Over the past decade post-humanism, new materialism and aspects of post-qualitative research methods have been used in early childhood research in the Nordic countries. This presentation concerns the visual material from an ethnographic study in preschool in which three-year-olds were given access to digital cameras in their daily activities (Magnusson, 2017, 2018). In the study, the children's photographs and the video data produced by the researcher were analysed by using diffractive readings (Barad, 2007, 2014). As a result of using these analytical readings, the researcher read the children's photographs through and with the video data. The two types of different visual materials were also read through previous research, the researcher's own experience and the potential of the theoretical framework.

By applying and using diffractive readings, not only did people and their actions in the analyses appear, but there was also a strong focus on the digital cameras, the video camera, directed and re-directed gazes, and they were all regarded as active, entangled and performing forces that took place in the analyses. By using diffractive readings, the analyses came to move back and forth and include not only data but also the ongoing data production. The presentation aims to highlight how the diffractive readings act as an analytical tool and how they can ask questions as well as demonstrate previously unknown knowledge and experience that concern children and children's perspective in their daily preschool activities. I propose, supported by the results, in the study concerned, and with the support of other theorists and researchers (Barad, 2007, 2014; Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013) that the diffractive readings indicate knowledge and knowing we do not yet know –and that this is what constitutes the strength in the use of the analytical method in education research.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C. ; London: Duke University Press.

Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together Apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187.

Lenz Taguchi, H., & Palmer, A. (2013). A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. Gender and Education, 25(6), 671–687.

Magnusson, L. O. (2017). Treåringar, kameror och förskola – en serie diffraktiva rörelser. [Three-year-olds, cameras and preschool: A series of diffractive movements]. Doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg. Sweden.

Magnusson, L. O. (2018). Photographic agency and agency of photographs: Three-year-olds and digital cameras. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 43 (3), 34–42.