ABSTRACT
Deliberately practising for liberty creates new and multiple meanings in early childhood communities. This chapter explores how to use rhizoanalysis to understand the child in early childhood studies. More specifically, it shows how to weave alternative ‘readings’ into the everyday work of observing, documenting and analysing children, their learning and their relationships. To do this it:
• provides an overview of rhizomatic logic as a tactic for meaning making; • demonstrates how this logic can be used to reframe the meaning given to children’s
play; • outlines simple moves you can make towards rhizomatic logic by interrogating your
texts of the child, being nomadic in how you frame them and seeking surprises in how you read them;
• shares a vignette of how one early childhood educator has created new co-ordinates for observation as a political practice for social justice.
