Acting with the Clock: clocking practices in early childhood

Transcription

1 Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Volume 13 Number Acting with the Clock: clocking practices in early childhood VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, Canada ABSTRACT In this article, the author addresses intra-actions that take place among humans and nonhuman others the physical world, the materials in early childhood education s everyday practices. Her object of study is the clock. Specifically, she provides an example of what it might mean to account for the intra-activity of the material-discursive relations that encompass early childhood education clocking practices. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad and other posthumanist theories, she proposes a particular approach to early childhood clocking practices, an onto-epistemology, as she argues that we learn to act with clocks in early childhood classrooms. The clock hangs high on the classroom wall, about a meter below the ceiling. Children move through the room amid the furniture, toys, books. Educators sit on the floor, talking with, playing with, observing the children. At the moment the clock marks 9:15, the movement shifts. An educator leaves the room; the others rearrange their positions to fill the vacated space. The children also move in response to the sudden rearrangement. For a short fifteen minutes, bodies mingle in the noisy space. New assemblages are created. Then, just as they become intense, the clock s hands mark 9:30. The children who were reading a book with an educator now must wait until the educator who was taking her break returns and takes over for the one who was reading; she will now take her break. The educators eyes are fixed on the ticking clock. Whose break is it now? What comes next? An almost-perfect synchronization exists between the clock s hands, the children s movements, and the educators bodies. When the clock s short hand marks 10 and the long hand marks 15, an educator sings: It s time to tidy up, tidy up, it s time to tidy up, my friends. In unison, the children join the singing and pick up the toys scattered throughout the room. The educator looks at the clock again: 10:20. The singing stops and the educator lets the children know that it is time to put on their muddy buddies to go outside. This scene, which emerged from one of the action research projects with early childhood educators that I have conducted since 2005 (Pence & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2008), is like one that Rose and Whitty (2010) describe, where the efficient movement of children and educators became the overriding priority... their clock-bound work created stress and, in the worst cases, a kind of frenzy: a running to be on time (p. 264). Wien (1996) describes two similar scenarios in early childhood classrooms: Just before noon, a teacher begins reading a Halloween storybook to a group of 4-year-olds. In the middle of the story, she suddenly looks at the clock, snaps the book shut, and the children jump up and run off to the kitchen for lunch. (p. 377) I come in at 9:30 and we tidy up and have snack. And from 9:30 to 10:00 we do snack and bathroom to finish right at 10:00... So then at 10:00, I take half the children and do craft, and 154

2 Clocking Practices in Early Childhood Marion has the other [half] and she does circle for 20 minutes and then we rotate the groups. (p. 385) Given that the clock plays such a prominent role in early childhood practices, several early childhood scholars have contributed insights into the relevance of time and clock practices in early childhood education (Wien, 1996; Wien & Kirby-Smith, 1998; Kummen, 2010; Rose & Whitty, 2010). These scholars, following Foucault s important work on the nature of knowledge production and the disciplining of bodies, have analyzed the tyranny of time (e.g. the clock shaping educators practices and regulating children s schedules; time dominating daily practice). This article aims to extend thought about the tyranny of time in early childhood clocking practices. In addition to thinking about clock time as practices invisible hand, I propose that we approach clocking practices in their specificity, spatiality, and temporality (Haraway, 1988; Barad, 2007). Through this argument, I outline a direction to analyses that moves beyond transcending clocking practices toward situating them. Drawing from several bodies of knowledge on post-humanism, my proposal entails paying attention to configurations of always already interrelated, reiterated sociomaterial practices so that we may begin to understand human and non-human others specifically here, children, educators, and clocks as coming into being through their relationships with each other. Attention to non-human others the physical world, the materials that mingle in early childhood education s everyday practices is key in this article. Closely following the work of feminist physicist Karen Barad (2007), I discuss what it might mean to account for the intra-activity of the material-discursive relations that encompass early childhood education. I propose a particular approach to materiality (an onto-epistemology) as I argue that apparatuses, technologies and machines are phenomena in early childhood practices. With Bruno Latour (2005), who writes in science studies, I propose to bring into early childhood education a conception of objects and things as interesting, variegated, uncertain, complicated, far reaching, heterogeneous, risky, historical, local, material and networky (p. 158) to explore practice beyond human-centered approaches. Ethnographers such as Annemarie Mol (2002) provide me with tools to get closer to the practice moments depicted in the article. I also turn to aspects of Deleuzian studies to articulate the concept of assemblages.[1] Although these ideas are not treated as equal throughout the article, I position them in complementary ways to engage with them in my project. My object of study is the clock, as the practice moments highlight. More specifically, I think about the clock in the context of early childhood practices and theories what I refer to as early childhood clocking practices. The clock structures both the arrangement of children and educators in the classroom and the very practice deployed throughout a regular day. At the same time, it produces particular knowledges about what it means to be an educator and what it means to be a child in an early childhood classroom. The clock is fundamental to how early childhood education is understood, organized, and enacted. My interest here is in how the clock is both a producer and an enabler, among myriad other animate and inanimate things, and the possibilities that these ideas afford for practice (Barad, 2007). Clocks-Educators-Children-and-More Assemblages Before presenting a discussion of how intra-actions and assemblages are used in this article, I proceed with two additional moments of practice from my field notes. At precisely 10:30, the educator asks the children to transition to outdoor play. Five children are still intently focused on the activity they began at 9:30, clay and water play. Two of the children, who had asked for food colouring to be added to the wet clay, are squishing the mixture in a container with their hands. Two other children continue the experimentation they began when the clay/colouring/water was introduced. The fifth child rubs his hand across the clay while intently watching the other children mix the clay with water and colouring. The educator calls a second time at 10:35 and again at 10:40. It was as if she were questioning the children and these five were resisting her questions. While some of the children ignored the calls, others responded that they didn t want to go outside. Following this event, the researcher spoke with the educator. Among many concerns, the educator stressed the developmental reasons for which outside play was important for children. 155

3 Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw She had learned that children need to be physical, she said; she and the other teachers thought there was too much focus on activities that weren t physical. She went on to explain that the extended play of a few children would disrupt the overall routine as it would interfere with lunch time and rest time, which were both developmentally important. She stated that this disruption was problematic for her; she felt it unfair that she would be stuck inside with these few children when she wanted to spend time with all the children outside. It s 3:00 and time to wake up the children, who are sleeping in the nap room. Sophia, sits up on her bed and asks the educator, with tears in her eyes, when her mom will be there to pick her up. The educator says, At 3:30. Your mom always comes at 3:30 pm. Pointing to the analog watch she wears on her left wrist, she shows Sophia where the clock s long hand needs to be positioned for her mom s arrival. Sophia s tears disappear. She smiles. Every few minutes, Sophia stops her play in the book corner and approaches the educator to ask her to show the watch so that she can see where the long hand is positioned. I conceptualize these ordinary events of early childhood clocking practices, as well as the ones I introduced at the beginning of the article, as assemblages educators, children, the clock, and other non-human bodies intermingling in the classroom. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) emphasize that bodies (both human and non-human) operate in conjunction to form assemblages, or compositions of bodies in constant relation. They highlight the relationships, not only between subjects and objects, but of a multiplicity of materialities constantly engaged in a network of relations that shift over time and through space. Their interest lies not in materials meaning (e.g. what the clock essentially is), but rather in their performative aspects (e.g. what the clock can do, what it functions with in this particular context, in this particular time, and in relation to the bodies it encounters and their variabilities). In the classroom, assemblages are formed and quickly rearranged. The clock-educator-child assemblages are tightly linked to the deployment of practices. Within assemblages, any body or any thing is the outcome of connections (Colebrook, 2002). Or, as Barad (2007) would note, it is the outcome of intra-actions. The practice moments presented above are assemblages of ideas, genetic material, things, matter; they are relations of power connecting and intra-acting (Barad, 2007). The elements in the assemblage do not necessarily precede the assemblage; they emerge through it. Barad s (2007) agential realism, specifically her intra-activity framework, helps us to understand the entangled process of transformation that takes place in clocking practices. She speaks about intraaction as signifying: the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. That is, in contrast to the usual interaction, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action. It is important to note that the distinct agencies are not only distinct in a relational, not an absolute, sense, that is, agencies are only distinct in relation to their mutual entanglement; they don t exist as individual elements. (2007, p. 33) Barad distinguishes between interaction and intra-action, highlighting the productive aspects of relations. In contrast to the usual understanding of interaction, which assumes separateness and individual agency of physical matter, the idea of intra-action proposes that distinct agencies of matter emerge through their intra-action; in their mutual entanglement, they do not even exist as individual elements. Thus it is through intra-action that particular material articulations of the world become meaningful. Following Barad s (2007) intra-activity framework, several questions arise as I pay attention to these assemblages: How does the clock work? What kinds of work does the clock do? What role do humans play in operating and producing clocking practices? What role does the clock play in producing early childhood practices and in reconfiguring human-clock boundaries and relations? What sort of temporalities do different clocking practices engender? What sort of shifts in assemblages do different clocks and different clocking practices encourage? How are specific practices of early childhood education mediated by various clocks and clocking practices? Do different clocks in different spaces do different work and engender different bodies and bodily practices and relations? 156

4 Clocking Practices in Early Childhood In the remainder of the article, I pay attention to some of these important questions as I attempt to tease out the sorts of bodies, relationships, subjectivities, and practices that are constituted by various early childhood clocking practices. I also illustrate the variety of ways in which modes of temporality and spatiality are made to matter, and I situate these discussions historically. Emergences and Intra-Actions in Clocking Practices In the clocking practices introduced above, the children and the educators are more than essences, more than fixed substances. They are phenomena which, Barad (2007) might say, acquire specific boundaries and properties through the open-ended dynamics of intra-activity (p. 172). They become what they are through intra-action with the clock (and many other things); humans are part of the world-body space in its dynamic structuration (p. 172). Likewise, the clock can be thought of as an apparatus and, in turn, a material-discursive phenomenon that materializes itself in intra-action with other material-discursive apparatuses (Barad, 2007, p. 203). Barad (2007) notes that matter refers to phenomena in their ongoing materialization (p. 151). In the clocking practices described above, the educators, children, and clock do not exist as such beforehand; rather they materialize through intra-action through time and space. What emerges, then, is constituted; it is not a static relationality, it is a doing. What takes place cannot be dissociated from the knower and the known; it cannot be discussed as the object of the known. Clocking practices are constituted and reconstituted in intra-action (with educators, with children, with families, with other material-discursive practices), and are therefore perpetually open to rearrangements, rearticulations, and other re-workings (Barad, 2007, p. 203). On the one hand, the clock defines, regulates, schedules, organizes, and synchronizes lives. As Foucault (1977) demonstrated in his work on power and as Postill (2002) argues in his writings on clock and calendar times, clocks became a technology for disciplining and colonizing bodies. Here is how Foucault (1977) refers to the presence of clocks in classrooms: At the last stroke of the hour, a pupil will ring the bell, and at the first sound of the bell all the pupils will kneel, with their arms crossed and their eyes lowered. When the prayer has been said, the teacher will strike the signal once to indicate that the pupils should get up, a second time as a signal that they should salute Christ, and a third that they should sit down. (p. 150) On the other hand, the clock does not always act in the same way. Rather, it represents a texture of partially coherent and partially coordinated enactments (Mol, 2002; Elgaard Jensen & Winthereik, 2005, p. 266). The clock does not exist in the classroom in and of itself, but only through a multitude of practices such as those enacted in the ordinary moments described above. The clock is never closed in on itself; it is always constituted and reconstituted in relation to human and non-human others (Mol, 2002; Law, 2004). The clock becomes multiple (Mol, 2002); it is enacted in practice as opposed to existing as an essence. In this context the clock, as one of many related entities, enables early childhood practices to function. In other words, the clock might be made by us and for our purposes, but it also performs a transformation on us by always increasing or decreasing possibilities of acting (Grosz, 2009, p. 130). Suchman (2007) proposes the idea of developing practices that recognize the deeply mutual constitution of humans and artifacts, and the enacted nature of the boundaries between them, without at the same time losing distinguishing particularities within specific assemblages (p. 260). Although these insights do not lead to attributing human-like characteristics to the clock when we think about early childhood clocking practices, they alert those working in early childhood education to deepen our understanding of the dense sociomaterial arrangements (p. 264) that everyday early childhood practices comprise. The clock in early childhood education, as a material-discursive apparatus, constitutes certain bodies, meanings, and boundaries. It is not an external force that operates on educators or children s bodies from the outside; rather, it is a component in the material-discursive clocking practices that are inextricable from the bodies that are produced and through which power works its productive effects (Barad, 2007, p. 230). Clock power does not work in one single, deterministic way. It is not that children and educators become automatons that follow the clock s ticking. Rather, the clock and humans (children and educators) differentially emerge and are iteratively 157

5 Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw reworked through specific entanglements of agencies that trouble the notion that these are determinate distinctions between humans and nonhumans (Barad, 2007 p. 239). The clock, the children, the educators do not precede their incorporation into such configurations in any simple way but emerge through their participation in various networks of relations (Suchman, 2007, p. 261, emphasis added). The clock has not always been and is not one thing, as I noted above. As the clock intra-acts with other human and non-human bodies, it emerges as something different and it affords the conditions for the emergence of certain bodies and not others. For example, the first European clocks alerted monks in monasteries when it was time for their regular prayers (Boorstin, 1983). Later, city after city described the clock as not only a device of immediate practical utility but also an investment in the future (Sawhney, 2004, p. 372). The clock emerged with and participated in the emergence of batch production, interchangeable parts, the use of sub-trades, tooth- and wheel-cutting machines, and many advances in metallurgy and metal-working (Sawhney, 2004, p. 361). The clock enabled the synchronization of local and regional commerce (Sawhney, 2004). In interaction with the telegraph, the clock afforded the emergence of standard time in the late 1800s: When it reached one o clock over the center of the Eastern time zone, the clocks were stopped at noon in Chicago and held for nine minutes and thirty-two seconds until the sun centered on the 90th meridian (Carey, 1989, p. 226). The clock also afforded the conditions for moral rules of conduct. Levine quotes the following statement from a catalogue published by the Electric Signal Clock Company in 1891: If there is one virtue that should be cultivated more than any other by him who would succeed in life, it is punctuality; if there is one error to be avoided, it is being behind time (Levine, 1998, p. 67). In the early childhood clocking practices described above, different subjectivities materialize in the intra-action as others are excluded. The productive, professional, and orderly early childhood educator materializes in these moments. Albeit, the children materialize as unruly human beings in need of intervention to encourage more organized behaviours. These events might not have occurred in the way they did in the absence of the clock, or even, in the events presented in the introduction, if the clock had been located in another location in the room. Spatial arrangements matter. Temporality was also important in how each of these events emerged and the kinds of subjects that emerged in them. For example, in the moment when the children did not accept the educator s invitation to play outside, different temporalities (clock time and intensive time, or duration, following Deleuze, 1988) combined to produce the event. Spatiality and temporality are inseparable in these events. The type of clock, analog or digital, also matters to the kinds of child subjectivities that emerge. The analog clock that the educator wears on her wrist affords the waiting body of a child, as Sophia watches the clock s hands reposition. Hers is not merely a body that exists, but a body that waits. In all these clocking practices, the clock emerges as a process, children emerge as processes, and educators emerge as processes. Additionally, the clock emerges as a historically and culturally specific practice with differential effects on different bodies in the classrooms at different times and in different spatial configurations (Barad, 2007). The clock restricts the children s behaviours, as in the events in which the children were asked to stop playing with clay or to end story time when the educator needed to take her break. The clock maps the terrains of children s and educators subjectivities and bodies in these instances and maps professional and historical factors. Simultaneously, the clock affords the emergence of professional codes of practice, such as regular schedules and fixed routines. These two pivotal aspects of early childhood practices obtain their meanings by reference to the clock (Barad, 2007); the clock is required to understand what is meant by schedules and routines. At the same time, the clock necessarily prevents the duration and intensive time (as experienced by the children playing with clay) from having any meaning during the event. The intensity experienced by the children cannot be measured by the clock. Thus, these children in this particular event emerge as resistant to routines and disruptive of practice as usual. The clock gives meaning to certain discourses and materialities and is involved in making and remaking boundaries, inclusions, and exclusions (Barad, 2007). Certain subjectivities are produced and not others. For example, in the events above we see the emergence of a child who needs routines and organization in her life, an educator who, conscious of the child s developmental needs, sets schedules, and a child who anxiously awaits her mother. 158

6 Clocking Practices in Early Childhood Through these processes, the clock becomes implicated in creating the professional early childhood community, not by shaping it but through intra-action. When an educator looks at the clock on the wall and declares that it is time to tidy up or to go outside, she declares professional awareness of what s appropriate in early childhood. Following the clock becomes a marker of belonging to an early childhood community. Similarly, we could say that an educator who does not follow the rhythms of the clock emerges as a subject lacking professional knowledge. The educator encounters the clock as an intrinsic element of professionalism in early childhood. Appropriate professional practice emerges as clocks, children, educators and other human and non-human bodies intra-act in an iterative process. In the example where Sophia anxiously waits for her mom, the clock becomes an element of intra-actions and emerges in a different way. Here, perhaps Sophia emerges not so much as a subject whose actions need to be controlled and organized, but as a subject whose emotions need to be regulated. We could also say that this regulation emerges from a pragmatic problematization to ensure that Sophia does not get upset rather than as a moral problematization that children need schedules and routines. Situating Clocking Practices By engaging with clocking practices as situated events, I have looked at how the clock, the children, and the educators emerge in practices: how the clock emerges differently, what kinds of subjectivities (human and otherwise) are afforded, what kinds of actions are afforded, and what kinds of actions are excluded (Barad, 2007). The article has attempted to think of the clock as an intra-active practice that is embedded in and, certainly, embodies a multitude of generative networks. Based on this analysis, the challenge is both to understand the ways in which clocks are embedded in our practices and how they resonate with educators, children and families, and to imagine ways to rearrange these reverberations. For example, the educators and children who were described in examples in this article are engaged in ongoing experimentations with clocks and clocking practices as they attempt to find ways to engage with the clock, and for the clock to engage them, differently. They are looking for other ways of working with time, always searching for ways to act with the clocks in their classrooms rather than being acted on by them. They are imagining different modes of thinking, feeling, and acting with clocks. Focusing on the clock as a material-discursive element in early childhood clocking practices, I contributed to this special issue on relating to the more-than-human world by attending to the intermingling of the clock with other bodies in the classroom, as well as their emergences. The article presents the clock as crucial for early childhood education practices and for children s as well as educators subjectivities to emerge. My interest lies in how the clock, as both producer and enabler, affords possibilities and exclusions for practice. The article has expanded the notion of the tyranny of the clock in early childhood education by suggesting that we situate, rather than transcend, the clock. In shifting our focus from being acted upon by clocks, we open possibilities for early childhood practice by learning to act with the clock. Note [1] For a similar project, see Lenz Taguchi (2009). References Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Boorstin, D.J. (1983) The Discoverers. New York: Random House. Carey, J. (1989) Communication as Culture: essays on media and society. New York: Unwin Hyman. Colebrook, C. (2002) Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge. Deleuze, G. (1988) Bergonism. New York: Zone Books. 159

7 Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F.L. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Elgaard Jensen, T. & Winthereik, B. (2005) The Body Multiple: ontology in medical practice (book review), Acta Sociologica, 48(3), Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage. Grosz, E. (2009) The Thing, in F. Candlin & R. Guins (Eds) The Object Reader, pp New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. (1988) Situated Knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective, Feminist Studies, 14(3), Kummen, K. (2010) Is it Time to Put Tidy up Time Away? Contesting Routines and Transitions in Early Childhood Spaces, in V. Pacini-Ketchabaw (Ed.) Flows, Rhythms, and Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum, pp New York: Peter Lang. Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: an introduction to actor-network theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (2004) After Method: mess in social science research. London: Routledge. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2009) Going beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education: introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Levine, R. (1998) A Geography of Time: the temporal misadventures of a social psychologist, or how every culture keeps time just a little bit differently. New York: Basic Books. Mol, A. (2002) The Body Multiple: ontology in medical practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pence, A. & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2008) Discourses on Quality Care: the Investigating Quality project and the Canadian experience, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 9(3), Postill, J. (2002) Clock and Calendar Time: a missing anthropological problem, Time & Society, 11(2/3), Rose, S. & Whitty, P. (2010) Where Do We Find the Time to Do This? Struggling against the Tyranny of Time, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 56(3), Sawhney, H. (2004) The Slide towards Decentralization: clock and computer, Media, Culture & Society, 26(3), Suchman, L. (2007) Human-Machine Reconfigurations: plans and situated actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wien, C.A. (1996) Time, Work, and Developmentally Appropriate Practice, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 11, Wien, C.A. & Kirby-Smith, S. (1998) Untiming the Curriculum: a case study of removing clocks from the program, Young Children, September, VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW is an associate professor at the School of Child and Youth Care and coordinator of the early years specialization at the University of Victoria. She has worked professionally in the field of early childhood education for over twenty years. Dr Pacini-Ketchabaw has written extensively on the history of child care in Canada; the experiences of young children and early childhood educators in early childhood settings; curriculum issues; and anti-racist feminist perspectives in early childhood education. Correspondence: vpacinik@uvic.ca 160