The aim of this thesis is to investigate the processes through which mathematical and gendered subjectivity is constituted, reconstituted and maintained in different situations during Early Childhood Teacher Education (ECE). In three research articles it is investigated how student teachers’ subjectivity constitutions are expressed, formulated and reformulated in different discursive and material practices. With the support of feminist poststructural theories, student teachers’ subjectification processes are investigated in relation to the subject of mathematics, gender, different learning and teaching discourses, materials and environments. During the course of the work a theoretical transit is carried out: from Judith Butler’s theories (1990, 1993 and 1997) to Karen Barad’s (2007, 2008) theoretical territory. The empirical data was collected from three cohorts (2005-2007) of a ten-week long mathematics course included in a one-year ECE course called Investigative Pedagogy – Dialogue Reggio Emilia. Examples of the data include memory stories written by student teachers, pedagogical documentation from different mathematics projects, field notes from action research studies in ECE education, survey results and students’ reports. Methodologically, in relation to the first and second articles the thesis works with feminist discourse analysis, deconstructive and performative methodology and in relation to the third article with diffractive and intra-active methodology. The results show examples of how student teachers constitute mathematical subjectivity through complex networks of social relations, learning discourses, gender, material practices, time, space and place. Taking part in alternative, aesthetic interdisciplinary learning practices changes the understanding of student teachers’ mathematical subjectivity, although not always in predictable or uncomplicated ways. In the shift from a discursive and performative way of understanding mathematical subjectivity to an agentic realistic one, the understanding of mathematical subjectivity is widened to include things, materials and environments. This shift implies a decisive meaning for how pedagogical practices can be viewed and, in the long run, how mathematics didactics can be approached for student teachers and young children alike. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished  and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press. Paper 3: Submitted.

I förskolans utemiljö är det vanligt att det finns en sandlåda på gården. Den är centralt placerad och barnen är där och leker. Enligt den nya Skollagen och förskolans reviderade läroplan ska verksamhetens innehåll vila på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet. Detta gäller även den verksamhet som pågår i sandlådan. Men vad är det som sker när sanden, barnen och lekredskapen möts i sandlådan? Detta är en kvalitativ studie som utifrån ett intra-aktivt perspektiv syftar till att synliggöra hur sanden i sandlådan, lekredskap och de yngsta barnen (1-3 år) skapar möjligheter och villkor för lek och meningsskapande. Utifrån fotografier, anteckningar och videofilm har nya begrepp skapats för att kunna beskriva och förklara det som sker i sandlådan. Resultaten visar på en ständig rörelse där sand, barn och lekredskap förflyttas, förändras och förvandlas. Barn, sand och lekredskap leker tillsammans i ömsesidiga och sammanvävda intra-aktioner. Studiens resultat bidrar till att visa på dessa komplexa processer och hur små barn, med hela sin kropp och alla sinnen, medvetet tillsammans med sanden och lekredskapen skapar ny mening och nya möjligheter. / In the preschool outdoor environment, it is common that there is a sandbox. It is centrally located and the children are there and play. According to the new Education act and Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 (Revised 2010) the content should be based on scientific evidence and proven experience. This also applies to the activities being performed in the sandbox. But what is happening in the sand, when the children and play equipment come together in the sandbox? This is a qualitative study based on an intra-active perspective, whose purpose is to visualize how the sand in the sandbox, the playground equipment and the youngest children (1-3 years) create opportunities and conditions for play and meaning. Based on photographs, notes and video, new concepts are created to describe and explain what happens in the sandbox. The results show a continuous movement in which sand, children, and playground equipment is moved, changed and transformed. Children, sand and playground equipment play together in mutual and intertwined intra-actions. The findings in the study help to demonstrate how these complex processes and young children, with the whole body and the senses, consciously together with the sand and play equipment create new meaning and new possibilities.

Concentrating on six plays in the 1610s, this thesis explores the ways theatrical visual effects described as “strange” channel the period’s moral anxieties about rhetoric, technology, and scepticism. It contributes to debates in repertory studies, textual and material culture, intellectual history, theatre history, and to recent revisionist considerations of spectacle. I argue that “strange” spectacle has its roots in the materialisation of morality: the presentation of moral ideas not as abstract concepts but in physical things. The first part of my PhD is a detailed study of early modern moral philosophy, scepticism, and material and textual culture. The second part of my thesis concentrates on Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1609-10) and The Tempest (1611), John Webster’s The White Devil (1612), and Thomas Heywood’s first three Age plays (1611-13). These spectacular plays are all written and performed within the years 1610-13, a period in which the changes, challenges, and developments in both stage technology and moral philosophy are at their peak. I set these plays in the context of the wider historical moment, showing that the idiosyncrasy of their “strange” stagecraft reflects the period’s interest in materialisation and its attendant moral anxieties. This thesis implicitly challenges some of the conclusions of repertory studies, which sometimes threatens to hierarchise early modern theatre companies by seeing repertories as indications of audience taste and making too strong a divide between, say, “elite” indoor and “citizen” outdoor playhouses. It is also aligned with recent revisionist considerations of spectacle, and I elide divisions in criticism between interest in original performance conditions, close textual analysis, or historical-contextual readings. I present “strangeness” as a model for appreciating the distinct aesthetic of these plays, by reading them as part of their cultural milieu and the material conditions of their original performance.