Defying the Developmental Child: Experimenting With Provocative Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: Entanglements Beyond and Inside the Young Child

Abstract

Inspired by Deleuzian-informed research practices, this paper experiments with provoking practices to defy dominant developmental notions of childhood. Based on uncanny encounters the author had with an art exhibition, the paper reworks a humanist ontology by bringing together the discursive, the material, the human, and the more-than-human through the interweaving of provocations and encounters. Uncanny encounters and provocations set into motion meanings about childhood that sit outside of developmentalism and are rarely entertained in the field of early childhood education.

Author

• Mindy Blaise, Victoria University - Melbourne