Children's everyday storying: A post-intentional phenomenological study in inclusive early childhood education

Abstract

Children’s storying is a phenomenon of their day-to-day experiences in living and imaginary worlds. Children are storying their relational worlds when they speak, act, encounter, fantasise, and create. Through storying, children shape and reshape themselves, connect with others, and create their multifarious worlds. Children of all abilities, languages, cultures, gender identities, and socioeconomic statuses are the protagonists of their everyday stories. Everyday stories might not have clearly sequenced start-middle-end structures, elegant expressions, or dramatic plots, but they are authentic, important and evolving. Everyday stories are “told” not only verbally but also multimodally through facial expressions, gestures and movements in intraactions with people and things. In this study, I explore the phenomenon of storying to address the overarching research question: What is the nature of children’s everyday storying in inclusive ECE? The nature of storying was examined through the natural intra-actions of people and environments in their day-to-day play, conversations, and visual and embodied creations. Post-intentional phenomenology was adopted as a philosophical perspective and methodological approach. Everyday storying experiences of 64 children aged 4–5 in four inclusive early childhood environments in Aotearoa New Zealand and Hong Kong were explored. The two geographical contexts are where my sense of belonging as a practitioner, inquirer, and learner of early childhood education is grounded. Children’s everyday stories (N=297)—the happenings relative to their doing, saying, experiencing, imagining, and creating in their daily lives—were identified from multiple sources. Observations, video recordings, and playful interactions were the major sources, supplemented with photographs of storying artefacts and environments. Thirteen teachers and 15 parents shared their views on storying in informal conversations. These multiple sources served as phenomenology materials. I used a post-intentional phenomenological approach with posthuman theory to playfully engage with messy and complicated matters that emerged (e.g., family knowledges, silences, and conflicts) and explore the possibilities in children’s intertwined intra-actions with people and things (e.g., cultural sustainability, affects, and relationships). Three waves of analysis were conducted. Five storying genres were identified in the first wave of analysis of all stories. The second wave gave an account of overall contextualised storying experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand and Hong Kong. The third wave of analysis focused on intentionalities, which convey inextricable connectedness in the space between children and their storying environments. Findings from the first two waves of analysis are presented and discussed in Chapter 4. Findings from the third wave of analysis are illustrated through six selected stories and presented in Chapters 5–7 of tentative manifestations, highlighting the sustainable, affective, and relational nature of storying in inclusive early childhood environments. Tentative manifestations foreground storying as complex and contextualised, not to be generalised, and thus open to change. Storying creates in-between spaces where children and things belong in connected relationships and shape themselves as unique beings. Storying as an inquiry approach opens educators and researchers to enter children’s worlds and co-create boundless possibilities that enrich their wellbeing, celebrate their ways of being, and strengthen their pathways of becoming.