This study aims to examine outdoor play as a phenomenon in a selection of Swedish preschools; the purpose, the teaching that occurs and to explore the term “teaching” through a new materialist lens. We employ a thematic analysis which focuses on issues such as the environment, staff attitudes, materials available together with curriculum aspirations. Through interviews, case studies and blueprints over two schoolyards we have painted a picture that is more complex than at first glance. A new materials interpretation offers a view that there are more aspects at play than simply staffing levels or the availability of an adequate schoolyard. Other agents that shape the outdoor experience include non-human elements such as materials, the environment, discourses and organizational structures as well as phenomena like the weather. The outdoors doesn’t just offer a range of pedagogical opportunities, it also offers vital opportunities for both staff and children to enjoy restoration; a break for both mind and body. Finally, we review and re-interpret the term “teaching” through a new materials perspective. With the inclusion of materials as potential producers of knowledge we broaden this term to acknowledge the importance of children’s interactions with their environment. We posit that this allows children to elevate their own learning experiences to equal or more than the value of learning facilitated by an adult.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka och bredda kunskapen om hur barns närvaro och avtryck syns i ateljén som rum när de inte är där samt hur intra-aktionen mellan olika aktörer främjar barns agens och estetiska processer. Studiens metod bygger på en visuell etnografisk undersökning, där empirin består av fotografiskt material som samlats in från ateljéer. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår från Barads syn på posthumanism samt Reggio Emilia filosofins beskrivning av rummet som den tredje pedagogen. Fotografierna har analyserats utifrån två analytiska verktyg, visuell analys samt semiotisk bildanalys. Studiens resultat visar att barn lämnat avtryck i ateljén som återfinns när de inte är där. Ett annat resultat är att barns agens syns i rummet och tolkas som antingen given av vuxna och rummets stöttning eller tagen som makt av barn själva. I fotografierna blir barns olika estetiska processer synliga och hur vuxna och rummet möjliggör för dessa. Det sker kontinuerligt intra-aktioner mellan de olika aktörerna som blir synliga genom olika estetiska processer. Det framkommer ur resultatet att rummet har svårt att helt få rollen som den tredje pedagogen, då förskoleverksamheten behöver använda ateljén för andra ändamål, såsom matplats. / The purpose of this study is to examine and broaden the knowledge about how children and their imprints are visible in the atelier when they are not present. Furthermore, how intra-action between different agents enables children's agency and aesthethic processes. The methodology is based on visual ethnography and the data consists of photographs of ateliers. The theoretic framework is based on Barad’s perspective on posthumanism and the Reggio Emilia philosophy’ description of the role of the environment as the third teacher. The method for analysis is visual analysis and semiotic image analysis. The results show that children's imprints can be found in the atelier when the children are not present. The results show that children's agency can be seen and interpreted as either given by others or taken as ways of power by the children themselves. Results show children’s different aesthethic processes and how adults and the room itself enable these. It’s visible that an intra-action occurs between different agents that become visible through different aesthetic processes. What appears through the result is that it’s difficult for the room to take on the role of the third teacher. Due to the organization's need for the room to have several purposes.

Based on Timothy Mortons notion of hyperobject, this material-discursive practice is a cooperative play of forces and intra-active agencies between nature and the technical world. This research reflects especially a paradigmatic shift from the traditional model to one of an interrelated and performative network, in which all of the non-human entities are seen with the same existence and considered to view as operative agents. From Karen Barads agential-realistic perspective and Timothy Mortons theory of hyperobjects, this article importantly examines how to enter into advantageous relationships in a posthumanist designpurpose. What this article contributes are theories and methods that are rooted in an ethical approach to include and explore non-human actors, especially with the starting point of repositioning oneself as a designer and collaborating with the material environment for the outcome for new perspectives. The study has thereof taken its final form into a design where its operational and performative actors, non-human and human agencies, have interacted to produce an audio-reactive installation. / Baserat på Timothy Mortons begrepp om hyperobjekt, är denna materiell-diskursiv praktik en kooperativ lek av krafter och intra-aktiva agenser mellan naturen och den tekniska världen. Denna undersökning reflekterar framförallt ett paradigmskifte från det traditionella formerna till en mer sammankopplad och performativt nätverk, där alla icke-mänskliga aktörer ses med samma grad av existens och övervägs att betraktas som operativa agenter. Utifrån Karen Barads agentiell-realistiska perspektiv och Timothy Mortons teori om hyperobjekt undersöker artikeln huvudsakligen hur man kan ingå i fördelaktiga relationer i ett posthumanistiskt designsyfte. Vad den här artikeln bidrar med är teorier och metoder som förankrar sig i ett etiskt förhållningssätt för att inkludera in och utforska icke-mänskliga aktörer, framförallt med utgångspunkten att ompositionera en designer och samverka med den materiella omgivningen för utfallet av nya perspektiv. Undersökningen har därav tagit sin slutform till en gestaltning där dess operativa och performativa aktörer, icke-mänskliga och mänskliga agenser, har samspelet fram en audio-reaktiv installation.

The purpose of this study is to examine children's intra-active relations with sounds in an explorative work at a preschool (1-to 2-year old children) analyzed through the lens of agential realism (Barad 2007, 2008), and to examine its didactical effects. This study has a transdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary design based on preschool didactics and the natural sciences, mainly physics andbiology. Research data consist of pedagogical documen-tation in the form of a short video sequence generated in a preschool sound project. An agential realistic approach in this study means an analysis of how sound is produced intra-actively in children's play and exploration in a pre-school. Barad’s agential realism also defines specific ethical stances for both the researcher’s involvement in the production of knowledge and the ethical implications of what that new knowledge and reality reveals(Barad 2007, 2008). The results of this study demonstrate the possibility to work with young preschool children around sound and how sound can be understood as a significant partner in children's play and exploration. This work ́s transdis-ciplinary goal, which is to work across the boundaries of preschool practice and scientific theory, contributes new knowledge about how sound vibration, frequency, loudness, hearingand acoustics intra-acts with children ́sbodies, feelings and thoughtsand the educational environmentsand discourses that children face in preschool. This study's specific impact on practice is that preschool staff can gain a greater understanding on the significance and im-pact of furnishings, architecture and organization according to time and place on how children express themselves and explore sound as a material-discursive phenomenon.

Through an experimental theatre play, this thesis explores the development of human-like agency in contemporary “social robot” technology. The entrance point of this study is the gender gap and lack of diversity in contemporary AI/robot development, with an emerging need for interdisciplinary research across robot technology and social sciences. Using feminist technoscience and critical posthumanism as the theoretical framework, this research involves an analysis of a particular social robot case, currently being developed at Furhat Robotics in Stockholm. Inspired by Judy Wajcman (2004), I analyze how socially intelligent machines impact perceptions of human agency, body, gender, and identity within cultural contexts and through interaction. The first part of the empirical research is carried out in the robot-lab. The robot is then, in the second part, invited to perform as an actor in a theatre play. Entangled amidst the other players and audience members, a queered agency starts to reveal itself through human-machine “intra-action” and embodiment (Barad 2003). Human-like agency in machines is shown to be a complex matter, drawing the conclusion that human-beings are vulnerable to a myriad of entanglements and preconceptions that artificial intelligence potentially embodies.

The aim of this study is to understand how dance is becoming through the subject. What agents are entangled in the process of becoming, and what hierarchies are at work within my practice. I want to find out how they figurate and see if it´s possible for these hierarchies to reach positions that are more anti- essential. The study wants to assist with the understanding of this multilayer of relationships that are ongoing in the becoming of dance. The study moves in relation to posthumanist theories, with emphasis on materialists such as Rosi Braidotti and her nomadic subject. The nomadic subject is significant and fundamental to the study because it uses materialistic understandings of the world while not renouncing the subject's previously situational experience and embodied knowledge and takes special considerations to both the external and internal complexity of the subjects becoming. In posthumanist theories, or materialism, material and non-material things as well as humans and non-humans have agency. It is the relationship between different kinds of matter that creates the understanding of what is in the process of becoming. Through diffractive readings, the understanding of intra-action, and with the nomadic subject as a theoretical base, this thesis wants to make visible the different aspects and relations that are active in the becoming of dance through the subject. In addition, linked to the research topic choreography, the study wants to contribute with knowledge about the expanded field of choreography by understanding how internal and external factors contribute to how dance is becoming through the subject. The study also wants to provide and develop understandings for didactical and pedagogical contexts. My own practice is the material on which this study is based and through it I seek understanding for my questions.

This thesis focuses on the relationships between agency, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and people with disability (in various ages). The aim has been to create an understanding by describing and analysing, and as such, to develop knowledge of how people with disabilities experience agency, ICT, and disability in their everyday lives. The frame of reference is inspired by disability studies, feminist studies and science and technologies studies (STS). The empirical material was collected in, Norrbotten (Sweden’s northernmost region) and Muscat (the capital area of the Sultanate of Oman) by an autobiographical account, audio-visual material, drawings, interviews, observations, and reading of textual documents. The thesis consists of six papers. The main findings outline that agency, ICT, disability, and gender are part of intra-actions between material entities (such as bodies, technologies, etc.) and practices. The thesis also explores that disability in Sweden and Oman are understood in a variety of ways. Additionally, it presents that the combination of the notions of interference with situated knowledges can contribute with alternative methodological insights about the interference of disability, gender, ICT, the participants’ and researchers’ experiences and understandings to make accountable knowledge claims. Moreover, the thesis presents that material entities (bodies and technologies) and practices are part of different modes of ordering disability which bear effects on the lives of people with disabilities. It additionally disentangles that materialities such as the Internet intra-act with other material entities (for instance, bodies) and practices which enact various forms of agency which bear effects on the everyday lives of people with disability and their ways to participate. Finally, the thesis outlines some implications that an intra-acting understanding of the use of Internet can contribute with in research which focuses on disability, participation, and agency.

No description available.

I den här vetenskapliga essän undersöker jag relationerna mellan olika former av materia, både mänsklig och icke mänsklig, i ett utbildningsrum. Syftet är en ökad förståelse för hur mening och tillblivelse möjliggörs och begränsas utifrån mitt agerande inom ramen för den materiellt-diskursiva praktik som utbildning utgör. Utgångspunkten är en gestaltande berättelse utifrån olika möten mellan mig, en matta och några kursdeltagare i ett utbildningsrum under en ledarskapsutbildning. Essäns teoretiska ramverk består av tankar från filosofen Martin Bubers dialogfilosofi och den posthumanistiska kvantfysikern, Karen Barads, agentiella realism. Utifrån den posthumanistiska analysmetoden, diffraktion, samläses teorier och insikter genom varandra för att söka fram emot ett tydligare artikulerande kring vad det innebär att agera utifrån mitt yrke och vad som är min praktiska kunskap. / In this scientific essay, I explore the relationships between different forms of matter, both human and non-human, in a training room. The purpose is to increase the understanding of how meaning and becoming are made possible and limited based on my actions within the material-discursive practice that education entails. The starting point is a narrative story based on different meetings between me, a carpet and some participants in a training room during a leadership training. The theoretical framework of the essay consists of thoughts from philosopher Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue and the posthumanist quantum physicist Karen Barad’s, agential realism. Based on the posthumanist method of analysis, diffraction, theories and insights are read through one another to seek a clearer articulation of what it means to act on the basis of my profession and what is my practical knowledge.