Journal of Childhoods and Pedagogies

Assemblages of Desire in Children's Roadmaking Events

2023-05-01T08:34:01-07:00

The pedagogical approach activated in this study is centred around the concept of the "assemblage of desire" put forth by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). This approach views education as a transformative practice that stages a pedagogical act, shifting the focus from transmitting information to embracing encounters, relationships, innovation, and difference. The roadmaking curriculum event manifests this approach, where a group of children, educators, and a researcher work together towards a shared goal through the force of desire and experimentation. The main protagonists in this event are a small group of 3 to 5-year-old children (Jason, Ella, Jessica, Scott, Brian, Chris, and James) and their educator, Pritti. This study highlights the collaborative nature of a curriculum inquiry, where all participants become co-inquirers, immersed in the experiment, and constantly exploring new problems and connections. Furthermore, this approach recognizes the importance of educators' ethical and political responsibility in viewing education as a transformative practice.

Pedagogical Documentation as an Ethical and Creative Practice

2023-05-01T08:13:10-07:00

Pedagogical documentation is an ethical and creative event composed of ongoing communication and processes of re-living and re-enacting experiences. The re-living and re-enacting indicate how documentation is a practice that is not just interested in creating a record of what happened but a generative process and an active engagement that helps to shape educational realities.

Being In-the-making of Pedagogical Narrations

2023-05-01T08:22:20-07:00

Specific instances and germinating ideas are documented in notational ways on various papers that are moveable and can be recombined, recomposed and brought into relation with other events and ideas. Over time, the images and notations are loosely reorganized into emerging concepts and thematic groupings. I do this together with educators as we work collaboratively in the studio. Like loose threads, fraying fabric strands undoing and tangling with other threads, we weave propositions, ideas, and processes together.

Becoming a Community With Clay

2023-04-24T14:53:18-07:00

This co-composed inquiry project reconceptualizes the idea of a community in early childhood contexts through working with clay. Building a sense of community is a dominant idea commonly brought up in early childhood care and education but is seemingly static and rarely reconsidered. To further delve into this idea of a community, one group of infants and toddlers at Simon Fraser University Childcare Society has worked with clay as a big block over several months. Thinking with place-based pedagogy, we attended to how our particular place – our program, identities, and community – becomes cultivated relationally and materially. This attention allowed us to move beyond viewing clay as modelling material and community as strictly human-centred. Working with clay became a vibrant social practice where our thinking, bodies, and relations with place are interconnected, transforming our understanding of how a community lives in our program, with each other and the world around us. By attending to the many ways in which a community has taken shape alongside our work with clay, the project aims to illuminate the complexities and possibilities of early childhood communities.

Keywords: early childhood care and education, community, place-based pedagogy, clay, social practice

Living and Learning with Morningside Blackberry Plant

2023-01-18T22:58:36-08:00

This living inquiry took place in the Morningside early learning program at the SFU Childcare Society as part of a practicum course. As we entered the program in early September, our attention was grasped by the children's and educators' engagement and encounters with a particular blackberry plant residing in the corner of the Morningside yard. The Morningside blackberry plant is an integral part of the daily life of the program as the children regularly visit this unique plant, spending time under its tall branches, observing the bubbly blackberries, and reaching over to pick them in their mouths. However, the desire of the children to pick as many berries as they could reach raised discussion and discomfort about the berry plant being viewed solely as an object – a resource for human consumption. And so, as practicum students entering a space with these concerns, we began to consider how we might shift the focus on living and learning with and knowing the berry plant differently and transform our perspective on the world through a curriculum inquiry. This Pedagogical Narration highlights particular events, becomings, and transformations that emerged from children's curiosity and encounters with the blackberry plant and its spikes that provoked the children to re-think their relationship with the world and more-than-human others.

Connecting to Country

2023-02-10T09:50:34-08:00

This project of connecting to country with infants and educators is an act of reconciliation within a community of learners. Through examining our pedagogical and cultural ontologies we journeyed with the children, families and members of the Awabakal community respectfully engaging with ancestral language, knowledge about the land, animals of Mulubinba and the importance of waterways. Due to a global pandemic our ability to wander while learning was constrained to our immediate learning environments. Therefore, we used experiences of digital media, music, art and artefacts as our conveyance to other imaginings within this learning. Where we arrived at is a place of deeply reflective understanding about young children’s capacity to share in the joy of cultural learning and the pathways this creates for whole communities to learn together.

Drawing - Places

2023-04-28T15:08:16-07:00

This inquiry project takes place within the community of Cypress Hollow, a small cohort of children and educators situated among the Coast Salish lands of which Capilano University Children’s Centre is located. Thoughtful living with natural spaces includes considering and cultivating relationships with the more than human community members such as plants, trees and animals that inhabit this place, acknowledging that there are multiple stories, knowledges and complex histories of Indigenous peoples and colonial settlement here, and living with the rhythms of seasonal conditions unique to the West Coast of B.C. This project was inspired by the Huckleberry Moss room, a soft, mossy area within the forest that holds memories and meaning to the members of the Hollow who visit this place. The initial intention of this project was to create a ‘drawing room’ within the Huckleberry Moss room so that we may continue to cultivate a ritual of being together to draw, think and share ideas in an area that is significant to us.

Finding our Place in the Garden

2023-01-13T09:54:04-08:00

With our bearings of place as assemblage, as political, and as driven by context and locality, we share our story of encountering the community garden on the campus of Capilano University in North Vancouver, and our evolving relationship to this place. In exploring our relationship to place, we recognize the importance of place-conscious learning for children, students, and educators in the context of our time, as we are living in a climate crisis, and are situated as settlers on stolen Indigenous land. Throughout this inquiry, we have been oriented toward theory in early childhood education that lives within poststructuralist and reconceptualist frameworks.