Revisiting Reggio Emilia through a more-than-human lullaby: diffractive montages as documenting childhood (and) literacy otherwise

ABSTRACT

The authors draw on posthumanism to expand Reggio Emilia’s pedagogical documentation techniques through a diffractive montage. Analysis of a phenomenon involving 4- and 5-year-old children singing a lullaby in a school in Seville (Spain), considers how this diffractive montage leads to a reconfiguration of the pioneering work of Reggio Emilia. The authors also contemplate the narrative of relationships, intra-actions and literacies materialised in this posthumanist diffraction of Reggio Emilia. The diffractive montage sheds light on the new material relations in the phenomenon to enable an expansion of the relational perspective of Reggio Emilia. Throughout this process, learning/play, observer/observed and human/non-human binaries dissolve which troubles the ontological premise of humanistic research. In the diffractive montage epistemic injustice relating to childhood literacies emerges, and so does the imperative to map their multiple familiarities from a de/colonising perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• Reggio Emilia
• posthuman theories
• diffractive montage
• literacy

Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to the CEIP Almotamid in Seville (Spain) and its collaboration as research assistants under the framework of the educational cooperation agreement between the Regional Ministry of Education and Sport and the University of Seville for the development of interventions in the field of innovation and research in non-university public schools of the Regional Ministry of Education. We thank the head teacher, children and the more-than-human ones for inviting us to think otherwise and Dr Hilary McQueen for her careful review of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All the names in this paper are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of financial support for Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) within the framework of the Grant PID2019-104557GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, Grant PRE2020-094747, and the European Union ‘NextGenerationEU’, through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and the Ministry of Universities, for the Requalification of the Spanish University 2021–2023.