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Abstract

This article examines how philosophy of science can function as a performative epistemological foundation, opening deeper insight into professional practice and understanding of positioning in complex interprofessional contexts and situations involving children. Drawing on a concrete school case - a third-grade boy referred for assessment by the school psychological service under Denmark's Children's Act - four epistemological positions (positivism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and agential realism) are shown to open radically different understandings of the situation and its possibilities. The article argues that the dominant reflective practice in Danish professional education rests on a hidden Cartesian epistemological foundation that structurally overlooks the wisdom of the body, the agency of materiality, and the agential cuts that intra-act in professional forums concerning children. It further highlights that systematic psychologisation of pedagogical practice risks constituting epistemic violence when complex situations are reduced to individual neurological explanations. Through Karen Barad's concept of diffractive reading, an epistemological practice is proposed that integrates intuition, tacit knowledge, and sensibility as legitimate epistemic forms. The article concludes that philosophy of science is not abstract curriculum content but formative for a pedagogical resource-oriented perspective that strengthens professional students' judgement, ethical accountability, and capacity for discernment in complex agential situations, with direct effect on which children's lives become materially possible.