Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the methodological and epistemological opportunities, affordances and constraints provided by multimodal interaction analysis (Goodwin, C. 2017; Goodwin & Cekaite, 2018; Mondada, 2018) in understanding children and childhoods in families and early childhood institutions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the methodological and epistemological opportunities, affordances and constraints provided by multimodal interaction analysis (Goodwin, C. 2017; Goodwin & Cekaite, 2018; Mondada, 2018). On the basis of recent video-ethnographic studies, conducted on children and childhoods in families and early childhood institutions, the paper discusses how conceptualisation of actions as embodied and material can enrich the understanding of contemporary early childhood. It presents examples that illustrate how rich combinations and features of multifaceted socio-cultural, relational, material, ecological and semiotic practices can work in shaping children's everyday practices that constitute contemporary childhoods, and discuss constraints shaping them. The presentation argues that through close investigation of the sequential and simultaneous entanglements of bodies interacting with bodies and materiality, we can outline how children's everyday lives do not separate verbal, embodied and material. Rather, it is argued that such analysis can provide insights into the experiential corporeal aspects of children as embodied subjects with visual, aural, haptic sensorial experiences and characteristics.