Shifting images ‐ thinking 'the child' in, through and with visual art:(re)configuring 'the child' inside/outside early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

(Re)configuring images (of the child or otherwise) is a complex and challenging process with multiple meanings (Escher, 2008; Foucault, 2001; Ranciere, 2009). Yet the notion 'image of the child' offered in (early childhood) education literature (and research) is centred around understanding image as a social, cultural construct, a representation, a discourse and/or a discursive account (e.g. Cederman, 2008; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999; Duhn, 2006; Olsson, 2009; Rinaldi, 2006; Sorin & Galloway, 2006). This thesis presents what happened when a researcher and several teachers engage with (visual- )art as a way of (re)configuring images of the child through thinking the child in, through and with (visual-)art. I argue that 'doing (visual-)arts-based research', an interdisciplinary poststructural methodology that draws in, on and around the disciplinary principles and practices of (visual-)art, opens up spaces for (re)configuring imaging the child - and understandings of (visual-)art - in early childhood education and research (e.g. Eisner, 2008; Galman, 2009). Experimenting with developing understandings of the ontological influences of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri's philosophy of difference, and other concepts that include e.g. an ethics of immanence and potentialities, offered this research opportunities to construct a dynamic and radically different way of working with (visual-)arts-based processes, poststructural analysis and (re)presentation (e.g.) Braidotti, 2008; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; MacLure, 2009). It offered this research a way of becoming that works with, makes use of, "differences, diversities and complexities of ... knowing" (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 9). (Visual-)art and the materiality of the work that (visual-)art produces are recognized as equally important epistemological ways of knowing the world (of the child) that differ to science or philosophy (e.g. Barrett, 2007; Colebrook, 2006; Grosz, 2008, 2008a; Massumi, 2002). The collection of research materials produced has been art-fully, craft-fully (re)presented by the research using Walter Benjamin's dialectical images (or image-thoughts) as a creative mode of critical inquiry (Osborne, 2005; Pensky, 2004; Richter, 2007). This enabled this (visual-)arts-based research to reveal the power and complexities of images, imaging and image-making involved in opening up the spaces available for teachers (and researchers) (re)configuring the child (and/or (visual-)art).