The Crane bag: Braiding Irish mythology, indigenous knowledge and posthuman concepts in early childhood education and care

Abstract

Initially, this article aimed to present findings from an empirical set of data, where postgraduates explored their pedagogical practice within early childhood education and care (ECEC). However, predictable modes of knowing were disrupted while braiding an artefact from Irish mythology known as the Crane bag, together with indigenous knowledge and posthuman concepts. In the generation of knowledge, the teachings of the Crane bag transformed the methodological approach to go beyond the fabricated split of matter and spirit. This transformation created the conditions for an onto-epistemological becoming with water. Hence, the intra-action of braiding together multiple theories became part of the empirical data. From the initial set of data, a photograph, capturing children rolling down a hill, was submitted by a research participant as an example of their approach to safety. In agreement with the research participant, I re-present the photograph in a different format, to tell the story of how an onto-epistemological becoming created an opening to decentre the image of the child. This opening changed the approach to the data analysis, which in turn allowed the more-than-human to come to the fore in the spirit of reciprocity.