I begin this section by outlining prevailing conceptions of the child and childhood in contemporary educational thought and childhood studies. I then discuss how posthuman and intra-active relational perspectives may contribute to a reconceptualisation of these views, offering a generative and parallel alternative particularly relevant to early childhood arts education. This line of inquiry leads to the reconceptualisation of the child as relational, approached through the notion of assemblages. Finally, I extend the discussion to consider contemporary early childhood education and related research.
2.2.1 Contemporary Views on Children and Childhoods
Conceptions of children and childhood in our society are constructed and mediated through various layers, including legislation, public policy, educational frameworks, and everyday interactions (Alanen and Karila 2009). In contemporary educational discourse, children are recognised as competent, agential, and full of potential (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020). These perspectives are echoed in the two curricula that are central to my research: the Finnish National Core Curriculum for ECEC and the Finnish Basic Education in the Arts (BEA) curriculum. Both portray children as active, creative agents and valued members of their communities, with learning understood as a social process. These curricula align with one of the most significant references regarding children’s status, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF 1989), as they emphasise children’s rights to well-being, care, protection, participation in decision-making, lifelong learning, and cultural engagement. (EDUFI 2022; 2025)
Posthuman Perspectives in Childhood Studies
Childhood studies play a vital role in understanding the shifting perceptions of childhood and the child. While philosophical orientations are gaining prominence, psychological approaches (e.g., Piaget 1952; 1950; Vygotsky 1978) have historically dominated the field, followed by influential sociological perspectives (e.g., James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; James and Prout 1997; Jenks 1997; Qvortrup 1994). Contemporary theorisations, including posthuman childhood studies, build on these views to understand children as active subjects and re-evaluate the meaning of childhood (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998). The relationally focused directions of childhood studies can be contextualised as a new wave of childhood studies, which view childhoods as biosocially hybrid and emerging within their human and non-human environments in complex and often messy ways (Kraftl 2013; Ryan 2012; Tammi 2019; Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw 2015). The relational quality of existence is central to posthuman and new materialist frameworks, which emphasise that children’s lives are embedded in interconnected worlds both within and beyond structured educational institutions. This relationality fundamentally reshapes how childhood is understood as a lived experience (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020).
Current perspectives in childhood studies position childhood within the context of the Anthropocene, recognising that the environmental crisis is also an ontological crisis, requiring a redefinition of relationships between nature and culture, as well as between humans and other beings (e.g., Hohti et al. 2022; Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020; Rautio and Stenvall 2019). Contemporary scholarship continues to advance this thinking, for instance through research on children’s geographies and environments (e.g., Kraftl 2020), their agency (e.g., Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw 2015), and digital entanglements (e.g., Ylirisku and Slotte Dufva 2023). Seeking to counteract the universalising effects of globalisation on childhood, these studies conceptualise childhoods as plural, encompassing multiple, overlapping, and at times conflicting perspectives and experiences (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020; Prout 2011). In a related vein, posthumanist perspectives address the complex interconnectedness of being and action, offering a pertinent framework for engaging with a rapidly changing world where intricate challenges call for equally complex and creative responses.
Despite these theoretical extensions, psychology continues to shape early childhood education policies, practices, and curricula worldwide (Murris 2016). Western psychological traditions have been challenged by post-structuralist scholars (e.g., Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999; Dahlberg and Moss 2004; Diaz-Diaz and Semenec 2020), who, along with theReconceptualising Early Childhood Education community (RECE n.d.), argue that notions of childhood are culturally constructed and continually evolving. However, the aim of posthumanist theorisation is not to disregard the lasting influence of earlier paradigms but rather to expand them and build a parallel alternative to understand childhoods as emerging from broader historical flows (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020). In line with this thinking, I acknowledge that there are valid justifications for employing these conventional developmental, social constructivist, and structuralist theories in child-related practices, particularly within healthcare and formal education. However, I am concerned about their extension into arts education contexts that do not need to be tightly aligned with the central premises of uniform development or primarily focused on the educational pursuit of rationality.
I regard early childhood arts education as a field that can benefit from alternative modes of thought and an expanded educational gaze. My motivation to challenge prevailing paradigms through posthuman childhood studies arises from a search for generative ways to conceptualise dance education beyond rigid, hierarchical, and adult‑centred frameworks. Such an orientation makes space for children’s distinctive ways of perceiving, sensing, and engaging with the world—modes often dismissed as unstructured yet rich in sensory and imaginative potential. Within dance education, scholars such as Bond and Stinson (2000) emphasise children’s extraordinary capacity for artistic expression, transformation, and aesthetic development, while Anttila (in Tesar et al. 2021) highlights their heightened sensory attunement and ability to imaginatively become other‑than‑human. Together, these perspectives position dance education as a particularly fertile context for nurturing and amplifying the creative expertise children already embody.
2.2.2 Posthuman Reconfigurations of the Child
In this section, I further articulate my understanding of the child, on the one hand as embedded within the broader concept of the human, and on the other hand as distinct from it. Both ontological perspectives are essential, though my goal is to expand educational thinking by iterating posthuman theorisation through a reconceptualisation of the child as relational.
The Human as Child and Adult
Discussing the concepts of the human and the child as distinct categories poses a challenge to my aim of deconstructing educational categories, hierarchies, and binaries. Nonetheless, such a distinction is necessary because childhood is an inherently vulnerable phase of human life, with specific characteristics that shape societal and policy responses. My conception of the human is rooted in Lauri Rauhala’s (2005) holistic humanist perspective, which I complement with relational ontologies. While posthumanist theories challenge anthropocentric views, I find Rauhala’s (2005) emphasis on individual uniqueness and intrinsic value within a holistic, integrated framework to be a useful foundation for posthuman extensions.
Posthuman theorisation has prompted an ontological shift away from viewing children solely in terms of their progression toward adulthood, advocating instead for their recognition as complex, relational beings within a non-binary framework. In this view, children are simultaneously becoming adults and being children. Consequently, childhood is understood not merely as a preparatory stage but as an integral dimension of being human. The categories of child and adult thus become relational, contextual, and overlapping, helping to flatten educational hierarchies between teachers and students. From this perspective, development, growth, learning, and transformation are lifelong processes, suggesting that humans remain perpetually incomplete regardless of age. (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020) This view is supported by Prout (2011, 8), who contends that both adults and children should be regarded as incomplete and dependent ‘becomings without compromising the need to respect their status as beings or persons’. I develop this argument further in the next section, where I critically examine the child–adult binary and associated age-based segregation.
Posthuman Perspectives on Age
Developmental theories have faced criticism across disciplines such as psychology (e.g., Burman 2008; Burman and Stacey 2010), childhood studies (e.g., Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020), early childhood education (e.g., Davies 2014; Lenz Taguchi 2010), and philosophy (Murris 2016). While critiques abound, many contemporary approaches in childhood studies and education continue to be influenced by developmental, positivist, and humanist traditions, whereby children are often understood through adult-oriented frameworks (Wyness 2012). These approaches maintain the child–adult binary, premised on the view of the child as an incomplete being and a ‘subhuman’ (Murris 2020, 1), who is ‘in the process of becoming (something of value), becoming adult, becoming more than child’ (Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020, 30). Consequently, children are constructed as different, less than fully human, and inferior to adults, who are perceived as separate, complete, and fully formed.
Age serves as one of many normalising categories embedded within educational frameworks, structuring developmental expectations and pedagogical approaches. Murris (2013; 2016) characterises the positioning of the child as inferior—whether due to age or subordinate status within prevailing educational hierarchies—as a form of epistemic injustice and ageist prejudice, manifested in situations where children are disregarded or silenced because of their age. This positioning is reflected, for instance, in educational practices, where children are primarily grouped by age, and their behaviour and learning are assessed to ensure appropriate development according to their age. Thus, educational practices do not always reflect the perception of what benefits the child. (Alanen and Karila 2009; Malone, Tesar, and Arndt 2020) This understanding informs my expansion of the concept of epistemic injustice to include embodied aspects of educational contexts, where a child’s right to embodied self-determination can be compromised—not only by limiting embodied possibilities as a form of control (Lucas-Oliva, Guzmán-Simón, and García-Jiménez 2024) or establishing norms governing touch and embodiment on behalf of children (Keränen 2022).
In conclusion, the ontological shift in posthuman thought involves moving away from seeing children mainly in terms of their growth toward adulthood to recognising them as complex beings within a non-binary framework. This shift challenges the traditional linear progression from child to adult by emphasising a fluid, actively evolving process in which childhood has shaped and continues to shape our lives profoundly. Following this idea, the concept of the human remains perpetually evolving and unfinished in its constant re/de/construction, not only during our formative years but throughout our lives, as Anttila notes in her contribution to Tesar et al. (2021). Hence, the concept of human beings referred to in this work is one that is moving, akin to children. Furthermore, perceptions of the child vary across time, cultures, and societies, making it a context-specific and constantly changing notion. On the other hand, posthumanism perceives the Anthropocene as a collective reality that encompasses all children. Malone, Tesar, and Arndt (2020) suggest that this era calls for a transition toward the idea of the posthuman child. In this study, I refer to this concept as the relational child, a notion that extends beyond childhood to encompass humans of all ages, as I will discuss in the following section.
The Relational Child
My conceptualisation of the child as relational draws on Murris’ (2013; 2016) seminal theoretical foundation for reconceptualising the child as posthuman, ‘child as iii’. Her analysis draws upon the research of Lenz Taguchi (2010) and incorporates the concepts articulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), as well as Barad (2007), to transcend the pursuit of finding universal truths about the child, knowledge, or development. According to Murris (2013; 2016), the concept of the child as iii is not merely a subject or an object; instead, it represents an entanglement wherein these positions blend in a continuous process of ‘becoming with others and with the world’, as she stated in an interview with Diaz-Diaz and Semenec (Murris 2020, 93, italics in the original). The entanglements may span multiple dimensions of time, challenging the distinctions between past, present, and future. Understanding the child–adult as an entanglement, in which childhood is not left behind but remains present in each of us, facilitates a deeper understanding that age is not a definitive factor influencing abilities. (Murris 2020)
Posthuman and new materialist theories enable children and more/other-than-human entities to be understood as hybrid participants across educational and other contexts, where learning and capability are conceived as collective. Through a Deleuzian lens, this collective can be understood as an assemblage, in which the child becomes part of dynamic material-discursive formations rather than a fixed biological or cultural being developing through predetermined stages. Pedagogically, this view encourages collaborative engagement with children and materials, emphasising learning with and from them. Therefore, rather than solving problems for children, this approach supports exploration of the world together, as both Osgood and Somerville highlighted in interviews with Diaz-Diaz and Semenec (Osgood 2020; Somerville 2020). Taylor further argued in an interview with Diaz-Diaz and Semenec for the development of new pedagogical methods capable of capturing how children learn with the world, not merely about it (Taylor 2020).
Rautio (2020, 118) frames the decentred perspective as an ethical and pedagogical move that enables children ‘to reinvent and explore what it means to be human’, extending beyond traditional definitions of the ‘proper’ child. This perspective aligns with Lenz Taguchi, Palmer, and Gustafsson’s (2016) discussion of how improvisational dance enables children to disrupt the notion of the autonomous, rational, skill-developing child subject and instead subtly reinvent themselves in dynamic relation to material, social, and discursive environments. They describe the moving child as engaged in a productive process that generates difference and explores the potentialities of bodies, thought, action, and dance within creative assemblages alongside multiple performative agents (Lenz Taguchi, Palmer, and Gustafsson 2016).
The idea of moving beyond normalising educational categories becomes particularly evident in dance improvisation, where playful experimentation enables participants to explore new ways of being in relation to themselves, others, and the group’s dynamics. This perspective underscores the importance of recognising the material-discursive relational nature of childhoods and life, as well as the potential of posthuman theory to deepen our understanding of existence as fundamentally embodied. These insights carry significant implications for educational practice and research methodologies, which I will elaborate on in the following sections.
2.2.3 Early Childhood Education (ECEC)
I begin this subsection by situating my discussion within the Finnish ECEC context, with a particular focus on the current position of dance within its arts education curriculum. I then extend the analysis to consider recent developments in ECEC, both in Finland and internationally.
The Finnish Early Childhood Education and Care Context
The primary educational context for my research is Finnish ECEC, which adopts a holistic and integrated approach to learning, education, and care. This context is particularly significant for research in early childhood dance education, as it is the main institutional setting for children under school age. In 2021, 87 per cent of Finnish children aged three to five were enrolled in ECEC, underscoring its central role in the everyday lives of young children (Statistics Finland 2023). Accordingly, Finnish ECEC can be viewed as a vital cultural space that reaches the majority of children in each generation. Furthermore, ECEC serves as the foundation of the national education system, shaping future learning outcomes and the overall well-being of children. The critical role of early childhood education in shaping both individual futures and broader societal development is widely acknowledged in public and policy discourse (Heckman 2000; Heckman, Pinto, and Savelyev 2013; EDUFI 2025).
Finnish ECEC is guided by two national curricula: the National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (EDUFI 2022) and the National Core Curriculum for Pre-Primary Education (EDUFI 2014). Both ECEC curricula are founded on a holistic approach to learning, positioning active exploration and play as central pedagogical methods. (Kangas, Ukkonen-Mikkola, and Harju-Luukkainen 2023) Art education within Finnish ECEC is designed to holistically support each child’s development, learning, and well-being, while also ensuring equal opportunities to participate in the arts (EDUFI 2014; EDUFI 2022; Ruokonen 2023). Within this framework, dance is included under the broader learning area of ‘diverse forms of expression’, alongside musical, visual, craft-based, verbal, and physical expression. This categorisation reflects the relatively limited role currently assigned to dance within the ECEC curriculum.
Although explicit references to dance are limited in curriculum documents, the value of embodied and creative activity is strongly conveyed through the concept of play, which remains central to Finnish ECEC pedagogy (EDUFI 2018; EDUFI 2022). Play is in this context understood as an embodied activity through which children exercise agency and engage in meaning-making processes (Kangas, Ukkonen-Mikkola, and Harju-Luukkainen 2023). The connection between improvisation-based dance and play has been widely acknowledged by scholars who conceptualise dance as a form of embodied play and emphasise its contribution to cognitive, emotional, and social development (e.g., Hermans 2025; Lindqvist 2001; Sansom 2009; Stinson 2005). For example, Lindqvist (2001) argues that dance education for young children should primarily emerge from children’s own play, whereas Sansom (2009) contends that dance arising from play cultivates a relational understanding of the self, others, and the surrounding world. These perspectives closely align with my pedagogical views on dance, which similarly emphasise bodily engagement and playful movement within improvisation-based, experiential learning.
Although dance is included in the Finnish national ECEC curricula, it is often approached primarily in terms of the development of physical skills, while its creative, playful, and improvisational potentials tend to remain underexplored. I am concerned about the extent to which children’s perspectives and artistic agency are recognised in ECEC. Dance education research supports this concern, noting that educators often lack dance pedagogical competence, particularly in terms of bodily knowledge and artistic skills (Pastorek Gripson, Lindqvist, and Østern 2022; Gibbons and Nikolai 2019; Martin, Snook, and Buck 2018). These observations align with findings from the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC), which reports that arts education, especially dance, is implemented less effectively than other learning domains. Accordingly, FINEEC has identified arts education as an area requiring further development within ECEC (Juutinen et al. 2021).
In the Finnish context, the significance of pedagogy increased in the latest curriculum revision (Ukkonen-Mikkola and Alila 2018). Special attention was also paid to ECEC and preschool, as Finnish young people’s performance on the PISA assessment had declined (Hiltunen et al. 2023). This trend appears to be exerting increasing pressure on both the curricular content and the practicalities of early childhood education and preschool, a tendency widely acknowledged internationally (e.g., Diaz-Diaz and Semenec 2020). In recent years, many researchers have expressed concerns about schoolification, the introduction of school-like practices into early childhood education to better prepare children for their future school careers (Tuukkanen 2025). A recent Finnish survey, the Children’s Barometer[1], focusing on children’s views of preschool practices, revealed that children find school-like tasks, subjects, and guided activities to be the most boring aspects of preschool, while play is very important to them (Tuukkanen 2025). This perspective offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate surrounding the schoolification of preschool and ECEC. It also underscores the need for alternative curricular perspectives, which I address next.
Alternative Perspectives on Curricula
To counter pressures for more rigid curricular guidance, the concept of an emergent curriculum offers an alternative to curriculum design. This approach has gained traction in posthumanist educational research (Nxumalo, Vintimilla, and Nelson 2018; Sellers 2015), early childhood education scholarship (Ciezczyk 2021; Sampson and McLean 2021), and Reggio Emilia pedagogy (Rinaldi 2021). Within the emergent curriculum model, teaching and learning occur through a collaborative relationship between adults and children, and the content of the learning process is shaped organically during the course of the work (Fenwick, Edwards, and Sawchuk 2011).
Within the Finnish ECEC context, Kujala and Virtanen (2023) discuss the emergent curriculum as a model that enhances children’s active participation in the planning and implementation of activities. Involving children as active agents who co-construct the curriculum not only expands their opportunities for exploration but also recognises and values their unique capacity for transformation, which often exceeds that of adults. This approach also offers valuable learning opportunities for adults, highlighting the importance of relational and response-able pedagogies in early education and affirming the value of co-constructed, process-oriented learning experiences. (Kujala and Virtanen 2023)
Rather than being defined in advance, the curriculum’s goals emerge during the process and are documented retrospectively. This approach highlights the significant role of pedagogical documentation as a tool for increasing the transparency of learning processes for both the group and parents. Thus, the model resists fixed outcomes, acknowledging that the curriculum is in continuous flux and that its objectives evolve in response to the unfolding dynamics of the learning context. (Kujala and Virtanen 2023) This view aligns with learning in and through the arts, which is characteristically unpredictable and emergent, making it difficult or even counterproductive to set specific learning outcomes in advance (Anttila 2018; Korpinen 2024). Just as improvisation unfolds through relational and responsive movements with children, ideas, materials, and surroundings, the curriculum can likewise be understood as an ongoing process of collectively figuring out new directions for learning (Kind 2020). This perspective foregrounds the complexity and multiplicity inherent in educational settings, shifting views of the curriculum away from traditional, adult-centred delivery of content toward more open and participatory forms.
However, Kujala and Virtanen (2023) identify several challenges related to emergent curricula, including time constraints, difficulties in documentation, and the risk of fragmentation in daily routines. I recognise these issues as strongly present and demanding in the everyday life of contemporary ECEC environments. Yet I argue that cultivating a deeper understanding of the possibilities and potentials of emergent approaches, for instance through encouraged, curious, and creative experimentation with curricular practices, could offer a fruitful way to address these challenges.
Posthuman Approaches to ECEC
Posthumanist perspectives in ECEC research have gained increasing traction. These perspectives include foregrounding postanthropocentric orientations, relational dimensions, broad-ranging questions of sustainability, and the environment’s constitutive role in learning. For instance, Vladimirova (2023) explored the outdoor education conceptually and empirically, investigating how bodies and place interact in outdoor learning, proposing a place-responsive pedagogy, where children’s bodies are seen as living responses to place, emphasising reciprocal relations with children’s environments. Nordström and Sintonen (2024) explored the educational and methodological potential of slow, affective becoming-with in early educational contexts, proposing holistic approaches that foster a deeper understanding of children’s growth as a unique, unhurried process. Rossholt (2018) focused on human and nonhuman movements to explore alternative logics for ECEC practices, rooted in posthuman philosophy. This approach enabled encounters with children through modes that extend beyond linearity, common sense, and rationality.
The significance of materiality and the agentic capacities of materials have also been explored by several scholars. Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, and Kocher (2017) reconceptualise materials as intra-active companions, emphasising their active role in pedagogy and advocating for more sustainable educational approaches through relational engagement with materials. In the Nordic context, Blomgren (2023) analysed aesthetic encounters in Danish ECEC, engaging materiality as a symmetric co-player alongside the artists and pedagogues and in support of children’s aesthetic agency. These perspectives highlight the complex entanglements of human and nonhuman agencies, positioning the child not as an isolated agent but as one agential component among many, aiming to foster engagement with the inherent complexities of educational practices.
Embodied Aspects of ECEC
The work of an ECEC teacher has been recognised as a holistic, embodied, and dynamic practice in which emotions are continuously present (e.g., Pape-Pedersen 2022, Tahkola and Keränen 2025). Tahkola and Keränen (2025) emphasise that one of the key responsibilities of the ECEC teacher is to remain available to children and open to diverse—particularly embodied—forms of encounter, underscoring the need for sensitive and context-specific ways of being and listening. Keränen (2022) has examined ECEC practices from the perspective of touch, observing that it is often adults who establish the norms governing touch and embodiment on behalf of children. Improvisation-based dance could offer a more equitable and physically attuned way of being together. Such practices may involve not only direct physical contact but also the exploration of more subtle forms of touch, such as relating through sight or shared movement.
This view aligns with Pape-Pedersen’s (2022) discussion of early childhood educators’ professional knowledge through a posthuman and intra-active lens, informed by somatic dance practices. Pape-Pedersen characterises teaching in ECEC as a fundamentally embodied profession, proposing that movement itself can generate new forms of knowledge and professional insight. She further argues that one way to bridge the divide between theory and practice in ECEC is to more fully reintroduce the body into pedagogical processes. From this perspective, art—and dance in particular—affords possibilities for embodied approaches that can expand and deepen professional understanding. While Pape-Pedersen highlights the embodied nature of teachers’ professional knowledge, I aim to extend this view to the broader ECEC community, including children.
Note
1 The Children’s Barometer is a series of surveys conducted every two or three years since 2016 to map the views of 6–7-year-old children living in Finland. The 2025 Children’s Barometer examined children’s views on preschool practices based on telephone interviews with 408 children. (Tuukkanen 2025)