Becoming Child and Sustainability—The Kindergarten Teacher as Agency Mobiliser for Sustainability Through Keeping the Concept of the Child in Play

Anita Tvedt Crisostomo and Anne B. Reinertsen
Additional contact information
Anita Tvedt Crisostomo: KINDknow—Kindergarten Knowledge Centre for Systemic Research on Diversity and Sustainable Futures, Faculty of Teacher Education, Arts and Sports, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5063 Bergen, Norway
Anne B. Reinertsen: Department of Teacher Education, Østfold University College, P.O. Box 700, 1757 Halden, Norway

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-10

Abstract: In this article, we seek to theorize the role of the kindergarten teacher as an agency mobiliser for sustainability through keeping the concept of the child in play, ultimately envisioning the child as a knowledgeable and connectable collective. This implies a non-dialectical politics of multiplicity ready to support and join a creative pluralism of educational organization and teacher roles for sustainability. Comprising friction zones between actual and virtual multiplicities that replace discursive productions of educational policies with enfoldedness, relations between bodies and becomings. This changes the power, position and function of language in and for agency and change. Not through making the child a constructivist change-agent through language but through opening up the possibilities for teachers to explore relations between language and matter, nature and culture and what might be produced collectively and individually. We go via the concepts of agencement expanding on the concept of agency, and conceptual personae directing the becoming of the kindergarten teacher. Both concepts informed by the transformational pragmatics of Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix Guattari (1930–1992). The overarching contribution of this article is therefore political and pragmatic and concerns the constitution of subjectivity and transformative citizenships for sustainability in inter- and intra-generational perspectives.

Keywords: early childhood education and care; the wicked problem of sustainability; child agency; the pedagogy of the concept; critical posthumanism; constitution of subjectivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5588/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5588/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:10:p:5588-:d:556291

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().