my metaphor
unravelling early childhood education as a way of witnessing the tensions, threads and knots
"Sometimes you don't know how to get started with your knitting, and its not until the first few rounds that your needles fall into place" (Olsen, 2021, p. 3).
Unravelling as a metaphor was inspired by Sylvia Olsen’s (2021) book, Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey. Olsen’s writing is both travelogue/memoir; an autoethnographic chronicle of the historic and cultural entanglements of knitting, knitters, knitting techniques, styles and materials, presented as storied artifacts from all across Canada. For me, unravelling invites an opening that gestures towards possibility—the possibility of being and doing otherwise with/in current and future educational projects. Ultimately, to (re)image and (re)create an alternate identity for the early childhood educator; one that fits for today, and manifests the dispositions, attributes, and capacities for responding; and being ‘responsive’ in the here and now ordinary and extraordinary moments of our lives.
As I consider the process of unravelling, I am thinking about knitting, as identity formation and the ways our subjectivities manifest. Sometimes conforming, sometimes inventive and sometimes creative. But always a knitting together of multiple, complex and contrary ideas.
In this moment, I am imagining an ill-fitting, dated– perhaps old fashioned and out of style, sweater. The yarn, however, is still useful, and should not be disregarded.
A keen knitter will commit to the task of unravelling. Working slowly, with intention, to carefully unstitch the garment –colour by colour, strand by strand attending to the tensions, threads and knots as the yarn in (re)rolled into new balls.
Varied techniques and personal preferences are at play within these beginning and beginning again processes. But perhaps, the difference that makes the difference (Bateson, 1904-1980) is the ways we navigate the tensions, threads and knots within these processes. Perhaps what matters is the creation of space as knots are unbound, threads liberated and tensions eased.
Perhaps, this is where magic happens; where new possibilities, and potentialities are (re)imagined, igniting the (re)creation of something extraordinary, something transformational–something that fits for what is needed now –inventing a new pedagogy of hope for today, and the promise of better tomorrows (Freire, 1970; Braidotti, 2010).
photo credit: V. Maclean
following the strands
Feminist researcher, Lenz Taguchi (2019) writes of the importance of historically situating our academic, educational and research practices. To know not only where we are, but where we came from and where we are yet to go. Investigating the history of early childhood education reveals deeply patriarchal, misogynistic and deterministic worldviews regarding women. In other words, history promotes discriminatory narrative and truths of women’s position in the world in general, and education more specifically (Ahmed, 2016).
One inheritance of the enlightenment era is the gender divide; differences between men and women that were accepted a biological truths (Ailwood, 2008; Gilligan & Snyder, 2018; Kern, 2019; Prochner & Howe, 2000; Woodill, 1986). For example, traits such as femininity and maternal love lived only in women’s bodies, as an innate and natural embodiment. Childcare, as woman’s domain, was posited as a benevolent act, and a necessity of the reformation movement (Ailwood, 2008; Aslanian, 2015). This discourse reveals a longstanding tension that persists within this socio-cultural and political construct. As it not only purports to be an absolute truth, but it also neglects to evolve with the times thus failing as a response to our, here and now realities. For example, the performative gender assumptions with/in early childhood impose Eurocentric truths –these aren’t only conformist, but prescriptive at best, and at worst, completely negate, silence and erase multiple others (Alaimo, 2019).
Women who interrogate or disrupt these narratives, often find themselves in double bind, positioned at odd with both men and women. Viewed as instigator of these tensions, they are blamed for creating inhospitable environments, and making everyone else feel uncomfortable. Their acts of resistance are not always viewed as moves towards more equitable or just worlds, but rather for those woman/educators/leaders committed to activism and social justice; disrupting the status-quo positions them as ‘troublemakers’ and as ‘willful subjects’ (Alaimo, 2019; Ahmed, 2016; Davies and Hoskins, 2021; Shalaby, 2017).
witnessing the tensions…
I am thinking about threads as possibilities and trajectories; and as one way to reimagine different alterity for the early childhood educator. For me, thinking about following threads, is thinking otherwise, and it creates for me, the condition for (re)imagining, (re)scripting and (re)reading the identity of the educator with/in early education, leadership and academia (Moss, 2013; Kennan, 2017).
I am viewing threads as agentic materials with ‘thing power’ (Bennet, 2010). Threads representing aliveness; invites us to move, think and perform in particular ways. To consider the multiple and diverse ways threads connect, link and weave together the complex assemblages that constitute, our realities, identities, sense of belonging and wellness in our worlds (Bennet, 2010; Bernstein, 2011; Kennan, 2017; Early Learning Framework, 2019; Malone, Tesar & Arndt, 2020).
In considering divergent and alternate threads, is the invitation to look deeper, to notice what other purposes and identities are available to education and the educator. Purposes, that may help to move us beyond ‘caring smiles and helping hands’ towards a more generative and meaningful, feminist ethic of care (Moss, 2019; Langford, 2010; Vintimilla & Berger, 2019; Vintimilla et al. 2021). Care is viewed here as an essential quality and act of survival for all beings, human and beyond (Arndt & Tesar, 2019; Lanford, 2007; Tsing, 2016). Threads are viewed as possibilities towards a shared desire for more equitable, just and livable worlds. Possibilities, for (re)constituting a renewed vision of early childhood education/educator (Styres, 2018; Malone et al., 2020; Moss, 2013; Tsing, 2016).
For me, (re)centering purpose then, requires a suspension of critique; making space for an affirmation ethic — a renewed pedagogical practice that relies on bridge building, a relational praxis, and a shared understanding of who we are and what is needed now (Braidotti, 2010, 2020; Jones et al., 2019; Pahl & Rasool, 2020).
witnessing the threads…
Manipulating strands of yarn almost always involves contending with knots. Knots figuratively, and literally bind; slowing down progress and disrupting flow. And yet, this interruption can offer an unexpected invitation to linger, and rethink our processes (Todd, 2001, 2015). In particular the ways we make meaning in our world, through identity, language and literacies (Kress, 1997; Malone et al. 2020).
I am also thinking here of knots as binaries, dichotomies and dualisms (Haraway, 2016; Todd, 2015). The systems and structures we employ to contain, define and order our worlds (Freire, 1970; Rogers & Elias, 2012). We seldom question the assumption with/in our black or white thinking; deferring unquestionably to the logic of order –that is to say, things are either this way or that way. We are either for something or against something (Moss, 2013).
A pause invites us to work the knots, teasing apart the strand thereby creating space in-between, affording us to consider what else is possible within these liminal spaces (Todd, 2015).
The knots represent, for example the dichotomy between education and care; educator or caregiver; childcare or early childhood education. Working these knots problematize how we see young children living their childhoods –childhood spaces as either for education or for care. As either a legitimate space for educating children or a service for working parents. what’s more, working the knots invites us to question the cultural expectations that insist early childhood education is either a space for ‘having fun’ or a space orientated towards the future, charged with getting kids ready for what’s next, what lies ahead and is utterly unknown (Vintimilla, 2013).
The knots bind us to the past, but also afford us an opportunity to consider what is needed now; and to perhaps curate a new pattern, a new project whereby we can knit ourselves anew (Moss, 2013; Ellis, 2020).
Witnessing the knots…