Exploring Photo Essay on the Meaning of Caring in 3-Year-Old Class: From the Perspective of Posthumanism

This study aimed to examine the stories of caring that are being expressed in the early childhood educational institutions where young children and teachers live together, and explored the phenomenon of caring and its meaning through photo essay exploration. To this end, the three-year-old class at the P city daycare center was observed 14 times and photographs and video data, research notes, and recorded conversations with teachers were collected. The photo essays for interpreting the meaning of the data were written through diffractive writing by re-viewing the images created through cutting. And the written photo essays went through a process of being reconstructed through re-reading and together-reading. The results of the study showed that the caring of three-year-old class from the perspective of posthumanism was ‘the entanglement of caring that crosses the boundaries of dichotomy’, ‘the transformation as a caregiver-becoming along with the agency of matter’, and ‘caring extended to non-human beings’. The results of this study suggest that acts of caring occurs when the act of care crosses within the phenomenon, that materials actively participate in the field of caring with agency, and that beings beyond humans and young children are creating caring together through relationships.