This colloquium shares experiences from doing ethnographic fieldwork with young children and the challenges that followed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project DIGIKIDS Sweden has its focus on very young children (birth to three years) and their engagement with digital media technologies in their homes. The pandemic put the project on hold,…

The aim of this article is to illustrate the potential of 'atmosphere' in order to consider more inventive ways of developing the language of young Norwegian ethnic minority children. The article draws on ethnographic data that emerged from doctoral studies. The analysis of the data draws on aspects of Arendt's philosophical work and Bakhtin's…

Western play theories and practices have had a dominant role in creating China's current discursive condition for preschool play. They are also essential to current knowledge production about play. However, this dominance tends to be transferred into rural preschools, which have recently mushroomed and demanded play activities. The authors reflect…

Research shows that modern forms of colonization are vested with globalizing discourses which include early childhood education, gender, and curriculum policies and practices that are Euro-western based. In this collaborative qualitative study, four ethnographic researchers--two who conduct research in Nepal and two who conduct research in…

This article uses autoethnography as the method of inquiry to explore definitions and contexts of early childhood education leadership. This affords a new space between the subjective and objective, the autobiographical and the cultural, to write in a way that lies between literature and the social sciences. Against a backcloth of scientific and…

The purpose of this investigation is to deepen understanding of the clandestine professional lives of men who care for young children, exploring the pressure to hide parts of themselves experienced by many. The author utilizes an autoethnographic approach to examine social and psychological experiences he has navigated during his work as a…

This article discusses the merits of vitalism theory in practice. It suggests a more creative and ecological approach to vitalism theory in the field of child health and development as a way of unlocking childhood potential and research innovation. By using an example from the author's doctoral research concept (based on Deleuzian ideas) for…

Grounded in critical and emancipatory theories, five critical ethnographies about the lives of children, grandchildren, colleagues, students, and teachers are analyzed and synthesized to illuminate the ways in which individuals are racially socialized over their lifespans. Three propositions for early childhood contexts were apparent across the…

In this article, the authors problematize the dichotomization of play and learning that often shapes the agenda of early childhood education research and practice. This dichotomization is driven in part by the tendency to define learning in terms of formal learning (i.e. learning as an outcome of direct instruction and school-based approaches that…

In this article, the authors bring together the cultural studies of emotion with theories that foreground the agency of place and objects in order to analyse the entanglement of place, children and emotion (particularly fear) in children's play encounters. When children, objects and places come into play with each other, intensities and emotions…

This article contextualizes the dark sides of play from a cultural-historical perspective using Fraser's theory of social justice based on the concepts of recognition and redistribution. Through a micro-ethnographic analysis of a kindergarten's daily life and play situations between 2 five-year-old girls, the article describes the dark play from a…

In contrast to studies focusing on digital games as learning tools, this study shows how young children use digital games as a means of facilitating spontaneous play in their everyday lives. This article highlights how 4 three-year-old children's play with digital games revealed their ability to create new forms of play by mixing their digital…

This article approaches newcomer migrant girls' experiences with social competition and relational aggression. This the authors do through a detailed analysis of the interactional practices that a group of preschool-aged girls make use of as they socially exclude one of two newcomer migrant girls from participating in a sharing activity involving…

The past two decades have seen a proliferation of studies investigating, complicating, and reimagining the relationship between second language learning and identity. Yet, with only a handful of exceptions, these studies are limited to adolescent and adult second language learners. In this article, the author proposes that identity research with…

This article considers what the repercussions are when the concept of "quality" is examined within the epistemological and ontological theoretical shifts that are afforded by post-humanism. In particular, Braidotti's configuring of thinking as "nomadic activity" and the need for "process ontology", together with…