Children’s Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences

This theoretical article views children’s risky play from an evolutionary perspective, addressing specific evolutionary functions and especially the anti-phobic effects of risky play. According to the non-associative theory, a contemporary approach to the etiology of anxiety, children develop fears of certain stimuli (e.g., heights and strangers) that protect them from situations they are not mature enough to cope with, naturally through infancy. Risky play is a set of motivated behaviors that both provide the child with an exhilarating positive emotion and expose the child to the stimuli they previously have feared. As the child’s coping skills improve, these situations and stimuli may be mastered and no longer be feared. Thus fear caused by maturational and age relevant natural inhibition is reduced as the child experiences a motivating thrilling activation, while learning to master age adequate challenges. It is concluded that risky play may have evolved due to this anti-phobic effect in normal child development, and it is suggested that we may observe an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society if children are hindered from partaking in age adequate risky play.Children’s Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling ExperiencespublishedVersio

Higher education as context for music pedagogy research

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"We Don't Allow Children to Climb Trees": How a Focus on Safety Affects Norwegian Children's Play in Early-Childhood Education and Care Settings

On one hand, we want to keep children as safe as possible; on the other, learning to take risks is a normal part of childhood and child development. In Norway, research has shown that early-childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners have, in the past, taken a permissive approach to children’s risk taking. In this article, the authors surveys ECEC managers to explore how the increasing focus on safety in Norwegian society affects ECEC programs. They find the previously more relaxed attitudes regarding risky play among children to be changing in such settings. They describe restrictions recently introduced into everyday program activities, and they discuss the implications both for ECEC pedagogy and for children’s play, learning, and development.acceptedVersio

Material as actor in the enactment of social norms: Engaging with a sociomaterial perspective in childhood studies to avoid the ‘traps of closure’

This article employs a sociomaterial perspective and explores how material artefacts take part in the enactment of social norms by analysing empirical examples from two different childhood studies projects in Norway. Drawing on interview data with tweens, (children aged 8–12), and observational data from an early education and care institution (ECEC), we argue that material, in this case toys and makeup, make a difference in the enactment of social norms in children's everyday lives. Our aim is to demonstrate the malleability of a sociomaterial perspective and show how this can lead to new insights and open childhood studies as a field.publishedVersio

The Paradox of Documentation in Early Childhood Special Education in Finland and Norway: Exploring Discursive Tensions in the Public Debate.

A child’s right to special educational support is often ensured through documentation, which, as an institutional practice, is consequential. We explore documentation as a policy solution in Finnish and Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems, which have both been undergoing changes as the realization of special educational support is found to be insufficient. We investigate discursive tensions in the public debate regarding documentation and illustrate tensions between documentation as 1) a way of safeguarding a child’s right vs. a barrier to support, 2) assessments requiring distance from vs. closeness to the child, and 3) decisions requiring pedagogical vs. administrative positions.publishedVersio

Leadership for Developing Consensus of Perspectives on Children’s Learning in Early Childhood Centers

During the last few years, the staff in Norwegian Early Childhood Centers (ECCs) have been exposed to increased pressures for improving children’s learning. This increased demand requires increasing consciousness among staff about perspectives on children’s learning. On this basis, the following question was raised: How do ECC directors work to promote consensus among staff of perspectives on children’s learning? The theoretical framework to answer this question was based on different perspectives on learning by children and staff. Further, it addressed ‘direct and indirect leadership’ and ‘pedagogical leadership’. The research has a qualitative design, and data were collected by semi-structured interviews with 16 directors of ECCs. Results from these interviews show that half of the directors have worked to promote consensus of perspectives on children’s learning among staff in an explicit way, while others have used indirect methods. One director had not worked with this learning concept. The directors have been working to promote consensus among staff in many ways by exercising direct and indirect pedagogical leadership. Many directors found this work time-consuming

A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry

In this article, the authors explore and contribute to producing a performative research paradigm where post-qualitative as well as artistic research might dwell and breathe. Entering a thread of discussion that started with Haseman’s A manifesto for performative research in 2006, and building on their own friction-led research processes at the edges of qualitative research, the authors plug in with performativity, non-representational theories and methodologies, post-qualitative inquiry and post approaches. A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry is proposed, where knowledge is viewed as knowledge-in-becoming as the constant creation of difference through researcher entanglement with the research phenomenon and wider world. A performative paradigm produces a space for movement, (artistic) freedom, (post-qualitative) experimentation and inclusion. A performative research paradigm also offers provocations that shake long-established notions about what research is and should be. Within a performative research paradigm, learning/be(com)ing/knowing is always in-becoming – as is the performative paradigm itself.publishedVersio

The Prevalence of Risky Play in Young Children’s Indoor and Outdoor Free Play

Research on children’s risky play and young children’s risk taking is a relatively new research area that has drawn the attention of many researchers in the last decades. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, no earlier studies have measured the prevalence of risky play when children can freely choose what to play, with whom, and where. Most research on risky play has also exclusively focused on outdoor play. This study aims at examining the occurrence and characteristics of children’s risky play, indoors and outdoors, in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. Children (N=80) were observed in twominute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 1878 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for the occurrence of several categories of risky play. Results revealed that risky play was registered in 10.3% of the total data material. The data is further analysed to explore distribution among diferent types of risky play, as well as diferences between gender, age and environment (indoors vs. outdoors).publishedVersio

Language revitalization in Sámi Early Childhood Education and Care institutions

The aim of this study in seven Sámi Early Childhood Education and Care institutions (ECECs) is to explore how we can understand language revitalization strategies in Sámi ECECs in the light of socio-cultural theories on human learning. The ECEC staff informants point to the important role the Sámi language has in their everyday practice, and to its role in children’s psychosocial development. They highlighted language revitalization in relation to children’s language competence in general, language in play, the staff’s language competence and the language environment in the ECECs. The Sámi ECECs have tried to create an environment for language revitalization based on the children’s participation, social interaction, play, and previous experiences. In some of the ECECs the staff speak less Sámi than some of the children. To stimulate language revitalization, it will be important for the children, according to Vygotsky (1978, p. 86), to communicate with staff who are more proficient in Sámi than they are. To be able to supervise and/or work together with Sámi-speaking ECECs, it is essential that the Educational-Psychological Services (EPS) staff have knowledge of the practices and possibilities for language revitalization.Language revitalization in Sámi Early Childhood Education and Care institutionspublishedVersio

The Polyphonic Embodied Self and Educational Organization: A Case of Theory Transplantation

Building on Bakhtin’s theories of polyphony and carnival, the article develops the concept of the polyphonic embodied self and uses it to suggest ways of rethinking educational organizations. The article examines a special relation of individual to the collective body, inspired by the grotesque body as a natural part of carnival time in the Middle ages, also allowing for resistance. Carnival creates parallel utopian human communities – and the basis for dreams. The unofficial world was marked by anti-power, by breaking taboos, and the ambivalent laughter culture was essential in the chaotic, but united multi-voiced body of carnival. According to Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, organizations can be viewed as systems of relations among individuals and with the world. The authors treat this as a case of transplanting a theory into a non-native context and reflect on what could be the rules for such an application.acceptedVersio