Soern Finn Menning

• Brandt, Lisa Annika; Menning, Soern Finn & Fasting, Merete Lund (2026). She is so cute. I love her. — Exploring ecological literacy through acts of spontaneous anthropomorphism in kindergarten. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. ISSN 1468-7984. doi: 10.1177/14687984261487658. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores three examples of kindergarten children spontaneously anthropomorphizing more-than-humans while outdoors, and the kindergarten staff’s reaction to this. The examples derive from an ethnographic study on kindergarten children who travel by boat 3 days a week to the unpopulated island of Bragdøya in Kristiansand, Norway. Mobilizing Maclure’s interpretation of Massumi’s exemplary method, we use these examples to contribute to discussions of ecological literacy by exploring how spontaneous anthropomorphism may shape the development of care and knowledge in children’s encounters with the more-than-human world. Our analysis points to spontaneous anthropomorphism being a relevant arena for helping children balance intuitive care for and knowledge about more-than-human entities. This balance might be achieved through staff members softly guiding the children toward a form of enlightened anthropomorphism, even though not all situations are suitable for such an undertaking. Furthermore, reflecting on one’s own relation to more-than-humans as a basis for supporting children in their development of care toward these entities appears to be a relevant area of reflection among pedagogical staff. Overall, acts of spontaneous anthropomorphism may constitute important pedagogical moments through which ecological literacy is negotiated and developed.

• Menning, Soern F.; Brandt, Lisa Annika & Fasting, Merete Lund (2026). Island pedagogies on Bragdøya: Potentials for embracing uncontrollability and resonance. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. doi: 10.1177/14639491261450313. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  According to the German sociologist and political philosopher Hartmut Rosa, the project of modernization has turned the world into an adversary and a ‘point of aggression’. He instead advocates engaging with the world's uncontrollability through resonance. To explore how early childhood education can respond to this call, we examine a distinctive pedagogical setting. The study is based on a sensory ethnographic investigation of a group of children and educators in southern Norway who travel by boat three times a week to the small, uninhabited island of Bragdøya. We employed videography, observational notes and conversations with children and educators to immerse ourselves in the island's distinctive daily life. This multimodal article integrates theoretical argument and empirical analysis by incorporating images and video clips to facilitate affective and sensory engagement. Our analysis suggests that this pedagogical setting nurtures dispositional resonance by rendering some aspects of children's daily lifeworld un-visible, un-reachable, un-controllable and un-usable – a contrast to the modernist impulse to dominate the world. Coupled with the temporal and spatial expansion offered on the island, these aspects give children opportunities to partake in resonant experiences of being with the world. Our study highlights the distinctive features of what we term island pedagogies and aims to inspire further reflection on the significance of temporal–spatial architecture for fostering resonance within institutional life in early childhood education.

• Fasting, Merete Lund; Brandt, Lisa Annika & Menning, Soern Finn (2026). Creating a Deep Embodied Intimacy: Sensitivity, Identity and Well-Beeing in and Through Play and Movement on Bragdøya. International Journal of Early Childhood. ISSN 0020-7187. doi: 10.1007/s13158-026-00513-0. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Throughout different seasons we spent time with 18 kindergarten children on Bragdøya, a small island in Southern Norway. Here, we observed their play in nature and how children form close embodied intimacy with their world. We applied a holistic and relational methodological approach through conducting lived and close observation; a sensitive bodily interaction, moving and wondering along children in nature to explore their sensitive and embodied relation with human and nonhuman surroundings. Based on conducted fieldwork, we present three phenomenological examples of playing and sensing nature through running alone and together; being with through lying on the ground and taking time; and tree-dwelling through sitting, climbing, and embracing trees. Through moods of running, lying, and sitting in nature the children expressed freedom, sensitivity and well-being, and we argue for that these can be seen as a primary foundation for an embodied and dialogical life. This demands trusting in children and their inherent playfulness and joy that come so naturally to them. It is matter of being in the world and creating meaning with the world—a starting point for encouraging intimate knowledge, place sensitivity and well-being. The joy of movement and the ability to feel calm and safe in nature are experiences that children carry with them throughout their lives.

• Murris, Karin & Menning, Soern F. (2025). Childing Methodologies : Image-ning Without a Subject in Performative Videography. In Koro, Mirka & Murris, Karin (Ed.), The Handbook of Reconfiguring Interpretation in PostQualitative Research. Routledge. ISSN 9781003504856. doi: 10.4324/9781003504856-17. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter proposes childing as an ageless postqualitative research methodology that reconfigures (human) agency ontologically. Through three examples of choreographed video clips, we present a non-representational methodology that challenges the assumption of the independent existence of human bodies-bounded-by-a-skin at the core of ‘agency’. Performative videography (Menning & Murris, 2023) as a childing methodology disrupts the binaries we tend to think and work with in research (animate/inanimate, subject/object, researcher/researched) and invites researchers to consider how the technology itself renders each other capable when ‘interpreting data’. Thus, interpretation shifts from subject-centred to an image-ning grounded in relations without a Subject. Image-ning as a form of interpretation challenges the developmental and linear discourse of scientific progress itself with the ground-breaking potential to produce the yet-unthought thought.

• Scott, Fiona; Chesworth, Liz; Kontovourki, Stavroula; Murcia, Karen; Murris, Karin & Balnaves, Kim [Show all 21 contributors for this article] (2025). ‘I just go headbutt a tree or something’: Children’s contextualised digital play drivers and subjective well-being in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Cyprus. New Media & Society. ISSN 1461-4448. doi: 10.1177/14614448251406245. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The relationship between children’s digital play and well-being remains under-researched, with debates often polarised and limited by a lack of holistic studies in diverse global contexts. This article draws on empirical data from an ecoculturally informed study of children’s (6–12) digital play in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and Cyprus to examine how individual and contextual circumstances influence children’s self-led digital play choices and practices. To do so, we theorise ‘contextualised digital play drivers’, understood as children’s own accounts, or adults’ interpretations, of the deep interests, needs and desires their play appears to fulfil. This approach moves beyond dominant lenses focused on individual autonomy, offering a more situated reading acknowledging the individual and contextual circumstances shaping digital play. Eleven contextualised digital play drivers are identified and discussed in relation to children’s well-being. The article concludes with implications for game designers, educators, families, policy and research methodology.

• Menning, Soern F.; Caetano-Silva, Giovanna & Murris, Karin (2025). ‘What action did you see me do?’: proposing a methodology of choreographed visual montage when re-turning to interview research data. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal. ISSN 1350-293X. 33, p. 850–868. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2025.2502821. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper offers a creative methodology for co-creating and analysing data when conducting research with children, families and practitioners in the early years. Instead of relying heavily on either adult observation or language when, for example, interviewing children, we propose the method of choreographed visual montage. We show the novelty and practical applicability of our posthumanist experimentation with visual and digital research methods through an example from an international research project on digital play and well-being in South Africa. In much detail, we explore the response of “seven-year-old” Dan to our question about how he feels when playing digital games. He answers ‘What action did you see me do?’ and enacts how he "looks" when playing. Affected by this performance and inspired by Erin Manning’s notion of the minor gesture and Karin Barad’s agential realism.], we describe how our creative methodology works and why it matters while staying closely with this example. Listening care-fully to his words, but also going beyond words, the method does justice to the complexity of reality and the relational encounters in-between family members, researchers and the more-than-human – an entanglement that is not only discursive (as in multimodal analysis), but, according to Barad, material and discursive.

• Brandt, Lisa Annika & Menning, Soern Finn (2024). Age segregation in ECEC: tracing arguments and reanimating the critique of developmentalism. Pedagogy, Culture & Society. ISSN 1468-1366. 32(4), p. 1051–1068. doi: 10.1080/14681366.2024.2355098. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Despite numerous critiques of the pioneering works of developmental child psychology, these key ideas continue to resonate within the field of ECEC (early childhood education and care). This article seeks to re-animate the critique through a closer look at two current tendencies within the Nordic countries: a growing and increasingly strict age segregation of kindergarten children; and a minor oppositional movement of family groups gathering children from one-to-six years of age. Looking towards Piaget as one of the main pioneers of developmentalism, we question whether strict age segregation is justified based on his theories – a close re-reading of two of Piaget’s major works would suggest not. Through reflections of kindergarten teachers working with age-homogeneous groups, we trace other discourses that developmentalism is entangled with. The analysis and deconstruction of the teachers’ reflections point to the need to explore age segregation within a neoliberalist political context and further, show how this results in institutionalised othering. Through mobilising an agential realist reading we explore how narratives of kindergarten teachers that work with age-heterogeneous groups might inspire alternative ways of thinking/practising, and re-energise the critique of developmentalism.

• Menning, Soern Finn (2024). Under the table: Using video(de)creation to imagine gestures of political Child. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (RERM). 15(2), p. 1–17. doi: 10.7577/rerm.5805. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Centred around a one-minute short film of an everyday activity in a Norwegian early childhood education institution, this article will explore how thinking with video offers the ability to deconstruct and re-imagine taken-for-granted conceptions of children’s political participation. Sensitive to aesthetic dimensions of video, this research-creation emphasises bodily intensities and collective vitality often less noticed in childhood research. Paired with both a close and an in-depth reading of Manning´s (2016) minor gestures as political as well as Agamben’s (1992, 1995) conception of gesture, the use of the cinematic technique of montage enables us to challenge dominant methodological discourses in the investigation of children’s agency. While the major gestures of political child are often based on identifying children’s individualised subject-centred and discourse-based agency, this multi-modal article will explore how video as research-creation might contribute to reconceptualising political child differently.

• Binfield-Skøie, Tina & Menning, Soern Finn (2024). Children’s participation when transitioning between early childhood education and care settings: potentials for readjusting institutional logics. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal. ISSN 1350-293X. 33(2), p. 352–367. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2024.2443649. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Through exploring children’s transitions within Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions, this article highlights an interconnectedness of children’s knowledge of institutional logics and children’s agentic actions. The theoretical framework conceptualises institutional logics as inherent structures and patterns (Thornton, Patricia H., and William Ocasio. 2008. “Institutional Logics.” In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, edited by Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin, and Roy Suddaby, 99–129. London: SAGE) and children’s agentic actions through their participation in everyday activities in ECEC institutions (Juhl, Pernille. 2023. Exploring Young Children’s Agency in Everyday Transitions. London: Bloomsbury). This ethnographic study followed 13 children who transitioned from a department for toddlers to a department for older children. Through a thematic analysis of video observations and field notes, children’s forms of agentic actions were categorised as adaptation, resistance and transcendence. Adaptation denoted embracing institutional logics, whereas resistance involves openly opposing them. However, the third category, transcendence, denoted an interrelation between children’s adjustment and opposition to these logics, which enabled the children’s agency. This article argues that children’s institutional participation are interconnected forms of agentic action with potentials for readjusting institutional logics.

• Menning, Soern Finn & Murris, Karin (2023). Reconfiguring the use of video in qualitative research through practices of filmmaking: A post-qualitative cinematic analysis. Qualitative Research. ISSN 1468-7941. doi: 10.1177/14687941231206755. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The article shows how film can disrupt human-centred discourses about the use of video technology in qualitative research. Inspired in particular by Deleuze's film philosophy, a detailed analysis of an “ordinary” event in an early-childhood institution gestures at some of the possibilities that the manipulation of technology can offer. Filmmaking practices, such as framing, tracking, speed changes, reverse motion and use of sound, shape what counts as “data” and offer alternative modes of analysis that include more-than-human bodies. These playful techniques draw attention to how video technology can play a democratising role in qualitative research by paying more attention to the digital, the sensory and the visual and relying less on language as the mode of enquiry. Grounded in post-qualitative approaches of performativity, we indicate the radical implications of the ontological and epistemological paradigmatic shift in agency and causality when disrupting anthropocentrism in qualitative research.

• Menning, Soern Finn (2022). Nysgjerrighet i barnehage - hva har dette med etikk og verdier å gjøre? In Aslanian, Teresa Katherine (Eds.), Det er her det skjer! Møter med religion, etikk og filosofi i barnehagen. Universitetsforlaget. ISSN 9788215037158. p. 120–129. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F.; Murris, Karin & Wargo, Jon (2021). Reanimating video and sound in research practices. In Murris, Karin (Eds.), Navigating the Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Terrain Across Disciplines: An Introductory Guide. Routledge. ISSN 9780367484705. p. 150–168. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. & Kampmann, Jan (2021). Når etikken er under press - relasjonsetiske aspekter og overveielser i aktuell etnografisk inspirert barnehageforskning. In Fasting, Merete Lund; Skreland, Lisbeth Ljosdal & Kampmann, Jan (Ed.), Å forske blant barn : Kvalitative metoder. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202689025. p. 145–161. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2021). Å forbinde begreper og praksisser - videobasert fokusgruppeintervju. In Fasting, Merete Lund; Skreland, Lisbeth Ljosdal & Kampmann, Jan (Ed.), Å forske blant barn : Kvalitative metoder. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202689025. p. 129–144. Full text in Research Archive
• Murris, Karin & Menning, Soern F. (2019). Introduction to the Special Issue "Videography and Decolonizing Childhood". Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy. 4(1), p. 1–8. doi: 10.1163/23644583-00401010. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2019). Exploring an Alternative Justification for the Importance of Curiosity in Education: Social Curiosity and Løgstrup’s Sovereign Expressions of Life. Studies in Philosophy and Education. ISSN 0039-3746. 38, p. 241–260. doi: 10.1007/s11217-018-9629-0. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  There seems to be a broad agreement that curiosity is important in education. However, current research often seeks to answer the question of how best to nurture curiosity and fails to ask the normative question of why this should be done. A closer look reveals that the reasons for justifying the importance of curiosity vary, with some theorists pointing to its role in cognitive development as a starting point for learning, and others praising it as an element of democracy and a child’s right to participation. Most of these approaches understand curiosity as an individual urge or desire for knowledge. In contrast, this article will examine a relational understanding of the concept by focussing on social curiosity. Instead of following a cognitive developmentalist, intellectual virtue or emancipatory approach to valuing curiosity, I will employ relational ethical theory. The argument then explores a possible analogy between social curiosity and the concept of sovereign expressions of life, as developed by the Danish philosopher and theologian K.E. Løgstrup. By drawing on his relational ethics, the article aims to expand the theoretical grounds on which curiosity can be normatively legitimised in education. With children spending longer and longer hours in educational, structured and adult-led settings, I conclude with a twofold normative claim: Social curiosity should be a part of all relations in education and its absence should lead to an ethical demand. In addition, an awareness of the actual deeds through which social curiosity is realised is also a topic that must be addressed by educators.

• Menning, Soern F. (2018). Why nurturing curiosity is an ethical endeavour: exploring practitioners' reflections on the importance of curiosity. International Journal of Early Years Education. ISSN 0966-9760. 27(1), p. 34–51. doi: 10.1080/09669760.2018.1547632. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Several authors have argued that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is essentially an ethical practice based on certain values and conceptions about the purpose of education. Is this also the case for educational practices surrounding the highly valued notion of curiosity? While psychological approaches portray it as neutral, this article aims to explore curiosity's normative connotations. To do so, an ethnographically informed approach and video-stimulated recall focus-group interviews have been used to gather Norwegian ECEC practitioners' reflections on the importance of curiosity. The reflections have been analysed using the concept of ethical rationalities and can be grouped into four approaches to valuing curiosity: the relational approach, the virtue approach, the consequentialist approach and the essentialist approach. The analysis suggests that different practices for nurturing curiosity are constrained and others are enabled, depending on the preferred ethical rationality. To prevent the nurturing of curiosity from being based on an assumed and restricted range of theoretical and ethical perspectives, it is necessary to invite practitioners’ reflections on values associated with curiosity.

• Menning, Soern F. (2018). Mapping the dilemmatic space of early childhood education and care practitioners when challenged by children’s curiosity. Journal of Early Childhood Research. ISSN 1476-718X. 16(4), p. 349–362. doi: 10.1177/1476718X18775769. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores the notion of curiosity as a gateway to value dilemmas in early childhood education and care practices. The concept of dilemmatic space (Honig) is used to highlight the complexity of educational practices. Through an ethnographic approach based on video-observation and stimulated recall interviews, the reflections of the practitioners in three early childhood education and care institutions in Norway are analysed regarding situations in which curiosity was challenging and in which explorative behaviour was stopped, transferred or adjusted. The analyses allowed the construction of several axes of dilemmatic space, such as Equality versus Supporting the Individual, Social Order versus Questioning Status Quo and Being Professional versus Being Private. This highlights the entanglement of values, which is part of the ongoing process of constructing professional identity. It is argued that even in the case of widely accepted notions like curiosity, standardised and fixed guidelines on practice cannot be the sole answer to the complexity of early childhood education and care.

• Menning, Soern F. (2017). Tracing Curiosity with a Value Perspective. Nordisk tidsskrift for pedagogikk og kritikk. 3(1), p. 1–16. doi: 10.23865/ntpk.v3.531. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Several have challenged the idea that the act of educating is a neutral endeavour. Following this line of thought, this article intends to examine a common concept often taken for granted: curiosity. The aim of this article is to explore the notion of curiosity in an early-childhood-education-and-care (ECEC) context in Norway in order to provide new perspectives on how value aspects of curiosity are communicated in official documents. Four ECEC documents from different organisational levels will be analysed. Informed by qualitative content analysis with a concept-driven strategy, this document analysis seeks to explore connections between the notion of curiosity and prominent value fields in ECEC, such as competence, democracy and care. Analysis of the documents suggests that curiosity is a value-loaded notion here, one which often has a competence-related value and which is frequently understood as a tool for gaining knowledge, especially in natural science and mathematics. Other value aspects, such as nurturing democracy, are represented to a minor degree. At the same time, the documents do not include possible ethical aspects of curiosity, such as connections to interpersonal caring, nor do they mention any existential or intrinsic value. In the final discussion, the article therefore explores these possible alternatives.

• Menning, Soern Finn (2016). Nysgjerrig på nysgjerrighet! Å sette fokus på nysgjerrighetsprosesser. In Gulpinar, Tona; Hernes, Leif & Winger, Nina (Ed.), Blikk fra barnehagen. Fagbokforlaget. ISSN 9788245016956. p. 163–173. Full text in Research Archive

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• Nome, Dag Øystein & Menning, Soern F. (2024). Småbarnspedagogiske praksiser. Gyldendal Akademisk. ISBN 9788205579705. 200 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Brandt, Lisa Annika & Menning, Soern F. (2026). En pedagogisk tidslomme. Barnehagefolk. ISSN 1500-6905. p. 79–82. Full text in Research Archive
• Brandt, Lisa Annika; Menning, Soern Finn & Fasting, Merete Lund (2025). Spontaneous anthropomorphism as an ecological-ethical arena in ECEC: The case of the ants, the leaves and the whale. Full text in Research Archive
• Brandt, Lisa Annika & Menning, Soern Finn (2024). Age-segregation in Nordic ECEC: Tracing arguments to reanimate the critique of developmentalism. Full text in Research Archive
• Brandt, Lisa Annika; Menning, Soern Finn & Fasting, Merete Lund (2024). Kindergartenlife on Norways island Bragdøya: Power of being and moments of resonance. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern Finn; Brandt, Lisa Annika & Fasting, Merete Lund (2024). Stedsresponsiv bærekraftspedagogikk på Bragdøya : Muligheter for resonans og værekraft. Full text in Research Archive
• Brandt, Lisa Annika & Menning, Soern Finn (2024). Aldersinddelte grupper i dagtilbud – Et tegn på effektivisering, standardisering og intensivering af barndommen? Pædagogisk Ekstrakt. ISSN 2246-7920. 25, p. 46–48. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Link: https://issuu.com/paedagogiskextrakt/docs/p_dagogisk_extrakt25/46?fr=sNmZjNTgwODMyNjA

• Menning, Soern Finn (2023). Reconfiguring curiosity in ECEC as sympoetic worlding. Full text in Research Archive
• Sirevåg, Lene Cherize Haugland & Menning, Soern Finn (2022). Children’s Laughter in the primary classroom - a corporal event as part of a ´democracy to come ´. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern Finn & Murris, Karin (2022). Reanimating Video in Research by Thinking Cinematically: Slowing Down and Speeding Up. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. & Murris, Karin (2021). Videography and Decoloniziong Childhood. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. & Murris, Karin (2021). Reconceptualising childhood as a multi-durational event through videography. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2020). Den Nysgjerrige Forskeren. [Radio]. NRK Sørlandet. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2020). Video Research in ECEC - Challenges and possibilities. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. & Murris, Karin (2019). Videography and Decolonizing Childhood. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2019). Nysgjerrighet som verdiladet begrep i barnehagepedagogiske praksiser. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2019). Getting affected by cinema to reconfigure video research. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2019). Curiosity - a value-loaded notion. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2017). Exploring possibilities of video based constructing grounded theory – a case study. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2017). Valuing curiosity - how practitioners legitimate educational practices around curiosity. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2017). The value of educationalised curiosity - An inquiry into how practitioners in the field of early childhood education and care reflect upon the importance of curiosity. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern Finn (2016). Tracing value aspects of curiosity in ECEC documents. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern Finn (2015). Nysgjerrighetens muligheter. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern Finn (2013). På leting etter fellesskap i den fleksible barnehagen. Barnehagen : tidsskrift for barnehagefolk. ISSN 1501-9667. 1-2013, p. 83–86. Full text in Research Archive
• Menning, Soern F. (2019). Curiosity - A value-loaded notion Exploring practices around curiosity in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Norway. Universitet i Agder. ISSN 9788271179397. Full text in Research Archive

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