Resistance Stories: Telling and Sharing Material Stories of Play as a Resistance to the Formalisation of Early Childhood Education.

This two-year ongoing research enquiry aims to tell stories of how play is embodied in everyday materialities as an act of resistance to the formalisation of learning in early childhood education (ECE) in England. As resistance scholarship grows (Albin-Clark and Archer, 2023; 2024) its enactments require scrutiny. Building on how resistances are lively materialities (Albin-Clark et al., 2024), like Malone et al. (2020) we look to more-than-human resistances. In our enquiry we theorise the storying of resistances with feminist posthuman and materialist thinking to notice what is situated, multiple, embodied and in relation with the more-than-human world (Osgood, 2023; Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 2016). In a post-qualitative paradigm, with arts-based research-creation (Manning and Massumi, 2014), we gather visual, audio/video expressions with twenty educators. Iterative analysis will be dialogic with participants and creative noticing of spaces and materialities in data. Ethical considerations employ international guidelines (EECERA, 2025) including confidentiality, risk management and secure data handling. With informed consent alongside data that is more than language, we account for relationships with materials and spaces. Preliminary findings suggest that Version 4 Sept 2025 308 resistances are situated in places and spaces. Stories reveal ‘idle moments’ resistant to adult agendas through hesitation and alertness to events, such as noticing a spider’s web. Analysis reveals ecologies of minor, everyday events that push back on major politics. Implications for practice suggest that whilst play can be marginalised, storytelling pushes back as a hopeful advocacy that embraces a liveliness beyond the child. The research platforms storytelling as an applicable and relevant powerful mode of resistance