Do I have to wear mud pants? Mud pants as material agent in Finnish preschool
Keränen, Virve; Kinnunen, Susanna (2025-01-16)
Avaa tiedosto
Sisältö avataan julkiseksi: 16.07.2026
Taylor & Francis
16.01.2025
Keränen, V., & Kinnunen, S. (2025). Do I have to wear mud pants? Mud pants as material agent in Finnish preschool. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2025.2452398
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. Keränen, V., & Kinnunen, S. (2025). Do I have to wear mud pants? Mud pants as material agent in Finnish preschool. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2025.2452398. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. Keränen, V., & Kinnunen, S. (2025). Do I have to wear mud pants? Mud pants as material agent in Finnish preschool. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2025.2452398. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202501171228
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202501171228
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Mud pants have protected Finnish preschool children from dirt and water for many years. However, children do not like to wear them and educators in preschools feel that mud pants cause hard work. This contradiction made us wonder with mud pants. Drawing on relational–material approaches, we understand mud pants as material agent and ask the following question: How mud pants act as material agent in everyday relations in preschool? Our wondering showed that mud pants act as material agent since they create different actions within non-human and human relations. Children in their mud pants strengthen the discourse of happy, clean and healthy outdoor child. However, mud pants limit children’s bodies and cause discomfort, making it hard for them to perform happy childhoods. We argue that it is necessary to think with mud pants and other material agents in preschool to make the material discourses more visible.
Mud pants have protected Finnish preschool children from dirt and water for many years. However, children do not like to wear them and educators in preschools feel that mud pants cause hard work. This contradiction made us wonder with mud pants. Drawing on relational–material approaches, we understand mud pants as material agent and ask the following question: How mud pants act as material agent in everyday relations in preschool? Our wondering showed that mud pants act as material agent since they create different actions within non-human and human relations. Children in their mud pants strengthen the discourse of happy, clean and healthy outdoor child. However, mud pants limit children’s bodies and cause discomfort, making it hard for them to perform happy childhoods. We argue that it is necessary to think with mud pants and other material agents in preschool to make the material discourses more visible.
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