his article explores gendered processes in preschool science through Barad’s agential realism [2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics of the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke Universal Press], and as such, the study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions in how it combines perspectives from emergent science [Siraj-Blatchford, J. 2001. Emergent Science and Technology in the Early Years.” Paper presented at the XXIII World Congress of OMEP. Santiago, Chile, August 3], new materialism, and gender theory. Empirically, the study makes use of data constructed during a field study in a Swedish preschool with five-year-old children. The focus of the field study was the children’s play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. The analysis highlights how the children’s identities and scientific explorations are made possible as well as constrained together with the preschool’s material-discursive environment. As such, the study demonstrates how teachers cannot rely on any environment, activity, choice or subject content to be (gender) neutral.

Drawing on new materialist thought (Barad 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2014), this study explores preschool children’s gendered becomings as they play and explore together with two large boulders in a natural setting. The study takes its point of departure in emergent science (Siraj-Blatchford 2001) which refers to science as a social practice that is already explored by children’s daily play. Data for the project was constructed during a field study in a Swedish preschool with 25 five-year old children. The focus of the field study was the children’s play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. The findings show how also natural materials, as the boulders in this study, can take part in and shape, both the children’s scientific explorations and their gendered becomings. This means that the ways that a child managed to explore and become was dependent on if and how the child managed to co-act and play together with the boulders and friction. However, not only the boulders, but also gender norms functioned as co-creators in this process. This goes against the common thought of children’s play in nature as “free and equal”, a notion that is not often questioned. Studies exploring children’s play and learning outdoors often lack gender perspectives, especially when science is also in focus. One of the article’s conclusions is the need for preschool teachers to engage in how children explore emergent science together with the natural/ material-discursive surroundings. That is, how different natural materials co-act with gender norms in different ways, moment by moment, and thus enable or prevent children from engaging with science and scientific phenomena.

The focus of this study is the co-actings of a 5-year-old girl, a swing, and physical phenomena. The study explores how the swing and physical phenomena worked as co-creators of the girl’s scientific explorations as well as her bodily capacities and identity construction. Empirically, the study makes use of a video sequence generated during a field study in a Swedish preschool with 5-year-old children. The field study focused on the children’s play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. To conceptualize children’s emergent scientific learning as mutual with their identity construction and as being co-created together with nonhuman agents, the study combines perspectives from new materialism, emergent science, physics, and gender theory. As a theoretical and methodological foundation, a new materialist perspective drawing on Karen Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism and diffractive methodology were used, as well as Elizabeth de Freitas and Anna Palmer’s (2016) notion concerning how scientific concepts can work as creative playmates in children’s  explorations. The findings show how the girl, together with the swing, could experience and explore various physical phenomena as well as extend her bodily capacities and become brave and strong. As such, new materialism shows how scientific phenomena can create affordances for an individual’s becomings as scientific as well as how “becoming scientific” can be understood. At the same time, the findings also indicate the importance of teachers not assuming that scientific phenomena are automatically part of children’s play or can be experienced by all children all the time. The explored situation was rare. On most occasions, the girl did not get the same kind of experiences with the swing because of gender norms. I argue that norms and discourses connected to science and gender are not things that “come with” older children or are only introduced by adults. These are instead already in the making and re-making within children’s co-actings with the material-discursive environment in preschool. It is therefore important that teachers engage in children’s embodied play with scientific phenomena, with the aim to empower the children, their bodies, capacities and (science) identities.

Den här studien undersöker samhandlandet mellan en femårig flicka, en gunga och olika fysikaliska fenomen. Det som studeras är hur gungan och de fysikaliska fenomenen fungerade som medskapare av såväl flickans naturvetenskapliga utforskande som hennes identitet. Empirin består av en videosekvens genererad under en fältstudie i en svensk förskola i en grupp med femåriga barn. Fokus för fältstudien var barnens utforskande och lek tillsammans med förskolans lärmiljöer under aktiviteter utan specifik ledning av pedagoger. För att undersöka barns begynnande naturvetenskapliga lärande i samspel med deras identitetsskapande, kombineras perspektiv från nymaterialism, begynnande naturvetenskap (emergent science), en konceptuell förståelse av fysik, samt genusteori. Studiens teoretiska och metodologiska utgångspunkter utgörs av Karen Barads (2007) teori agentisk realism och hennes diffraktiva metodologi, samt de Freitas och Palmers (2016) idé om hur naturvetenskapliga fenomen kan fungera som kreativa lekkamrater i barns lek. Genom en konceptuell förståelse av fysik kunde flertalet fysikaliska fenomen framträda som lekkamrater (de Freitas och Palmer 2016) i flickans utforskande tillsammans med gungan. Tillsammans med Barads teori (2007) blev det möjligt att se hur de fysikaliska fenomenen inte fanns där som ”förexisterande” lärandeinnehåll utan hur de, genom flickans upprepade kroppsliga samhandlande med gungan, kunde ge sig till känna. I situationen blev acceleration, hastighet och kraft inte enbart viktiga lekkamrater i hennes naturvetenskapliga utforskande (de Freitas och Palmer 2016) utan även i hennes identitetskonstruktion. I samhandlande med de fysikaliska fenomenen kunde flickan utöka sin kroppsliga kapacitet och bli till som stark och modig. Resultaten visar därmed hur naturvetenskapliga fenomen kan delta i ett barns (en individs) konstruerande av en naturvetenskaplig identitet samt även av identitet i ett bredare perspektiv. Att bli till som naturvetenskaplig är därmed inte något man kan göra på egen hand utan något man kan bli i sammanflätningar och samhandlande med omvärlden. För att pedagoger ska kunna upptäcka hur barn på många olika sätt utforskar, leker och blir till, tillsammans med naturvetenskapliga fenomen, blir kunskaper om naturvetenskapliga begrepp och fenomen i första hand ett verktyg för dem och i andra hand för barnen. Tillsammans med sådana kunskaper kan pedagoger öppna upp för multipla förståelser för hur det är möjligt för barn i förskolan att påbörja skapandet av en begynnande naturvetenskaplig identitet. Samtidigt visar resultaten att pedagoger inte kan ta för givet att naturvetenskapliga fenomen automatiskt ”ger sig till känna” på samma sätt för alla barn. På grund av könande processer, behöver pedagoger vara uppmärksamma på när, hur och tillsammans med vad som fenomenen gör sig begripliga för olika barn. Situationen i videosekvensen var ovanlig och på daglig basis var möjligheterna få för enskilda barn att utforska och bli till på många olika sätt. Om pedagoger inte tar könande processer i den naturvetenskapliga undervisningen i beaktande finns en risk att vissa barn – redan i förskolan – uppfattas som ”mer naturvetenskapliga” än andra, på samma sätt som studier visar sker i relation till äldre elever och studenter (Carlone 2004).

In this methodological paper we are re-turning (Barad, 2014) parts of the diffractive analyses conducted in a research project on science and gender in preschool (Günther-Hanssen, 2018, in press; Günther-Hanssen, Danielsson, & Andersson, 2020). In our first re-turning we explore how a swing and scientific phenomena in the data co-created the knowledge construction. To do so we engage with how embodiment and re-actualized experiences of swinging came to matter. After this we re-turn how smaller events in the data always are part of larger situations. For this task we elaborate with writing different situations from the data through one another. As we keep on re-turning the analysis, new diffraction patterns evolve with each turn. By the end of the paper our diffractive writings and readings have been re-turned into explanations of how pendulums can be used to think and approach gendering in preschool together with.