pedagogical commitments
Loris Malaguzzi (1969) states that, “[e]ither pedagogy – like all human sciences – is remade, reconstructed and updated based on the conditions of the times, or it loses its nature, it’s function, it’s proper capacity to correspond to the times we live in” (p. 100).
It is these ongoing processes, collaborations, exposures and contaminations (Tsing, 2016) that inspire me as an early childhood educator, instructor, becoming academic and scholar. And it is also in these spaces of ‘unknowing’ where I often find myself bumping up against tensions, and knots; and am unable to grasp or make sense of the world around me. It is here, in these moments that I find the invitation to pause, pay attention and to act–to think hard, read hard and write hard (Adams, 2019) and stay with the trouble (Haraway, 2016).
In the name of witnessing, engaging with wonder, awe, experimentation and creativity in all the everyday moments of living and learning together in our shared worlds and towards more livable futures.
photo credits: V. Maclean
my theoretical framework
Malone, Tesar and Arndt (2020), introduced me to the new sociology of childhood. And it is this framework that invites me into a multidisciplinary approach to early childhood education by invoking new words, and languages to create new stories, of who the child is and is able to be within the here and now of their childhoods. The new sociology of childhood tells other stories –alternate stories of children and childhoods erased, silenced and/or marginalized throughout our historical accounts. It provides the conceptual tools to rethink the global and local child, and it pays attention -notices and upholds the cultures, languages, interests and knowledges of all citizens towards the creation and recreation of other worlds.
I continue to lean on Sarah Ahmed, Rosie Braidotti, Jane Bennet and Stacy Alaimo (to name a few) as I engage and think with a feminist new materialism. As a methodology, feminist new materialism offers me a way to be, to move, to see, to read, to write and to wonder and imagine. It is inventive, innovative and dynamic—it keeps me on my toes, moving me beyond my assumptions, biases and Eurocentric narratives of the self, and of children, childhood and education. It represents for me, a visceral and emotive response to my memories and hopes, moving beyond to consider what a more livable future could be. It incites passion and the desire to revisit my stories, to cultivate a generative space whereby I can begin to (re)read, (re)imagine and (re)write a narrative for the early childhood educator with/in early childhood education. Stories that attend, respond and care for and about who we all are, where we’ve come from and where we want to go. Stories that provoke and move us beyond ourselves, beyond our stagnated ways of thinking and doing in ECE without denying, discrediting, or devaluing the already too common dispirited ECEs. For me, working within a feminist paradigm creates space for unsettling status quo theories and practices, whilst confronting patriarchal and colonial systems and structures that continue to hem us into a particular mold and/or fabric.
The purpose is then to unravel the tensions, threads and knots –while attending to those, who identify as caregiver and educators within ECED.
And, if the purpose of education is to transform, we must then take care to not undo the educator but rather support, nurture and make visible what is needed now, as we embark on a journey of (re)knitting, (re)weaving an alternate identity, reality and knowledge -together, and in collaboration.Lastly it is to a narrative, autoethnography and living literacies for change approach that I turn (Arvay, 2002; Ellis, 2020; Leavy, 2020; Pahl & Rowsell, 2020). This pedagogical framework offers me an ongoing-ness, a vibrancy, an aliveness and an alertness to my ethical obligations at the same time, I acknowledged my social, cultural and political subjectivity and positionality. As a methodology, it requires an ethic of care, caring for and about the world around me –that is, caring for all those who dwell with me here in these spaces. It is toward this ongoing commitment of unsettling my complacency and privilege, and to continue cultivating and inventing conditions for a (re)generative and hopeful spaces for early childhood education, for children with/in their childhoods and for educators with/in academia, scholarships and with/in a transformative pedagogy.
A narrative and living literacies approach provides the conceptual and theoretical tools for curating alternative stories. And if stories are what we are (King, 2003), and how we come to read and write ourselves into our worlds –it is to my way of thinking, also that gesture towards witnessing, as a slowing down, a noticing and an attuning to the here and now of the ordinary, and extraordinary moments of today and towards the promise of tomorrow.
photo credit: yarn-ball-needles-309401