression’ (p. 409). This matter-flow cannot be determined, it ‘can only be followed’ (p. 409), or mapped.


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childhood as commodity~consumer~producer. There is a complexity of discourses oscillating

through various space-times. (E)merging subject positionings appear in a multi-dimensional

complexity of networks where images of children become perceptible from within an historical

tangle of authority, regulation and possibilities for the future and in a continuing dissolving of

present practices and opening to future ones.

the agentic child

The constituting of the agentic child positions children as active and influential participants within a

variety of social contexts (Cannella & Viruru, 2004). Agentic children are perceived as capably

participating in their worlds, competently appropriating and reproducing aspects of their culture

through social interactions (Sorin, 2003), often creating learning experiences beyond that which

their teachers may have conceived or thought possible. This understanding considers children as

collective producers of culture, as co-constructors of childhood, as co-producers of knowledge, as a

social group, as useful, as autonomous social actors (Vandenbroeck & Bouverne-de Bie, 2006;

Prout 2005; Mayall, 2002, Corsaro, 1997). From a westernised educational perspective, viewing

children as co-producers (with teachers and other adults) of knowledge foregrounds them as power-

full in negotiating their childhoods. However, Lee (1998) argues that considering children as

agentic and actively contributing to the social worlds they operate within fails to recognise the

notions of dependency and immaturity inherent in agentic action. He claims that this sociological

concept of agency privileges competency and completeness and, as an essentialist view, excludes

those outside the mainstream, so while this view of children’s agency is commonly promoted in

early childhood education, the concept is culturally bound. Similarly, Davies (1990) emphasises

that the traditional sociological view, which constitutes individuals as having choice and as being

able to act on those choices, is a misplaced assumption that lacks cognisance of complex and

contradictory belief systems, such as those around individual rights and the productivity of the

collective and around notions of gendered-ness.

While ensuring children as a group in society have voice and are visible, how agency translates into

practice is inherently problematic as it functions within the parameters of childhood’s minority

status (Mayall, 2002). Although disrupting the adult|child binary may produce anxiety about an

erosion or disappearance of childhood (Suransky, 1982; Postman, 1994), it opens opportunities for

both adults and children in that arbitrary, generational boundaries, for example, dissolve and

become less constraining (Vandenbroeck & Bouverne-de Bie, 2006). But within such sociological

perspectives a problem also arises. When agency is considered dependent on having a ‘voice’,

encouraging children’s participation risks silencing groups of children who operate within tenuous


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social worlds of diverse lived experiences, socially and culturally. For example, participation is an

acceptable notion for children living in families where a culture of negotiation exists – negotiation

between parents and between parents and children. Such negotiation and self-expression are

western, middle-class cultural constructions, not common to all cultures, although such attributes

are perceived as optimal in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood settings. As Davies (1990) says,

‘all available discursive practices are not something any individual can automatically take up’

(p. 342). So this, now westernised, and most likely middle class, agentic child works to privilege an

already privileged group of children even though agency is likely to be produced in different ways

in different social and cultural contexts. With negotiation skills perceived as a civilising process and

preparation for adult life in a westernised democracy, anomalies arise in that promoting the agentic

child also works to tame the monster child and to affirm the status of childhood as a preparatory

process for life in which the child is futuristic adult and redemptive agent. The agentic child,

culturally bound, continues to be susceptible to adverse affects and effects of dichotomising

adult|child.

From a poststructuralist perspective, agency is contingent, within contradictory and shifting

positionings of accepting and resisting social beliefs around individuals and collectives, and of

accepting and resisting operating within and outside these social lores. Davies (1990) foregrounds

the following questions as significant to becoming agentic, as children (and adults, continually)

learn to fit in and also become agents of change:

How is an individual’s subjectivity, their idea of who they are, their particular way of making

sense of themselves and of the social world, developed? How is it that we find the words, the

concepts, the ideas, with which to say who we are? How do we becomes one who takes up or

resists various discursive practices, who modifies one practice in relation to another – who

chooses between various positions and practices made available? (p. 345)

What becomes apparent is that in theorising any image of children and childhood risks

homogenising children within their childhood and if teachers fail to generate opportunities for

divergent ways of children seeing and making sense of the world, we risk reverting to a universal

conception despite diverse lived experiences. Although subject positionings of children and

childhood admit to being unstable, non-unitary and contestable, even the weaving of subject

positionings that work to (re)conceive children as active and contingent members of society and of

childhood, risks limiting children’s world views, as any (adult-construed) discourse ultimately

affect how children see themselves. Agency is (a) supposedly shared and participatory (enterprise),

but there is a sense that an agentic child emerges only when the adult world authorises her/him, by


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providing necessary discursive and social resources and when a personal sense of agency is given to

children (Davies, 1990). Ongoing critique and deconstruction is thus significant to avoiding limiting

children through a use of conceptualisations that un/intentionally sustain adult control and

children’s acquiescence.

a child with rights

At first glance the child with rights is positioned as actively agentic, but a second glance reveals it is

also permeated with passivity. Recently, in early childhood education, the ‘needy’ child has become

a child with rights – to freedom, self-determination, equality and citizenship – but this is also a

value-laden, problematic image maintaining the minority status of childhood, with children

becoming subjects of an emancipatory project (Moss & Petrie, 2002). Children’s needs are

reinscribed to a human rights discourse that makes issues visible and more readily contestable. But,

although this entitles children, as young human beings, to be active agents with personal desires for

enacting personal goals, children remain under the jurisdiction of adults and are not entirely

autonomous. There is scope for independent thought and action and some capability for children to

act on their own behalf, but rights tend to be granted by adults (Bird, 2003). Also, the child with

rights still needs protection against oppression (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005), this protection assuming

expert-adult knowledge of children’s needs and desires. Not denying that protection from abuse

may be necessary, this still assumes a vulnerability that exacerbates inequitable, inferior positioning

in both family and society.

Futhering the problematic, the notion of the free thinking child with rights assumes cultural

homogeneity in regard to the place and limits of autonomous actions, and tension arises between

understandings of individual rights and collective interdependence within diverse culturally located

families/whānau/communities23. Cannella and Viriru’s (2004) understanding is that the adult|child

hierarchy works through all discourses to colonise children:

Our Enlightened, modern, and even postmodern discourses have conspired to create a group of

the invisibly colonized – those who are so dominated that they are disqualified (without adult

awareness) as human beings…While we would not hesitate to stress that children themselves do

not necessarily accept or function within this colonization, we would stress the ideas that within

the adult mind and constitution, the colonization of children is complete and without question.

(Cannella & Viruru, 2004, p. 118, italics added)

23 Whānau is the extended family, which includes not only blood relatives but also others closely connected within everyday living experiences of parents and children.


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That children reject adult’s colonising their childhoods is demonstrated by children’s expressions of

power-fullness, for example, in Marcy resisting adult demands on her activity (See Letter to Marcy

in Preceding echoes) and in Tim’s confronting my colonising of his space (See the Becoming-

child(ren) becoming-power-full plateau). However, for the moment, a rights discourse seems useful

for including children in wider societal understandings of entitlements and responsibility as it

disrupts the ‘expert needs discourse’ (Bird, 2003, p. 43) and opens (to) possibilities for children’s

active participation in decision-making about their childhoods and their learning. Both children and

adults are entitled to be heard, to have their concerns taken into account; and children and adults are

obliged to listen to, and take into account others’ concerns. Individual and collective rights of

children and adults are co-implicated – children become social participants, with adults being seen

as ‘protecting children’s rights, rather than protecting children’(Moss & Petrie, 2002, p. 106,

original italics). (E)merging from/with/in the agentic young human being with rights is the rich

child.

the rich child

The rich child (Moss & Petrie, 2002), commonly associated with Reggio Emilia philosophy,

operates in an agentic setting. This child is rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent, social and

an interdependent agent, understood as a member of the social group of childhood, which is

important in its own right and as a significant phase of life that leaves traces on adulthood. The

concern is with who the child is now, with the adult world bearing responsibility for ensuring

children have opportunities within the present, rather than regarding children as redemptive agents

of their own future. Children’s extensive relations among parents, adults, children, their

communities and wider society are of great importance within the rich child image. Such extended

relations decentres the nuclear family as being totally responsible for children’s welfare, with both

parents and children viewed as contributing members of communities, which reciprocate by

providing support. These relationships acknowledge that childhood is played out in many settings.

Children’s friendships represent ways for more active involvement in the wider community, as

together children generate their own cultural expressions to enhance their ‘sphere of social agency’

(Moss & Petrie, 2002, p. 104). The rich child is a subjective person with citizenship rights, not an

object of adult demands; collectively, children as citizens are a social group in their own right with

rights and strengths. This interdependent approach works to ensure that children’s optimal

involvement contributes to an accrual of collective benefits to the adult world (Lero, 2000; Moss &

Penn, 1996).


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However, in that the development of children’s human capital is an investment in the social capital

of the adult world, this rich child again becomes a potential object of exploitation, a resource for

future investment. When children are considered fully operational, young human beings, spaces

open for genuine interdependence among children and adults and their social worlds. Yet such

spaces are rife with ambiguities and contradiction, as rich children express their own flows of

power-fullness, their richness becomes a resource for the adult world, for example. Considering the

complexity involved, allocating specific subject positionings to children and childhood through

classification that is aligned with understandings that adult worlds deem either desirable or

problematic continues to confound the conversation.

the rich child and Te Whāriki

The rich child is conceivably a desirable and readily acceptable image for Kindergarten practice in

Aotearoa New Zealand, which aims to provide agentic environments that foster children as active

participants in their own learning. Much of Te Whāriki can also be read as supporting this rich child

image. Suggestive of this is the underpinning philosophical aspiration for children ‘to grow up as

competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in

their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society’

(Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 9). This highlights children’s family and community as places of

‘socially and culturally meditated learning’ and the critical role of ‘reciprocal and responsive

relationships’ among these (p. 9). Positive aspects of the rich child’s agency and rights are alluded

to, as children are afforded opportunities to ‘reflect on alternative ways for doing things; make

connections across time and place; establish different kinds of relationships; and encounter different

points of view’ (p. 9). However, subject positionings are both affirmed and problematised in the

principles and strands of Te Whāriki, as conceptual understandings of children as agentic, with

rights and rich are entangled with western assumptions of children as essentially weak, needy and

embryonic adult, these latter assumptions in part productive of providing early childhood services

(Moss & Petrie, 2002).

The principles of empowerment, holistic development, family and community, and relationships are

suggestive of agency, but not without difficulties. Although one side of empowerment is that

‘children will have the opportunity to create and act on their own ideas’ (Ministry of Education,

1996, p. 40), a flip side is problematic in that a superior someone from the outside endows children

with dispositions for supposedly operating more effectively. Also, holistic development weaves

together intricate patterns of linked experience and meaning rather than emphasising the acquisition

of discrete skills and expects that early childhood practitioners will have ‘an understanding of


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Māori views on child development’ (p. 41), but the informing developmental perspectives of Te

Whāriki are based in psychology. The principles of family and community and relationships seem

to cross cultures more readily, but in an essentially westernised educational environment honouring

ideas that ‘different cultures have different child-rearing patterns’ and ‘culturally appropriate ways

of communicating should be fostered’ (p. 42) is not straightforward. In relation to the former, Te

Whāriki assumes independence is an ideal, but what of cultures who prioritise interdependence?

Also, not all cultures deem it appropriate for children to express their opinions and desires in adult

fora, for example.

The strands are similarly complicated in their linkages to images of children and childhood.

Although the intent of the strands promotes a rich child, like the principles, this is culturally bound.

The strand of well-being~mana atua states: ‘The health and well-being of the child are protected

and nurtured’ (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 15). Keeping young human beings safe, physically

and emotionally, is to be lauded but this strand does operate from within the weak~innocent~needy

image, perpetuating the adult|child binary and valorising the powerful, competent adult. What is

deemed ‘safe’ thus requires critique. Communication~mana reo reflects the image of a child with

rights, stating: ‘The languages and symbols of their own and other cultures are promoted and

protected’ (p. 16) but, again, this requires deconstruction of colonisation. Exploration~mana

aotūroa, in which ‘the child learns through active exploration of the environment’ (p.16), promotes

an agentic child, who is expected to develop reasoning strategies, but this is a problematic

modernist attribute. In belonging~mana whenua, ‘children and their families feel a sense of

belonging’ (p. 15), which links to the promotion of extensive relations of the rich child image

although families of traditional Māori, Pacific Peoples or Asian families, for example, may find that

‘limits and boundaries of acceptable behaviour’ (p. 15) differ from those promoted in westernised

settings. Contribution~mana tangata expects that: ‘Opportunities for learning are equitable, and

each child’s contribution is valued’ (p. 16). A simplified translation of mana tangata is ‘human

rights, integrity, status’ (Ryan, 1997, p. 143), including honouring cultural rights24. Social and

spiritual connotations are embodied in Māori understandings in that mana tangata is about not

standing alone but being at one with one’s people. This conflicts with the individualised child with

rights suggested in Te Whāriki whereby ‘children are affirmed as individuals’ (Ministry of

Education, 1996, p. 16). These linkages between well-being~mana atua, communication~mana reo,

exploration~mana aotūroa, belonging~mana whenua, and contribution~mana tangata present as a

24 The Mataatua Declaration on Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples First International Conference on the Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Whakatane 12-18 June 1983 Aotearoa New Zealand. www.fphlcc.ca/downloads/mana-tangata.pdf accessed 19.02.09


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complex system, lacking coherence – as soon as a link is made it is disrupted in a kind of

de~territorialising recursivity so establishing any sort of orderly pattern related to specific subject

positionings is impossible. This lack of consistency is unsettling to developmentally based thinking.

Conceivably, a rich child application of Te Whāriki opens possibilities for meaningful linkages in

valuing whānau relations that are extensive, collective and interdependent. But, a cursory check of

the goals for children’s development attached to the strands again highlights the inherent

westernised thinking, and not only in terms of ‘development’. For example: ‘an expectation that

[children] take responsibility for their own learning’ (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 84) implies an

individualistic approach, not necessarily one of interdependence; and, developing ‘working theories

about Planet Earth and beyond’ (p. 90) implies use of western, modernist scientific perspectives –

what about mythological explanations of Māori and Pacific People’s cultures? Also, the expectation

for children to develop ‘a growing recognition and enjoyment of “nonsense” explanations’ (p. 90) is

intriguing. But what is ‘nonsense’? It sounds rather like the adult|child binary at work, positioning

(westernised) adult understandings over children’s interpretations about how the world works.

I now move the conversation about children and childhood towards the Deleuzo-Guattarian

imaginary of becoming-child(ren) (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). This imaginary (introduced in

Preceding echoes, pp. 14 & 20) works to disrupt notions of the child as incomplete, immature and

passive and childhood as universal and thus normalisable.

…a becoming-intermezzo…

Before elaborating a Deleuzo-Guattarian understanding of becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), it

is important to note that this is significantly different from psycho/sociological perspectives. In

psychological and sociological terms ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ work to reduce the child to always

being in states of incomplete development while becoming a different person (Nelson, 2007). The

Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginary of ‘becoming’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 232-309) offers

possibilities for working a conception of children as embodied be(com)ings. ‘Imaginary’ (as

explained in Preceding echoes) moves outside ‘image’ and stretches ‘subject positioning.’ An

imaginary is dynamic, a ‘symbolic glue’ flow operating in spaces of transitions and transactions; it

is ‘sticky,’ ‘it catches on as it goes’ (Braidotti, 2001, p. 384) lacking transparency and purity. It is a

characterising affect, a force affect involving the activity of thinking rather than the thought itself.

This ‘becoming’ imaginary thus considers children and childhood as subjective structures,

characterised by continuous change and alteration so that they are no longer (in)complete bodies,


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but perceivable as alternative epistemologies, in which dynamic processes are ongoing, being both

subject and object of perpetual change through de/territorialisation. That is, systems are in flux,

recursively changing. Becoming, in this sense, works as an antidote to being and identity – these

presuming a stable, rational individual – instead conceiving of bodies as constantly changing

assemblages of forces. The notion of becoming – as in becoming-child – is a way to ‘get outside the

dualisms…to be-between, to pass between, [to act and be with/in] the intermezzo’ or the milieu

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 277). Working rhizomatically, with the Deleuzo-Guattarian

becoming-child, opens possibilities for ‘new’25 linkages and intersections around

(re)conceptualising children and childhood, for exploring the situated production of subjectivities of

children in ways that decentre hierarchical arrangements, which in the past have specified and

regulated ‘normality’. Becoming-children and becoming-adult are embodied with/in common

territory; re(con)ceiving childhood is thus a(n) (e)merging hybrid amidst an array of troubled

discourses.

becoming-

Within the web-like interactions of rhizomatic thinking, interconnectedness and intersections,

becoming is not about becoming anything specific, rather, it is what happens ‘in-between’ –

‘becoming is the very dynamism of change, situated between heterogenous terms and tending

towards no particular goal or end-state’ (Stagoll, 2005). Becomings are always a flow of becoming-

something, such as becoming-child; the happening of becoming gives birth to an emerging subject

in moments and spaces of liminality, at intersections with/in in-betweenness, within the ‘inter’ of

interconnectedness. ‘Becoming produces nothing other than itself’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 238), it is the becoming itself that matters, ‘not the supposedly fixed terms through which that

which becomes passes’ (p. 238).

A line of becoming is not defined by points that it connects or by points that compose it; on the

contrary, it passes between points, it comes up through the middle…a line of becoming has

neither beginning or end, departure nor arrival, origin or destination…A line of becoming has

only a middle. The middle is not an average; it is fast motion, it is the absolute speed of

movement. A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get to it by the middle. A

becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between, the border or

line of flight…. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 293, original italics)

25 Following Lather’s (1994) reference to Deleuze (1992), I use ‘new’ in the sense of ‘creativity which marks the ability to transform, to break down present practices in favour of future ones’ (Lather, 1994, p. 45).


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From within this in-betweenness, the subject is thus viewed as a ‘flux of successive becomings’

(Braidotti, 2001, p. 391). In this complex thinking the subjectivity of embodied subjects (bodies)

becomes ‘a play of forces, a transformer and relay of energy, a surface of intensities’ (p. 391), and

for singular children as subjects, ‘the child [does] not become; it is becoming itself that is a child’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 277, italics added). Amidst this happening of intersecting forces and

spatiotemporal connections, life~work~play becomes a passage of all kinds of inseparable

becomings, an endlessly becoming-multiplicity.

becoming-child(ren)

Becoming for Deleuze and Guattari (1987) is incommensurable with the static, sociological notion

of being as becoming. Understandings of becoming-child and becoming-adult are ‘not a

correspondence between relations’ (p. 237); it is not about a child becoming an adult. This Deleuzo-

Guattarian becoming thus dispels notions of incompleteness; becoming does not involve a series of

progression and/or regression (p. 238) culminating in specific ends, such as incompetent child

developing into rational adult. Rather, becoming works within liminal spaces, which emerge around

borderlines and boundaries, at intersections where crossing-over (of thoughts, thinking, doing,

acting) occurs. Spaces for incipiently different ways of thinking thus emerge from/with/in such

states of in-betweens, middles, milieus.

In contrast to any system or order associated with psychological and sociological understandings

that require subjects and culmination in achieving completeness, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) work

with ‘zones of proximity and undecidability’ (p. 507), in which there is ‘no preformed logical order’

(p. 251). In this condition, ‘becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to,

or lead back to, “appearing,” “being,” “equalling,” or “producing”’ (p. 239). The nub of becoming

for Deleuze and Guattari concerns not such much what it is, but how it is qualified. For example, it

is not about identifying with something, it is about qualifying being (as becoming-child), in such a

way that ‘a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself’ (p. 238), the act of becoming is all it ever

is. Becoming-child(ren) is thus an expression of becoming.

In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), the full title

for plateau 10, which discusses becoming, is ‘1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal,

Becoming-Imperceptible…’ (p. 232). Each plateau title gives a date and text that is significant for

the content, with which it engages. In this instance, the date 1730 is a reference to the prevalence of

a belief in vampirism in Eastern Europe at this time. With this folkloric archetype Deleuze and

Guattari suggest an imaginary that provokes notions of becoming-intensity, becoming-animality


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and becoming-imperceptibility. Such an imaginary enables an approach to understanding becoming

that perturbs the usual structural way of imagining that favours reductionist and historic relations of

subjects/objects. Thus, in becoming, ‘animal is defined not by characteristics (specific, generic,

etc.) but by populations that vary from milieu to milieu or within the same milieu’ (p. 239). In a

similar way, becoming-child is defined not by characteristics but by populations of children in

diverse milieus – thus my preference for becoming-child(ren), which embodies a plurality.

Becoming-child is children expressing becoming, and children’s play(ing) is an expression of that

becoming. Becoming-child(ren) is not evolutionary or filial, it is not progressive or serial; it is

involutionary, it in-volves creative symbiosis, or in other words, enactive-interactive-play(ing).

In the same way that mechanical play is the usually imperceptible allowance for movement in a

machine to enable it to run, so ‘becoming’ is an imperceptible allowance for movement that enables

children to operate in/through their growing and learning or in ‘living~learning’ (Sellers, W., 2008).

Just as play is imperceptible when the machine is running, so becoming is imperceptible when

children are living~learning, with both living~learning and becoming simultaneously in play.

Therefore it is not a matter of what becoming is or does; rather, it is about its workings. Becoming

happens between~through~among~with~in coursing of beings doing with~in de~territorialising

spaces, with/in undefin/ed/able territories, during which, various criteria come into play in the

course of events unfolding. Despite this imperceptibility of becoming, we do ‘see’ becoming at play

– rather like we ‘see’ a stream of water, which we perceive in water flowing. Although, perhaps it is

more about witnessing and about presencing experiences, rather than seeing. Such presence

of/with/in experience is perceptible in the following tale.

Semetsky (2006) re-tells a Russian story of a four year old kindergarten child who, through her

familiarity with some stories, pretended she could read until she was presented (presenced?) with a

book she had not seen/heard before. Mortified by her impending exposure to the group of children

listening, imperceptibly, what emerged from her panic was becoming-child becoming-reader. As

she opened her mouth to confess that she could not really read, her eyes fell on the page and she

heard herself quietly and rhythmically saying the words:

One half of me was reading, and the other was listening in sublime horror…I was reading page

after page as if in a dream…simultaneously I was seeing the text all at once and letters very

black and pictures very bright and myself too surrounded by the kids. (Semetsky, 2006, p. 109)


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The book ended, the children disbanded, the child was alone with her new knowledge; she could

read, albeit without understanding how. Later she feared she had forgotten and took a book from

her mother’s shelf. To her amazement, she recognised a phrase even though it made no sense to her.

In this story, ‘the concept becomes the narrative, and the subject becomes [the] subject of

expression’ (Deleuze, 1993, p. 127), telling of a dynamic process of becoming-reader, an

expression of her becoming-child. Without explicit instruction she had learned to read; she

interacted with the book and the setting – the fear, the teacher, the group of children – and

actualised a virtual thought experiment. As Semetsky points out, her becoming-child could not have

happened (in this moment) without these immanent connections – ‘conditions enabling the

possibility of accessing the otherwise inaccessible may indeed be created and realized in

experience…Something that was virtual…became actualised in a singular experience in the

material world’ (Deleuze, 1993, p. 120). Becoming-child becoming-imperceptibility becoming-

reader becoming-multiplicity linking child~learning~playing~reading~understanding~

curriculum~currere…

Although Guss (2005) does not work directly with Deleuzian philosophy, my reading is that she

illustrates becoming as she troubles the identity of children’s dramatic play(ing). She shows

children engaged in fantasy play(ing) being in ‘a state of continual becoming’ (p. 240). A game of

‘house’ quickly morphs into a performance of fantasy actions, ‘generative and expressive of

personality and culture [becoming] a process of discovery of the here and now, rather than a

rehearsal of (male-dominated, adult-dominated) models for functioning in later life’ (p. 241). In

what I interpret as a play of becoming-child, Tessa and Hilde (children in the data of her research)

segue through a game about a wolf. Tessa singularly and simultaneously is becoming-mother~wolf

catcher~props person~sound producer~wolf~narrator~ young goat~pig~dramatist, momentarily

becoming-each several times over. Hilde’s roles are less varied as becoming-narrator~dramatist-

narrator~wolf-catcher. In Guss’s analysis, Tessa is engaged in processes of constant change: of the

fairytale narratives, actions and meanings about the wolf; of the dramatic monologue that her

teacher used in telling wolf stories to the children; and of herself. In a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading,

Tessa is playing out some (aspects) of her becoming. As she segues through the characters, she

reveals herself as becoming-child playing out her understandings of the various characters. While

the Russian story (Semetsky, 2006) explicates the immanence of becoming-child, Tessa and Hilde

(Guss, 2005) make visible more of the complexity involved in becoming-child(ren). This involves

enactive~interactive play(ing) of each singular becoming-child and a creative symbiosis, severally

becoming child(ren) (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3).


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Using Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) imaginary of territorialising movements to trouble the notion

of identity of the learning of the young child, Borgnon (2007) shows the workings of becoming-

child in a creative demonstration of the expression of a becoming-child. She creates a palimpsest by

combining the image of a child starting to walk with the movements of a surfer on a surfboard,

(re)conceiving ‘the child’ as becoming-child. This linkage is not to redefine how children learn to

walk, but to open up another way of appreciating one child’s – (Stella Nona’s) – manner of learning

to walk. (Figure 8)

Figure 8: Surfer’s movements superimposed on Stella Nona’s novice steps. (Source: Thor Jonsson in Borgnon, 2007, p. 265)

Borgnon (2007) describes the imagery:

From this perspective we could as well understand Stella Nona’s apprenticeship of walking in

terms of a surfer’s movements; the lying on the board with the hands well placed in the height of

the armpits, the fast jump up with the feet close to the hands, into a squat position, the slight

raising of the legs, the arms balancing horizontal to the body. (p. 265)

Stella Nona is now ‘a hybridised child; a child who, for a moment at least, escapes a fixed

definition. She is no longer the child with the attributes of naturalness and development; she is a

mixture of all that and the skilled, closer-to-his-twenties, wild-at-heart guy’ (Borgnon, 2007,

pp. 264-65, original italics). Her becoming-child as a beginning-walker is expressed as movements


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of de~territorialisation – Stella Nona disrupts the adult|child binary, as does Borgnon, passing

through the divide to be understood from the position of surfer. Adult and child are no longer

separate identities; rather, each is already always the other. In passing through the generational

divide, Stella Nona is ‘the becoming child of the adult as well as of the child’ (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 277).

This morphing of toddler and surfer illuminates becoming-child(ren) as rhizomatic, disturbing and

decentering any developmental or socially reproductive agenda:

The girl or the child do not become, it is the becoming itself that is a child or a girl. The child

does not become an adult any more than the girl becomes a woman; the girl is the becoming-

woman of each sex, just as the child is the becoming-young of every age…it is Age itself that is

a becoming-child.’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 277)

As well, in dispensing with sequential, age-related developmental stages, body and mind are linked

and are operational in a ‘new flux of self’ (Braidotti, 2003, p. 46). Understanding Stella Nona as

becoming-child~beginning-walker moves outside conventional territory and reforms (as) another

territory. But it does not ‘stop’ ‘there’, ‘within’ ‘a’ ‘new’ territory of space-time. It keeps moving to

resist any latent over-coding, to disrupt any organising tendency. What happens is that we become

involved in constant change and alteration through movements of de~territorialisation. As we and

the territories within which we operate are always already changing, so an assemblage of forces

expressed through encounters with one another moves to negotiate the territory, through

spatiotemporal connections. Braidotti (2001) explains such an assemblage of forces that activate

becoming thus: ‘A pattern of de-territorialization takes place [between us and Stella Nona], which

runs parallel to and in-and-out of [our] respective and mutual existences, but certainly does not stop

there’ (p. 405). The becoming-child of Stella Nona becoming walker as becoming-walker intersects

with the becoming-child within adult understandings. All in flux, dynamically (re)constituting in

connections with in/animate others, constantly moving, continuously becoming. So that: ‘In this

shifting moment, the condition of childhood comes gradually to be seen no longer as an unformed

adult subjectivity, but as a form of subjectivity in itself’ (Kennedy, 2002, p. 157), representative of

possible worlds yet to be encountered by adults.

Becoming is not so much the changing, it is more a continuously (re)constituing movement, which

embodies dynamics of change and dynamic changes, and which having achieved a condition of

alterity simultaneously dissolves into the movement of more recursively changing processes.

Becoming embodies mobility, as forms of motion and rest, as speed and slowness, as points and


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flows of intensities. Grosz (1994a) says: becomings are ‘always a multiplicity, the movement of

(trans)formation from one “thing” to another that in no way that resembles it’ (p. 204). So,

becoming-child is not about who the child might be working towards becoming – either now as

child, and particularly not as an adult-constructed ideal child, or as future-adult. The imaginary,

becoming-child(ren) is a multiplicity of processes of becoming. It is not about being or becoming

the child who will then become adult. Rather, the becoming-child co-exists with/in itself as

expressions of becomings, within spaces of alterity, different from how they were before. The

alterity of becoming is not a singular endeavour – ‘Becoming is always double, that which one

becomes becomes no less than the one that becomes’ (Grosz, 1994b, p. 305). This means that as

becoming-child s/he becomes no less, yet neither does s/he become more; the child-becoming-child

intensifies the singularity while the singularity intensifies through conditions of continuous alterity.

Becoming-child always already changes and (re)constitutes her/him/self, indiscernibly,

imperceptibly without culmination.

To dispel any structuralist ideas that becoming is a correspondence of relationships, a resemblance,

an imitation or even a series of progressions/regressions by explaining a becoming as that which is

in-between, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) are saying that it is a middle comprised of movement, of

lines of flight. Thus, becoming-child is a work of passage, is always in the middle. For example, in

the playing of their games, (within the data of re(con)ceiving childhood in curriculum)

each/any/every becoming-child embodies and is embodied within a multiplicity of becomings. In

processes of becoming, linkages are formed among various characters and roles. As they flow

with/in the spoken or unspoken producing of the game, they morph, unexpectedly, into various

characters – mother becomes pilot becomes doctor, baby becomes co-pilot becomes nurse becomes

sick baby, the characters being played out both singularly and all-at-once. (See data in the Play(ing)

plateau.) Each character draws, and is drawn by others into zones of undecidability, a flow of

energy and movement as one becomes the other(s), becoming-child(ren) constantly in flux, so that

all that is real is the becoming itself.

three becoming(s)-child(ren)

In the following juxtaposition of (the) becomings of three young people special in my living~life,

my grandchildren, I offer other possible readings of what it means to be (a) young child(ren) within

childhood(s) in some ways far apart – as a one year old, three year old and five year old, in London,

Sydney and Auckland – and in other ways sharing a togetherness of enacting their becomings.

Through these poetic inscriptions, I attempt to reinscribe the worlds of these children and perturb

the authoritative tendency of academic text by welcoming these glimpses of Caelan, Taylah and


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Leo. I also seek to disrupt the authority of behaviourist and developmental interpretations by

leaving the children’s activity to do the talking, without intervention of researcher analysis and

without providing any (more) interpretive and/or de/constructive literature. Although the poems

were generated through adult wor(l)ds, written collaboratively with the parents,26 I have

endeavoured to dispense with an adult-centric authorial voice, inasmuch as that is ever possible, to

(re)story a few moments of becoming-child(ren) becoming-intense becoming-imperceptible

becoming-power-full becoming-curriculum.

These becoming(s)-child(ren) (re)imagine a heterogeneity of children’s manner of experiencing

learning~living. They offer opportunities for appreciating the(ir) (e)merging hybridity with/in

the(ir) flux of successive becoming(s). What is at least momentarily perceptible is the dynamism of

change of becoming that is these children. With these glimpses into their learning~living, I leave

this plateau…

26 Thanks to Mel and Ben, Alicia and Hamish, and Toby and Pen for contributing to these poems. Thanks and love also to Caelan, Leo and Taylah for opening (my) thinking otherwise.


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leaving the plateau

Stepping outside of images of children and associated discourses about characteristics of childhood,

I have presented an incipiently different space, an imaginary of becoming-child(ren). As adults we

can participate in this space as bodies attempting generative understandings, rather than as adults

characterising children and their childhoods in our terms of presumptive understandings. But we

must now function as becoming-adults in our relationships with becoming-children. Becoming-

children, and particularly what this means for young children, are no longer inferior beings

maturing into a superior condition of adulthood. Becoming-children are actualised as young human

beings living their becoming-childhoods. Through becoming they are autobiographically, as in

currere, expressing their understandings of their lives. What they will be(come) is (im)perceptible

only within their immanent becoming. The condition of children and childhood becomes

conditional. A way opens for young children to (re)imagine their understandings of/as becoming-

learners, to show how their play(ing) (out) of their learning produces (their/our) understandings of

curriculum and what it might become.

Childhood is now perceived as an ongoing phenomenon, a never-ending experience and while it is a

part of life that warrants attention for what it is in the present (its presencing), for young children in

particular, as the future opens out before us, past memories of our childhoods (as becoming-

child~becoming adult) are unsettled and unsettling, requiring continuous (re)imagin(ary)ing. Like

Silin (2003), I wonder whether adulthood is merely a time in which we have expanded, not

necessarily improved ways for understanding our experience. So that becoming-children~

becoming-adults (together) live interstitially between past and future, and childhood becomes a

dynamic presence in (our) adult lives as well as a time already lived. This intangible, interlocutory,

imperceptible philosophical space of interstiality is created through ‘negotiation between spaces,

where contrasting rationalities can work together but without the notion of a single transcendent

reality’ (Turnbull, 2000, cited in Gough, 2003, p. 67). Always already both becoming-child and

becoming-adult always already both becoming-child and becoming-adult always already…and so

on…

Play(ing)

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Play(ing)

opening the plateau

Theory of children’s play and actualities of their playing is the work of this plateau about play(ing).

What transpires in this conversation is a play-full engagement with Play which is more than play

(Trueit, 2006, p. 53) through a rhizopoietic juxtaposition. From this emerges a tripled juxtaposition

of my interaction with two transcriptions – transcriptions of a data snippet of children playing a

game in the family corner and a transcription of the same children (re)playing their play(ing) as

they watched the video of themselves playing. These juxtapositions are interactive pieces, an

embodied ‘analysis’ in which each text works with the other(s).

conceptions of play Much has been written about play from diverse disciplinary fields, such as biology, ethology,

folklore, literary criticism, leisure science, education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history

and communications. But it is psychological and sociological perspectives that dominate in early

childhood education, with play considered a natural condition of childhood and the ‘natural media

of children’ (Rhedding-Jones, 2004, p. 244). The pedagogy of play is basic to early childhood

studies but it is often given minimal attention in recent texts (see, for example, Papalia, Olds, &

Feldman, 2001). In the literature, play is presented as progress, power, fantasy and self, adaptation,

existential optimism, hegemony, social context, transformation, performance, and world upside

down (Sutton-Smith, 1995, 1997) and, although some take a discursive approach involving

characteristics of play and lingering historical discourses, the theory addressed remains primarily

with the developmental (Ailwood, 2003). However, any conversation about play(ing) cannot deny

the complexity involved, as Sutton-Smith’s (1997) indexed references for play exemplifies (p. 275).

A critical view considers the concept of play as elusive, as defying definition, and those who

attempt definitions often do so without concern that it is a contested issue. Within an Australian

context, the following excerpt from the Queensland Early Years Curriculum Guidelines presents an

explanation of children’s play experiences prior to entering kindergarten, in which play is

constituted as a particular western construct that valorises cognitive development:

Children play and learn in particular ways in early childhood settings…Some children may not

have developed strategies for learning through play in educational settings. These children may

come from families where play is not seen as contributing to children’s intellectual development

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or their play opportunities are limited by materials and space. Some parents and relatives will

join in children’s play and influence the type of play. For example, men are more likely to

engage in physical play, especially with sons, and to play in ways that involve fine- and gross-

motor skills and visual exploration of the environment. Girls may experience more verbal and

“school-like” experiences, although many parents encourage similar play for both girls and

boys. Play for many boys is limited to running, chasing, hiding and acting out their favourite

superhero’s adventures. In view of these experiences, some children will need to learn new ways

to play that promote learning. (Queensland Studies Authority, 2006, p. 20)

Although this alludes to different cultural understandings of play, it offers none other than that of a

dominant majority. In theoretical terms, it presents a limited and limiting understanding of what

play and playing is, and lacks critique. In comparison, Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996),

the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood curriculum statement supposedly works with bi-cultural

philosophical principles – indigenous Māori and a westernised perspective – but, similar to the

implications of the Queensland statement, it is westernised understandings that underpin its

workings. Te Whāriki takes a non-prescriptive approach and makes no attempt to define play

although the implication is that play is a natural condition of early childhood activity and that all

children play. Most often it refers to play as exploration, but also in terms of communication,

contributing to social interactions and as part of a sense of belonging in the setting. Although there

is no limiting definition, there is little attempt to rescue play from ‘natural’ social and psychological

understandings and, in the text, there are also remnants of Parten’s (1933, cited in, Hyun, 1998)

outdated typology of play as notions of solitary, parallel and co-operative play.

Language as an ‘intellectual technology’ (Rose, 1999) is a means for rationalising play, describing

it as natural, spontaneous, pleasurable, developmentally appropriate, dramatic, free, pretend,

exploratory, representational, creative, sand, to name a few. In recent times, discussions about what

constitutes so-called normal play, age-based phases of play and types of play have dominated,

producing matrices of regulation, informed by developmentally appropriate practice (DAP),

legitimising the adult gaze for monitoring progress (Bredekamp, 1987; Bredekamp & Copple, 1997;

Fleer, 1995; Reifel, 1993). Establishing such specific sets of language and knowledge about play

has become effective in governing early childhood education and this predominance of thought is

made rational, technical and practical. This is significant to both producing and silencing children,

curriculum and teachers, the corollary being observation of play for management of children. Play

as a cultural artefact and the naturally playing child as a social construct are seldom questioned let

alone critiqued (Cannella, 1997; Rhedding-Jones, 2003). The centrality afforded play within this

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array of discourses and the effects of such positioning in early childhood education is culturally

significant as how play is understood varies among cultures problematises play as an artefact of a

white, middle-class culture (Cannella & Viruru, 1997). Although westernised sociocultural

understandings present play as a community of practice, reflecting the spaces and relationships of

children’s social and cultural worlds (Wood, 2004), these tend to be dominated by developmental

theories. Together they work to normalise and regulate children’s behaviour by classifying play as,

for example: appropriate/inappropriate; social/individual; or advanced/delayed. These discourses

then become technologies for governing young children and early childhood education (Cannella,

1997; Gibbons, 2007).

Despite DAP attracting considerable critique (Hatch et al., 2002; Jipson, 1991) when play is

considered as irrational, unreal and not sensible, such trivialisation operates to separate childhood

and adulthood and to distance children from the adult world. This separatist perspective ignores

similarities and valorises childhood play, masking social and power relations that operate within

play. Trivialisation also creates a separation of play from work. In the late nineteenth century,

compulsory schooling pre-empted children’s involvement in the workforce (Hendrick, 1997),

further distancing children and childhood from adults and their work-a-day world (Cannella &

Viruru, 1997). However, this separation of work and play folds back on itself as early childhood

education has used the Froebelian notion that play is a child’s work (see Liebschner, 1992), to

produce itself. So while children are excluded from adult-type work, play becomes the site of

children’s work, the implication being that adult work is more meritorious than the trivialised

play~work of childhood. Children and their play~work are then open to adult influence and

management, even though teachers are challenged to reflectively examine their practice (Cullen,

2003); power relations enmeshed in play-as-work are thus problematised as a technique of social

control. In espousing play as the work of young children, adults influence, construct and manage

play environments that reflect culturally created agenda for controlling children (Cannella &

Viruru, 1997). Further, from a more technicist perspective, the player-as-worker is shaped and

managed according to principles of work, the playing child becoming ‘a realisation of a more

efficient means of producing a self-managing subject’ (Gibbons, 2007, p. 303).

In Sutton-Smith and Magee’s (1989) analysis, play perceived as fun trivialises it as a structure of

curricular performance while psychological and cognitive readings of children’s play attempts an

order and rationality that satisfies adult’s perspectives and desires to control play and refine

children’s behaviour. From an ideologically similar understanding, Ranz-Smith (2007) suggests that

fostering a sense of play in the learning process might threaten adult perceptions of what learning

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ought to be. Alongside this, Ailwood (2003) reveals the culturally mediated, adult-imposed

relations of power and control that are concealed within the taken-for-granted concept of play. Also,

in Cannella and Viruru’s (1997) analysis, play is a cultural artefact and is central also to the

(re)production of western culture. For De Castell and Jenson (2003), play and learning are mutually

constitutive and their conjunction is transformative to both. Considered together, these offer

possibilities for different ways of (re)thinking play despite the literature lacking anything that

deviates from the traditional psychologically and sociologically developmental perspectives.

play-fully (re)conceiving play

Guss , however, brings some creativity to her reconceptualising of play, as a critically reflective,

cultural activity. She devises a cultural-aesthetic methodology, which promotes children as power-

full players within their ‘play-culture’ (p. 233), reversing cultural hegemony and considering play

as critical transformation, as a reflective process, not unlike Deleuzo-Guattarian ‘becoming’

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). She shows how, ‘in the privacy of the children’s play-culture, they

have the cultural occasion, space, and liberty to take control’ (Guss, 2005, p. 233), to question,

speak for and transform themselves. As with the feminist challenge to male-dominated functioning

in life, children experiment with and trouble standpoints, so that ‘[c]ultural hegemony can be turned

on its head’ (p. 233). Guss demonstrates how ‘the aesthetic dimension contributes to the children’s

ability to interpret and communicate meaning, as well as the aesthetic mode and production

contribut[ing] to a strengthened child-cultural sphere’ (p. 235). Apart from Guss, I find little to

inspire (re)newed ways of thinking ‘play’ in the literature…until I happen upon Donna Trueit’s

(2006) Play which is more than play and other contributions to Semantic Play and Possibility in

Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education. These articles at last inspire my

attempt to (re)think play – playfully!

Trueit invites another way of thinking about play, significantly different from the literature about

play reviewed above. Referring to Bateson, she works with ‘binocular vision (double description)

for enhanced depth of perception’ (Bateson, 1979, cited in Trueit, 2006, p. 97); and, reflecting

poiesis (copying for creating, the work of her doctoral dissertation27), Trueit speculates on ‘new

meanings’ around play through a conversation linked to mythopoetic discursive practices of archaic

times (Trueit, 2006, p. 97). As I read her workings with mythopoetic understandings of ‘the play’ –

its performance or playing by the players – I glimpse possibilities for (re)thinking play differently in

27 Trueit, Donna (2005). Complexifying the poetic: Toward a poiesis of curriculum. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisana State University.

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early childhood curriculum. There is also a sense that perturbing a conventional interpretation of her

article is a way to open (to) such possibilities.

In a contiguous contribution to Semantic Play and Possibility, Doll (2006) discusses ‘a new sense

of method’ (p. 87). He notes the importance of ‘inter (or trans) action’ between reader, writer and

text as a reflective, creative, flexible, open, complex conversation that disrupts the rigidity of

conventional, multiple step approaches to method. To achieve this, students (readers~writers) need

to be supported in developing ‘their own personal habits (method) of thought and action’ (p. 87),

that is, ‘personal ways of doing things’ (Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 171, cited in Doll, 2006, p. 87,

italics added). As with the Deleuzo-Guattarian project, Doll suggests a ‘process of recursive

iteration’ whereby a text, for example, ‘is looked at not only in terms of itself, but also in terms of

its relationship with…[the philosophy or other reading] from which it emerged, and in terms of that

which has yet-to-emerge’ towards exploring ‘the multiple pathways which connect and create’

(p. 88, italics added). This affirms I should indeed find my own way, a personal and creative

approach to (re)reading Trueit’s text. But, there is more.

In another contribution, Playing with our understandings, Smitherman Pratt (2006) presents Aoki’s

considerations of what it means to ‘understand’, namely that understanding ‘is never static, fixed, or

rigid; rather understanding is always changing, in flux, continually being renewed’ (p. 93).

Reflecting on Smitherman Pratt’s reading of Aoki and reading this alongside Doll and Trueit,

affirms that for my reading~writing to become the ‘generative space of possibilities’ that Aoki

espouses, I need to enter spaces of ‘tensioned ambiguity’, spaces of both ‘and/not-and’, of

‘conjoining and disrupting’ wherein newness emerges’ (Aoki, 1996/2005, p. 318, cited in

Smitherman Pratt, 2006, p. 93).

Also, Gough’s (2006b) ‘rhizosemiotic play’, in which he demonstrates ‘the generativity of

intertextual readings’ (p. 119), affirms my desire to play with Trueit’s text to find out what might

happen by writing around it. He reminds me that Deleuze and Guattari (1987) urge experimenting

with rhizome and that, like Richardson (2001), ‘I write because I want to find something out…to

learn something that I did not know before I wrote it’ (p. 35)…and… I wonder if I am also

experimenting with the writing to uncover what I do ‘know’ but need to ‘see’ written down, to drift

with illuminations of the shadows. So, with ideas of how I might move towards generating a

multiplicity of understanding ‘play’, I (re)turn to Trueit’s text; Hand (1988) helps explicate the

approach I choose to take.

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In discussing the philosophical difference between Deleuze and Foucault, Hand (1988) notes that

‘both Deleuze and Foucault recognize that the relationship between their work resembles the partial

and fragmentary relationships between theory and practice that can no longer be understood in

terms of totalization’ (p. xlii, italics added). He goes on to present a series of ‘de-individualizing

principles’ that Foucault identifies in Deleuze’s work, one of these being: ‘Develop action, thought,

and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal

hierarchization’ (p. xlii, italics added). In reading Trueit’s (2006) text (see also Trueit, 2002), I

sense a relationship, partial and fragmentary, between our philosophies of curriculum, ways of

thinking, style of writing and communication of ideas. Within conventional realms of academe, she

is undoubtedly my superior, and although we have neither met nor spoken, a few email

communications (the first in 2003) and her scholarly writing assures me she does not buy into

pyramidal hierarchies. There is also a sense that to analyse the article, Play which is more than play,

in the usual (linear) way is not going to satisfy my desires for proliferation as I seek ways of

intensifying the rhizoanalysis that constitutes my thesis-assemblage. So, to avoid breaking up

(subdividing) what I perceive as a lyrical text, I transpose the words that speak to me into a poietic

format (reflecting the spirit of her article) and juxtapose my commentary alongside. It is a play-full

negotiation of her work, one that Donna has approved (personal communication, February 10,

2009).

In the next part of the reading~writing thinking~doing conversation, to disrupt a conventional

interpretation of Trueit’s (2006) article, I transpose selections of her rather lyrical text about Play

which is more than play into a poietic format, as a way of opening (her) ideas to a rhizomatic

understanding of children’s play. Mostly the punctuation is as in Trueit’s text but occasionally I cut

a sentence short and add a period; mostly the sentence structure is the same but in a few instances I

trim words from the beginning of a sentence and replace a lower case letter with a capital; I omit

her citations to optimise the lyricism and minimise disruptions to the flow.28 Centering the text

disturbs any regression into a linearly focussed reading. By virtue of what I have included and what

I have left out, the re-presentation inevitably reflects my subjective partiality of my understandings

of her text, and associated limitations – ‘Are we not subject to our own limited “understandings” as

we impose our interpretations on others?’ (Smitherman Pratt, 2006, p. 91). Another (re)reading on

another day and I might change what is/not included – ‘understanding is always changing, in flux,

continually being renewed’ (p. 93). This (re)reading/writing is processual; I have no idea before

doing it what I might find, what might be revealed, what understandings might emerge. Similar to

28 See Trueit’s (2006) original text for her citations.

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Richardson (1992), I feel the urge to step aside from the dreary writing of ordinary academic prose;

to po(i)etically enact ‘a threshold occasion: a moment of ecstasis when something moves away

from its standing as one thing to become another.’29 I thus play with the idea of playing with

Trueit’s text to see what happens, what spaces of possibilities might open. It is a play-full hopefully,

for me, thought provoking (ad)venture with writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson & St.Pierre,

2005), in search of understandings incipiently different, about something I/we all assume to know –

‘We all know “play,” don’t we?’ (Trueit, 2006, p. 97) – because of my/our own childhood

experiences.

To open a previously unseen reading, what follows is a poiesis of Trueit’s text30 on the left with my

commentary on the right. As I (re)orient my thinking, away from linearity, a stuttering of

(re)thinking~(re)reading~(re)writing aggregates in a multiplicity. The following ‘rhizo-imaginary’

(Sellers, W., 2008) becomes a way of negotiating (through) this, negotiating (with) Donna31, as

nomad(s). What follows is my rhizopoiesis, a conjoining of Trueit’s and my ideas,

nomadically~rhizomatically generating a further disruption of ideas about play as presented in the

early childhood literature. My reading~writing~thinking can be perceived, both abstractly and

with/in the actual, as a ‘vertical dimension of intensities’ (Foucault, 1977, cited in Hand, 1988,

p. xliv).

Mythopoesis of play

Play-fully engaging with Donna Trueit’s (2006) writing about

Play Which Is More Than Play, in which I is Donna

Much has been written about play

from various disciplinary perspectives, about the value of play,

its relationship to child development and to learning.

We all know “play” don’t we?

A rhizo-poiesis: Children’s play(ing) of games

The preceding overview of understandings of play illuminates various work(ing)s of the concept of play. In these, developmental approaches are mediated by sociocultural critiques, but modernist thinking pervades. The assumption that everyone knows about play is foregrounded here by Trueit’s facetious question, to which I respond in kind: Of course we all do/n’t know about play. Trueit’s question points to the tendency to trivialise ‘play’. Play goes hand-in-hand with (western)

29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis. For more on Poiesis, see also, Threadgold (1997). 30 To read the original, unaltered version, please see Trueit’s (2006) full text. 31 Breaking with academic convention of surnames seems appropriate for the moment. With (un)certain familiarity, I proceed.

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Why search for new meanings?

I [Donna] hope not only to open up modernist habits of thought,

but also to suggest that play might be the organizing principle of a

discursive practice.

Note: Discursive practices shape, and are shaped by thought.

As the organizing principle of mythopoetic (primarily oral) discursive practices,

play signifies recursive relations, dynamics, and liminality

characteristic of an open system of representation,

one that has far greater complexity than the modernist practices of representation

that continue to hold us captive.

conceptions of childhood and as all adults have passed through (graduated from?) childhood. What more is there to know or be said about it? We played. Play happened. So what? Subjectively affected by my childhood experiences of play, I bring my scholarly understandings in to the play of play-fully responding to this question. In working (with/through) this mythopoesis, I am alert for re-newed ways of re-thinking play. Like Trueit, I want to disrupt the modernist agenda that pervades and suggest how we might re-think ‘play’. For the moment, I transpose (again) her ideas, this time from poem into scholarly discourses. In the poem, I map Trueit’s ideas; now, in this juxtaposition, I plug the tracing back into the map in a (re)shaping of my thinking; in (re)thinking the poetical (re)reading of her text. I consult the OED for a definition of mythopoetic and find it used in reference to Māori: 1. = MYTHOPOEIC adj. 1914 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. 44 139 It is clear that the ancestors of the Maori, in common with other races, strove to fathom the unfathomable... The above is part of the result, ideas evolved by a mythopoetic people (mythopoetic, 2008). Striving to fathom the unfathomable – not least in navigating to Aotearoa New Zealand, talking ideas into be(com)ing through storytelling or becoming-myth. What I am attempting here in a mythopoetic gesture? I engage with Trueit’s projected flow of movement through play – read play ambiguously here, as performance and as constantly changing movement – with recursivity, interrelating systems, speed and flow, thresholds of in-betweenness, openings. Complex, yes, and hard to shake off modernist trappings of representation – language, discourses and the notion of representation itself. Biesta and Osberg (2007) outline complexity’s challenge to representation: a static, passive, or representational view of knowledge relies on a binary understanding, ‘which holds that the world is simply present in and of itself and that we can acquire knowledge of it…[a] binary logic of representational

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In modernist discursive practices one observes play,

objectifies play as a “thing” or an “event,” and represents “play” definitely.

However, modernist discursive practices are

(1) very different than the dominant discursive practices that preceded them; and

(2) these prior practices probably cannot be fully appreciated

from our now too distant stance.

[But,] we can speculate––and it is necessary for us to

do so, because in regard to “methods of representation and the recasting of meaning” there have been

“universes of thought evolving into other universes of thought.”

Due to the recasting of meaning,

I am led to consider the implications of another meaning

of play as “the play,” as in theatrical performance,

as an acted re-presentation of a story. I speculate that the play is not the thing itself,

but rather, the play is a site of far greater complexity,

a nexus, or perhaps, a temenos, in Ancient Greek thought “a sacred space within

which special rules apply and in which extraordinary events are free to

occur.”

epistemology…that there is a real world that knowledge somehow reflects’ (p. 24); ‘that knowledge is an accurate representation of something that is separate from knowledge itself (Osberg, Biesta, & Cilliers, 2008, p. 213). Rather, knowledge and reality ‘are part of the same emerging complex system which is never fully “present” in any (discrete ) moment in time’ (p. 213). These authors call this ‘emergence’. Emergence explicates active and adaptive understandings ‘towards questions about engagement and response’ (p.213), releasing us from modernist captivity. In the preceding review about play, pervasive modernist practices linger. ‘Play’ is under scrutiny as Ailwood’s (2003) analysis disrupts long held relatively simplistic and naïve understandings, bringing other agenda out of the shadows. But, play is still objectified as something that happens, as an experiential event and an eventful experience, albeit with poststructuralist leanings. Alternatively, Trueit’s engagement with cosmological ideas that precede modernism, although distant and speculative, opens an oscillation through past~present~future space-times or universes of thought. A change from always thinking forward in relation to the not-so-distant past; a change towards thinking differently? Beyond representation; thinking emergence? Epistemology addressed, play(ing) with play(ing) becomes the conversation and a linkage appears to children playing their imaginary games (i.e. of play) and the games they play (i.e. “the play”), particularly those informed by children’s literature, the media and popular culture. So the game is not perceived as the thing itself but as a site of complexity, a milieu of various becomings, spaces of convergence and (con)fusion. As children and games converge, adults may see only confusion among/within children’s games (in early childhood settings). Yet, the temenos or space-time of early childhood requires educationists’ respect for the children and their understandings played out in their games. Along with the children, we must expect the unexpected and accept the surprise of its occurrence within this

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The play is not just the play: it is much more. And it is the “more-ness” in this sacred space of

play I wish to bring forward:

the staging of cultural education (paedeia) leading to creativity and transformation.

In this place, in this ancient time, the play was not just entertainment it was

education; recreation was for re-creation.

In this sacred space of play extraordinary events occur.

Energy flows through all things, bringing contiguity.

The free play of forces brings in to relations: players [the children];

time [of past, present and future relationships and

games (to be) played]; senses: speaking, hearing, seeing, feeling;

and inter-subjectivities [fairytale and popular culture heroes and

heroines].

play-site of complexity. So…the play is not just the play; the play is not just the game; the game is not just the play; the game is not just the game. “More-ness” or ‘and…and…and…’(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25) is foregrounded within the paedeia of the setting. This OED quotation elaborates paedeia: 1904 S. H. BUTCHER Harvard Lect. on Greek Subj. ii. 124 The Greek Paideia (ΠΑΙΔΕΙΑ) in its full sense involves the union of intellectual and moral qualities. It is on the one hand mental illumination, an enlarged outlook on life; but it also implies a refinement and delicacy of feeling, a deepening of the sympathetic emotions, a scorn of what is self-seeking, ignoble, dishonourable––a scorn bred of loving familiarity with poets and philosophers, with all that is fortifying in thought or elevating in imagination. The creativity and alterity characteristic of milieu(s) of children’s games emerge through/with such understandings of the complexity of the culture of the setting and through/with the cultural complexity of the setting. Becoming- is apparent in the re-creation that happens through the game and its play(ing). Entertainment and education; play and learning are mutually constitutive and their conjunction alters both (De Castell & Jenson, 2003). Yet, how extraordinary is this, really, considering the complexity of this play-site? And, considering the chaos of energy, forces, players, time, senses, inter-subjectivities? Toscano (2005) explains chaos in Deleuzian understandings as infinite speed of forms and entities emerging and disappearing simultaneously leaving no points of reference. So, as energy ebbs and flows through both children and their games, borders are crossed over and crossed out and the free play of forces, the play or movement of what happens between forces, becomes an(other) entity. Children as players within games merge within relationships among each other: as they relate to each other and brush alongside others relationships with others; remembering past relationships and present affects, experiencing relationships of the now, envisaging relationships as they may be in

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There is a flowing together that forms an unbroken sequence in time

and uninterrupted expanse in space. There is a dynamic system of patterns and

transformation that “makes it possible to deal with unresolvable

differences and contradictions” in a relational manner.

Recognizing patterns and rhythms. Recognition by “patterns of resemblances”

means that of bundles of relations must be seen rather than one set of relations,

or isolated events. While all situations are contextual,

one is, in a mythopoetic culture,

looking at an event as a bundle of relations over time.

This backwards and forward looking marks the threshold of play,

for in this culture, the play, as a sacred temenos

where extraordinary events are free to occur, insists on the flow of dynamical interactions.

The dynamic flow of play is complicated, but the energy might be thought of deriving

from the use of language (which is why I suggest play is the organizing

principle of mythopoetic discursive practices).

the future. And, into the chaos of in-between spaces come memories of games already played; as well, energy of present games and expectations of what these games may/will become. The children bring their senses into play as they negotiate relationships and the storyline of their game drawing characters in and drawing from the characters as they are played. Children within games flow together, sometimes together and sometimes multi-directionally. The storyline may not emerge as expected by any/all of the players and in that sense it is disrupted. In another sense, as long as the game continues it is unbroken. But, even if/when time intervenes (e.g. tidy-up time or home time), the games most often only pause, to be taken up again at the next session or soon after. Even when the play-space is interrupted, the game is likely to re-emerge in another play-space in a similar or altered form. Patterns and rhythms of play within games and of games seem tacitly understood by the players. With practice, through generating the data and working with it, these become recognisable to me. I see that play is a heterogeneous bundle of relations, ideas and understandings that have ‘merged and collided over time’ (Ailwood, 2003, p. 295), all in oscillation. In the oscillation, the constant moving backwards and forwards through the storyline of the game now and reflections of similar or different storylines already played, thresholds are glimpsed in stop~start moments as games and players turn ebbs into flows. Or is it more of a fibrillation, a quivering of uncoordinated movement(s)? In liminal spaces of the games and their playing, interactive flows (e)merge. Play and its playing are complex, yet its energy is illuminated in the children’s talking their way through storylines. Play, I suggest, is also a methodology, a way of children expressing complex understandings and a way of opening those understandings to adults. But, immediately I think of cultural lore: Inasmuch as (western) anthropology may want to understand the lore of other cultures, why does it assume that other/ed cultures might want to share their understandings? Similarly, just because adults want to know, doesn’t necessarily mean children

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The audience members are drawn out of themselves,

their energy flowing outward, toward the events enacted on stage,

reacting to the performance; and energy from the performer is absorbed,

drawn into, as the viewer receives this version of the tale.

This active engagement and participation, giving and receiving,

attention and reflection, is part of paideia,

being drawn into oneself, drawn continuously forward.

Each performer and participating viewer allows him or herself to be drawn in to the

movement and find the play,

the slip, in a situation, to be in the movement,

and to work with the movement, to find––to create––variations.

But there are multiple sites of play in the play, and the flow of reflexivity and reflection

infuses all, permeating individuals with cultural values of

creating, perhaps even creating as an ethical responsibility

––creating self.

Self in this sense is not an object, but rather seems almost another site of play,

of reflexivity, reflection and connection, with the other and with tradition.

want to tell. But, we can be(come) with them in their curricular spaces. Perhaps we need to (re)learn to play, ourselves and with them. If we want children to work alongside us towards shared understandings, why not learn to play alongside/with children; ‘with’ as engaging in their play-full activity, not ‘with’ as in toy. For the moment, in this moment, my suggestion is that we (re)learn play(ing). So, adult-outsiders become part of the audience but must be willing to be drawn into the play and the game, towards the players, responding to the playing. We see other parts of the audience playing their part, players of bordering games becoming part of the energy as the games brush alongside each other, merge and collide, responding to the performance of players of other games. The energy melds; energy of the game and its players and energy of outsiders and the exteriority of the milieu. Each understands the game in their own way. Players interact with the exteriority, aspiring singularly and severally to the multiplicity of the paedeia, players oscillating between inside and outside, so the inside becomes the outside, insider becomes outsider, inside(r)~outside(r). Drawn into the movement or the machinic play of the play, into the liminality of play’s constant motion. Play(ing) with/in the slip. Here the storyline (e)merges, in response to what has already happened, responding to creations of the players, to players’ creativity. And, I am glimpsing an emerging storyline around ‘play’. In the multiplicity of the milieu, of playing in the games, of the games in play, the children collectively and collaboratively negotiate their storyline(s), in an ethics of processing through their own becoming, and merging and colliding with others in their becoming. Becoming child/ren emerging. Not being a particular someone. Be(com)ing someone different. Becoming-child, singularly and severally. Becoming-children, different, yet understandable within the lore of the paedeia.

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Gadamer (1998, pp. 103-109) associates play with performance and the dynamism of play

with creating self.

Gadamer says: The movement of playing has no goal that

brings it to an end; rather, it renews itself in constant repetition.

The movement backward and forward

is obviously so central to play that it makes no difference

who or what performs this movement.

The player is subsumed by the play, playing without purpose or effort,

absorbed into the structure of play, and relaxed by it.

First and foremost play is self-representation.

All presentation is potentially a representation for someone.

Play before an audience becomes the play

and openness toward the spectator is part of the

closedness of the play. The audience only completes what the play as

such is: a process that takes place “in between.”

Play does not have its being in the player’s consciousness or attitude,

but on the contrary play draws her/him into its dominion

and fills her/him with its spirit. The player experiences

the game as a reality that surpasses her/him all the more the case where the

game is itself “intended” as such a reality–– for instance,

the play which appears as presentation for an audience.

Each performative occasion is an opportunity to

create, to reinterpret and to grow through the

experience.

Moving through, moving with, moving in games~playing~becoming-child/ren. The games are never-ending. They pause only as children tire of negotiating storylines or when the programme says it’s time for something else. Like a rhizome, they shoot in (an)other moment(s), later, tomorrow, next week. Games keep going, newly different in different moments. For the game to continue, characters and roles shift within moments of movement, within movement of moments. What matters is the game continues. The game takes over, draws the players in, with no end other than the processual condition. Process is. (Means and end.) Play is about becoming-, in whatever way matters. The gaming (presentation) is about always already becoming-. Within the space-time of the setting and programme, insider~outsider becomes the storyline. Openness and closed-ness in never ending de~territorialising movement, de~territorialising play (verb/noun), de~territorialising play (adjective/noun), interrelations among insider~outsider players contesting the game and the storyline processing in the in-between; also, read ‘play’ ambiguously as what children do and machinic movement. The players become the game, both develop into and are accepted as the game and enhance the game. The game and its storyline become more than the collective contributions of the players. It becomes a milieu, an ‘interior milieu of impulses and exterior milieu of circumstances’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 317). Becoming-(…), becoming…

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The extraordinary occurrence of play, the “more-ness,”

derives from the powerful dynamism of relations and interactions,

the circumstances for the emergence of the new and for transformation.

This semantic play does not provide a neologism

for play, a word––like “spirit”––that defies defining. It presents only a speculative re-description

of play as dynamic flow through which systems––cosmological,

mythological, human, and natural–– are transgressed,

transcended, and transformed.

Play, as the organizing principle of discursive practices

or re-presentation (re-enactment) in Ancient Greece,

blows open the tight

and constraining discursive practices of representation in

modernity.

But then, we all know about “play,” don’t we?

There is no playing down the complexity of play, of play as movement. Elusive, indefinable, dynamically changing, emerging. However, these semantics have not overwritten or over-played play with any newly coined expression. ‘Play’ and play(ing) fly free, avoiding concretising. But, I do have an offering as to how might we conceive of play differently. It is about finding a way beyond thinking of play as thing or event and thinking of play verbally, as dynamism and movement, as a milieu of becoming. ‘Becoming is the pure movement evident in changes between particular events… [It is] a characteristic of the very production of events. It is not that the time of change exists between one event and another, but that every event is but a unique instant of production in a continual flow of changes evident in the cosmos. The only thing “shared” by events is their having become different in the course of their production’ (Stagoll, 2005, pp. 21-22, original italics). Following Trueit’s playing mythopoetically with play, I would approach the discourses of play (in the early childhood literature) play-fully. I would blow open the modernist representation of the centrality of play to supposed developmentalist advantage. I would work to disrupt thinking that enables play to be understood as governmentality, and more. I would present a rhizopoietic offering of play as a machinic assemblage, a milieu of becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). And, I would not pretend to know anything about ‘play’ as children understand it until I (re)learn to be a player as children are in their childhoods, until I (re)learn to play as children do. Sutton-Smith (1997) says: ‘We all play occasionally, and we all know what playing feels like’ (p. 1). But, do we? It is like drawing and painting; when we stop doing it, we forget, we stop learning how to do it. When we stop playing, we stop learning about it or how to do it; we stop learning what play(ing) is, what play(ing) means; we stop understanding play(ing).

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rhizopoiesis

Making this rhizopoiesis was, for me, more adventure than venture as I played with Donna’s~my

understandings32 and as I disturbed the distracting linearity of the academic writing and the page.

Continuing the play (the performance, the fun game, the constantly changing movement), I

recursively and speculatively (re)turned to (re)negotiate the (re)reading. Processing nomadically

through this generative space of possibilities, in the doubled map above, the juxtaposing of my

commentary alongside my play-fully poetic version of Trueit’s article reflects a collaborative and

palimpsest engagement of ‘produsage’ (Bruns, 2005) as I take an opportunity to create a ‘new

remixed version of [her] artistic material’ (¶ 7), to open through poetry another iteration of

play(ing). Feminine écriture, in this moment exemplified by the works of Trueit (2006) and

Richardson (1992), opens to other poietic readings, as Coetzee (2007) explicates in pointing the

finger at patriarchy: ‘The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may

have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always

one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible’

(p. 23). In this doubled, if not multiple reading~writing~reading, my preference for difference,

flows and mobile arrangements is illuminated, relegating uniformity, unities and systems (Hand,

1988) to the shadows. Also, with/in this attempt at something of a ‘disjunctive affirmation’ (p. xliv)

I make manifest my belief ‘that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic’ (p. xlii).

In play-fully engaging rhizopoietically with play which is more than play, I hope I have gone some

way towards disrupting the idealisation of children’s play that pervades much of the work of play

theory and interrupted order and rationality in favour of a Dionysian approach relating to the

sensual, spontaneous and emotional. Hopefully, I have also averted a modernist, civilising tendency

‘to take away play’s muddy complexity and reduce it to some kind of pure fun, pure intrinsic

motivation, pure flow, rid of all encumbrances’ (Sutton-Smith & Magee, 1989, p. 54) and also

turned away from ways of controlling it – both children’s play(ing) and theorising about it.

Continuing with the complexity, yet aware that I risk further ‘concretising’ (Alvermann, 2000) of

children’s play(ing), in the closing words of this plateau, I introduce play as intensities of

becoming.

32 In a personal communication of February 13, 2009, Donna approved my poietic processing of reading~(re)writing her work. The poiesis is to be included in a joint submission to Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education (www.complexityandeducation.ca).

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(re)thinking (re)newing (re)conceiving play as intensities of becoming

What comes to the fore in the play of ideas above is that play is not so much thing or event but

movement, with/in/through which change occurs, constantly. Gadamer (1982) considers play as

‘the to-and-fro movement which is not tied to any goal which would bring it to an end’ (p. 93) such

as in ‘the play of light, the play of waves, the play of the components in a bearing case, the inner

play of limbs, the play of forces, the play of gnats, even a play on words’ (p. 93). This sense of play

as light and constantly changing movements generates an openness as the movement of the play

becomes somewhat, indescribable, indefinable, an elusive mo(ve)ment. In abstract terms, this may

go some way towards explaining difficulties in defining the play that children do. Hodgkin (1985)

suggests that in human play ‘[o]penness is incorporated within a larger system so that the whole

system may function without breakdown under the probable range of stresses to which it may be

subject’ (pp. 27-28). Through this openness of potential space, of a ‘time-space field – a field which

is open to the future’ (p. 28), play continues. In Deleuzo-Guattarian understandings, children’s

play(ing) happens in this kind of potential space as a ‘machinic assemblage’ (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987). In such potential, liminal spaces an intensity of forces operate, these forces being ‘the

relation between forces’ (Boundas, 2005, p. 131, italics added). In all these understandings, it is the

play between that generates movement – if there is insufficient play, things seize, nothing happens.

In a machine, it is ball bearings moving that create the play, the balls moving every which way

against each other, generating a play of forces between. This helps understand machinic forces of

children’s play – unavoidably elusive, constantly in motion, moving multi-directionally, never-

endingly multidimensional, always already becoming-intensities of liminality. The sketch below

(Figure 9) pictures a way of imag(in)ing this between-ness or liminality; here the play of movement

of machinic forces opens to spaces that spandrels create. Play and spandrel simultaneously move

with/in/to opportune space-time moments between.

Figure 9: Play (movement between) becomes spandrel (spaces between). (Drawing by Warren Sellers)

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A spandrel is the area between the curves of adjoining arches and the horizontal between the tops of

each arch, or ceiling; it exists with arch and ceiling; on its own it is non-existent. Play, as spandrel

is a multiplicity of children, games, context, and artefacts. Like spandrel, play cannot exist in

isolation; it is not a thing. Neither is play an event or a happening even; it is a ‘hap’, a ‘watershed

moment’, a ‘happenstance’, which attends to the ‘unexpected consequence… [The] sudden

insight…. The hap may be anticipated…but will more likely be a matter of happenstance’ (Davis,

1996, p. 257). Play as hap and happenstance of mo(ve)ments is constantly changing in spaces

between children, their interrelationships, imaginative and physical territories that they operate

within, characters of games, artefacts at hand, all of which exist only in relation to (an)other(s),

never in isolation; like spandrel and mechanical play.

It now appears that turning back in on itself – a process of eversion – the elusiveness of

mo(ve)ments of mechanical play and spandrel spaces affirms the machinic movement and space-

times of children’s play, this interrupting any defining frustration about what play is not. Sphere

eversion (Figure 10) provides imagery that reflects the machinic assemblage of children’s play(ing)

as inside out or outside in mo(ve)ments through storylines, characters, roles, themes, physical

territories and relationships of their games.

Figure 10: Picturing sphere eversion (Source: http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Papers/isama/color/opt4.htm)

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Starting from the top left, this imagery depicts the inside out and outside in turning of a sphere back

in on itself. In pure mathematical terms, the images are to be read clockwise with the inside

becoming the outside and vice versa, but in understandings of de~territorialisation, the eversion

works in both directions – clockwise and anti-clockwise – with inside and outside becoming the

other all-at-once. Eversion invites a still more generative reading of Sutton-Smith and Magee’s

(1989) notion of play as reversibility, which they conceive as a world turned upside down. In its

complexity, ‘the world of play…is…both up and upside down at the same time’ (p. 60); in its

chaos, order and disorder combine. If children’s play(ing) could be imaged, I imagine it might look

like this image of eversion, like a constantly changing bubble un/re/folding, in/re/e/verting

continuously, de~territorialising, a multiplicity, multidimensionality at play, always already elusive

and intensifying. I imag(in)e play as intensities of becoming, and as becoming-intensities of play.

rhizoanalysis of becoming-children and children’s play(ing)

To move outside and disrupt conventional developmental and behaviourist analysing of children

and their play(ing), I turn to Deleuzo-Guattarian understandings of intensities, towards generating a

rhizoanalysis of play as intensities of becoming in/through/with which becoming-children (are at)

work. This moves away from imposing (an) arborescent order on play, of identifying it in terms of

being extensive, divisible, unifiable, totalisable, conscious and organisable, to use Deleuzo-

Guattarian descriptors of ‘numerical or extended multiplicities’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 33).

In contrast, ‘qualitative or durational multiplicities’ (p. 33) are intensive, that is, they constitute

rhizomatically as particles with relations of distances or between-ness and movements that are

turbulent.

…intensive multiplicities [are] composed of particles that do not divide without changing in

nature, and distances that do not vary without entering another multiplicity and that constantly

construct and dismantle themselves in the course of their communications, as they cross over

into each other at, beyond, or before a certain threshold. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 33)

Intensities grow inwards and outwards all-at-once forming aggregates or conglomerations that both

stretch and become more dense, tying together ‘in an asymmetrical block of becoming, an

instantaneous zigzag’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 278), such as of becoming-child(ren),

becoming-intense, all becoming-imperceptible. But, how to perceive what is imperceptible?

Deleuze and Guattari say that we perceive the imperceptible through movements of difference, not

in relations between points, but in the middle between. ‘Look only at the movements’ (p. 282).

When viewing the constellation Mātāriki (Pleiades) in Aotearoa New Zealand’s night sky with the

naked eye, by not focusing on the objects of our gaze, things become more clearly visible. Not

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focusing on developmental, behaviourist perspectives of children’s play(ing), not trying to pin play

down, opens possibilities for something incipiently different to come out of the shadows.

As I video recorded Maria, Fleur and Lucy playing together, I was struck by the intensity of their

play(ing). I was confused as to what was happening. The speed of the flow left an impression of

total disorder as they drifted through a scenario that made little sense from the outside, other than it

seemed that Maria had an agenda of control and in various ways the others were willing to play

along. But this was a pervasive developmental analysis and as I opened to the complexity at play, I

was prepared for a more generative reading to emerge. This generativity continues through the

rhizoanalysis as I remain open to furthering possibilities in explaining what I perceive to be

happening – a hap of becoming-imperceptible of becoming-child(ren) becoming-intense. The game

seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and as an outsider, I have difficulty in keeping up with

the play, but as I watch the chaotic flow, I come to see it as more of an a-ordered intensity with a

complex storyline, outside my comprehension as a non-player. Through the next seventeen minutes,

the game flows rapidly, the game taking over the players. To avoid being inadvertently caught in

modernist analytical trappings, I again choose to work with the sensual, spontaneous and emotional.

As I resist a (serious) behavioural analysis that focuses on cognitive, social and emotional

development, I put the individualised child aside, instead illuminating them as singularities and as

several. This avoids isolating each child and breaking down their activity into separate categories.

Similarly, to disrupt a conventional analysis of breaking things down, in an attempt to see things

differently, I (play-fully) take a rhizopoietical approach to transcribing the data, working with the

children’s conversation to create more of a map of the play(ing) than a tracing of the activity.

My choice initially is to juxtapose the children’s conversation with my commentary in a doubled

perfomance, to enable the rhizoanalysis to flow as the game does, in ebbs and flows of movement

and speed – ‘a movement may be very fast, but that does not give it speed; a speed may be very

slow, or even immobile, yet it is still speed. Movement is extensive; speed is intensive’ (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 381). So, ebbing and flowing with/in/through this plateau of the rhizoanalysis, I

take a more rhizo-friendly approach, namely, not breaking the transcription into bits/bytes, but

leaving it together with its moments of incoherence that are none-the-less cohesive, not interrupting

the movement and speed of this snippet of children’s play(ing). It becomes something of an

improvisational performance, similar to the two-column rhizopoiesis earlier, but different in that I

make no attempt to align my interaction with the transcriptions although some synchronicity occurs

– a happenstance of mis/dis/connections. The juxtaposition enables an improvisational reading and I

expect there will be jumps across, from rhizo-interaction to transcriptions, as opportunities arise for

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connections. The juxtaposition becomes (a) rhizo-imaginary (Sellers, W., 2008). Like a painting or

poem, where the artist~author presents a creative work for viewers~readers to take from it what

they will, I merely signal my intentions for one understanding (mine).

But later, I (re)turn to the juxtaposition described above as a two-column (ad)venture, adding a third

column – a transcription of Maria, Fleur and Lucy watching a (re)playing of (the video of) their

game in a review session. This more intensive tripled juxtaposition is to perform a rhizoanalysis of

data, to demonstrate a rhizo-storying of the data and to open (to) (a) rhizo-reading opportunit/y/ies.

The poiesis of this tripled juxtaposition is improvisational with the rhizo interaction changing with

each reading~writing performance (Trueit, 2005). The children’s play(ing) of their game plan(e)

also changes as it passes from one player to another; and possibly the reading for each

reader~reading of the play. Mo(ve)ments of game, children and juxta-position are fluid,

inconsistent, unpredictable. To avoid giving primacy to my (im)plausible reading of data, I follow

Lather’s (1992) suggestion of exploring postpositivist approaches to presenting data that cast aside

assumptions that the researcher will say ‘what the data “mean” via a theoretical analysis’ (p. 95).

Although the centre column in the juxtaposition below presents a rhizoanalysis of the transcription

of the game, the addition of the third column is intended to display the data rather than analysing

them. ‘Data are used differently; rather than to support the analysis, they are used demonstrably,

performatively’ (Lather, 1992, p. 95). While each of the transcriptions constitute some of the

rhizoanalysis, they are singular, each (merely) telling some of the story. Yet when read together

they illuminate the intensity of the game and simultaneously work to intensify adult readings of the

play(ing). The transcription of the (re)playing shows that although the game processed with fluidity,

it was not random. The players were familiar with the storyline and the characters needed to

perform it and if Adam was a random character, his presence was opportune for intensifying the

game. Initially, I positioned the review transcription in the centre column to foreground the

children’s comments as ‘central’ to the conversation. But, on reflection, I decided to position it in

the third column, on the right, as a gesture towards the children’s storying being foregrounded –

their storying through/of the game and in the (re)playing of it. This was to illuminate the children’s

words as opening the ideas in the commentary and to enable their words to linger as they drift out of

sight~hearing but not out of the reading~writing~thinking. I note also that in transcribing the

(re)playing of their game, I became aware of the dominance of my comments and questions,

although being aware at the time that they were intent on watching and not conversing.33

33 I discuss more of researcher imposition on the research and the data in the Children becoming power-full plateau.

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Further to the reading of this tripled juxtaposition, much of Maria and Fleur’s conversation is in

dramatised voices, used to express the various characters they are playing; when in this mode, their

conversation is in Helvetica font. When they are confirming the processing of the storyline, they

speak in ordinary voices (marked by Times New Roman). I provide only enough details of their

movements to explain the physical flowing of the game, leaving their conversations to tell a story of

their play(ing). The transcription of the game is centred to suggest the a-centred flow of the

conversation. The (re)playing transcription is justified to the left, as it verged on becoming more of

an unstructured interview than a free-flowing conversation - however, ‘nomadic’ it still was. The

two transcriptions are set alongside one another as moments in the game appear in the conversation

of the replay. In the electronic version (PDF) of the thesis-assemblage the following pages can be

rotated to ease the reading on the screen.

Maria and Lucy are in their home in the family corner. Fleur is in the adjacent kitchen/shop. Adam

is playing by himself in the kitchen. Their play(ing) has segued through Maria telling a goblin story

into a game involving a mother, baby, shop-keeper, office person, hostess, neighbour, big sister,

cook, papa, doctor, house minder, Nana, pilot, co-pilot and possible nurse. In the review session, the

(re)playing, The storyline of the game is elusive as it moves rapidly through various themes; a

plan(e) marked and constituted by changing characters.

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leaving these play-full intensities

My (ad)venture has been with play-fully generating a play-full rhizome that tells a story of the

intensities of children’s play(ing), to generate a multidimensional, complex and slippery ludic out-

of-the-ordinary happenstance. It is a ‘chorus of many ‘voices’ a ‘creative pastiche, a rhizopoiesis, a

“valid” piece of academic writing allowing for the whether of data stories that refuse and exceed

containment, confinement, and codification’ (O'Riley, 2003, p. 53), so that the (re)play(ing),

transcribing, juxtaposing, (re)reading become ‘both data and analysis without succumbing to

interpretation’ (p. 53). The tripled juxtaposition opens (to) a rhizo reading, as multidimensional

happenstances with/in/through the middle extend and intensify the play and its playing, forcing the

play plateau to grow outwards (movement is extensive) and simultaneously pushing on further

inwards (speed is intensive). In this multiplicitous milieu of becomings we catch glimpses of

play(ing) as intensities of becoming-child(ren) becoming-intense becoming-imperceptible.

Lucy, Fleur and Maria’s activity is a generative play(ing) of/with/through constantly changing

characters and subject positionings that promote their own expectations for the storyline(s) and

respond to each other’s. Maria articulately expresses her power-fullness amidst the others; silent

Lucy not necessarily acquiescing, but playing out her understanding of Bubba without instruction or

resistance; Fleur oscillating through her ideas, listening, dis/agreeing, questioning, playing

with/amidst rejection. But, it is Fleur’s stuttering moment that talks to us about the complexity

of/at/with/in play(ing). As she searches for words when answering the phone, to say she is not the

shopkeeper but the office person, she performs play and playing as fluid, contextual and

unresolvable: No, I’m I’m I’m I’m the Ring ring um I am the I’m the office and I’m not I’m the shop

I’m not I I I’m I’m the shop. The lack of punctuation accentuates the speedy flow of the words,

largely without pause, including the change in voice (Ring ring). With/in a generative reading it is

as if the play is going too fast to seize, even momentarily; the play and the playing are elusive…

…which opens a way for closing this plateau. Play(ing) is elusive. But, that is to be welcomed in

rhizo-thinking: ‘Movements, becoming, in other words, pure relations of speed and slowness, pure

affects, are below and above the threshold of perception’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 281).

Following Deleuze and Guattari, the plan(e) of games and their playing cannot be perceived at the

same time as that which they compose or render…so, if play(ing) is intangible, indefinable,

indescribable (at least in modernist terms), does this plateau even exist?

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opening to rhizo research

Doing research rhizomatically with young children is the work of this plateau. It illuminates the

rhizomatics of the research processes – the research design and data generation – and links to the

writing that constitutes this thesis-assemblage. The analysis – rhizoanalysis – is discussed in

another plateau. In thinking and working rhizome~nomad, linear processes are interrupted and there

is a sense of oscillation, that everything about the research is always already happening. Similar to

St.Pierre (1997b), as I write about the research strategies I (re)think the rhizo-methodological

approach of the data generation and this then becomes part of the rhizoanalysis, so that writing

down the research story becomes some of the writing up of the research (Holly, 1997). This

thinking~researching~writing assemblage is, ‘simultaneously and inseparably a machinic

assemblage and an assemblage of enunciation’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 504). It is a

simulacrum of research as understood in this moment (St.Pierre, 1997b) as I respond to various

aspects of the question: How did I do the research?

…and…opening to researching with young children

Throughout, I use the phrase ‘researching with children’ rather than ‘research with children’ to

foreground the active processes involved in doing research in which adult-researcher and children-

participants work together in conjoint relationships of generating data; in researching with children

(not about or on), children become co-researchers. However, researching with young children is a

complex endeavour, fraught with challenges about power relations…and…abounding in

opportunities for generating richer insights into the lives and learning of children. For example:

Considering children as young human beings questions whether involving children in research is

any different from research with adults (Punch, 2002); also, privileging children’s perspectives

enriches data (Sorin, 2003) but uncritically honouring their voices can be problematic

(MacNaughton, 2003). Ultimately, researching with children is an embodiment of respect and

responsibility, of honouring their understandings of themselves, others and the cultural, physical,

social and imaginative worlds they operate with/in. In research contexts this means approaching

children with open-ness, honesty and humility, expressing authentic interest in them and their

activities towards fostering their well-being being in the research context and the wider research

community (Sumsion, 2003). In this plateau, I engage with these issues, by discussing researching

with children, understandings of voice, power relations between adult-researcher and child(ren)-


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participant(s), and ethical issues as they affect children. Before leaving the plateau, I discuss

research relationships as responsible, responsive and response-able.

researching with young children ~ same as, or different from research with adults?

As adults, we cannot understand the world as children understand it, the assumption being we need

children to explain their perspectives to us. As we work to listen~hear what children say, paying

attention to the ways they communicate, we presume that children want to share their childhood

understandings with adults. Although ethical considerations require that researchers respect children

as willing and voluntary participants, and although experience tells us that many young children

love to talk about what they are doing, we must be wary of uncritically adopting attitudes that deny

children’s choice about if and what to communicate. Listening to children may be intrusive and

distressing (Roberts, 2000), and ‘more listening may not inevitably mean more hearing’

(Komulainen, 2007, p. 25). There may be moments when adult questions and conversation are

objectives must be put aside.

Considering children as young human beings, as mature and capable in ways different from adults

(James et al., 1998) and as becoming-child(ren) (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), begs questions around

whether researching with children is the same as, or different from research with adults (Morrow &

Richards, 1996; Punch, 2002). Although ethical principles employed are the same whether

researching with children or adults (Christensen & Prout, 2002), methodological issues in

researching with young children are complex, potentially different from those of adults and affected

by researcher assumptions about children and childhood (Fasoli, 2001). Ways of approaching

children need care-full and responsible consideration. Developing responsible processes means

exercising a different kind of vigilance to children’s susceptibility to adverse affects of unequal

power relations in research than when researching with adults. While power relations between the

researcher and adult participants are similarly an issue, the complexity intensifies in research

relationships with children because of their particular social and cultural positioning. Dilemmas

arise around honouring becoming-children who are essentially operating in marginalised worlds.

Although the research context may be a space for children, it is largely adult-controlled. Moreover,

while the research process may have been a fun experience for the children involved, in the final

analysis, the adult researcher most often interprets their perspectives.

Approaching children respectfully, within practices that resonate with their concerns (Christensen

& James, 2000b) requires that researchers are critically reflexive, this working to mediate

inequitable research contexts. Thus, from writing the proposal, through data generation to writing


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the research requires that I continuously question my role as researcher and my relationships with

the children. This means resisting valorising my perceptions, but the impossibility of writing the

thesis-assemblage without imposing my subjectivity remains and I can only proceed as ‘not all-

knowing’ (Holt, 2004, p. 14). This, in turn, means reflecting on how these expectations affect the

dynamics of my interactions with the children of the research, these dynamics continuing through

the writing.

hearing children’s ‘voices’ with/in research processes

Considering Cannella’s (1997) claim that constructions of research have silenced the most critical

voices, namely children’s, ensuring they have greater control of research processes is yet to have a

significant effect on (re)shaping qualitative research with young children (MacNaughton, Smith, &

Davis, 2007). In a recent response to Cannella’s critique, MacNaughton, Smith and Davis explore

‘child-friendly’ research, that is, research viewed through a children’s rights perspective, which

promotes children’s voice and choice as part of equitable research processes, from design to

production, informed by understandings of children as people with human rights while surrounded

by adult-centric knowledge-power relations. MacNaughton, Smith and Davis (2007) present four

axes, read as a continuum, for explicating children’s research participation and sets of knowledge-

power dynamics. Axis 4 is, potentially, the most desirable: ‘Children initiate and direct research.

Children have the initial idea about what they would like to research and decide how the project is

to be carried out. Adults are available to the children but do not take charge’ (p. 172). The power

relations inherent in this approach privilege children’s knowledge about research and the processes

involved and enable a power-fullness akin to becoming-child(ren). However, as a novice researcher

relatively isolated from an active early childhood research community and with doctoral

requirements to be met, it is unsurprising that my project slipped further down the continuum and

fits most (un)comfortably with Axis 2 which states: ‘Adults initiate projects and share decisions

with the children’ (p. 171). However, while the research idea was mine and the children were

involved in every part of the implementation, it was not possible to involve them in the planning.

The requirements of producing a research plan to gain university ethical approval, the time-frame of

this process and the time frame for generating data which took me away from my paid employment

and associated responsibilities all limited opportunities for planning the research with the children

and compromised their participation (Powell & Smith, 2009). These limitations highlight the

significance of funding for research projects. External funding may have opened possibilities for

involving the children more meaningfully, although only experience – either on my own or within a

research community – was going to advance my novice researcher status. Another limitation arises


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around the children’s voluntary participation. They were able to volunteer or withdraw at any time,

but their initial involvement was subject to parental consent – this gate-keeping (Powell & Smith,

2009) precluded one child from participation. The children’s views were the research data and by

virtue of their willingness to respond to my ideas or their lack of response, they determined how the

data generation pat of the project would progress. Their response to the actual participation opened

possibilities for their power-fullness in the research, although I inadvertently overrode this at times

(as discussed in the Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full plateau), but opportunities for the

children to work with knowledge of research and its processes were largely non-existent.

However, as MacNaughton, Smith and Davis (2007) admit, privileging children’s perspectives in

this way is problematic, not in regard to their having significant understandings to express and

communicate ideas, but regarding how research institutions would accept this unconventional

positioning of children, in which knowledge-power dynamics are turned upside down. Also,

although children having choices enables them some control over their lives and their experiences

in research contexts, Komulainen (2007) asserts that choice-making privileges certain cultural

understandings, which assume that ‘children are not only entitled to choices but also willing to

make them’ (p. 15). Thus, not only is ‘choice’ problematic, discussing choice in terms of ‘voice’

becomes problematic.

problematising ‘voice’

Commonly accepted early childhood practice in Aotearoa New Zealand unquestioningly privileges

the child’s voice as expressions that are (modernistically) truly representational and authentic. Such

practice follows the sociology of childhood that considers children have rights to voice their

understandings, that they need to be (up-)skilled in projecting their voice and that they need to be

seriously listened to and heard (James & Prout, 1997). This voice is about making individual

children’s views perceptible, enabling them to tell their stories of what life means to them and to

talk about their different experiences of learning, particularly in early childhood settings

(Samuelsson, 2004). However, most often, adults listening to, and subsequently ‘giving children a

voice’, is dependent on a child’s capability with language, in which adults are already competent

(Clark, Moss, & Kjørholt, 2005). ‘Giving voice to children’ thus perpetuates the unequal power

relations inherent in the adult|child binary and although ‘voice’ encapsulates the moral goal of

honouring children’s rights, it risks dismissing the complexity of communication ‘as a local

interactional activity’ (Komulainen, 2007, p. 25).


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Komulainen argues that despite the notion of the child’s ‘voice’ being a ‘powerful rhetorical

device’ (2007, p. 11) it is nevertheless socially constructed. She thus proposes that the notion of the

child’s ‘voice’ be understood as a constantly changing ‘multi-dimensional social construction’

(p. 13), in that, simultaneously, ‘voices’ reveal discourses, practices and contexts in which they

occur. Also, ‘giving voice to children’ involves ambiguities of human communication, exposing

‘voice’ as a tool for furnishing young children with westernised competence. In poststructuralist

thinking, experience is understood as producing subjects and subjectivities, as always socially

mediated, rejecting an authentic voice. Youngblood Jackson (2003) explains:

Poststructural theories reject the pure, full presence of an experience that can be fully understood

and that can be fully expressed through a transcendental voice that reflects a direct and

unmediated consciousness of experience. In poststructuralism, there is no prelinguistic

experience or meaning that is “out there” waiting to be expressed by our innocent voices. Instead

language and experience are productive in that they create a meaning that is always already

slipping away – not meaningless, but contingent. Therefore, retrieving the authentic voice so that

it can (finally) fully express meaning, bringing the subject and its experiences into

consciousness, collapses under poststructural scrutiny. (pp. 702-03, original italics)

Voice thus becomes a concept to be problematised as privileging the authority of an innocent voice

risks romanticising the speaking subject (Lather, 2007), in this instance, the child – ‘language is not

transparent, voices do not speak for themselves, and referents always slip away’ (Youngblood

Jackson, 2003, p. 704). Britzman (1991) similarly problematises voice as contingent and non-

transparent in that ‘narratives of lived experience are always selective, partial and in tension’

(p. 13). In working with the heterogeneity and connectivity of rhizome, Youngblood Jackson (2003)

invents a way through, suggesting rhizovocality as a performative dimension of voice, which

simultaneously illuminates its expressive power, dissonance, and nuances (p. 707). Rhizovocality

is:

a vision of performative utterances that consist of unfolding and irrupting threads. These threads

have the ability to irrupt and unfold simultaneously in “smooth, open-ended spaces” (Massumi,

1987a, p. xiii), which compel poststructural feminist qualitative researchers to listen for texture

and subtlety within and among discordant, muted, and harmonious voices, including their own.

(Youngblood Jackson, 2003, p. 707)

Authentic voice is thus disrupted towards vocalisations of research that are partial, contradictory

and in processes of becoming. Processes of disrupting~irrupting~erupting perturb completeness and

coherence, stretch and intensify children’s expressions of their understandings as a-centred,


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temporal and productive, embodying de~territorialising mo(ve)ments. ‘Talking back’ (hooks, 1989)

demonstrates defiant expressions that decolonise voice and subvert exploitation.

opening (to) power relations

Considering poststructuralist understandings that disrupt positivist perspectives of the child’s voice

and working with Youngblood Jackson’s notion of rhizovocality opens (to) methodological issues

of my subjective (st)utterances as adult-researcher with the children-participants and as writer of the

research. In considering my researcher rhizovocality and that of the children~participants, I recall

Foucault’s (1979) warning, whereby he ‘consistently refuses to assume the standpoint of one

speaking for and in the name of the oppressed’ (p. 256). The conversation here about power

relations and research methodology now folds back on itself in theorising about power relations and

throughout the methodological discussion and the rhizoanalysis, I am, by default, speaking for the

children within the data. Despite wanting to learn from and with them and despite promoting young

children as becoming-child(ren), I am in the invidious position of now speaking for them in the

writing of the thesis-assemblage. Aware of this contradictory endeavour, I persist, acknowledging

that I can only speak of how I perceive children, childhood and the discourses generated by social,

political, educational ideal(ist)s, about my perspective of how it appears for (some?) young children

living in an adult (dominated) world in a community imbued with western sociocultural-political

beliefs. As Deleuze in conversation with Foucault aptly puts it,

You were the first…to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity of speaking for

others. We ridiculed representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the

consequences of this “theoretical” conversion—to appreciate the theoretical fact that only those

directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf. (Deleuze 1972, quoted in

Sheridan, 1980, p. 114)

There are somewhat irreconcilable issues here, as young children have limited public space from

which to speak, and work with/in language capacities limited by adult-centric understandings of

linguistic expression. How we can create an academic field of childhood studies whereby young

children can freely communicate to a listening~hearing audience is not easy to see. With this in

mind I turn to relations of power in research contexts as adult-researchers work with children-

participants, noting that the most significant challenge in researching with children is ‘disparities in

power and status between adults and children’ (Morrow & Richards, 1996, p. 98) and that these

cannot be ignored.


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children-participants and adult-researcher

Working to ensure equitable relations between adult-researcher and children-participants within

research contexts, works also to interrupt subordination and marginalisation of children in (the)

wider world(s). This requires a shift in thinking from acknowledging that power exists and

attempting to equalise or minimise it, to engaging with the complexities of relations of power-

fullness. It requires moving from seeing power as residing in people and social positions towards

considering power relations as inhering in social representations of ‘adult’ and ‘child’ (Christensen,

2004), particularly in intergenerational relations (Mayall, 2000). Power is not fixed; rather it is fluid

and shifting. Within the research context ‘power moves between different actors and different social

positions, it is produced and negotiated in the social interactions of child to adult, child to child’

(Christensen, 2004, p. 175). None of us are outside power relations, neither are we entirely

autonomous or enslaved (Cannella, 1999). Power is not linear; it is discursive, constituting and

constituted as ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972,

p. 49), practices that recursively generate and reflect power (Foucault, 1980, cited in Cannella,

1999). In her research with young children, Fasoli (2001) observes access to power as continuously

tipping one way and the other, from researcher to participants, ‘always both producing and

disputing power relations’ (p. 9) as they interact with each other.

Researching with children involves ongoing dialogue with the children as they are informed,

consulted and heard. Christensen & Prout (2002) promote ‘ethical symmetry’, which considers

ethical relationships between researcher and informant as the same, in research with adults and

children, but how this plays out with children as a unique grouping is complex in that power

relations are never equally proportioned. Relations of power are ‘changeable, reversible and

unstable’ (Foucault, 1987, p. 12). However, considering power relations as complex, contextual,

fluctuating and relational (Bloom, 1998, cited in Fasoli, 2001) provides something productive to

work with, notwithstanding the proliferation of relationships, which likely generate many different,

intersecting and conflicting interests within social relations and cultural contexts.

Foucault (1979) says that power is present everywhere at the same time and that it coincides with

the conditions of social relations in general, ‘not because it embraces everything but because it

comes from everywhere’ (p. 93). Thus, if power is not positioned in adult or child per se, but is

visible in the social representations we make of these, then power moves through children as well as

adults. In theorising Foucault, Deleuze (1988) says, ‘power is not homogeneous but can be defined

only by the particular points though which it passes’ (p. 25). There is thus no hierarchical, top-

down, arborescent effect of Power, rather, a-centred rhizomatic affects of ‘powers…of becoming’


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(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 106). Power as affect ‘describes the forces behind all forms of social

production’ (Colman, 2005a, p. 12). Thinking powers of affect(s) moves outside the negativity of

power as domination towards a condition of becoming that manifests differently in different

mo(ve)ments for all, including children. Braidotti explains that Deleuze’s configuration of power(s)

‘re-inscribes the reflection on the politics of the subject within an aesthetic and ethical framework

centred on affirmation, …on the affectivity and the positivity of the subject’s desires’ (Braidotti,

1996, p. 305).

However, Braidotti (1994c) argues that the internal logic of domination cannot be remedied by

simply reversing the balance of power as this leaves the dialectical opposition intact. But dissolving

the adult|child binary disentangles child and adult from disabling power relationships, instead

recognising non-hierarchical relations of flows of power-fullness in which each is embodied in the

other while simultaneously emerging from the other. When children are involved in research as

active participants as generators and rhizoanalysts of data, power-full relationships, tense and

dynamic in their interplay (Roy, 2003), are illuminated and open to critique.

reflexivity in doing and writing the research

Reflexivity works to critique and deconstruct the inextricably intertwined relationships of

subjectivities that are constituted in this research, by/through me as reader~writer~thinker~

researcher together with the subject matter with which I work – the literature and the research data.

Reflexivity works with and against authenticity, so, as I conceive of myself from/with/in the lived

experiences of my theoretically abstracted understandings, I can only be(gin) wherever I am, in a

(con)text where I already believe myself to be (Derrida, 1974). In this, I am continually reminded

that my thinking about and doing the research is constituted and affected by my historical

understandings and that these contribute to the research processes and text. My thinking is thus

opened to critique around various issues (Gergen & Gergen, 2000), such as my unique historical

and geographic situated-ness, my personal investments in the research, my biases and the surprises

that emerge from these, my choice of Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries that affect the research

processes and the reading of the thesis-assemblage, the combination of philosophical, feminist,

poststructuralist understandings that I employ and perspectives I choose to pass by. While I produce

the research text, the philosophical understandings I use also produce me (St.Pierre, 2001). Thus my

presence is significant throughout the research and the writing.

A self-consciously reflexive approach is characterised by making connections among (my)self as

writer, the writing, discourses involved and discursive acts that are both played out by the writer


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and come into play through the writing. This kind of reflexivity also problematises these

connections – the actual connections and the processes of making them – as well as reflexive

reading~writing as a processual approach. In The Ambivalent Practices of Reflexivity, Davies,

Browne, Gannon, Honan, Laws, Mueller-Rockstroh and Petersen (2004) explicate their collective

work on/with an exploration of reflexive practice. They say that reflexivity involves:

…turning one’s reflexive gaze on discourse – turning language back on itself to see the work it

does in constituting the world. It entails the development of a kind of “critical literacy” in which

the researchers understand that they are also caught up in processes of subjectification and see

simultaneously the objects/subjects of their gaze and the means by which those objects/subjects

(which may include the researcher as subject) are being constituted. In this model, researchers

come to see what is achieved through particular discursive acts as well as the constitutive means

by which the particular act was made possible and interpretable as this act in particular.

Researchers see meaningful actions in the world, analysing them both in their own terms and at

the same time, as the result of the constitutive acts engaged in and made visible by the

researchers themselves. (p. 361, original italics)

Thus, when writing reflexively, who I am and what I think and feel, simultaneously (e)merge

from/within the text of this plateau assemblage. Self and writing, as (con)textual assemblage,

become rhizome, related as wasp and orchid (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) in a becoming-self of the

writing and becoming-writing of (my)self. This is an ongoing, recursive process as ‘[e]ach of these

becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of the other;

the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the

deterritorializing ever further’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 10). Thus, generating (a) text becomes

an activity of ‘ceasing to acknowledge a distinction between the inside and the outside’ (Groves,

2007, ¶ iii). In this way, I become one with/in my writing; my writing is not so much mine, rather it

becomes me, and I become it. However, always already I am writing myself into (non)existence, I

am (un)doing myself. Writing and me, as multiplicity, has ‘neither subject nor object, only

determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase…without the multiplicity

changing in nature’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 8). In the process of writing I change, I am no

longer myself; yet I cannot stop being myself on my own, I can only cease to be myself in

conjunction with others – in this instance, only with/in (my relationship) with my writing. As I

become more aware of whom I am, my writing blurs – researching and self are ever (e)merging

self-consciously, reflexively, recursively. Davies et al. (2004) explain this deconstruction of who I

am in relation to my writing as slippery because of the always-already-ness of my relationships with

the world:


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…the subject is deconstructed in such a way that it can no longer be read as a fixed object to be

read or as a superior transcendental consciousness that can engage in objective readings. But

such a position can be a slippery one to maintain because researchers are (always already)

subjects who engage in readings, and in analysis, and who draw on their own experience of

being in the world to make sense of it. (p. 362)

The (im)partiality of my thinking and writing is constantly in question – (im)partiality in terms of

what I choose to remember, how I interpret remembered understandings and the attachment I have

to them (Miller, 1999). In reference to Lather (1993), Davies et al. (2004) explain that while

‘authentic, realist self narratives and discursive textual analysis…may appear to coexist…the

former [is] often seen to undermine and erode the latter…The subject both does and does not exist

in reflexive social science writing’ (p. 362). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) acknowledge such

(non)existence as they seek to make themselves (un)recognisable in their writing, dissolving their

“I-ness” into a subjective multiplicity.

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite

a crowd…[We] render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think…To

reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any

importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves, each will know his own. We have

been aided, inspired, multiplied. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3)

While this sounds like a relatively straightforward task, de-cluttered of subject/object, Deleuze and

Guattari acknowledge that operating from this kind of middle is not always easy. Although there is

a sense when reading Davies et al. (2004) that writing reflexively may intensify more readily when

writing in conjunction with others, their exploration is fraught with difficulties as they negotiate

‘multiple layers of ambivalence’ (p. 363). However, by thinking of self not as a fixed, stable entity,

but as constantly moving and changing – in processes of becoming – ways are opened for

transgressive possibilities (p. 368); ‘the act of reflexivity creates new thoughts and ideas at the same

time as going back over old thoughts and ideas…chang[ing] the thinking that is being thought’

(p. 386). Reflexivity operates to/with/in (a) middling through plateaus, generating middles within

plateaus and plateaus of middles, endlessly.

As I work with the children in data generating processes, working reflexively opens my sensitivity

to ongoing issues around not impeding their expressions of power-fullness within flows of our

child-participant~adult-researcher relationship. However, within the reflexivity of the rhizoanalysis,

I see that I did not always achieve this. For example, my pragmatic response to Tim’s rhetorical


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question as to why I was following them (see the Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full

plateau) does not address his concern about my being in his play space. On a subsequent day Tim is

more explicit and succeeds in getting me to understand that my directing the camera at him is not

what he wants. Although I apologetically withdraw, it is not until later that I appreciate that my

activity was compromising his power-fullness. Reflexivity, particularly around children’s power-

fullness continues throughout the writing of the research and enriched reflexivity afforded by time,

provides considerably more meaningful insights.

reflexive journaling

Maintaining reflexivity, of the moment and later, works to mediate my researcher understandings as

privileged in the child-participant~adult-researcher relationship. It seems that in my journaling

throughout data generation I become aware of different approaches I need to take, but, reflecting on

those reflections, it now appears that most often it was the children’s rhizo-expressions (combined

implicit~explicit expressions) made through their actions and responses that alerted me to making

changes. Although reflexivity occurs within the moment, it inevitably continues later in my journal.

For example, through my journaling, I become aware of Chloe’s expertise with the video camera in

capturing the children’s play(ing) that generates enriched data, implicitly ensuring her, and the other

children’s power-fullness in the data and in the process of its generation. Because I wanted to

understand what the children were videoing and why, I kept trying to get Chloe to talk about what

she was seeing/doing, and to talk with the children she was following during the conversation

recorded on the video. But on reflection, I realised I was not trusting her with capturing a story

worth telling (Dockett & Perry, 2007). Also, my suggesting that she ask them what they were doing

makes no sense; as I record the flow of various children’s play(ing), I say little, being intent on

following their ideas and intentions for their games and not risking any comments I might make

being (mis)interpreted by the children as my imposing ideas in any way. Surprisingly, I was not

affording Chloe the same respect.

However, now making my position as researcher explicit in the writing of the research disturbs any

lingering positivist notions of a neutral or invisible researcher and assures that my story is not

definitive. Also, flowing with the children’s activity ensured that what I was capturing was their

stories of their play(ing). While I endeavour to work reflexively with research practices that respect

the children as power-full players in their learning by acknowledging my subjectivity, situated-ness

and (im)partiality, the notion of being transparent is suspect (Holt, 2004). As reflecting on my

interactions with Chloe demonstrates, I was not always aware of my intentions; being fully


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conscious of past and present desires, motivations, and the pressures and constraints of these on the

research processes is often untenable.

In the writing of the research, working reflexively alerts me to poststructuralist methodological

questions (following Lather, 1992; Mayall, 2002; Youngblood Jackson, 2003): How do I deal with

the pervasiveness of narrative authority? How do I open (to) possibilities and not lock them in (my)

interpretations of data? How do I ensure (a) rhizovocal, a-centred text(s) with/in the rhizoanalysis?

How do I think from children’s lives? How do I deconstruct my desires for the research that affect

the text of the thesis-assemblage I am generating? These questions (re)turn me to the unstable and

dynamic matters of subjectivities, singularities and severalties that are constituted within power

relations (Foucault, 1980) and continue to inform the presentation and writing of the research.

Responsibly, all I can do is bring my understandings together with the children’s expressions of

their understandings to find out how they (can) work together, perhaps towards a(nother) rendering

of what childhood may be like (James & Prout, 1997). Thus, self-consciously reflexive, I continue.

Before moving reflexively to ethical considerations I provide some information about the research

context that is relative to the ethics discussion.

selecting a kindergarten and gaining entry

My preference for generating data was with a kindergarten offering a sessional programme with

ample time and space for the children to move freely through the programme and the setting. In

consultation with the regional Free Kindergarten Association, I identified Sunshine Kindergarten34

as a possible research site. My contention was that the large chunks of uninterrupted time available

to the children in this kindergarten would open possibilities for rhizomatically generating data, with

the children leading the way, and, as the children were used to operating in such a programme, my

expectation was that their play would be largely with their own agenda. However, I acknowledge

that these were preconceptions I brought to the study (Christensen & James, 2000a) and that there

are ethical implications of identifying my standpoint thus (Morrow & Richards, 1996). Although

the rhizoanalysis illuminates that this was a useful setting in which to generate data of children

performing curriculum alongside my understandings of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical

imaginaries, questions arise around my Deleuzo-Guattarian influenced lens affecting such

understandings. Also, my philosophical situated-ness likely advantaged Sunshine Kindergarten as

an option.

34 Pseudonym.


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opening relationships with the teachers

Appreciating the importance of engaging the trust and confidence of the adults responsible for the

children, who would become research participants, and the importance of establishing a working

relationship with opportunities for dialogue and collaboration towards this (Thomas & O'Kane,

1998), I met with all three teachers to discuss the possible involvement of the children of Sunshine

Kindergarten in the research project and invite them to raise any concerns they might have. The

teachers were supportive of the project, expressing particular interest how the findings might inform

their teaching. Enabling the children’s power-fullness was important to my conception of the

project and this corresponded with their personal philosophies as early childhood teachers. They

were comfortable with not being involved as participants and with my working with the children in

generating the data in such as way that the children were in control.

This decision, not to involve the teachers as participants, emerged reflexively prior to seeking

approval for the research. I decided that minimising adult involvement would more likely minimise

impoverishment/dilution of data around the children’s power-full expressions and performance of

curriculum. Although the teachers were not included in the data, they were inevitably party to its

generation as they worked with the children in their everyday learning experiences in the setting.

This meant that some data generated that involved intriguing rhizo-conversation with the children

were excluded from the rhizoanalysis. Although early in the rhizoanalysis I thought that it might

have been useful to include the teachers, I later returned to my prior decision that their involvement

may have blocked the foregrounding of children’s understandings.

familiarisation sessions

Six familiarisation sessions were scheduled during the two-week period prior to the data-generating

period. My presence in the kindergarten was announced in a welcome message on the parent

noticeboard at the kindergarten door; I also displayed an introductory notice with my photo

attached. The purpose of these sessions was to open relationships with the children, gain their

confidence and ascertain what kinds of interactions worked well with this particular group (Powell

& Smith, 2009). The sessions were also a way of becoming more familiar with the teachers, and

they with me, and were also a time for me to engage with the programme and culture of the setting.

During this time I interacted with all the children on at least one occasion. I talked with them,

engaging with them in various activities, indoors and outside, and worked with them in creating

various artworks. We also experimented with the video, capturing snippets of their play(ing) and

playing it back on the LCD screen of the camera or through a television monitor I had set up. All of


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this contributed to our mutual rapport. Although supported by the teachers in my researcher role, I

also endeavoured to support them in their work with the children, for example, participating in tidy-

up time and up-dating them about the progress of the project.

ethical considerations

Ethics, in researching with children, link to understandings of children and childhood. For example,

sociological views perceive children as competent social actors in everyday worlds of their

childhood(s), capable of participating in and withdrawing from research (see, for example:

Cannella, 1997; Corsaro, 1997; James, Jenks & Prout, 1998; Mayall, 2002). Childhood is perceived

as a social construct relative to particular spatio-temporal contexts, including research contexts

which welcome children as active participants (Farrell, 2005). Working with Deleuzo-Guattarian

rhizomatic understandings of children as power-full, as becoming-child(ren) respects children as

young human be(com)ings and opens to ethical considerations that are ongoing throughout the

research process, from design to dissemination.

In accordance with The University of Queensland School of Education Guidelines for Ethical

Review of Research Involving Humans (2005) ethical clearance was granted for the research to

proceed. To inform the documentation, I used the New Zealand Association for Research in

Education (1998) ethical guidelines and the Australian Association for Research in Education

(1993, 2005) code of ethics and Cullen, Hedges and Bone’s (2005) ethical guidelines addressing the

processes of planning, undertaking and disseminating research as relative to early childhood

settings. Throughout the research I remain cognisant of the following ethical issues: Respect for the

person; minimisation of harm and maximisation of benefits; informed consent; voluntary

participation; respect for privacy and confidentiality; avoidance of deception; avoidance of conflict

of interest; social and cultural sensitivity; and, justice (Cullen, Hedges & Bone, 2005, pp. 1-2).

However, as a beginning researcher I am aware that the best intentions are no guarantee for an

ethical approach (Powell & Smith, 2006) and of the importance of ongoing critical reflection

throughout towards assuring all aspects of the research become power-full experiences for the

children. There are unique, complex methodological and ethical issues involved in researching with

children, involving intersecting issues of informed consent, protection and confidentiality,

intermingled with providing information.

a complexity of methodological and ethical issues Researching with children presents unique ethical issues of protection, consent and confidentiality

that complexify with/in the manifestation of children’s different understanding and experience of


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the world (Thomas & O'Kane, 1998). Consent is generally given by adults, but the research and the

participating children likely benefit from children giving their consent as well, although this may be

more about ‘assent’ (Morrow & Richards, 1996) and/or dissent in that parents might have coerced

children or overridden their desire to participate. Protection assumes that children are vulnerable

and need adults to advocate for them, shielding them from exploitative researchers and research

processes and this is complicated by rules of various social institutions, such as protection from

abuse. However, viewing children as vulnerable, incompetent and in need of protection

‘perpetuate[s] power disparities’ (Powell & Smith, 2009, p. 139). Confidentiality becomes complex

in that adults responsible for participating children may expect to be informed of details of their

private lives and thoughts relative to the early childhood setting (Thomas & O’Kane, 1998). In

Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood settings, teachers regularly share information of children’s

everyday learning experiences in terms of informal assessment with parents/caregivers, but

confidentiality and anonymity guidelines for research sometimes state that parents/caregivers do not

have the right to access individual data (Powell & Smith, 2006, p. 132). These complex and

sometimes conflicting issues may raise dilemmas during the research or they may (simply) act to

inform the research throughout. Ethical considerations often raise questions rather than providing

clear means of resolution. Furthering the complexity around ethics, researchers likely prioritise

principles differently (Powell & Smith, 2006, p. 136) – the perspective a researcher adopts will

depend on their personal understandings of children and childhood and their operational responses

to these. Whether understood in terms of un/equal power relations or children’s power-fullness,

issues of power undergird methodological approaches, research strategies and ethical

considerations.

protection

Ethical considerations of protection are concerned with minimising the risk of harm to children,

ensuring that they are not hurt, disadvantaged or coerced in any way, that their learning and

relationships within the early childhood setting are not disrupted (Hedges, 2002). Protection also

requires that all interactions with people and processes of the research work positively to affirm

children’s well-being. Although ethics committees grant approval that aims to protect participants,

researchers and institutions, from adverse affects of the research process, it is the researcher’s

responsibility to avoid any activity within the research process that is potentially harmful, including

dissemination. As Valentine (1999) advocates:

academics have particular duty to be aware of the potential impact of the dissemination of their

research findings on children as a whole, for example, by considering what model of childhood

is assumed in the research and by considering whether the wider dissemination of the findings


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will reinforce or contribute to the stigmatisation of young people or discrimination against them.

(p. 151)

However, unexpected dilemmas can arise at any time during the research process, despite rigorous

ethics approval processes, for example, tensions around the ethical commitment to report findings

with honesty. ‘Ethics is an ongoing social practice’ (Powell & Smith, 2006, p. 127).

Although young children may benefit from adults’ advocacy, being overly protective and

considering children as power-less, has the potential to reduce children’s participation in the

research and to limit the kind of knowledge they may be willing and able to share. Powell & Smith

(2006) affirm that ‘protection is a disputable concept…that overprotection may be as harmful as

neglect…and that true protection of children requires protection of their rights, including that of

participation’ (p. 135). When children are considered the ‘gatekeepers of their own accounts…as

competent witnesses to their own experiences…[there is] a blurring of typical adult-child

interactions’ (Danby & Farrell, 2005, p. 61) so that researcher and children participants can together

generate understandings and accounts of children’s everyday experiences. ‘Protection’ then takes

on another meaning. In respecting children from within their own understandings, protection

becomes more about enabling children in their power-fullness to escape the exploitation of well-

meaning but limiting gate-keeping of expressions of their lived experiences that researching with

children has the potential to broadcast.

ethics of informed consent

Informed consent means providing parents/caregivers with information about the research project

and the processes involved and inviting them to give permission for their children to participate.

Essentially, adults volunteer children. While their responsibility is to be respected, parents giving

consent risk coercing or denying children’s participation. Moreover, seeking consent from adults on

behalf of children does not resonate well with children’s rhizovocality in research, with disrupting

any power im/balance and with creating child-friendly research. It embodies neither the notion of

researching with children nor ‘research as participation in a community of practice’ (Fasoli, 2003).

However, for researchers working with young children, ethically sound practice is considered to

involve the children in decisions of the research process, in which children’s views are central to the

data and are sought respectfully. This means providing children with information to ensure they

‘understand what is required of them in the research project…[and] who has involved them, and

why’ (MacNaughton, Smith & Davis, 2007, p. 171). Ensuring children understand that participation


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is voluntary and they can withdraw without explanation at any time, is crucial. Ideally children

should be consulted and informed about the shape of the project throughout, such as making

decisions about research strategies that they think appropriate with their opinions ‘taken seriously in

how the research evolves’ (p. 171).

Gaining informed consent from children is an unfolding discourse. Thomas & O’Kane’s (1998)

research with 8-12 year olds depended on passive agreement from caregivers and active agreement

from participants. They provided information material for the children as well as the caregivers so

children could express their views about (non-)involvement in an informed way. Similarly, in

research with older children and young people, Valentine (1999) refers to asking children for

written consent rather than consent that is ‘oral or implied’ (p. 144). Yet, seeking formal, written

consent from young children seems to have been overlooked in much of the discussion of research

(see, for example: Christensen, 2004; Clark, 2005; Dockett & Perry, 2003; Godfrey & Cemore,

2005; Komulainen, 2007; MacNaughton, 2003; Samuelsson, 2004; Sorin, 2003; Sumsion, 2003).

This is despite a growing respect for children’s freedom to assent or dissent to participation and

support for children’s increasing involvement throughout other aspects of the research process.

However, a number of researchers have actively sought children’s written consent (Bone, 2005;

Danby & Farrell, 2005; Dockett & Perry, 2007; Hedges, 2002, 2007; Te One, 2007).

Danby and Farrell (2005) affirm that the issue of children signing consent forms is foregrounded

through sociological understandings, whereby young children as research partners contribute to data

generation and interpretation in meaningful ways. These authors relate their experience with

children aged 5-11 years giving consent. After parents had given permission the children were

invited to give theirs. The children had the opportunity to give a ‘consent signature’ (p. 53), their

responses including drawings, initials and nicknames, for example. Similarly, researching in a

kindergarten, Hedges (2002; 2007) first sought parents’ consent and then children’s. She designed

sheets for the children to sign and she read the information to each child individually. Admittedly,

the younger the children are, the greater the imagination required of the researcher to be able to

generate a way of making this a possibility. Children giving active consent foregrounds potential

conflict of interest around parents coercing their children to participate or excluding them from

research that children themselves may want to be involved in. Either way, opting in rather than

opting out minimises un/intended coercion, but this, recursively, problematises informed consent in

researching with young children and a slippage of children’s power-fullness re/oc/curs.


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seeking informed consent

Prior to data generation I participated in six sessions to become familiar with the children and the

programme and to enable the children to become familiar with me – these familiarisation sessions

are discussed further on, along with selecting the kindergarten and opening relationships with the

teachers. Part way through the familiarisation sessions, I distributed an information letter to the

parents/caregivers of the morning children, explaining the aims of the research, methods to be used

and how their children would be involved in the data generating processes. Parents/caregivers were

invited to sign a form consenting to, or declining permission for their child’s participation, in the

understanding that participation remained voluntary throughout and that participating children were

free to choose whether and when to be involved. Only one parent declined consent for her child to

participate but the child was not excluded from any of the data generating activity, rather, I later

edited out data that included her/him35.

Cognisant of generating opportunities for enabling children’s power-full participation in the

research and informed by recent experiences of early childhood researchers obtaining written

consent from young children, with permission (Jane Bone, personal communication, January,

2006), I adapted the consent form that Jane Bone designed for her research (Bone, 2005). I created

a six-page booklet for the children inviting their written consent, explaining in age-appropriate

language informed consent and voluntary participation. Before giving the children the booklets, I

talked to the whole group at mat-time, explaining that if they wanted, I would make videos of them

playing and they could use the camera to record each other playing. I reiterated that they could

change their mind (opt in or opt out) at any time. I showed them each page, explaining that their

parents could read it to them and, if they wanted, they could write and draw in it and bring it back to

me (Appendix i: Children’s Consent Booklet).

children’s consent booklets

A photograph of the playground illustrates the cover, along with a note asking that

parents/caregivers read through the booklet with their child and assist her/him in filling it in. In

language accessible to four year olds, I introduced myself, then the research, with a brief

explanation about how together we might go about making videos, reviewing the videos and then

talking, and perhaps drawing, about what they were doing. In relation to how the children felt about

doing this, they were invited to apply colour to any of the words – happy, fine, not sure, worried –

indicating their feelings about the research. They were then asked whether they wanted to be 35 I use ‘her/him’ as part of protecting the identity of this child.


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involved in making the videos, circling either yes, no or maybe. Over half drew a picture of

themselves in the space provided; others attached a photograph; some did neither. Most of the

children indicated that they felt ‘happy’ or ‘fine’ to be involved – only three were marked ‘unsure’

and none were ‘worried’. Regarding making videos, one child did not want to be involved and two

said ‘maybe’. Following are examples of responses (Figure 11):

Figure 11: Responses in the consent booklets of two children.

Except for the child whose parent had declined consent for participation, all forty-seven others

returned their booklets. Enthusiasm to participate was demonstrated by many of the children

showing me, and the teachers, their booklets before posting them in the special box I had made for

them. On seeing their engagement with the consent booklets and noting the pride most took in it, I


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scanned their booklets and returned the originals for insertion in their profile books, their

personalised record of their work and activity at kindergarten, home and in the community,

compiled in a clear-file. I noted which children were unsure about the research or did not want to be

involved. Later, I wonder if the children’s consent booklets contributed to the 100% return of

consent forms from parents/caregivers and to the high level of interest. Many parents engaged me in

conversation, with ongoing interest in the progress of the project.

confidentiality and privacy

Intersecting with protection and informed consent, confidentiality concerns identities of participants

and the research context throughout the study, in the research text and in subsequent reports and

publications. Working with these principles plays out differently in researching with children than

with adults. Respecting anonymity is relatively straightforward and children creating pseudonyms

becomes a way of involving them in the research process, simultaneously providing them with

information about privacy issues and ensuring their own privacy. When Hedges (2002) invited the

children to create pseudonyms, Orca, Kitten and Frankenstein were some choices that reflected their

varying interests. But, as Valentine (1999) notes, this is not unproblematic as ‘giving children

voice’ is ensured but their choice of pseudonym may ‘bear little relation to their own identities’

(p. 148) and may distort the way extracts from the transcripts are read by others in research reports.

Children’s ‘individuality’ is thus written out of the research in an attempt to protect their

confidentiality (p. 148).

Confidentiality during data generation was in accordance with Sunshine Kindergarten policy, which

encourages children to discuss their ideas with peers, teacher and other adults in the setting in

respect of individual children’s best interests. Children are party to, and encouraged to be respectful

of other children’s conversations and activity throughout the daily programme and given that the

data comprised of video-ing their ordinary, everyday activity in the Kindergarten and reviewing

these videos later, there was nothing recorded beyond everyday events and situations that could

potentially breach the children’s confidentiality. How the children discussed their involvement with

their friends and others at kindergarten once outside the setting was beyond my control.

Confidentiality and privacy was thus maintained in the setting, although not entirely controllable

beyond it.

Privacy aspects of confidentiality are openly addressed in group interviews with adults, but this

plays out differently in researching with young children. It is not uncommon to conduct group

interviews in open spaces, such as at the drawing table where the children can talk together as they


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draw, but where conversations can be overheard. Hedges (2002) worked with the idea that whatever

the children discussed with her would be private to them and their parents. In my research project

data was the children’s play and conversations videoed were mostly everyday interchanges among

the children and sometimes these included me in the same way that their teachers interact ordinarily

in the course of their teaching. Conversations with various children about their play when reviewing

various bits of footage again involved the kind of conversations the children have with the teachers

and each other when reading their personal profile books – clear file collections documenting their

work and activity in the Kindergarten. These kinds of conversation are always open to all.

Reviewing the videos (discussed in detail further on) happened during the session when parents

were not present in a relatively contained space in a corner in the kindergarten. Occasionally the

teachers were invited by children to watch recordings of their play(ing) – Fleur, for example,

insisted on several occasions that a teacher watch the funny bits, insisting: …look at this cos it’s

really funny. Please watch this part, it’s really funny. It’s really funny you have to watch all of this

part. For the teacher to have declined the invitation would have compromised their

teaching~learning relationship and been an ‘inappropriate intrusion’ (Thomas & O’Kane, 1998,

p. 340) on the reciprocity of learner~teacher. Other than noting Fleur’s comment (above), such

interactions captured in the videos have been excluded from the wider rhizoanalysis.

These ethical considerations of informed consent, protection and confidentiality and aspects of

providing information that intermingle illuminate some ‘ethical mind-fields’ (Fasoli, 2001) in

researching with children and this opens to the significance of generating a ‘culture of ethics’

(Bone, 2005) in early childhood research. This needs to be a culture that reflects the complexity,

continuously questioning how to ‘enable children to be heard without exploiting them, protect

children without silencing and excluding them, and pursue inquiry without distressing them’

(Alderson & Morrow, 2004, p. 12).

ethical considerations for becoming-child(ren) becoming-researchers

As Buchanan explains, ethics for Deleuze is about ideology in that ‘any exploration of the process

by which concepts are invented is also an examination of an ethical existence’ (Buchanan, 2000, p.

73). This approach to ethics works to disrupt specific, established modes of perception, towards

understandings for thinking and doing things differently. We have to ‘square the circle so to speak

by asking “How does it work?”’ (p. 74). The underpinning ethical question for Deleuze is around

how we might reinvent ourselves, take ourselves apart and, imagined differently, put ourselves

together afresh (p. 84). To create an active mode of ethics, Deleuze’s response is a folded


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endeavour, which read in regard to researching with children, means simultaneously understanding

children as they are…and…seeking ways by which they can become something different within a

milieu of ethical (and methodological) considerations involving de~territorialisation of adult

perceptions of who children are…and…how they can be perceived differently…and…children’s

understandings of what they consider themselves to be becoming, differently, as becoming-

child(ren) becoming-power-full becoming-researchers.

The assemblage of becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full becoming-researchers is conceptually

fluid in respecting and reciprocating with young children in research processes. These becoming-

child(ren) becoming-power-full becoming-researchers are constituted in/by constantly changing

capacities, conceptual understandings, lived experience and communicating abilities different from

those of adults. Researching with children is about thinking (as) nomad~rhizome, (an) alterity (of)

the sedentary thinker locked into various forms of (adult-centric, rational) thought, with nomad

asking how it works. Thinking (the thought of ethics – form of content) and doing (ethical

considerations – form of expression) as nomad~rhizome, means thought (form) and thinking

(expression) are inseparable – ‘both content and expression are embedded in a complex, not

hierarchical but heterogeneous, system of relations in such a way that one reciprocally presupposes

the other’ (Semetsky, 2004, p. 317). Ethics are not fixed and ethical considerations cannot be

resolved; research(ing) is always already both ethics and their considerations. Similarly, in

understandings of becoming, adult-researchers and children-participants-researchers are in

reciprocal relations of be(com)ing several – as adults and children together become both competent

and incompetent, immature and mature in expressions of power-fullness with/in ethical

considerations of becoming-researchers. In the thinking and doing of research(ing) (with)

becoming-child(ren), relations between everyone and everything is always already in flux.

using video to generate data

Data generated through video does not depend on sophisticated use of language or children’s

particular linguistic competence in expressing their ideas. Video technology opens ways for paying

close attention to the uniqueness of the moment and becomes a way of connecting with the hundred

languages that children use to express themselves and their understandings of worlds operate within

(Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). The responsibility would then be mine to listen, not in terms of

interpreting their activity/understandings, but by looking for ways in/through which the children

perform their curricular understandings. Expressing their ideas is then not limited to/by

developmental conceptions of language development or linguistic skills. The videos generated

would disrupt a (westernised) focus on verbal explanation, whereby adults work constructively with


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constructivist theories to scaffold children towards adult-centric explanations, that is, explanations

theorised by adult perspectives of the world, and explanations which adults can make sense of.

Even in approaching researching with children as a multidimensional (ad)venture of reciprocity and

responsibility among children-participants and adult-researcher, the preponderance for verbal

explanations lingers. It is as if the quest is for continually ‘more effective’ ways of children verbally

expressing their views, opinions and understandings. Despite my theoretical understandings

expressed here, I fell into this positivist-modernist trap during the familiarisation sessions, of

‘needing’ words as I struggled to ascertain the kinds of questions that opened (to) fruitful

conversation; and when the children, like Chloe, took the camera I continued to encourage them to

talk about what they were videoing. Eventually I recognised this quest as but a surface annoyance

of the tracing (‘the plan’ for ‘the research’) overtaking the map of the research, which would, given

space, rhizomatically emerge. It appeared that video had the potential to subvert this need for

words, the onus becoming mine to ‘read/listen/hear’ children’s various expressions of their

understandings. However, not having children’s explanations risks (my) adult-construed

(mis)interpretations, which may bear no resemblance to what was actually happening for the

children.

Video also has the potential to capture glimpses over time of what is happening, through various

play spaces. It also made the data accessible to the children when reviewing or replaying the videos,

as they were not reliant on text, or conversation even. In recording the videos and in transcribing

them, I was also opened to worlds of children’s play(ing) as they performed their understandings of

curriculum – I was immersed in and surrounded by the activity, enactively learning with, and

embodied with/in the children’s understandings. The children, in (re)playing the videos, similarly

opened to spaces for listening to and seeing themselves. This does not mean however, that I avoided

totally falling into positivist traps of analysing behaviour, of psychologising and pathologising the

children although it does mean that these were reflexively edited out of my thinking and writing –

or at least watered down – as I pondered what the children are putting to work with/in/through their

play(ing). In that (re)playing the videos became a way of slowing down and tuning into the

children’s performance, they also enabled my reflexive understandings to (e)merge.

generating the data of this research project

Data of this research were generated through processes of videoing the children at play, and by

videoing, through a second camera, children who chose to replay the videos or ‘watch them-selves

on TV’, as they described it. Hong and Broderick (2003) also report that children are attracted to

‘revisiting previous events by watching their actions on the viewing screen of the video camera’


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(p. 15). For me it was a (re)play of their (re)playing. In anticipation of using children’s drawings as

expressions of complex and abstract issues of their understandings (Rauch, 2001) I had brought into

the kindergarten an assortment of high quality papers, crayons, pencils and pastels. However,

during the familiarisation sessions I realised that utilising drawing as a strategy added another

dimension to interacting with the children that would have required more time to develop than the

time allocated to generating data. It would also have limited the data to children who liked drawing,

so drawing became something some children did while watching~listening to the videos; others did

puzzles. Overall, I was working to disrupt any power im/balances towards enabling the children’s

power-fullness in which they could influence the research agenda by creating an atmosphere

responsive to their ways of operating.

Arguably, this is how teachers in many early childhood settings work to provide a programme of

ongoing learning opportunities for young children, but overlaying a research agenda seemed to

complicate my thinking and associated ways of operating. Throughout I needed to continually put

the tracing of the research back on the map of the children’s play(ing), learning and expressions

(verbal and non-verbal) around these. From a distance I now see that this was a slow learning

process for me and I can appreciate the value of working with another, or group of researcher(s), in

regard to discussing methodological issues and constraints. Into the second week of data generating,

I was comfortable with following the flow of the children at/of the moment. By then, I was flowing

as nomad~rhizome, negotiating middles of understandings, the children’s and mine.

Videoing the children play(ing) afforded glimpses into their worlds of curricular understandings

and my strategy was to engage with various children early in the session and follow their play. As

there were always other children close by, mostly this involved small groups or children playing

side-by-side. Sometimes I moved with the children through the setting; sometimes I would turn to

another group playing alongside when one group moved elsewhere; at other times I would relocate

into an entirely different space and group of children. There was no plan to video in specific areas

for specific lengths of time. As nomad, I was flowing through the setting, following groups of

children, moving through various play spaces. Some of the children were very interactive, talking to

me as if the camera was not there; others disregarded me, although my presence was obvious;

others seemed oblivious to my presence. Although wanting to leave the children’s conversation and

their activity to tell the story, there were times when I asked a question, and there were times when

they included me in their conversation. In all situations the camera did not seem to impede

conversation. In a way, it legitimised my entry into their worlds of play and my looking and

listening did not have to be explained – they knew I was interested in videoing their play(ing).


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It transpired that for much of the time I operated the camera, recording the play(ing) of various

children, mostly in groups but sometimes individually as they requested. I attempted to consult the

children in the moment, checking with them before beginning, or announcing my arrival with a

greeting, or, not wanting to disrupt the flow of their play(ing), checking that it was OK only when

they looked up and noticed me. Early on, Fleur, Maria and Lucy performed to the camera whenever

I was within range, making wild, random movements and a range of loud, weird sounds. But, after a

few days, like most of the children, they were unconcerned about the camera, sometimes ignoring

me, sometimes looking at me but continuing the conversation of their games without pausing,

sometimes including me in their conversation. The camera seemed to becoming less invasive of

their games and their space even though it was always visible.

Although there were many snippets in the videotapes when I had flowed with the children’s

play(ing), abandoning lingering structuralist concerns of certainty – about getting ‘enough’ ‘good’

data ‘about children’s understandings of curriculum’ – was not always easy. However as various

children took the camera, they affirmed the rhizo approach, as they readily flowed with children and

games. Chloe’s footage illuminated that a nomad~rhizome approach yielded considerable

meaningful data as she videoed most of the strong girls episode. (See the Children playing rhizo-

methodology plateau).

children videoing play(ing)

Towards the end of the data generation period, more children expressed interest in taking charge of

the camera. Jess opened this flush of recording by taking the camera at tidy-up time at the end of

the eighth day. She had asked me to tie her shoelaces and, not wanting to interrupt videoing the

group of girls playing with/tidying up the clay, I asked her to hold the camera. When viewing the

tape later, suddenly the activity intensified as I saw the activity as children see it – faces in closer

proximity, from a lower angle, children bearing down on the camera, not looking up to it, from

within the middle of their world of activity and communications. It was some telling imagery of

the(ir) power-fullness of/in their worlds. Also, Jess showed confidence in holding the camera and a

sophisticated capacity for choosing the shot. Others in the group had a turn at that moment, but by

next morning, they were more interested in continuing with their games.

Over these last few days, various children took the camera, mostly for short bursts of time, videoing

what captured their attention. The lens became a way of framing whatever it was they were

interested in and often they talked about what they were looking at; it seemed to become a means of

focusing their own attention, each with their own approach. For many children, the recordings


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identify artefacts that obviously matter to them personally, rather than other children’s activity; they

seemed to be using the video camera to take pictures not action movies. Some of them did,

however, video children playing. Brett could focus the camera in one place for relatively long

lengths of time, spending five minutes seated on a strategically placed bench recording two girls on

the swings and three minutes videoing boys making chocolate pies in the sandpit, moving on only

when he was being splashed with sandy water. Anna, Ani, Cassie, Eve and Zoe captured the

activity of children with whom they often played, taking turns to video each other. Although Fleur

held the camera, Maria led the way through various indoor play spaces. How the children operated

here is similar to Dockett and Perry’s (2003) research, which highlights children’s capabilities in

communicating their insights about their educational experiences, particularly when in charge of the

technology. However, the children’s video recordings of my research capture much activity beyond

their immediate focus, activity that enriches the understandings of the complexity of children’s

play(ing).

On reflection, my expectations for the children to video the activity of others involved in games was

overly ambitious. I was expecting them to step aside from their usual interactions, to distance

themselves on the other side of the lens, to disturb the embodied nature of their play(ing) and

interacting with the children around them. I was imposing my adult-centric way of operating in a

research world on their childhood understandings of their worlds of curricular performativity. Even

though I had recognised the difficulties (or impossibility?) of being on both sides of the camera, I

was expecting that somehow they could be. But they did not pretend it was possible to be both

camera operator/movie maker and player. However, I do wonder what might be possible over time

if children had ready access to a video camera and a television through which to play their

recordings of their play(ing). A review of their recordings suggests they needed considerably more

time to work through the excitement of using the technology before engaging with a more creative

use of the camera.

reflecting on the videoing process

Having generated the data of my research project, I happen upon Walsh, Bakir, Lee, Chung, Chung

and Colleague’s (2007) writing about their experiences of using video in research with children.

Nevertheless, this is useful, as I write about, and continue to reflect on the process now. As

St.Pierre says of writing her doctoral thesis: ‘This text appears to represent the real, but this

inscription is a simulacrum, today’s story, and the following attempt to unfold the methodological

processes of this project is limited and partial and a bit absurd, like all attempts to capture the real’

(St.Pierre, 1997b, p. 180, italics added). In this moment it certainly feels, as St.Pierre recognises,


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that analysis, methodology, data generation not only happen at once, rather they are one – that the

methodology is affected by the thinking that has since occurred, becoming but a shadow, a

resemblance of what (may or may not have) happened. Recognising rhizome at work, I continue to

reflect on my experience with some possibilities and challenges of video as a research tool.

Video deals well with capturing the detail of fast moving and complex activity of children’s

play(ing) and these can be viewed repeatedly, in real time, slow motion or frame-by-frame,

although what is happening off-camera can be frustrating – Who said that, and to whom? What is

happening behind me? It captures shadowy details and subtleties, such as patterns of interaction that

may not have been obvious at the time – like the intersecting lines of play among games unfolding

side-by-side. Although not possible to be in the ‘right’ place at the ‘right’ time, to see everything all

at once, in the replaying more and more is noticeable – a word or action can go unnoticed through

several viewings, particularly when there are groups of children interacting. Transcribing often took

several passes to create an overall picture. In the first viewing, I worked with the interaction as a

whole, then focused on one child at a time through the sequence to pick up more of the

conversation, gestures and interactions. Even then, I found that each time I returned to various

snippets, I noticed things I had not seen~heard before, which leaves me wondering if I could I ever

pick up everything. Video contains a mass of information, taking hours to transcribe the complexity

of a snippet of a few minutes, the resulting detail offering both possibilities and challenges, as

others have also found (Ratcliff, 2003, cited in Walsh et al., 2007). Some of the transcriptions

became so intense it was hard to write about the complexity of the play(ing) in a way that would be

understandable to the reader, but the challenge of textualising the complexity urged me on, hence

the various ways of working the data throughout the plateaus. Video undoubtedly more readily

captures the complexity of what is happening than is recordable in field notes or with audio alone

and revisiting various snippets kept me with the actuality of the moments.

Another challenge of video as a tool is the risk of thinking the video captured everything that was

happening, as the ‘lack of direct participation leads to a loss of contextual information not easily

deciphered’ (Walsh et al., 2007, p. 48) from the videotape. More than once I journal-ed that it was

impossible to be on both sides of the camera at once, to be camera-operator and participant in the

research; if it was possible, I did not work out how. At least I was visible with the camera and the

children were continually aware of my presence – there are many moments that capture a glance in

my direction. On reflection, I may have been able to capture more contextual information had I

paused after videoing each play episode to (re)write the story in that moment, but that would have

interrupted the rhizomatic flow and may have lead me to focus on certain scenes and sequences that


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seemed important at the time and dismissed opportunities for flowing with the unexpected. Also, I

could have become even more entangled than I did in tracing(s) (of) the research, so that mapping

would have stayed in the shadows. While video makes accessing the complicatedness of detail

possible, it also works well as a way of generating data that enable (a) negotiation of the complexity

in children’s play(ing). It also opens (to) possibilities for infinite rhizomatic wanderings with the

participant~researcher children towards multi-dimensional intensities of understandings of their

curricular performativity.

(re)viewing the videos ~ (re)playing the play(ing)

In working to understand more of young children’s conceptions of curriculum, my intention was to

collect data by videoing the children involved in various learning experiences, then to take time in

the latter part of each session to review the video, with any children who were willing to be

involved. In this way I hoped to encourage them to tell more of the stories about their learning. I

anticipated that this would involve nomadically entering conversational spaces with the children

towards furthering my understandings of their curricular performances. Working with a list of

comments and questions to foster the conversation, my intent was to seek their ideas in a

conversational interview (Kvale, 1996). I also anticipated that the children drawing about their

learning experiences would add to the conversation. However, during the familiarisation sessions it

became obvious that questioning the children or trying to engage them in conversation about their

curricular understandings was a strategy that would not work in that we needed more time than was

available to experience this way of being together (Cadwell, 1997). Also, structuring the review

session in this way did not correspond with the more informal organisation of the programme

familiar to the children and was going to be disruptive to their preferences for the use of their time

at kindergarten. Part of the problem was that I was thinking of data ‘collection’. Having thought

through understandings of data collection and data ‘gathering’, which imply data are stuff to be

picked up, then through notions of data ‘producing’, in which there is a sense of effecting end

results, I came to understand this as data ‘generation’ within my research project. This generative

understanding considers forthcoming opportunities, infinite possibilities and potential for an

ongoing openness to dynamic discovery processes of permutation, casting aside, (re)visiting,

(re)turning to, (re)combining (Corballis, 1989; Mathews & Cochran, 1998). Generativity involves

matters of always already recursively enfolding world and be(com)ing, in contrast to a structuralist

worldview that considers these and their processes as (having) discrete constituents, of which

notions of collection, gathering and producing are reminiscent. Data generating reflects an ‘active,

creative and improvisational process’ (Walsh, Bakir, Lee, Chung, Chung, & Colleagues, 2007, p.

44). Making video recordings was useful to this.


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It was this reviewing process that I envisaged would optimise the children’s participation in the

research. As the children adopted a reflexive stance, telling me more of their stories about what they

were thinking and doing, they would be ‘actively interpreting and shaping the research process’

(Christensen & James, 2000a, p. 5). But, as it transpired, (re)playing the videos happened only if

someone requested it. From the first explorations with the video camera, the children were intrigued

with the replays of themselves. In consultation with the teachers, I re-arranged a corner of the

kindergarten (Figure 12), making space for a 21-inch television set on a low table in the corner.

Using tape, I defined an area on the mat that ensured the children were a safe distance from the

television and within range of the second video camera, positioned on a desk in the adjacent office

and angled to record the review sessions.

Figure 12: Reviewing area showing position of second camera on tripod for videoing the review sessions. (Drawing by Warren Sellers).

Replaying the videos only as the children requested, respected their control of the research in their

combined roles of participant~researcher. This worked well whereas my ideas for organising review


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sessions would likely have generated less interesting data and jeopardised the continuation of that

part of the process after the initial excitement of seeing themselves on television had faded.

Researcher and participants had been drawn together as researcher~participants in a reflexive

community of research practice (Sumsion, 2003), into a participant~researcher~research

assemblage, with conversations (e)merging from the re-play(ing), not from any questions or

questioning, including, ‘talk of many things’ (Robbins, 2002, p. 13). Even the child who had chosen

not to become part of this rhizo-community and the one excluded by her/his parent opting for

her/him not to participate were part of this assemblage, their presence contributing to the

continually de~territorialising affect, although data that had captured them were deleted.

But, in my enthusiasm to play the first video tape through the television set, I overlooked alerting

the children to the second camera. However, Fleur soon noticed it, announcing: Hey that is taking

photos of us. This was a timely reminder for me about avoiding deception. There was often a

revolving group of children, some more vocal than others, some absorbed in watching themselves,

others happy to watch others at play: There’s me and you, Kate! Hey! There’s you Chloe! Hey!

There’s me! Some watched for considerable time, talking about the games they were playing; others

came and went quite quickly. On one occasion, Fleur and Maria talked for thirty minutes about an

Indian princess game they had been playing, a game that on the surface had looked as if nothing

much was happening. Several days later, their attention to a complex game was different, a game

which had appeared to me rather random and haphazard as I videoed it. This game involved a

mother~pilot~doctor, baby~co-pilot, shop assistant~office person~neighbour~sister~would-be pilot

and papa~house-minder~not-wanting-to-be-pilot (See the Play(ing) plateau). Fleur started out on

her own telling me what she understood of the game, with me pausing and rewinding as instructed:

Oh yeah. Let’s stop here. Let’s stop here (clapping her hands). Eleven minutes later, Maria and

Lucy join in and for the next thirty minutes they play with puzzles while watching the television set,

making comments, responding to my questions and comments, sometimes looking up and saying

nothing when parts of the conversation attract their attention, working together and on their own

with the puzzles and talking about these as they go. The complexity of the game they are watching

unfold on the television screen is replicated in the way they are reviewing it as they interact with

each other, the television screen, the puzzles and me.

At times there was much hilarity among a group, as with Matt’s fire-fighter episode (noted before).

Several times, groups of individuals watched for a while, and then went off to revisit the game,

albeit a day or so later – Brett said, Let’s go and do that again, and off he went with his mates to dig

another huge hole in the sandpit. Maria, Fleur, Lucy and Chloe had watched their game of Rapunzel


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when Maria announced: We might play that in the family corner. Um now we are going in the

family corner. C’mon, I’ve had enough of watching this. Later, I noticed that the game had evolved

differently – Eve and Maya had joined in. Similarly inspired both to play and watch himself on

television, Rylie asked to be video-ed playing with a ride-on digger and a trolley. After watching

the video of his play(ing) for about five minutes, he decided to do a puzzle at the same time and

once completed to make a drawing of it. By the time the sequence stops, eleven minutes later, he is

proudly displaying his drawing of a Māori carving (the puzzle) and is telling me he saw one like it

on holiday. The reviewing led Rylie on a quite different line of flight.

children engaging with reflexivity

Corsaro and Molinari (2000) report young children engaging with reflexivity as they are

encouraged to think beyond their current experiences to imagine themselves in future school

experiences. Hong and Broderick (2003) utilise instant video revisiting as a way of asking children

to recall ‘past experiences as a platform for further exploration of new ideas’ (p. 3). In reviewing

videos of their play(ing), the children of this thesis-assemblage similarly engage with a kind of

reflexive thinking as they (re)consider their involvement in their games. This happens in various

ways. For example, Matt laughing uncontrollably as he realises the problems he and Jonty were

having with their fire-fighter helmets slipping down over their faces was not that they were too big

(being authentic, adult-sized helmets) but that they both had them on back to front. Of another

game, Fleur reflects on Maria being in charge as she comments: Bossing me around (grins) yeah.

Later, Lucy refuses to comment about her bed in the cupboard despite Zoe claiming it to be scary,

and Maria says she never gets shut in the cupboard because she’s the mother and because she

doesn’t like being in the cupboard. All these children engage with reflexivity as they contemplate

previous play experiences.

Tim also demonstrates reflexivity as he continues to work with his expressions of power-fullness

beyond the data snippets discussed in the Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full plateau.

Having understood that he did not want me to follow him, I was later videoing a game in the

sandpit when he suddenly danced in front of the video camera, waving his rolled up light sabre map

at me. Operating reflexively, I check that it is OK to video him as his playing to the lens suggests he

wants to be videoed.

MS: Hi Tim, I thought you were tired of being followed.

Tim: Mmmm, well, we’re not anymore.


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Tim, in this moment acknowledges his reflexivity. The intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogue that

reflexivity affords goes some way to meeting ethical challenges of researching with children,

particularly relating to issues of power and power-fullness. As Christensen and Prout (2002) say,

this kind of dialogue not only helps ‘to sharpen researchers’ knowledge and internal personal

discussions but also treat the increasing involvement of children in research with the respect that it

deserves’ (p. 495). They also note that a complementary dialogue emerges from/with/in reflexive

processes as consideration of ethical issues are intensified through drawing on experiences of

published researchers meeting ethical dilemmas and using these experiences to ‘help to identify

strategic elements of ethical practice on which to build future research’ (p. 495). Reflexivity

becomes a way of taking responsibility for children involved in research as commonalities with

adult research are recognised and differences respected, as a critique of children’s social positioning

is engaged with.

responsible~responsive~response-able research relationships

Research(ing) with children involves thinking about how we might do research differently. It

requires that we (re)think how we connect with young children with/in research relationships,

noting that ‘feminist and postmodern theoretical perspectives regarding non-exploitative research

have paved the way for research with children’ (Krieg, 2003, p. 89). The concept(s) of ethics

discussed in this plateau are identifiable as (a) western(ised) construct(s) and although

intermingling and complex, their origins in structuralist frameworks remain. However, possibilities

for generative understandings of ethical considerations that are poststructurally openly context

specific and culturally bound come through a combined reading a Deleuze’s approach to ethics and

Osberg and Biesta’s (2007) concept of strong emergence, which is concerned with questions about

responsibility and response. In research(ing) with children, we need to adopt a heterogeneous view

of children and childhood, such as one that respects becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full

becoming-researcher(s). These understandings dissolve the modernist adult|child binary and open to

working with children in their ‘namings of the world’ (Freire, 1972, cited in Krieg, 2003, p. 91)

with/in a ready acceptance of equitable relationships. Engaging with a kind of communication,

which responds with dignity to children and the worlds of their childhood(s) is eloquently stated by

Ellsworth (1989):

If you can talk to me in ways that show you understand that your knowledge of me, the world,

and “the Right thing to do” will always be partial, interested, and potentially oppressive to

others, and if I can do the same, then we can work together on shaping and reshaping alliances…

(p. 324)


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Similarly, Bauman (1993) considers that ethical sensibility in postmodern times is about taking

responsibility for the Other, the minority that includes young children. This is not to reduce the

Other to the Same (of adults) in forms of paternalistic control but to respect difference. Notions of

responding responsibly and responsibility (Osberg & Biesta, 2007) and of being responsive and

responsible (Hedges, 2001) open to reciprocal research relationships respect-full of becoming-

child(ren). In these kind of relationships, communicating is an active endeavour always already

involving children and adults heterogeneously, towards perturbing pervading power relations of the

adult|child binary. This communication stays open to constant critique as all relations among

subjectivities of becoming-adult(s) and becoming-child(ren) can never be any more than partial and

interested. Also, simply following past directions of knowledge and know-how ‘makes of ethics and

politics a technology [and] begins to be irresponsible’ (Derrida, 1992, quoted in Osberg & Biesta,

2007, p. 45). But, always already in flux, relations can be(come) more, as multiplicities of response,

responsibility and responsiveness, engendering reciprocal response-ability of children and adults.

Yet, avoiding irresponsibility is not a simple exercise:

In an emergent universe…simply following the rules can only be seen as irresponsible for the

present moment does not follow the same rules as the moment that has passed. Since each new

present is radically new, in that it contains elements that were not present in the past, each new

present requires its own unique [responsible] interpretation. No existing interpretation or set of

rules can do it justice. This, however, does not mean that we can ignore what came before. If we

ignore lessons from the past we again become irresponsible. We must therefore make two

apparently contradictory gestures [of responsibility] at the same time. We must make a decision

now, based on what has come before but at the same time we cannot rely on what has come

before to make this decision. (Osberg & Biesta, 2007, pp. 45-46, italics in original, underline

added)

Acting responsibly in researching with children is not about reproducing past, structurally-informed

ethical relationships, rather, following Osberg & Biesta (2007), research and its contexts ‘should be

thought of as places where the world is renewed’ (p. 47). But, this is something of an im/possibility,

as: ‘The condition of this thing called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the

possibility of the impossible…there is no responsibility that is not the experience and the

experiment of the impossible’ (Derrida, 1992, cited in Osberg & Biesta, 2007, p. 46). And, ‘[t]he

idea of [research and its contexts] being places where the world is renewed is very much caught up

with the idea of human subjectivity since it is largely the choices made by human subjects which

cause the world to emerge in the way that it does’ (p. 47). So, responding responsibly in research

contexts with children involves adults in opening to mo(ve)ments of im/possibilities for children as


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participants-researchers to respond so that their worlds may (e)merge. Thus, opening possibilities

for becoming-child(ren) to engage as responsive and response-able becoming-participants~

researchers is an obligation of researchers to initiate with/in/through their relationships with the

participating children. (Re)thinking research relationships as respect-full, engaging with reciprocity,

responsibility and response-ability, eases a way through dilemmas and tensions of ethical concerns

and methodological processes. It is with these responsible understandings and those of becoming-

child(ren) becoming-intense becoming-power-full becoming-researchers that I have endeavoured to

explain how I went about the research of this thesis-assemblage. The plateau, Becoming-child(ren)

becoming-power-full, links with this plateau, also the Rhizoanalysis and Children playing

rhizo~methodology plateaus connect with Rhizomatically researching with young children.

Before leaving this plateau I briefly document my ethical requirement of reporting back to the

community, and as part of disseminating the research data and findings.

reporting back to the community My researcher responsibility is to ensure that the participating children are respectfully represented

as becoming-child(ren) and as young human beings in the dissemination of data and findings. This

is always to the fore in publications, conference presentations and in the ethical requirement of

reporting back to the community. One of the questions Cullen, Hedges and Bone (2005) say that

researchers need to consider in dissemination processes, is: ‘Whose knowledge is valued in

presentations and publications?’ (p. 6). The challenge for my research is to use Deleuzo-Guattarian

philosophy to foreground the children in their telling of curricular performance and not let this

philosophy or my interpretation of it to dominate. Also important to early childhood

poststructuralist researchers is to subvert any tendency to represent young children as ‘cute’ or as

‘normalised’.

Working rhizomatically to generate this thesis-assemblage has not been a straightforward (linear)

process as with most research, so there was not an identifiable moment when I would have

something specific to report to the parent community. Time has passed as I have worked on the

writing up~down of the research and, three years on, the children who were the prime players in the

data generation are now at school. Occasionally I returned to the Kindergarten in the course of my

work and, once the children I knew had all moved on, I was introduced to their younger siblings –

This is Libby’s brother. Meet Matt’s sister. So while the participating children have moved on to

school, some of their parents are still involved with younger siblings now attending the

kindergarten. In mid 2008, I was invited by the Head Teacher to conduct a parent meeting about


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children’s learning at kindergarten. The invitation was in response to the ERO’s (Educational

Review Office36) suggestion for addressing some parental dissatisfaction about the children, and

boys in particular, not being engaged in formal desktop work. ERO was supportive of the teachers

communicating the kindergarten’s philosophical approach to early childhood education. For me,

this became an opportunity to share some ideas from my research about how we might think

differently about learning and how these relate to preparation for school. Minimising my talking

and involving the group in discussion, I used the digitally altered images of the Children playing

rhizo~methodology to introduce ideas about reciprocal, responsive and responsible teaching-

learning relationships and the idea that children have much to tech us about their learning. The ideas

made for lively discussion, during which it transpired that some of the concerns were generated

through understandings of how early childhood operates in the UK. Overall, my discussion points

seemed to be a useful forum for the teachers to generate different ways of communicating their

ideas to the diverse group of parents. As I write this, I realise I have not spoken with the teachers

about how the parent concerns have panned out and whether the discussion was meaningful in the

long term.

If reporting back to the children was to be meaningful, it needed to happen within a few weeks of

data generation, in a form that captured their attention and made sense to them. After the first day of

data generation I decided to compile a record of the research process as the children were engaging

with it, in the hopes of inspiring more in-depth conversation about what children considered

important to their learning at Kindergarten. However, day-by-day research happenings did not make

for a particularly compelling story for the children and although I added to the clearfile for a few

days, it failed to capture the children’s attention and I abandoned the idea. But, the review session

were a way of keeping the children informed about the data generating process, and in themselves,

these seemed enough for the children to respond to. I decided that adding in more ‘talk’ about the

research was being overly invasive of their learning~playing time in the Kindergarten, and although

the children did not respond in ways I anticipated, replaying the videos was a way of sharing

information with them. For much of the time there was not a lot of detialed conversation, just brief

comments made to each other, but it was apparent that the children who watched the replays

enjoyed watching their play(ing). Had I asked them later, what they enjoyed most about being

involved in the research I think it is likely that they would have replied: ‘Watching ourselves on

TV.’

36 ERO reviews the operations of every school and early childhood education setting on a three to five yearly rotation. Part of their brief is to interview parents.


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I did return to the Kindergarten six weeks after the data generation and the participating-children

still there were keen to reconnect and update me on significant events: Adam and Jess were going to

school soon; Maria had gone already; Fleur said she didn’t miss her but someone else did; Fleur

showed me her ‘beautiful’ skirt; Lex showed me his new spikey hairstyle created by his mates in

the family corner/hair salon and he and Adam offerred to spike my hair; Chloe looked at me

querously, as if I wasn’t real; Callum asked, Where did you go?; Alice made me a painting and she

explained that Eve had showed her how to draw with a candle and paint over it with dye; Fleur

showed me her profile book and told me Bubbles, the guinea pig had died; Fleur, Chloe, Lee and

Eve told me the story of Bubbles’ funeral and took me to her grave. I sat with Chloe at the small

picnic table and at the dough table as they tidied it and we talked about the fun they had when

tidying up. I talked with the teachers about the children’s curricular performance demonstrated in

their play(ing) and the possibilities I saw for their learning. I had not yet noticed that it was

becoming-children becoming power-full with/in the complexity of their play(ing), mostly in/of their

games, that was significant to the findings. At that time, I was thinking that the socialising was what

was mattered most to the children, that everything else that happened was but a plateau

with/in/through which the socialising occurred and that for the children it seemed that being with

friends and learning to do things together was significant. It seems now that the

participant~researcher relationships of those few weeks mattered too – any discrepancies in my

intentions for the children as participant~researcher and actualising the research were hopefully

mediated by the affirmation of the children as becoming-children with/in/of research processes and

power-full players in their own learning. I talked with the children at mat-time about the fun times

we had together – videoing, watching the videos, drawing, talking. I continue to ponder how I

might conduct a similar study elsewhere sometime, now that I have ironed out a few wrinkles in the

methodology, although perhaps I would only find more (exciting) folds to explore. In returning to

Sunshine Kindergarten I was reminded of how much the children matter in/to the whole research

process and of th eimportnace of showing my respect in the research text without romanticising

them, their childhood(s), their play(ing) or curricular performance and their understandings.

Becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full

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Children’s questions are poorly understood if they are not seen as question-machines.

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 256)

opening to power-fullness

Using the term ‘powerfull-ness’ as a way of problematising conventional notions of power, being

powerful and empowerment (Sellers, M., & Honan, 2007), in this plateau, I foreground the power

relations between me, as adult-researcher, and Tim, as child-research participant, in which

relationships embedded in the modernist adult|child binary and researcher/research participant

interactions are entwined. All too often young children’s expressions of how they understand the

workings of their worlds are either not understood or not listened to. Even when my intentions to

ensure the data generating of the research project was a conjoint endeavour with the children, I

inadvertently fell prey to the research taking over and to being party to compromising Tim’s flows

and expressions of power-fullness. After a second encounter with Tim, his forthrightness led me to

understand the (mis)placement of power relations. The idea of children becoming power-full draws

on Deleuzian and Foucauldian notions of power, which I understand as power-fullness, and brings

these alongside the concepts of empowerment and whakamana in the Aotearoa New Zealand early

childhood curriculum. In foregrounding Tim’s expressions of power-fullness, empowerment is

disrupted. Tim’s challenging question~statements directed at me on two different days – You

following me everywhere we go! and You’re following us! Why are you following us? – were

statements and directives to not follow him and his friends; the question was rhetorical. But, it was

not until the second interchange that I understood the implications for Tim. In the first situation, I

missed the machinics of his enacting of power relations and did not hear his expression of flows of

power-fullness. Through the second interchange, I came to actually understand Deleuze and

Guattari’s quite simple statement: ‘Children’s questions are poorly understood if they are not seen

as question-machines’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 256) and to understand the machinics of Tim’s

power-full flows.

flows of power-fullness

Both Foucault and Deleuze work with the understanding that power is a force in perpetual motion

that flows through social networks, an affect that is operational. This is a reminder that Tim’s

relationship with me is only a part of the network of power-full(ness) at play in the two data


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snippets used here. In these, my attention is with showing how Tim’s flows of becoming-power-full

works to play this out in relation to the power-fullness flowing with/through me. In so doing, he

disturbs historical discourses that position children as incapable, immature, weak and needy. His

expression of becoming-power-full disrupts the adult|child binary and any associated hierarchical

privileging. He generates understandings outside the agentic child as one who is always already

becoming-child(ren). He works with power as relational and operational and shows how this is part

of his understanding of his learning and of curriculum. Tim’s question – Why are you following me

everywhere we go? – is a question-machine.

disrupting empowerment

Empowerment is a modernist concept involving someone doing something for someone else in a

hierarchical, top-down relationship, that is, empowerment is the ‘action of empowering; the state of

being empowered’ (empowerment, 1989). In this, a more powerful outsider ‘bestows’ power on a

powerless being. Power and authority to an end, or for a purpose, is invested, imparted, authorised,

licensed, enabled, permitted.37 All imply someone greater and stronger doing for someone lesser

and weaker and communicate a sense of an authoritarian, deterministic notion of control as one

body claims authority to free another from a state of powerlessness. In these terms, empowerment is

perceived as liberating bodies from a position of powerlessness, bodies that are (supposedly)

oppressed, repressed and disempowered. Power in this way is understood as a thing, as something

some people have more of than others, as something a body grants or is granted. Power is

hierarchical, perceived as pressure exerted from above – those above oppress those below,

enforcing submission. In this understanding, empowerment is perceived to be a desirable, liberatory

force for individuals affecting control in/of their lives. Thus regarded, it is a state of being that

young children need to be endowed with by the world of adults (Brandtzaeg, 2006; Holt, 2004).

To think about empowering children in relationships implicitly positions adults over children.

Empowerment requires that adults claim power ideologically by assuming the child as inferior and

that in order to be more like adults, to catch up, to be admitted to a higher position hierarchically

alongside adults, children are needy beings, less fit than adults. It requires that adults make

decisions for, on behalf of children, to advocate for them about what they need to know, for

example, and how they need to go about acquiring certain knowledge and skills. Empowerment

assumes children to be incompetent in this regard, not to know about what it is they need to know;

37 I acknowledge my frequent use of ‘enable’ throughout this thesis-assemblage. Within the poststructuralist endeavour of deconstructing the power of language, I have not identified a term that works any more productively than ‘enable’ to disrupt hierarchies of power. Although, it has modernist undertones, I continue to use it.


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children are regarded as lacking in knowledge, as being unknowing. At best, they are seen as having

immature understandings of what it is they need to know, to have little, limited or no understanding

of why they need to know certain things and of being incapable of articulating their knowledge

competently.

Within this structuralist view, children need to have advocates to empower them – well intentioned

and undoubtedly caring adults to decide what they need to know and to provide an environment

conducive to receiving this knowledge. Whether empowerment is granted to children, that is, they

are allowed it or presented with circumstances that enable them to practise it, empowerment

remains a thing that adults provide for children to satisfy the needs legacy of developmental

approaches to children and childhood(s). As Holt (2004) says, empowerment ‘seems to be clearly

located within modernist imperatives to emancipate’ (p. 15). But, even in this deconstruction, I heed

Rose’s (1997) warning, that pretending to be fully conscious of all my desires and motivations, and

the forces and constraints that operate on them is to deny the partiality of the accounts and my

understanding of my subjectivity. I am unstable and dynamic with a power-fullness that is my own,

and in working not to impose this on others, to entirely avoid moments when I do, is likely

impossible.

whakamana

One of the four guiding principles of Te Whāriki38 (Ministry of Education, 1996) is empowerment,

which parallels the Māori concept of whakamana. But given that language works to express cultural

beliefs, a traditional Māori understanding of whakamana cannot be completely defined in English

terms. Language does not fully cross through different cultural understandings, so whakamana can

only be authentically represented in Te Reo. I can but attempt an explanation in English

terminology, mediated by its use by Māori in English texts. It appears that a traditional Māori

understanding of whakamana is subtly different from empowerment. As pākehā39, I start with The

Reed Dictionary of Modern Māori (Ryan, 1997): the prefix whaka is translated as ‘cause to do, in

the direction of, towards’, and mana as ‘integrity, charisma, prestige, formal, jurisdiction’. In these

terms, whakamana communicates a somewhat intangible, respectful recognition of movement

towards enhancing power-fullness. Royal Tangaere’s (1999) explanation of whakamana is of

‘listening, guiding and supporting [that] does not model a bureaucratic system’ (p. 8), and Horomia

(2006) associates whakamana with leadership. Durie (2006) talks of whakamana being ‘the

capacity to empower’ (p. 5, italics added) that bodies experience and that whakamana is a ‘whānau 38 Te Whāriki is the national curriculum statement for the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. 39 Pākehā translates literally as non-Māori, but is generally understood as the white, dominant majority.


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function that facilitates the entry of members of the whānau into the wider community, as

individuals and as Māori’ (p. 5). He talks of whānau (the extended family) being a gateway into

fully participating in the Māori world and in wider society. These all convey a sense of movement

towards personal and communal power-fullness. Within this movement there is a sense of

reciprocity, an always already connected awareness by the individual and recognition by the world,

so that the inside and outside are always already working to create an environment through which

the uniqueness of children – their gifts and traits – can emerge. Whakamana thus problematises

empowerment. Although the concept of whakamana likely gets lost in translation between pākehā

and Māori understandings of power, to excuse a misreading in terms of (mis)translation casts aside

the importance of continuously working to understand the subtleties of differing cultural concepts.

Similarly, although the Māori concept of whakamana was part of the Whāriki gifted by Te Kōhanga

Reo to the early childhood curriculum, it is the English understanding of empowerment that

commonly informs early childhood practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. This discourse of

empowerment that works to constitute the minds and bodies of children is part of a network of

modernist, and in this situation Westernised, power relations that pervade institutions (Weedon,

1987), including early childhood curriculum.

Deleuzian and Foucauldian power relations

For Deleuze and Foucault, power is understood as a continuous force of relations, fluidly moving

back and forwards within relationships among people and institutions; no singular person or

institution can hold or exert power in a static and fixed way. Power in this sense is ‘diffuse and

unformed’ (Deleuze, 1988, p. 73). It is not a thing with which some bodies are endowed; it is a

force or affect that flows through and around relationships, affecting other related forces and

affected by others. Deleuze explains Foucault’s conceptualisation of power:

An exercise of power shows up as an affect, since force defines itself by its very power to affect

other forces (to which it is related) and to be affected by other forces. To incite, provoke and

produce…constitute active affects, while to be incited or provoked, to be induced to produce, to

have a ‘useful’ effect, constitute reactive affects. The latter are not simply the ‘repercussion’ or

‘passive side’ of the former but are rather ‘the irreducible encounter’ between the two, especially

if we believe that the force affected has a certain capacity for resistance. At the same

time,…each force implies power relations: and every field of forces distributes forces according

to these relations and their variations. (Deleuze, 1988, p.71, italics added)


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Deleuze and Guattari (1987) discuss power in terms of pouvoir and puissance. Pouvoir relates to

the actual, puissance to the virtual. Their use of pouvoir is similar to Foucault’s as ‘an instituted and

reproducible relation of force’ (Massumi, 1987b, p. xvii), a realm of Power and Domination

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Different from this, but nevertheless part of the Foucauldian network

of power, puissance describes ‘a range of potential…“a capacity for existence,” “a capacity to

affect or be affected”…a scale of intensity’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, cited in Massumi, 1987b,

p. xvii, italics added). Powers of becoming, as in children’s becoming-power-full, demonstrated by

Tim, in the data of this plateau, addresses puissance as powers of intensity, constituting and

constituted by (a capacity to) affect(s), made visible in his expression of power-fullness around his

playmates; and around me, as (predominating) adult-researcher.

Foucault (1980) considers power as ‘a productive network that runs through the whole social body,

much more than a negative instance whose function is repression’ (p. 120, italics added). Power is

always already everywhere, extending boundlessly through social relations. It is a force that is

never isolated. Thus, power is not positioned in adult or child, for example, rather, it is visible in the

social representations of adults and children that we create and work with. As a force it is accessible

to child and adult, although most often, exacerbated by the prevailing modernist adult|child binary,

forces of power are interpreted as negative affects for children, to the extent that ‘disruptive’ or

‘challenging’ behaviour is repressed rather than welcomed as children’s expressions of power-

fullness.

When power is perceived as non-linear, as continuously operating relationally with other forces and

not as a singular force acting on various bodies, other possibilities for conceiving of power-fullness

emerge around/with/in/through the interplay of relationships. I thus use the term ‘power-fullness’ to

problematise modernist assumptions of power as a controlling, top-down effect, desired by all and

possessed by few. Power-fullness responds to Deleuze’s (1988) provocation to ask not what power

is and where it comes from, but to ask ‘How is it practiced?’ (p. 71). The ‘fullness’ of the term

implies a condition of power common to all. My intention then is to work with power-fullness to

disrupt modernist notions of empowerment, the adult|child binary and developmental, behaviourist

interpretations of children and their childhoods. Thinking of children as similarly power-full to the

adults they engage with and the institutions they live and learn within, disentangles child and adult

from a disabling modernist understanding of power relationships, instead recognising that each is

embodied in the other’s expressions of power-fullness – simultaneously becoming (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987). The adult|child dualism is disrupted to affirm both, (re)conceiving the relationship


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as non-hierarchical. This problematises the modernist view that children need advocates

empowering them and instead presents children in their capacities to perform power-fullness.

expressions and flows of becoming-power-full

For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), becoming is a dynamic movement of change, a continual flow

through unique moments of the constantly changing present. Nothing stands still in our thinking or

being; the present is understood from within our past experiences and our memories of the past

change as our lived experiences in the present accumulate. So power-fullness is always in process

of becoming. Within the data there is a multiplicity of becomings expressed in many ways. I see

becoming-child of singular children like becoming-Tim; I see becoming-children as the children

work with their subjectivities together, as they make maps, play games, for example. I see

expressions of power-fullness of each child and flows of power-fullness of their severalty. There is

an intermingling of power-fullness and children, always already becoming. Becoming and power-

fullness are inextricably entwined. To illuminate the becoming of children’s power-fullness, I use

Tim’s power-fullness as he problematises power relations between us. This then problematises

modernist assumptions of empowerment explicit in Te Whāriki.

In the following data snippets, Tim performs power-fullness, affectively and effectively, as he

confronts the complex network of power relations of our (participant) child-adult (researcher)

relationship. Through his relationship with me as researcher, Tim works (with) power-fullness. His

activity of becoming-power-full and the condition of power-fullness his activity produces becomes

visible in the following transcriptions, the first from the dinosaur spider hunt and the second from

the bad guys hunt a few days later.

expressing becoming-power-full ~ ‘You’re following us! Why are you following us?’

Zak is pulling a trolley, in which Tim is seated, holding their hobbyhorses. Coming down a rise, the

trolley runs too fast for Zak to control. Tim yells: Stop! Stop! Stop! The trolley crashes into the

wooden edging around the adventure playground area. Zak lifts his hobbyhorse out of the trolley.

Tim sits for a moment then stands in the trolley, looks around the surrounding area and announces:

This is our parking spot!


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Tim suddenly points at me: You’re following us! Why are you following us?

Hands on his hips, he stares at me.

MS: Oh because I’m making a video of you. Is that OK?

Zak (without hesitation): Yeah, that’ll be OK.

MS: I can show it to you later on the TV screen.

Zak trots off astride his hobbyhorse: I like watching TV.

MS: OK, when you’ve been on your dinosaur spider hunt. Tim jumps off the trolley, sits for

a moment on the end of it, and then follows Zak.

Zak pauses, looks back towards Tim, calling: C’mon (…) it will be all right.

Tim’s reply is inaudible as he picks up his hobbyhorse and follows.

Reflecting on my response to Tim, I am aware that my concern was to openly answer his questions

and ensure the data generation process remained transparent. My pragmatic answer to: Why are you

following us? focuses on the ‘why’. I was videoing their game and, if they wanted, they could

watch it later and we could talk more about what was happening. I seem unaware at the time of the

significance of the preceding statement; of the accusatory You’re following us! Zak’s comments of I

like watching TV and C’mon, it’ll be all right may have signaled no more than his desire for the

game to continue, but they add to my (mis)interpretation that Tim was annoyed by the crash and my

presence. I was unfazed by his annoyance, focusing on a calm, rational reply and unaware of what I

later saw as Tim’s expression of power-fullness. At the time I thought we had reached an agreement


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to watch the play sequence later on TV, another reading of that moment is that I frustrated and

misinterpreted his attempt at exercising power-fullness as he (actually) was implying I should leave

them be. I was unaware of the pervasiveness of modernistic analysis in my thinking (my calm

rational reply); it was not until reviewing the video later that, in a more generative reading, I

recognised Tim’s expression of power-fullness. A few days later, when he again confronts me, I

seem oblivious to the earlier encounter.

Tim’s flow of becoming-power-full ~ ‘You following me everywhere we go!’

A few days later, Tim is on a bad guys hunt with Piri, but their game is interrupted by challenges

from several children.

Josh tries to join the game: Oh yeah, and I’m the baddie and I stole your stuff.

Tim resists: I’m going to call the bad boss to take you away.

Josh clarifies: Oh, so you want to get me away.

Others want equipment for their game. Aware that Josh has stolen Piri’s gear, Tim arranges

his equipment for safekeeping on the top of a reel. Rory then jumps him from above, glaring

at him at close range while Lex, who has rushed in from another direction, grabs at the

camera, saying: Can I have that? I need it, I need a camera. Tim clutches the camera and

they leave.

Adam then arrives and debates ownership of the camera.

Adam: You don’t really need that.

Tim: Yes we do, we take pictures of us. We take pictures of each other.

Adam: OK just give me the camera.

Prospective ownership then oscillates: Adam demands the camera and Tim refuses to hand it over;

Tim offers it and Adam refuses to take it; Adam again demands it and Tim refuses him; Adam

stalks off and Tim runs after him trying to give the camera to him; Adam turns and points his hand,

as if a gun, at Tim. Tim seems confused as he wanders after Adam.

In the next shot, Tim is standing alone in the adventure playground area, back to the video camera,

staring in the direction Adam, Lex and Rory disappeared. Tim (top left Figure 13) is amidst an

arrangement of reels, planks and boxes.


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Figure 13: The scene of the pending confrontation.

Josh runs up a plank and jumps onto the cube beside Tim. Tim remains motionless, staring

into the distance. Josh, still intent on playing with Tim says: I need to show you something.

Tim looks up at Josh: What?

Josh: Shall we hide from the teachers?

Tim says nothing, but walks past Josh, around the slide, then, feet astride, he turns to face

me, at the same time exacting a decisive nod of his head. He is holding the phone by the

aerial.


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MS (wondering whether Josh’s reappearance is hassling him): Are you all right Tim?

He points the phone at me and shouts: You following me everywhere we go!

At ‘we’ he looks in the direction of Josh, apparently now more friend than foe, and as he speaks, he

gestures with the phone, holding its aerial and swinging it wildly.

MS: Is that annoying you?

He emphatically nods his head twice.


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MS: Ok I’ll stop.

Tim, grinning, strides off, out of range of the camera and me.

Tim’s flow of power-fullness in the bad guys hunt

When Tim unequivocally expressed his annoyance at my following him in the bad guys hunt,

similar to the earlier confrontation, my initial perception was that he was frazzled by the series of

challenges to the game he was directing and disputes over his equipment, and that this precipitated

his challenging comment to me. But, in the moment of this second confrontation I suddenly became

aware of his expression of power-fullness.

Tim seems decidedly unhappy about my videoing his game, his exasperated tone and gesture

evident in his exclamation: You following me everywhere we go! This was not the response I was

expecting to my query about his well-being. My observation at the time was that he had moved

away from the children who were hassling him and that Josh had followed him. Josh had bounced

into his reverie as he stood staring into the distance and, although seeming to engage with Tim with

his suggestion of hiding from the teachers, I was uncertain how Tim regarded Josh’s appearance.

On reflection, it seems that Tim and Josh were now working together to throw me off their trail.

Josh suggested hiding from the teachers – presumably that included me. While Josh’s reference to

my presence was more subtle, Tim, open and forthright, confronted the issue and me directly.

Another thought is that the conflict with Josh was necessary to Tim’s game – after all, a bad guys

hunt needs bad guys to hunt. So, perhaps Josh was a new player in the game. If so, Josh was not

hassling Tim, rather he was now part of the game.

Far from my thinking in that moment, was any notion that Tim’s disturbance was linked to my

presence in the territory – of game and playground. Surprised out of my (mis)assumption by his

challenging statement, I was pleased he had voiced his disapproval as that suggested he was


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exercising his right to non-participation in the data generation. His exclamation indicated that he

felt safe to withdraw his consent, so I immediately turned my attention elsewhere. Although I may

have again been a safe target for releasing his frustrations – in that he likely knew that I would not

argue back like his peers had just done – my lasting impression is that I was a source of annoyance

for him, if not all the time, at least in some moments. It was a sobering moment, Tim’s revealing to

me that the equitable research processes that I was working hard to ensure were, actually, not; a

timely reminder that researching with children requires ongoing negotiation. My power-fullness

was overbearing and compromising Tim’s power-fullness and I was happy to be called to account.

flows of power-fullness in researching with children

Although, while videoing, I was aware of Tim’s constant playing out of power-fullness alongside

that of other children he connected with, it was becoming-power-full in relation to me that took me

by surprise. However, I should not have been surprised. Later, when reviewing the video, I was

disturbed, as supposedly respectful researcher, that I had not appreciated the invasiveness of my

presence; my following him obviously came to the fore with/in his agitated condition. I was also

disturbed that his initial expression of power-fullness had not affected my researcher behaviour.

However, without denying my jeopardising of Tim’s power-fullness affects in this second

confrontation, my response was undoubtedly coloured by an interim conversation with Tim, in

which he dances in front of the camera demonstrating the workings of his light-sabre and affirms

that it was now OK to video him.

MS: Hello, Tim. I thought you were tired of me following you with the camera.

Tim: We’re, we’re not any more.

In this moment we see his expressions of power-fullness flowing rhizomatically. This rhizomatic

flow is also perceptible in the moments of Tim’s confronting me for the second time.

Tim, Josh and I are each rhizomatically processing through lines of flight of our own activity. Tim’s

attention is with something or someone in the distance. Josh in his attempt to join the game, has

followed Tim and is now suggesting they hide. I am trying to keep a respectful distance as I video

the activity. Then, as our lines of flight intersect, flows of powerfull-ness around/through/with/in

Tim, Josh and me are foregrounded; they (e)merge in a clash of ‘confrontation.’ (Figure 14)


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Figure 14: Rhizomatic flows of power-fullness.

Tim and Josh were flowing rhizomatically through the(ir) game(s) and their interactions with each

other. Both were protagonist in their own games and antagonist in that of the other, as Tim hunted

bad guys and Josh was a baddie. The game(s) they were engaged in (again) intersected when Josh

suggested they hide and Tim nodded in agreement. Tim moves around past Josh, I come into his

line of vision and he confronts me.

I thought Tim and I had a workable relationship – he had affirmed he was not bothered any longer

by my videoing him, but, on reflection, it seems I inadvertently subverted Tim’s flows of power-

fullness. As I listen to myself on the recording, I recognise that my response is imbued with

developmentalist, behaviourist expectations that give primacy to cognitive functioning. I respond to

the ‘why’ of his question, overlooking powers embodied with/in my following him. I display an

underpinning agenda that works to dispel his anger and frustration and promote a peace-full

environment – this is not to deny I favour working for/with/in peaceable environments – thus

exerting adult control over his emotions and imposing adult rules for the setting.

confronting the privileged adult of the binary

Children in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood centres are encouraged to ‘use words’, sensitive

to others, to express feelings of frustration and anger; to talk about conflict with their peers,

particularly if they are feeling their ideas or personal well-being are being compromised; and,


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teachers are expected to promote cultures of talking through conflict. Children often manage this

without adult intervention and the children in this data snippet showed how they work with their

difference. Supporting children (in resolving conflict) in this way is viewed as teachers empowering

children. However, the very act of children resolving conflict illuminates their power-fullness,

ironically disturbing the notion that they need empowering. It illuminates children as always

already power-full players with/in the conflict that inevitably arises in their play(ing); also, that

‘conflict’ and ‘imbalanced’ power relations may not always be as they seem. Josh’s involvement in,

and on the periphery of Tim’s game, as protagonist~antagonist not appointed but nevertheless

accepted, can be conceived of as expressive flows of power-fullness as Josh plays through/with/in

power-fullness of his own making, and with Tim’s. Tim plays with power-fullness as he rejects

Josh and accepts him as ally, in removing themselves from my presence and/or removing me from

theirs. Tim is forthcoming in expressing disapproval and always already flows of power-fullness.

However, in working with/in situations that enable children to play out/with power-fullness,

children are affected by flows of power-fullness that are intensified by/around teachers, who

promote adult-centric approaches for conflict resolution. Although encouraging children to talk

about/through conflict is considered necessary to achieving a peaceable resolution, in itself it

exemplifies Foucault’s (1980) proposition that power is a force that is never isolated, that power is

not a singular force acting on various bodies but rather operates in relation with other forces. This

‘empowering’ of children is dependent on adult’s dominating, more powerful perspectives of how

resolution is ‘best’ achieved. Rather, power flows back and forth throughout social networks,

accessible as expressions of fullness.

Focusing on the why of Tim’s question by reminding him of my reason for being in the setting

likely engendered acquiescence on his part – my adult (pervading modernist) rationale disqualified

him from any option but agreement with my agenda. I (mis)interpreted his challenge as a curiosity

question and missed that he was problematising the (modernist) power relations he sensed were in

play. Apart from feeling that as poststructuralist~feminist~teacher~researcher I failed Tim in the

moment, I am left wondering if any kind of research with young children is ever free of the

dominance of adult flows of power-fullness. But as a Deleuzo-Guattarian ‘becoming-researcher’

my work is to relinquish adult|child dichotomous power relations in favour of capacities and

conditions of becoming-power-full involving everyone. Tim persisted with this in the assertion of

power-fullness as it flowed around/through him, affirming that power is a productive network

running through the whole social body. He continued with becoming-power-full in confronting me

a second time.


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So did Tim need empowering? In expressing his/the becoming of power-fullness, it is apparent he

did not. In his becoming-power-full(ness), he was in charge and was not in need of anything that the

adult world or modernist thinking may assume the right to provide. Tim in becoming-power-full as

a young human being was not needy. The notion that teachers or adults are there to empower Tim is

dispelled.

re(con)ceiving becoming-child(ren) becoming-power-full in curriculum

In this moment, I (re)turn to the question: How does it work? I also wonder how children in

conditions and flows of becoming-power-full work towards re(con)ceiving children in early

childhood curriculum, curriculum in this moment understood as every person, situation, event and

artefact that intermingle with conditions and capacities of/for learning.

Philosophically, it is relatively easy to map relationships involved in the becoming-power-full of us

all. But, living the experiences of always already becoming, such as becoming-power-full, amidst

dichotomous tracings of modernist power relations is challenging. It is not easy to eliminate

dominating developmental perspectives from our thinking. Even talking about becoming-power-full

is unwieldy, yet if we want to change the way we think, to learn to think differently, we have to

learn to use words differently, and when words no longer work, to use images to think with/through.

Warren Sellers (2008) presents picturing as a rhizo-imaginary for thinking differently. For him

using pictures to think about words enables a different turn in/towards thinking differently.

Periodically, I also turn to picturing my thoughts with lines, although these are generally marked

with words. In working with pictures (Figures 13 & 14) around Tim confronting my (inadvertently)

powerful researcher role, I came to understand things that words of the transcription and my writing

do not adequately communicate alone. Tim provides images in the video and enables picturing

with/in my thinking about becoming-power-full as he works to express the ever-changing

becoming-condition and becoming-capacities of his flows of power-fullness, through his activity of

becoming-power-full. And, most significantly, as he problematises the power relations at play and

disrupts the notion of empowerment, the becoming-child of Tim is illuminated in his rhizomatic

flows becoming-power-full.

This multiplicity of becoming-power-full disrupts the pervasiveness of modernist thinking in

various ways. This rhizomatic way of perceiving power relations involves affects as becomings – ‘a

constellation of affects, an intensive map, is a becoming’ (Deleuze, 1997, p. 64). ‘Affects are

becomings’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 256). Affective happenings are some of the Deleuzo-

Guattarian and of becoming. In working with and…and…and… affect explains the forces embodied


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in all forms of social production – the dynamic movement of change, the continual flow through

unique moments of a constantly changing present. So, Tim’s expressions of becoming-power-full

can only be conceived as a constantly changing assemblage of forces, always already in flux, as a

flow of expressions amongst relationships.

In the process of working with these data snippets, I continue to become aware of the power-

fullness imbued in my researcher role, despite my intentions to ensure equitable relationships in

researching with the children. My understanding was that I never claim power over young children

and that I certainly did not do so while researching with these children. However, in the transcribing

process and subsequent writing, Tim opens my eyes otherwise, as I reflect on expressions and flows

of power-fullness surrounding him, as he confronts me in my researcher role. I was shocked and

then saddened to realise that my acclaimed poststructuralist researcher approach had slipped into an

all-knowing adult perspective that oozed misplaced power-fullness. However, this failure was not

cause for despair; I need not be overly perturbed about shattering Tim’s flow of power-fullness as

Tim working with power-fullness was also working his understanding of equitable relationships. I

say this, not in defense of my actions then or of my rhizoanalysis now, but to ensure that in the

analysis I do not replicate any misplaced power in assuming primacy of my actions; also, to

foreground the power irruption with/in this rupture of power-fullness.

Continuing to reflect as I write, I realise my feelings of inadequacy about my (lack of)

understanding of Tim’s expressions of power-fullness are inappropriate. They reflect the modernist

concern that teachers (or researchers) are responsible for empowering children. As Tim draws

attention to, in working to eliminate conditions that impede processes of children’s flows of

becoming power-full, we cannot assume we are necessary to making it happen. To be overcome

with feelings of inadequacy is to claim a position of power in an assumed modernist hierarchical

adult-child relationship. To feel bad because I did not do something for Tim is misplaced in a

poststructuralist reading. What is appropriate is to accept my actions as an (im)partial intermingling

of Tim’s expressions of power-fullness alongside mine – and not forgetting the other children at

play with theirs. My lack of recognition and associated inadequate support of his becoming-power-

full did not deter him or diminish his success eventually. Rather, it can be read as opening (to) an

opportunity for him to express himself more loudly, to intensify opportune moments. This worked

to enhance Tim’s becoming-child(ren), befitting a poststructuralist participant~researcher. It also

worked to enhance my becoming-power-full around (re)presenting the data and hopefully around

my future awareness of young children becoming-power-full. Deleuze (1988) explains the

complexity at play here: ‘Power has no essence; it is simply operational. It is not an attribute but a


200

relation: the power-relation is the set of possible relations between forces which pass through the

dominated forces no less than the dominating’ (p. 27). When power is regarded in this way as an

affect, Tim is not disadvantaged although in the moments of the snippets he works hard to ensure I

understand this. From within this space-time of intersecting lines of flight, flows of becoming-

power-full become apparent. Movement of power as affect is to the fore. A multidimensional

multiplicity of power-fullness flows through/with/in/among the flowing of the game(s), the flowing

lines of flight, the flowing of the video recording and flowing relationships among each other.

Tim’s expressions of power-fullness forcefully appear as force, perturbing specifically positioned

cause and effect-type discourses of power and empowerment.

Rhizoanalysis

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Rhizoanalysis

Rhizoanalysis is fluid, flexible, conjunctive, re-generating, and fun – not a place of dry linear

intellectualisation. (O'Riley, 2003, p. 28)

Thought happened in the writing…I doubt I could have thought such a thought by thinking

alone…anything can happen – and does. (St.Pierre in Richardson & St.Pierre, 2005, pp. 970-971)

opening rhizoanalysis

As discussed in different ways throughout various plateaus, everything is always already

happening. Opening is thus sous rature as opening to/the rhizoanalysis is already happening in the

writing of other plateaus. With/in a poststructuralist approach, the writing of the research becomes

part of the inquiry in that there is no difference between what the thesis-assemblage talks about and

how it is made. ‘The analysis’ is thus not a constant thing relegated to a place of its own in this

doctoral dissertation. Rather, the rhizoanalysis as ‘some of rhizome’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987,

p. 9) of this thesis-assemblage happens throughout…and…I am uncertain that I could have written

about rhizoanalysis before (my attempt at) making it work, before doing it. With/in/through

processes of thinking rhizome in flux, working rhizome (im)provis(at)ionally, becoming rhizome as

becoming-researcher, I am continuously experimenting with, and exploring my own thinking, thus

becoming some of the rhizome I am attempting to generate and map (Tamboukou, 2004). So that

even in writing the previous sentence, I come to understand working (with) rhizome as

thinking~working becoming-rhizome with/in an understanding of processing as

thinking~doing~rhizome. Rhizoanalysis (dis)continuously (e)merges with/in/through every

dimension of my thinking as becoming-researcher; ebbing and flowing with/in/through matters of

always already becoming. In the same way that writing (about) methodology was already affected

by a growing understanding of how I saw (the) methodology working throughout, writing (about)

rhizoanalysis is now affected by my writing (the) methodology and doing (the) rhizoanalysis.

Nothing is separate or linear in the thinking or writing up~down of the thesis-assemblage. There is

an ongoing intermingling of data, methodology and analysis with theorising the literature and

practicing the theory. In various space-times, any of these or any relationship among these may be

foregrounded, albeit momentarily as light and shadow pass through, like shadows of clouds on a

sunny, windy day. Each becomes (an)other.

Rhizoanalysis

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negotiating rhizoanalysis

Having videoed the children’s play(ing) – their performance of curricular understandings – the data

generated was then reviewed by the children, this generating more data through a shadow of the

rhizoanalysis. In this way, data are processed through rhizoanalysis and the rhizoanalysis becomes

(more) data becomes rhizoanalysis…continuously…with both rhizoanalysis and rhizo generated

data escaping positivist, clearly defined classification, blurring datadata becoming

rhizoanalysis. It is not so much asking what this or that means but how understandings change

through various mo(ve)ments and what happens with/in those mo(ve)ments of negotiating rhizo-

inquiry or, nomadic inquiry (St.Pierre, 2000b). Moving with/as mythical nomad allows me to think

through and move across positivist imbued established categories and levels of experiences,

‘blurring boundaries without burning bridges’ (Tamboukou, 2004, ¶ 17) and working

with/in/through ruptures and irruptions (Youngblood Jackson, 2003). Rhizome forms rhizomatically

with/in/through different de~territorialising lines of flight of thought and thinking, intermingling

with discourse(s) with/in/through which the children’s playing out of stories of their understandings

are (becoming) unfolded. Rhizome invites a multiplicity of different thought, ways of thinking and

ways of representing (blurred) datadata , , ‘employing unconventional and unexpected genres, textual

design, and representations’ (Jipson, 2001), calling forth a bricolage~assemblage~milieu~

multiplicity of (dis)connection(s), (dis)agreement(s) and (dis)placement(s) – confusing, messy

(Law, 2004), ‘working the ruins’ (St.Pierre, 2000b; St.Pierre & Pillow, 2000).

Despite my commitment to generating a rhizo text and to rhizoanalysis, challenges arose, mostly in

the form of the pervasiveness of the ‘ruthlessly linear nature of the narrative of knowledge

production in research methodology’ (St.Pierre, 1997b, p. 179) inherent in the expectations of

conventionally informed methods of producing data, analysing, interpreting and reaching

theoretical conclusions. Although qualitative poststructuralist methodologies disrupt positivist

expectations, even in justifying choosing them, strategies utilised are imbued with lingering

under/over/tones of scientifically structured thought and thinking. A rhizo approach, reflecting

complexity and chaos theory, eased my way through as I negotiated passages of lines of flight as

they appeared from/with/in the shadows, from the middle as I perceived them in the journey ahead,

in the rear vision mirror and all round within my peripheral vision. Also, operating with/in a

complexity of middles~muddles, obvious to me in my thinking, was eased by my artistic and

creative capacities (Eisner, 1997).

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As I thought of what to write next, it seemed I had negotiated the tricky plateaus and those yet to be

written would be ‘straightforward’, yet, every assemblage of ideas I could see in my mind’s eye

abounded with intensities of complexity like never before. Conventional thesis writing determined I

should simplify the complex and that frustrated me. Issues of clarity in the representation of the data

in the rhizoanalysis loomed large and, although I could not articulate the problem more lucidly,

St.Pierre’s (1997b) explication was (cold) comfort.

Those who find the differences enabled by a poststructural concern with language confusing and

sometimes difficult to understand demand clarity. On the other hand, those who find difference

hopeful and productive continue to trouble language. To this point, it appears that the demand

for clarity has won out…[despite] an emerging body of literature addressi ng the politics and

ethics of clarity and accessibility. (St.Pierre, 1997b, p. 185)

Perhaps I want my readers to get lost in middles of folds of ideas and my writing~thinking, that

they may find their own way. My quest throughout this Rhizoanalysis plateau and the thesis-

assemblage is to find ways of ‘living with and knowing confusion’ (Law, 2003, p. 4) destabilising

the tendency of pervasive linear approaches to research processes that deny the possibility of mess.

In practice, research…needs to be messy and heterogeneous, because that’s the way it…actually

is. And also, more importantly, it needs to be messy because that’s the way the largest part of the

world is. Messy, unknowable in a regular and routinised way. Unknowable, therefore, in ways

that are definite and coherent…Clarity doesn’t help. Disciplined lack of clarity, that may be what

we need. (Law, 2003, p. 3)

I do not want to condemn myself to meaning-making in/of old ways/days that are unlikely open to

incipiently different possibilities. I do not want to order data to conform; I want to open ways for

linkages to (e)merging ideas. I do not want to concretise these slippery mo(ve)ments. I do not want

to engage with a text that neither resonates with rhizo theorising nor generative understandings of

ethics, which together deny the complexity of children’s play(ing) that I could see, but did not know

how to communicate in ways different from a conventionally linear text. But, does this

‘methodology of getting lost’ (Lather, 2007, p. 144) with/in/through the rhizo of methodology and

analysis, of thinking~reading~writing favour me, as (initiating) writer of this text? Am I, and is the

text ‘[p]erhaps too clever by far in its dizzying involutions and intellectual somersaults, such a

messy text says yes to that which interrupts and exceeds and renounces its own force toward a

stuttering knowledge’ (p. 146)? Then, Lather alerts me to the ‘danger’ of denying the activity of

readers by ‘subsuming’ them within my ‘interpretive and textual moves’ and I am ‘caught in aporia,

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where to succeed is to fail in making the other part of us’ (p. 146). So I persist in the understandings

that ‘our methods are always more or less unruly assemblages’ (Law, 2003, p. 11).

reader~text~writer as rhizo assemblage

Although I needed to transcribe data into words, I had no need of coding, sorting, categorising and

no desire to ‘produce knowledge based on these categories, which…are simply words’ (St.Pierre,

1997b, p. 179). Alongside my resistance to separate the rhizoanalysis into linear, supposedly clear

and coherent, sections of narrative, was my desire to destabilise the reader|writer binary, not so

much in terms of expert reader (assessor)|novice (student) writer~researcher, but with an

understanding of writer~reader responsibility to work to understand a text. Problematising the

demand for immediate and evident understanding opens (to) possibilities for different ways of

writing (Richardson, 1990, 2001) and messy texts. Lather (1996) does not fear ‘reading without

understanding’ or ‘not being understood’; she welcomes the idea of sometimes needing a ‘density

that fits the thoughts being expressed’ (p. 528). Responsible engagement that disrupts the passivity

of the reader (Spivak, 1994, cited in Lather, 2007, p. 147) seeks an ethics of response unique to

situation and moment, an ethics evoked through the telling, (e)merging with/in engagement of

machinic assemblage of reader~writer~text as reader~thinker~writer.

Within postmodern educational research, St.Pierre (2000a) posits the need for a shift in attitude

towards ‘assuming the burden of intelligibility lies as much with the reader as with the writer’

(p. 25). This notion challenges the critique that postmodernism is deliberately obfuscatory, but, as

St.Pierre remarks, postmodernism cannot be ‘readily accessible and coherent within a structure it

works against’ (p. 25). The silent conversation of such ethical exchange marked by personalised,

singularised theoretical understandings that risk confounding the text thus invites mutual

engagement of reading~writing~thinking. This is undoubtedly challenging when the text appears

inaccessible and is open(ed) to personal absences in understandings, absences that can only be made

intelligible by ‘the difference of the other’ (St.Pierre, 1997b, p. 186). Despite such challenges,

St.Pierre’s expresses a desire to keep on playing with/in possibilities of spaces outside language that

are opened (up) when words fall apart, exposing thresholds of being lost and confused in liminal

spaces that open (to) communal possibilities for understandings otherwise in other ways.

Intensifying meaning, awareness and understanding is not an isolated activity, it is a ‘community

decision’ (Eisner, 1997, p. 6), always already in flux. With any sense of closure unlikely, many

possible interpretations for/with/in rhizoanalysis become more and less im/plausible and the

multiplicity of reader~writer~thinker~text becomes ever complex as reader and writer, both

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thinking and following lines of flight, their own and the other’s, within the silent conversation of

(re)reading and (re)writing the text.

In that it is not possible to say what came before this doctoral journeying, I think perhaps working

(with) rhizo (e)merged from/with/in/through my artistic sensibilities as I (always already) (re)turned

to the flow of ‘a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks like speed in

the middle’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25), and considering the powers of water, once in the

flow, resisting is unwise. The rhizo flow of the thesis-assemblage invited response, and at the

suggestion of my supervisor, although somewhat tentatively, I experimented with storyboards.

Encouraged by the different way of working the data, I continued experimenting – with

juxtaposing, creating interactive pieces among various texts of data (words, images from the

videos), poietic representations of literature and transcriptions, with poems, commentaries and

rhizo-imaginaries (Sellers, W., 2008) of mappings. From within the shadows, I was aware of

‘laying-down-a-path-in-walking’ (Varela et al., 1993), negotiating (an) academic milieu(s) of

Deleuzian folds (Deleuze, 1993), St.Pierre’s (1997b) ‘transgressive’ data, Richardson’s (2000a)

‘writing as a method of inquiry’ and ‘skirting a pleated text’ (Richardson, 2000a). I was inspired by

Trueit’s (2006) mythopoetic text, heartened by Law’s (2003) messy text, intrigued by Jipson and

Paley’s (1997) daredevil research, informed by Eisner’s (1997) promises and perils of alternative

ways of representing data and urged on by Holt’s (2008) creating interpretive visual texts; not

forgetting my own creativity~subjectivity infused with a colloquially-innovative ‘number 8 wire’40

Kiwi heritage. I also wanted to artfully engage the reader of the thesis-assemblage in her/his own

inquiry process, one/my passage calling forth other/readers’ passages, these passageways opening

onto other passageways, becoming41 a/the reader~writer~thinker machinic assemblage, becoming

the research and/of the thesis-assemblage.

rhizoanalysis and storyboards

As I became entangled in an (im)possibility of trying to linearly represent the complexity of three

intersecting play scenes, I became aware that I risked overlooking the children themselves in my

wording of their activity. As a way of showing the children and ensuring their presence in the text

of the thesis-assemblage, it was suggested that I present the data through storyboards. Interestingly,

this also became a way for me to ease the reader into the milieu(s) of a four minute data snippet

40 ‘Number 8 wire’ refers to a gauge of wire historically used by Aotearoa New Zealand farm workers in a variety of adaptive and inventive situations and circumstances. The term has become a colloquial metaphor for the capacity of many Aotearoa New Zealanders to accept and accomplish challenges that demand innovative and spontaneous solutions, as in: ‘She did a number 8 wire job on the bike and had it fixed in no time’ 41 Read becoming as both ‘turning into’ and ‘enhancing’.

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with which I had chosen to work. (See the Children performing curriculum complexly plateau.) For

me, pictures are easier than words and I was surprised I had not thought of setting up words and

images to work interdependently as visual texts. The storyboards become a way of illuminating

various aspects of the children’s play(ing) of games related to various becomings – becoming-

child(ren), becoming-curriculum, becoming-power-full. As well, the storyboards open (to)

possibilities for exploring these understandings with/in/through the dynamic and constantly

changing territories of their games. Selecting images that depict turning moments of the storylines

unfolding was challenging, as identifying thresholds of significance within children’s games as they

are played out is elusive, much of which was happening off-camera, with no images linked to the

activity. Nevertheless, storyboards are a way of teasing the complexity from the shadows – of the

storylines, my thinking, the reader’s reading – leaving the children’s words and activity to tell the

story. But, I wondered how rhizo the analysis accompanying these storyboards actually was, and

advisory discussions confirmed my thinking, that they necessarily foreground the temporal 'lines' of

each story rather than the spatial rhizo-imaginary... So, what now? How to perturb the pervasive

linearity, adversely affected by (unavoidably) paginating the text?

Not wanting to disturb what I came to appreciate as a continually (ebbing and flowing) (e)merging

rhizoanalysis that was impossible to generate in one pass(age), I pondered this. Initially I had

written about the four minute snippet as ‘one’, with the different storylines intermingled but

represented in different fonts, (the chocolate factory in Times New Roman times, the monster game

in Arial, etc.) as I didn’t want to separate them out. The problem was I knew the data well and I

accepted, although not without some resistance, that someone less familiar with the data would

easily get lost and that would interfere with a reader’s comprehending the complexity of the

children’s play(ing) and of understanding curriculum as milieu(s) of becoming. So I (re)turned to

talk about the different storylines one at a time, gradually leading into the always already

simultaneity that comprises complexity. Yet, despite my attempt at textually mapping the

intersecting lines of the three games in the Children performing curriculum complexly plateau, the

spatial rhizo-imaginary is lost in the separation; in the words I have generated but another

tracing…and…I am still wondering how I could have explained the map in a meaningful way. For

the moment, I’m thinking I couldn’t have. The map is a picturing of coloured lines and words that

speaks for itself. Any attempt at ‘wording’ it confounded the communication (Figure 15).

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Figure 15: Intersecting lines of flight~mapping (a) curricular milieu(s).

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mapping data

Generating other ways of thinking continues throughout the writing of the thesis-assemblage and

so, I map more ways of how I might have approached the rhizoanalysis. There is always already a

sense of and…and…and…, not to undermine what is already done, but to say that any part of (a)

rhizoanalysis is always already contestable – to avoid any concretisation – always unfinished. There

is always going to be more to be considered and said although there is a moment when the writing

must stop – as a pause not an endpoint – with what is written merely demonstrating the limitations

of what can be included in a thesis.

Engaging with the ongoing rhizo performance, various map(pings) offer possibilities for an artful

reading as I attempt to picture landscapes constituted by/of (an) intermingling (of) activity among

children, ideas, imagination(s) towards explicating (a) milieu(s) within milieu(s). So, the rhizo

exploration continues as I (re)turn to mapping, to make (a) map/s to plug the tracing back into,

attempting map(ping)s that flow with the play(ing). I want something that can be superimposed on

the tracings although I will not (re)work the text of the rhizoanalysis of the storyboards as to do so

would obliterate the rhizo lines of flight I have followed. However, I am curious to see what will

happen in regard to (re)creating the spatial rhizo-imaginary that I could ‘see’ in the beginning. As I

am about to explore an emerging idea for re-mapping some of the activity pictured in one of the

storyboards, I wonder, what affect this way of approaching the data might have had on/in the

rhizoanalysis. But, it is impossible to tell now, from within the intensity of the continually

(re)worked data snippet – the emerging complexity is embodied in my thinking about the

(rhizo)analysis. Working only with the chocolate factory and Goldilocks storylines, I try various

approaches, first, a juxtaposition of the conversation and activity in three columns with the

Goldilocks text on the left, the chocolate factory in the extreme right column and the moments in

which they intermingled, in the centre column. However, this tabulated form does not generate a

sense of the complexity of the intermingling and I cannot see how to bring it together with the

storyboard images to enable a significantly different reading. In landscape format, I then map the

two games as they processed through the four minutes. This disrupts the linearity – makes a mess

with method (Law, 2003) – and I can see what is happening (by following the colours of text and

lines) and because it is all very familiar, but the page is overloaded with information and the mess,

even for me, is overbearing to the extent that I am not sure that reworking it digitally would make it

any easier to read (Figure 16). Although, digitally (re)worked it may have emerged as a pictured

understanding, not reliant on words and dismissing the need for them. But intent on using words to

explain my thinking, I continue, aware that I am limiting possibilities for thinking otherwise in this

moment; that I am limiting the data.

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Figure 16: Messy map of another possible rhizo-imaginary.

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Then taking a snippet of the four-minute snippet, I generate an overlay that, for me, opens (to)

possibilities for a rhizo-imaginary of the game in which text and images work together to depict the

activity (Figure 17). Again using colour to connect conversational lines of flight, in this mapping

the images and text are layered so the reading of the text is not orderly – neither by design nor

direction – generating more of a sense of the flow of rhizo interactions among the children. In

contrast, the transcription reads more like a scripted play unlike the non-scripted storyline that

emerged in the play(ing) and as seen in the mapping. The kind of (rhizo)analysis of Children

performing curriculum complexly that working the transcription in this way might have generated is

not possible to say, as I (re)turn to it now with understandings that have emerged through the

writing and thinking that has got me this far. Regardless of what this overlay does/not do for me, I

am hopeful that it presents more of the complexity to the reader. But, even if I had happened upon

this approach sooner, the rhizoanalysis would not remain in that one space any more than it has

remained in any other.

Again I become aware that a limitation to the representation of this thesis-assemblage has

materialised over these last few pages that display my mappings. If the thesis-assemblage is printed

in black and white, and not in colour as electronically submitted, potential readings of the maps

(Figures 15, 16 & 17) are limited by the monochromatic version. In the same way that I have

persisted with words and limited more complex readings that pictures generate, limiting these maps

to a black and white presentation is to limit an opportunity to learn to think differently.

As I continue to reflect, it seems that the rhizoanalysis becomes the text as much as the texts

(words, images and literature) enable the (rhizo)analysis.

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Figure 17: Merging images and text.

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juxtaposing text in rhizoanalysis

Juxtaposing texts was another approach I explored. Throughout writing the research, I wrote a few

poems. They are moments of thinking that were easier to record in a poetic style, eliminating excess

and decentering style. (See Appendix ii: embodied (un)consciousness). (Un)surprisingly, it was the

centering of the text on the page that opened (to) an evocative and power-full way of presenting the

text and processing data about children’s play(ing); the interrelationship between text and page

affected the reading. The authorial, often authoritative ‘voice’, was disrupted making way for a kind

of rhizovocality (Youngblood Jackson, 2003) that reflects a heterogeneity and performative

dimension of unfolding expressions. Frustrated with a lack of inspirational literature and bored with

play being projected as inevitably relative to development and behaviour and to sociological

representations, I turned to Trueit’s (2006) semantic play on ‘play’.

In this article, she responds to an invitation to bring complexity theory together with any term

prominent in educational literature; Trueit’s choice was ‘play’. Her lyrical writing was refreshing,

but the challenge was how to work with her ideas without locking them, or her wording, into a

conventional academic style. I envisaged a conventional response taking an unnecessarily long time

with the possibility of negating the living~playing of the piece and her writing in the process, and to

explain what I sensed within her writing without making it dull was a daunting task. So, I selected

words, phrases and sentences from her text that spoke to me of children’s play(ing) and reformatted

them as a rhizopoietic gesture, reflecting the mythopoesis of her discussion. In this deconstructive

reading, I attempted, and perhaps risked, a creative collision of possibly ‘incommensurable voices

that do not map onto one another’ (Lather, 1992, p. 95), although at the very least I decided the

experiment would foreground my way of linking assemblies of ideas as they brush alongside one

another. The next challenge was to work with this without, again destroying what it (re)presented.

Resonating with Holt’s (2008) juxtaposition of poetic workings of transcriptions with photographs,

I placed a commentary alongside the mythopoesis just to see what would happen. I liked what

happened – an opportunity to read the two texts freely and openly, without (an) imposing linear

order to the ideas in both poem and commentary; each time I read it, it opened (my) thinking to

something different (see the Play(ing) plateau for this juxtaposition).

Later, I worked a snippet of data in the same way, creating an interactive piece, a (tripled)

juxtaposition of Maria, Fleur and Lucy’s conversation as they negotiated a complex storyline,

alongside my rhizoanalysis that attempts to not interrupt the storying of their play(ing). Later still, I

positioned a third column alongside – their talking about the game as it unfolded for them (again) in

a reviewing~(re)playing session – creating a tripled juxtaposition (see the Play(ing) plateau); and as

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I rhizomatically reflect on this tripled affect, other ways of reading it (e)merge in my thinking.42 In

another moment, not wanting to interrupt rhizo flows of/in my thinking about children, I pondered

how to poetically (re)conceive of them outside behaviourist or developmental perspectives. Poems

of three becomings (see the Children and childhood plateau) open (to) rhizo ways of understanding

young children, in this moment responding to becoming-child(ren) aged one, three and five years,

without falling prey to a developmental hierarchy or behaviourist interpretation. The juxtapositions

form evocative and power-full representations, but perhaps more important to assembling the thesis,

they offer play-full interactions among data, reader, writer, texts (both words and images),

(mis)interpretations, all (dis)continuously mis/dis/connecting.

(rhizo)analysis of other data snippets

Throughout the rhizoanalysis, I work against ‘one best’ way of dealing with the data and instead

flow through different forms of ‘analysis’. As well as working with storyboards and rhizopoietic

expressions, in places I have approached the data in a more conventional way as I concentrated on

bringing a Deleuzian reading to my understandings of the children, their play(ing) and their

curricular performance. These workings are my earlier attempts at rhizoanalysis, bringing rhizome

to the analysis in regards to philosophy rather than methodology, for example: Tim’s confronting

my exploitation of his power-fullness (see the Becoming-child(ren) becoming power-full plateau)

and children’s use of mapping (see the Rhizo~mapping and Children play(ing) rhizo-methodology

plateaus). This rhizo processing began in the co-authoring of papers (Honan & Sellers, M., 2008;

Sellers, M., & Honan, 2007), in which the rhizoanalysis of Children play(ing) rhizo-methodology

was first produced. These publications demonstrate the impact of two people writing together

about/through disparate curriculum policy texts in bringing together aspects of the Queensland

English syllabus with the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood curriculum statement with

Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. This involved different ways of approaching rhizoanalysis and a

different way of writing together, which incorporates pieces obviously written by each author and

pieces where the ‘we’ of our thinking and writing merges.

Despite this conjoint experience of rhizoanalysis, when starting to generate more of the analysis of

this thesis-assemblage, I was afraid of overworking the data, this being a response to a peer

reviewer who commented on my (over)working Marcy’s story43 prior to publication of an earlier

42 Other ways of reading this juxtaposition continue to (e)merge only hours before submitting this thesis-assemblage – letting it go as it is – while reassuring myself that it is barely a beginning, that there are papers to be written, in which the exploration will continue… 43 See Letter to Marcy in the Preceding echoes plateau.

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article (Sellers, M., 2005). However, I was encouraged to discover that Guss’s (2001) doctoral

dissertation about reconceptualising children’s dramatic play, uses only three videos, totalling fifty

minutes of play out of the twenty three videos she recorded (Faith Guss, personal communication, 2

May 2008). This affirmed that the rhizoanalysis is indeed about multidimensional intensities

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and that it was not necessary to add more and more data to elaborate

understandings, rather it was about generating (a) milieu(s) of mo(ve)ments from/with/in/of liminal

spaces towards thresholds of understandings. It was about mo(ve)ments of conceptualising children

and their childhood(s) outside conventional normalising psychological, and sociological

perspectives towards understandings of becoming-child(ren) becoming-intense becoming-power-

full becoming imperceptible becoming-curriculum. Moving through these (continuous,

uninterrupted) passages of becomings opens (to) possibilities for understanding children and

childhood(s) as curriculum, as assembling intensities of milieus of doing~be(com)ing~learning, as

both heterogenous singularities and as several, together-as-one(s). No longer do we have hard data,

firm foundations, secure places, fixed states, classified categories or stable ground in which to

stand. It is about what we can learn from different ways of data representation, by exploring the

edges and (re)thinking research (Eisner, 1997).

Throughout the rhizoanalysis that rises up in various plateaus of the thesis-assemblage, I explore

snippets of data seeking understandings that a traditional rendering likely excludes, reflecting

continually on questions that challenge prevailing approaches, questions such as the following: By

rhizomatically following the children’s play(ing), what was I getting and what was I giving up?

What is revealed, what is concealed? Am I setting up yet another adult-centric reading of children’s

ways of operating? Through the camera lens I inevitably frame my adult-centric gaze, but in

flowing with the children, opportunities open (to) the complexity of their play spaces. Before

beginning I gave up data collection as a linearly planned exercise, attempting to work with, and

generate fluidity, where every/one/thing is in flux, but am I merely (mis)leading readers into

flowing with my ideas and ways of thinking? Am I (mis)leading readers into negotiating (my)

incipiently different territories? Do I want readers to flow with my (mis)representations? Do I want

their negotiating these territories to coincide with mine? Do I want them to find their own way?

How might the participant~researcher children feel about my (mis)representations of their

understandings? Is the videoed visual sampling an authentic view of their play(ing)? Much of the

time I operated the camera and decided which games and children to follow. But how did this/I

affect their play(ing) because of my presence with the camera? Did they make imperceptible

choices as to the what and how of their play(ing)? Did they imperceptibly choose what they would

reveal? In which un/identifiable mo(ve)ments might I have been excluded? Is this research?

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According to Eisner (1997) it is in that it constitutes my ‘reflective efforts to study the world and to

create ways to share what [I] have learned about it’ (p. 8).

The rhizoanalysis is thus but an open/ing (ad)venture and it is in processing through/with/in it that I

(be)come to understand more of how it works – by doing rhizome in the rhizoanalysis and

exploring its possibilities. In my response to Deleuze’s (1995) concern for how imaginaries like

rhizome work, I have come to an understanding of what it is as well as an understanding of how it

works, by putting it to work within the thinking and writing of, not ‘the’ but ‘some’, rhizoanalysis.

Happening as it does, interspersed throughout the thesis-assemblage, it avoids it being ‘the’

rhizoanalysis rather its intermittent re/oc/currence ambiguously becomes some (rhizo)analysis. As I

leave this plateau, I remember the data snippet (in the Children play(ing) rhizo-methodology

plateau) that initially intrigued me as it illuminated young children’s understandings of Deleuzo-

Guattarian mapping and rhizo methodology itself. Similarly, all the data snippets of various

plateaus become the rhizoanalysis.

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216


Every voyage is intensive, and occurs in relation to thresholds of intensity between which it evolves

or that it crosses. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 54)

nomadic flow

By rhizo-methodology, I mean working as/with rhizome and following a nomadic flow. In flowing,

the nomad does not operate in fixed or closed space or follow specified routes, rather s/he

rhizomatically ‘re-routes the terrain’, its pathways and narratives (O'Riley, 2003, p. 28),

metaphorically talking itself into be(com)ing, (re)mapping the map as it is mapped. In this, doing

and thinking becomes (un)doing and (re)thinking through a flow that is simultaneously energy,

force and motion, this nomadic flow embodying becoming, heterogeneity, ‘passage to the limit’ and

‘continuous variation’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 363). Flow cannot be determined, only

followed, or mapped. Working nomadically is then about:

unhinging habitual and reactive thinking, regularity and normalized inscriptions…grow[ing]

from the middle, the cracks, the voids, the hyphens, the slashes, and the outcrops…undoing…

remapping a different space…a whole new virtual landscape featuring otherworldly affects,

always marginal and transversal. (O’Riley, 2003, p. 29)

Working as nomad, working nomad or doing nomad opens (to) different ways of thinking, moving

into spaces without boundaries to dream of other ways of be(com)ing and contemplate what it

might mean to realise them. This moves outside a focus on what something might mean, for

example, instead foregrounding questions like: ‘How does meaning change? How have some

meanings emerged as normative and other been eclipsed or disappeared?’ (Scott, 1988, cited in

Richardson & St.Pierre, 2005, p. 969). Working nomadically is not about tracing straight paths in

thinking, doing and be(com)ing, rather it is ‘letting go of conventional wisdom and wilful

ignorance’ (O’Riley, 2003, p. 21) and thinking outside overcoded (research) processes. The nomad

works with de~territorialisation (being without boundaries), destratification (being undefined and/or

undefinable), and lines of flight (composed of unlimited directions in motion of both thought and

thinking) in a trajectory that distributes people in open, indefinite space, in which there are no

points, paths, or land even (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The nomad is always already in multi-

dimensional, anti-genealogical, a-centered, non-hierarchical fluxive space with a network of

interconnections that processes from/through the middle, continually coming and going.


217

nomad~rhizome

Flowing nomadically with rhizome involves a complex interplay of following lines of flight and

passaging through various territories, such as physical and imaginative space of the games children

play and the relationships among players. These are ceaseless and ongoing connections – ‘any point

of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7),

assembling as an a-centered milieu of perpetual and dynamic change without specific end or entry

points, or beginnings and endings. In this smooth space of nomad~rhizome, there are no points or

positions, only lines, and working with these lines, as de~territorialising lines of flight, opens (to)

possibilities for connecting what otherwise may be regarded as disparate thoughts, ideas and

activity. In this way a network of interconnections forms – an amassing of middles amidst an array

of multidirectional movement among open systems. Generating this nomad~rhizome assemblage,

‘open and connectable in all of its dimensions’ (p. 12), disturbs the arborescently informed, linear

progression of modernist thought and action that is always retraced through the same series of

points of structuration – it ‘always comes back “to the same”’ (p. 12).

Tracing (thinking) pathways arborescently, from trunk through branches and leaves, requires

coming and going along the same tracks, with a fixed beginning (base of trunk) and ending (tips of

leaves). While a tree trunk and branches may expand in length and girth, new pathways are formed

only at the tips, and returning along pathways can only occur by re-tracing the route already

travelled (Figure 18).

Figure 18: Arborescent tracing. (Author photo)

Figure 19: Burrow~rhizome produced by crustaceans in the Middle Jurassic period. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.

org /wiki/File:ThalassinoidesIsrael.JPG


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In a burrow – a rhizome (Figure 19) – there are infinite combinations of negotiable pathways

through and back again; there is a multiplicity of entryways, which double as exits, with many

pathways intersecting with ongoing possibilities for new pathways irrupting among and beyond

those that already exist, de/re/territorialising liminal spaces between. (Re)turning to negotiate

pathways as nomad~rhizome can happen in infinite ways.

mapping rhizo-methodology

Flowing through this nomad~rhizome involves passaging ‘towards’ never-ending peripheries and in

this nomadic~rhizo flow, mapping rhizo-methodology becomes an activity of continual

con/di/vergence, of processing around and about, linking, interconnecting through thinking and

doing ‘and...and... and...’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25). As I worked to generate a rhizomatic

mapping of the children at play – in the Children performing curriculum complexly plateau – it

became apparent that, as well as rhizomatic methodology informing the data, the children of the

data were showing how rhizomatic methodology works. I saw a flow of rhizo~nomad, as

assemblage of game~setting~players. In generating the data with the children, I flow freely through

the setting, following lines of flight in a video-ed assemblage of their play(ing). Lines of flight

appear within the strong girls game, made visible through a multiplicity of video camera operators

as various children take the camera – Chloe, Abi, Lisa, Libby, Lee, Eve and me. Although this

contributes to ruptures of/in the flow, these irruptions enrich the data as moments are captured

through many eyes. In this moment it becomes readily visible that the children and I ‘were no

longer ourselves,’ and it was no longer important who was ‘I’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3).

Later, in bringing Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries to the rhizoanalysis to foreground the children’s

representations of curricular performance, I become aware of their tacitly playing out various

imaginaries – rhizomatically mapping their nomadic flow – flowing as nomad rhizomatically

negotiating smooth spaces. A de-territorialising mo(ve)ment then happens – their rhizomatic

performance now informing the methodology, illuminating both rhizomatic methodology and

rhizoanalysis at work. As the methodology informs the data generating, the data now inform the

(rhizo)analysis; what the children are doing in the data shows how to use the methodology in the

rhizoanalysis. Following their performance foregrounds their embodiment of thinking~playing. As

in a mobius strip (Figure 20), such de-territorialising mo(ve)ments are on the same plane, the

mo(ve)ments continuously (e)merging.


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Figure 20: De~territorialisation always already at on(c)e on the same plateau~plane

rhizo-mapping the children’s play(ing)44

Video snippets of the strong girls game, played out by Libby, Lee and Alice, are captured over two

days as they negotiate smooth spaces of the game, their play(ing), their imaginations and the

setting. Smooth spaces enable unstructured, non-striated opportunities for the children to work and

play, uninterrupted and unhurried, flowing through space-times of setting and programme. Smooth

spaces of the play(ing) of the game(s) is illuminated in the performing of (e)merging storyline(s) –

in contrast to a (pre)scribed scripted performance. The strong girls’ intention of ‘saving the world

outside’ is like a de~territorialising mo(ve)ment as in the game of Go.

Deleuze & Guattari use the game of Go to explain smooth spaces of nomadic de~territorialising in

contrast to the occupation of the ordered, striated spaces of chess:

in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus of going from one point to

another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In

Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in a open space, of holding space, of maintaining the

possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but

becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The “smooth” space

of Go, as against the “striated” space of chess…The difference is that chess codes and decodes

space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing or deterritorializing it…

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 353, italics added)

In Go, the outside space is territorialised from within, by territorialising a bordering space. Rather

than capturing the space and eliminating occupiers, as chess does, the Go player encircles the

territory and both spaces merge. In a simultaneity of de~territorialising, the space is immediately

de~territorialised by this sha(tte)ring of ownership of the territory, by renouncing oneself by going

44 See also (Honan & Sellers, M., 2006) and Sellers, M., & Honan (2007) for a (different) rhizoanalysis that illuminates the children’s expressions of power-fullness within the data snippet used here.


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elsewhere to further territorialise adjacent territory. And so the flow continues, creating a ‘milieu of

exteriority’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 353), avoiding battles, battle lines and battles over power;

it is about mobility not occupation.

As the strong girls negotiate the physical territory (indoors and the playground outside) and the

(imaginative) territory of their game, they follow lines of flight conversationally and lines of flight

within their game. They explore folds and surfaces (physical and imaginative) that they happen

upon, they slip in and out of discursive spaces of relationships and the game. Similarly, other

children and I flow with the video camera and I flow through the video-ed snippets uncovering

resonances between the children’s play(ing) and rhizo-methodology.

the strong girls as nomad~rhizome

Libby, Lee and Alice flow as nomad~rhizome through smooth spaces, de~territorialising spaces of

their game. There is ‘a flow of children; a flow of walking with pauses, straggling and forward

rushes… a collective assemblage…one inside the other…plugged into an immense outside that is a

multiplicity’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 23). Within this multiplicity, involving forty other

children, several adults, the physical surroundings, artefacts and the uninterrupted space of the

programme, the children ‘space themselves out and disperse…jostle together and coexist…begin to

dance’ (pp. 23-24) as the game continues to emerge. There is continuous ebbing and flowing of

ideas and energy, as the tracing of their pre-conceived game is continually plugged into the

(e)merging strong girls map for saving the world outside, itself (e)merging from/with/in a game of

Mums and Dads.

Libby, Lee and Alice invite Chloe to join their game.

Libby: Alice wants to be the little sister. Lee wants to be the big sister and I wanna be the

Mum, and you wanna be the baby? ’Cos we’re playing Mums and Dads.

Chloe listens but says nothing so they abandon that line of flight and take another, running

outside to play the game without her. They skip across the playground, making their way

over and through various pieces of climbing equipment and into a large custom-wood cube.

Libby: Hey, this here is our place in here.

Lee, climbing into an adjoining cube: No. No. I know…this could be the house and that

could be our bedroom.

Alice follows Lee and they climb through to join Libby, choosing to go with her line of

flight in regard to which cube is to be their home. They sit on the ledges inside and discuss

where to sleep and the kinds of snoring noises they can make.


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They have started up the territory for the Mums and Dads game, but they are distracted by the world

outside the game – the video camera and me. They tell me about their characters and confirm

amongst themselves that it’s a Mums and Dads people game, not Mums and Dads butterflies.

While my presence interrupted the flow of their game, the rupture generates an opportunity to

confirm the storyline and the characters they each play. Interiority (inside elements of their game)

merges with exteriority (with the outside), and continues. Another i(nte)rruption occurs as Lee

reaches to brush some bark chips off Libby’s tights and they discuss their clothing and their status

in the world. .

Libby: …hey it looks like looks like we’re pretty girls.

Lee: Yeah we’re pretty…I’m the prettiest girl in the world.

Lee’s claim of being the prettiest girl in the world is uncontested; as ‘pretty girls’ they play

together. The imaginary game is merging with actual artefacts and happenings, these being

incorporated into their imaginary world as their game emerges. Flowing as nomad~rhizome, they

are negotiating their actual and imagined worlds all-at-once; actual and imagined operate as one in

this smooth space, continuously. Libby decides it is now morning and the others agree as they

wander around outside their home and their game. Suddenly, another de~territorialising line of

flight starts up.

Libby runs up to the others and proclaims: We better be strong girls!

Lee says: No! Alice says nothing.

Libby shouts: We can be strong girls now…and…WE…CAN…DO…IT! (punching her arms

in the air)…We have to have maps to see where to go.

Following Libby’s line of flight, despite Lee’s objection and Alice’s silence, they run inside

to the drawing table to make maps.

Flowing as nomad~rhizome they have negotiated disparate ideas and activity – with the Mums and

Dads game, thinking about butterflies, interacting with the video camera and me, discussing their

clothing and what it means to be pretty, then segueing from Mums and Dads to strong girls. They

have continually de~territorialised spaces of their game.

mapping nomad~rhizome flow

Their use of mapping is intriguing as it demonstrates a tacit understanding of rhizome. (E)merging

throughout their game is continuous moving through virtual~possible, actualising~realising

(Deleuze, 1993) mapped spaces, through the map of the imaginary game; through deciding they

needed to create a real map; through mapping the next part of their game; through consulting their


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drawn maps. They flow rhizomatically through (a) Deleuzian milieu(s)45, negotiating virtual and

possible spaces of the game and of the world outside. Mapping becomes a way of affirming the

characters they each play and exploring their relationships with each other, of confirming the

mo(ve)ments of the emerging storyline of their game, of working out which part of the playground

they will flow into next, of exploring their understandings of the physical and social context(s) they

are playing with/in and how this relates to the outside world46.

Libby leads the map-making: Now we can draw a map…Ok! Now!

She draws a stick figure in the centre bottom of her page, and Lee replicates Libby’s figure.

Alice watches but draws a more detailed figure that takes up most of her page, positioned as

portrait whereas Libby and Lee’s is landscape.

Although Lee objects occasionally to Libby’s decision-making, she flows with Libby, following

Libby’s lines of flight with few deviations. Alice quietly flows with the others, but more openly

incorporates her preferences for her map. The orientation of her paper suggests she is less intent on

doing things exactly as Libby dictates, and her person – with round body, detailed facial expression

and hair – is considerably different from Libby and Lee’s stick figures. Alice is flowing as

nomad~rhizome within nomad~rhizome, following Libby’s lead and following her own desire for

the game as all three girls are embodied in processes of mapping their understandings of how the

game should process.

45 Deleuze and Guattari use milieu as “surroundings,” “medium,” (as in chemistry), and “middle” (Massumi, 1987, p. xvii) See discussion of milieu (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) in the Reconceiving curriculum plateau. 46 The pictures in this plateau were developed for a conference presentation, where there was a need to obscure the children’s identity. I have retained these here for the way they resonate with mapping and focus attention on the rhizomatic activity of the children.


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Libby draws a line, leading from her person, a line that wiggles and zigzags and loosely

follows the edge of her page. As she draws, she explains: You need to do […] in here so we

know where to go…we go through the prickly grass…by the tree. She joins another line to

the first, indicating the prickly grass with zigzags along the top of her page and the tree by a

thinner zigzag in the top right corner. The line then loops back onto the initial line around

the page. Lee draws a line surrounding her person, a pathway with less detail and without

explanation.

Alice continues with her own understanding of the interiority of the map. Her figure is large

with her pathway pictures as a series of disjointed squiggles.

Libby

Lee

Alice


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We are now presented with three mappings of one game; three understandings of how they

each envisage the game will proceed. Their maps indicate the pathway they intend to

negotiate as strong girls. Libby talks about her pathway as she draws it, communicating her

ideas for the game, ideas that unfold in the drawing. She creates a pathway with no

beginning or ending, suggesting they will process through a middle~milieu. Lee’s simpler

pathway is similarly positioned on her paper while Alice’s is different. Alice’s map is

dominated by the figure, surrounded by several unconnected wiggles. That her pathway is

disjointed is of no concern to any of them.

Just as this game does not begin as being one about strong girls – the strong girl theme starts up in

the Mums and Dads game – it appears there is no explicitly planned endpoint either. What seems

important is the indication of various spaces that they will flow through – de~territorialising spaces,

lines of flight to be followed. But, another line of flight emerges. They move from the smooth space

of their game to the striated space of literacy and numeracy.

They each write their name on the back of their maps, then spend several minutes

conversing about the similarities and differences in the spelling. They fold their maps and

because of the different paper orientations, Libby and Lee make a lengthwise fold while

Alice folds hers crosswise.

Lee notices the difference and points this out: She did a long one.

Libby responds: That’s OK. She’s fine…C’mon, let’s go…to save the world outside.

In this moment, the discursive understandings of curriculum, in conventional terms, become visible

as they share their understandings about reading and writing. This also involves not only

affirmation of each other’s abilities to form the various letters but also affirmation of each other as

people, foregrounding their social learning experiences of curriculum. Some maths learning appears

also as Lee notices the different shapes created by the different folds. While they enjoy the

interchange about their literacy and maths skills and knowledge, Libby is mindful of ensuring all

are included as successful performers of their understandings – she is working to affirm each of

them as individuals within the rhizomatics of making their game work.

Once outside Libby pauses, pointing to her map: Start there and y’ go all the way

round…We need to go to the playground…it said playground.


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They twist and weave through the playground, pausing to play on various pieces of

equipment, to interact with other children and with me, to seat themselves on a large log.

Libby does the map-reading: Our map says to go to um to go to…(and later) Treasure…the

treasure is here…see the little x here (and later still) Hey…hey, wanna go to the pool? If you

want to go to the pool, that’s OK. They continue on their way, negotiating the outdoors

equipment – over, under, through, across, balancing, jumping…


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And so they continue mapping their play(ing), flowing through the middle space of their game, a

flow of walking~running~skipping~jumping, pausing~rushing, together an assemblage, with/in a

multiplicity. As they dance through their game, playing out their understandings of themselves as

children with/in childhoods and/wit/in curricular experiences, flowing together as ‘one’ – each as

singularities and together as several.

children performing nomad~rhizome

The children perform as nomad~rhizome in their play(ing), uninterrupted and unhurried by a more

formalised curriculum that dictates specific times and places for adult-identified teaching of things

to be learned. They flow through spaces of the setting, the programme, with/in relationships they

encounter, through the territory of the physical environment and their un/conscious imaginary

territories, following lines of flight conversationally with each other and lines of flight within their

strong girl game, de~territorialising folds and surfaces (physical and imaginative) as happened

upon, slipping in and out of discursive spaces. They play Mums and Dads, outside in the large

boxes; they flow inside to the drawing table to make maps as their game segues into strong girls,

then outside again to follow the pathways of their maps. They track through the outdoor equipment,

pausing to hang from the bars, to re(read) their maps – an ‘x’ is identified as treasure and a


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previously unmarked swimming pool appears. Through their informal, improvised, enacted storying

of games, they open out their imaginary worlds. As Mums and Dads they discuss their home, their

clothing and their gendered understandings; and, the strong girls theme emerges with a mission to

save the world outside. They generate and claim their learning spaces through making maps and

then work with them to map their play.

When perceived as nomad~rhizome players, these children generate different images from the

rational human beings developmentalism dictates. In modernistic terms, Libby, Lee and Alice might

be perceived as skimming the surface of ‘real’ learning, such as their unattended (by supposedly all-

knowing adults) foray into literacy learning. They might be perceived as sorting themselves into a

social order that demands a certain kind of leadership, namely one person in charge all of the time.

However, a generative rhizomatic reading illuminates them as differently sensible and sense-able

(reasonable) as they unconsciously, without conscious decision (randomly) negotiate various

curricular territories and/with/through (e)merging lines of flight. Throughout the rhizomatic

performance of their game, they de~territorialise smooth spaces and de~territorialise their singular

and collective desire to play the game, ameliorating any un/intentional attempted individual control.

Despite Libby working to enable all to be included, such as acknowledging that Alice’s folding was

OK, there are moments when Lee could have walked away from the game – when her objections

were ignored by Libby. But, as well, Lee does not persist with her objections and Alice quietly

plays out her resistance to totally conforming. Together they flow through the physical and

imaginary territories of their game, pausing, rushing, straggling, dispersing, jostling, co-existing,

dancing…

There is nothing static or fixed about the children, the game, the geographical or discursive

territories to be negotiated, the way they communicate (verbally through language and visually

through their maps) and the space-time of the game. The game neither begins nor ends. The strong

girls game and generative mapping emerges from within a middle~milieu~plateau of their play

(Mums and Dads) and eventually merges with yet another plateau, as their play(ing) continues on

‘past’ the end of this data snippet. In the middle of the plateau, along the way, the game and the

children follow other lines of flight. They decide that they need a map and in the process of drawing

it, they intensify the map of the game. They follow lines of flight pictured on their drawn maps and

move through middles of mappings not pictured. Through their map-making, the children express

their desires for playing the game and mark the territory to be negotiated. In drawing the

continuously (e)merging maps, they follow and map lines of flight in their thinking, making

personal connections with/in the territory they would negotiate and with each other’s maps and


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ideas expressed through/with/in them. As they flow through their mapping, they pause literally (to

rest on the log and to swing from the bars) and figuratively on plateaus to contemplate processes of,

and the procession of their learning.

playing rhizo-methodology

Following St. Pierre (2001), I am ‘not much interested in any search for originary and correct

meanings’ (p. 150) of their play(ing), but I am interested in the multiplicity that their game both

becomes and operates within, as I similarly negotiate rhizomatic(ally) the territories of their games.

This involves bringing together seemingly disparate discourses – Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy

and children’s map-making. It involves following lines of flight (theirs in playing; mine in research

methodology), as mapped on paper, imaginarily mapped and played out similar to their maps but

also differently through their continuous imaginings. This is akin to my researching Deleuzian

philosophy and researching the methodology, continuing the inquiry in writing the methodology

and rhizoanalysis, in which everything is always already becoming something else. Interactions

among discursive systems within texts and discourses themselves do not operate as straight lines

through a text. They (e)merge (im)plausibly, connect and cross over and Libby, Lee and Alice

illuminate generative~rhizomatic spaces of rhizo-methodology through the play(ing) of their game.

As the storyline of the game is always already narrated and (e)merging, so Deleuzo-Guattarian

figurations inform the research. In narrating and projecting the storyline, the children are putting the

tracing back on the map; tracings of conventional theories of children, childhood and curriculum are

constantly imposed on the map, such as on mappings of rhizo-methodology. Immersed in the

(e)merging complexity, through their map-making and their enacted mapping, they (simply) show

pathways and spaces that are/will be negotiated in the course of their game. Similarly, I follow lines

of flight, flowing with tacit understandings of something that might go somewhere, such as

juxtaposing text, images, transcriptions and commentaries within the rhizoanalysis throughout

various plateaus of the thesis-assemblage. The children describe characters as they emerge, calling

them into being, simultaneously talking them(selves) into becoming, announcing their strong girl

status to the world and supporting each other while claiming singular desiring-spaces for the game.

In a similar way, my becoming-researcher emerges through interacting with (writers of) the

literature and participant-children when generating data.

As I map a way through the snippet of data of children playing rhizomatically, the mapping

illuminates moments of convergence, when connections allow reasonable readings of contradictory

and conflicting discourses. On the surface, the prospect of linking in any meaningful way children’s

map(pings) or play(ing) with philosophical understandings of research methodology seems


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unlikely. However, what becomes apparent in the videos and in the transcriptions, is that young

children unaware of Deleuzian figurations or rhizomatic methodologies enact complex

understandings of these. The intensity of this complexity is unexpected when put alongside taken-

for-granted versions of possible childhood understandings outlined in many curriculum texts. As

Deleuze (1997) says: ‘Children never stop talking about what they are doing or trying to do:

exploring milieus by means of dynamic trajectories and drawing up maps of them’ (p. 61). So why

am I surprised about their tacit understandings of nomad~rhizome? Throughout the methodology of

the thesis-assemblage, I continue in a similar way: inquiring about the inquiry about inquiring about

the inquiry and inquiring…

Aftwrdng

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Aftrwrdng

Before beginning this thesis-assemblage I imagined having an epiphany somewhere before the end.

I imagined having significant things to say about my perceptions of young children’s

understandings of curriculum. But when that seemed not to happen I thought there was nothing to

write about in the mo(ve)ment of this Aftrwrdng…until I realised that thought was yet another of

the pervading modernist expectations that have lingered along the way. That thought appeared to

trip me again, despite my knowing that having specific conclusions to propose at the end was not

embodied in my understandings of rhizo inquiry. What matters in rhizo inquiry is what (e)merges

from/with/in the rhizome of this thesis-assemblage, the illuminations, sometimes mere glimpses of

what is happening in the shadows – like momentarily dappled pools of light shifting with the sun,

wind blowing shifting shadows, light fading in and out, coming and going. Thoughts, ideas,

thinking that can only be captured or seized upon momentarily because everything is always

already becoming. The notion of ‘seizing’ characterises what this thesis-assemblage is mostly not:

to seize is to take hold of an object firmly, to take advantage of something, to take official

possession of something, to take somebody into custody, to become jammed as a result of pressure,

to become painfully stiff or immobile, to come to a sudden and permanent halt, to endow with

ownership, to tie or secure (Encarta World English Dictionary). However seize also has another

more fitting meaning: to understand an idea or concept especially quickly. The notion of speed of

momentarily seizing or glimpsing is embodied in the thesis-assemblage, at times overwhelmingly.

Every part and process of the thesis-assemblage resists being pinned or tied down, curriculum as (a)

milieu(s) of becoming.

Re(con)ceiving children in curriculum is a poststructuralist deconstructing project, exploring

various dimensions of concepts and thought to seek out that which may be in the shadows. In early

childhood curriculum, developmental psychology informed perspectives of children and childhood

have dominated the past century. Although Te Whāriki sought to break from these in the mid

1990s, the sociocultural ideals it aspires to continue to scaffold – a structuralist endeavour –

children into rationalised, mature adulthood in co-constructivist ways and the what and how of

curriculum pervades. Curriculum as a learning~living (ad)venture remains largely in the shadows in

early childhood curriculum, thirty years on from the emergence of the reconceptualist conversation.

However, this is not to despair, rather to say that (re)conceiving curriculum is an ongoing

endeavour. Before reiterating my thinking around that which is emerging from the (hidden)

Aftwrdng

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shadows of reconceiving early childhood curriculum, I ask: What of receiving children in

curriculum?

Receiving children in curriculum involves different ways of thinking about children. It involves

thinking of children living~working~learning with adults, all as human beings, some just younger

or older than others. Disadvantaging children on the grounds of their younger age begs questions

around the more homogenous concept of adulthood. Young adults and the elderly may be regarded

with some disdain in certain circumstances, but by and large there are no categorisations within

adulthood in the modernist mature, rational adult discourses of everyday life. Or, at least,

discernible degrees in the fifty years or so of the dominating middle mass of adulthood are masked

by non-ageist agendas. Bringing children (and young adults and elderly people) and their

understandings into this middle should not be difficult. If there are no (explicit) boundaries in the

middle mass of adulthood, why have limits at either end? Young children continually display their

capacity in regard to their understanding of learning~living. Marcy’s ‘disruptive behaviour’ was a

glimpse into what she understood she needed of curriculum. Even in developmental terms,

supporting her desire to do a puzzle was arguably more significant for her in that moment than

sitting at a table listening to a story while waiting for morning tea to be served; and, sociologically,

the ideals of agentic subjectivity uphold her right to be in charge of her own learning and to set her

own curricular agenda. But as this thesis-assemblage proffers, Marcy’s activity and action as

becoming-child and as some of the plurality of becoming-children demonstrates that she knew what

she wanted to know, how to go about doing it and why it was important. In that moment, at least,

finishing the puzzle was important to her ongoing living~learning as becoming-child(ren). Through

expressions of her own subjectivity, she was endeavouring to alter and change in a doubled

becoming of the one (singularity) with the (collective) one, in a de~territorialising line of flight of

becoming-puzzler. Considering children as responsible and response-able thinkers~learners with

sophisticated understandings respects them as young people within (a) milieu(s) of their curricular

performativity.

What is curriculum then for becoming-child(ren)? Curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming,

becomes a space for becoming-child(ren) to negotiate their becomings, in flows of becoming-

power-full becoming-intense becoming-imperceptible – response-ably demonstrated by the

severalty of children in the intersecting games in the Children performing curriculum complexly

plateau. Curriculum as (a) milieu(s) of becoming also becomes a space where(by) the adult|child

binary is dissolved into a child~adult co-existence in a curricular performance of

doing~learning~living. At the beginning, I wrote a Letter to Marcy, noting that the thesis-

Aftwrdng

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assemblage gathered together here was but a postscript. A thesis-assemblage later, I write again at

the end of this Aftrwrdng, in a co-existence of doing~living~learning.

Writing an Aftrwrdng free of constraints of linearly informed decisions or conclusions is

challenging. It is difficult to ‘produce’ something that ‘makes sense’ while saying something

different in regard to curricular ideas. At the end of the Children performing curriculum complexly

plateau I outlined some relatively simple ideas that I perceived the children to be communicating

through their curricular performance in the games they played. I wrote that children thrive within

the complexity of their spontaneous play(ing) and linear processes are not necessary to the

productive play(ing) of generative learning~living experiences, and that they are adept at

responding to opportunities that present as…and…and…and…, with linear processes obstructing

generativity. I (rhizo?)analysed gendered performance of the embodied victim~strong girls and

suggested that their expressions of power-fullness opened (to) a generative line of flight, which

de~territorialised the game, their subjectivities and adult understandings of (non-)gendered activity.

I worked with the notion that the children’s leadership subject positionings are similarly fluid. Yet

these comments still ooze modernist thought, as I offer interpretations of behaviour that I have

chosen to classify. There is a sense that to think outside behaviourist analyses, I have to become

more practised at opening (to) other generative spaces of becoming, not only spaces of becoming-

child(ren), but also to spaces of my becoming-adult(s) becoming-researcher becoming-

reader~writer~thinker. It is not about arriving at (new) thoughts, but about learning to process

thought and thinking in other ways otherwise, about learning to think differently. With practice,

thoughts outside my current repertoire may then emerge from the shadows as I think…and…and…

and…

Something I have noticed in my thinking~reading~writing of this thesis-assemblage is my

propensity for always introducing different ideas by starting with how things are not or with what

something should not or cannot be if we are to change our thinking around children and childhood

and about their curriculum-ing. What if I had started with thinking curriculum-ing as children doing

learning, as doing~learning~living? Perhaps I had not thought enough about curriculum before

beginning in that I spend so much time tracing through layers of traditional thought in the literature.

My tentativeness in suggesting how other ways of thinking might work also suggests (my)

capitulation to modernist imbued thought within academe, founded in rationale and justification.

Yet, looking for what might be in the shadows becomes some of a way into rhizome and becomes

rhizome.

Aftwrdng

233

So I remind myself of what did I draw from the rhizomatic shadows within each of the plateaus:

o In Preceding echoes, before introducing Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries, I acknowledge

Marcy for her inspiration and for every child that she is, rather than represents. I unveil my

subjectivity and offer some guiding thoughts for reading this thesis-assemblage otherwise in

other ways as a way of breaking with a linearly constructed thesis and as an attempt to relax

the reader into opening to generatively intra/inter/personal connections.

o Reconceiving curriculum opens (to) possibilities for conceiving curriculum as (a) milieu(s)

of performativity. In (re)thinking the traditional what and how of curriculum, children’s

curricular performativity appears more as curriculum-ing than curriculum, and this is

illuminated in the data snippets of the rhizoanalysis of Children performing curriculum

complexly. This is an attempt to dispense with developmental analyses.

o Rhizo~mapping continues with mapping (a) milieu(s) of curricular performativity by

working, somewhat recursively, with mapping to foreground more of the rhizome of

children and curriculum. Data used show children mapping their play and playing out their

maps in a curricular performance of map(ping) play(ing). In this, I enact trust in children

knowing how to enact the what of their learning.

o A journey through historical discourses of Children and childhood, which both accede to

and challenge the adult|child binary, discusses affects of modernist images and

poststructuralist subject positionings in regard to children as young human beings.

From/with/in more recent understandings of subjectivity, the Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizomatic

imaginary of becoming (e)merges and the notion of becoming-child(ren) de~territorialises

lingering historical perspectives.

o From within the Play(ing) plateau a poietically play-full way of connecting various

theorising about play with actualities of children’s playing emerges in methodological

expressions that juxtapose the literature…and…children’s play…and… their curricular

performativity as seen in transcriptions of a game in the family corner. Although the rhizo-

methodology and rhizoanalysis of the research weaves through all plateaus in various ways,

the Play(ing) plateau exemplifies a play-full academic performance, which conceptually

commingles with data of children’s curricular performativity.

o Methodological and ethical issues of Rhizomatically researching with young children are

discussed in understandings of acting responsibly, responsively and response-ably within

research relationships with participant-children. Working reflexively in the doing~writing~

thinking of the research is embodied within explications of how this research was enacted.

Aftwrdng

234

o Power relations imbued in the child-participant and adult-researcher partnership are

confronted through the data and this opens (to) the notion of Becoming-child(ren) becoming

power-full in curriculum – as Tim demonstrates simplicity and sophistication. Respecting

his expressions of power-fullness as de~territorialising lines of flight disturbs the propensity

for behaviourist analyses in early childhood education.

o In the Rhizoanalysis plateau I reflect on various approaches to analysis that emerged in the

writing and presenting of data through some of the plateaus, in expressions of storyboards,

intertextual juxtapositions and mappings. Although I resist presenting any particular plateau

as central, it transpires that the becomings of the milieu of the thesis-assemblage pass

through the rhizoanalysis. This plateau embodies the workings of rhizome, in itself and with

the others responding to the question: How does it work?

o Children playing rhizo-methodology uses data to show a recursive relationship among the

imaginaries of nomad~rhizome informing the research – from design to the writing of the -

thesis-assemblage – and the children of the data playing out the research methodology as

they operate as nomad~rhizome. The thesis-assemblage becomes a reflection of the

methodological nomad~rhizome. Rhizo-methodology of the research becomes one with the

writing~reading~thinking of the thesis-assemblage, around children, childhood and

curriculum. Children playing rhizo-methodology also works to foreground children’s tacit

knowledge of the dynamics of rhizo research…and…how rhizome works in the curricular

performativity of their learning…and…how children put rhizome to work.

From/with/in the shadows, it appears that some different ideas for re(con)ceiving children in

curriculum have (e)merged, but my reflection now is that it is more about thinking differently than

producing different thoughts. Although that in itself is a (different) thought, through thinking

differently it opens (to) possibilities, both scholarly and in practical understandings. The journey for

me has been about rhizomatically thinking around rhizo ideas that I have presented rhizomatically –

rhizo mapping rhizo inquiry, rhizo methodology, rhizoanalysis – with the ideas being but a plateau

of/for de~territorialising thinking~performance. Which (re)turns me to say that what matters in this

Aftrwrdng is not the thoughts or ideas I have proffered along the way, but the kind(s) of thinking I

have negotiated and the kind(s) of thinking these ideas inspire, particularly as they affect young

children…and…their childhood(s)… and…their curriculum performativity…and...adult perceptions

of these…and…as the incompleteness of the txt-ese of Aftrwrdng suggests there is always already

more happening with/in the shadows. In conclusion these shadows of thoughts from/with/in my

shadowed thinking address Marcy outside the now defunct, at least in this thesis-assemblage,

adult|child binary. Having mapped some of (a) milieu(s) of becoming of/through/with/in this thesis-

Aftwrdng

235

assemblage, recursively and with reflexivity, I (re)turn to the (initial) foreshadowing in another

letter to Marcy. As before, the language is mine, but my thinking is that the sentiments resonate

with young children’s tacit knowledge of doing~learning~living.

Dear Marcy,

If I’d known how hard it was going to be, I may not have started out on this PhD journey. In some

moments, with modernist thoughts and beliefs pervading my poststructuralist ways of operating, it

felt that it was hardly worth it, but I stayed with the idea that this is my legacy for my grandchildren

and the future, trusting that what I have written may become something useful for you, you as

young children in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood educational settings, now and further on.

Doing learning for you is also hard from/with/in limited and limiting modernist thought and

discourses fraught with classifications and categories, sequential ordering of developmental skills

and ways of achieving these. It is demanding and tiring, sapping energy of children and adults as

conformity imposes. Collapsing the binarial walls of this modernist prison of thought, concerned

with control and confinement of children in particular, opens (to) possibilities for spaces of co-

existence in/through/which becoming-child(ren)~becoming-adult commingle, freely mobile,

singularly and as a severalty. In such de~territorialising spaces children’s expressions of

dissatisfaction about curricular performance – as when you, Marcy, declared by your actions that

sitting at a table to listen to a story was not a priority in that moment – would not mean that neither

you nor your behaviour would be labelled disruptive but that you had responsible and response-

able agendas to be respected. Without a hierarchy of being, adults have no reason to interpret

actions such as yours as being against them, their ideals and their aspirations for you. Rather, in

these de~territorialising spaces your activity flows as expressions of your becoming-child(ren),

expressions of your aspirations for ongoing becomings of your subjectivity. As educationists –

practitioners, researchers, scholars – we must learn to think in such ways, learning to think

through/with/in opening (to) possibilities, learning to think differently. In early childhood education

this becomes possible and accessible (simply) by flowing with, or following de~territorialising flows

of children in the complexity of their play(ing), so that children are no longer dependent on adults

for curriculum and (supposedly) for their learning. Rather, children are understood as teachers,

researchers and curricularists engaged in recursive and responsible inter-relationships, always

already becoming-child(ren) with the always already becoming-adults of the worlds around them.

Forgive my reminiscing for a moment, Marcy…

Historically, early childhood has ‘progressed’ through adult-centred teaching, child-centred learning

into current trends of co-constructed child-adult shared learning experiences. The aspirations of

co-construction reflect reciprocity but the inherent pedagogy distances children from adult worlds,

Aftwrdng

236

just as early childhood education is often distanced from family/whānau/community, operating

within sites of consumption, remediation and preparation for school.47 But, generating other

(maybe westernised, but maybe not) ways of thinking (about) curriculum towards curriculum-ing as

a processing of learning~teaching (re)turns me to Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming, in which there is

a co-existence of becoming-child(ren) with/in a dynamically changing processing that intensifies

expressions of monad~nomad singularity~subjectivity. From/with/in my understanding, this way of

conceiving children and their childhood(s) resonates with your curricular performativity of

doing~learning~living, Marcy, and with that of the children’s play(ing) throughout the data.

In an odd sort of way, I think perhaps theorising about the pedagogy of play has become a serious

endeavour that would now benefit from a more play-full approach. Play is seriously children’s

doing~learning~living and is elusive and indefinable in its complexity. As I flowed with various

children’s play(ing) in the processes of videoing, transcribing and then engaging with a

rhizoanalysis of the play(ing) of the data, everything became inextricably entwined, yet, in not

resisting but continuing with the flow, the complexity was illuminated in a becoming of

(im)perceptibility. So, again I eschew facts as to how practitioners can engage with this way of

working to understand children, their childhood(s) and curriculum through their play(ing) and

suggest that it is in the processing with the children that things come into the light, that it involves

be(com)ing with children differently. Through his play(ing) Tim foregrounds the significance of his

expressions of becoming-child(ren) to his doing~learning~living and to (my) adult

(mis)interpretations of what that means for him, other children nearby and adults in surrounding

worlds – not only researchers and teachers, but adults in Tim’s wider world. Learning to think of

children engaging with flows of power-fullness and respecting their expressions of these requires

letting go of the adult|child binary and the safety that this has unfairly afforded adults through many

eras. It also requires stepping aside from the familiarity of a developmental/behaviourist analysis.

To let go and step aside may be scary and seem unwise to some, but in doing so, we open

(ourselves) (to) possibilities for (re)conceiving children and childhood(s) and for receiving children’s

understandings towards generating incipiently different ways of doing thinking of curriculum.

As for the rhizo of the inquiry, methodology and analysis of research, I do not doubt that there are

as many ways of doing this as there are nano-seconds spent in any research context, from design

to dissemination and further. That there are infinite possibilities for using rhizome in research does

not make it easy as is apparent in various plateaus here. As I discovered throughout, particularly in

the writing, there are modernist constraints and containments that pervade and sometimes these

are hard to dispense with. Often it took someone else to attract my attention to these – Tim and my

supervisors, for example – but in other times it seemed the only way through was to move to or

47 Woodrow and Press (2007).

Aftwrdng

237

generate other passages for negotiation as ways of leaving the limit(ation)s. This was to

actively~passively resist by continuing processing with my doing~learning~living otherwise in other

ways, everything always already becoming – the thesis-assemblage and all it illuminates, and me.

So, Marcy, it is time to say farewell. It’s not that this curricular conversation of my thinking is over,

as I will forever be talking with you as young children about curricular performativity in (a) milieu(s)

of becoming. It is merely to pause in the intermezzo…with/in in-between liminal spaces of

interstiality, de~territorialising lines of flight, e/ir/dis/inter/ruptions of rhizo inquiry…and…and…

and…

Me he manu motu i te mahanga

As the bird escapes the snare, for you Marcy, I joy-fully escape the limitations of modernist, linear,

arborescent thought to fly free in my play-full thinking of re(con)ceiving children and curriculum

differently.

Respect-fully, and in celebration of our curricular play(ing)

Your friend

P.S. The next moment is (y)ours…48

48 With thanks to Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery and Taubman (1995, p. 868) and Daignault (1992, cited in Pinar et al., 1995, p. 847).

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Appendices

261

Appendices

Appendix i: Children’s consent booklet

Appendices

262

Appendices

263

Appendix ii: Poem

embodied (un)consciousness

doing~learning~living

learning embodied with(in) doing and living

with(in) rhizomatic intensities of wobbly jelly

plateaus of

flavours textures colours sounds happenings

intermingling

thoughts words ideas no-words forewords afterw.rds

enactively linking learning~living

In the modernist, analytical sandwich, learning is a nounal structure.

Assured, secured |learning| is valorised.

|Learning| = |information| = |knowledge|.

|Experiences| are |learning| |for life|, |life-long|.

Boxed | marked | separated | states of being |.

Demarcation: commas, colons, fullstops, periods.

Taxonomies – categorising, bounding, constraining, limiting.

Restraining | doing | learning | living | replete with glottal stops.

nomad’s mess with method nomads mess with method

rhizomatically messing around

…thinking of Other/other ways/wise (of) thinking of…

thinking about how to think writing about how to write differently

(e)merging thinking

(un)consciously embodied

embodying (un)consciousness

doing~living~learning~living~doing~

with(in) the writing of a rhizo(-analytical) assemblage

with(in) thinking about young children learning

re(con)ceiving children in curriculum - mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming

Documents