This presentation aims to highlight aspects of the visual construction of childhood as well as the visualisation of modes (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, 2003) of communication in the institutional space of Swedish preschool – through the eyes of children who inhabit those spaces. The presentation is based on two researchers re-reading and re-analysing work of the visual data from two different case studies with different aims. The re-analysing work is evolving, and methodological developed, during the re-readings performed.

The first study was carried out within the framework of an educational action-research project (Kemmis, 2010) to open up new spaces for languaging and literacy practices in an early childhood setting with sizeable linguistic diversity. The study focused how the concept of childhood is given meaning about issues embedded in society, such as nationalism and migration, when the institution of preschool is characterised by a tension between the aim to foster Swedishness and at the same time mediate values of multiculturalism (Åkerblom & Harju, 2019). The second study is an ethnographic study (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007) focusing on how three-year-old's become camera users in preschool and thereby are offered the opportunity to become onlooker (Sparrman & Lindgren, 2010) in the context of preschool. Where they usually are the ones being looked at (Magnusson, 2018a, 2018b). Children were offered disposable cameras in the first study and digital cameras in the other; the two studies both focused on the everyday context of preschool and was ethically approved by children and their guardians.

The overall produced data consist of children's photographs, visual (camcorder) and textual data (pen, paper) as well as interviews with children. Through the re-reading of data, we aim to explore and discuss how contemporary Swedish childhoods are constructed and experienced by children in a time of diversity and transience out of the two questions: What is characterising for the childhoods created by the children who inhabit them? What are the visual conditions in preschool, and what can be the consequence if children become photographic onlooker in this context?

The photographs made by the children, the stories told in the interviews, and the children's actions and experiences within the two studies are examined and analysed as "social occasions" (Jones, 2009, p. 114) with the help of the analytical concepts of multimodal modes (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, 2003). Thereby speech, sound, image-making and body language (gestures and looks) are seen as active parts in producing language. The preliminary results show how children can become co-creators of the daily activities in preschool by teachers following and listening to the ways that children develop language, in a broader sense, with the help of visual and visualising tools. This result can come to offer preschool teachers and researcher new and changing directions in the understanding of Swedischnes and what language can be and become by following the children rather than fostering them to become communicative in a particular or given way.