Skip to content
1981

A Posthuman Perspective in Arts-Based Research with Children

image of A Posthuman Perspective in Arts-Based Research with Children

This chapter explores an artist in residence engagement with a group of children in an inner city school as part of International children's day supported by The Ark (a cultural centre for children in Dublin). It applies a posthuman theoretical lens as a tool for reflecting on the event and work created.

Keywords: art education ; art with children ; Arts-based research ; posthuman philosophy ; posthuman theory ; posthumanism

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

A Posthuman Perspective in Arts-Based Research with Children
Intellect , 49 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835951286_5
/content/books/9781835951286.c04
/content/books/9781835951286.c04
Loading

Data & Media loading...

References

  1. Atkinson, Denis (2018), Art, Disobedience, and Ethics: The Adventure of Pedagogy, 1st ed., New York: Nature America Ltd.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Barad, Karen (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Biesta, Gert (2021), World-Centred Education: A View for the Present, New York:Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Braidotti, Rosi (2013), The Posthuman, Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Coleman, Rebecca, Page, Tara and Palmer, Helen (2019), ‘Feminist new materialist practice: The mattering of methods’, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture (Focus issue 4), 4:2, https://maifeminism.com/feminist-new-materialisms-the-mattering-of-methods-editors-note/. Accessed 5 June 2019.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Coole, Diana and Frost, Samantha (2010), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392996.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Dahlberg, Gunilla (2016), ‘An ethico-aesthetic paradigm as an alternative discourse to the quality assurance discourse’, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17:1, pp. 124–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949115627910.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Davies, Bronwen (2018), ‘Ethics and the new materialism: A brief genealogy of the “post” philosophies in the social sciences’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39:1, pp. 113–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2016.1234682.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Dolphijn, Rick and Van der Tuin, Iris (2012), New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographie, London: Open Humanities Press, https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.11515701.0001.001.58
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Efland, Arthur (1976), ‘The school art style: A functional analysis’, Studies in Art Education, 17:2, pp. 37–44.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Ferrando, Francesca (2016), ‘A feminist genealogy of posthuman aesthetics in the visual arts’, Palgrave Communications, 2:1, pp. 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.11.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Geerts, Evelien and Van der Tuin, Iris (2016), ‘Literacy and agential literacy’, New Materialism Almanac [preprint].
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Guy, Jenny (ed.) (2020), Curriculum, Bristol: Intellect.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Hackett, Abigail, Pahl, Kate and Pool, Steve (2017), ‘In amongst the glitter and the squashed blueberries: Crafting a collaborative lens for children's literacy pedagogy in a community setting’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 12:1, pp. 58–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2017.1283994.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Hayles, N. Katherine (1999), How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, London: University of Chicago Press, http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/ncad/items/39355. Accessed 15 February 2018.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Hickey-Moody, Anna, Horn, Christine, Wilcox, Marissa and Florence, Eloise (2021), Arts-based Methods for Research with Children, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Hill, Lucy (2021), ‘On being led (astray) by (feral) materials: Posthuman research practice in an outdoor ECEC atelier’, in N. J. Yelland, L. Peters, N. Fairchild, M. Tesar and M. S. Pérez (eds), The Sage Handbook of Global Childhoods, 1st ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Inc., pp. 426–37.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Hill, Lucy and O'Gorman, Aisling (2020), ‘For the love of small stuff: Materialising theory in an early years artist residency’, in A. Hackett, R. Holmes and C. MacRae (eds), Working with Young Children in Museums: Weaving Theory and Practice, London and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, pp. 62–70.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Hodgins, B. Denise (ed.) (2019), Feminist Research for 21st-Century Childhoods Common Worlds Methods, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Holmes, Rachel and Jones, Liz (2016), ‘Flickering, spilling and diffusing body/knowledge in the posthuman early years’, in C. A. Talor and C. Hughes (eds), Posthuman Research Practices in Education, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 108–27, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453082_8.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Honan, Eileen and Bright, David (2016), ‘Writing a thesis differently’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29:5, pp. 731–43, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1145280.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Irwin, Rita, L. (2013), ‘Becoming a/r/tography’, Studies in Art Education, 54:3, pp. 198–215.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Irwin, Rita, L. and De Cosson, Alex (2004), A/R/Tography Rendering Self through Arts-based Living Inquiry, Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Kennedy, David (2006), Changing Conceptions of the Child from the Renaissance to Post-Modernity: A Philosophy of Childhood, New York: Edwin Mellen.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Kind, Silvia (2014), ‘Material encounters’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 5:4.2, pp. 865–77.59
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka, MacLure, Maggi and Ulmer, Jasmine (2018), ‘D…a…t…a…, data++, data, and some problematics’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5th ed., Los Angeles, CA, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington, DC, and Melbourne: Sage Publications, p. 23.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Lather, Patti and St. Pierre, Elizabeth A. (2013), ‘Post-qualitative research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26:6, pp. 629–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788752.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Lester, Stuart (2020), Everyday Playfulness: A New Approach to Children's Play and Adult Responses to It, London and Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Loveless, Natalie (2019), How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. MacRae, Christina (2012), ‘Encounters with a life(less) baby doll: Rethinking relations of agency through a collectively lived moment’, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13:2, pp. 120–31, https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2012.13.2.120.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Manning, Erin (2016), The Minor Gesture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (Thought in the Act).
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Odegard, Nina and Rossholt, Nina (2016), ‘In-betweens spaces: Tales from a Remida’, in A. B. Reinertsen (ed.), Becoming Earth: A Posthuman Turn in Educational Discourse Collapsing Nature/Culture Divides, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 53–63.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Pacini-Ketchabaw, Vanessa, Clark, Veronica and Hodgins, B. Denise (2014), ‘Thinking with paint: Troubling settler colonialisms through early childhood art pedagogies’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 5:4.2, pp. 751–81.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Rotas, Nikki (2015), ‘Ecologies of practice: Teaching and learning against the obvious’, in N. Snaza and J. A. Weaver (eds), Posthumanism and Educational Research, New York: Routledge, pp. 91–104.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Sandvik, Ninni (2010), ‘The art of/in educational research: Assemblages at work’, Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 1:1, pp. 29–40.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Sellers, Margare (2015), ‘… working with (a) rhizoanalysis … and working (with) a rhizoanalysis’, Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 12:1, pp. 6–31.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sellers, Margaret Anne (2009), ‘Re(con)ceiving children in curriculum: Mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Queensland, Australia, https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:180106. Accessed 7 March 2018.
  38. Sinner, Anita (2017), ‘Cultivating researchful dispositions: A review of a/r/tographic scholarship’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 16:1, pp. 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2016.1183408.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Snaza, Nathan (2013), ‘Bewildering education’, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 10:1, pp. 38–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2013.783889.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Snaza, Nathan, Appelbaum, Peter, Bayne, Siân, Carlson, Dennis, Morris, Marla, Rotas, Nikki, Sandlin, Jennifer, Wallin, Jason and Weaver, John A. (2014), ‘Toward a posthumanist education’, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30:2, p. 17.60
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Springay, Stephanie, Irwin, Rita L. and Kind, Sylvia (2008), ‘A/R/Tographers and living inquiry’, in J. G. Knowles and A. L. Cole (eds), Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues, Los Angeles, CA: Sage, Chap. 7, pp. 83–92.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Strom, Katherine J. (2020), ‘Learning from a “Lost Year”: An autotheoretical journey through anxiety and panic’, Capacious Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, 2:3 pp. 2–24, http://capaciousjournal.com/article/learningfromalostyear/. Accessed 23 October 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Taylor, Carol A. and Hughes, Christina (eds) (2016), Posthuman Research Practices in Education, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Thiele, Kathrin (2014), ‘Ethos of diffraction: New paradigms for a (post)humanist ethics’, Parallax, 20:3, pp. 202–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927627.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Trafí-Prats, Laura (2017), ‘Learning with children, trees, and art: For a compositionist visual art-based research’, Studies in Art Education, 58:4, pp. 325–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Ulmer, Jasmine B. (2017) ‘Posthumanism as research methodology: Inquiry in the Anthropocene’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30:9, pp. 832–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2017.1336806.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Wolfe, Cary (2010), What Is Posthumanism? London: University of Minnesota Press (Posthumanities; 8), http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/ncad/items/63808. Accessed 15 February 2018.
     [Google Scholar]

References

  1. Atkinson, Denis (2018), Art, Disobedience, and Ethics: The Adventure of Pedagogy, 1st ed., New York: Nature America Ltd.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Barad, Karen (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Biesta, Gert (2021), World-Centred Education: A View for the Present, New York:Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Braidotti, Rosi (2013), The Posthuman, Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Coleman, Rebecca, Page, Tara and Palmer, Helen (2019), ‘Feminist new materialist practice: The mattering of methods’, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture (Focus issue 4), 4:2, https://maifeminism.com/feminist-new-materialisms-the-mattering-of-methods-editors-note/. Accessed 5 June 2019.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Coole, Diana and Frost, Samantha (2010), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392996.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Dahlberg, Gunilla (2016), ‘An ethico-aesthetic paradigm as an alternative discourse to the quality assurance discourse’, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17:1, pp. 124–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949115627910.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Davies, Bronwen (2018), ‘Ethics and the new materialism: A brief genealogy of the “post” philosophies in the social sciences’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39:1, pp. 113–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2016.1234682.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Dolphijn, Rick and Van der Tuin, Iris (2012), New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographie, London: Open Humanities Press, https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.11515701.0001.001.58
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Efland, Arthur (1976), ‘The school art style: A functional analysis’, Studies in Art Education, 17:2, pp. 37–44.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Ferrando, Francesca (2016), ‘A feminist genealogy of posthuman aesthetics in the visual arts’, Palgrave Communications, 2:1, pp. 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.11.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Geerts, Evelien and Van der Tuin, Iris (2016), ‘Literacy and agential literacy’, New Materialism Almanac [preprint].
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Guy, Jenny (ed.) (2020), Curriculum, Bristol: Intellect.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Hackett, Abigail, Pahl, Kate and Pool, Steve (2017), ‘In amongst the glitter and the squashed blueberries: Crafting a collaborative lens for children's literacy pedagogy in a community setting’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 12:1, pp. 58–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2017.1283994.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Hayles, N. Katherine (1999), How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, London: University of Chicago Press, http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/ncad/items/39355. Accessed 15 February 2018.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Hickey-Moody, Anna, Horn, Christine, Wilcox, Marissa and Florence, Eloise (2021), Arts-based Methods for Research with Children, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Hill, Lucy (2021), ‘On being led (astray) by (feral) materials: Posthuman research practice in an outdoor ECEC atelier’, in N. J. Yelland, L. Peters, N. Fairchild, M. Tesar and M. S. Pérez (eds), The Sage Handbook of Global Childhoods, 1st ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Inc., pp. 426–37.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Hill, Lucy and O'Gorman, Aisling (2020), ‘For the love of small stuff: Materialising theory in an early years artist residency’, in A. Hackett, R. Holmes and C. MacRae (eds), Working with Young Children in Museums: Weaving Theory and Practice, London and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, pp. 62–70.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Hodgins, B. Denise (ed.) (2019), Feminist Research for 21st-Century Childhoods Common Worlds Methods, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Holmes, Rachel and Jones, Liz (2016), ‘Flickering, spilling and diffusing body/knowledge in the posthuman early years’, in C. A. Talor and C. Hughes (eds), Posthuman Research Practices in Education, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 108–27, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453082_8.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Honan, Eileen and Bright, David (2016), ‘Writing a thesis differently’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29:5, pp. 731–43, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1145280.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Irwin, Rita, L. (2013), ‘Becoming a/r/tography’, Studies in Art Education, 54:3, pp. 198–215.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Irwin, Rita, L. and De Cosson, Alex (2004), A/R/Tography Rendering Self through Arts-based Living Inquiry, Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Kennedy, David (2006), Changing Conceptions of the Child from the Renaissance to Post-Modernity: A Philosophy of Childhood, New York: Edwin Mellen.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Kind, Silvia (2014), ‘Material encounters’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 5:4.2, pp. 865–77.59
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka, MacLure, Maggi and Ulmer, Jasmine (2018), ‘D…a…t…a…, data++, data, and some problematics’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5th ed., Los Angeles, CA, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington, DC, and Melbourne: Sage Publications, p. 23.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Lather, Patti and St. Pierre, Elizabeth A. (2013), ‘Post-qualitative research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26:6, pp. 629–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788752.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Lester, Stuart (2020), Everyday Playfulness: A New Approach to Children's Play and Adult Responses to It, London and Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Loveless, Natalie (2019), How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. MacRae, Christina (2012), ‘Encounters with a life(less) baby doll: Rethinking relations of agency through a collectively lived moment’, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13:2, pp. 120–31, https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2012.13.2.120.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Manning, Erin (2016), The Minor Gesture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (Thought in the Act).
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Odegard, Nina and Rossholt, Nina (2016), ‘In-betweens spaces: Tales from a Remida’, in A. B. Reinertsen (ed.), Becoming Earth: A Posthuman Turn in Educational Discourse Collapsing Nature/Culture Divides, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 53–63.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Pacini-Ketchabaw, Vanessa, Clark, Veronica and Hodgins, B. Denise (2014), ‘Thinking with paint: Troubling settler colonialisms through early childhood art pedagogies’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 5:4.2, pp. 751–81.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Rotas, Nikki (2015), ‘Ecologies of practice: Teaching and learning against the obvious’, in N. Snaza and J. A. Weaver (eds), Posthumanism and Educational Research, New York: Routledge, pp. 91–104.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Sandvik, Ninni (2010), ‘The art of/in educational research: Assemblages at work’, Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 1:1, pp. 29–40.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Sellers, Margare (2015), ‘… working with (a) rhizoanalysis … and working (with) a rhizoanalysis’, Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 12:1, pp. 6–31.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sellers, Margaret Anne (2009), ‘Re(con)ceiving children in curriculum: Mapping (a) milieu(s) of becoming’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Queensland, Australia, https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:180106. Accessed 7 March 2018.
  38. Sinner, Anita (2017), ‘Cultivating researchful dispositions: A review of a/r/tographic scholarship’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 16:1, pp. 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2016.1183408.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Snaza, Nathan (2013), ‘Bewildering education’, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 10:1, pp. 38–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2013.783889.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Snaza, Nathan, Appelbaum, Peter, Bayne, Siân, Carlson, Dennis, Morris, Marla, Rotas, Nikki, Sandlin, Jennifer, Wallin, Jason and Weaver, John A. (2014), ‘Toward a posthumanist education’, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30:2, p. 17.60
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Springay, Stephanie, Irwin, Rita L. and Kind, Sylvia (2008), ‘A/R/Tographers and living inquiry’, in J. G. Knowles and A. L. Cole (eds), Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues, Los Angeles, CA: Sage, Chap. 7, pp. 83–92.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Strom, Katherine J. (2020), ‘Learning from a “Lost Year”: An autotheoretical journey through anxiety and panic’, Capacious Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, 2:3 pp. 2–24, http://capaciousjournal.com/article/learningfromalostyear/. Accessed 23 October 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Taylor, Carol A. and Hughes, Christina (eds) (2016), Posthuman Research Practices in Education, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Thiele, Kathrin (2014), ‘Ethos of diffraction: New paradigms for a (post)humanist ethics’, Parallax, 20:3, pp. 202–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927627.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Trafí-Prats, Laura (2017), ‘Learning with children, trees, and art: For a compositionist visual art-based research’, Studies in Art Education, 58:4, pp. 325–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Ulmer, Jasmine B. (2017) ‘Posthumanism as research methodology: Inquiry in the Anthropocene’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30:9, pp. 832–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2017.1336806.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Wolfe, Cary (2010), What Is Posthumanism? London: University of Minnesota Press (Posthumanities; 8), http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/ncad/items/63808. Accessed 15 February 2018.
     [Google Scholar]

  • From This Site

    /content/books/9781835951286.c04
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
/content/books/9781835951286.c04
dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
-contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
10
5
Chapter
content/books/9781835951286
Book
false
en
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test