Chapter 5 - Knowledge Possibilizing

Summary

This chapter describes the “rhizomatic writing machine,” described in Chapter 4, in action in a nursery school in Norway. Data are shared about moments with the children as well as about the experience of writing itself. At the heart of the participants’ experience is the tension between safety and transgression, as they become increasingly willing to share difficult aspects of their daily work with children. Transgressions in this context are understood from a processual perspective, in which change happens in practice when educators understand something new or see realities differently through written approaches. In this way, both the writing process and the sharing of writing become sites for the building of sensitivity, for relationship making, and for serious assessments of the complex nature of quality improvement. Writing becomes equivalent with thinking, with written texts used to prompt questioning and reflection on the intimacy and quality of pedagogical practice. The chapter concludes by stressing the importance of close collaboration between center leaders to ensure strong internal systems exist to support the ongoing developing of staff and of the writing process.