In line with social studies of children and childhood, it is necessary to pay attention to local contextual understandings and practices in those places where constructions of children and childhood occur. The authors argue that the discourse of the competent child has become intertwined with a discourse of early intervention. In Norwegian day-care institutions, new practices of increased monitoring and evaluation of individual children have been observed. In this article, the authors explore day-care staff members' descriptions of children who have not been formally diagnosed but who are positioned in between what is considered normal and deviating. While political documents stress the importance of early intervention and discovering special needs in the day-care setting, the authors suggest that this 'discovery' is context-bound, valuebased and intertwined with ideas about children and childhood. From a study with day-care staff members, the following question is explored: 'Which subject positions are present in day-care staff descriptions of children in between, and how do these positions legitimise the positioning of some children as deviating from perceived normality?'

Based on interviews and fieldwork in Norwegian day-care institutions, I examine day-care staffs' descriptions of children suspected of, but not (yet) diagnosed as, having impairments. The main research question is: how do children become constructed as possibly impaired and positioned outside the realm of a perceived normality in Norwegian day-care centres? Understanding impairment as discursively constructed, I explore how day-care staffs' portrayals of three young boys construct them as deviant and possibly impaired by drawing on cultural values and ideas about children and childhood. I use a continuum concept (Davis 1995) to visualize and conceptualise the fluid and blurry areas between the binaries, disabled/non-disabled and normal/abnormal, and explore how day-care staffs' statements deconstruct or cut-off the continuum, thus, (re)produce categories and position some children as deviating from what is perceived and accepted as normal. Keywords:Early childhood education and care; Inclusion; Special needs; Critical Disability Studies; Norwegian day-care institutions IntroductionNorwegian day-care institutions are considered central arenas for inclusion processes, and should offer all children, no matter their individual ability or background, good developmental and learning opportunities (St. Meld. 18, 2010-2011)-they are, or should be, inclusive arenas without social/environmental barriers. At the same time, day-care institutions are perceived as key arenas for the discovery of children with special needs and impairments (St. Meld. 16, 2006, St. Meld. 18, 2010-2011, Mørland 2008. Currently, in Norway, there is an extreme growth in practices that monitor, test, and evaluate day-care children's skills and abilities (Østrem, et al. 2009) to detect deviations from a pre-established norm. Diagnosing children, or categorising children as having special needs, is seen as a crucial first step in order to create equal opportunities and inclusion within the educational system. Somewhat simplified, the idea is that if one discovers and defines children's ' deviations,' the institutions can adjust and better serve the child. One could say that these types of inclusion measures rely on the logic: 'Changing what is wrong with society, […] implies finding out what is "wrong" with the people in it' (Grue 2010, 169). In other words, in order for day-care institutions to take appropriate measures and become inclusive, staff members are expected to discover and report to external authorities 1 their concerns about a child that may have special needs. In this article however, day-care children's potential impairments or special needs are not considered to be discovered, but rather constructed. My overarching research question is: How do children become constructed as possibly impaired and positioned outside the realm of a perceived normality in Norwegian day-care centres?The starting point of my exploration is that impairment is a discursive construction (Hughes & Paterson 1997) rather than value-neutral description. I draw o...

This article employs a sociomaterial perspective and explores how material artefacts take part in the enactment of social norms by analysing empirical examples from two different childhood studies projects in Norway. Drawing on interview data with tweens, (children aged 8–12), and observational data from an early education and care institution (ECEC), we argue that material, in this case toys and makeup, make a difference in the enactment of social norms in children's everyday lives. Our aim is to demonstrate the malleability of a sociomaterial perspective and show how this can lead to new insights and open childhood studies as a field.

Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. SammendragAt barn skal laere å dele med hverandre, er en del av barnehagens hverdag. Hva som menes med deling og hvordan sosiale normer om deling finner sted i barnehagen, risikerer derimot å bli tatt for gitt i hverdagen. Som forsker opplevde jeg å bli meget forvirret over barnehagens regler og praksiser for deling. Det fremstod som en myriade av regler og normer om når å dele og ikke dele -alt fra å dele en leke sammen til førstemann-sin-rett eller turtaking. I artikkelen gransker jeg derfor naermere hvordan ulike sosiale normer for deling utspiller seg i barnehagehverdager, og jeg retter et saerskilt fokus mot det materielle sin rolle i ulike situasjoner. På bakgrunn av observasjoner og intervju i fire barnehageavdelinger analyseres konkrete hendelser ved bruk av aktør-nettverksteori (ANT). I tråd med ANT anerkjennes det ikke-menneskelige og menneskelige som aktører (jfr. Latour, 2005). Hensikten til artikkelen er å introdusere en alternativ tilnaerming til utforskning av hvordan sosiale normer om deling utspiller seg i hverdagslige situasjoner, og å forstyrre etablerte sannheter omkring et tilsynelatende enkelt og uproblematisert område i barnehagers praksis. Nøkkelord: Aktør-nettverksteori (ANT); lekgjenstander; barn; sosial samhandling AbstractLearning to share is a part of children's everyday life in Norwegian early childhood, education and care (ECEC) institutions. However, what it means to share, and the way social norms for sharing take place in ECEC institutions, run the risk of being taken for granted. As a researcher I experienced confusion regarding ECEC institution's rules and practices for sharing. There appeared to be a myriad of rules and norms on when to share and when not to share -varying from sharing a toy together, to the first child's right to ownership, to (children) taking turns. In this article I therefore examine how different social norms for sharing take place in everyday life of ECEC institutions, with particular attention to the role of the material in various situations. Based on observations and interviews in four ECEC units, specific incidences are analyzed using actor-network theory (ANT). In line with ANT, the non-human and human are both recognized as actors (cf. Latour, 2005). The article's objective is to introduce an alternative approach for exploring the manner in which social norms of sharing take place in everyday

The aim of this study was to critically examine how expert assessment documents describe and assess the early childhood education and care (ECEC) context in reports about a child's need for special educational support. Adhering to a shift towards inclusive education, the focus is on how educational-psychological services assess, or fail to assess for, potential shortcomings in the educational environment. The study is based on in-depth document-analysis of 23 expert assessments of children with 1-10 weekly hours of special educational support in various ECEC institutions in Norway. The analysis outlines five different ways in which expert assessments refer to the educational context: from concealing, separating, situating the child in, accentuating, to critically assessing the ECEC context. The results illustrate how assessments at times refer to the ECEC context in, for example, descriptions of a child's behaviour during routine activities or providing information about the institutions organisational qualities and practices. However, the documents hardly ever discuss potential shortcomings of the ECEC context.