Conference Agenda

As two scholars who have read and thought with post-philosophies, such as posthumanism, we invite a discussion on how post-philosophies have, and could, open-up possibilities for thinking about early literacies. The paper traces the development and contribution of post-perspectives in relation to early childhood literacies, before identifying three interconnected facets via which post-philosophies demand we conceptualize, teach, and research literacies: uncertainty, mundanity, and movement. Concepts such as these, we argue, have frayed the edges of ‘the box’ that defines literacy via Humanist logics, thus serving as gathering points for a growing critique of the assumption that ‘human’ is a fixed and unproblematic category. Through personal reflections of how post-philosophical concepts have forced us to think differently, we ask; what has, does and could post-philosophies, specifically those that align with posthumanism, contribute to the field of early childhood literacies?

This paper speaks to the conference theme by inviting others to consider how post-philosophies offers creativity and interconnectedness in unprecedented times. Thinking with theories and ideas outside of our normal disciplinary homes is a generative process over time and an ethical project of producing difference towards a more just world. As we reflect on and propose, this process is getting us somewhere otherwise conceptually and politically, not as a quick fix or neat answer, but as an iterative and long-term intellectual project that also produces new, different realities along the way. Inspired by writings on thresholding, we propose the phrase ‘child with/in the world’ which encompasses what post-philosophies produce for us. Post-philosophies are not trying to get rid of ‘child’, rather, post-philosophies shift how we think and teach children with/in the more-than-human lively world.

Education is often positioned as a ‘solution’ to social inequalities, with literacy framed as a set of discrete skills essential to children’s well-being. Reading and writing can help children relax, gain confidence and understand others. However, dominant discourses privilege fixed, decontextualised views of literacy and narrow, eudaimonic outcomes such as achievement, belonging and economic security. These frameworks ignore the complex relations between literacy and well-being, positioning children as ‘becomings’ not ‘beings’ and aligning with neoliberal logics of future human capital.

This paper explores the digital-literacies-in-the-body of three-year-old Niyat as she engages with diverse cultural, material and social resources including the (post-)digital in the context of her Eritrean diasporic family home in the UK. Drawing on a home-based ethnographic study, I discuss some of the ways in which my research unfolded ‘from the floor up’; reflecting on who I became in my research with Niyat and her family, how the things I noticed seemed to matter and how our shared practices became methods over time.

I also trace how Niyat’s embodied practices with media and everyday objects - such as stone carrying seemingly connected to her watching of In the Night Garden or dancing with her mother and sister to Eritrean worship songs and Beyonce’s Single Ladies - can be read as complexly entangled action texts. These moments highlight how very young children both draw from, and transform, the cultural, affective, and material ecologies they inhabit.

Posthuman orientations guide this analysis, unsettling teleological accounts of literacy as linear skill development and instead foregrounding affect, embodiment and relationality. In doing so, the paper reimagines young children’s digital practices as simultaneously cultural, critical, embodied and affective, expanding thinking about what ‘counts’ as ‘digital literacy’ and its association with ‘well-being’ in early childhood.

Research on language and literacy practices has addressed the different contexts in which children make meaning, and how children are full, competent and able when considered as phenomena. However, narrow considerations of language in the classroom may tend to put the focus on what the children lack. This situation is particularly striking in the case of non-normative children where deficits, associated to disorders or syndromes, populate educational discourses. In this contribution we focus on a child with a diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) that puts the focus on her lack of words. We apply neo-materialist theories to pay attention to what emerges when DLD diagnosis becomes part of a classroom entanglement.

In our research we accompany Alice, a five-years-old child diagnosed with DLD, during a school moment in which her classroom group reads a silent book that recreates Little Red Riding Hood tale. We pay attention to Alice’s sounds, silences and movements, and to what those same sounds, silences and movements do. Considered that way, agency during this event does not belong solely to Alice, nor solely to the non-human matter. We read this event through Barad while we assume that concepts and ideas are not constituted autonomously. In our approach we apply the concepts of material-discursive apparatus and agency to look into non-normative children in a different way. In doing so, we re-conceptualise DLD, Alice, the classroom floor or Little Red Riding Hood. We reflect on what DLD does and how it creates relations, transforming both the human and the non-human and challenging standard definitions of DLD as deficit.

This paper explores how very young children make sense in museums through refrains: small, repeated utterances, sounds, and gestures. We explore how these fragile and fleeting refrains shape children’s engagements with cultural spaces, considering their implications for museum education and early childhood literacies.

Background

Research on early language development often emphasises “serve and return” interactions between adults and children. However, posthuman and affective perspectives highlight the material, multisensory and relational dimensions of language. Building on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the refrain, we propose that children’s sense-making emerges through rhythmic patterns of repetition that are at once generative and precarious—holding things together only temporarily, always at risk of dissolving.

Methods

The study draws on a collaboration with Humber Museums Partnership. We conducted ethnographic observations and continuous audio recordings with families and under-fives across diverse museum and heritage sites. Data consists of field notes, audio vignettes, and researcher reflections, analysed with attention to rhythm, affect, fragility, and place-making.

Findings

Our analysis identifies refrains as rhythmic, fragile, and emplaced. Vignettes such as “waddle waddle” at a penguin enclosure, “ding-bell” during play with a toy, or whispered repetitions of “it’ll be alright” show how refrains create temporary territories of order and belonging. These refrains are unstable and contingent, breaking apart as quickly as they coalesce, yet precisely through this fragility they open possibilities for new relations and sense-making across bodies, soundscapes, and places.

Conclusions

We argue that refrains demonstrate how children’s literacies are aesthetic, improvisatory, fragile, and multisensory, exceeding conventional models of language. Museums can play a vital role in supporting these precarious yet creative practices, providing hospitable spaces where young children’s vocal, embodied, and relational engagements are valued. Attending to refrains expands understandings of early childhood language beyond developmental norms, foregrounding rhythm, affect, and fragility as central to children’s cultural encounters.