What Haunts Pedagogical Documentation? Speculating With Data-Ghost(s)
Abstract
With the imaginary of (a) data-ghost(s), I use ideas from hauntology to speculate about what haunts pedagogical documentation. By re-turning to an example of documentation of young children encountering a hatchery where eggs incubated into chicks, I notice the absences of what was not documented as hauntings. With performative and playful writing, I speculate with artworks and dialogue as a way of speaking of, to, and with ghosts. By thinking with the relationships between past/present/future, I ponder what inheritances, response-abilities, and possibilities emerge. Through slowing down with data-ghost(s), I speculate with what haunts and hauntings’ call for something-to-be-done to imagine what becomes possible for practices in the present and future for classroom practice and teacher education.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Albin-Clark, J. (2023). Documenting data-ghosts: Visualising non-human life and death through what is undocumented in early childhood education. Journal of Posthumanism, 3(1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.33182/joph.v3i1.2851
Berger, I., Ashton, E., Lehrer, J., & Pighini, M. (2022). Slowing, desiring, haunting, hospicing, and longing for change: Thinking with snails in Canadian early childhood education and care. In Education, 28(1), 6–20. https://doi.org/10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.658
Bone, J. (2019). Ghosts of the material world in early childhood education: Furniture matters. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 20(2), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949117749599
Derrida, J. (2006). Specters of Marx. Routledge.
Gordon, A. F. (2008). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. University of Minnesota Press.
Rinaldi, C. (2006). In dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching, and learning (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Vintimilla, C. D., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Berry, A., Frankowski, A., & Escudero, M. E. C. (2025). Encounters and proximity. Escuela Itinerante / Itinerant School: Pedagogies in Viral Times [Webpage]. https://viraltimes.climateactionchildhood.net/index.php/gardens/
Copyright (c) 2025 Jo Albin-Clark

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to the Journal of Childhood Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.