Making sense and nonsense: Comparing mediated discourse and agential realist approaches to materiality in a preschool makerspace

Two approaches to materiality (i.e. mediated discourse and agential realism) are compared to explore their usefulness in tracking literacies in action and artefacts produced during a play and design activity in a preschool makerspace. Mediated discourse analysis has relied on linguistic framing and social semiotics to make sense of multimodality. Can a multimodal lens grounded in embodied histories of meaning-making unpack sensory exploration, silly repetition and free-wheeling nonsense in children’s playdough play? Barad’s agential realism seems promising for unpacking the sensory and the emergent produced in the materiality, fluidity and messiness of entangled bodies and things in a makerspace. We compare key constructs of mediated discourse and agential realism, comparing interaction and intra-action in video excerpts from two weeks of play with playdough electronics kits in three early childhood classrooms in a US university childcare centre. Mediated discourse analysis of multimodality identified collaborative interaction among players in a small group and tracked a collective flow of materialized knowledge that moved through children’s sharing and collaboration. Agential realism tracked intra-actions among bodies, materials and spaces as transitory becomings and undoings that rupture definitions of sense-making as strategic design that manipulates materials into artefacts or as play that resemiotizes materials into roles and props in dramatized narratives.