Researching with young children: Reconfiguring language and researcher becomings

In this paper, ontological engagements in research, ‘positioning oneself in-between’ and acknowledging ‘reaching beyond the spoken’, are challenged through affective encounters within a fieldwork in early childhood education. The study focuses on a single circle-time event where the spoken language is unfamiliar to the researcher. The indeterminacy of the unfolding circle-time destabilises research premises that had appeared carefully reasoned. Drawing especially from Deleuze and Guattari’s work on human subjects, thinking and language, this paper explores and makes tangible the often-hidden struggles that changing one’s ontological orientation does to research. The study shows, how embracing an immanent, relational ontology helps resist human-centred, adult-built, language-laden norms and sensitises educators and researchers to unforeseen emergences.