Nomadic writing: exploring processes of writing in early childhood education

This thesis explores how writing is made in two Swedish early childhood classrooms with a focus on how processes of writing are constituted in the writing event and what writings and writers the event offers potentials for. Theoretically, the research project takes its starting point in the assumption that processes of writing are an effect of relations between different elements, where the young writer is only one part of many human and non-human matters that make way for multiple becomings of writing and writers. In this context, the figuration of the nomad thought of Deleuze and Guattari is particularly applicable as it builds on the assumption that everything is always connected, continuously moving. The questions addressed are how the processes of writers, text-like writings and educational writing processes emerge, continue and transform in the writing event, and what writers, text-like writings and educational writing processes the event offers potentials for. The thesis consists of three research articles based on different empirical data. The first article builds on data from the thinking and talking about writing and the writing child in scholarly literature since the 19th century. The second and third articles are based on analyses of ethnographic documentation of six- to seven-year-olds’ writing activities in two early childhood classrooms. The ethnographic strategies of the audio and video recordings, field notes, informal interviews and the collection of children’s text-like writings were carried out over a period of one and a half year during which the children moved from preschool class to their first year of school. The findings of the first article suggest that the image of the ideal writing and the ideal writer has changed over time. However, the image of the young writer training for adult life predominates over time. The main result of the second article shows in specific ways that the mutual production of stabilizing processes of writing and processes of experimentation are vital components for becomings of writers and writing, irrespective of pedagogical framings. The finding of the third article illustrates how the teaching method of creative writing produced over time creates multiple pedagogical trajectories of “doing method” and “doing creativity”. The thesis posits nomadic writing as a way to account for the movement, the connectivity and change in the processes of writing, thus contributing to an understanding of how the proces