“Now You See Me, Now You Do Not”: Dialogic Loopholes in Authorship Activity With the Very Young

The genesis for this paper lies in the problematic nature of assessment practice, as a central authorship activity, for early childhood education teachers. This paper draws on dialogic philosophy to explore this challenge based on a doctoral investigation of a very young child (White, 2009) and the strategic means by which she reveals and conceals meaning through dialogic loopholes that are generated through eavesdropping tactics. The central argument made is that what can be seen and interpreted, when language is not shared between dialogic partners, and is always and only an ontologic endeavor and never an epistemological truth. Seen in relation to the very young child, this tenet invites the potential to “see” more and move beyond narrow definitions of learning as an outcome of authorial intervention on the part of the teacher, embrace uncertainty and difference as a central pedagogical stance and re-vision the infant as polyphonic hero in their own adventure plots.