The materiality of authentic scientific practice is frequently underestimated in science education . Unlike scientists who possess precision instruments, primary students’ scientific practice often relies on highly structured "material kits" or simple daily items. Based on empirical observations in Chinese primary science classrooms, this study employs micro-interaction analysis to demonstrate how the body is "assembled" within material practices.

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, what a body can do depends on the assemblages it forms (Gatens, 1996). The distinction between human and non-human is less important than how bodies are assembled together, and what relations or capacities this combination constitutes. Pickering’s "mangle" also attempts to show how human powers and material powers intertwine in an interactive and emergent way, revealing the critical role of "non-human actors" (such as experimental kits, light, paperclips) in the Latourian sense in the construction of scientific facts. Just as in authentic scientific practice, in primary science classrooms, we similarly observe: how students' bodies, assembled within specific material contexts, are able to do more scientific things beyond the official script; or are thereby restricted to doing specific things or even unable to do anything; or make students more prone to the risk of data fabrication. In other words, the student's body always dances with and works with material actors. Thus, distinct from bodily essentialism, "what a body can do" and "will do" is understood as a situated, open possibility.

Theoretical concepts such as Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, Pickering’s "mangle," and Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblages (Gatens, 1996) all point to the fact that the body is always situated within material practices, being supported or constrained. What a body can do always depends on the specific situation it inhabits, thereby outlining the body's numerous connections, associations, and assemblages. For instance, a Formula One racing car in a competition is actually a heterogeneous network assembled by maintaining a series of material, bodily, and informational connections; it is full of contingency, and a slight accident can instantly dismantle these associations. This prompts us to realize that many instances of a body's inaction or specific actions are not necessarily attributes of the individual itself—whether regarding thinking or personality—but are assembled within specific socio-material contexts. This urges us to focus on how materiality and its action networks support or hinder students' bodily engagement, rather than viewing bodily engagement merely as a subjective choice of "willingness," but focusing on its "capacity" (can or cannot).

Research Question: In the material practice of primary science classrooms, how are students' bodies "assembled" by material entities (e.g., experimental equipment, material kits)? Specifically, moving beyond the singular focus on "cognition" and "concept mastery" in traditional science education research, this study turns to examine the material basis of scientific practice. Combining typical cases emerging from the classroom, this study reveals:

1. How standardized experimental materials (such as material kits) limit rather than support students' agency in scientific inquiry.

2. As pointed out by Hardahl, the production of phenomena often requires a division of labor, meaning participants need to know and learn different things (Hardahl et al., 2019). The study analyzes how the scarcity of material resources in common group settings in primary science classrooms leads to inequality in bodily engagement at the micro-level (i.e., "bodies with nothing to do").

3. Exploring how students face accusations of "data fabrication" and epistemic risks when the body serves as part of the "experimental apparatus," and how such authentic bodily engagement processes might bring about further learning opportunities regarding measurement uncertainty and the resulting argumentation and explanation construction.

This study is situated within a larger classroom ethnography project conducted in City S, a developed coastal metropolis in Eastern China. The broader project explores primary students' bodily engagement in science learning, comprising 75 video-recorded lessons (Grades 1–5) across three public schools distinguished by their advantageous educational resources and teaching quality. From this extensive corpus, we purposively selected nine core episodes (see Table 1) following the principle of "telling cases" (Mitchell, 1984). These episodes span Grades 1 to 4 and cover diverse science topics, including electromagnets, insect specimen observation, simple circuits, paper bridge testing, and air cannons. These specific cases were chosen because they vividly demonstrate how bodies are "assembled" within material practices, revealing how material entities act as agents that introduce uncertainty, exclusion, and epistemic risks to students' bodily engagement. Additionally, the study integrates data from teacher interviews, textual materials, and science narratives to ensure analytical saturation and depth. Methodologically, we adopted the classic Interaction Analysis approach (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) to focus on how participants create environments for each other during interactions (McDermott & Raley, 2011). We strictly followed the "whole-to-part" analytic logic proposed by Erickson (2006). The analysis proceeded through a recursive cycle: initially reviewing the entire video corpus to immerse in the field and identify key themes; subsequently isolating participation structures with high analytical value; and finally, conducting micro-transcriptions of critical episodes, focusing on both verbal and non-verbal behaviors. Regarding data presentation, this study strives for "ethnographically adequate description" (McDermott, 1987). This approach necessitates not merely recording interactions but revealing—through narrative depth—how participants dynamically construct the immediate context and organize their body postures to activate these contexts. To address the challenge of translating dynamic visual imagery into static text, we drew upon embodied learning research (Goodwin, 2007; Vossoughi et al., 2020), combining written narratives with visual sketches (e.g., key-frame drawings) to preserve the embodied details and situational tension inherent in the interaction.

What a body can do depends on how it is "assembled" within material practices; thus, students' bodies are always engaged in a dance with material actors. First, while material actors facilitate the production of phenomena, overly structured "material kits" often restrict student agency. Such kits can reduce science to mere handicraft, where students create beautiful products without understanding the underlying principles. Furthermore, they deprive students of autonomous exploration, imposing a framework where they need not consider materials beyond the provided package. Consequently, it is not the students doing science, but the students "being done by the materials"; it is not the student who needs the materials to realize an idea, but the kit that needs the student to execute a script. Second, the scarcity of materials and spatial arrangements in collective settings (e.g., a student seated far from the equipment) often physically hinder engagement, leading to inequitable divisions of labor. This exclusion poses significant epistemic risks. Given that producing phenomena is the core of scientific practice, if a student lacks bodily access during group work, they cannot physically generate the phenomena required to validate their ideas. Consequently, they struggle to obtain evidence to persuade others, face skepticism, or are relegated to specific manual tasks, ultimately feeling that science is not a domain open to their exploration. Third, unlike scientists using standardized instruments, students often conduct crude experiments where the body functions as part of the experimental apparatus (e.g., supporting a paper bridge by hand). While this reliance increases the susceptibility to "data fabrication," these moments are often unjustly dismissed as interpersonal conflicts or character flaws. Instead, they should be valued as intrinsic parts of "practicing like scientists"—critical opportunities for understanding measurement uncertainty and scientific ethics.

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