Through a series of exquisite encounters with children, and through a
lucid opening up of new aspects of poststructuralist theorizing, Bronwyn
Davies opens up new ways of thinking about, and intra-acting with,
children.
This book carefully guides the reader through a wave of thought that
turns the known into the unknown, and then slowly, carefully, makes new
forms of thought comprehensible, opening, through all the senses, a deep
understanding of our embeddedness in encounters with each other and with
the material world.
This book takes us into Reggio-Emilia-inspired Swedish preschools in
Sweden, into the author's own community in Australia, into poignant
memories of childhood, and offers the reader insights into:
- new ways of thinking about children and their communities;
- the act of listening as emergent and alive;
- ourselves as mobile and multiple subjects;
- the importance of remaining open to the not-yet-known.
Defining research as diffractive, and as experimental, Davies'
relationship to the teachers and pedagogues she worked with is one of
co-experimentation. Her relationship with the children is one in which
she explores the ways in which her own new thinking and being might
emerge, even as old ways of thinking and being assert themselves and
interfere with the unfolding of the new. She draws us into her ongoing
experimentation, asking that we think hard, all the while delighting our
senses with the poetry of her writing, and the stories of her encounters
with children.
