Theorising young children's interests: making connections and in-the-moment happenings

Global perspectives of early childhood education are increasingly mediated by an instrumental discourse associated with standardised notions of knowledge acquisition. However, an alternative discourse for early childhood emphasises the importance of learning experiences that are responsive to the diverse interests that children enact in their play. In this article I argue that instrumentalism reproduces binary conceptualisations of knowledge through which curriculum content privileges universal forms of knowledge over the locally situated knowledge which is mediated by children's interactions and intra-actions within fluid and overlapping social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon an episode of play from an early years classroom in England, this paper explores three different ways in which the notion of ‘interest’ can be conceptualised and positioned in relation to young children's learning, knowledge and ways of knowing. In so doing, the paper poses critical questions regarding ‘what counts’ as valid knowledge and as legitimate modes of becoming knowledgeable. I suggest that interests are constituted by a combination of children's intentional motivations to make connections with sociocultural repertoires and the unpredictable, in-the-moment happenings that emerge through intra-activity in early childhood learning environments.