Barns undring gjennom fortolkning og levd kropp. Hermeneutiske og fenomenologiske hendelser i barnehagen

The thesis aims to develop a new understanding of children’s lifeworld and children’s formation processes in kindergarten. The thesis highlights the child’s existence as homo admirans (Child the wonderer) and homo interpretans (Child the interpreter), and is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological study that emphasises children’s lived experiences. By emphasising children’s wonder and interpretation as overarching expressions of life and manifestations of life essential to their formative development, the thesis asks the question: In what ways do wonder and interpretation show themselves as a childlike phenomenon in kindergarten? The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on philosophy, more precisely Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body. 

The study’s most important empirical findings are that children’s wonder and interpretation show themselves as a distinctive, childlike, expressive, dialogic way of being-in-the-world, as intertwined friendly conversations, stories, play, parties, poetics and bodily expressions, ‘languages’ that overlap and are often concurrent. In summary, the phenomenon reveals itself as embodied communication about the world, an interpretive practice in which the world is granted meaning.

The empirical data are based on lived observations (including video observation, audio recording and photography) in a kindergarten, in two groups of children, each consisting of children aged three to six years, for a period of six months.

Amundsen, H. M. (2018). ”Barns undring gjennom fortolkning og levd kropp. Hermeneutiske og fenomenologiske hendelser i barnehagen”. Akademisk avhandling. NTNU.