Movement and Experimentation in Young Children's Learning ─ Deleuze and Guattari in Early Childhood Education

In contemporary educational contexts young children and learning are tamed, predicted, supervised, controlled and evaluated according to predetermined standards. Contesting such intense governing of the learning child, this book argues that the challenge to practice and research is to find ways of regaining movement and experimentation in subjectivity and learning.

Vivid examples from Swedish preschools – involving children, teachers, teacher students and educators and researchers - are woven together with the theories of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, bringing important new concepts and practices to the early childhood field. This ground-breaking book investigates three key areas:



the need to focus on ‘process’ rather than ‘position’, as positioning of any kind, such as learning goals or developmental stages, hampers movement.


working with methods that recognise science’s inventiveness and productivity, demonstrating how the events in which children take part can remain open ended and in movement.


Re-considering the dichotomy between the individual and society as a ‘cause and effect’ relationship, which immobilizes subjectivity and learning and hinders experimentation.


Challenging dominant ways of thinking, Movement and Experimentation in Young Children's Learning offers new possibilities for change and provokes a re-evaluation of the educational system’s current emphasis on predetermined outcomes and fixed positions.

This book provides researcher and students with a sound theoretical framework for re-conceptualising significant aspects of movement and experimentation in early childhood. Its many practical illustrations make this a compelling and provocative read for and student taking course in Early Childhood Studies.

Liselott Mariett Olsson is in the Department of Didactic Science and Early Childhood Education at the University of Stockholm, Sweden.

Contents Foreword Acknowledgements PROLOGUE – ENTERING A PROBLEM Walking and surfing Purpose of the study; the construction of a problem PART I - CONTEXTUALIZING THE PROBLEM 1. Practical resources: preschools in Stockholm and its suburbs, where subjectivity and learning take on the features of a relational field 2. Theoretical resources: a Deleuzian/Guattarian philosophy of relations and creations, and experimental empiricism 3. Micropolitics and segmentarity in early childhood education PART II - METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 4. Pedagogical work and transcendental empiricism 5. Pedagogical documentation treated as events, a culture, a use, a style PART III - ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS 6. Assemblages of desire in early childhood education 7. Conclusions EPILOGUE-OUT OF ORDER Notes References