Wearing and daring the hat – Exploring the materialities of children’s experiences in research

Authors

• Linnea Bodén Stockholm university, Sweden

Keywords:

children’s experiences, EEG caps, exploratory research, worlding

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to explore how the materialities of EEG caps became vital to produce knowledge on children’s experiences in a research project. By closely examining a six-week exploration together with six five-year-olds at their preschool, the paper focuses on how the making of alternative EEG hats became a worldly and worlding (Haraway, 2008) practice, and was productive of new potential worlds. The exploration is part of a research project that investigates children’s experiences in a large intervention project, at 28 Swedish preschool units. The analysis shows the ways in which materialities were not only related to these experiences, but also crucial for them to emerge. The conclusions highlight that children’s experiences, in the exploratory work, expanded in time and space and that the practices connected to the materialities of the hats came to include other worlding processes, made elsewhere and in other situations.