JournalTOCs

in education
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1927-6117 - ISSN (Online) 1927-6117
Published by U of Regina

[1 journal]

Editorial: Sketching Narratives of Movement in Early Childhood Education
and Care
- Authors: Emily Ashton, Iris Berger, Esther Maeers, Alexandra Paquette
  Pages: 1 - 5
  Abstract: Editorial for the Sketching Narratives of Movement in Early Childhood Education and Care Special Issue
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.682
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Slowing, Desiring, Haunting, Hospicing, and Longing for Change: Thinking
With Snails in Canadian Early Childhood Education and Care
- Authors: Iris Berger, Emily Ashton, Joanne Lehrer, Mari Pighini
  Pages: 6 - 20
  Abstract: This paper is a collective attempt to respond creatively to a research project we were part of entitled Sketching Narratives of Movement: Towards Comprehensive and Competent Early Childhood Educational Systems Across Canada. We share our slow process of thinking, collaborating, wondering, and pausing along with the figure of the snail as we improvise a nonlinear path towards an unknown future. We think-with various theories of change as a response to narratives shared by participants in the project’s knowledge mobilization events: two public webinars and the production of a series of short video interviews. The pandemic simultaneously (re)inscribed ECEC with familiar discourses and narratives, yet, it also issued forth the potential for new imaginaries. ECEC was suddenly positioned as a critical community life-sustaining space for entire systems stressed by a pandemic. Amidst the attention, however, “slimy” traces of chronic neglect, underfunding, and undervaluing of ECEC were gleaming. Given the unpredictable momentum, we argue that it is essential that we open up ECEC to different narratives of movement. To this end, we offer five theoretical capsules titled: Slowing, Desiring, Haunting, Hospicing, and Longing as provocations for storying care otherwise and for stirring ethical consideration with potentialities for slow activism in ECEC. Keywords: Early childhood education and care, Canada, theories of change, slow activism, haunting, hospicing, desire
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.658
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Pandemic-Provoked “Throwntogetherness”: Narrating Change in
ECEC in Canada
- Authors: Esther Maeers, Jane Hewes, Monica Lysack, Pam Whitty
  Pages: 21 - 40
  Abstract: In Canada, multiple, intersecting, and incommensurable narratives promote investment in a public ECEC system. These dominant narratives are typically justified through an entanglement of discourses, including gender equity, colonialism, developmentalism, investment in children as future workers, and childcare as social infrastructure. With COVID-19, renewed economic arguments propose ECEC as an essential service, jump-starting an economy ravaged by the pandemic. Taking up a conversational approach, we question the potency of dominant narratives proliferated in media and policy initiatives as a way to effect large-scale change, and we seek to better understand alternative narratives of ECEC. We are drawn to those spaces where a range of new texts and narratives are generating possibilities for transformative changes. We co-create a bricolage of minor stories (Taylor, 2020) of change, keeping in mind Eve Tuck’s (2018a) theory of change and Elise Couture-Grondin’s (2018) premise of stories as theory. Keywords: early childhood education, policy, change, COVID-19, colonialism, throwntogetherness
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.655
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
“With Fear in Our Bellies”: A Pan-Canadian Conversation With
Early Childhood Educators
- Authors: Christine Massing, Patricia Lirette, Alexandra Paquette
  Pages: 41 - 61
  Abstract: The highly gendered, classed, and racialized early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce in Canada labours under exploitative conditions: low status and pay and lack of recognition. Early childhood educators have recently faced two additional contextual shifts that further complicate their daily work and practice: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Federal announcement of funding for a national universal childcare system. This paper is the result of a broader study that set out to uncover the innovative changes and practices in ECEC policy, practice, and pedagogy enacted across provincial/territorial boundaries in diverse communities across Canada with the hope of contributing to the ongoing conversation informing the development of a new system of ECEC in Canada. Qualitative data for this paper were derived from solicited photo collages and a video-taped webinar conversation with early childhood educators, responding to the following question: “What does it mean to be an early childhood educator at this moment'” Viewed through a critical lens, the findings elucidated four intersecting narratives: loss, sacrifice, adaptation, and hope. This paper contributes to ongoing discussions about the fluid and contextual nature of professionalism within ECEC. As we attempt to mobilize for transformative change and social action in the development of a competent ECEC system in Canada, it is imperative to provide space for the lived experiences, critical insights, and interwoven story lines offered by educators and children. Keywords: early childhood education, early childhood educators, professionalism, care, COVID-19
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.646
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Embracing Our Power: ECE Students’ Experiences Creating Spaces of
Resistance in Post-Secondary Institutions
- Authors: Camila Casas Hernandez, Luyu Hu, Tammy Primeau McNabb, Grace Wolfe
  Pages: 62 - 79
  Abstract: In this paper, we, four students with diverse social locations, explore the development of preservice educators’ professional identities as political resisters. Through our experiences in an Ontario college, we found commonality in our emerging need to resist “alarming discourses” (Whitty et al., 2020, p. 8). By dissecting and analyzing the neoliberal narrative perpetuated by our educational institution, we refused the notion of being the good ECE (Langford, 2007). Rejecting the universalism and totalism of Western European curricular and pedagogical inheritances, we set out to create a space to embrace alternative narratives to critically question our role and the expectations of our profession in a neoliberal world. This space was used for ECEC advocacy and brought together our student community, creating an opportunity to mentor while fostering human connections from our stories. Through collaboration, we reaffirm the importance of building community and reciprocal mentorship for nurturing and developing political agency within our field. We are motivated to sustain this critical space, to serve as a place of resistance for other students who question “universal truths.” Education comes from more than the diploma received. Keywords: Early childhood educators, professional identity, resistance, student advocacy, post-secondary institutions, ethics of care
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.651
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Node-ified Ethics: Contesting Codified Ethics as Unethical in ECEC in
Ontario
- Authors: Lisa Johnston
  Pages: 80 - 101
  Abstract: In this conceptual article, I argue that there is a difference between codified ethics and the ethical. I begin by situating code of ethics in the broader professionalization movement in early childhood education. Drawing upon Gunilla Dahlberg and Peter Moss (2005), I discuss the dematerialization of early childhood educators (ECEs) and the instrumentalization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Ontario through the implementation of the Code of Ethics by the College of Early Childhood Education ( 2017). Thinking with Eve Tuck’s (2018) question of “How shall we live'” (p. 157), I take up a critical invitation from Sharon Todd (2003) to consider how codified ethics in education may be rethought “as a relation across difference” (p. 2). I work conceptually with the imagery of nodes from the film Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera (2008) as an aesthetic device to examine the effect of codified ethics on ECEs. Finally, in conversation with Joanna Zylinska (2014) and Tim Ingold (2011), I re-frame instrumentalized nodes/codes of ethics within the complexity of knots and meshworks to recover the ethical in early childhood education. I offer this piece as a warning that solely relying on codified ethics completes the transformation of the ECE into a worker technician and may be leading us toward a dystopian future and as a call to activism to engage in the complex ethical work required in the small everyday spaces of the early childhood classroom. Keywords: early childhood education, codified ethics, ethical, nodes, dematerialization, instrumentalization
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.648
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Doing Twitter, Postdevelopmental Pedagogies, and Digital Activism
- Authors: Nicole Land, Narda Nelson
  Pages: 102 - 115
  Abstract: In this article, we interrogate how we might manifest early childhood education’s Twitter purview as a space for thinking with postdevelopmental pedagogies. Accordingly, we pay attention to the ethics and politics that shape our Twitter practices, asking how these activate postdevelopmental provocations. In this sense, postdevelopmental pedagogies refer to processes and questions that interrupt the assumptions, objectivity, universalism, and technocratic instrumentalism of child development that so often pervade ECE practice, including much of the #earlychildhoodeducation content. Anchored in the two Twitter accounts that we coordinate, we outline four practices for doing Twitter with postdevelopmental provocations: counterpublics, counter-narratives, and counter-memory, collectivity, and digital feminist activism. We then work through two examples, showing how we draw these practices into our decision making as we craft tweets to activate postdevelopmental questions. We conclude by offering forward questions that educators, pedagogists, researchers, and activists might carry into their own Twitter practices. Keywords: early childhood education, Twitter, postdevelopmental pedagogies, digital activism
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.650
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
Counter-Storytelling: A Form of Resistance and Tool to Reimagine More
Inclusive Early Childhood Education Spaces
- Authors: Kamogelo Amanda Matebekwane
  Pages: 116 - 125
  Abstract: In this essay, I reflect on my lived experiences as a girl child growing up in my home country of Botswana, and also as a mother in a foreign country, Canada. I am experimenting with my personal essay and making connections with academic articles that will help me understand my behaviors, attitudes, and responses to challenging situations that seemed unfair and unjust. I believe sharing my experiences not only gives me a platform to reflect, but also renders an opportunity to unearth hidden ideologies that perpetuate dominant discourses that continue to undesirably affect early childhood education. Sharing the unfortunate events for me brings healing and comfort. My essay is guided by critical race theory that provokes and challenges the normalized practices in education that continue to marginalize the minority community. Also, my inspiration for this piece was drawn from Wallace and Lewis’s (2020) book, which described humans as narrative creatures who need stories/narratives to make sense of the world around them. The essay unpacks and discusses four critical questions, at the same time, offering acts of resistance and refusal by applying counter-storytelling methodology. Keywords: counter-storytelling, critical race theory, lived experiences, racialized minorities, early childhood education, acts of resistance and refusal
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  DOI: 10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.661
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)
A Review of Relationships With Families in Early Childhood Education and
Care: Beyond Instrumentalization in International Contexts of Diversity
and Social Inequality
- Authors: Esther Maeers
  Pages: 126 - 128
  Abstract: A Review of Relationships with Families in Early Childhood Education and Care: Beyond Instrumentalization in International Contexts of Diversity and Social Inequality edited by Joanne Lehrer, Fay Hadley, Katrien Van Laere, & Elizabeth Rouse
  PubDate: 2022-12-21
  Issue No: Vol. 28, No. 1b (2022)