Ask Again: A Novel Experiment in Early Childhood Knowledge Relations through a Phenomenological Study of Claims on the Thinking Child's Words and Development

Early childhood, and the wild and tender moments of its care and education, has been depicted by those who love it. Thus, in a profession inscribed by the throngs of love surrounding the work of care and education, early childhood presents an urgent problem for knowledge. The significance of the inquiries explored through my dissertation project are posited on the idea that at the core of debates about how best to care for, educate and respond to young children participating in institutional life, is a constantly communicating child. Communicationas that which both transforms and describes the worldis treated as a horizon for experimental explorations between body and language. This dissertation draws upon phenomenological description as a method that addresses the ways the study of the child has contributed to the humanizing of the child and goes beyond to speculate new methodological possibilities.

The dissertations central question, which asks how to undertake a description of the child from the childs perspective, is explored through three scenes animated by the questions of communication between children and adults. The first delves into the lectures of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2010) through debates on the nature of knowledge, research, teaching, and learning that shape the history of approaches to the world of childhood. The second turns to the artistry of childrens literature to think with Maurice Sendaks methods for animating the depths and vicissitudes of childrens experiences. The third explores relations of meaning in interviews with children and how the researcher can attend to structures of symbolization that open beyond words. The dissertation contends with the problematic of how caring for thinking has been handled in the fields of early childhood education, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and in the craft and study of childrens literature.