Narrative methods in the nursery: (re)-considering claims to give voice through processes of decision-making

From a feminist post-structuralist position I recount and reflect upon using narrative methods in a recent study with a sample of nursery workers in London. Firstly, I offer a critical reflection of feminist concerns to undertake research in emancipatory and recipricol ways. The decision-making that took place at various stages of the study is explored to consider the tensions and ambiguities that come to characterise feminist post-structuralist approaches to narrative research. The paper concludes by arguing that there is still an important need to hear the stories of marginalised groups. However, to overcome concerns that ‘giving voice’ is unethical, arrogant, and partial then heightened transparency about decision- making and representation is vital

Young women negotiating maternal subjectivities: the significance of social class

In this review article, we explore discursive configurations of motherhood and the ways in which class informs how young women engage with these in the construction of their biographies. Our theoretical starting point is principally sociological; we contend that the meanings and identities associated with 'the maternal' have been transformed by the impact of neo-liberalism, and that these produce dilemmas for young women as they constitute themselves as learners and future workers. This article reviews contemporary literature which engages with the ways in which the maternal is a key feature in the (re)making of classed and gendered identities

Pets that Have ‘Something Inside’: The Material Politics of in/Animacy and Queer Kin within the Childhood Menagerie

In this paper, we seek to unsettle and extend understandings of what constitutes the contemporary family in Western minority world society and consider the material politics that follow from such a reconceptualization. We do this by offering a situated exploration into the caring relations and shared biographies that routinely evolve between children, other than human animals and toys within the family home. An emergent field of scholarship (Hohti and Tammi 2019; Taylor 2011; Malone 2015) reveals child–animal relations to be charged with various pedagogical and ideological assumptions, which we argue are partly exported to the relations that form between children and their toys. We undertake a close examination of the relationalities between humans and a range of toys as a means to explore the ways in which care and liveliness materialize in childhood play and what this means for our conceptualizations of ‘the family’. We put to work the idea of queer worlding (Haraway 2008; Osgood and Andersen 2019) and animacy (Chen 2012) alongside Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017, 2011) feminist ethics of care. We then specifically focus on the materiality of robotic toys to illustrate some crucial connectivities and erasures to examine how the queer human–animal and animate–inanimate boundaries are reworked and negotiated in childhood play. These processes create a shift in understanding what matters in children’s lives and how materiality and affective forces co-constitute the posthuman family. This paper engages critically with the ambivalences and tensions that emerge within the domestic menagerie and extend to a planetary scale in ways that are inherently political

Pets that Have ‘Something Inside’: The Material Politics of in/Animacy and Queer Kin within the Childhood Menagerie

In this paper, we seek to unsettle and extend understandings of what constitutes the contemporary family in Western minority world society and consider the material politics that follow from such a reconceptualization. We do this by offering a situated exploration into the caring relations and shared biographies that routinely evolve between children, other than human animals and toys within the family home. An emergent field of scholarship (Hohti and Tammi 2019; Taylor 2011; Malone 2015) reveals child–animal relations to be charged with various pedagogical and ideological assumptions, which we argue are partly exported to the relations that form between children and their toys. We undertake a close examination of the relationalities between humans and a range of toys as a means to explore the ways in which care and liveliness materialize in childhood play and what this means for our conceptualizations of ‘the family’. We put to work the idea of queer worlding (Haraway 2008; Osgood and Andersen 2019) and animacy (Chen 2012) alongside Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017, 2011) feminist ethics of care. We then specifically focus on the materiality of robotic toys to illustrate some crucial connectivities and erasures to examine how the queer human–animal and animate–inanimate boundaries are reworked and negotiated in childhood play. These processes create a shift in understanding what matters in children’s lives and how materiality and affective forces co-constitute the posthuman family. This paper engages critically with the ambivalences and tensions that emerge within the domestic menagerie and extend to a planetary scale in ways that are inherently political

Editorial

This volume offers the reader two articles and an interview with which to engage. Aligned with the objectives of Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodologies the authors variously unfold and problematize conventional qualitative research philosophies and practices in unexpected ways. By undertaking and highlighting how transdisciplinary work might disrupt objective truth claims formed from particular research ideals - the authors avoid generalisations and glorification of their research data. Though the articles approach research practices differently, what unites them is the capacity to capture complexity within entangled assemblages of forces and intensities in which the individual subject is disrupted and rethought. Collective assemblages of desire are created by writing together, thinking together, and creating together - the yet not known. Dynamic elements work together to connect multiple literacies, artistic photos and transgressive writings that evoke liveliness and rhizomatic thinking

Interesting times: a short introduction from the new editorial team of Gender and Education

Editoria